Poetic Past

The American Poetry Review

Article

Five Poems

May 1, 2023

Let’s be GodFor a moment, Shall we?That which invites Composition,That which is suspended From a great height,The presence Of approximationHeavy in the meadows, I’m not afraid,And yet My shroud vanishesIn these lines, I am so weptPast weeping, And wh

The American Poetry Review

Article

Seven Poems

Sep 1, 2021

The dancersIn a terribly brightLight blue gauzeRetained the mystery Skating on a lakeBlue and iceAn illusionary timeWhere poetry feels inevitable The terrific clownWho lies insideEvery blue dressDoes he see me Always a starAlways a rootHorrible auras

The American Scholar

Article

Five Poems

Dec 1, 2022

You have to first Sit in the temple gloom In the mahogany chair & despair. The only glimmer In the temple (being the inlaid bits of The Mother-Of-Pearl shells On the tall, more than humanly tall Chair back, for these These too Are the reputed “Tears

The Paris Review

Article

Two Poems by Mary Szybist

Sep 15, 2019

Like an alarm I can’t shut off, the summer.Like air raid sirens stuck onthe world is burning, the world is burning& I can’t stop it. Can’t stop ash from the reddening sky falling dry onto grass, onto cloverlit purple at their tips. Mouth level.My che

The American Poetry Review

Article

Two Poems

Sep 1, 2023

This poem is for everyperson who will neverread it either by choiceor circumstance I writeit in silence wherethe most realparts of our liveslive like a shoe lostin an alley or an emptyboat in a black sea butmore like the fallenleaf on the other sideo

Choice Magazine

Article

Your Poetry

Apr 29, 2022

Email your poems to: (editorial@choicemag.co.uk) or post to Your Poetry, Choice, 4 Milnyard Square, Orton Southgate, Peterborough PE2 6GX I see you all, sitting there in rows.Singing hymns, as your tears do flow. But please don’t cry, not for me.For

The American Poetry Review

Article

Five Poems

Mar 1, 2019

If we don’t have to bring honesty into this,why bring it, or that’s at least what Ithink the question was, though what I moreremember is how it kept breaking—the question did—the way waves do,touching shore (one, that I shall be punished, two, that t

The American Poetry Review

Article

The Epic Of Gilgamesh

Jan 1, 2020

My friends, who can reach heaven? The monster bellows like a river swollen with flood.Many are consumed in his fiery breath. My friends, who can reach heaven? Let us ask the mountain for a sign.Let us cut the spirits from the cedars. My friends, who

Popshot Magazine

Article

How Ordinary The Revelation

Nov 5, 2020

I left my beak hanging on the tree, but my voice continues in my head. There’s no silence in this house. No forgetting. No beginning of forgetting. Humans walk by with their widening language, their twitching wings. They don’t understand we must be q

The American Poetry Review

Article

Five Poems

Sep 1, 2023

I am walking through the hotelEvery time I am so sadThat I want to die It’s a place where I can keepEverything I’ve never beenBrave enough to get to Poets have moons and moneyTo get themselves throughThe longest night imaginable But I’ve had these ro

New Philosopher

Article

Love Letters

Mar 7, 2022

MY BELOVED ANGEL, I am nearly mad about you, as much as one can be mad: I cannot bring together two ideas that you do not interpose yourself between them. I can no longer think of nothing but you. In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you.

The American Poetry Review

Article

Four Poems

Nov 1, 2022

Day after Thanksgiving. I give thanks for Eveto beat the rush of appreciating hernext year and let her sleep inuntil three hundred o’clock.Thank you light on the mountainfor being my star on cloudy nights.Thank you all the guns I’ve never ownedand ki

Harper's Bazaar India

Article

Summer: A Love Story

Apr 20, 2021

It is a squalid time. The body grows tired of being a body. Sweat. Always. A thin film of it on the skin. Do not say dewy. Do not say glisten. I dream of endless green. Of wet. Of rain hammering the Earth. Of buds sprouting. I want to insist on life

The American Poetry Review

Article

Three Poems

Nov 1, 2023

for Brenda Shaughnessy The news isn’t good, and neither of us feelslike pretending, though the list of what we hope forgrows longer by the day. More news, goodor otherwise, everything witnessed by the lightof fires, and something we cherished alwaysb

The American Poetry Review

Article

Two Poems

Jan 1, 2024

For Jordan Neely, a brother in madness/After Leila Chatti On the train home, an evangelist. He says:GOD IS CALLING YOU TO COME HOME TO HIM My eyes closed, pretending he cannot see me on this third dayof antipsychotic withdrawal, my insurance expired,

The American Poetry Review

Article

Four Poems

Nov 1, 2019

for Rouge they do not knowthe joy they walk with their footprints a lessonof faith O faithful companion of lonelinessthe name we gave you was not a name but a cryand you stayedand now they come to hunt in the wildnot for meat not with the ritual for

The American Scholar

Article

Five Poems

Mar 4, 2019

for William Gifford, 1928–2015 The river. Always the same, never the same.Poughkeepsie. A place north of where I am.To remember you is to remember Poughkeepsie.To remember Poughkeepsie is to remember the river.I am downriver now & you are a memoryI

The American Poetry Review

Article

Three Poems

Jul 1, 2020

Beneath your skin, a floodof glass is surfacing. It means I stayalone for years during your weekin the hospital. You breathe like rosehips crushed, mouth too muddy to believe. I’m one to talk.The stylist asks if I want my liesto show through. I wade

Cricket Magazine Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories for Children and Young Teens

Article

Wings

Sep 1, 2023

“BUT WHAT MUST I give you in return?” I ask, suspicious. “Nothing,” she replies. “Well. Next to nothing.” She has offered me wings, beautiful, silvery wings. And I am not mad, so I intend to accept. But I’m also not a fool. I touch a feather. Delicat

The American Poetry Review

Article

Four Poems

Jan 1, 2022

followed—in front, as horses—into daisy& silver dancing, knowing the jaw who unkeysin the danced earth to drink me down to haints,& will go again. was willed. distrusted happiness, addicted to it.a god needs of a god. here, i don’t want to reachfor g