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Baffler Archives: Poems

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Race Inauguration Day
Parades, but not-a-one in the meter of a march. There were parties. No apology. Then there were more parties.   Still many of our former owners spat at progress, at celebration, at transparency, our fought-for step up from nothingness.   Masked, we forgave them. Civil ...

Zones
The house spent on transpacific flights pass like a sandstorm through the Kazakh steppes, lodging a single grain—an irritant to memory—within the furrowed cortex. Nacred by revolving doubt, it grows a pearl as black as the ocean depths and lustrous as the moon through ...

[If I had invented homosexuality…]
August 05, 2013
If I had invented homosexuality It would be entirely different Would be incredibly archaic like an Egyptian statue Or two boys that are pals with each other Would be I beg your pardon, Mr. Freud, Immovably fixed at the crazy level of adolescence. The sexual ruling ...

Exercise
August 05, 2013
Is it the word “dream” that causes so much         trouble? Dreams are there like clouds floating endlessly         in an except for them blue sky Over the rim Is it the word, dream, that ...

This Is
1 “If you can read this, you’re too close.” This has been specially hand-crafted in Mexico. “Hi, you’ll do” on a tee-shirt made by young girls in Thailand? America poses in whose mirror? Irascible. Insouciant. 2 This is a five star trance. To have this ...

March Ample Life
Methought I saw my late live-in theory     crossing the fireplace like a train For the Headless Horseman is bald     in the grave where the hair grows long And Maud was the androgyne without a club     on the path to ...

Clistheret
I heard a sleave of song from an upper window and moved in the sun to find them I wanted to call to them, beg them to lean out, and go on But there was no window, I was on sand, their lullabye came from the waves, there were no waves, but a glinting derelict named—no derelict ...

Distinguo
Freedom, yes, but a Freedom combed and curled A safe, tame Freedom, eating from the hand A Freedom which will lie down at command Not this wild wench whose scarlet flag unfurled Threatens our cozy, comfortable world With voice like thunder echoing through the land Who tramps the ...

The Manly Apocalypse
1. Two-Fisted Tales       A cowcatcher jaw splinters the door.      “Jack Ginch, you slants!” The opium den clears.      Strike a match—so much for that sinister ...

from Cantos for James Michener
XCVI. He wasn’t sure how the bathroom mirror worked but decided it must be powered by the razor blades and aspirin he found in the engine compartment. It was a matter of relearning everything after he surfaced from the coma. The hospital chapel had bought a battered fog ...