Birds of Paradise
“Heaven is waiting: a pair of snow / leopards guard the entrance in sculpted marble and obsidian, each coiled round the other, muscles / tensed and ready. I open the door.”
Poetry
We are so grateful to all of our partner-poets for sharing their work with us—please enjoy their beautiful words in our Featured Poetry catalogue.
The Invisible Hand
By Felix Eshiet
“the fair boy says he’s been peeling since manhood stripped him of innocence, but that’s not a / grief solvent enough to dissolve his whole”
This Suburban Child Yearns for a Stereotypical Post-Apocalyptic World Overgrown with Weeds
By Hanwen Zhang
“the heaving of cyanobacteria / blooms in steaming lakes / no less bustling with life / than a field of dandelions”
The name you were given and the one you are known by
“A coyote tells secrets to the hemisphere / of my mind that cannot speak. It is busy shuffling / scene after scene of each girl I’ve been.”
Vanitas: Half Skull, Orchid, Gecko
“Even our orchid chokes on / the affection—overwatered, coffee grounds for soil. / The flies connive among the fruit.”
Daphne, 1958
“at her waist, of silk more than wood. / the rush whisper”
Septuagenarian Abecedarian Love Song
By Tina Blade
“Superimpose over all of this a photo of our younger selves— / tight smiles and a greedy earnestness that nearly // undid us—”
there is no place for tigers
“in the end : the body recedes into veils of budded / jasmine : cottoncloth in the underground country / do you understand?”
Bog Body Love Poem
By Mary Simmons
“Winter-humid parts, / nosy parts, love the murk of my eyes, then / love my eyes. Make love an ouroboros.”