Totem
Hatched from the wet egg of a sculptor’s eye a quarter century ago, it grips its squat stump, wings outstretched as if to dry. Its bones are wires, its plumage ragged strips of pages torn from my … Continued
poetry
I never meant to be mean ||| Crab Orchard Review
Though it happened. When I threw the plant across the kitchen counter, I never meant to crush its unstraight stalk crude with green sureness, cracking pottery chips across the tile floor. I meant to scoop handfuls of … Continued
Snapshot
The Husband & I stand next to each other: not speaking, sometimes speaking. See? Asks the photograph. A closeness or almostness? The photograph is meaningless except insofar as it is a record of us in a place at a moment … Continued
No. 1964
Translated by Robert Hedin and Dag T. Straumsvåg I’m prisoner 1964, my birth year. My cell number is the same as my phone number. I often sit in front of my cell door looking for cracks in the … Continued
Sex Machina
Against a xeroxed purity I’m learning to say My pleasure Pouring one out For narrative unity Watching soap operas On a stained futon I’m learning about free will How little I have Nature produces automata Opening an email … Continued
Debt Free
I knew someone Who went broke throwing clam bakes A generous backfire There are wet dreams It aches to wake from Like unlearning the axiom that To love anyone You have to love everyone Watching my love rescue … Continued
Object Permanence
Making out inside a Richard Serra Strikes me as the right way to take in art Like embracing an echo The moment examined mercurifies An eviscerated longing I feel like a voyeur Eating warm cheese at the gallery … Continued
Unlike nostos, algo is unspecified.
nunca sé por dónde empezar, así que decido hacerlo al comerme una fresa incontable la cantidad de semillas can you say I’m of two minds? yo diría que tengo ideas encontradas lo cual abre dos posibilidades: que se encuentren como … Continued
Hymn: Plain As Day ||| Going Haywire and Other Old Sayings
Dawn fades in when I least expect it. Where are the books that held me once, my brave invective, the pictures forming in the darkroom? Memory leaves with her usual lack of meaning, a darkness with … Continued
Look ||| Mantis
Translated from Hebrew by Tal Nitzan and Ilya Kaminsky. It’s not a green bench in the children’s room It’s a crocodile It’s not a crocodile It’s the future: here’s the slow shift of his eyes here’s … Continued
The Initial ||| The Arkansas International
Written in Polish by Jerzy Ficowski. Translated by Jennifer Grotz and Piotr Sommer. where the green snake at the bottom of a dark cellar under the mossy cover of rumbling and wood rolled around itself and unrolled … Continued
I Am Chito ||| The Poetry Foundation
Written in Japanese by Hiromi Itō. The first time I ever heard about coyotes Was in a book called (in Japanese) Setons’ Animals for Boys and Girls There I encountered Lobo the Wolf King, bighorn sheep, a … Continued
Very Many Hands ||| The Cincinnati Review
You remind me of the Underground Railroad. I’ve learned to watch for the kerosene lamp aglare in your distance. Past the fuel and wick at the far end of your forest, there’s a mud basement, a soot-slick coal cellar with … Continued
Self-Mastery ||| The Poetry Project
We thank you for your interest, an urge from within, a special something. A sea of metaphysical books before they amounted to clairvoyance. An ether inside a higher ether. Two sensitivities to one whole and a dimension of your dormant … Continued
A Kind of Poetry
Sometimes you turn to poetry the way you turn to another country. Everything is better, more humane. You notice things you wouldn’t otherwise. You notice things. Watching gardeners trim branches for birds to fly through reminds you of … Continued
The Birds
And later, in the empty room upstairs AAAAAAAAAAAthat will stay empty because it’s a lookout AAAAAAAAAAAJames and I are staring at a cardinal in a tree and I say AAAAAAAAAAAhe’s so red and James says … Continued
The Almost Audience (for Phyllis Wheatley)
Of Senegambia and seven, she should have been of the not-to be-taken, the not-high price, for a not-prime boy’s a girl of the unsuitable labor (birth not work)—and that years away. (Some of the captured, their spirits: … Continued
Snow
It used to settle on the crowns of trees unevenly, so that gravity or a breeze could make a fringe fall down, the fluttering particles meeting their two- dimensional shadows, off- white occluding off-white. Children could … Continued
Action Origami
How much can you do with one piece of paper— creasing, tearing, adding volume with air? You can make a mythic sea monster toppling a tall ship in high, high seas, as my seatmate in 30C, in … Continued
Circum-Navigation
The boats return Heavy from cities and distance. The crickets fall asleep. A child listens to the hollow of a conch. Perhaps it is the moment for another trip At the bow, for certain, the … Continued