And mirrored in the dilated,
upturned eyes, can you, she asks, see a room’s
bright window, panes of light. And can you see
how the selfsame light pours into us,
the shine of attention, of tenderness.
(poetry)
Tag: Poetry
She used to talk nonstop, now she calls so little, asking strange questions. One time she asked him about that Wednesday morning in 1976. He was just fifteen then. She wasn’t even born yet! Crazy girl, cried over dead communists. What has she been doing in America? Countries kill their people all the time.
(poetry/No Place is Foreign)
Part of a series of Native poetry collected by Mark Turcotte.
I sat at his grave,
rearranging ever-present anger and decades old resentments into
drunken one night
stands, warring
with abstract and weak forgiveness.
(poetry)
This week, ACM is posting book reviews every weekday.
The book, at its core, follows the speaker’s daily journeys along a rugged mountain road over the course of a year, with the gravel thoroughfare and its environs serving much the way Thoreau’s Walden Pond once did— fueling reflections on humanity in general, and the present moment more specifically.
(reviews)
This week, ACM is posting book reviews every weekday.
Supposing there was any lingering hope that the modal interventions of capitalism might deliver us, as a whole, into a brighter, more sustainable future, well, Gilbert’s poems are here to announce the ethical insolvency of that hope—or, not only are we totally, irrevocably fucked, but the severe degree to which we are fucked has already reshaped our ecology, our futurity, our reality.
(reviews)
This week, ACM is posting book reviews every weekday.
Catrileo’s florid, visceral writing traverses the centuries—from the so-called Conquista, Spanish term for the brutal colonization of the Americas, to the modern-day capital city. It is a lyrical and nonlinear chronicle that spans the arrival of invaders armed with “old maps” and “steel fire” to urban streets studded with bars and patrolled by police known for their brutality.
(reviews)
This week, ACM is posting book reviews every weekday. This is the first.
The volume opens with an epigraph quoting Toi Derricotte, the co-founder of Cave Canem, an organization dedicated to the future of African American poetry: “Joy is an act of resistance.” We learn through these poems of the sheer joy of Black woman creativity, as well as the power of women speaking out against injustice and evil.
(reviews)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Blair emerged otherworldly in his cloud of sawdust,
but wheezing and sucking for air. Over his head,
centerfold pin ups in every garage door panel
were framed by black tape. They hovered like angels.
Part of a series of Native poetry collected by Mark Turcotte.
to hold sky, rain, all
beloved creatures born to climb.
And I, earthbound, earth-bonded,
a troth renewed with each step.
(poetry)
Part of a series of Native poetry collected by Mark Turcotte.
they built the mall of america
like a curse over the convergence
of our dreaming
they carved their brave explorers names
all men
into our mother’s tongue
(poetry)
This is the first of a series of Native poetry collected by Mark Turcotte.
My father. I am your only son.
Look. In my hands I hold a name.
Ours. This proper noun we share.
Oh how you follow me still.
(poetry)
I have missed the predictable angles
of houses & the swollen arms
of buff dads. & these buff dads’
sullen children, their sullen faces
frowning across the road.
(poetry)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
A cloud spills grey
oil over their guns
They aim at a wolf
who, a second ago,
was someone’s son.
In Kiefer’s Maine, the trucks, soon to contain slaughtered chickens, have “waiting mouths,” “the air [has] feathers”—as if all that’s left of that life is scattered to the wind. Kiefer braids losses throughout the book; it can feel as if loss, like farm grit, “filters into every soft thing.”
(reviews)
suns as yellow as ours
gleaming suns
from lives like matches
atrocious explosions
scattering ashes
like bright corollas
(translations/ poetry)
I didn’t know we lived a few counties
south from where Frederick Douglass stood
half-naked, one shirt for a whole winter.
His hands smaller than my brother’s
who took all the jokes on the school bus
(poetry)
how many egrets lost footing in the candles of your chest,
syllables broken by rust?
(poetry/ No Place is Foreign)
This is the first in our Palestinian Voices series, featuring work by Palestinian writers and artists, including people who are part of the Palestinian diaspora.
The dignified broadcaster on TV smiled. “The boy’s mouth is now a restricted military zone,” he announced.
(Palestinian Voices/ Translations)
Man’s resentment at her for being torn in half, forced to share his Maker’s image but not enough to spare. He wept petitions in the lap of Tigris and Euphrates, “Please, please!” he moaned, “She’s too singular to be understood!”
(poetry)
My mother insisted
til the day she died
that I was born at a very early age
I still don’t know if I believe that
(poetry)
The song might be the length it took for a historic city to be destroyed (twenty-two minutes) one February evening.
Who collects the snow globes of war and of fathers?
A collection of snow globes, each says “it is snowing.”
(poetry)
if the Earth would just split in two
& one half would take its leave
I’d take a seat on the other half
& absorb the blue skies above
(translations/poetry)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
exhausted like a French arthouse film
there’s always a male and female lead
reuniting for us
(TCTC translations/poetry)
to know everything
and understand everything
doesn’t guarantee I’ll be able to tell the difference between poisonous and edible
(No Place is Foreign/ translations)
Because these times are fresh paint, fresh wax, fresh garlic. These times are new grass in the same wasteland where every spring new grass grows.
(poetry/translations)
Nothing is so dangerous as a news report wherein Palestinians die in the passive voice, the horrific violence massaged into meaningless oblivion, the perpetrators somehow irrelevant.
Some art just makes you think instantly of the seven deadly sins. Not because they traffic in, say, lust, but because they arouse feelings in you with such painful precision that it seems some dark magic has occurred.
Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
I hope the water of Lake Michigan knows the water of your body like kin. I hope there is soil under your nails, that the light of necessary fires burns luminous in your corneas.
Between us – a screen, a thirty-minute flight, / the friendly/ uncaring world, / car crashes, NATO drills
Another Chicago Magazine 