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Baffler Archives: Poems

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Experts are Puzzled
January 12, 2014
Experts are puzzled by the legacy for the purpose of the handing down of which we seem to exist successively and respectively. We seem to exist to correct, in proper order, the minute derangements caused in the legacy of our existence. We on whom it is temporarily bestowed find ...

from Odi Barbare
January 11, 2014
Boreal light-loaded incorrigible Plutocratic anarchy breaks the archons Little praised here more adamantine than those        Clapped into durance   Herod rants | pageants on their wooden tractions Cannot hold him · Now he is in the ...

Strike!
Strike because the sky turns gray just before it blacks out. Strike because when you were little your father told you too many lies. Strike because the surf is up. Strike because you are heartsick with the old ways and giddy with promise. Strike because things can’t go on ...

Syria Renga
Driving a flatbed truck of sheep alongside the Qalamoun hills, he   glances at the mountains and thinks of his brothers who are   still in Kirkuk. Once borders were porous, work meant crossings, for those who   are amateur refugees now, inadvertent ...

Snow Globe
January 08, 2014
This house is older than the lilac trusses glistening        in winter ice, older than the pack of Winstons on the wire chair, older than the chair as well as this glass of water        holding water. Is it ...

Breaking Stones
January 07, 2014
Beside a road in Allahabad, I saw her        breaking stones.   No tree to give her shade, A dark skin, Firm, tightly-cupped breasts, Eyes fixed on the ground, Thoughts of the night before Going through her mind, She brought down the heavy ...

Little Princess, or, the One-Eyed Girl
January 06, 2014
Her mother calls her Little Princess, Affectionately, as the name suggests. The truth, however, Is a pock-pitted, flat-nosed, bald, And one-eyed face.           Little Princess has come of age.         ...

Instantaneous
September 24, 2013
The conifer of forever Stood tall in the forest. Lumberjacks passed by And took out their saws.   The stump was forever   The elephants of forever Were shot down by poachers. Their bodies were left to Rot on the desert floor.   The tusks were forever   A ...

Ballad of Susan Smith
September 13, 2013
I put my car into reverse On a lee and lonely This will be my babies’ hearse Down by the green lake side-ee-o   I am a daughter of the Mills On a lee and lonely Young I am but doomed to kill Down by the green lake side-ee-o   I had a love I thought was true On a ...

Doppio
September 03, 2013
Latin beans through Italian machines for that perfect cup. German autos in the parking lot and Vivaldi in the coffee shop drive the cost of comfort up several cents per pound.

5:30 P.M.—Friday
September 03, 2013
Cold wind and cars stall in lines on N. Lamar. The parking lot to the “natural foods” grocery store and the “locally owned” bookstore crowds with machines that complete the escape from ignored old earth-bound time questioned by carbon dioxide leaked in a ...

The Ring of Strategic Influence
August 28, 2013
It’s sometimes valuable from a military standpoint to be able to engage in deception. Dick Cheney TRANSLATIONS PART predawn vertical insertion for invasion unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life for killing “You always write it’s bombing, bombing, bombing. It’s not ...