beyond hardware
i peruse paint samples to learn what shade names you. a blend of calumet cream1 and ivory2 and atyour cheek blush rose, but i didn’t need a color chart for that. at six months, you have lost theshimmer that teens buy cheap or steal in their first transgressions, but...
The Social Virtues Series
Recent Posts
“A Meal of Only Tongues”: A Review of Amy Beeder’s AND SO WAX WAS MADE & ALSO HONEY
Halfway through Amy Beeder’s third, full-length collection, And so Wax was Made and Also Honey, we encounter a persona poem in the voice of the 19th century author Gustave Flaubert, known for coining the phrase le mot juste, meaning “the exact (or right) word.” He defined this as the guiding principle of his writing. The inclusion of him in Beeder’s most recent collection is fitting, as Beeder, too, appears to take this as a guiding precept for her work. Each of the poems that span this 61-page collection have been crafted by a master wordsmith who excels at finding the perfect language with which to dazzle and awe her readers.
Stone
Unfortunately for me and my wife, Elissa, a subject arose that impelled Rock to hold forth. Rock was married to Elissa’s long-time friend, Ruby, and seeing and hearing Rock had become part of remaining friends with Ruby. We’d recently moved into a new house, and the empty lot next door had come up for sale. We’d considered buying it to preserve a view of some trees from our screen porch, but the seller’s asking price was far too high.
Larry Levis Is an Alien That Knows God Will Always Be 17
All I know is that I was somewhere in space and time reading Larry Levis. /
A poem about God. How God is always and forever 17.
Matrix of all Relation: The Death Spiral
The Death Spiral by Sarah GiragosianBlack Lawrence Press, 2020. “To rend: this is what I want,” says the intrepid and metamorphic speaker of The Death Spiral, from the poem “Notes Toward an Apology” wherein the speaker slices a tomato open with her fingernail,...
She Says
We’re dreamswalking in the worldon the landof red skin red bloodon the land of a civil war She sayswe will walkon rifles for freedomon missiles for foodon the hymns of spiritualshumming the criesof our children killedtheir parents...
Nine Winds (i am only ever writing about love)
I. Pandemic IT IS THE FIRST WEEK OF MARCH WHEN WE CROSS THE BORDER INTO MEXICO, continuing the long drive from the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest and head down the California coast, where the land is roughened into arid boulders. We are now cruising the...
Four Poems
Uterus, You Always the gracious hostess, stretched thinto accommodate your growing guests—threepregnancies a breeze. Until the physicaltherapist asked if mine was still intactI hadn’t thought of you in forty years.How rude of me! But in my defense,I never had a sense...
Ornithology
LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I was a child. Mother on the front porch, watering flowers. Daddy on the couch, book fallen to the floor. Too young for words, I know nothing of their worlds. Ornithology. Site fidelity. Geraniums. Faith. I know nothing yet of the split between science and God, between men and women, between want and need. Home is a set of sensory perceptions: the rough-smooth texture of my father’s wool socks; bright red tomatoes on the windowsill; my mother humming “Abide With Me” as flowers outside remain abundant, carrying full green leaves.
remedies
for Aunt Lydia for the heart disease shepherd’s purse for the...
What We Hear from our Neighbors
Michael and Sara supervised their neighbor once from their living room window as he cut down a hundred-foot tree alone. Both the maples and the neighbors in that part of Vermont come in one size. Double-XL for the trees. Extra-small talk for the neighbors.