Univ. of California Press
2009
daydreaming w/ Bob Arnold
Mr. Wells in 2011. When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he decided not to undergo treatment. “He accomplished what he set out to do,” a former colleague said.Credit...
Photo ~ Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
Skunk
The pot I'm
smoking now
smells like
Armpits after sex (
not with you
of course). You
always tell me
to go to hell. (this
may be the
last time we
see each other.) Where
I will lie is where
I say I loved
you more than this.
Verse
some-
thing's out
there—aft (her
the uni-
verse). The verse
is yet.
Call It
Tobacco
cotton
sugar in
Louisiana
shirts
made of gingham
and slaves
after
and the crack
of what twang of what
tight strings what
on earth under
the sun nothing mugs
but time
for the
load coffee
is like that double
time to
the old swing
No Joke
dragging myself
through 3rd street
& across avenues
depends on the kindness
pf strangers, cars, trucks, bicycles
refuse to run me over. The other
day a bus stopped just short
of a crutch at a curb I was
hanging precariously from
& swung out to miss me, it was
an old man who
was getting on that alerted
the driver & a young hoodie
that grabbed my pack: i
thought he was going to run, but he didn't.
"Watch out pop!" he said, solicitously, &
never asked me for
a quarter. Maybe more
people should be crippled: even cops.
_____________________
John Farris
Last Poems
Archway Editions 2025
Weather Vane
If only I had one,
I'd keep it for a pet.
Let it perch on the roof
tethered in the wind,
warbling a tinny,
whirring song.
Let the body of the house
sag beneath its talons,
go limp as it lifts,
it and us up — up.
Gilded bird,
crowing at midnight,
pecking at the grain
of stars.
________________
Elaine Equi
Out of the Blank
Coffee House Press, 2025
NIMS PURJA CLIMBED THE FOURTEEN EIGHT-THOUSANDERS IN THE WORLD
IN SIX MONTHS AND SIX DAYS
Norton 2025
Language is damaged when demands to stop killing civilians are 'antisematic', when an army that dehumanizes its enemies is 'moral', when an enterprise of obliteration is a 'riposte', when a military operation openly conducted against Palestinian civilians is the 'Israel-Hamas war'. Thinking is suffocated when debates are prevented, lectures banned and exhibitions cancelled, when the police enter institutions of higher education and prosecutors are imposed to ensure orthodoxy. An oppressive atmosphere of suspicion and accusation has endangered freedom of speech.
— Didier Fassin
Verso, 2025