Democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas. Help sustain it with a tax-deductible donation today.
sam sax is the author of Madness (Penguin, 2017), winner of The National Poetry Series selected by Terrance Hayes. His second book, Bury It, will be out on Wesleyan University Press in 2018. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambda Literary, and the Michener Center, where he served as editor-in-chief of Bat City Review, and is a two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion. He lives in Brooklyn.
soon as the boy’s body breaks
water, it’s divided into clay
poker chips. they drift like wet
leaves to the bottom of the world.
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975. Registered 501(c)(3) organization. Learn more about our mission
For National Poetry Month, sign up for our newsletter and get a digital copy of our out-of-print chapbook Poems for Political Disaster—with work by Jorie Graham, Ilya Kaminsky, Solmaz Sharif, Juan Felipe Herrera, and much more.
Newsletter subscribers get our latest essays, reading lists, and exclusive editorial content (plus 10% off our entire store).
For National Poetry Month, sign up for our newsletter and get a digital copy of our out-of-print chapbook Poems for Political Disaster.