New Poetry with Audio!
Donald Revell
Stephen Burt
Paul Hoover
Jonah Winter
Cathy Wagner
Reginald Shepherd
Nin Andrews
Sophia Kartsonis
Sandra Miller
Joshua Harmon
Devin Johnston
Chuck Zerby
Sara Henning
Ognjen Smiljanic
Lance Phillips
Peter Drake
Kathleen Byrne
Ernest Hilbert
Garth Greenwell
Marc McKee
Criticism
Brian Henry on Kinsella
Gabriel Welsch on Northrop
Gabriel Welsch on Smith
Cecily Iddings on Ruefle
Christopher McDermott on Wenderoth
Charles Zerby’s book The Devil’s Details: A History of Footnotes was recently
released in paperback by Simon & Schuster. His chapbook Sam Hose’s Knuckles: Some Lynching Poems
was recently published by
Swamp Press.
Opening Arguments
Pebbles let
slip
their
silver admits
a brown.
Granite, trying hard
to keep up,
concedes
blue
interrupts its gray.
The cosmos
proves orange
and pink
compatible.
A cardinal
flares up.
Low, lying
clouds insist
light isn’t
in charge.
A gunmetal
V of geese
makes a
point of leaving
nothing to
think about.
After Matisse's Jeune Femme Jouant du Violon Devant La Fenêtre Ouverte
The woman
plays the violin in a corner.
A sailboat
drifts across the open window.
Identical
palm trees are posted like sentinels.
The sea and
sky assert air and space and movement.
A sailboat
drifts across the open window.
Red and
white stripes unscroll across the room.
The sea and
sky assert air and space and movement.
The woman
is confined to her music.
Red and
white stripes unscroll across the room.
The
painter’s brush amuses with improvisations.
The woman
is confined to her music.
What if
music finds the open window?
While the
painter’s brush amuses with improvisations
the woman
plays the violin in a corner
but what if
music finds the open window?
Identical
palm trees are posted like sentinels.
After Matisse’s La séance de trois heures
A nude stands stiffly on a draped pedestal.
The nude is an elongated column of brown.
A woman sits before a makeshift easel.
The woman has on a blue, white dotted shift.
The nude is an elongated column of brown
though a mirror shows the nude as wide and flesh colored.
The woman has on a blue, white dotted shift
though only the woman’s black, tossed hair is reflected.
A mirror shows the nude as wide and flesh colored.
The mirror is substantial. It takes in a vermilion wall.
But where is Matisse as he paints the reflection?
The woman looks ravenously at her drawing.
Can she have forgotten she is being observed?
A nude poses on a draped pedestal.
Can she have forgotten she is being observed?
