Baffler Archives: Poems

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American Sonnet For My Past And Future Assassin

Terrance Hayes

March 04, 2018

Issue no. 38

It feels sadder when a black person says Nigga Because it sounds like Nigger. It feels sadder When a brother or sister says Nigga because It sounds like Nigger. I have never heard either Word in the mouth of my mother or father. Once I had a lover who said neither word Out loud. ...

American Sonnet For My Past And Future Assassin

Terrance Hayes

March 04, 2018

Issue no. 38

When walking hope is a swagger When sleeping hope is a lullaby When breathing hope is oxygen When drunk hope is liquor When dirty hope is water When unfilled hope is a well When unwell hope is medicine When impatient hope is patience When lonely hope is company When poor hope is ...

Bath I (Cairo)

Jen Silverman

March 04, 2018

Issue no. 38

It rained every day. Cairo was rib-dry, glass-eye-dry but every night in my dreams we drowned. The bathtub was stone. Set in the middle of a tile floor. Verdigris. Verdant. Moss in the cracks. Ancient pharaohs bathed with less abandon than you. Head back. Wet throat. Skin to ...

Pentecost

Marvin K. White

March 04, 2018

Issue no. 38

Looked up and saw on a telephone wire the most unbelievably beautiful black crow in East Oakland’s history. It held a single perfect Dorito chip in its beak. If I ever get a tramp stamp tattoo, it will be of this blessed triangulation. It will be of this holy trinity being ...

You Said the Lambs Were Ready

Traci Brimhall

March 04, 2018

Issue no. 38

Aim behind the ear. Point blank is a mercy. If this were sacred, we’d let it run freely as it dies. But we are part-time believers and tie the legs. I fold your recipe for mint jelly into the crane’s blue paper. A group of geese is only a gaggle on the ground. In ...

Love Actually

Carmen Giménez Smith

December 04, 2017

Issue no. 37

When mumblecore makes it to television, I will understand it better

Nope

Adrian Blevins

December 04, 2017

Issue no. 37

As for yes I’ve been against it since ballet & I refused to leap like a little white flag

A Dispatch from the Last Stout Elm in Chatham’s Fair Mount Cemetery (N.J.)

Malachi Black

December 04, 2017

Issue no. 37

Here, too, a tablespoon of light spills from each temporary star—

Argument

Simeon Berry

December 04, 2017

Issue no. 37

Don’t tell me that I have a problem. I am the problem.

It’s a Limousine

Cate Marvin

December 04, 2017

Issue no. 37

It is nothing like a shark but the monochrome blanched off-white of its long body is dumb like a shark’s nose and dead eyes and it is turning a corner.

Justice

Alan Shapiro

December 04, 2017

Issue no. 37

Less for the murders than the smug face remorseless smirking on the screen

Study of Beet and Earring

Paula Bohince

September 04, 2017

Issue no. 36

Vegetable fuchsia but faded, gilt gone bad from its season in Hell. Plucked up with dirt on its cheek, petrified as a rose shut in a box and dull as a brain left too long in one place. Sedate glamour on the counter, unhinged from my skin: golden chime, faintly Egyptian. Truth ...