Necropolis
translated from Dutch by Donna Spruijt-Metz in memoriam Joost Zwagerman Woken up in a hut on the Bay of Baratti under a blood moon Barking dogs on hilltops ripped silence to pieces held the dead … Continued
translated from Dutch by Donna Spruijt-Metz in memoriam Joost Zwagerman Woken up in a hut on the Bay of Baratti under a blood moon Barking dogs on hilltops ripped silence to pieces held the dead … Continued
translated from Dutch by Donna Spruijt-Metz in memoriam Derk Wiersum Having had to absorb a lot of life lately I learned through so much pain that being dead doesn’t seem so bad It is up … Continued
11. One sneeze can kill you Church bells ring seven futures Blackbirds flex sunlight 100. Blunt-rolling squirrels A crow rocks an evergreen The cupola smiles 23. A dog on Front Street … Continued
When I was a child I was pixie dust. That’s only part of the story. The other parts are the boys from New England. How they put their mouths to my neck, a river on the moon. I … Continued
Translated from Swedish by Patty Crane I In the evening darkness at a place outside New York, an overlook where in a single glance you can take in the homes of eight million people. The giant city over … Continued
Translated from Hungarian by Timea Sipos Climb up onto my chariot, sweetheart. I’ll take you free of charge. The sharks planes are flying lower than ever. We have to hurry. My body is stubborn under metal. I burst forth. My … Continued
Translated from Hungarian by Timea Sipos This tunnel is underwater. It doesn’t matter whose it is. You’ve never seen anything like it: I hold the spheres of my life below sea level like a virtuoso. An inherited or learned reflex? … Continued
Complete focus can resemble utter distraction, just like there’s a point where my lover begins to look like a stranger and large things begin to look small. When the squirrel twitching in the dirt becomes, upon closer … Continued
The painter wants to say she was the speechless grass obscuring the doe’s tangle of ankles, but she was not grass. She’d forced certain realities into being; for instance, the fawn. She’d refused to paint it as … Continued
On the bottom floor of the modern Bibliothèque nationale de France, stack #368, row K, reference #p33189787272, page 368, the first comma of paragraph three is feeling a little lonely today. No one has glanced at it for … Continued
Splayed before the white plastic table two hearts an orifice several ears a hue & a small cloud all a mess and amiss like a lava lamp. Through the eye of a golden needle she sees the sun … Continued
The screw of a tug stirs the night, thrums the chest like a heart in blood. Does it fight? Yes. Its iron mass displaces fear if fear is a kind of tide. Inside its cabin, a … Continued
after T.S. Eliot I The fog horn wakes me up in February. The night leaves snow on the docks but morning grays it, sends rivers running down the bare cooper beech. Rose Island is shrouded by fog. … Continued
But what does this phrase mean to you: “People in glass houses should not throw stones”? Does it mean you might break things, these things or others, not yet named, nor dreamed of? Or that the wasps outside … Continued
I promised myself I wouldn’t say what I expected to say, nor even something else: but what else? And while we fill in a few hours ’til sunset, we might ask: why do we write poems? Hysterics? Wonderment? … Continued
Yet all that summer it was boys against girls when the giant girls and boys were fighting, where past was prologue, and all bore down on one another in the radiance of flooded land where the mezzo-soprano sang … Continued
for Melvin I’m sitting on the floor watching Jackie Robinson die or watching his funeral, or he’s stealing home and he’s dying into home and I’m trying to look back. There are people in dashikis and afros. Everyone … Continued
You’re supposed to thank the fumes. To be grateful for the toxic patch on the rail track. For the craquelure in the asphalt, seeping green— it reroutes you, proffers with each commute a forced adventure. Who’s to say … Continued
I have lush grass in my mouth come sit, come mess with my unplumbed sum, let your finger at leisure destroy my mute, my hermetically sealed little baggie of spit. I treasure whatever will stay in the room: … Continued
The way she wears her sweater is so Sunday. If her parents were here she’d say why don’t you go watch Dancing With the Stars. It is every generation’s job to feel deprived. If she had kids she’s scared of … Continued