Death Poem
by Hanabusa Ikkei
translated by Yoel Hoffmann

I thought to live 
two centuries, or three—
yet here comes death
to me, a child
just eighty-five years old.

Share

From Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death, compiled and translated by Yoel Hoffmann (Tuttle Publishing, 1998).

SINS DEADLY SOME
by Hannah Weiner

This is not a poem today I cannot write poems I can only write sentences The second sentence says that there are sins deadly to oneself and to others The third sentence says that some of these sins do include jealousy anger envy avarice pride because a person if she has spiritual power projects these qualities through her being and her work say writing and is imitated by others because of this power thus perpetuating what are called sins The third sentence which is here the fourth sentence was a long sentence and has to do with the need for work on the self The fifth sentence introduces one of Gandi’s redefinitions of the seven deadly sins which deals with the political or work in the world The sixth sentence says that wealth even with work is no justification for keeping it all whether you work or inherit the obligation is to share until need is erased The seventh sentence quotes Gandi that pleasure without conscience is a sin but any act without conscience or consciousness is a sin and to close I have already committed seven sins seven sentences with meaning which I would prefer to destroy for a writer’s goal of altering consciousness by means of disjunctive non-sequential techniques thus forwarding a consciousness which would eliminate sins however and whomever defined

Share

From Hannah Weiner’s Open House, edited by Patrick Durgin, forthcoming from Nightboat Books in January 2027.

I Want to Tell You Love is Castle Sex is a Planet, and We Are All Dogs With Very Special Leashes
by Suzanne Richardson

I bleed for months at the temple doorways so you’ll let me in.
I am tracing the vermillion border of your lips with my finger.

We are warm dunes of Martian pink snow. I want to know,
‍what would you get on your knees for? I haven’t asked because

the answer is not me. You are trying to control time. Slow it.
Speed it. Like a nature documentary in reverse, you burgeon

then seed. Why know me, then strange me? Why not keep me
strange and never know? The sun rises the same way on days

I’ve told lies. You lean in to touch and kiss my sinister side.
Tonight, the moon is eel skin wrapped in cellophane,
or a dancing cartoon elephant whispering:

‍be warned, I have barely any tenderness left.
Tho, I’d give you what I have, if you asked for it

Share

Measurement
by May Miller

A thin repeated note
Strikes against
The tuning fork of time 
To mark man's encroachment
On the God-threatened way;
To set the hour
Of his uncertain final step. 
Choose an ancient scheme—
The fractional-lengthening shadow
On the unscarred dial;
The way is none the less short.
The tune begins again.

Share

First published in Poetry (December 1948).

Still Life, Idaho Falls, Idaho
by Francesca Bell

I want to walk into Shakey’s Pizza,
1975, with my sister who tells me 
what to do and my brother who plays
Army with me, a boy so gentle 
he has no choice but to obsess himself 
with weapons. I am so skinny 
my bones show through my clothes, 
so shy I look down in all the photographs. 
I want the scent of the pizzas
as they bake, to know one
is intended for us, a goodness
the exact shape and size
of our hunger, and our hunger
growling inside us, a sensation 
we can still understand. 
Nothing has fallen apart yet. 
We live in the little house
on Woodruff in the little town
full of Mormons and physicists
and wind so cold and constant
the icicles freeze sideways.
The three of us have tunneled
all day through snow piled
and drifted in our yard. 
I want to warm up in Shakey’s Pizza 
and wait to be fed the way we wait 
for the future, thinking it will arrive 
as ordered, and we will eat as much as we want. 
After, our parents, faces unmarked
by what is coming, will give us 
each a nickel, and we’ll line up
behind the other children
at the Soft Serve machine
and attempt to make our own desserts. 
The ice cream is smooth and sweet,
and we do not yet know 
we’ll never master it. 
No matter how many times 
we are allowed to try, 
it will slide and slide and never look 
as we imagine. It will pile, 
misshapen and precarious, 
in our cones.

Excerpt from our conversation with Francesca Bell: 

KARAN
I love “Still Life, Idaho Falls, Idaho.” Three kids at Shakey’s Pizza in 1975, waiting to be fed the way they wait for the future, and then the Soft Serve machine: “and we do not yet know / we’ll never master it.” A year later Elizabeth Bishop published “One Art” and assured us the art of losing isn’t hard to master. Your kids at the ice cream machine might have a word with her. Tell us about your relationship with the past. Do you go back to Idaho Falls often, in poems or otherwise?

FRANCESCA
I lived in Idaho Falls from age six to age ten, the four best years of my childhood. It was a small town, truly full of Mormons (because of its proximity to Utah) and physicists (because of the Idaho National Laboratory, home to numerous nuclear reactors), and astonishingly cold. My dad had stable employment there, our schools were the best schools we ever attended, and the problems that would later engulf us were just beginning to bubble beneath the surface. I’ve only been back there once, and this is the first poem I’ve written about it. Partly because of my age (59), I imagine, and partly because a young member of my family has come close in recent years to dying of alcoholism, I have been revisiting this particular part of my past a lot, looking at the befores and afters. I’ve avoided writing much about the difficult parts of my childhood, honestly, have tried to keep keeping the silence we were quietly taught to keep. But it’s gotten harder to do, especially since my mother died. Something more general that I will say about the past is that there are people and experiences that only make sense to me as I get older, as I get further from them. It is counterintuitive, I think, that I feel I can now know people better after enormous absence, that I see them more clearly the longer it’s been since I last saw them. But it is true.

Share

Spitting Image
by Liz Femi

after Chen Chen

On the back shelf, wedged between two cans of condensed milk, 
               the shocked nerves of a dandelion. Dryad lion. Fountain of anxious 
light spooling from its head. And because it takes all kinds of lions 
               to corner Daniel in the den, some lion, too, has no choice but to be the kind of lion 
his lioness mama raised him to be. Most days, I dream of living as full blown 
               exoskeleton.  But that’s not enough time to condense bone into anything but what my mama raised me to be. I’m ready to admit that a spitting image is an image that spits out 
               its own kind. Flummoxed organs reject blood type, macrophages scream law & disorder the flags & they say at the end of the day isn’t family a kind of country?
               I am not a nice idea. I’m an aloof anthem. I’m an anxiously attached sermon. Resplendent 

flowering from my father’s immigrant head. Unordered, discountryed parts to assemble 
               into twelvefolds of a fortune teller or is that a crumpled love letter?  
I am not the anti-antigen my mama raised me to be. I’m a thrill-seeking dandelion. 
               In eighth grade, I pulled myself through the eye of a joke so I was a kind of exoskeleton but only for a short while since needles are tiny, obviously, & so I spit myself back out into the 
               joke, crawling on all fours through the jungle. In first grade, I learned clouds condensed into rain. I thought tears were condensed thoughts & the sky was trapped inside my mama’s head 
               & my mama was trapped inside the sky’s head & they kept each other company. I asked how she was. She cried as long as a book: the world was a bandage of dandelions 
               & my mama raised me to be a species of silence

Share

The complete history of the era
by Bob Hicok

By the time the fire crew finished with their selfies,
my house had burned down.

Share

The Emptiness of Man
by João Cabral de Melo Neto
translated by Galway Kinnell

I.
The emptiness of man is not like
any other: not like an empty coat
or empty sack (things which do not stand up
when empty, such as an empty man),
the emptiness of man is more like fullness
in swollen things which keep on swelling,
the way a sack must feel
that is being filled, or any sack at all.
The emptiness of man, this full emptiness,
is not like a sack of bricks' emptiness,
or a sack of rivets', it does not have the pulse
that beats in a seed bag or bag of eggs.

2.
The emptiness of man, though it resembles
fullness, and seems all of a piece, actually
is made of nothings, bits of emptiness,
like the sponge, empty when filled,
swollen like the sponge, with air, with empty air;
it has copied its very structure from the sponge,
it is made up in clusters, of bubbles, of non-grapes.
Man's empty fullness is like a sack
filled with sponges, is filled with emptiness:
man's emptiness, or swollen emptiness,
or the emptiness that swells by being empty.

Share

From “The Poetry of Our World” (HarperCollins, 2000) translated by Galway Kinnell.

Wishes for Your Wednesday
by Tina Kelley

May it have the smart scent
of fingersweat and typewriter.
  
May the song of yes
get stuck in your head
but only in a good way,
 
and may you hear the peace
of the beagle stopped barking,
the silence like a casserole.
 
Your muse will have the composure
and fertility of a well-mated queen bee.

If I told you that whales understand
baby squeals, would you believe?
 
Prayer has a hot and wet summer ahead,
so may your worries be as flimsy
as state park toilet paper.
 
May your Wednesday have all the calm hush
of this word: grazing
and this one: solace. 
 
Did you know your soul is refilled
a quarter inch every time you hear
the shushing of a man raking leaves?
 
May your dog like you so much
he dislocates his tail upon waking,
and may trees be for you 
very-much a cathedral.
 
Text yourself a heart.
See how good it feels.
Sending, getting.

May you end your night with a list
of gratitudes, may it grow. End your day 
in dayenu. One item alone would’ve sufficed.

Share

From “Field Guide to North American Words” by Tina Kelley (Jacar Press, 2026).

When You Return From the Dead, I Ask You For Interesting Facts About Clouds
by Sarah Mills

*

Lawnmowers clip your words like blades of grass. What did you say? I yell over the noise. Purple irises bloom inside your mouth. Cirrus, cumulus, stratus: each word a wet petal falling from your tongue.

*

I read you every poem I’ve written since you left. You smoke—death hasn’t cured your addiction. We lie in the cut grass, but now you can see through the sky. Tell me something interesting about clouds, I say. You think it over, and then: Do you regret letting your phone go to voicemail?

*

Your voice sounds different, like a recording of your voice. I read you my poems about grief. 
You say grief is not about what’s lost, but what’s left behind.

*

The irises in your mouth are rust-colored. I store your cigarette smoke in glass jars.

*

The rain may never end. And why would it want to? Why would it choose to fall to its death?
Grief reinvents itself. Like rain.

*

Today, the sky is cloudless and I am filled with dread.
Pareidolia: seeing familiar images in random things. Like animals in clouds.
You blow a smoke ring. It looks more like your face than your real face.

*

I try to lift your suitcase but it’s too heavy. I open it and a single cloud escapes. Clouds are surprisingly heavy, you say.

*

bleeding heart  *  red-winged blackbird  *  hyacinth  *  fistfuls of onion grass  *  rhododendron  *  pistachio ice cream  *  sturgeon moon  *  nimbostratus  *  cirrocumulus  *  New and Collected Works  *  tiger swallowtail  *  sleepy orange  *  hibiscus tea  *  Japanese maple  *  cumulonimbus  *  sky as metaphor  *  goodbye in eight languages  *  ocean as metaphor  *  death as metaphor  *  goodbye as cloudless sky  *  goodbye as white noise  *  goodbye as sugar cube  *  goodbye as goodbye  *  goodbye

*

What will I do with myself, now that grief is no longer the heaviest thing I’ve held?

Share

Renascence
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
 
Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
 
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And—sure enough!—I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
 
I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.
 
I saw and heard, and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not,—nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
 
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
 
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire,—
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each,—then mourned for all!
 
A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.
 
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.
 
Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.
 
Long had I lain thus, craving death,
When quietly the earth beneath
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
At last had grown the crushing weight,
Into the earth I sank till I
Full six feet under ground did lie,
And sank no more,—there is no weight
Can follow here, however great.
From off my breast I felt it roll,
And as it went my tortured soul
Burst forth and fled in such a gust
That all about me swirled the dust.
 
Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatched roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who's six feet underground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave is such a quiet place.
 
The rain, I said, is kind to come
And speak to me in my new home.
I would I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine
Of every slanting silver line,
To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon the shower will be done,
And then the broad face of the sun
Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth
Until the world with answering mirth
Shakes joyously, and each round drop
Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.
 
How can I bear it; buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I shall never more behold!
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred away from you!
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd
And let the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!
 
I ceased; and through the breathless hush
That answered me, the far-off rush
Of herald wings came whispering
Like music down the vibrant string
Of my ascending prayer, and—crash!
Before the wild wind's whistling lash
The startled storm-clouds reared on high
And plunged in terror down the sky,
And the big rain in one black wave
Fell from the sky and struck my grave.
 
I know not how such things can be;
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself,
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain's cool finger-tips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealed sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see,—
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—
I know not how such things can be!—
I breathed my soul back into me.
 
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;
 
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb
Sent instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e'er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!
 
Thou canst not move across the grass
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak, however silently,
But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!
 
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

Share

From Renascence and Other Poems (1917).

Listening to the Billionaire Tell Us AI Is Just the Newest Tool That Everyone Will Benefit From
by Joseph Fasano

When men
broke open
the miraculous power
of the atom,

the first thing they did
with it
was deliver it
into the hands
of the schoolchildren

of Hiroshima.


Excerpt from our conversation with Joseph Fasano:

KARAN
Joseph, what a gift to have you in our pages. Your poems do one of the rarest things — they console without lying. “Maybe you were not born / on your knees” is the kind of line people carry into hospital waiting rooms, and I mean that literally, since your poems travel farther than almost any other poet writing today. Let’s start with that mode of address: the poem that speaks directly to a stranger in trouble. How did you come to it?

JOSEPH
Thank you, Karan. I think in some way I’m always writing for someone in trouble, someone going through a great trial, someone who has turned to poetry for deep soul-company in the wild thirst to stay alive. In some sense, that means I’m also writing to a part of myself. The poem you refer to came to me when I was struggling with some issues that really made me face my own mortality. I heard a voice saying, “Maybe what you need is the earth again,” and I listened, and I followed.

Share

God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot
by Leonard Cohen

God is alive, magic is afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is afoot, magic is alive
Alive is afoot, magic never died
God never sickened
Many poor men lied
Many sick men lied
Magic never weakened
Magic never hid
Magic always ruled
God is afoot, God never died
God was ruler
Though his funeral lengthened
Though his mourners thickened
Magic never fled
Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live
Though his words were twisted
The naked magic thrived
Though his death was published
Round and round the world
The heart did not believe

Many hurt men wondered
Many struck men bled
Magic never faltered
Magic always lead
Many stones were rolled
But God would not lie down
Many wild men lied
Many fat men listened
Though they offered stones
Magic still was fed
Though they locked their coffers
God was always served
Magic is afoot, God is alive
Alive is afoot

Alive is in command
Many weak men hungered
Many strong men thrived
Though they boast of solitude
God was at their side
Nor the dreamer in his cell
Nor the captain on the hill
Magic is alive
Though his death was pardoned
Round and round the world
The heart would not believe

Though laws were carved in marble
They could not shelter men
Though altars built in parliaments
They could not order men
Police arrested magic and magic went with them
Mmmmm.... for magic loves the hungry
But magic would not tarry
It moves from arm to arm
It would not stay with them
Magic is afoot
It cannot come to harm
It rests in an empty palm
It spawns in an empty mind
But magic is no instrument
Magic is the end
Many men drove magic
But magic stayed behind
Many strong men lied
They only passed through magic
And out the other side
Many weak men lied
They came to God in secret
And though they left Him nourished
They would not tell who healed
Though mountains danced before them
They said that God was dead
Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live
This I mean to whisper to my mind
This I mean to laugh within my mind
This I mean my mind to serve
Til' service is but magic
Moving through the world
And mind itself is magic
Coursing through the flesh
And flesh itself is magic
Dancing on a clock
And time itself
The magic length of God

Share

Excerpt from “Beautiful Losers” by Leonard Cohen (Viking Press, 1966), put to music by Buffy Sainte-Marie for her album “Illuminations” (1969).

Ghost Story
by Matt Dhillon

After Victoria Chang

I.

Appetite died in the summer. News came through
the phone. It was the middle of a meal. Then it
was the end. Things were being put into boxes.
And my father was one of them. He was going in
a box like something left over. Which you could
say is what each year had become for him. I
labelled all the boxes Never with thick black
sharpie. Still, I had to find space for them. I slid
nevers between bones in my shoulder. They went
in like blades. Something was closed that would
stayed closed. Appetite died surrounded by teeth.
The teeth survived. I thought a new set would
grow in. But I remained the same. Small and lost
kid I’d always been. Trays appeared next to
relatives. Flames lit in the eyes of burners.
Tupperware snapped shut. Beans followed bread.
Bread followed rice. Curry followed yogurt and
buttered chicken. Of all muscles it was the jaw
that kept moving. After every thought had gone
to sleep. The passage of night was a kind of
chewing. Fat on the lips. It was grief. It was good.

II.

The lock died unwillingly sometime in the night.
My father had attached it to the front door. A steel
bar in a brass cylinder. It was part of his ongoing
feud with all things outside of his wishes. Which
is what I was. After that there was an inside and
an outside to his anger. After that you could
watch the deadbolt shut across his eyes. His thick
brow. This is what a wall is: the invention of
inside and outside. My father was built like one.
Square and hard as a brick. A mind made for
stacking until it was made up. But I think he was
really the door. I passed through my own dark
interiors. The plural of surprise is deer slipping
away. Velvet shadows on the wet fields. I find
their trails still in the woods. Grazing in the
footprints of the old homesteads. Nothing now
but a chimney in a ring of grass. At what point do
the things around you become you? To be a house
stripped for its wood. The roof gone. The floor
removed. Is to be an idea. The deer visit for sleep.

Share

I thought of eagles for a long time...
by Daniil Kharms
translated by Alex Cigale

I thought of eagles for a long time
and understood such a whole lot:
the eagles soar above the clouds,
they fly and fly and touch no one.
They live on cliffs and on mountains
and are intimate with water sprites,
I thought a long time about eagles
but confused them, I think, with flies.

Share

Translated by Alex Cigale.

Hallowtide
by Sarah Ashbach

Sunlight stretched taffy-thin, our bright days narrow,
               and locust trees drip leaves like honeycomb
                        that’s lifted in a hand. Fall feast, long fast.
The year matures like mead. Earth’s in our marrow;
               now how shall we grow old? From home to home
                        the children go, candy dropped where they’ve passed,
                                       the wrappers orange and gold. The scarecrow sings,
           “Sweet life falls down to ferment in the loam.”
                        But see the wilting asters, still harassed
                                     by time and tardy bees, salvaging things—
                       here—last. 

Share

First published in New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry (Halloween 2026— Volume 3 Issue 4).

The American Scene [3]
by Taylor Byas

Halloween, and laughter gutters through the cracked window above my bed.

I’ve rubbed my contacts right out of my eyes, and I see the world as if looking through pantyhose.

The edges of everything soften—the dog-eared books I can’t finish, the coffee table, the quiet.

What is a day about horror when waking and not waking make me equally afraid?

If you asked me if I wanted to die, I would say no.

If you asked me if I wanted to live, I would tell you I die in almost every dream.

In last night’s dreamscape, I was a monster that felt pleasure when I enacted pain.

Eventually, I set myself on fire to feel ecstasy.

This is familiar work.

There is a knock on my apartment door, a muffled chorus of Trick or treat! on the other side.

When I open the door empty- handed, the children scatter.

I am the scariest thing they have ever seen.

Share

The Cold Green Element
by Irving Layton

At the end of the garden walk
the wind and its satellite wait for me;
their meaning I will not know
                until I go there,
but the black-hatted undertaker
 
who, passing, saw my heart beating in the grass,
is also going there. Hi, I tell him,
a great squall in the Pacific blew a dead poet
                out of the water,
who now hangs from the city’s gates.
 
Crowds depart daily to see it, and return
with grimaces and incomprehension;
if its limbs twitched in the air
                they would sit at its feet
peeling their oranges.
 
And turning over I embrace like a lover
the trunk of a tree, one of those
for whom the lightning was too much
                and grew a brilliant
hunchback with a crown of leaves.
 
The ailments escaped from the labels
of medicine bottles are all fled to the wind;
I’ve seen myself lately in the eyes
                of old women,
spent streams mourning my manhood,
 
in whose old pupils the sun became
a bloodsmear on broad catalpa leaves
and hanging from ancient twigs,
                my murdered selves
sparked the air like the muted collisions
 
of fruit. A black dog howls down my blood,
a black dog with yellow eyes;
he too by someone’s inadvertence
                saw the bloodsmear
on the broad catalpa leaves.
 
But the furies clear a path for me to the worm
who sang for an hour in the throat of a robin,
and misled by the cries of young boys
                I am again
a breathless swimmer in that cold green element.

Share

From A Wild Peculiar Joy: The Selected Poems by Irving Layton (McClelland & Stewart, 2004).

Everybody's Dead but You Haven't Made 25
by Jacq Roderick

Fuck it. There’s ghosts no matter when you decide to turn
up. Aunt Wendy’s the latest to return to her haunts. Good run,

all of them. I promise you. Ghosts in the photos, 
spirits beside the babies. Fuck it, at the watering hole,

bartender Amanda wishes them luck for purgatory
& pours you another. Let her. Where’s the harm in believing?

In leaving? Nothing, but remember to visit. Get your cards read
& belly fed. Reacquaint yourself with scrap. That’s home, kid—

body-dropping land. Zombies littering municipal sidewalks,
menthols popsicle their chapped lips. You kiss each weathered cheek. 

The salt air shares with the cigarette wheeze. You know everybody.
Everybody knows. Skeletons shaking bones marketside, wait in line

for deli-cuts. Where else? What else. It’s alright that most of it’s gone. 
What’s meant to last comes back otherwise. Fuck it. Who hasn’t death

asked about? Tickling the best of them. And the worst. Funeral home glory be. 
Meetingplace. Outing. Opiate withdrawal. Etc. Nickel for each dead drunk 

& you’ll have enough to buy a round. I promise you. Ghosts 
worth toasting for. Ghosts dancing on their own 

graves. It’s alright. They’re celebrating you. They’re celebrating. 


Excerpt from our interview with Jacq Roderick:

KARAN 
“Everybody’s Dead but You Haven’t Made 25” fills the town with company: Aunt Wendy back at her haunts, skeletons in line for deli-cuts, ghosts dancing on their own graves, etc. The poem asks, “Where’s the harm in believing? / In leaving?” — so I’ll hand that back to you. Where’s the harm, and what does believing in ghosts mean to you?

JACQ 
I woke up one cold January morning to be told my estranged mother, halfway across town, did not. I was sixteen; my sister, fifteen. We could count all the other tragic deaths on both hands by that point. What I mean to say is that ghosts have never not been around. And it’s their constant hauntings that urge you to leave a place like Marshvegas, because it’s easy to feel like you’re fading, too, amidst all that senseless grief. 
The harm in leaving is everywhere. It’s drenched in the post-vomit sweat of “Marshvegas,” it oils the engine in “Trespass.” The minute you leave home, you are always a visitor; rarely a guest. In leaving, you betray your ghosts—you don’t make it to every gathering, you can’t catch up with your cousins as often. And yet leaving is the beginning of living, not just surviving. 
Structurally, it’s an act of social mobility; I went off to school, and then more school. In these places, you’re just as much a visitor. You don’t fit in because you don’t talk right, because your uncle’s definition of “PhD” is “professional hole digger.” I think I was only able to really get my voice in my work once I let go of the Keatsian emulations. And I love Keats—he’s in the Cockney School of Poets, after all. But it’s easy to fall into thinking you have to write a certain way to be taken seriously—taken as literary.
Despite the harms I am grateful for my leaving—my believing. I know my ghosts will always follow me wherever I go. That’s the good thing about them—they stick around. And they help you. They remind you where you come from. I will always be proud of where I come from. 
I’m indebted to them, the ghosts—just as much as my teachers, my friends, and anyone else I’ve been lucky enough to know or love. 

Share

The Little Flower
by Jean Valentine

I thank God, I have never taken to drinking, as many I know have, I 
     have never done that and my children should be thankful but they 
     are not, I have not been that kind, 
I say my prayers every night, 
Lots of them do and with less reason, I did once but put it from me, 
and with all the shocks I have had to bear, such shocks in those ter- 
rible years, you do not know, my father, my father was a mean man, 
Given to giving nicknames, 
He called me Susan B. Anthony because I was so strong I guess, I have
     never given way as others would have done. he called your aunt 
     Bunny because when her first two teeth came in he said she looks
     just like a bunny, she did look just like a bunny, we will call her 
     Bunny and so she is to this day I am eighty-three she must be 
     eighty, strange she was always jealous of my looks Bun was I was 
     tall and slim 
And very beautiful they all said so, 
And she thought I had all the looks always was a jealous kind of per- 
     son but you know she was very lovely too, I was jealous of her too, 
     isn’t that funny I always thought Bun had such nice feet and I al-
     ways thought my feet were ugly isn’t that funny, the things you will 
     get into your head, feet 
It hasn't all been roses, 
My mother was a Ross a Ross from Scotland, they were a noble clan, 
     your mother sent me a postcard once of the Ross castle, I have it 
     somewhere in these suitcases, it's in the north 
Oh I must set my things in order 
I must have help to set my things in order, so many papers, no one 
     will come and soon I will be gone and then who will, No now we 
     will talk it is so good, to have someone to talk to, is that chair all 
     right for you not in a draft, this room has a terrible draft you have 
     beautiful eyes,
A little like mine oh when I was younger 
You have always been a good child and you know you get funny all 
     alone in a room I hope I have never complained but you get and at 
     my age, no one understands what it is like to be old, does my mind 
     wander, that is what I 
I forget things 
Words do not come to my mind, my mother was a Ross from Scot- 
     land, they were a noble clan, she used to tell such wonderful stories 
     and sing us the old songs she would go on with those stories and 
     songs the children loved her, she came and visited us often and 
     stayed weeks and weeks, she was always there if I were sick, I hope 
     she always knew she had a home with us and I was sick so much 
     with the climate what it was and the miscarriages and the babies, 
     and she always came to be a comfort to me, but then she died, 
What it is like 
He had died long before that, there is a place for Bun and a place for 
     me with them in the plot in Minneapolis, I don't care about cre- 
     mation it seems the cleanest thing you don't mind talking about 
     these things do you, neither do I some people do but I don’t mind 
     talking about these things at all, look at my teeth, if I do not get to 
     the dentist, but I cannot even get dressed, just to get dressed but I 
     get so dizzy, when I stand I am so afraid of falling again, will you 
     look at my teeth, I try not to smile so as to show them, I always 
     had beautiful teeth 
It seems the cleanest thing 
Bunny has written me a long letter about it, she's going to be cre- 
     mated, Henry was too, you pack a bag with the clothes you want 
     to go in and if you go in winter like her Henry did, and a godsend, 
     they wait till Spring to put you in the ground, Henry's there, no I 
     don't mind about cremation as long as they make sure I'm good 
     and dead first, ha, ha, 
Look at my teeth 
The children loved her, she would tell them those stories over and 
     over, no I don’t remember any of them, not one, and the children 
     don't any more, I asked Louise and she said, No Mother, I like to 
     tell you these things because soon I will be gone and then no one 
     will remember all this 
My father 
There do you hear her, there she goes, eight or ten hours a day some 
     days, they say she is an opera singer, it goes right through my 
     spine, we would always come to New York here for the opera sea- 
     son, we always took the same suite at the Plaza Hotel, the manager 
     was a very fine gentleman, he always said to me, Mrs. Haran, your 
     children are the best behaved children who have ever visited us 
     here at the Plaza Hotel, and they were, so quiet 
They all said so 
Your grandfather used to love the operas and then we always had sea- 
     son tickets for the Chicago Symphony, I would take the children 
     every Friday afternoon, do you hear her, I have sent a note to the 
     desk but they say there is nothing they can do, I must take another 
     room, on another floor, another hotel 
Just to get dressed 
Your mother always had a gift for music, she had lessons from the age 
     of five with the best piano teacher in the city, but no when she 
     married him she let it go, I told her, you will be sorry Louise, if 
     you have music you will always have that whatever comes, like 
     books, my children all loved books if you give children the love of 
     books they will always have that whatever comes, will you listen to 
     that woman, I have told them at least let her be still Sundays, at 
     least let me have peace Sundays but you know they are all Jewish 
     people in this hotel 
Not that I 
Not that I have anything against Jewish people if you like them I hope 
     I am not so narrow, it is all knishes, what are they, and lox and the 
     good Lord knows what on the menu, I cannot eat it, Ramon my 
     waiter says ¡Ah Mrs. Haran you did not eat! they all loved reading, 
     if I could only read but it hurts my eyes so 
Even the Tribune
With everything else I had to bear there were always books, I used to 
     read a book a day, oh yes and magazines, Edward used to tease me 
     for taking the Post but I have always said there are lots of fine arti- 
     cles in the Post I still take it but now I can hardly read the Tribune, 
     Dr. Giroux wants me to see an ophthalmologist 
Just to get dressed 
Edward your uncle Edward was a great reader, he was always reading, 
     he always said he loved to read with me there in the room, we al- 
     ways read together like that when he was little, those were bad 
     years, that was when it was just beginning, he was reading to him- 
     self at three years, his teachers always told me, Eddie has a wonder- 
     ful mind, they called him Eddie, I was always with him when he 
     was little, that was when your grandfather began to take too much, 
     then I was so ill and Edward would always come in and sit by me, 
     I was in bed so much, months at a time, Edward would say 
     Mother shall I sit with you a while, he was always considerate that 
     way most children are not you know, Edward was 
To be a comfort 
They were seven brothers the children's uncle Jack was first, the mon- 
     signor, then your grandfather, and the others were all born over 
     here, well they scattered around the middle west, mostly farming 
     and such, your grandfather was the only one of them who ever 
     made his way, and Jack, one went to California I think, oh the Lord 
     knows where they all are now living or dead, they all blamed me 
Listen to her 
We had an audience with the Pope did I ever tell you that I like to tell 
     you these things, Pope Pius X, he was a very charming man, 
     charming, a gentleman I shall never forget it, a private audience. 
     no he spoke English, your uncle Jack was at the American College, 
     he arranged it all, no I went to the Church long before I ever met 
     your grandfather I was still at home well it seemed to draw me in I 
     don't know why, my father said it was just like me, The Little 
     Flower he called me 
A religious man, they were all religious men 
I have always held that your church doesn't matter as long as you live 
     right you must give the children some faith to stand by them when 
     their troubles come, it doesn't matter what church I hope I am not 
     so narrow, but it breaks my heart to see Billy and her rising those 
     children without anything, he always went to the best Catholic 
     schools, I gave him that, and how can he stand by and watch her 
     rise those children with nothing, and how can she let him get 
     so heavy 
It's the drinking 
I'm sorry, I hope I've always been good to her the same as I am with 
     all of you yet she never brings them, they are my grandchildren 
     and I never see them, they do not know me, they lose that you 
     know, they will never have those memories, it is nice to have a 
     sense of family 
They all blamed me 
We went down, Jack had a summer place at that castle Gandolfo you 
     know, very nice, outside Rome, it was hot, I remember I was faint 
     do you hear her ah-ah-ah-ah, no no coffee for me I can't take it, 
     my lower intestine, well, and then I get so terribly dizzy, Dr. Giroux 
     has given me pills for it but I don't like to take them, just some ice 
     water is all, there in that green bottle, Tipperary was where they 
     came from but they were originally Normans 
Normans who came over from France 
Jack was good to us at first, for a while, at the beginning he would 
     take his dinner with us every night, so as to keep the idea of a fam- 
     ily for the children, he cared a lot for that, priests do they don’t 
     know, that was when it was beginning with your grandfather, the 
     stocks dropping and his partner and all and the never coming home 
The children never knew 
I spared them that, and the miscarriages, it was not so easy in those 
     days to have a baby, you girls today, and my back was never strong 
     to carry them, six months in bed before Billy, and then the broth- 
     ers tried to get me to have him back, they all blamed me 
Normans 
I was never off a penny in my books when I was spending thousands 
     of dollars managing Astor Street and now I'm always so confused 
     that is what terrifies me, my checkbook is in such a state and no 
     one, I ask Billy but he never comes, I guess she won't let him away, 
     I don't think much of a person like that, I like to keep two thou- 
     sand dollars margin in case I have to go to the hospital or so when 
     I go it will, but it's under that now I don't know how much and I 
     make mistakes in my arithmetic, and then these medicines, forty 
     dollars, fifty dollars, I feel awful, the children do not understand or 
     they would not be so 
What it is like 
None of you, but you are a good child, I always had a special place in 
     my heart even when you were little, of course I loved you all, and I 
     worry so about you, when you get old you worry a lot, there's some 
     nice cake in there on the shelf chocolate the kind you like, I got it 
     in last week expecting you, oh I know how much you have to do at 
     home, I hope you're through having children now, two is a nice 
     family plenty these days, you know just a phone call would mean a 
     lot when you have a minute 
The children do not know 
I hate to call you I know how busy you are, I hope I haven't asked 
     much of my family, I know you're all caught up in your own life 
     the family and all, you look tired, I loved my children I hope I 
     loved my children 
None of you 
I hope I was good to him, everything a wife should be, he was proud 
     of me, all my clothes were made specially for me, and I was never 
     off a penny in my books and they all loved to come to Astor Street, 
     I remember Mr. Fairbank a millionaire there, he used to always 
     come and he could have had anything in the world, he loved to 
     come to us, he said, Nelly I feel at home here, a charming man, a 
     very old family, no airs, no I never turned him away while he was 
     well, I was everything a wife should be, it wasn't easy but men are
     that way and I hope I never let him know while he was well 
Anything in the world 
He used to say, Nelly, you make me feel very grateful, and he tried to 
     be very considerate that way while he was well, not all men do, you 
     know, he did try 
Music whatever comes 
What could I do, it was such a shock, the money, and then him never 
     coming home and the drinking, I had the children to think of, 
     they never knew, Jack tried to help him, first talking himself then 
     the doctors, but nothing helped, he got worse, worse, he had had 
     so much, risen from nothing himself, and he became deluded after 
     the drop, losing more and more, he was on the telephone talking 
     business as if he were still what he had been, then I had to call 
     back, I was so ashamed, and explain he was not well, everyone was 
     very kind, I couldn't go out of the house 
I had the children to think of 
I kept everything just as it had been for them, Dr. Lapham their doc- 
     tor, he was a world-famous pediatrician, he died of pneumonia in 
     Boston, he had called on me the day before he went just to see 
     how we were getting along, he said, Mrs. Haran try to do for the 
     children just as you would have done, and I did, Billy went to 
     Canterbury and Harvard, Louise had a beautiful debut, I always 
     had all her clothes made specially for her and there wasn't a better 
     dressed girl her year, or a prettier, it wasn't as if we had a lot 
Dr. Lapham 
But I always remembered what Dr. Lapham had said, many women 
     would not have done it that way for their children, I should have 
     thought of my own old age 
Dr. Lapham 
They all blamed me when he was put in the mental home, it was the 
     best state institution in the middle west, I had the children to 
     think of, they said there was money enough for private care but I 
     knew what there was and I knew he couldn’t be helped, we had 
     spoken to the best doctors in Chicago, do you know what the pri 
     vate places cost, and he lived, he lived for years and years, he only 
     died three years ago, there wasn't that kind of money for him, look 
     how I've had to manage all these years, and I had to do for the 
     children it would all have gone, what would I have done, no he 
     hadn't lost much yet but he would have if he'd gone on, I had to 
     save what I could
I knew 
They kept trying to get him away, one Christmas they got him out, a 
     trick, and brought him down to Minneapolis, it was Christmas 
     night, so cold, and we had to take him back, he was not respon- 
     sible then for what he said, he was ill the doctors could not do any-
     thing for him, the money was gone, all but what I had managed to 
     keep away, I had the children to think of, and myself 
He was not responsible then 
Then later Billy and your mother brought him east to another state 
     home, New York State, up here, they said it was a better place, no 
     they never visited him, he did not know them anymore they said, 
     that was when they were grown of course when they were young 
     they never knew 
They all blamed me 
Dr. Lapham did not blame me, I asked him, in the worst of it, I had 
     no one to turn to and I asked him and he said, it is very hard 
     Mrs. Haran, he understood and Edward understood he was older 
     than the others and I used to talk to him I had no one, oh of 
     course I didn't tell him the truth, but he was with me and that was 
     a comfort, Bun came but she did not understand ever, she always 
     thought he could be helped by the doctors, she never understood 
They all blamed me 
We didn't see her for a long while and then we didn't talk about it any 
     more, but I knew she blamed me, she used to say, he loves you 
     Nelly, she never understood he had never loved me never, only the 
     house and the clothes and that 
Edward understood 
He was always with me if it hadn't been for Edward there were times I 
     would have committed suicide, I know it's a terrible thing to say, 
     but those were terrible years, but for Edward who always under- 
     stood, and he was always there, later I wanted him to go out and 
     get a place of his own, make his life away from all my troubles, but 
     he always said No Mother and he always stayed until he died four 
     years ago, the night he died his car went over a bridge 
It was the eye drops 
He’d been reading Stendahl On Love, he was always a great reader, 
     when he died the doctor came in the middle of the night and gave 
     me an injection, she was so kind to me that country doctor, she 
     understood 
Edward understood 
It is a terrible thing to lose a child, no matter how old they are they are 
     always your children and you always worry, I gave them every-
     thing, and then he died, and the other two never come, what have 
     done, your mother came when he died to be with me, she 
     blamed me, I know she blamed me 
Never only the house 
She did not know how it was with Edward, the drinking and the 
     trouble, I never told anyone, he needed me, thank God I had the 
     money to help him out of his trouble, it was always the same, I 
     was always there 
Died, died 
I should have thought more of myself, other women would have saved 
     for themselves, learn from your grandmother 
Christmas night 
What it is like to be old, and alone, and sick, and I worry so about 
     money, not about leaving a lot behind, I have done enough I hope, 
     but I don't know how long I'll last, which will go first, ha, ha, the 
     money or me 
Always the same 
Every night when I lie down I think they'll find me in the morning, 
     always have the bag ready, that blue one dear you should know, 
     every night I wash my feet before I get into bed, they never think 
     what it is like, 
The children loved her, 
Thousands of dollars, I loved my children, I hope I loved my children, 
     what have I done that they are strangers to me, sometimes at night 
     when I can't sleep 
Whatever comes 
I never sleep till three or four in the morning or five and then at eight 
     or nine she starts up with her scales sometimes I think I must have 
     said something or done something to hurt them, something I do 
     not know, do you know? then I pray 
Deliver her soul, O Lord 
And that has been a comfort to me these last years, though what the 
     Lord has done for me I don't know, I hope I’ve always lived right, 
     and surely the Lord should not refuse His creatures 
And let my cry come unto Thee 
Most children are not you know, Edward was, they all blamed me, 
     always the same, gone, and then no one, look at my teeth, I am 
     afraid to die, you are young but you know you get afraid 
I knew 
It's good to talk like this to someone, and then I like to tell you these 
     things, never, only the house, died, died, died, soon I will be gone 
     and then no one will remember, there do you hear her, none of you.

Share

Originally published in Light Me Down: The New & Collected Poems of Jean Valentine (Alice James Books, 2024). Used with permission.