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Baffler Archives: Poems

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Mikhail Arkadyevich Svetlov
 A waning crescent melting in the sky— this is the profile of Svetlov, the poet. The tips of his forehead and chin reach for each other, between them nests the clever smile of a man from the city once known as Yekaterinoslav. Stooping, Svetlov carries his leanness ...

Implements
On the shingles, the same color as its fur, a cat’s cut-out.   Shovelled off the ground and tossed into an empty cement bag, it is carried   to a corner of the garden and there left on a mound of trash.   3 kilos of dead cat, its head an unsightly red, is ...

A Parade Tirade
Good night ladies and good night nuns & priests & monks & ministers who never march in peace parades Protestants shouldn’t protest The holy wars are over The only united crusade a fund drive and good night holy ordained ministers who evict peace ...

Re-Make/Re-Model
The old language says the apple is the old apple and spoke in categories, it gave her the dance floor she needed, all those vocabularies and animal nights before her. Spotted fur. Lithe. Taut.   The syllable in apple and the ecstasy of naming. Or was it knowing? ...

Why would the Minoans
Why would the Minoans fire the clay tablets which they recorded their everyday transactions on? They wouldn’t and didn’t, so when the   rotted thatched roof of the rented house of Arthur Evans fell in during a prodigious downpour, all the unfired gray clay ...

Berryman Anecdote
He came into the Grolier carrying his head, hungover like death. He told of the time he’d come into a class and to introduce himself written his name, hand shaking, on the blackboard. He turned and saw rows of puzzled faces then turned back to the board then back to the ...

Haut Monde
He’s not yet into botox but vain enough for a transplant on his thick head of hair to offset, he confides, the future loss twenty years on when his pate might glint like a Nikon flash on the ramp.   It was painful but worth it— these don’t fall or turn ...

American Mammal
November 06, 2014
Who is there? This is your Iranian plastic surgeon.   What have you done with my nose? Stopped up the offending holes.   What have done with the holes? Applied them to your eyes. Look how wide they are now!   Now all the clouds look like beefcakes. The clouds were ...

Do What You Love
 Do what you love, they said. The money will follow, they said. They didn’t say what the money should follow, or who. Poor money, lost money: money must have been so much confuse! One money, twice, eleven monies, four: money trying to keep it together, ragged flock of ...

The Invisible Man’s Electric Bill
Old and figured over from a life in the basement, he sat under the judge, deaf to paper shuffling, jabs from the jury, the thousand flashes of cameras,   holding his figurine, a dancing Sambo he made in the long hours after he forgot what day meant to night, how the evening ...