Tag Archive for: Poetry

An excerpt from “Stage 1: Cold Shock” by Caroline M. Mar (poetry ’13), published by Anomalous Press.

STAGE 1: COLD SHOCK
THREAT NO.1: LOSS OF BREATHING CONTROL

Gasping

There are an average of seven drownings per year in the lake, most due 
to cold water shock, even among those who are capable swimmers. Or were 
before the water folded them into itself: 
                                                                           a pocket of failure, a slipped 
                            seam of darkness out of the summer 
                                                                                                       sun’s light. 

[…continue reading at Anomalous Press.]

An excerpt from “Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America” by faculty member Matthew Olzmann (poetry ’09) published by Tin House.

Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America

Tell me what it’s like to live without
curiosity, without awe. To sail
on clear water, rolling your eyes
at the kelp reefs swaying
beneath you, ignoring the flicker
of mermaid scales in the mist,
looking at the world and feeling
only boredom. To stand
on the precipice of some wild valley,
the eagles circling, a herd of caribou
booming below, and to yawn
with indifference. To discover
something primordial and holy.

[…continue reading at Tin House.]

An excerpt from “Crone poem (we’re all gonna die)” by Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet (poetry ’05) published by The Collagist.

Crone poem (we’re all gonna die)

and how could I have come
more than halfway and not know, I mean

I say it often enough. This is how
we talk tough, out here in the dark wood

where the direct way is lost though hey
it looks pretty clear to me, one-way trip

fire to fire. Even you, asshole,
the one with the big gun

on your shoulder, brandishing your right
to brandish your fear.

[…continue reading “Crone poem (we’re all gonna die)” at The Collagist.]

An excerpt from “House of Unending” by Reginald Dwayne Betts (poetry ’10) published by Poetry.

House of Unending

1

The sinner’s bouquet, house of shredded & torn
Dear John letters, upended grave of names, moon
Black kiss of a pistol’s flat side, time blueborn
& threaded into a curse, Lazarus of hustlers, the picayune
Spinning into beatdown; breath of a thief stilled
By fluorescent lights, a system of 40 blocks,
Empty vials, a hand full of purple cranesbills,
Memories of crates suspended from stairs, tied in knots
Around streetlamps, the house of unending push-ups,
Wheelbarrows & walking 20s, the daughters
Chasing their fathers’ shadows, sons that upset
The wind with their secrets, the paraphrase of fractured,
Scarred wings flying through smoke, each wild hour
Of lockdown, hunger time & the blackened flower.

[…continue reading “House of Unending” at Poetry.]

An excerpt from “Ode to Dalya’s Bald Spot” by Angel Nafis (poetry ’19), published by Poetry.

Ode to Dalya’s Bald Spot

my sister wraps the throw
around herself on the small
cream loveseat & i know
for sure that she is not
a speck of dirt on a pill.
she coughs & sniffs up all
the lucky air in the room
into her excellent nostrils,
which are endless
holy wells replenishing
the soft architecture of her guts.
not even the lupus can interrupt
this ritual of beholding.

[…continue reading at Poetry.]

An excerpt from “Ship of Fools: Surviving Fragment of Triptych” by Rose Auslander (poetry ’15) published by The Piltdown Review.

Ship of Fools: Surviving Fragment of Triptych

and what remains of us? A plateful of cherries
spilled, half-eaten, a breast forgotten, dangling

from a torn bodice, men bellowing drunk
nuns plucking lutes, blind to children
begging naked in the water and
the fool we raised on high to guide

our leaking vessel, canvas torn, paint
cracked with age or by his rage—

[…continue reading “Ship of Fools: Surviving Fragment of Triptych” at The Piltdown Review.]

An excerpt from “Greenhousing” by Sarah Audsley (poetry ’19), published by Tupelo Quarterly.

Greenhousing

I’ll push against—
                what did you say—any
                                edge. An orchid cannot
impregnate it-
                self. Stamen & pistil sound
like dirty words, but they’re necessary.
                I know how
                                to push
                against the glass. I was a seed.

[…continue reading “Greenhousing” at Tupelo Quarterly.]

An excerpt from “W A K E : A SLEEP IN FORTY-SOMETHING WINKS” by Jennifer Sperry Steinorth (poetry ’15), published by Connotation Press.


W A K E : A SLEEP IN FORTY-SOMETHING WINKS

Midway through our night’s sleep
I woke to find the dream lost
My body shaken from it— salt

 \ /

At the midpoint of the night we were allotted 

I found myself     in dark apartment

 \   / /

Half through rocky return journey
I woke beneath a skein of geese
three fleet deer mice scrambling o’er me

[…continue reading “W A K E : A SLEEP IN FORTY-SOMETHING WINKS” at Connotation Press.]

An excerpt from an interview with poetry faculty member Alan Shapiro, published by the Katonah Poetry Series.


“Writing poetry is partly and mainly essentially a collaborative enterprise. Nobody writes anything without the help of someone else. That can be a friend, a fellow poet or another poem you love and want to emulate, or at the very least be in conversation with. More generally, poems exist not just to be read in the isolation of one’s study but to be talked about, to generate communal bonds and insight.”

[…continue reading the interview with Alan Shapiro at the Katonah Poetry Series.]

An excerpt from “Ode to My Father’s Failed Heart” by Maya Phillips (poetry ’17), selected by Rita Dove and published by The New York Times Magazine.

Ode to My Father’s Failed Heart

It’s okay. I, too, have failed
at the expected, have sputtered
and choked like a rusty valve
in water, have jumped into the pool
only to sink. Little engine, your flawed
machinery is nothing like love. You limp
at last call to the dance floor,
but feel no shame

[…continue reading “Ode to My Father’s Failed Heart” at The New York Times Magazine.]