Imminent rain I didn’t believe in finds me walking down 4th as the reluctant air begins losing itself— it can’t quite hold together changing state as surely as faith once it’s begun to let go. Mist anoints my skin shrouds my hair catches in funnel-webs spun over the shrubs hedges rosebushes, beading tiny necklaces … Continue reading
Category Archives: Poetry 2014
Memoir — John Sibley Williams
And even this is not about me. Not the lightning-struck boy that melted from mountain into river and emptied eventually into open sea, not the absent siblings he drew in the margins of notebooks to resemble the heroes and demons he feared battling himself, not love’s fluid arc from unquenchable fire to empty language and … Continue reading
Travelogue — John Sibley Williams
No matter the stark snow-capped descriptions, the foreign rivers that become through language any river, your river, the unpronounceable city that is your home, what do you expect to learn about here with there distanced twofold— eye and word? Life is a page that remembers only itself— still I will try to give you a … Continue reading
Two Poems for Frank Lloyd Wright — John Sibley Williams
1. Material origin: essential in constructing the authentic body authentically. Angles: as space must diverge from form regardless, and in opposition define harmony. Structure: a home begins as dream, begins air, as content that needs something to fill. Hands: mold the air earthward. 2. Had we not remade the world into … Continue reading
First Death — Susana Case
I dreamed there was a leak, a corner of the wallpaper, the green leaves stained and blistered, the paint cracked and curled. When I awoke, I thought it was real, the way it was real when she died and every morning I awoke to the same weight on my body, unfurled along its length, as … Continue reading
Hourglass — Susana Case
The porter runs over to ask if I want him to take my photo with Marilyn Monroe, J. Seward Johnson’s life-sized statue in the Washington, DC hotel lobby. Marilyn, the skirt of her white halter dress lifted by a blast from a subway grate, a scene from The Seven Year Itch, shot two weeks before her … Continue reading
A Poem for Luis — Michelle Donahue
San Miguel, Guatemala You can’t speak mine so I’ll try to speak yours. Aburrido you said. Bored when the other guests spoke only English & you were left alone working at the bar with nothing but sky & Lago Peten Itza lit like a carnival. Aburrido. Your eyes bore into mine. You look so cansado. … Continue reading
(and Jump out) — Elena Botts
once i open the window (and jump out), i am a real body and nothing more or less, the stars summoning darkness and folding it gradually between them i must have abandoned love to the ocean (there was no other option), mailed my soul to the wrong address, regardless the sun outlines the sky in … Continue reading
melancholy — Elena Botts
i. prelude I am not existing so readily. I am not existing so readily. I am not existing so readily. ii. melancholy#1 you have melancholy eyes slanted to hold in numeric universes inside, scrolling in scrolling your tight miniature ocean syntax speech, tidbits of news stripped of vapidity, what it lacked was satire–the thin lip … Continue reading
Orienting Response — Kevin Brown
You asked me to make lists—the five future jobs I would want; ten countries or cities where I would like to live; five things I want to do one day, skydiving, say, or watching tennis at Wimbledon. I told you I found joy in my job teaching tenth graders American literature; enjoyed the ease of … Continue reading
Coe Review 