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Baffler Archives: Poems

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American Nothing
Tonight the wind tears through a flag building a religion from cruelty. Someone lifts their face out of privacy, out of death. I’m here to marry you, lonely American nothing— with my useless name and your aimless car ready to take me out of myself. If the body was ...

Story Problem
Suppose: a Device for measuring subdural space. Let your Device be audible in all nightmares. Suppose: all nightmares stick to the nerves & veins. All veins get injured. Let that be true. It’s a great honor to get injured in a nightmare. The honor is: you can activate ...

Jelly Donut, NYC
Whatever that humming is it stopped       the garbage trucks for a moment crushed their cargo in silence underground the trains glided soundlessly       revolving doors deferred their ...

Here We Name Them ‘Way’
Cart and horse scaled streets, some cities have Alleys couched that way enough the British might say mews, Doors silent the size to walk through Not interrogate your journey, big Mouthing in stasis the importance Of their place, ready to say not your Destination; but here, ...

My Daughter Night Terrors the State
yes moneys and birds settle by night in what formations on the lake the roofs replaced leaves the hail brought down flake in the sun and winds push and mound them into berms there is no color in straw but fuel in nerves my leg shakes and big planters hold trees outside the ...

A Monkey Could Do This
at the very first moment in Baltimore there was a thud it was my great grandmother coming back to earth (levitate, negro   you could do it just breathe)   up to my chin in what I do not deserve certainly there is a limit to the utility of Jesus   watch how I am to ...

You and me are not friends, OK?
With “barbecue” in one ear and “chips” in the other, that is how a goddess comes with one calf cramped and a finger up her ass; a goddess comes for twenty minutes   only when the seventh record has been turned over, convinced that laboring so closely ...

Where Is It Now
The heart of my life was spent on it— that was my life! And where is it, now, as this train goes down the mountain for an hour, six years after divorce, all that sex, it must be somewhere, maybe among these wild grasses near the tracks, or near plants in the sea which ...

Grim Sleeper
O what is that sound—a shot in the night?        Down in South L.A., a shot, then a round? Only the cops, practicing for a fight, The cops, clowning around.   O what is that shadow I see—just the toes—        next to the dumpster, that look so cold? Only the ...

Underground
April 10, 2014
Listen: the squealing melody like someone’s baby as the train        lumbers into the station. I am listening to a song but I can barely hear myself        listening. What are you writing about? Nothing and everything at once. The last best test of ...