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Baffler Archives: Poems

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Nuclear War
October 28, 2024
At the university there is a mysterious course In which a black & white film begins with war And ends with a dog biting a ball   A student says she’s reminded That the human body is mostly water   Another says she’s reminded Of the sermon Van Gogh wrote on a ...

Poem Inspired by Everything
I would just like to point out, but I always end up pointing in. “Everyone’s holier than thou! & I’m definitely rolling the dice!” a camo-clad gent w/ dork beer a good sixteen fiats away exclaims—just as I was measuring how to use inkling in a work: this report ...

Clytemnestra
October 28, 2024
Sky streaked with azure and bloodred.    No wind. No oar.   That memory swift-hooved, tramples itself,    the cart wheel rutting in the ditch       as if the spokes   would turn backward. That ...

All morning, tax evasion
October 28, 2024
In the subway station liquid Drops on our heads While the F train never comes Trash overflows Outside the marble university   Utopia’s attainable but pressing On truth where it’s tender Results in feeling metal Bands around your heart snap open It’s pretty ...

From Fall Creek
September 03, 2024
Time past tumult-fodder getting wet by the ton plummets up the sky dispersing wild syllables an anarchy of storming signs into systems that can’t be understood for a simple reason that everything is participating loftily or low invading the public sphere with swaggering ...

[…]
September 03, 2024
The gods have spoken. The gods said nothing. All our clamour sounded the same.   Your window is closing, they said, they didn’t say on what. I am not a window, I said, I am the view.   The window was on the ground floor. The ground was grass. The room had a working ...

Flight Attendant,
September 03, 2024
To land this position, you have to be able to talk to ducks. Actual ducks. Ducks over the horizon, ducks at the end of a bottle, ducks that if they were strewn out at the edge of a pond at night and you saw them in a bit of light would trigger your phobias. Ducks on drugs. Ducks ...

Jim Carroll’s Ass
Nothing seems real  yet I’m willing to play ‘the real’ game for ones I love and when I’m sick I go get pills but more and more hovering above it I’m and then is it a question of for who that’s why I no longer have memories I don’t care about them though I ...

The Karen Horney Progressions
i. I once met a woman who’d been run over by a truck. Well, a cement mixer. Leg like a pancake. Was her name Karen Horney? I don’t think so.   ii. I once met a girl who’d been struck by a truck. Cement mixer, two tons. Name was Karen Horney. Or was ...

Annette Peacock
Barbara Giraffe Martin Egret Allison Hippopotamus Nadezhda Goat Lose my body Shake the hell Thurston Wildebeest Omar Snake Priscilla Lioness Zainab Elephant Herman Gorilla Margaret Octopus Bring a noise Flung in joy Steve Swallow Creature Palette Arthur Weird Bug Patricia ...

Ordering a Casket from Amazon Prime
Avoid cramps by keeping your grip parallel to the hip. 20 gauge steel, but surprisingly light. It’s called the Atlas XL. You may hear Atlas and conjure a collection of maps and charts with his picture as the frontispiece. He is the sea. He is a mountain whose cave shelters the ...