Recently added articles from The American Poetry Review:
Love Poem: bent.(seven poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> If love is to be thirsty in the night un-slaked in the day. The day without parameters-- or motion detectors monitoring the way I configure my neck unruly on the axis of my spine. The down-turned mouths of many in the immeasurable heat ...
Lingual.(seven poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"><Italic>Scantily clad</Italic> is the language of beauty rather than condemning as unfit. Equatorial-necked blue bottles and field chickweed blistering. How thin a shirt-- how strong the tongue of the sun. Hanuman was a celibate monkey ...
No Identity Crisis Here.(seven poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> There is a woman named Joanne who barely accepts the fact of being a woman. And in some circles, or centuries, she would be seen as an old-woman. Or an adulteress. Or a nun of no particular propensity for sainthood. Not because she's ever ...
May 25.(seven poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Women have always inserted objects into orifices. Swan feathers are offered to pacify the sea. I once refused a gift of a toy. The original rosary 165 rolled rose petals. Think of the hands doing such affectionate work. My birth on May 25 makes ...
Animal Origins.(seven poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Humans slaughter for scent-- for fragrant aphrodisiacs. Civet is siphoned from the genitals of Ethiopian cats, ambergris is stolen from the stomachs of sperm whales, castoreum from Russian beavers. The molecular structure of musk is so close to ...
Love Poem: Imagine.(seven poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> If to love is to imagine let me imagine a red thread exiting the windpipe of a ghost. That I may suture my veins to yours, sew up the hem of the doll's ragged collar. That I may embroider the wings of black flies into the lashes of your ...
Alchemy.(seven poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> I once told you I like the smell of owl dung drying in the leaves under the cottonwood trees. On the trail along the railroad tracks we watched the male mount the female in the dusk. Sometimes I see things. In Jerez, in the Gypsy Barrio an infant ...
Arriving at the Heart of Tragedy.(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Italic>No medicine in the world can do thee good.--Laertes</Italic> <Preformatted type="other"> There are certain things that cannot be Undone. Lot's wife glanced back at Sodom as she was Fleeing--and just like ...
Verbatim.(two poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> A woman is dying and the view Doesn't change. The view doesn't change. The lake does not ripple, And a woman, who is not breathing, Will soon be dead. Is that thunder you think you hear? Is it fire you think you see? A woman is grasping her neck, ...
Donkey Propaganda.(two poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"><Italic>Glory in Subdued Light</Italic> Man painting brown bricks Brown, more brown Than they ever were before. Soon He will stand back from his work And make certain he's proud Of what he's done. <Italic>Staircase That Leads</Italic> But ...
Ecstatic Emigre.(APR: A Column)(Critical essay)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> 1. Preliminaries1. To experience time passing and to know the sensation is the truth and province of poetry2. To feel the onus of this knowledge as a physical law3. A physical law and a dynamic which winds the experiencing subject into a ...
Unconfessional.(three poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> For twelve love-affluent, long years We'd lived together in unvaried Concord, a completion that nears Keats' sweet, unheard-of harmony-- Who'd have believed that we were married? She'd once planned she would never be, Till we met. Now, though, ...
Axis of Evil.(three poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Italic>Even if we lose this war, we still win, for our spirit will have</Italic><Italic>penetrated our enemies' hearts.--Dr. Joseph Goebbels</Italic> <Preformatted type="other"> You've heard your enemy has veered toward sin, Endangering the whole ...
"Hard Paper".(three poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> My sly attorney termed the document I'd plunked down on his desk just that--flat, hard Evidence that the girl and I who'd spent Snug nights together could just drop our guard, Sleep where we pleased or move straight in; we were Legally wedded in ...
Mostly Read the Luna Moth.(two poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> The savor of mango is unlike Toothsome papaya. My son takes My hand and brings me Into the classroom; Fluffy Is absent and unremarked-upon And in his place, two butterflies Use tentatively in a sentence. One, he explains, is a boy and The other ...
Amber Alert.(two poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Having a child changes you. For example, A salmon's face extends forward, a giant underbite Emerging, and then there's the matter Hanging off their sides. I am proud to be An American. Also, I'm proud to be a Protestant, And wasn't whiteness a ...
Gardening.(five poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> 1/ What else is one to do--when one has so little and so little to look Forward to? Today, I staked the tomatoes; tomorrow, it's going to rain. <Bold>2/</Bold> A cool, wet spring and everything rotten--. <Bold>3/</Bold> Forget about your ...
Meditation on the Season's First Green Fruit.(five poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Like unborn suns in bunches hung from branches bent by years spent holding up such pulp-plump fruit, Gorgeous and corpulent, their green rinds tight And shining, sheened with rain, This season's first blood Oranges are ...
In the Town Where Everything Goes Wrong.(five poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> This afternoon makes me think I will die badly. One minute, it's cloudy, the next, the sun is so Bright, it's like having your brains pecked out. This afternoon makes me think I will die badly. Oak trees, tea roses, Spanish moss .... A small Hawk ...
The Coast Road.(five poems)(Poem)
May 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> On nights like these, when the house is too quiet, I walk into themoonlit yard and listen--. The wind in the oak tree says: nothing ever happens when youwant it to. The crickets in the witch grass say: <Italic>there will never be ...