My friend Carol says aging evens out the advantage of beautiful women over plain ones. ... Where are the girls who were beautiful? - Julia Alvarez

33 is the year that Jesus Christ
embraced His life...
...Wasn't he crucified at 33,
I ask, depressed, deserted by his friends,
divorced from god, subject to human laws?
Wasn't he the most single finally
at 33, meeting his lonely end?
Yes...

Gloved with two potholders, I listened
while she told me not long ago
a girl could not marry until she could roll
her dough so transparent her beloved
could read his Bible through it.

(What moves you most in a work of literature?) JA: Accuracy of language and perception — the writer is not striving for effect and gets out of the way to let us see the world through the lens of language. I love what the poet Stanley Kunitz said about dreaming of “an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world.” That pretty much sums up what I most admire in a work of literature.