List Poem In Which There Is At Least One Lie
I’ve been trying for months to work moxibustion into a poem that isn’t about sex. According to personality tests I exhibit higher-than-average levels of aggression and I do not dispute these findings. The first time I saw my father slice the head off a bluegill I stared into the eye …
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[I was told the best rituals]
I was told the best rituals are cast by children inside covert forts, hedges carved out by older siblings or the wolf-man from a nightmare in the nineteenth century. In their spaghetti jars: ghosts, not June bugs or ladybirds or unreasonable expectations to be happy. Some children are not happy. …
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Death of a Fox
Winner of the 2023 Maine Postmark Poetry Contest, held in conjunction with the Belfast Poetry Festival. I always knew it would end like this: a cold night, around the end of March, when I …
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Myrmecomorphy
Fern stands in the church pew wearing her floral Sunday dress. Large peonies blossom across the fabric. Her soprano voice is absorbed by the congregation’s rendition of “As the Deer.” The chapel is full. A fan wafts sweat and rose oil in circles above the parishioners. Fern mindlessly rubs …
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Cruelty at Recess
We joined hands and sang “Ring Around the Fatso” to the tune of “Ring Around the Rosie.” We were fourth graders, and that’s what we did that autumn day at recess. The student in the center, a boy I’ll call Joseph, smiled at first, and as we circled …
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The Name Dropper
While having a famous father-in-law is not literally the least interesting thing about me, most days it hovers suspiciously close to that designation. Maybe that’s the reason I try to keep it on the DL whenever possible. No one would ever know were it not for my wife’s last …
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I Tell Myself, You Should Write a Poem
about a plot line from your favorite soap, call it “Marlena, Possessed. Again.” You should write a poem about gas giants not as failed stars but successful planets. About what scientists call exotic physics—gamma rays coming from the Sun, not from its core but from protons slingshot through space by …
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Everything is Equal When You’re Distorted by the Afterlife
When M told a poet, You are young and nothing is sacred, we watched the smallest bloom on the seaside roses wilt. It was a certain evening where nothing was happening. It was a certain evening where strangers were building wildflower museums. We are old and everything is sacred—the …
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A Tortilla
Tonight, I consummate. The ceremony itself is discreet, and the only people in the church’s kitchen are my mother and I. The anticipating groom the size of my child eye, only maize dough between my mother’s index finger and thumb. Instructed by a nod, I let cold water …
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