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Baffler Archives: Poems

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The City Mouse and the Country Mouse
February 07, 2014
A rough and ready cousin lived on barley and water, and barley water, too,   and slept on a board, while the women of the city dressed themselves as flowers. From   every ear a bauble spun, from every fez a tassel.                         Not me—I was ...

One Way
February 06, 2014
Where the first one came from, we’ll never know, but once it landed, it did what arrows do—it pointed. The headlines read New Shape Discovered: Arrow Invents the Straight and Narrow. Children who had been content to trail snails around the patio suddenly made a gesture ...

The Blackest Black Forest
February 05, 2014
Just nada y nada, which means drop dead in your cleanest socks, o grand and fearless pumpkin. Whether brave or bedraggled or both, the fact that you can put anything (or anyone) into my poem doesn’t mean that you should submit an innocent biped to the vagaries of an ...

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 ...