Time

is a curve

with a caveat. …more

This brings us to the end of our National Poetry Month project, one poem short of a sestina’s worth. We close out this year with a poem by Mary Jo Bang, whose forthcoming translation of Dante’s Inferno will be our Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection for the month of August. You can find links to all the poems we’ve run during this project here. Thanks for reading along with us this month.

A Room In Cleopatra’s Palace

Flies and a fan and a pillar
in this or that arch of the empire. …more

Well I got to keep it going keep it going full steam.

Two Lyrics from “Rondo”

The boys pawing the ground are horses.
They will drag you between them.
Come, give them your arms! …more

Was National Poetry Month over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

The Lover’s Field Guide to Lesser Coinage

There are eight stycas in a penny, two pennies in a farthing, three farthings in a nearthing, and eight nearthings in a positutely. …more

So maybe you’re following our National Poetry Month project and you want to know who else is going to be featured. You’re following, right? I mean, sure you get the tweets from Rumpus Poetry and The Rumpus, and you regularly check the Rumpus and Rumpus Poetry Facebook pages, but what you really want, what you yearn for, is a link list of this month’s poems, updated daily.

I’ve got what you need. …more

We decide when National Poetry Month is over.

A Double Sestina on Happiness

Part 1:

I should never be happy, the Samsung Chairman’s eldest daughter Eunhee thought
as she picked up a capsleeved dress in Seoul’s only Marni boutique, and paid …more

Because thirty days just isn’t enough National Poetry Month for us.

Death is a Hysterical Dynasty

Tonight we shall read from my personal book of lamentations,
sit shiva in a room lit with those overly perfumed candles as thick
as the aluminum bat I used just last week to flip away the possum
carcass I’d found collapsed against the house. Forensics tell us …more

We’re never satisfied with the thirty days that April allots us for National Poetry Month, so we’re extending it a bit. Enjoy!

Zoo

Unbridled, the sick pony
traverses listlessly a circle. …more

We’re never satisfied with just the 30 days that April offers for National Poetry Month, so we’re keeping it going for a little while longer.

Machine Song

I Xerox what I need to keep
(a sheaf of papers, taxes, real estate),
everything that once was ours. …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

From “Sungone Noon”

One raised
goats; …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Nine Out of Ten Dentists Agree I Am Not an Octopus

I think I am an octopus.
Nine out of ten dentists agree
that I am not an octopus. …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Barry Bonds on the Witness Stand

Barry Bonds trial, courtroom blog Day 11

…more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

14 Fragments/10 Muses [Re:Sonnet #38]

We’re with James Baldwin in a lofty basement room, with a narrow strip of windows close to the ceiling revealing a moving stream of star-sky. There’s a loud high-pitched sound in the room. “Oh that?” James says. “That’s just the stars howling.” …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

All Is Love

Sorry. I’m wrong. Everyone lives alone. All
is not love. All is whatever happens next,
and whatever happens next, of course, happens
in due course, its course, not yours. But all is love, …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

While John Berryman Drives In His Orange Chevrolet Through A Minnesota Rainstorm
To Lecture On Don Quixote, Sylvia Plath Paints The Beehives of Court Green

While John Berryman drives in his orange Chevrolet through a Minnesota rainstorm
to lecture on Don Quixote, Sylvia Plath paints the beehives of Court Green,
stroking one stern white coat after another on the hive, …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Terra Incognita

Counting scars of gum on the stairs down
from the Dome I briefly felt joy

even though I’d just read, in the World or Times,
that some of my fellow citizens …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Mnemosyne to the Poet

For you, memory is but
an oil lamp to snuff, left to
smoke. Diademed by earth’s
velvet mantle. So easy

for you to ignore: hadal
press of sea, the open
vein’s tasseled plumes,
how they wheel

like a maelstrom up & down.
My sight spills through
waves of old, blown
glass. I am not permitted

to turn, pillow to cheek,
& wait for sleep to find me.
Am not permitted
to learn how not to look.

-Rebecca Dunham

If you like what the Rumpus is doing for National Poetry Month, you’ll probably like this multimedia anthology of original poems we’ve run at The Rumpus over the last three years. Available only for iPad. Check it out!

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

The Story Gets Away From Him

Billy Collins
is dining with friends. …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Mirror

All day I had been photographing boats.
A study in angles: light on water, …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Skin Like Brick Dust

In bed, your back curved
to answer the heat of my holding …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

The Robot Scientist’s Daughter [brushes with death]

drowned when she was three. …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Big Legs on the Bus

How old could you be
And still popping your collar? …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Alternate Ending: My Grandmother As Gretel

“Hansel and Gretel is the saddest story;
it’s the one where hunger comes first.
~ Frederick Busch

…more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

between the wolf and the dog

a freight train splits the difference
between dark and not-yet-light:
inter lupum et canem: enter smoke
in shreds: the wolf sniffs out a glowing
hub of ash: finds the scent of the man
who built the fire: between flame
and smolder: pelage and fur: enter
a night in single digits: enter the outlaw
and a pack of shadows takes him: in:
between fang and tooth: ember and smudge:
exit the galaxy: its nest: oh: enter
that egg: the star that blinds him:

-Davis McCombs

If you like what the Rumpus is doing for National Poetry Month, you’ll probably like this multimedia anthology of original poems we’ve run at The Rumpus over the last three years. Check it out!

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

15 minutes

the beaming sun
sun
out there …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Semi-Aubade

When I wake in the morning,
my mind is black. …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

On Style

Henri Matisse died of a heart attack
staring at the open-mouthed
windows facing the alpenglow …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

The Strangers

1

Mostly, I hope.

2

In the industry of specifics, I list my Sally-trees, my letters to Paul. …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Cousins

On the rock slide behind Building 10,
we crushed pebbles into powder,
and plotted replacing what his mother smoked

with the products of our pounding.
Peanut butter breath and rubble dust hung
in the sliver of summer air between us.

His mini-fists gripped the sharp edges of the broken
stone mallet he drove into his growing mound
of grit that would always be

bigger than mine under the ferocious bang of a boy
whose whole body rocked to his determination
to smash the world as he knew it to pieces.

When the first big rock split open,
I looked at him and didn’t breathe;
he looked at me, didn’t breathe;

we looked at the center of a rock
for the first time, together,
expecting magic.

Some days I’ll remember that day
as the day we realized, forever,
that a rock is just a rock

through to its core. But when alcoholism
comes to him as naturally as his dimples,
this day will be an exhale; the final finger flex

of a throbbing fist; it will be blood
seeping from cut hands—all of the blood—
drops that dripped free and those that pooled

in his dirty palm to dry up together,
to waste, in the cracks in his lifeline.

-Jonterri Gadson

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

At the Book Shrink

one learns to say “my body uses me
as a grape uses wine–”

to talk about inevitability,
the essence of plot. …more