Poetry

At first among certain shadows 
you felt forbidden to ask whose they were.

Metrophobia
I, too dislike it, or at least I find
too much of it bromidic and unrhymed,

Above me in the night
My unknown neighbors walk 
Across a creaking floor

John, you asked me what it was like to be black,
to come from a place where being black mattered.

The town, my dear, is closing down: dead-
Bolts slipping into their sleeves, cicadas insisting

These arms, after all,
are open for no one
else. Posture of air

Come work with me awhile, Hayden,
I can use your company in the shed 
among tools your hands have never lost

Apollinaire experimented with audacious techniques for generating verse. On occasion he would sit in a café and weave overheard phrases into the composition. Read David Lehman’s translation of “Zone,” the central poem in Apollinaire’s...

I’m nearly eighteen, between ships, moping 
on the mess deck of Coast Guard Base 
Seattle. It’s Saturday night & I’m broke

How could they know,
how could anyone know
you were not formed by origins,