We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
Never instead put the bales in the bounty,
resize the type to provide ALLURE.
Look how the picture seems to tell a story.
Mother, I'm all dolled up in HOPE.
My breastplate hinge needs a little oil,
I'm hobbling along to kick your crutch.
Mother, I'm all doped up with DESIRE.
I've cleaned the machine with delicate
hand, scrubbed the data within an inch of its life.
Mother, I'm all diary today, feeling PENSIVE.
The returns keep disappearing, I can't get my hands
around even one. I keep clicking through
the channels, the links, little vortex
displays all the characteristics of a MOTIVE,
mother, but someone's just reported
that the election has been made OFFICIAL.
The results seem promising. In one version
you get to keep the crown. The twin diamonds
sparkling your eyes sparkle harder, the LIGHT
takes on a decadence like that of old snow.
In the other, your garland consumes itself,
your hair falls out like nuclear, your elisions
lisp the windows shut, breaking the view
in half. Your face becomes but a VAGARY
and there are no backups in storage. I AM
a cosmos if I am still breathing. Wind breaks
at my neck and spells your name acrostically.
Spells your name like my BELOVED. Repetition
of facts and figures keeps me apprised. Dogs
mass in the streets, shaking bones, slurping scrap
lifted from the MALFEASANCE of silver plates
hung to dry from row house clothes lines,
the tread's worn down on the spires sagging
from the GLORIOUS peaks of this great sky!
Can you hear the clicking through the air vents?
Did you notice the picture twitch on the bedroom wall?
Leaves turn pink and blue, SUPERNATURAL
is not dead, is rippling through me, I can feel
my toes, I can see you staring at my nape,
I can see you vivid in the dark corner of the day,
taking your damask gown off one strap
at a time, as if I were watching. I have a MANDATE.
Nobody else would bother to see you this way.
Nick Twemlow's poems have appeared in A Public Space, Court Green, Fence, Sentence, and Volt. He is co-editor of The Canary.
Contributions from readers enable us to provide a public space, free and open, for the discussion of ideas. Join this effort – become a supporting reader today.
Vital reading on politics, literature, and more in your inbox. Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter, Monthly Roundup, and event notifications.
Our well-being depends on a better understanding of how the logic of labor has twisted our relationship with pleasure.
“I was my father’s son. My father was Nai Nai’s least favorite.” A Taiwanese American man, driven from home by a secret, reevaluates his childhood memories of his grandmother.
MacArthur Genius Kelly Lytle Hernández makes the case for why U.S. history only makes sense when told as a binational story.
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975. Registered 501(c)(3) organization. Learn more about our mission