Category: Poetry

Dirge

Something about the engineering of stairwells / makes you want to push someone down one. / Vertebrae snapping against all those / edges straight as rulers. Too violent,

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“Brecht in Southampton – Personal Pleasures”

Morning at the coffeeshop Cheating traffic, the back-roads White clouds, the pale sky Parking near water, a book Midday at the bay, the breeze Water on your feet and scallop shells My sister’s laughter—baby mischief, feeling glad Scanning the view, … Read More

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Letter from Lia Beach

For the island has harpooned me.

For the day will not end.

For salt-drunk I swam to an underwater cave and saw clear through but the sea pressed me and I turned.

For I am glad you could not see me clamber onto the stone beach, awkward as a palsied horse and naked but for goggles.

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Sure

“I’ll take any reason, / absurd to God, for something new. / That’s why I stood up, no doubt— for a little color.”

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Ex Post Facto

“…I’ve become a spy for mankind.”

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To cleanse

“I consider cleaning it / But a marble pattern of the last remnants of you is reassuring to stare down at ”

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after mother

“the catching of blood / & buttercream pipes / around edges as the mattress coils / find a home in my ribcage.”

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LEGS.

“Green grass./Blue skies./A faint haze distorting the figures”

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Cinquains

__Rooms Full of Pottery Make Me Want to Smash Things__

Nervous,
(as I am in
china shops,) when you place
your hand on my back, saying, “I
am Here.”

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The Apotheosis of Washington

his brush-stroked / countenance / and plaster-backed / powder blue / dress coat / dragged down / into the crypt

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Reflections from the Backlog —

“There’s always summer to/think/realize/laze./There’s always summer/and the year after that/and the year after that/and the year after that/and the rest of our lives.”

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Cost-Benefit Analysis, 2013

I am to have this gold when you die. To buy ink for poems crumpled on the carpet purchased with your cancer. You’ll make nothing as a writer. But my materials are cheap. Each verse I write about you merely … Read More

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