poetry: results 25–48 of 735

he was bound and stitched. they hadn't a need to cut him loose.

after many times of him slipping, worming his way, logically,

out of those predicaments—the ones where

he swallowed the oaks and unbecame himself—less predictably each go round.

now they've given him a place, or worse.

the windmill yawns and turns over. the brass chimes

grunt, half in sleep. from the house, someone sings

and i will never forget this sound, the openness of that voice:

the only song—

there is only here and there and gone.

the cotton grows wings and rises,

rocking chairs bare their wooden knees.

there are amphetamines in the horses' hay,

psychotropics in the cattle trough,

on the dinnerplate, styrofoam cornbread.

a porch with a mouthful of boards says hello

to a church steeple, who asks

what is this cheap oak table tarnish smell in the air?

This is the story of my grandfather Benjamin Simonds

who survived Auschwitz. He kept

a scrap. Torn label of a can of con-

densed milk. He took dictation. He

dictated. He flipped the dialectic flapjack. He was

a gambling man. People think prisoners don't gamble.

Gamblers are always and only prisoners.

Once he told me that the spine is a prison.

I was going to write a poem about giving birth,

about meconium and vernix,

the cubic zirconium

scattered on the floor tiles of the hospital room.

It would have been about false

windows that face false

walls, about

the tiny hamburger—the mustard too yellow and sweet…

is all about showing off how different it will be from

the old curriculum. The old

books point us to the new

ones won't matter when the old

ones point us to the

new. You, the new you

will learn one

less language.

A man spent time at the bottom of a vase. "Arrange me, please," he heard the air around him say. The man knew he should have a plan but he had none. One day he noticed a fly outside. It bumped its big slimy eye on the glass.

I drove my truck across groomed Texas to an enormous crucifix, the biggest one in the nation. I was alien, terrified. I'd gone there with a purpose but arrived to find the place barren. A cop drove by. I turned back on to the highway.

Lying on the floor of the place we'd just moved to in Portland—B. and I—listening to CDs, there was nothing there but the two of us, and the music.

1) Darkness (So lately I have these visions — the sky at a hover by the off-ramp, steam percolating off the half-thawed river like something vaguely of the body, threaded with frost, hibernatory and beating)

2) Hair Loss (and so all she wants is a cold one and maybe a booth with a view of the local scene but then there's this strung-out looking, mullet-headed guy out of nowhere and suddenly she's in this white van, okay, it's like something straight of out "Silence of the Lambs" and the lack of light is already making her skin do weird things, breaking out like crazy…)

3) Tenderness (the way the body reveals its single, herbaceous intent)

but why for the life of it the singing, why the lust-fed hands

like a pair of burning tongs, the table lacquered in moonlight,

why the moonlight, inky and desolate, why the lollygagging

in the snack aisle, the lying awake in the room beneath the all-night

fisticuffs of rain, why if not for the life of it the body, shaken but not

apterous, not ruined but ruminant, a dissonance, a fog, a humming…

I run out of songs for the piano

which has been making sounds all night

connecting me to her past

like humerus swelled to the tune of frozen ground

a field turned flame and fern

in ink a weather unexpected

The hero in this story was never born. If you never say never, you can't ever say nevermind. Say this is the beginning. Say this is the end. Say your princess is in another castle. Say the castle is made of sand.

Who are you? Tinkerer or whistler? Whisperer or pickpocketer? Specter or wren? If a riddle, then answer in static trapped in antennas or flash powder dissuading children away from the dark. If not, when weather registers music in our bones, then answer with glass antlers shattering or stars carved of paraffin. Once, I dreamed of paper targets of a prey rare or fleet enough to make me turn away the gun.

Some are sparrows,

but generally wintry.

Some sparrows spell

rows or spar

when in discord.

Just listen beneath

the din then:

A contradiction

sings winged things

through cold seasons.

The wind in the beginning

meant the crying

inside the blackened lanterns

could carry a rare measure of music.

But midway

into the forest, we already heard

the stolen horses

whinnying within the ending.

you've use that old cane you found for another purpose: you whittle the hand rest to look like a branch: with a discarded knife: you carve patterns into the rod: running your fingers over the carvings: they feel like ancient meaning: you place that fragment of shell: on an ornate string: attaching it to the hand rest: so it will dangle and hang: catch the breeze and spiral: a dowsing medallion: a cursor: to what?

you show up with pockets full of water: but what everyone notices is your large ears: someone whispers donkey: and gets the reply you mean like in Midsummer's Night Dream?: so what if you are different: you resent people jumping to conclusions…

not sure. the sun. but we knew.

the afternoons became burdens.

something to throw away late

at night. along with certain

perishables. under the yellowing

light the pickle jar. then morning

peeled peaches. then a still

afternoon.

A smack of jellyfish gelatinizes

the beach: man-o-war

blue bottles pop from hot

sand: tide churns these alien

bodies: we wonder why we

gather and destruct

            When the train picks up speed, it sounds like a woman screaming,

one woman all over the city, releasing her heat in a high, steady wail,

            smearing her red mouth along the tunnel walls. I make and unmake

myself. When the doors open, anyone can come in, anyone does.

You're a trigger finger dug into the starting gun,

the smack as it fires, the tense stroke of hooves

pressing into a fresh track. You're the curiosity

of a flashbulb nibbling air, tricky camera lens

grabbing a mane as it quivers back. I'm a rising

overture of thighs. I'm dirt exploding midair…

New husband, I have no

faithfulness to spoon into

our morning coffee,

and our evenings

are predictable as

the instars of caterpillars.

You snore, offer nothing…

tell us about evening and about the bright

star tell us about the huge dark wall

where it is pinned so if no one is looking

the sky is really burning and tell me it is my eyes

that douse it all to soot, black branches

with one root in carbon and budding eternity.

We will chalk out where

your heart balked forever,

mangled into some kind

of a horseshoe, lucked

over for the very last time—