Ma wrings a wet world of colors
we drove on through the blue seal of morning as the turbines turned and winked out their hearts
Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.
People have always coped with flooding, and they learned to cope with death.
I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary until I smell like the bones until I am its echo…
I don’t know why I’m in the garden kneeling on dirt
The collective failure of ethical standards
We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…
He has stories that I am not in anymore. It’s healed this way.
The poetry of Brian S. Ellis unravels, inverts, investigates, and complicates. His poems are radical koans and invitations to forego common narratives.
Live the rest of your life from one worst case to another.
my father holds his favorite drink
Millions of Americans have been affected by identity theft. It’s probably the greenhouse gases.
I count my homes— those of my scattered youth the sanctuary of our young family the intermittent rest stops of apartments and vacations.
Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time
If America is Babylon / and you are an exile / newly arrived among pagans / Catholic, ‘Ngolan, Black, woman / you already know how to pray
Part of being a good sad person is always painting the shadows in the right direction and knowing what sorrow to art with.
I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.
I tap at the alphabet while a single deer taps at the dirt beyond the brush on the far side of the tree line.
Mostly he ate what was put on his plate snuck coffee grounds or dirt for a snack Once a zipper Unzipped