POETRY
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.
Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.
We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…
I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.
Try not to see your own predicament in every fucking thing.
I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.
I count my homes—
those of my scattered youth
the sanctuary of our young family
the intermittent rest stops
of apartments and vacations.
He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.
my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house
The poetry of Brian S. Ellis unravels, inverts, investigates, and complicates. His poems are radical koans and invitations to forego common narratives.
we drove on through
the blue seal of morning as the turbines
turned and winked out their hearts
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…
Dylan Krieger’s poetry is unflinching, grotesque, and beautiful. Her work tackles trauma, wrestles authority, and is a decadent sonic feast.
I have an axe
with hearts gashed