Come to Bed

ODE TO MY BEDSIDE CARAFE

(FIRST A HAIKU, THEN A TANKA)

Oh my, my carafe,
which I set near my bedside.
So sleek, I sip, sigh.

Oh, Crate & Barrel,
you've done the unthinkable—
what pristine design.
This is one for the ages!
The pages of Arch. Digest!

(Bedside Carafe, $14.95, includes 23 oz. carafe, 6 oz. glass, Crate & Barrel, see above)

BEDTIME STORIES

Take two—no, not Ambien, silly—and call me from your dreams.

Childrens' classics: You can't go wrong with a classic or two. Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are is still both scary and sweet—for adults too, and Shel Silverstein's poems and drawing in A Light in the Attic have just been released in a special 20th-anniversary edition, with a CD of selections read by the author.

Two Hot: Nerve's Guide to Sex Etiquette for Ladies and Gentlemen by Em and Lo (nerve.com columnists Emma Taylor and Lorelei Sharkey) is a delightfully precocious guide to bed etiquette written in language that manages to be quite elegant, effusive, and up-to-date. Up All Night: Adventures in Lesbian Sex (edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel and Stacy M. Bias) is a hot new collection of real stories by real women (including Voice contributor Tristan Taormino) that is, perhaps, best read in bed.

Two Photo: Elinor Carucci's portraits in Closer, her first monograph, chronicle intimacy in a way that is at once unintentionally glamorous and ripe. (A photo from the book appears in this section's opening spread.) If your bed was your coffee table, then The Devil's Playground, a collection of Nan Goldin's recent work, would be its perfect mate. And while we usually look to Goldin for her telling portraits of the people she is closest to, it's the spaces she captures in the chapter "Empty Rooms" and "57 Days in Roosevelt Hospital" that are the most telling.

FURNISH A FUTURE

The New York City Department of Homeless Services recently released the results of HOPE 2004, the second annual Homeless Outreach Population Estimate. Volunteers counted the homeless population on the streets of the city on this past February 23. They estimate that there were 2,694 people living on the streets and in the subways of Manhattan, Staten Island, and Brooklyn. The Partnership for the Homeless is committed to helping the homeless population through initiatives such as the Furnish a Future program. You can help too. Rather than navigate the city's rules and regulations for throwing your old mattresses and furniture out with the trash, you can donate your no-longer-needed belongings to the program's warehouse, which serves as a free furniture bank for formerly homeless families as they begin to settle in new homes. Furnish a Future is also always looking for volunteers to staff the warehouse, to fix up donations, and even to set up and design displays of the furniture. (476 Jefferson Street, Brooklyn, 718.875.5353, partnershipforthehomeless.org)