83 Dirty Animals

The American Poetry Review

Article

Four Poems

Nov 1, 2019

for Rouge they do not knowthe joy they walk with their footprints a lessonof faith O faithful companion of lonelinessthe name we gave you was not a name but a cryand you stayedand now they come to hunt in the wildnot for meat not with the ritual for

The American Poetry Review

Article

Four Poems

Jan 1, 2023

And god created the waves and we the graves beneath, bodies madeparticulate by the force of water against water, water against rock, againsttime. I descend into the deep in a kind of prayer, listen to its centuries.Make me pay, will you, make me hurt

The American Poetry Review

Article

Seven Poems

Sep 1, 2021

The dancersIn a terribly brightLight blue gauzeRetained the mystery Skating on a lakeBlue and iceAn illusionary timeWhere poetry feels inevitable The terrific clownWho lies insideEvery blue dressDoes he see me Always a starAlways a rootHorrible auras

The American Poetry Review

Article

Three Poems

Mar 1, 2022

i look like someonehealing from an accidentbecause i am someonehealing from an accidentthe book of actsscales falling from saul’s eyesremembering my capacityfor stillnesshow long can i sitwithout looking awaythe fear of god escapingi desperately need

The American Poetry Review

Article

The Epic Of Gilgamesh

Jan 1, 2020

My friends, who can reach heaven? The monster bellows like a river swollen with flood.Many are consumed in his fiery breath. My friends, who can reach heaven? Let us ask the mountain for a sign.Let us cut the spirits from the cedars. My friends, who

The American Scholar

Article

Five Poems

Mar 4, 2019

for William Gifford, 1928–2015 The river. Always the same, never the same.Poughkeepsie. A place north of where I am.To remember you is to remember Poughkeepsie.To remember Poughkeepsie is to remember the river.I am downriver now & you are a memoryI

The American Poetry Review

Article

Five Poems

Nov 1, 2020

The American linden sways nonplussed by the storm,a bounce here, a shimmy there, just shaking like musicleft over from the night’s end wafting into the avenues before sleep.I remember once walking down Clinton Street, and singingthat line returning,

The American Poetry Review

Article

Four Poems

Jan 1, 2022

followed—in front, as horses—into daisy& silver dancing, knowing the jaw who unkeysin the danced earth to drink me down to haints,& will go again. was willed. distrusted happiness, addicted to it.a god needs of a god. here, i don’t want to reachfor g

The American Poetry Review

Article

Five Poems

Sep 1, 2023

I am walking through the hotelEvery time I am so sadThat I want to die It’s a place where I can keepEverything I’ve never beenBrave enough to get to Poets have moons and moneyTo get themselves throughThe longest night imaginable But I’ve had these ro

The American Poetry Review

Article

Two Poems

Jan 1, 2022

What I love about the woodsis that you can screamand no one will come. Some dayssound’s the only way pain can fleethe body. I wish I was grownof wildflowers, but I’m all thorn. Years ago,my father came home alone from a bike ride,his face a broken wi

The American Poetry Review

Article

Four Poems

Nov 1, 2022

Day after Thanksgiving. I give thanks for Eveto beat the rush of appreciating hernext year and let her sleep inuntil three hundred o’clock.Thank you light on the mountainfor being my star on cloudy nights.Thank you all the guns I’ve never ownedand ki

The American Poetry Review

Article

Three Poems

May 1, 2024

Did you wait for mein the riverbed, undera smooth stone?Did I have to earn you,like a Chicago summer?A seed sproutingin harsh conditions?Stand in a long linefull of crossed fingers,all the whileyou lit up the marquee.Can I keep you?When they callyou,

The American Poetry Review

Article

Two Poems

Sep 1, 2023

This poem is for everyperson who will neverread it either by choiceor circumstance I writeit in silence wherethe most realparts of our liveslive like a shoe lostin an alley or an emptyboat in a black sea butmore like the fallenleaf on the other sideo

The American Poetry Review

Article

Two Poems

Nov 1, 2023

For I woke with a walnut for a skullFor every star switched on, burning through black pagesFor if you seek God you will find His childrenFor everything I know fits in a walnutFor every scene I once lived now invisible For I didn’t want to meet people

Choice Magazine

Article

Your Poetry

Jun 25, 2021

The music labeled from A to ZI can’t get those sounds out of my headThose 45s are from our lifeSometimes the memories cut like a knife Jukebox Nights have been the bestAll my problems to get off my chestSpent with people I love and have sharedA good

Harper's Bazaar India

Article

Summer: A Love Story

Apr 20, 2021

It is a squalid time. The body grows tired of being a body. Sweat. Always. A thin film of it on the skin. Do not say dewy. Do not say glisten. I dream of endless green. Of wet. Of rain hammering the Earth. Of buds sprouting. I want to insist on life

The American Poetry Review

Article

Mountain Time

Jan 1, 2021

In the air you don’t know who you are or where My own self feels it is in wind being born These are currents a man made one eighth of smokeless fire fears but chooses A path south from Anchorage to a Mountain House Ungovern the northern land to pass

The American Poetry Review

Article

Six Poems

Feb 28, 2023

if you see oneyou can saybad bearright to its faceeven if you’re not sure,maybe it’s goodand has discretionin relationto the delicioustreasury of humangarbage or eventhe eternalwork of bees,who knowsbut it’s okon the pathwith your thunder voiceunequi

The American Poetry Review

Article

In Which the World Is Not that Bad

Jul 1, 2024

let me live with no intention; i triumph at the mile-long hair in my shower; even in thunderstorms, more air is dry than not; there is no will that makes water cling to me the way you cling, but there is always the thought of water; i am telling you

New Internationalist

Article

Home

Feb 25, 2019

I once lived in a yellow little house. Each morning, birds convened and sang at my bedroom window. The gate was indigo and inside the garden all kinds of flowers rose to kiss the sunny walls. The yellow nest was filled with cherished books, colourful

Choice Magazine

Article

Your Poetry

Apr 30, 2021

I once was a chestnut, I hung from a tree,Like all of the young, I longed to be free.One day I landed, it felt like a mile.I need not have worried, I was in Hutton soil.My work had just started, ‘twas about 1803.That’s when I knew, I’d become a tree.

Choice Magazine

Article

Your Poetry

Apr 29, 2022

Email your poems to: ([email protected]) or post to Your Poetry, Choice, 4 Milnyard Square, Orton Southgate, Peterborough PE2 6GX I see you all, sitting there in rows.Singing hymns, as your tears do flow. But please don’t cry, not for me.For

The American Poetry Review

Article

Three Poems

Sep 1, 2019

before I was one I heard every soundas a sound that had never been heard,before I was one I saw every lightas a light separate from dark, colorhidden in a place I had not been.Before I was one I used feet to wakenin water, to pedal through air,hands

The American Poetry Review

Article

Three Poems

Jan 1, 2020

In class, I stared because of the blood going blue.The chalk that coated our fingerly teeth.The way we lapped each other (on the shorewhere the flowering). I gave away our location. Smacked my lips in the coat closet.Sucked at her teeth. We, on all e