“The great achievement of Cracked Piano is that its poems present psychological pictures of a person in loneliness,” writes reviewer John Zheng. (poetry reviews)
Category: Poetry
“Out west, we get our sunlight second hand, / when the East has settled the business of the day.” (poetry)
“The last traces / of what I have lived, / of what I have loved, / are vanishing at the mercy of the wind.” (poetry)
“You did not talk politics, except / to tell me we were being watched” (poetry)
“Weird fantastic beings of a / Super-intelligence. Ruling a race of synthetic humans / and pitting them against mankind’s dream.” (poetry)
“in soft squares, you try to neglect / your worries and shut down / the war-voices,” (Poetry)
“Each day the quick kick of the dream / empties another body / and the ghosts move through unkempt streets / named Lincoln and Delaware,” (Poetry)
“they are the ones not allowed the roles except / maids and gardeners and gangsters and prisoners”
“at recess the innocent school / children play and gambol in / pure non-denominational play”
“from their beacon hands / glow worldwide welcomes and a thousand smiles.” (Poetry)
“I dreamed the sun, very low, / painting me a mustache of sweat and coal.”
“I wondered aloud/if on those odds days/where I felt like a hunted squid/that what I was actually feeling/was Light Cerulean Blue” (Poetry)
“I see that the innocent face/beneath the long-brimmed, straw hat/does not seem to know it is raining.” (Poetry)
All the other cool calm quite sensible terms had stable gigs in respectable stories. (Poetry)
“‘I can ring you up for/what fits in the bag. The rest is your responsibility.'” (Poetry)
“20th century monk/High Priest of Art/The Legendary Master—/in his bare immaculate altar of a studio/in the heart of New York City” (Poetry)
“ParaGard: [thank you student health/insurance] a type of long-acting,/reversible, contraceptive, inrauterine/device.” (Poetry)
“Ghosts stories/told around the campfire/predicted my future.” (Poetry)
Our government only practices against a sunset bleeding into the cradle of tactile landing. (Poetry)
“the city’s landmarks / are illuminated / by your stopover in my thoughts” (TCTC Translations)
“I pledge allegiance to no man,/ let alone some fucking flag” (Poetry)
We’re whiter and more rural which means we don’t pick the president—we just narrow the view. (Poetry)
“Eyes reflect the distortions/of a whitewashed mind.” (Poetry)
“The footbridge is missing a plank./He has frayed the regard of everybody he knows.” (Poetry)
“Haranguing shots, agony, careening/blue lights stir fever in a dark bedroom.” (Poetry)
Many are drawn to martins covered with feathers that seem to absorb ash, stained with orange glass shards. (Translations)
“Apparently to be a poet—dogmatic on the outside/and lacking conviction within//is a hell one can leave/but doesn’t” (Translations)
“but the sea swoons/with delight in holy purity/but sand breaks the stone/that covers my face” (Translations)
Whilst searching through an unfamiliar room,/the guest against the bedstead sets abloom./A blemished bruise that raise on his shank pain’s gloom.” (Poetry)
