Mass Quarantine as Aquarium
Before everything shut down, we took a walk
through the fish, immune
inside their walls. ...
Anthropomobscene
...quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher.
Terre des Hommes
Accommodation. Once we’d learned to spell it,
found a pleasant sphere for an extended...
Spiders on the Hancock
Steady at their webs on the brilliant edge, Chicago
spiders range outside the windows
across the 94th floor, at every vantage
their dedicated tensile silks arrayed
upon the...
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...
The First Morning of Quarantine
we are standing feet apart between thorny rose vines, some
potted sapling trees. A child, unaware the rules, breathes in,
chokes out, weaving too close to...
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...
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...
Four Poems by Charles Bernstein
Loose Lips Lift All Slips
It wasn’t so long ago
and then it was. Sliding
till you hit false bottom,
wrestling metaphor for
sleep. It wasn’t so long
and then...
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...
Dispatch
I lived on eggshells once, with my lover. I ate eggs for every meal.
Listen, the lake keeps chipping into white glass.
I do my best,...