May/June 2020

The American Poetry Review

The world’s most exciting poetry-reading experience.

The American Poetry Review1 min read
American Poetry Review
Editor Elizabeth Scanlon Business Manager Mike Duffy Editorial Assistant Thalia Geiger General Counsel Dennis J. Brennan, Esq. Contributing Editors Christopher Buckley, Deborah Burnham, George Economou, Jan Freeman, Leonard Gontarek, Everett Hoagland
The American Poetry Review1 min read
Two Poems
Woke up at the edgeof Hasbro,at the guardrail,with the stingerstill interred.Helmet free,I drank my spit.Extracted five-plus yearsof garbage from my ears.Had to unlearnmy learningin the navellesscomics of Prince Valiant.Spoke sternlyto my two-tailed
The American Poetry Review4 min read
Two Poems
Are you still there, bitchin—word I used in Hawai’ito describe a wave, a friend’s hair, my pink bikini—bogart, book, banzai, boss, stoked, psyched, all the surfing slangthat faded when I moved to Dixie, the land of dang,Christ all mighty, Jesus bird
The American Poetry Review4 min read
Copy Of A Roman Copy Of A Greek Original
Carrying his toy guitarthe boy-god laughing looks awaythe bees climb the columns] stone bees on stone columns [the head of Hercules inside the mouth of the lionhe killed the lion hewears the head as a hood his eyes look outhis mouth ] is he carrying
The American Poetry Review8 min read
from SYNTHESIZING GRAVITY
The central thing I want to think about is the mystery of—I want to call it profundity, which seems all wrong for Stevie Smith. But impact seems inadequate. No, it is inadequate; impact just means that one is struck; profundity means that when one is
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Three Poems
Neighbors call the stand of pinea ghost forest—t because when glaciers melt,the sea steals onto the land, the saltseeps in, and long established marshes, once fresh, now salt, seizefrom bleach and blacken at the rootof grubby shrubs, grasses, stands
The American Poetry Review30 min read
How The Sonnet Turns
This essay is adapted from a lecture delivered at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, on January 10, 2010, at the winter residency. My thanks to The American Poetry Review for their graceful and gracious assistance in the adaptation
The American Poetry Review3 min read
Four Poems
But that’s not, he said to me, to cut me off, the limitof empathy. There was, I thought, a breeze somewhere nearby, but I didn’tknow. I faced the wall, and after all was indoors. This not speaking for months—that’sa choice you made. You didn’t have t
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Muslim With Dog
bring home baby pitbull in a Nike shoebox,her mother left tied to a post in the Bronxafter the owner sold her kids. The puppy hops on hind legs when happy, pees in a pot of yucca,licks the hollow in my throat when sleepingon my chest. Muslims believe
The American Poetry Review4 min read
Three Poems
No one is proud of a drug addictionor a son with addiction or a cousinwho stops calling his mother no oneis proud of an accident no one is proudtheir grandmother was mean like a doga secret smoker no one spends Saturdaystalking about house painting h
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Dear Devonte Hart
I imagine your ghost as thinand dark as your body claspedaround the armor of the officer who perhapsin another two seconds might have pepperedyour flesh with bullets chargedyour form with the sharp sting of voltagelifted his arms and squeezedthe life
The American Poetry Review2 min read
From ASYLUM
Pollen is everywhere.Blossoms are at the very edgeof becoming & there is no more winter(global warming is destroying our idea of what we’ve come to know),except for the winters of our memory, winters where the girlin the blue snowsuit (a sister) tast
The American Poetry Review1 min read
In America
It rained, as we left that last day. What did the trees meanto explain, bent as they wereto the unruly street? What did the wind speakof ordinary time? Does anything left behind ever loosefrom us? The string. The balloon. The wrist. The sky that neve
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Two Poems
Your body becomes dangerousin water, after you watch Memoirs of a Geisha & learn aboutthe eel & the cave, knowing it’s a metaphor for sex but alsotaking it literally, imagining what animal mightswim up into you as you wade, nakedin the lake under a c
The American Poetry Review14 min read
The Living Mandelstam
It is common for English-language accounts of Mandelstam’s life to begin with an account of his death. Consider the first sentence of a twosentence biography that appeared in The New York Review of Books in 2016 to preface a translation by Andrew Dav
The American Poetry Review3 min read
My Bull-faced Tender Friend Was Right About Everything I Consume One Nasturtium After Another Wishing I’d Been Alive When He Found Me First
but I wasn’t / I was / somebody else’s eurydice and he had none nor any bride though sirens mobbed him and mopped his brow and stole his breath and laughed deep throated laughs around their thighs around his torso as mine would be hands braced agains
The American Poetry Review1 min read
Metal Detector
He leans frowning like a tuned-out janitorsteam cleaning the Jersey shore,beer can, beer can, door hinge, hardly Caesar’sgladius or filigree from the lostlast Incan temple. He doesn’t care,eyes us with suspicion as we point and shoutuntil off come hi
The American Poetry Review3 min read
Four Poems
1. Stop the action. 1a. Does that include apologizing? 1b. Because I’m sorry about this poem. I’m so embarrassed. Please forgive me. 3. Tape pictures of policemen all around the house, especially on the refrigerator. 7. Cheap tops. 49. Cheap tops. ii
The American Poetry Review5 min read
All The Gay Saints
Apz Books All the Gay Saintsby Kayleb Rae CandrilliSaturnalia Books, 2020Paperback, 100 pages It is clear that if I communicate all the ways I hurtI will lose my usefulness. So begins the second poem of Kayleb Rae Candrilli’s much-anticipated second
The American Poetry Review3 min read
Five Poems
How on the Kama River the eye grows dark,when the cities stand on oaken knees. Disguising itself in a web, beard to beard,the burning pine grove runs, younger in the water. The water resisted one hundred and four oars,bearing them up and down to Kaza
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Shulammite
One day I stopped the swipe,left or right. One dayI started to believelike the Shulammite,the ashen haired ancestorthat I am my Beloved’sand his desire is toward me, whether I ask for it or notbecause that’s what faith isbecause that’s what Shulammit
The American Poetry Review1 min read
The Skeleton At The Pier
A skeleton walked on a pier holding a balloon. It was a mild Sunday; not too windy. The balloon had a drawing of a shark on a surfboard. The skeleton sat down on a bench and stared at the waves. Plenty of seagulls flew overhead. Some seagulls landed
The American Poetry Review3 min read
Three Poems
When my father calls my grandfather, he becomes a son.He calls me to become, again, a father. My son would have made me a father and my fathera grandfather. The expectation: this would continue, one long trail of names passed like a candle.I carry th
The American Poetry Review1 min read
Self-operating Machines
Everything is a clock inside, gearedand oiled to sing and turn—the body, even, no different than that of medievalmechanical monkeys lining the bridge in the park at Hesdin, re-pelted in badgerfur every year. For the surface of life runs by a mere ser
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Three Poems
We came here to fondle the glassoctopi. Rosy crystal dragons, psychedelic phalluses in jewelry cases. Eyeglasses, butterflies.Black market rocker leather; Do ItIn Muscle Beach tees. The indecisive sea.We ate a slice of boardwalkpizza topped with anch

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