Beyond a tongue of dried sand, towards a sea that licks its traces, we cross the wash. A nether world, it aches with its quick, its own. See, you say; and there they skitter and sink as we skirt rivulets and pools, piles of seaweed, the casual dead, castaways. Our steady steps press and fill […]
Poetry 70
Carmine G. Simmons: At Liberty near 43rd and 8th
The marquee unzips its serial smile like an eager tongue along yellowed teeth. A craving for roast peanuts hangs in the street-wise air. Hear above the humping traffic that voice – denial or chummy alibi – savor the rise of relativity. It is, after all, 4:17; it is after all, Tuesday and cold, and those […]
James Richardson: End of the World
Only for years faint hush hush in the walls and in the off TV of wings as large as pages, powder of taupe and umber on glass doors, then suddenly on the window, Cecropia — last seen when? — named for the king who taught burial of the dead. It’s the mask of a god, […]
Alicia Ostriker: May Rain, Princeton
Green, green, the maples preen themselves Up and down Prospect Street, their cells plumping up Like nervous freshmen before a dance, The bird feeders need daily refilling, the hot Azaleas enhance their orange and fuschia tints, The rhododendrons puckered dryly inside Their big buds have begun to force themselves out, Apple blossoms lie in shallow […]
Paul Muldoon: Starlings, Broad Street, Trenton, 2003
Indiscernible, for the most part, the welts and weals on their two-a-penny skins, weals got by tinkering with tin foil from condoms or chewing gum, welts as slow to heal as spot-welds on steel in a chop-shop where, by dint of the din, their calls will be no clearer than their colors till they spin […]
Farid Matuk: The Inclinations of a Stable Marriage
At the bar they lamented that nobody sits like a lady anymore and grandly wished for the alternative of seeing everything in the world standing up alive, though by their sloshing hearts, knew everything already was and so settled for joining their statesmen in another bout of drinking and screwing: she slaps his face for […]