POETRY

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

you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties

Making Israeli Salad

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

Getting Postcards From a Piano Showroom

The two of us toast to a man we both love, to whatever degree, clink our glasses and laugh…

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…

Clotheslines

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

i do not want to wait until it’s too late

the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.

oh Manifesto

The collective
failure
of ethical standards

An Endeavor of Being Now

We stop doing dishes while
a mile unwinds
from the tree outside.

The Body is a Sin

The sin is existing.

love poem with dead leaves & color

I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.

Despairathon

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

Drowning in sky

I have observed, the theorist
I am

First

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

Sprung (April)

I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.

Sadness is a Sin

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

A Beautiful Thing

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

Welcome To The House of Static

here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome

Like dirt

this is what I want you to to see:
leaves falling because it is too late for them not to

Tea

my father holds
his favorite drink

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.