Crime & Republic
The Crime We lived by the trees, Under mountain shades, Unknown to the Sun And headlines. I remember rosehip Jam thickly laid on Bread …
Night Journey
Excavations 3 A poetry denies its end in any descriptive act, I mean any act which leaves the attention outside the poem. — Robert …
Trash Picker
Emma actually stopped Paul on the church steps. Blocked his way. Emma, Paul’s former sister-in-law, and her posse had been waiting, though Paul had …
Rinda’s Moniker
It’s a melancholy chamber, willow wallpaper and a power-steam humidifier trying to spread calm across six pews sulking on either side of a narrow …
Finding their letters
Knowing that people used to communicate with each other and express their feelings through hand-written texts made me feel somehow sad for being born …
Storm Flight
How disappointed the first flyers must have been to finally rise above the feathery white heavens and not find themselves surrounded by angels but …
View & Spring – Poems
View A white petal falls as the bee drinks the Mandarin bloom then moves on. Purple and red tin pots with orange flowers …
Down to the Desert & At the Corner
At the Corner At the corner of Division & Reclamation where the town is split between chaos & choice, the edge where you look …
Empty Towns and Other Poems
Meeting the Resistance In her twenties during World War II she joined the Netherlands resistance and cycled out to meet newcomers dropped by …
The Piano Player
Frank felt edgy all week. Preparations for Bennett & Co.’s RESTORE AMERICA fund-raising tour were taking over all his time: petitioning the state for …
My Father’s Axe and Other Poems
Boundaries Lucy, boundaries might be made of Roman stone walls or hedges, but they’re boundaries all the same. I would walk through the English …
Midwest Storm Cellar Sequence
1. Revisionist Ministry of the Martians Seared almost scorched, rolling potato eyes and broccoli heads now dead, this medicated dedicated bougie meditator’s Sternoed noodle soul …
Downtown Shadows & Other Poems
Henry Miller’s Typewriter How did you know that I dreamt about Henry Miller’s typewriter last night? Stolid gray Remington, with a bloodshot aura, green …
Water Harp
1 At the window, last night’s words, ashen Against the glass Black petals in the vase, delicate As the hour fading from us Their …
Four Poems
Miss Dolly Bumfrey We bear Muscat To your sick by traction. Making headway at that driving test Was the needles up-and-up. Annihilating two easy-natured …
from Broken Glosa
Rae Armantrout: I put a glose on you Habitat-themed enclosure. Zen-inflected mug. Around the block dogs bark at absence. Habitat (entire poem) ― …
Try This On – Three Poems
How I Like My Women I like my women slight and frail, bones hollowly light, ribcages pressed like prison bars against the skin. I love …
A Painting Balla Called Flight of the Swallows
you ask me how I occupy myself in my dreams well, if I see one I see the rest I am not an optimist …
The Forsythia in Bloom etc.
The Forsythia in Bloom Suddenly in the early spring evening the forsythia bush is aflame with light, a monastery with hundreds of cells. Throughout …
Milton’s Well etc.
Milton’s Well Predestination stopped her on the road, speeding in some overcommitment, racing impetuous down green skylines, pushing the envelope of the just-possible. On …
For Fred etc.
For Fred (Veteran’s Day, November 11th, 2004) We miss you, Mr. Rodgers. You told us straight. You were not purple Mr. Rodgers, not an …
Fragments of the Human Heart
1. I will say our secret… a stone holding its own weight we were lovers holding each other warm in the unfolding there was …
By Jupiter! By Bacchus! etc.
By Jupiter! By Bacchus!: Against Humility In the black ooze of the sky, where golden spangling stars alight, Jupiter, alone at its zenith …
Pieta, Detroit
Pieta, Detroit He’d been dead an hour when she came, Ambulance waiting, no hurry now. Her oldest boy. She cradled him, Lifeless, nothing like …
Daylilies At Night etc.
Daylilies At Night Lilies which open half-sullen pods in the night As if lightning bugs, the torso’s involuntary Lucent flash, and then the equally …
Not Black And White etc.
Not Black & White Joey was swimming in Sulphur Creek, mother can tell because his eyes are yellow, and he reeks of rotten eggs. …
The Midal Charm etc.
The Midal Charm In a white canoe The river takes her home Tired and alone With her chin on her knees She dreams …
Where The Land Moves On Forever
Where The Land Moves On Forever 1. Siringitu, the Maasai named it, the sepia expanse of grassland, and marshes that stretches to a blur …
To Theseus and Other Poems
Mis En Scène: A Wet Season The graceless way in which you wooed me positions itself, transfigures itself into a scene (complete with …
Evidence of Obsession
Memento Fr. 1 Aotearoa is the savage place, seeding A heap of broken images, mixing Mortuary photos with life But this went further as …
Resurrection Suite
The Dead Zone North from Kiev, empty roads The light of other summers opens among the pages. In the photograph, your face, …
Head Up, Chin Down Straight
Bob can play a number of instruments, none of them well. He likes his guitar, an Ovation with a sensual, curving back. The guitar …
The Magic Orgy of the Pig
Now, this was not one of those cases in which a pig is killed in sacrifice and its private parts are gluttonously coveted …
Five Poems
Eight Months On Time, tidewater near, headlong has ripened you to this glowing fullness, clumsy in dormant love. Nothing can take you back to …
The Autobiography of Somebody Else
1. The End I went home—after three hungry years, a dozen awful addresses, and too many leftover 60s prophets and 80s mental patients, and …
Bone White Death
Venerable Xoratio Rey is now very ill and there is no hope he will be able to live out his dream. That is why …
La Estupidez de Cosas
Rush hour was over but traffic in the city was still bad. The long summer days kept the streets busy. Chuy did not like …
One Oh For Tilly
It didn’t announce itself, the difference in the room, but it was there, of that he was positive. It wasn’t the soft caress of …
A Wink For Luck
Abbott, West Virginia, the town with a funny name, was a funny place to live. Needing somewhere to hang for the winter, I settled …
The Nickel
Shards of sunlight flickered off the car’s bumper as it disappeared over a rise in the road. Josh stared at the bright bursts of …
The Strongest Man In The World
Thirty-five years before he died, a man with straight and thick but graying hair hurried down the worn carpeting of a steep wooden staircase. …
The Sex of Angels / O Sexo dos Anjos
I More excited than she’d ever been before, Ankbanatacha rushed into her parents’ bedroom — feeling indulged as only a loving, guileless ten-year-old only …
The Year Of The Itch
In this first summer night in the year of the itch, I watch the rain clouds collide and part in a dance as …
Moses and Joe
“What kind of a name is Moses O’Reilly?” said Joe Babylon. I didn’t answer him because I was too scared to talk. I was …
Turning Over a New Leaf
Cotton Barbeau thought of himself as both lucky and damn smart. He was called Cotton by everyone who knew him even though he had …
From Retelling
I felt an irritation on my right shoulder and tapped my skin. Something awoke in me. A new sense of awareness overtook me, even …
ACME Short
Third day out, the oddest feeling overtook me. A hybrid of nostalgia and deja-vu, this fuzzy childhood sense-memory of melancholy bliss. I wanted to …
The Most Natural Thing In The World
The note, if one word could be referred to as such, was on eggshell-blue stationery, and had come in a neat blank envelope, slipped …
The Whistle Blowing
Christian Gimel was killed by a falling stand-up piano on the day The Dyke was painting the staircase in her apartment building. A chic …
Checkerboard Conscience
“Aren’t we quaint — sitting around this stage prop of a country store with a leaky pickle barrel as our centerpiece? Reminds me of …
Quentin at Peace
September 1, 1970 ImageI have lived here for the past fifteen years eight of them alone save for Jason and Carruthers. They’ve endured as …
Fishing The Moody River
Each morning she stood on the bank casting her line into the water and reeling it in slowly as white smoke curled around her …
Berlin Letter
Dear A, I’ll keep adding to this as I go along. Maybe by the time I finish it, I’ll have an address for you …
Maine Letter
The October edition of POETRY featured an annoying sequence of petulances entitled, collectively, “Antagonisms,” none more excruciating than earnest Eavan Boland’s cautious, provisional confession of failure to bond …
Haiti Brief
Almost 10 years have passed and Jean-Bertrand Aristide has failed to improve the lot of the Haitian people who trusted him so completely in …
The Azizam Poems
the trembling that day in iran you weighed a honeydew’s weight when you first took thick milk from your dune-gold mother, purblind with sucking, …
To Sidney’s Defense etc.
TO SIDNEY’S DEFENSE The erected wit with its complete set of screws and mock I-beams and moist whimsy fluid in its jests, sit on …
Pronomial Adjective
i. her, one perspective, is secular and simple with blue plastic eyes and split thumbprints. and, in a word her is ambiguous like variety flower …
A Pacific Vagrant etc.
A PACIFIC VAGRANT And so, in travel, I made my mind treasonable in every way, In treason to say I had eloped all those …
Three Poems
TWAS it was was a translucid partition between the consciousness here below: forfeiting all things-light she goes back over the world of the world …
Lowe’s Cabins
We’d recommend them to anyone— As nice, but pricy (which is a lie)— Took our breakfast on the Lowes’ Ephesian patio by that pool …
Ex Cathedra
Beyond St Catherine’s Hill, the long chalice of river sluices through the city, canals Romans cut dividing the Itchen into die-straight races. Surrounding the …
The Event Rose
A child-slave’s blood washes the feet of the black prince in the mute heart of Africa. The prince will later use his blood-soaked feet …
The Emergence of Slow Purple
Here I was, forty-five years later, coming back to Saugus, looking to find something I had lost. Though I’d been told I was still …
Love in White & Black
Love in White Lucía blew out the eighteen candles of her white birthday cake in one go. She got the tip of her nose …
Playing Your Hand
The first time I saw him was in our shift room. We were coming in mornings—early mornings. The night shift had already changed and …
The Bank Robbery
“I want us to ride over to Aeria,” decided Mr. Bell early on the morning of the bank robbery. “We’ll take your truck.” “What …
The Hula Girl On Lot Six
Not long ago, when his parents were alive and his sister didn’t have to live in a trailer or dress up as an Arab, …
Hunting The Duberrys
He’d wound up pretty well and delivered a hell of a punch. It hurt a lot and I banged my head hard on the …
The Poetry Project, or When the Shit Hit the Fan
No one who lived in the East Village during the 1960s can forget the foetid smell in the tenement hallways and the reek of …
The Asylum Fields
All the itinerant shadows of a man’s quiet hope dissected and his guts laid open for the crows. But see the place: varicose, unmaintained, …