From the Archive: Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Raymond Antrobus
On screen, I’m peering up a faintly lit staircase and all goes grainy.
...moreOn screen, I’m peering up a faintly lit staircase and all goes grainy.
...moreCelebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...moreCelebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...moreCelebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...moreCelebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...moreCelebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...moreTo speak of the shame is to speak of him / and his bed of lichen and his green / ribbon fastened around my throat.
...moreIn my meanness I hear the mother of my mother and her mother / before her, the cold cellars and flat pillows of their hearts. The single current / of anger that ran through their voices, each daughter forever through time / believing herself a burden.
...moreBefore I loved you, the figs were still in season. / My body was a lone fig swollen like summer. / My body was a lonely fig swollen like summer, / In every dream as bottomless as shame.
...moreI am in need of privacy and a new wardrobe. / Indulge me. There is nothing that style cannot fix. // Outside, a colony of bees stir with a missing monarch. / Does that make them more or less of a swarm.
...moreI’m tired of sheeping. / how boring, to be good. / a head gets heavy. / I can only feel this ribbon brush against my throat / so long, you know. / one day I’ll untie it, I know, let the whole thing roll off.
...moreonce in the splendor of death, we magnify his name two of each for everyone. one for me & for me too. each one sliced long ways head to tail. the summer turn twenty-five a vow to only wear white this is not […]
...moreyou write that “what we worship / makes us what we are,” and if this is true / then based on the poems of yours I’ve read so far / you are both a daughter and a god, / if this is true, I am a vine, invasive, here / to climb a wall. “As tendrils cling and twine / about the tree,” you write, and I try / to unwind your words into a history.
...moreI thought / you had grown angry with me but turns out / you were just lazy.
...moreit’s dark there, and wet, and time is closing in
...moreyou wake up early / & do me no good.
...moreI miss space, when I’m not / reading about it
...moreThe story thrummed its bruise open and never stopped
...moreThe ancient sapien instinct: love is an approximation to danger.
...moreSculpture—a body tearing into a body.
...moreI guess we’ll never know // if God is for or against us.
...moreSo, earthquake as a god, // creatures as determined judges.
...moreso many miles just to slip / this skin. i won’t lie. i sobbed.
...moresuffered the elements / habitable // space / deteriorating in the absence
...morethere came a night I thanked god // for reincarnation.
...moreHe wasn’t my father but someday would be someone’s.
...moreThe steam wallows out of the kettle and your book’s pages / turn themselves.
...moreWe / not a boat people / rather / water // undammed / a waiting hurricane
...moreOne day, I will cheat death & wake up // in the afterlife after dusk, breathing.
...morethe doctors – never warn you about the poem / between your legs.
...more