AN ERASURE AND FOUND POEM A seagull, all fluffed up, sits at the edge of the pier, chest against the wind. A sharp explosion interrupts its contemplation, the gray water, it spreads its wings. Seagulls don’t know what war is. But after sixteen days, the gulls overcome confusion, learn not to fly too far when […]
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March 22, 2022 – 10:59 pm
OscarDomesticated @OscDomesticated A note from #Mariupol : “Dima, Mom was killed on 9 March 2022. She died quickly. Then the house burnt down. Dima, I’m sorry I didn’t protect her. I buried Mom near the kindergarten” – and the scheme where exactly. It’s so horrible that tears are freezing in the eyes. 2:03 PM · […]
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Crow, Wheels When the city was destroyed, they started fighting over the cemetery. It was right before Easter and wooden crosses over the freshly dug graves put out their paper blossoms— red, blue, yellow, neon green, orange, raspberry pink. Joyful relatives poured vodka for themselves and for the dead—straight into their graves. And the dead […]
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In a Time of Peace Inhabitant of earth for forty something years I once found myself in a peaceful country. I watch neighbors open their phones to watch a cop demanding a man’s driver’s license. When a man reaches for his wallet, the cop shoots. Into the car window. Shoots. It is a peaceful country. […]
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February 28, 2022 – 7:22 pm
To go to Lvov (Jechać do Lwowa) To go to Lvov. Which station for Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew gleams on a suitcase, when express trains and bullet trains are being born. To leave in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September or in March. But only if Lvov […]
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February 26, 2022 – 7:49 pm
Here is the great paradox of poetry and of the imaginative arts in general. Faced with the brutality of the historical onslaught, they are practically useless. Yet they verify our singularity, they strike and stake out the ore of self which lies at the base of every individuated life. In one sense the efficacy of […]
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December 8, 2020 – 7:15 pm
Why Write Love Poetry in a Burning World To train myself to find, in the midst of hell what isn’t hell. The body, bald, cancerous, but still beautiful enough to imagine living the body washing the body replacing a loose front porch step the body chewing what it takes to keep a body going— […]
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I Long For the Rhyme of Health I long for the rhyme of health a small fresh syllable a poultice of words to put the soul right and make the body strong. I long for a rhyme to put the soul right. Caitlín Maude, trans. from the Gaelic by Pearse Hutchinson from a Facebook post […]
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February 10, 2019 – 11:54 pm
We Lived Happily during the War And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house. I took a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth […]
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April 17, 2014 – 12:16 pm
Confession. I am afraid to go on-line these days for fear of falling down the rabbit hole of April – Poetry Month. And the blogs pouring forth their bounty of poems. Overwhelming. Yet, here I am adding to the cataract of poetry. My problem is that I have my own closer-to-home welter of words. Piles […]
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