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.

Mexican Standard About a Desert

“What goddess of war / Came to me as a boy; dumb, / Summer-sweat wet child?”

“I want to be enough, but it’s still an outline / of a woman inside the outline of another woman.”

“No one walks to the water alone. / There are ghosts. There are clusters of trees.”

“I know what I’m getting myself into / when he’s naked in bed, and I’m doodling / bears, bows, speech balloons, and bunnies”

“I have seen monks burning / in their saffron robes for days, / coaxing sand from throats / of silver”

“Twilight. Watch trees on the near shore. / A tug boat chuckles at a private joke; / white furrow through the jade”

“O animal, held / at tongue-point // I always cried during / mass, dreaming of dirt // & hands made / useful”

“youth a ceremony of rebellion everything washed / ashore”

“A cigarette burn on a bathing nude. / A raven under palm fronds. / What we call a bruise as if / fruit could heal.”