Poem

A Separate Incident

Burdick has come through. It
wasn’t easy, or, apparently,
     that
difficult. . . . 

Kind Permission

Almost tonight, let’s not and say
     we did.
I used to be a slightly handsome
     boy, then
this happened. . . .

Poet’s Sampler: b: william bearhart, introduced by Natalie Diaz

Because two brothers make a
     body where none existed
God drew two bodies as one
     went crooked . . .

My Somniloquist

I can’t paint your image, it’s the image every portrait
mourns. It’s the art we still dream once was.

TV of the Gods

The gods offer blank slates. The gods offer black marker smiles. They offer profit, excess, cardboard
box-headed children to the void so I don’t have to.

Animal Love

Of course they love, says my
     student. I slap
my dog sometimes when he
     comes to my bedside
just to see if . . .

To Tell of Bodies Changed to Different Forms

In the market of ideas, of meat
     —in the teeth of need—you
     will never be happy with

your body—it is not the right
     body . . .

Poem of My Humiliations

After the salt feast, I watched a bird peck at another bird who was already dead. . . .

Fragments

Translated from the Japanese by Yuki Tanaka and Mary Jo Bang

( )

The word saudades cannot easily be translated. Our mother & i translate Brazilian poetry, & when we come to the word saudades we hesitate. . . .

A Disservice

Discovery Poetry Contest Winners

Selected work from this year’s winners.

Poet’s Sampler: Vidhu Aggarwal, illustrated by Bishakh Som

Introduced by Bhanu Kapil

Excerpt from ‘How They Fall / Like That’

Who are all these people 
     that have doubled, 
     scanning in all these
old photographs
we can ploy them off . . .

Three Poems

A coastline, a transitional place
bears evidence of others
     dwelling:

a house pit in the shape of a
     nest . . .

Three Poems

Folk songs of sexual violation. Move the furniture around. The knife always hanging there. In this case it’s just a metaphor. . .

Excerpts from ‘Illuminations’

What we say is where we say.
What we say is how we say,
What we say is why we say.
What is said fluctuates. . . .

Two Poems

You don’t have to pay taxes on your feelings. You don’t have to fill a bucket with snow. You don’t have to carry the bucket from Aunt Clover’s. . . .

Two Poems

Can’t submerge this dirigible
below the floor itself, cold wood
cheek-pressed and so hard,
hard like anything else you
might have wished for . . .

Two Poems

The past was different.
We lived in a loud place.

There was light sometimes
and water in a jar. It was
     always late

and everybody breathed . . .

Stingray

having had no proper family
    name I made do
with Stingray never loved a
     man so-called . . .

The Films of Tony Scott

hould a secretary sleep inside of Tony Scott? The biologist attends in him—why not?—as an arch attends upon opponent necrochemistry . . .

Three Poems

Oh I'm looking but I lost
my glasses at a gas station
10 miles south. Yes I’m getting
    closer
but I can’t quite remember . . .

Excerpts from ‘Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven’

Translated from the Spanish and French by Ignacio Infante and Michael Leong

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