POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
Tea

my father holds
his favorite drink

“Artifact,” as Translated from Gluberhöff’s Lexicon

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

melting ice cap
blue is the color of surrender

you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?

appetites

you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties

Ode To the Dove Pt. VI (Avrom Sutzkever)

Yes I am guilty, I’m guilty. A sin was desirable then.
Bring the dancer back to the stalks.

oh Manifesto

The collective
failure
of ethical standards

close up of sun
Mercury in Retrograde

You said it was okay to blame
what goes wrong on the planet

Welcome To The House of Static

here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome

Fallout Shelter

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

Observer of the Patient

Her brown eyes,
how a fig
considers itself.

On the Night Row-Houses Across the Street Catch Fire

You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

Mom, in Her Dementia, Steals Oranges

and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place

An Interview with Brian S. Ellis

The poetry of Brian S. Ellis unravels, inverts, investigates, and complicates. His poems are radical koans and invitations to forego common narratives.

Vase

The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.

beach
On Undressing a Color / On Undressing a Girl

I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.

First

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

Sprung (April)

I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.

A Way of Seeing

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

You can’t make them love you, no matter how artfully you betray yourself

Try not to see your own predicament in every fucking thing.

Back Suplex

Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat