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Baffler Archives: Poems

Columns

Di$claimer
Though unmoored and fearful in spirit,     you, trembling investor,         rather than ourselves or our affiliates,             will incur the bulk of the ...

Accounting for the Damage
Sixty seconds the earth shook beneath their feet   God-fumbled porcelain, the colonial palace rushing to pieces in the city center. Atlas rolls a shoulder in fitful sleep, and hearts crumble. Dazed palm   trees studding the horizon, bayonet the sky while soldiers ...

Inside the House
I’m no frail eel, no damsel steal, My costume’s a bathrobe, secure as hazmat one look at me, I’m addictive as transfat you can’t touch my towel-rack.   My batcave’s this needlepark, But it’s being converted to luxury condos, so I’m ...

The Robots Are Coming
with clear-cased woofers for heads, no eyes. They see us as a bat sees a mosquito—a fleshy echo, a morsel of sound. You’ve heard their intergalactic tour busses purring at our stratosphere’s curb, awaiting the counter intelligence transmissions from our ...

Or Why the Assembly Disbanded as Before
Hosanna in the borderline cinderblock warehouse, as much applause as possible to collapse inside an ambulance now that conveys   The intravenous bags and bottle holder, twenty-seven stones from here to the Idyllwild     to the gun fields   It’s a place ...

from California Tanka Diary
Meandering through hill-top neighborhood of splendid old mansions, I loiter at wrought-iron gates picketing the senator’s home.    * “Where does California’s produce go?” shoppers ask in supermarkets stocked with Mexican avocados and Chinese ...

Summit Meeting
The Germans fly in the day before and get the hotel rooms promised to the Palestinians. The Bolivians are nervous but expectant, having promised not to make a scene this time.   They say that money isn’t passionate but you can see the way it pulses in the groin of the ...

Equations
The calculation is simple enough; he comes for you when you least expect, when you are minding your own business in the middle of a pecan grove, shells at your feet, the sweet rot of overripe fruit, birds feasting all about, and suddenly, like light, he rests on you and you ...

Song of Whiteout and Backache
1 Well I’m so white, when the lights go out, I glow in the dark.   So white, when I wear white clothes all you see are the stripes on my socks.   White as the sun’s bare rays—iron-heavy and hot.   White as the grass that’s ...

Jeweler
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend; so let her have them. My work is strictly   for the primitive sex and I deal only in pearls. In my showroom   you will find any assortment of boys dripping with them—from the ears,   wrists. You should see the dapper ...

The Free World
I bind my old     grievances    to a helium balloon.     A long memory,   I have been warned,    is a curse.     Everywhere I go,     someone   has ...