You jumped from the bridge a few blocks from here, onto the west bank of the Mississippi. It was a Friday morning in January, icicles must have jeweled the trusses— how bright they shine today. But I'm not writing to describe the city. I need to ask what it takes to point your toes and slice through mantle, to crawl around the groans of a winter flume. John, this is not despair, not even boredom— but the grind of air brakes, Drake crooning through my neighbor's earbuds, a diesel engine down Washington Avenue, they all mask stone's tectonic lust. Should I confess, I was happy once? Ten months chasing weasels from olive groves in Liguria. Do fields in the afterlife need tending, too? I think of you in that sunken garden, shears in your pocket, as you pour a shot into your coffee and watch bees weave in and out of the buckbrush, lingering on the broad whiskey petals of your breath.
from the book WEST PORTAL/ University of Utah Press
Please join Poetry Daily editorial board members Kaveh Akbar and Ilya Kaminsky on Tuesday, November 2 at 7:30pm ET for an intimate online reading and conversation about Akbar’s Pilgrim Bell, his highly anticipated follow-up to Calling a Wolf a Wolf.
"Where Am I?" Poems in the Streets Poet and bookseller Buck Downs is bringing art to the people of Washington DC with thousands of 2" x 2" poetry stickers. "With the stickers, he says, 'an experience of an unusual beauty or of an unusual art pops into their day, and they have a minute with it. And then they get to go on with their day.'" via THE WASHINGTON POST
"The more I studied 'My Father, in Heaven...,' the more I appreciated the stanzas’ complexity, pattern-making, and interiority, and how the poem reflected the lyric’s capacity as a communal art. I knew this is what I wanted. Whether I could write anything of dimension was uncertain. But in Lee’s work I discovered textures of energy, music, and intimacy I hoped to emulate—even if I couldn’t predict my effort’s outcome."
