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Baffler Archives: Poems

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Nothing Wrong with a Maple
September 05, 2016
Go fast, white light, go faster out of sightThe Devil does know        how to row my boat ashore      HallelujahOrange juice, a swing set, the creaminess of milk ...

Ode to Lithium #419: Perfect
September 05, 2016
. . . I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse . . . and since I had an absolute belief that I should be able to handle my own problems, I naturally bought a horse. —Kay Redfield Jamison I ...

Incendiary Art: The Body
September 05, 2016
I’ve nightmared your writhe, glumfists punching their way out of yourown body, the blind stumble throughthe buckled vein of your throat asyour nerve endings sputtered and blew.I’ve dipped my finger into a vaporouspool of your skin. The heat blessedyour whole new self with ...

Sorrow Is My Own Yard
What I worship both wartime & pax in low country   is sweat& pay-dirt & death to the tea tax   & any day I want now I can say to my captors   tomorrow, you watchwe’ll be the end of America   & history with horseshoes for ...

Why so angry, Bluto?
Your low frequency growl inspires feelings of dread. You want to seize the world by its neck, tear it in half with your tombstone teeth. When you storm down the street, swigging from a bottle of XXX and punching telephone poles to splinters, fleeing hooligans dive down ...

All the Answers I Ask
Raymond Chandler, Redacted   the lady discovered kingsley looked harder in leather discovered a bashful cowboy   a little fawn in sunglasses the lady discovered foul play and boyfriends of ice asking questions   mr bitter gilded his grill kingsley spat on a rose   hatless ...

Artemisia Mourns Her Husband
Tattered curtains drawn her eyes shift down to plum robes   one shoulder is exposed—lips red ready to take him in. Ashes with a bit of wine,   he meets her lips   she takes him in— joined again.   Spoon by spoon he left too soon she is consumed ...

After I Die
I am reborn as an animalthat breaks into dental clinicslong after sundown to suck laughing gasfrom its dark mask.               I am rebornas an animal that keeps watchon the liquor store until the ...

Narrated by Leonard Nimoy
We were in search of the garden, marzipanfruits and flesh, glazed babies posed on mallow flower,rose and Rose of Sharon. In search of the backgate, iron selvage, and strips of muslin, a chipped brass strikeplate. In search of the doomed search partylost searching for the doomed ...

The refugees born for a land unknown
March 11, 2016
The refugees born for a land unknown We have dismissed their wrongs, now dull and old, And little judgment days lost in the dark.   “I have fled through land and sea, blank land and sea, Because my house is besieged by murderers And I was wrecked in the ocean, crushed ...