Life's Little Meanings

The American Poetry Review

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Five Poems

May 1, 2023

Let’s be GodFor a moment, Shall we?That which invites Composition,That which is suspended From a great height,The presence Of approximationHeavy in the meadows, I’m not afraid,And yet My shroud vanishesIn these lines, I am so weptPast weeping, And wh

The Paris Review

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Two Poems by Mary Szybist

Sep 15, 2019

Like an alarm I can’t shut off, the summer.Like air raid sirens stuck onthe world is burning, the world is burning& I can’t stop it. Can’t stop ash from the reddening sky falling dry onto grass, onto cloverlit purple at their tips. Mouth level.My che

The American Poetry Review

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Three Poems

Sep 1, 2019

before I was one I heard every soundas a sound that had never been heard,before I was one I saw every lightas a light separate from dark, colorhidden in a place I had not been.Before I was one I used feet to wakenin water, to pedal through air,hands

The American Poetry Review

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Two Poems

Sep 1, 2023

This poem is for everyperson who will neverread it either by choiceor circumstance I writeit in silence wherethe most realparts of our liveslive like a shoe lostin an alley or an emptyboat in a black sea butmore like the fallenleaf on the other sideo

New Internationalist

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Home

Feb 25, 2019

I once lived in a yellow little house. Each morning, birds convened and sang at my bedroom window. The gate was indigo and inside the garden all kinds of flowers rose to kiss the sunny walls. The yellow nest was filled with cherished books, colourful

The American Poetry Review

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The Epic Of Gilgamesh

Jan 1, 2020

My friends, who can reach heaven? The monster bellows like a river swollen with flood.Many are consumed in his fiery breath. My friends, who can reach heaven? Let us ask the mountain for a sign.Let us cut the spirits from the cedars. My friends, who

The American Poetry Review

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Seven Poems

Sep 1, 2021

The dancersIn a terribly brightLight blue gauzeRetained the mystery Skating on a lakeBlue and iceAn illusionary timeWhere poetry feels inevitable The terrific clownWho lies insideEvery blue dressDoes he see me Always a starAlways a rootHorrible auras

The American Poetry Review

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Four Poems

Jan 1, 2023

And god created the waves and we the graves beneath, bodies madeparticulate by the force of water against water, water against rock, againsttime. I descend into the deep in a kind of prayer, listen to its centuries.Make me pay, will you, make me hurt

Harper's Bazaar India

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Summer: A Love Story

Apr 20, 2021

It is a squalid time. The body grows tired of being a body. Sweat. Always. A thin film of it on the skin. Do not say dewy. Do not say glisten. I dream of endless green. Of wet. Of rain hammering the Earth. Of buds sprouting. I want to insist on life

The Paris Review

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Two Poems by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Jun 15, 2018

And, after the explosion, made spheres sing,A pure expression of pure poetry,Like rising rain or a nation with noFlag—. Something that whispers as the airDoes just before the lightning comes. A pureExpression of the breaks in the blank lakesOn Neptun

New Philosopher

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Love Letters

Mar 7, 2022

MY BELOVED ANGEL, I am nearly mad about you, as much as one can be mad: I cannot bring together two ideas that you do not interpose yourself between them. I can no longer think of nothing but you. In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you.

The American Poetry Review

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AUSTRALOPITHECA1 & STARMAN2

Sep 1, 2019

The countdown to you begyns with me, deere Starman, when I wander, dumbly, deep into a space hospittable to Hunger. Now, all’s desert. No milk in syte. Just pitifull sand, what shushes as it slydes through your hande to rejoin itself. I’d join myself

The American Poetry Review

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from BLACK PASTORAL

Nov 1, 2023

somewheres, some lifetimes ago I have run so far, so long.There is nowhere I haven’t beenBut here, in this field, a bodyLength from the ragged brinkThat gives way to forest.I collapsed here, the thin, hard slipOf me whittled at both ends.I want badly

The American Poetry Review

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TEN POEMS Translations of Rafael Alberti

May 1, 2024

Throughout the centuries,through the nothingness of the world,I, without sleep, search for you. Behind me, imperceptible,without touching my shoulders,my dead angel keeps watch. Where is Paradise,Shadow, you who have been there?I ask silently. Cities

The American Poetry Review

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Five Poems

Nov 1, 2020

The American linden sways nonplussed by the storm,a bounce here, a shimmy there, just shaking like musicleft over from the night’s end wafting into the avenues before sleep.I remember once walking down Clinton Street, and singingthat line returning,

The American Poetry Review

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Four Poems

Nov 1, 2019

for Rouge they do not knowthe joy they walk with their footprints a lessonof faith O faithful companion of lonelinessthe name we gave you was not a name but a cryand you stayedand now they come to hunt in the wildnot for meat not with the ritual for

The Marshall Project

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On Death Row, There's No Such Thing As Closure

Aug 2, 2019

It is August of the year 2000, and I am cold. I know the sun is shining outside, but there are no windows in the courtroom. The lighting is subdued, darker in the back where spectators sit and lighter in the front where tragedies play out—like a the