POETRY
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…
If America is Babylon / and you are an exile / newly arrived among pagans / Catholic, ‘Ngolan, Black, woman / you already know how to pray
You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.
I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.
Dylan Krieger’s poetry is unflinching, grotesque, and beautiful. Her work tackles trauma, wrestles authority, and is a decadent sonic feast.
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.
I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.
In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote
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 count my homes—
those of my scattered youth
the sanctuary of our young family
the intermittent rest stops
of apartments and vacations.