“. . . the Muse guides mariners in the shape of bees.” —Philostrates Her wild cunning hypothesis: the Sirens in the Odyssey were bees. And I imagine two virgins, joined at the thorax— grounded, centered, perfumed— who could hum the Greeks’ ancient choruses, who knew all the lullabies, the waltzes, the songs a wife would…
Bill Knott: The Quicken Tree, new work from a truly original and brilliant poet, whose language, ideas, and images always bedazzle. (BOA Editions)
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” —Janis Joplin But when you lose it’s only you and the hard wood maple floor beneath you, your shoulders pinned down, wet shirt on a clothesline by the knees of a god leather-clad in medieval thigh-highs. He forces you to repeat or he’ll show you…
“Flour is a fine thing.” —Nadezhda Mandel’shtam Bread we’ve all pissed away Stale crumbs the baby dances On sandwich she won’t eat now Vallejo’s nightmares semi Full colon hungers crackling Like electricity be dash Tween them a hungrier man If we survive moments self dash Abnegation like that We will elect ourselves to The pantheon…
Alan Williamson: Love and the Soul, a third collection of poems that eloquently addresses psychological and spiritual questions about love. (Univ. of Chicago)
In order for a rapprochement with the physical body Only necromancy could be behind it. Racked on a stretcher the I.V. tubes string me up like a cello without a player Only necromancy could be behind it. These days of horse-drawn betrayal. Like a cello without a player I’m caught, a crown of thorns,…
I have been sculpting my father’s head. I began it when he died, when his head was most familiar, when the priest called him a liar. I have been sculpting my father’s eye. It had been wide and black, they say, peerless in the art of sinking; my father was a king. I have been…
In the line of trees part of the mirror grows a harder forest through them. A pallor is the storm. Blossoms through the trees, the mirror of rain, flow hard as a fever. We hear the marble water dressing, dressing. The middle of rain sours the skin. The mist is combed through, pulled apart, having…
His first infidelity was a mistake, but not as big As her false pregnancy. Later, the boy found out He was born three months earlier than the date On his birth certificate, which had turned into A marriage license in his hands. Had he been trapped In a net, like a moth mistaken for a…
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