After Aftermath
Orphaned boys plus my mean calculations.
Orphan boys plus desire equals their long
bodies. How they sucked summer-long water
off a garden hose from beside the trailers.
Their mean mothers weary of them sharing
rooms in mental hospitals: I want to meet
them with flowers, thank them for offering
up their sons to this, our glazed plexi-glas
world.
Embers of Smoldering Homes
It is a major war from
a manufacturing plant
near Ciudad Juárez, a concrete
dust smell from the maquiladoras
cools. There is a pool
of liquid forming
on the stone floor.
When Érika Gándara, the only
cop in Guadalupe Distrito Bravos
was killed the buzzards
were fucking in the wind.
Alexis Orgera reviews Mark Irwin’s Large White House Speaking today in Rumpus Poetry.
...moreThe Great Loves of Our Lives
Begin with the body
desire manifests itself in the body:
the flutter of the heart
the nervous shake of a hand
the dilation of the pupils
hardening of nipples
thickening of mucus
within the vaginal walls.
War with Computers
“We don’t make war with computers.”
—Captain Kirk in Star Trek, “A Taste of Armageddon,” 1966
Now we hover at 5000 feet. It’s not a fair
fight, but IEDs aren’t fair, either. We watch day and night.
We don’t make war with computers, though; we’re not there
yet, are we?
...moreGoogle Search: “Julie Marie Wade”
I am dead in Mississippi—
dead & Catholic.
A cheerleading coach who passed suddenly on
Wednesday night from “causes unknown.”
In Oxford, they mourn with a funeral mass,
send flowers to the family that survives me.
Astronomy of Fishes & Emily Dickinson (1986)
One eye squeezed like a bag phone between shoulder & ear.
Another eye stuck in a paper towel tube like it’s a telescope
& the whole country sky is as recyclable & sparse as the goatee
I couldn’t grow when I wanted one most.
Lisa Cheby reviews Vow by Kristina Marie Darling and Music for another life by Darling and Max Avi Kaplan today in Rumpus Poetry.
...moreOver at the Poetry Foundation, Patricia Lockwood considers whether or not poetry is real work:
...moreIs it work, though? The question persists. Is a single muscle exerted during the process? Do you sweat at all, besides the weird thing that sometimes happens under your right arm because you haven’t lifted it up for 8 hours?
My Brother
My brother _is__ a savior
who can torpedo
through privilege with an artistic stun gun
he’s a tempest saturating the city
He makes a scar
in the earth_ draws out
an admixture of folklore
and animus_ plus
a pinch of_ worry from our
adolescent miseries
so he can build_ endless
self-perpetuation_ literally
with big red bricks
This he does with
our so-called inheritance
We once walked
on our father’s periphery
looking in like_ the matchstick
children
We walked the edge of our houses
to find ___a warm window
Was it there
It wasn’t
the self-preservation__ that hunger
and fear __made of me
a bewitching hybrid of
broken coat trees and orbital
chair and door_ king_ choir
maybe _____that _elemental
cultivation
of fading into____ the wallpaper
We’re still looking
plush with hunger
My brother speaks
the cloud’s patois
a clatter ___calm ___medium loosens
a grip wears
on the surface____ of his planet
I said anything
I walked far away
I left my brother behind
More tenderness
might have made us_____ better
failure without the sting
we might have found
magic and known
its transport
the instability was the brutal
______grief of one tornado
Wesley Rothman reviews Sean Hill’s Dangerous Goods today in Rumpus Poetry.
...moreThe Mother In This Poem Is Me or You or Your Mother
mother is
a falling
star a bead
of sweat of
blood of bread
our daily
bread on which
we fed the
thread of life
the trouble
and strife of
he you wed
with heart and
head you pledged
in daddy’s
bed there is
no rest for
wickedness
lest evil eye
pry babe from
breast again
I rest my
case on wave
and wind hey
knight hey knave
come save me
blame me for
sin of rage
its wage so
high I am
both monster
and slave shame
me slay me
this is the
Labyrinth
where you play
Theseus
and I play
Minotaur
it’s okay
it’s just a
metaphor
The electric body
changes like a sky bleeding peach,
gray feathers and smoke –
– a body circular as the earth,
water and air,
rivers surging through.
The poet does what poets do: reactivates words, makes odd associations, connects things that do not ordinarily belong together in order to create deeper meaning.
...more...moreWe know Bishop primarily as the eager traveler who wrote of distant, tropical locations and lived for many years as an expat in Brazil. She was that, of course, but she was also an aficionado of her native landscape and climate.
exercises in breathing
I.
knowing the rules is not enough. when it snows,
it doesn’t always mean it. when it snows, sometimes
it snows for the museums and sometimes it snows
for the papers and sometimes it snows for only
her majesty, the sea.
The Vindication of Judas
Forgive me at last, Brother,
for the death sentence: a kiss
that revealed me, an act of obedience
which began your martyrdom.
Who else but you—who loves
me still—could I ask to bear blame
for my murder for all time?
William Pratt reviews Marie Sleight’s The Antigone Poems.
...moreToday
Each year I know less about myself
but the insurance company knows
how much my life is worth.
This is for those who suffer & endure
& laugh about it later.
Someone asked, “where do you get
your news from if you don’t have a teevee?”
It is 7:36 a.m.
When NPR’s Code Switch went searching for “young poets who were livening up the literary landscape” in honor of National Poetry Month, they found themselves in the world of Rumpus contributor Kima Jones. Code Switch and Ms. Jones set out to crowdsource a poem, which they most certainly did.
...moreMy First Male-to-Male Kiss
______was on Mexican TV. In the 80s. Believe me.
Like my cousin Mari, I too wished I could be
Érika Buenfil, her blonde locks so close to
René of the dark pompadour that looked like a cliff
where so many broken hearts took their final leap.
Patrick James Dunagan reviews Merrill Gilfillan’s Red Mavis today in Rumpus Poetry.
...moreThe History of Asterisks
It is midnight under the sky’s dome ceiling.
The moon speaks, saying nothing of consequence.
John Wayne is from Iowa, so we hitchhiked West
and I realized I never really loved you.
Your skepticism of scientific indices of happiness
is probably gendered or otherwise distorted.
Christian Anton Gerard reviews (in epistolary form) Luisa Igloria’s The Saints of Streets today in Rumpus Poetry.
...moreThis week, the Paris Review has a really beautiful interview up with the poet Mary Szybist. She talks about religion, Wallace Stevens and her abiding love for the apostrophe:
...moreI have always been attracted to apostrophe, perhaps because of its resemblance to prayer.
In honor of National Poetry Month, we are taking time to consider how poetry makes us better readers of all different types of literature. George Quasha suggests that learning to read poetry is akin to learning to speak a new language:
...moreA reader has to learn a poet’s language.
Some days I come out wrinkled like a jacket / exhumed from a suitcase. Some days / I’m as constant as the last soggy corn flake / at the bottom of a bowl of milk, / that piece that keeps giving…
...more
For our first episode of The Rumpus Late Nite Poetry Show, Dave Roderick sits down with poet and playwright Nick Lantz to talk about his latest collection, How To Dance as the Roof Caves In, found poems, self-help manuals, and titles as points of departure.
...more
