share


Two Poems

I approach a purchase

adore my children—
back away—
that they revere ugliness

the rainbow bag
that holds a smaller
rainbow bag

I just forgot! (isn’t
that a scream)
to stand outside

the vault of apt

comparison.

I am come

to sell you my farm.

You cautiously open
your wallet. You

are almost ready to begin
spending your money.

Vivid lightning
illegible handwriting

strong and locally severe

thunderstorms. I’m always coming
forth in the evening

expecting everything to be
so elegant. Fallacy

of inner beauty meets
fallacy of transparency.

Most of the time I do understand
exactly what someone is talking about

but this time she really was talking size—‘small’
—when I thought she was talking miles per gallon

given the context:
culture in decline.


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

is the author of three books of poems: Manderley, Figment, and The King. She is also the author of a novel, The Beginners. A founding editor of Fence, a literary journal, and Fence Books, and of The Constant Critic, she is a fellow at the New York State Writers Institute at the University of Albany, in the US, and lives in a small village called Athens, on the Hudson River. She is at work on a new book of poems called One Morning—.

READ NEXT

feature

December 2013

The Horror of Philosophy

Houman Harouni

feature

December 2013

An article published in this same venue opens with a grievance: ‘We lack the philosophers that we require for...

Art

March 2011

Trafalgar Square Street Protests

Cosmo Hildyard

Joseph de Lacey

Art

March 2011

The following photographs were taken during the third day of student protests in London on 1 December 2010, a...

fiction

January 2016

Eight Minutes and Nineteen Seconds

Georgi Gospodinov

TR. Angela Rodel

fiction

January 2016

The minute you start reading this, the sun may already have gone out, but you won’t know it yet....

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required