At the Reading of the Antiwar Poets
Someone says, we’re living through an age the ancient Greeks would understand, internecine, unrepairable as red ceramic shards. The famous poet calls the soldiers babykillers, says fuck them. It’s…
Exposition/Expose/Exposure
setting forth an ex- a present position point act of exposing state of being exposed displayed disclosed wares details laid open disposed of former opposed for want of…
We Speak of Forget-Me-Nots
Tr. from the Portuguese by Calvin Olsen I see you do not want things to continue This way In this particular case We speak of forget-me-nots A flower about…
Some of the Hidden Things No One Wants to Talk About While Saying Goodbye
We were walking past your dead grandfather’s house, and I left you as if through a door in the air. I wanted to tell you, but you were speaking…
Poem Written in My Breath in the Bathroom Mirror
What I cannot name I almost never think about or what love has joined together, I said, and approaching you is like a light coming through the place where…
In a Foreign City in July
The sleeper summer is airing out its torn tendrils, but we think of night sirens, a black sky like a record, the white tooth of Republic Square bare and…
Zagreb, November
I find graffiti again and again on different walls, a leitmotif not a landmark: giraffe-people with swirling eyes, initials added together inside hearts, a rabbit as tall as me,…
from Psalmwork
6. With an eight-stringed harp. In the grave Who can give thanks? I will try with my fingers to pluck the chord to please you. Though I have never…
Fire Woman
Mornings I walk among trees, walk away my wanting, long nights, teeth clenched, waiting; stormy nights, light slashes the sky, my body restless, succumbing finally to my own hands,…