Black Hole Beheld
Image: "Black Hole Image Makes History" NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Photostream, licensed under CC 2.0.
Michael Leach:
I was inspired to write the poem ‘Black...
Slight of Hand
I’ve come for you, cushion-soft
instead of being wrapped, we’re loose salt
and spray / solid and shadow at once
a frame brightens lime when one of...
My Nature
You gave me your wildest no.
Thank you, I said.
I will keep it forever.
I will put it in a little box
and carry it across rivers
on...
Mass Quarantine as Aquarium
Before everything shut down, we took a walk
through the fish, immune
inside their walls. ...
We Have Permission
We can swim here—
only fish and shells
to glide with, a full
alternate below-world.
A single language
where breath and tears
are invisible, muted darkness
making us all blind.
There is...
In Summer
He uses your full first name
right from the start, and you let him
because neither of you intends to stay:
he'll go home and so will...
Instructions on Surviving Genocide
In the study of comparative
trauma, it is important to ask
how much have you suffered,
and is it enough? Hello, are you still
breathing? No, this is...
How Lonely Sat the Town
Quarry houses like napping men flanked us. We were born
on the day of other births, many other births.
Inside the train tracks were the sounds...
The Last Days
In the last days, we press our dirty bodies together
A new kind of prayer—and I am asking you
To be honest with me,
I am asking...
Harbinger
On my walk I notice a hint of yellow
on the arched branches of forsythia
that grow over an old rock wall—
the stones handpicked for fit
not...
Snapshot
Glimmer on the sidewalk
August grit smells
of old hotdog water
pigeons bathing in fountains
children running into
fountains shimmying up
fire-escapes and this whole
damn apple wavy with summer
stank and...