Shooting Pool in the Mental Hospital
Shooting Pool in the Mental Hospital Because memory is not the hovering bank shot that stops at the lip of the pocket and will not fall, but the scatter of balls when the cue ball strikes, rolling...
View ArticleOracle, Mallarmé & Stone
Oracle A broken rib could be the sign that stabs a little when you breathe, long after the boy who beat you goes free, and still you keep him near, in the breathing chamber, the way a jilted lover...
View ArticleDear American Amnesia
DEAR AMERICAN AMNESIA, I know you are only trying to make white people feel better— and some of us might even appreciate it, but maybe it’s good you sometimes let us remember certain things, like the...
View ArticleA Progressive Disease
A PROGRESSIVE DISEASE I feel my body getting away from me, becoming erratic and strange, slowed by even the stillest air. I feel it twist into itself, gnarl and tighten. My brain’s signals go astray...
View ArticleUndomesticated
Undomesticated The large goose does what it always will, pushes aside the smaller fowl for crusts, ducks its head below the surface briefly, then makes a horrible, raspy honk. It’s lovely in its...
View ArticleAt the perennial exchange
At the perennial exchange At the perennial exchange, you will swap half a hosta for a clump of obedient plant. It will spread like the clap. Repainting the porch, you’ll scrape the paper wasps’...
View ArticleBlues
BLUES Why is there careful language instead of nothing to be said? Look! By kicking the table I make the light blue ring in the dark blue water in the blue plastic bottle shudder and...
View ArticleFamily Way
Family Way In my family, when any one of the women of my grandmother’s generation dreamt of fish she would get on the phone to confer with the others about who of the younger generations was...
View ArticleAn Island
An Island –ending almost with a phrase spoken by Keats, from Cowden Clarke’s remembrances Toward the end of the island (a tapered spit of sand and ocean cusp), I heard a bell (a bird, it turned...
View ArticleThe Triumphs of 1974 & A Self-Guided Tour of Machu Picchu, OR Please,...
The Triumphs of 1974 Moneyless, we moved to Cali, Riverside, mall-land. Dad scored a government job. As you entered the gate rusted missiles pointed at your head. Dad parked his Triumph bike in our...
View ArticleInviting the Reader: Narrative Values, Lyric Poems by Sydney Lea
Inviting the Reader: Narrative Values, Lyric Poems by Sydney Lea The editor of an online journal recently asked 25 poets to complete the following in one sentence: “Poetry is…” Here’s what I wrote:...
View ArticleNesting & a triptych
Nesting At my parents’ house nothing is in boxes, nothing is packed. A loose-leaf photo album. A jar of sticky coins. A plastic Disney cup. A tin of pet ashes. I package them up or I throw them out,...
View ArticleThe Last Plume Poems
1943 & COUNTING the year that is when Churchill begged the Aussies to send a platypus to boost wartime morale. Alas, the male died in his tank aboard the MV Port Phillip not far from docking in...
View Articlespattered measure
spattered measure what beauty O sad world through answers the screech of white, O says the light. O says the moon behind all of beauty: What of it, around a stately ugliness the screech of...
View ArticleRemote Stars
Remote Stars Look up. There’s Bill, Jimmy’s mother Lena’s only relative who, for most of his life did his best to escape people and light, but finally, seeking the darkest places, found himself...
View ArticleMeditation on a Shower Rod at the Super 8
Meditation on a Shower Rod at the Super 8 You and I are snake bit. Can we postpone? Your words, liquid-lit in my palm like a fortune. I don’t know what, exactly, being “snake bit” means to the...
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From Lewisburg to Syracuse: An interview with Bruce Smith by Chard deNiord
Chard DeNiord: Theodore Roethke’s line “I’ll make a broken music or I’ll die” from his poem “In The Evening Air” has served as an abiding credo for you throughout your career, from your first book The...
View ArticleBodies on the Margins
BODIES ON THE MARGINS The artist understands blood; or rather the bloodlines. There was a synagogue in the swelter, the dust from the yard would make a film over the stained wood—soon the rabbi gave up...
View ArticleSince Childhood & The Virgin’s Miracles translated by Don Schofield
Since Childhood Think of the body on the sand, palms open, arms spread, an arrow cleaving the air, a brief surprise in the heavens before it changes course and falls to the earth where it belongs, in...
View ArticleArmantrout, Skloot, Barger, et. al.
Rae Armantrout On “Blues”: This poem is an encounter between the ordinary objects and events of my morning and a couple of philosophical (or metaphysical?) problems that were on my mind. The first...
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