#cd wright

ron padgett collected poems: "how long"

donald justice collected poems: "there is a gold light in certain old paintings..."

rita ann higgins witches in the bushes: “be someone”

frank lima incidents of travel in poetry

campbell mcgrath nox borealis

ha jin a distant center: "all you have is a country"

jack underwood war the war

kit schluter pierrot's fingernails: "bad faith"

angela mao theme and variations on ai weiwei's "dropping a han dynasty urn"

lilly bechtel the shape of grief

simon shieh act i

c.d. wright steal away: new and selected poems: "everything good between men and women"

stephen dobyns name-burning

dan vera speaking wiri wiri: “small shame blues”

hannah srajey the lamppost glows orange in the daytime

deborah landau the uses of the body: "september"

What Keeps

We live on a hillside close to water We eat in darkness We sleep in the coldest part of the house We love in silence We keep poetry locked in a glass cabinet Some nights We stay up passing it back and forth between us drinking deep

We do not mean to complain. We know how it is. In older, even sadder cultures the worst possible sorts have been playing hot and cold with people’s lives for much longer. Like Perrow says, We’ll all have baboon hearts one of these days. We wintered with ample fuel and real tomatoes. We were allowed to roam, sniffing and chewing at the tufted crust. We were let to breathe. That is, we respirated. Now the soft clocks have gorged themselves on our time. Yet as our hair blanches and comes out in hanks, we can tell it is nearly spring— the students shed their black coats on the green; we begin to see shade. Lo, this is the breastbone’s embraceable light. We are here. Still breathing and constellated.

This isn’t the end. It simply cannot be the end. It is a road. You go ahead coatless, light-soaked, more rutilant than the road. The soles of your shoes sparkle. You walk softly as you move further inside your subject. It is a living season. The trees are anxious to be included. The car with fins beams through countless oncoming points of rage and need. The sloughed-off cells under our bed form little hills of dead matter. If the most sidereal drink is pain, the most soothing clock is music. A poetry of shine could come of this. It will be predominantly green. You will be allowed to color in as much as you want for green is good for the teeth and eyes. (‘Morning Star’ by C.D. Wright, 1949-2016)