The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books.
I thought I was
responsible. I was not large enough
for the knowledge.
Tag: poem
On Maui a whole town catches fire in a great wind and burns to the ground in two hours. The iron center of the earth grows weary of devastation
(poetry)
my real-time palimpsest of human misery
my tonight we’ll go behind the scenes
of my mass grave hospital livestreaming
in a theater of war near you my tent city
(poetry)
I see Jesus watching people sell grilled chicken and nutritional porridge.
I see Jesus watching people trade real estate.
(poetry)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books.
there are trees. A tall one
that has shed all its leaves,
has its roots in my heart.
One, still bright with red
and orange, touches
the great loves of my life,
while a spruce, evergreen,
keeps me shamelessly naive.
Lamb’s ears plucked where
the stairs are, prairie
grass, steeple here, and
dandelion bends,
(poetry)
How long is a piece of string when all we’ve got is scissors?
(poetry)
Remains, remnants, in print only, a death mask; just as dead
But in another place. Taxons without Lazarus. Facts
Some data has confirmed. You, among the dead,
(poetry)
Newspapers make the best
umbrellas, the rain erases
them. Fascinating philosophies
in my head-hunch over litter,
digging for shit
when there is already so much
on the surface.
(poetry)
father’s Chevy
station
wagon nostalgia
weekend I am
always in
service to
my failed
marriage’s cream-
colored
cashmere
sweater
(poetry)
Sears Tower stands fast and solidly flies. Over its base no statues try to beautify the essence of its vim: a skeletal trajectory, a bold learp of blackest metal/glass reaching, soaring higher and higher
(poetry)
My sister is going on a limitless journey
Those flying blue atoms above us
Penetrating our hearts exactly like darkness
(poetry)
this, the poem i cannot
return to
this, the wholehearted
downpour
(poetry)
it was a hundred thousand miles safely tucked away
had been years since its teeth had tasted the lock of his mouth
when they murdered him
it didn’t break no it vibrated
changed from key to tuning fork
death does that you know
(Palestinian Voices)
His cheek, cool on asphalt, shining before he closed
his eyes: the pigeon’s neck, shimmering
(poetry)
To read Södergran’s work today is to easily contextualize her voice within a feminist discourse, but it also defies being so neatly categorized. What makes her poems feel timeless is exactly their resistance to any niche delineation of time’s cultural productions.
(reviews)
The poems refuse to dramatize feeling when intimacy is already present, letting proximity, stillness, and ordinary action carry the weight. Moments of connection are often pared down rather than heightened. After intimacy is established through shared gestures—errand talk, side-by-side movement, unremarkable speech—“Greenlight” concludes simply: “Nothing much happened.
(reviews)
This identity transformation, and the inherent tensions of being a mother-writer, inform the poet’s search for a medium that can contain the impossibility of it all. Its pulsing, chimeric quality is reflected against, and through, the structure and constraints of poetry.
(reviews)
in my city, two fallen en route
to a market, eight more
at an intersection
of a hospital, ice
in their cheeks, hair, lips as if
they said goodbye
(poetry)
One of the famous Iranian rug patterns is the Tree of Life, in which the tree is often located on the vertical symmetry line of the carpet. The tree symbolizes the connection of earthly beings to the heavens.
(poetry)
In both concept and practice, we ask a great deal of the field, making it an adaptable metaphor in poetry and art: the open field, the blank page, the blank canvas. The field suggests potential, something unspoiled and limitless where growth is inevitable.
(reviews)
The poems conjure historical and essential artifacts, from “Before Refrigeration” to “Beckoning DigiSex,” and people, too, such as Darwin walking on mountains above the sea, and the poet’s grandmother, whose life “began in Kitty Hawk / and ended in Sputnik.” The tone includes not a simper of lachrymosity for some mythic, ideal time. “The poems included here,” Goldbarth’s introduction continues, “are meant to elegize.”
(reviews)
this sharpness
of ritual burns
toward expiation, but
the body kindles
(poetry)
As the title suggests, this is a book about vantage and perception. In several poems, the speaker takes an empathetic approach, trying to see the world through the eyes of her neurodivergent son. Elsewhere, she poses the question: “How can I teach my child to live through and/or in violence, without becoming violent themselves?”
(reviews)
Look! Look! Look! The dance
of these albatrosses in a sea, heaviness
like the iceberg of a frozen era!
(poetry)
The boy in the black carriage listens.
Solo in flight the starlings have no message.
They fly. He listens.
(poetry)
Can violence be made into beauty? Can beauty be used to dignify the stain of violence? Sloan seems to suggest so, perhaps, by conceiving of Ophelia’s body as part of nature—indistinguishable from it.
(reviews)
This week, ACM is posting poetry every weekday.
wait, things improve, around every corner is a prize.
Let’s go back to that track and crush pine needles
with our heels. Crush our watches too.
(poetry)
This week, ACM is posting poetry every weekday.
See? I’ve been frank, while the TV keeps beaming images–you yelling at the cop dragging you away: Don’t take me away yet; but the cops keep manhandling you, smash your spectacles, your black skin shines with sweat.
(poetry)
Shiki wrote haiku—tens of thousands of haiku—elevating himself to the immortal ranks of Bashō, Issa, and his personal hero, Buson. However, Shiki did not want to go back to the past and its masters; he wanted to reinvent what he believed was a dying art.
(reviews)
Another Chicago Magazine 