“Thousands are gathered outside the interior ministry…”

Bloody lullabies soothe the centuries.
Can’t see the cradles for the tops of trees
but you know the rest: you can’t rest, poor babies. …more

Scissor Half

You were telling me your dream
at some point you started
just making it up …more

Ode to the Painter Ross Watson

Don’t imagine me as the woman
        who you replicated
                from the Vermeer …more

Death, Is Always

Turning my hair inside out, I only see
Emma Bee making sense of excess,
making something of it online, via high fashion,
which shouldn’t be but is,
along with every other thing,
both uber- and central- Pacific—
Turns out the world is a big one. So,
This is where I am tonight: …more

Kināyah

“[concerning] women, the sexual organs, defecation, various forms of
uncleanliness and everything which is a bad omen” –Sandra Naddaff

“when a woman desires something, no one can stop her” –The Thousand
and One Nights

her “slit”
different forms of discourse

basil of the bridges
in the interests of narrative variety …more

A Little Sign

When I was little
we ate a meal
at my great-grandmother’s farm. …more

A Rumpus Original Poem by Kristina Marie Darling

beloved. The raison d’être of the melancholic’s affliction. Consider the graceful line of his wool coat, its fabric dark against the towering snowdrifts. …more

La Femme Rouge: Redux
(Red Riding Hood, Aged)

What I know is more than thorn
and thistle, whistling through
an oak forest, trees large as barns. …more

THE TRANSLATORS

After reading about Caesar
And Pompey, we searched
Until we found a nearly perfect
Antique plate. Speaking …more

WalMart Supercenter

God Bless America says the bumper sticker on the racer-red
Rascal scooter that accidentally cuts me off in the Walmart parking lot
after a guy in a tricked out jeep with rims like chrome pinwheels tries
to pick me up by honking, all before I make it past the automatic doors
waiting to accept my unwashed hair, my flip-flops, my lounge pants. …more

Like an Old Chest in a New House

I want to be let down gently
but destined to tumble I am …more

This is the third year that The Rumpus has celebrated National Poetry Month by running a new, previously-unpublished poem every day for the month. Here’s a link to last year’s collection. We’ve solicited poems from a wide range of poets again, including new work from some of the poets who were covered in our Rumpus Poetry Book Club. We’ll update this list daily with links to the new poems, and you can also get your daily dose of Rumpus Original Poetry by following us on Twitter or liking us on Facebook.

April 1: Shane Book
April 2: Sandy Longhorn
Click more to get to the rest of the poems! …more

Our National Poetry Month project comes to an end two days after the end of the month, but we close with a special treat–a poem from the next book selection by the Rumpus Poetry Book Club, Life On Mars by Tracy K. Smith. I hope you’ve enjoyed these poems as much as I did while curating this project.

Sacrament

The women all sing when the pain is too much.

But first there is a deep despairing silence. …more

Here at The Rumpus, we think it’s a little silly that National Poetry Month only has 30 days, so we extend the celebration for just a little bit longer. Welcome to April 31!

Single Lane Bridge

The dark cannot claim the water.
The moon got there first, and now

shines from the deep like a fish light
dropped from a boat. We passed here

hours ago. One does not travel
to a crossing — one does not

abandon his anniversary
bed. I left her sleeping.

The river has no right to such
stillness. I have no right

to complain. Maple leaves splay,
suspended on the surface, each

a hand waiting to close. A sound,
faint in the west, grows, draws near.

And you, my fair, my sweet unnamed:
How like you these spindling rails,

these splintered boards? Are you tired —
are you sleeping, too? Have you any idea?

–Johnathon Williams

Johnathon Williams is the editor of Linebreak and of Two Weeks, a Digital Anthology of Contemporary Poetry.

Joseph Harrington’s Things Come On was the Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection for March. You can read the Rumpus Poetry Book Club’s chat with him here and Camille Dungy’s essay on why she chose the book here

Out of Office Reply:
Why Do You Seek the Living Among the Dead

Scene One: The Hieros Gamos

“I am 5 cards on a stick in another state”:
the wings, like an albino cave bat’s, …more

I’m a Poet and I Don’t Know It

I am so broke
Maybe I am a poet
I wonder. …more

Casket Sharp

Your soft cough becomes prognosis. Soon,
cigarette smoke is the inkblot test of the lung. …more

The Accused Terrorist’s Wife

The house foreclosed, she’s gone
to his father’s home, carting
her things, a pair of his shoes, their only

daughter, sons. Water springs …more

In the Rafters at Birdie’s Roadhouse

504 forever. Hillbilly princess. FDNY.
For a good time a hard man is good to find.
Got nookie? Life is too short for bad moonshine. …more

Squirrel

The squirrel is in her little kitchen out by the tennis courts. The ceiling is too low for her, but that’s precisely the point. She wouldn’t want it any other way. How else to bear the peace of it, …more

Letter to the Right

I hope you never read my poems.
I do not care for the sweet wine you serve
warm from the pantry, or the email you sent
about a savior at the supermarket. …more

Familiar

It was because my
snot was frozen, it
was because you spit
out little chunks of

H & H when I made
that crack about the guy …more

Long (dragon)

Once skin teaches you body’s not to feel
with it grows to solve other problems fires
get tired of burning every bed
they’ve been in down ashes look so soft
but you would never spend the night anyhow …more

Eat the Sinew’s Disbelief

You will never be great, no shirt, no shoes,
no servitude. Just a regular Joe, Josephine
who walks around, has thoughts, and makes way
for Whitman. You’re John the Baptist,
a footnote, not your own story. …more

Not light’s version

A child from the past:

We always knew the world

would crack open like this, in our lifetime. …more

Deer between fallen branches

Snow fills the eyes of the winter
animal. She’s like a photograph

of himself as a child, feet dangling
over the side of a boat, skimming …more

Transparent to Visible Light

Across the seas, and then across the
seas, an aircraft carried full and whole
a world: as far apart as their fair
hostess could achieve sat mother and
father and their little girl who sucked
a sulking, tortured curl she’d wound

around her head, smacked the frayed strands
against her lips like a lapdog kiss. …more

Ode to Government Cheese

The streets are alive with your radioactive smile,
your distinct glow, not quite pumpkin, not quite
squash, not quite orange; no, not anything organic. …more

Missed Connection

You: Bartender at the left wing bar, sleeves
rolled up, preaching happiness, Fredrich
Nietzsche. Small scar across your chin. We
high-fived, nodded about get-out-the-vote

rallies, about Gore, Clinton, and Obama. …more

Jena Osman’s The Network was the Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection for November, 2010. You can read Brian Spears’s essay on why he chose the book here and the Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Osman here

Persona Ficta

a corporation is to a person as a person is to a machine
    amicus curiae we know them as good and bad, they too are sheep and goats
    ventriloquizing the ghostly fiction. …more