Category / 2020 / Fall 2020 / Fall 2020 Poetry / Poetry

To my family it keeps me dry. To my friends I’m organizing chaos, overlapping like fish scales. To myself I lie. When really I write so maybe one day you’ll see my name through a window and read about yourself. Really, It’s so you might see me how I see you. Anthony Harper is a…

Imagine the highest mountain You could climb in your mind, Where early morning mist bathes The frosted beargrass in pearly dew And wild huckleberries offer Their tart gift to fat pancakes Cooked over an open fire. Imagine all this And climb. Seek out the stones That have lost their voice, Silent in the eddy and…

I stared Genocide square in the eye, accused it of being a foreign spy. It laughed and said I had no business injecting facts about its sordid record. In my derision, I became fit to kill. Yet, let’s take this discussion outside, I urged, under the moonlit magenta sky where we may mitigate our differences.…

Small fires burn in the street and the smell of gunpowder permeates the night. Another fourth of July and I feel the old pull of sadness for summers gone past, the wish that if I tried hard enough, I could shed myself and join the sparklers that erupt in the sky, that beauty could erase…

After they buried you, I found myself in my bedroom thumbing through a shoebox of cards – looking for you in the baptisms, birthdays, first communions, confirmations. I found you between Christmas and Valentine’s, on a piece of parchment folded over and over on itself into a small square. I pulled you open and you…

Skipped like a stone across a wide warm lake. The day, reenacted in fragments. Night a surface I bend into. Thoughts in cobweb drift to earth. Sparks of crimson dance against my eyes, a bright constellation of visitors I won’t remember when I wake. Buffeted, oh so gently, as if by wings of angels. Erica…

The sky is frothy white with clouds like with flakes of sweet cream. The lollipop ingot of the sun has teased us and gone. Now, the darkness of the night glows with myriads of crumbs: someone has secretly feasted on a sponge cake up there. The poppy seed crescent roll of the moon is fatter…

once i read this adage that bad people don’t think they’re bad people which made me think i wasn’t bad which made me think i was which put me in an anxiety spiral at god knows o clock a.m sometimes i think maybe i’ve burned bridges just to have something to run from like i…

There is a dream I can’t imagine And a son I cannot hold There’s a passion I seek and a kissless cheek And a love as pure as gold There’s a child I need and a father’s greed An ocean of tears I’ve cried There’s a heaven that cradles my baby And a question not…

Gentle hum of cars on my right Rumbling of the trains on my left Locusts buzzing in front of me My family shouting behind me The wind caresses my face with her brisk hand —Like the way Mom used to— Her other hand brushes my hair towards the dusk sky Fireflies make light in out…

The trembling old man, Spirit waning with time, Everyday I see him Head down with thoughts, Walking slowly by. But today was he smiling And was gathering quite a pace, Out of curiosity, I could not help but follow his steps. Into the woods he went And so did I. From behind a tree I…