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Baffler Archives: Poems

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Sanctuary
June 05, 2017
my man was committed to an asylum as a child wild thing    fungal phylum    virus thought they could fix him that he could be fixed his sickness too much too much his diagnoses drugs & boys & language & ...

What Goes Around
Not all wells are tapped. Some draw sufficient to run a hose to a house, the low sulfur cloud a mark of the wet-mouth advantaged. As if that’s not enough, they buy the sprays in shades like police-tape yellow or this-is-not-yours red, so I can’t believe The Kid who, ...

Inventory
The -ah was more song & she sang beyond the name. If the name were river, the -ah flooded its banks. Nonetheless, in its song the -ah signed the air, made the air mean. The -ah hitched & hinged its intimacy. Jaw-dropped, it crooned its diminutive— sang of class, ...

The Story
The story involves fireworks on display, day lilies in bloom, also an unhappy doomed stepdaughter, nymphs playing in the fountain, a mysterious trip to Tangier as a place of refuge, a priceless painting once owned by Durand-Ruel, a strange odor at the local flax ...

The Spoon
So the dish ran away with the spoon. Although the dish prevailed, what they didn’t tell us is how the spoon escaped. The spoon wanted more contrast. That’s a fact. It’s also a fact that juxtapositions are endless— frying pans and bricks, skillets and ...

The Nature of Mortal Illness
December 05, 2016
As a kid skeptical of pollen plumes making my skin ash, mind migraine heavy, and nasal cavity a sanctuary for deformed crustaceans seeking terrible refuge   in a false moisture           I wanted to believe this ...

Hotel Letters
December 05, 2016
In the Estonian film in which I star as myself but prettier, or Jean Genet when he was young in the one black and white photograph I have seen of him. And a room with cameras and photographs, piles of film and white tubes and jars of matte, bright pink and mint-green Golden ...

Love Poem
Dear woman, listening with your mouth pursed into a false ear, which cannot—   despite the clarity with which my sisters, who are poets & so precise   as an incision, describe how they are called out of their blood into the same work—   get over how both ...

Bad Weather
So used to drought, the city looked astonished at the sky & I have to believe that’s why   she didn’t see me in the crosswalk. I was on my way to celebrate another year   among my friends, then drowned by laughter in an ambulance as it raced ...

Pluto.4
December 04, 2016
                                                                             we win from time to time                                  abandoned above adaptable positions ...

Pluto.3
December 04, 2016
                                               judged by the way we fall in                                    love in the bathroom in sweating out the ...