The Divine Comedy

The American Poetry Review

Article

Collins Ferry Landing

Jul 1, 2020

for my father Only rivers bottom out like this.Only rivers bottom out with this kind of conviction.Not humans, or, at least, not humans asindisputably human as you were,trapped in consciousness’s surplus, exilic,animalized absurdity, writhing in its

The American Poetry Review

Article

The Epic Of Gilgamesh

Jan 1, 2020

My friends, who can reach heaven? The monster bellows like a river swollen with flood.Many are consumed in his fiery breath. My friends, who can reach heaven? Let us ask the mountain for a sign.Let us cut the spirits from the cedars. My friends, who

The American Poetry Review

Article

Five Poems

Sep 1, 2021

You don’t understand, he says, again,from the backseat of the car, my son, who only months ago, could not fallasleep before whispering, first, some secret in my ear. When I lookin the rearview, he turns toward peaks in the distance, and when I ask hi

The American Poetry Review

Article

from 36 WAYS OF WRITING A VIETNAMESE POEM

Feb 28, 2023

You can’t go far wrong with violence.You’ll go far, my boy.You’ll cross oceans, my boy. Start with the Fall, go back or forth,Through bombs or boats,Across all the killing fields of thought. You can’t make it upBecause it’s all yours—by blood.By righ

The American Poetry Review

Article

Five Poems

Mar 1, 2019

If we don’t have to bring honesty into this,why bring it, or that’s at least what Ithink the question was, though what I moreremember is how it kept breaking—the question did—the way waves do,touching shore (one, that I shall be punished, two, that t

New Philosopher

Article

The Woman At Home

Jan 29, 2019

From the journals of Samuel P. Perceval,bookseller: Covent Garden, Dec. 15, 1974 This spring, I found a curious letter sewn into the hem of a coat belonging to my late great-aunt Florence. Crudely enveloped in what appeared to be a page torn from

The Paris Review

Article

Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

Dec 15, 2017

The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

The Paris Review

Article

Two Poems by Mary Szybist

Sep 15, 2019

Like an alarm I can’t shut off, the summer.Like air raid sirens stuck onthe world is burning, the world is burning& I can’t stop it. Can’t stop ash from the reddening sky falling dry onto grass, onto cloverlit purple at their tips. Mouth level.My che

Domus

Article

La Globalizzazione In Versi / Globalisation In Verses

Nov 25, 2022

Non dico: sono uscito, se ho camminato. Se cammino, cammina con me il mio interno. Il mio interno è esterno, il mio esterno è interno – quando cammino. È l'unità del volto, del cuore e dei piedi: un'altra inclinazione senza come o dove? La magia del

The American Poetry Review

Article

The Island (catullus 64)

Mar 1, 2022

Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was nobl

The Paris Review

Article

Joanna Klink

Mar 3, 2020

Far into fever, attached by cords to the soft-clicking machines, he sleepsin a bed in a room not his own.People enter and pass like ghost-blownfogs. He is a slow walkwith limbs that recently gave way.He is part of the blue snowfall.He is very small,