I was hooked but / never sated.
Tag: poet
The synagogue of my youth wandered throughout the city, from the basement of the Methodist church on the Manayunk hills to the East Falls nursing home…
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?”
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”
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.
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)
But those who press the grapes now, / who toil from morning till night, / they’ve disowned us…
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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)
Do you need to be a good person in order to be a great poet?
(nonfiction)
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?”
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)
After double shifts / waiting tables at the country club, / she soaks herself pruny, / floats on the water until the streetlights hum.
(poetry)
The historical cloth covers two forms / beating like the angels’ hard bodies in the midst of changing time.
(poetry)
O, old ocean! the river has mixed with your waters / where I so often bathed
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“From space you can see the shimmer / of the thousands of immigrant children / wrapped in tinfoil sleeping on the desert // sand”
The roof soars so high above the sky’s hanging at arm’s length / And you, dear, are now drunk on a thousand glasses of wine
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