Tommye Blount
We cannot know his legendary head,
now hidden by a peach. Yet his torso,
all ink and Equinox, is backlit from inside
the phone: hard math; a circuitry of low

fires—sexy algorithm. Otherwise
the flexed bicep could not dazzle me so, nor could
his cum-gutter's v, his barely-shaved thighs,
nor his bottle rocket all set to flare.

Not on this phone, he doesn't have any face
pics to trade, nothing above the shoulders.
But his chest—bury my face in that fur!

Would not he, were it not for the cropped selfie,
arouse like a porn star. He says your place
or mine. I must lie about my life.
from the book FANTASIA FOR THE MAN IN BLUE / Four Way Books
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
Black-and-white composite image of featured translators on November 20th
Virtual Event: The Cheuse Center and Poetry Daily will be hosting a monthly virtual event Friday evenings at 8:00 EST. We'll feature a moderated conversation between four poet translators, as featured on Poetry Daily. Our first event will be Friday, November 20th, featuring: Dan Beachy-Quick, Kazim Ali, Forrest Gander, and Jennifer Grotz.
Register for Event Here
Black-and-white photograph of Natan Zach in 2011
Israeli Poet Natan Zach Dies at 89

"Mr. Zach joined with other rebel poets—most notably the premier modernist, Yehuda Amichai—to form an avant-garde nucleus anchored in the journal Likrat (Toward). He went on to publish two dozen collections, with poems often touching on the fleeting nature of relationships and the fragility of the human body and of existence itself."

viaTHE NEW YORK TIMES
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
Image of a human figure, outlined in stars, emerging from a blue-black sky
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. 
We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality.
We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world.
Black Lives Matter.
Resources for Supporting and Uplifting the Black Community
What Sparks Poetry:
Kazim Ali on "When the Night Agrees to Speak to Me"

"Writing Devi’s poems into English—I guess I mostly believe that Benjamin was right: even the original poem is a ‘translation’ of an experience past language—made me a writer of poems nothing like the poems I myself wrote. They were poems of great despair, of great rage, emotions ordinarily thought of perhaps as ‘negative;’ certainly they were emotions and feelings that I myself was only just beginning to explore in my own work."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. 
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2020 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency