Jacques J. Rancourt
My grandfather doesn't say much
about the war, except that it was
            his job to pull

the bodies, dead for three days
& rotting on shore,
            into sacks & stack them;

& that to him the corpses smelled
like chocolate; & that once
            when he yanked

on an arm, the arm came loose,
tugged free from its body; & that now,
             when he watches

a documentary where a team captures
a living giant squid for the first time
              on camera

by firing off the sub's bow a cloud
of pulverized, lesser squid
              & the narrator remarks

it doesn't take long
for the dead to summon the living,
             that the narrator is wrong.
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
Informal photograph of a seated Victoria Chang
"Letting Poems Tell You What To Do"

"Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, editor, teacher and former marketing consultant Victoria Chang about what writing in the third person makes possible, the liberation of formal constraints...and the many kinds of literary and non-literary labor each of them does."

via COMMONPLACE PODCAST
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
Cover of Natalie Harkin's Archival-Poetics

"In using the state’s archive against itself, in forcing the state to remember its many forms of violence against indigenous people, in releasing ancestral voices from their archival confines, Harkin counters oppression with 'infinite ways to imagine/ infinite possibilities to/ transform/ beyond this colonial-archive-box.' Her inventive and necessary interventions into Aboriginal Affairs records offer back to the state its own language not as a narcissistic exercise in nation-building but rather as an indictment of its alleged successes."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
Poetry Daily logo
Poetry Daily Depends on You

We make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2019 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency