Field-Crossing by DAVID O’MEARA The clover’s razed; the ground is autumn-hard. The land bristles in a ragged frame. I’m on the far end, watching weightless clouds hastened by wind, the…
Category: How Poems Work
PIGS by Les Murray Us all on sore cement was we. Not warmed then with glares. Not glutting mush under that pole the lightning’s tied to. No farrow-shit in milk…
When on occasion I teach poetry, one of the main things I try to instill in my students is, to quote Spicer, “Poet, be like God.” To go from trying…
Custom We maintain a critical distance from the sad spaniel gentlemen in cravats on the plaid duvet at the Custom Hotel, Los Angeles. We are so over it. We fly…
Kleptomaniacs As long as you keep an open mind about the thing you seek, it’s always in the first place you look. Gabe Foreman, A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types…
Darcie Dennigan runs a reading series in Providence, and a couple of years ago I bumped into my old friend Leeore on the street outside the bar that hosts the…
The City wept by a pool midway, the lover’s conversation claimed itself like the old head of the wandering Jew painted on leather, the head follows the voice, a fluid that is a body…
Boy with His Hair Cut Short Sunday shuts down on this twentieth-century evening. The L passes. Twilight and bulb define the brown room, the overstuffed plum sofa, the boy, and…
Untitled You’re still young. Someone curled an arm around you as you slept, and upon awaking gently touched your face. The first sound you heard today was a bird, a…
The Tank Squats three days at a time in white brown mud that sticks and sucks like a mouth against everything it touches. The long battle, the bit by bit…
—- What are the phonemes within phenomena? What is their speak and how are they sounded? How does a phrase issue outward from event? What is the name of the…
A few months ago, a friend’s father challenged me to defend poetry as a product in the marketplace — the demand left me sputtering about art, the relative insignificance of…