Poets’ Corner
Every Angel Is Terrifying: A Review of The Elegy Beta by Mischa Willet
The Elegy Beta by Mischa Willet Mockingbird Press, 98 pages, $12 paperback No one, apart from a few oddball formalists, wants to write light verse. James Tate maybe but he is dead.[1] Simon Armitage, sometimes, but the English are a different matter. On the whole American poetry is very serious business indeed—a business that is…
John the Baptist’s Brain Scan
Clinical History:Fetal synaesthesia and involuntary ecstasy; sudden adult-onset soteriological hydrophilia. Findings:There is pervasiverubicund pigmentationof the frontal lobe andluxury perfusionof the mid-cortical gyrisuggesting locust-ingestion ketogenesis.Patient’s sulciare focally engorgedwith desert flower honey.Hypertrophic changesto the circle of Willisreveal vaticination. Impression:MRI findings suggest Nazarite syndrome. Further testing with sandal thongs is indicated to assess digital non-compliance. The patient should…
Me And Pablo Neruda
I am with my love in La Colombina, a room with forty narrow windows and a stained glass spine to the ceiling and calligraphic iron scribbles for roof support. The sea stands still beyond hillsides of innumerable houses, folded and tucked shapes of plaster and painted tin. A seagull waits at the open window beside…
Dead Water
Between despair and hope, two continents, a vast sea lies, blank whiteness on the chart. No waves, no cartographer’s fanciful decorations—a simple nothing, nondescript, immense. Here I tread water. The taste and smell of salt, irreducible facts, offer no explanations to map the trackless journeys of the heart:how I came here, whether I’m at fault….
Call for Poetry Submissions
As the summer comes to a close, it’s time for Daniel Rattelle and me to turn our attention to the serious matter of poetry. Last year, we had a grand old time editing our first volume for Little Gidding Press, The Slumbering Host. I pitched the idea to Dan the first time we met,…
Examen
In filtered sunlight footstools even shine.They show in autumn tones their tenebrae,A brown that sparkles—isn’t that so fine!Along with chipper calls, cicadas pray. The peaceful sun’s retirement from this day,This night, leaves nothing lost; days do not die.Instead, night gathers in and up our playIn packets portaged forward, tight and dry. The day’s clear glare…
Cædmon
(657 – 684) Ashamed to be without a song to shareWith men more talented apparently,The herdsman left the monks in revelryAnd went to sleep with creatures in his care. That very night he was commanded inA dream to sing of how the world began;At first he balked and said, “I doubt I can,”But inspiration led…
Midrash
When the ink printed on paperfeels rigid, sterile,we can close our eyes,lean in, and empty our breath.That’s when the letters separate, rise,dance in the air like leavesflittering as they fall. We collect what we can,rub them across our skin,swallow them whole and feelthem warm inside of us.The ones we miss formkite strings across the skyas…
The Weakness of Men
The story is that men are getting softer.They break down sobbing, hide a face beneathA towel, after they’ve been benched, as ifA private room of terry cloth could shutOut our contempt. They say that some men areAfraid to lift a phone, to call the drug storeAnd ask the hours of the pharmacy.They’ll sit there, sunk…
The bite.
The bite. That one bite. That defiant crunch —“Oh God!” She begg’d as knowledge ravish’d her.That old cliché that ignorance is blissWas in this act conceiv’d, but none can know —Not really — know how knowledge felt at firstTo pure primeval innocence of mind. She knew the tree bore knowledge by its name.She knew its…