The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“In the end when they ask would I do it again // I’ll shake my head: where does one draft / end and another begin?”
Category: Poetry
When someone’s chasing you with a knife, / you just run, as someone said ages ago in a statement, / actually a manifesto demanding a person be face to face / with the words or they won’t count.
I might have lived a life or two / instead of counting steps in the parking lot, / between the rust-colored cars, / missing you.
I blossomed into violet / flames while my / Self, in silent flight / within my soul, / drank and sang / until dawn.
I’m paranoid, I’m chronically fatigued. / Neither Freud nor Jung can help. / Lord, grind us with your palette knife down into / the dark, into the soil.
(poetry)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“an archipelago: / a chain of islands / and also, / what contains them”
(poetry)
Now all I want is to / hear what Paul Thomas Anderson whispered into Fiona / Apple’s ear to make her cry in public.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“And what if dying is like / that time I got out of school early / because I had an appointment”
“For Example: You’re Allergic to Bees – A community poem for Maureen Seaton” “Oyl”
(poetry)
I compliment / the man on his black leather jacket and he hangs it on my / shoulders and says, I think you’ll like it better than me, bunny.
i go to school to see mary but learn louis xvi was beheaded in front of an empty / pedestal
When I see a half-fallen curtain, / I see an eye on the verge of sleep.
(poetry)
The cicada ebbed and flowed / until those raised in cities / complained. How can we sleep?
(poetry)
The only language you know / the form you know as love / as one, / complete / complete.
(translations)
I don’t trap my dreams in books / you might as well store fire in paper
(translation)
But those who press the grapes now, / who toil from morning till night, / they’ve disowned us…
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He moved close enough to whiff my aftershave. Our eyes met before he grimaced.
(fiction)
The children / dance on open flame, scrawl shapes across the sky / you feel the ground vibrate as they raise hell / on all your futures.
(poetry)
He slices an opening in the side / of my breast and puts a needle inside / which flails around like a water hose he can’t control / in the yard
(poetry)
in silence, those dark minutes of recess when they stomp on my shadow with their hyena / laughter
(poetry)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“Do you know what it means to be glorious in a way / even God doesn’t see?”
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“every long night before I met you // every long night when I wanted you”
It was late in the evening and dark, the dark river with its lights passing by, reflections from the Seine travelling across the ceiling, sliding along the walls.
I have not / strayed far from the dead. I see their hip favored / executives and can pick them out from big / crowds
That day has never ended. / The fence he built is still new.
The latest piece in our DEBUT section, which showcases the first literary work published by a writer, beyond a campus-only magazine
“Sometimes I feel like a beetle. / Hanging on to a blade of grass / for dear life while what others describe / as a gentle breeze knocks the wind out of me.”
(poetry)
It’s theirs as much as mine, / this house, their great black wings / sweeping past windows as the day unfolds
(poetry)
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