POETRY

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

Every so often, they add a tattoo
in honor of some long-forgotten love.

A Way of Seeing

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

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.

Dear Deer in the Compost Pile

I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.

Black Ghosts of Ponderosa on a Silhouette of Hill

Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.

Observer of the Patient

Her brown eyes,
how a fig
considers itself.

Despairathon

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

things they won’t tell you but should:

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

The River

I myself should never have been born

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.

close up of sun
Mercury in Retrograde

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

Hollywood Hills
the remarkable thing

I am still waiting for the lion

Making Israeli Salad

Now that the Israeli has left, it falls
on me to make the salad.

An Interview with Dylan Krieger

Dylan Krieger’s poetry is unflinching, grotesque, and beautiful. Her work tackles trauma, wrestles authority, and is a decadent sonic feast.

The Kotel in Jerusalem is Filled with Cracks

We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…

melting ice cap
blue is the color of surrender

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

Sadness is a Sin

If my life was the size of my arm, I would stretch it out for you.

Vase

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

Back Suplex

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