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Poetry 84

R.A. Villanueva: Confluences

May 12, 2011 by PBQ

Because you will not talk about your mother’s hands or describe further the meat of her left thumb almost gone as if eaten down to the bone, and because it is too early yet to imagine your mother’s breast brushed with prep gauze, held in some nameless palm, an attendant knuckle There to mark just […]

Filed Under: Contributors 84, Issue 84, Poetry, Poetry 84 Tagged With: Contributors 84, Poetry, Poetry 84, R.A. Villanueva

R.A. Villanueva: As the river crests, mud-rich with     forgotten things

May 12, 2011 by PBQ

               Colors this summer Raritan carries: of this flailing, flaring New                Jersey sunset     of the burnt-ends of cigarettes as they     and gravity          then the river kiss                Red’s surge toward night- fall: a dark diastole     rich with the blood                of pigeons, worms, catfish—a mercury blood, heavy with gas                    This orange Raritan                This drunk, Dutch princess     flanked as if by knights: trunks bent, leadened […]

Filed Under: Contributors 84, Issue 84, Poetry, Poetry 84 Tagged With: Contributors 84, Poetry, Poetry 84, R.A. Villanueva

Danielle Veith: Tsunami / The Reporter

May 12, 2011 by PBQ

Egalitarian damage, the reporter wrote, to homes of those of all religions, puts paid to the notion of a God who takes sides. But shrines in every town— Crucifix, Buddha, Shiva— spared. • You, and I, same God. All, same God, a Sri Lankan says to a reporter. • White flags everywhere: fluttering from phone […]

Filed Under: Contributors 84, Issue 84, Poetry, Poetry 84 Tagged With: Contributors 84, Danielle Veith, Poetry, Poetry 84

Maureen Thorson: Tomatoes

May 12, 2011 by PBQ

Hours spent parting the vines in search of blossoms, hauling the gallons and slopping them over bristling stalks. A gross promise of fertility. Last winter, I dreamed of red valleys stung with growing lanterns, a rustle on the wind. But the vines are fruitless and the air is still. Still I bring the water, thinking […]

Filed Under: Contributors 84, Issue 84, Poetry, Poetry 84 Tagged With: Contributors 84, Maureen Thorson, Poetry, Poetry 84

Maureen Thorson: Three Squares and No Funning

May 12, 2011 by PBQ

They linger in the evening round the chuckwagon, slurping beans and thinking of apple pie, of Sunday chicken dinners. When they wake, there’ll be coffee burnt and stretched like it was hiding something Cookie wanted to know. There’s a human price to the stock that comes through Abilene, and you can count it in lost […]

Filed Under: Contributors 84, Issue 84, Poetry, Poetry 84 Tagged With: Contributors 84, Maureen Thorson, Poetry, Poetry 84

Maureen Thorson: Otter Pop Blues

May 12, 2011 by PBQ

Mirrors in mirrors, in mirrors, in mirrors: bitter diminution. The rest of the material is a jaundiced blob of colors, water sweating from a plastic sleeve, barely remembered candy necklaces softening in the deep waters of summer pool parties. A single luna moth taking refuge in the shadow of the changing room’s concrete overhang. Then […]

Filed Under: Contributors 84, Issue 84, Poetry, Poetry 84 Tagged With: Contributors 84, Maureen Thorson, Poetry, Poetry 84

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