Café Space Here comes backwash from apocalypse gamey as last night’s monastery potluck. Did you have the goat bleating from the roof of a floating house, its song as old…
Swim Lesson No. 3 Syracuse, New York June 2012 I can’t find my bearings in this landlocked country, riverless and briny. Not waterless exactly but curveless and motionless, a chlorophyll…
Marilyn Nelson, today’s featured poet, wrote a series of ghazals to accompany some images by illustrator Philippe Lardy, who gave us permission to include a copy of the painting which…
Elizabeth Bradfield wrote the first poem we published here on The Rumpus, so I’m pleased to have her kick off this year’s National Poetry Month project. Elizabeth’s poem is more…
Feather Somehow, I thought you’d want to eat alone, A state you’d grown to master—brandy glass, A man behind your chair to fill your plate, A girl to bring you…
The Tornado Collects the Animals The tornado likes animals because they pay attention. The tornado sees the dogs howling up from rippling yards, the cows huddled mutely against one another,…