POETRY

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

It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows?
Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.

Finding My Fix

I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.

All In

I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt

Dis Place Ment

People have always coped with flooding, and they learned to cope with death.

[Zoetrope with Particulates in it and a Newborn]

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

painting of apple and grapes
Feast Of

anger, like you can sink teeth into, candy apple

Vase

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

oh Manifesto

The collective
failure
of ethical standards

Fallout Shelter

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

The State School 1984 His Given Name Was Wilbur  We Called Him Magpie

Mostly he ate what was put on his plate
snuck coffee grounds or dirt for a snack
Once a zipper Unzipped

Landscape with Ash

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.

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.

Letter To a Young Poet

Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”

The Man

the man is stayed bent over the canvas
of my sofa. the man is me the man is him
self and I bring down the whip…

Observer of the Patient

Her brown eyes,
how a fig
considers itself.

3:17 AM as Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks

Part of being a good sad person
is always painting the shadows
in the right direction and knowing
what sorrow to art with.

Willpower

Live the rest of your life
from one worst case to another.

heavy rain
The Plot

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

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.

I could, even now, go down to the water

Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble