VASSAR MILLER ~

 

Adoration

The afternoon is beautiful and silent.

The white garage lifts like the cloudy pillar

Into the sunlight. The tree rears taller,

Its foliage rufled like a green swan's plumage,

A sudden bird goes skimming through the sky

As noiseless as a fish swims in the sea.

When everything is far and near at once,

Remote as memory and luminous as now,

Till mind is cut adrift and like a web

Shimmering rides the heat waves up and down.

Nothing is half so tenuous as flesh,

Which, on the lightest pretext, steals away

To sleep in the cocoon of summer heat and haze,

When a jay's scream might tumble the brick wall

Next door to slide into the forests of the grass,

The afternoon so beautiful and silent.

________________

Onions and Roses

Wesleyan University Press, 1968

KEVIN KILLIAN ~

 

Pasolini

First, after the spots in the Sun

the twenty-seven holes in the coronal

Then, the meeting in the hotel

with a man in a cape only more discreet                                                       Visconti

First, look at the blackened scar

an elbow like a piece of macaroni

Then on the plate

I nearly came while I was looking                                                               "No Hands"

First, both ways, crossing the

street to the traffic island

Then a big van painted multicolor

hippie style, a tiger across it                                                                              The 60s

First, why don't you shave

your filthy face is burnt with oil

Then you could maybe eat

a bit of fruit like maybe, my little guava                                                          foreplay

First in the Mezzanine Palace

of the ancestors

Last on my list of like

required reading, get it?                                                                                  Lovecraft

____________________________

Padam Padam

Collected Poems

edited by Evan Kennedy & Jason Morris

Nightboat Books 2025

VASHTI BUNYAN, WAYWARD ~

 

R E A D   M E

White Rabbit, UK

2022

WILLIAM EGGLESTON, THE LAST DYES ~

 

 R E A D   M E

GO WEST, OLD MAN ~

 

                                                      C O R M A C   M c C A R T H Y

R E A D   M E

St. Martin's, 2026

ELMO HOPE TONIGHT ~

 

Recorded at Bell Sound Studios, New York City June 22 & 29, 1961 Released in 1961 on Riverside Personnel: Elmo Hope - piano Percy Heath - bass Philly Joe Jones - drums Blue Mitchell - trumpet on tracks 1, 2, 4, 7, 8 Frank Foster - tenor saxophone on tracks 1, 2, 4, 7, 8 Jimmy Heath - tenor saxophone on tracks 1, 2, 4, 7, 8

GREGORY ORR ~

 

Small Ode To Un-Earth

There, roots are

Revealed

While

Branches are hidden

There shadows are

Richer

Than substance

Land where each

Hourglass

Is reversed

And the sands

Of your life

Travel toward birth.

_________________

We Interrupt This Broadcast

Norton 2026

RAYMOND PETTIBON'S ALBUM COVERS ~

R E A D   M E

    David Zwirner Books

    2026

EDITH SODERGRAN ~

 

Black or White

Rivers run below bridges,

flowers dot roadsides,

trees bend with whispers to the ground.

There's no up or down to me,

no black or white,

not since I saw the bride

in my love's arms.

The Forest Lake

I stood alone on a sunny beach

by the forest's pale blue lake

a single cloud in the sky,

a single island in the waves.

Ripe summer sweetness dripped

in pearls off every bough

straight into my open heart

a little drop ran down.

Evening

I don't want to hear this sad tale

that the forest tells.

The whispers that linger between spruces,

the sighs stuck in the leaves,

shadows gliding over gloomy trunks.

Come out to the road: no one will meet us there.

Night dreams in pale red along the embankment.

The road runs slowly, then climbs gently,

takes a long look back at the sunset.

Love

My soul was a dress pale blue as the sky,

I left it on a rock by the sea

and came to you naked, looking like a woman.

And like a woman I sat at your table

and drank a bowl of wine, breathed in the scent of roses.

You found me beautiful, like someone you saw in a dream.

I forgot it all: forgot my childhood and my homeland,

I knew that your touch kept me captive.

Smiling, you held up a mirror and told me to look.

I saw my shoulders were made of crumbling dust,

saw my beauty was sick and I wanted to vanish.

Hold me in your arms, so close that I need nothing.

____________________

Modern Woman

translated from the Swedish by CD Eskilson

World Poetry 2026

TRIO DA KALI / KRONOS QURTET ~

 

 2017

KAMAU BRATHWAITE'S EQUINOX ~

   New Directions, 2026

THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL ~

 

R E A D   M E

     W.W. Norton

     2026

NORMAN & NANCY BLAKE ~

 

SIRI HUSTVEDT ~

 

R E A D   M E

Simon & Schuster

2026

MONIQUE WITTIG ~

 

R E A D   M E

      Winter Editions 2025

RICHARD RUSSO ~

 

R E A D   M E

    Knopf 2025

JUNE TABOR TONIGHT ~

 

MICHAEL BAZZETT ~

 

On Average

It takes a little over eight minutes

for sunlight to travel to Earth,

and a little under eighty years

for people to travel six feet more

down into the root-haired dirt,

freshly dug.  The last stretch

is so perilous, we tuck folks

into boxes to keep them safe.

Kalsarikanni

Let's put on our childhood clothes

and walk the secret streets.

Let's remember that in Finland

they have a word that means

drinking at home, alone,

in your underwear.  Let's feel

the give in our bones again,

soft and green as flowers stems.

You might not be my sibling.

But you're as close as we both

might get.  Let's use the sides

of our hands to scrape forts

out of the road-sand snowplows

left in the gutters, then watch

as they melt in the rain.  Let's remember

old songs again.  You can tell me

how chessboards lie about

the rules of war, how Mother's

sigh was a descending note

that sharpened into nothingness.

Then we'll each go our separate

ways, slip into our humming

houses, and drink one last pull

of starlight straight from the bottle.

___________________________

Cloudwatcher

The American Poetry Review

2025

MEET "NAZA" ~

 

THE ANNOTATED AFRICAN AMERICAN FOLKTALES ~

 

R E A D   M E

Liveright 2018