word and silence

Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
To the Dead White-Throated Sparrow in my driveway: Would you at least do me the courtesy of an explanation? What’s with your belly-mound-cenotaph arisen from the stony gloom spiel? And why this exquisite bundle of yours, with its still-tender russets folded in the unbounded repose of a napping cherub, as… Continue reading Stephanie L. Harper (7 Poems)

Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
Hollow Glasses clink and mouths smile and jewelry sparkles and eyes are hungry hawks. This dress is too tight. My smile is too tight. My stomach is too tight. I wish I could peel off my skin to stretch it out over the curve of the Earth. Maybe I would… Continue reading Hannah Rousselot (4 Poems)

Originally posted on Crime Poetry by Jonah Finn:
A Young Hitler is Seen in Vienna, c. 1909 That one without even an overcoat, covered in lice and old laborers’ clothes? That one who’d be dead if not for the doles, that charity tramp living off rat scraps? A homeless louse like that will what, be… Continue reading A Young Hitler is Seen in Vienna, c. 1909

Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
The subject of these poems, Walter Anderson, a Mississippi Gulf Coast artist who died in 1965, spent most of his time on the Barrier Islands off the coast of Mississippi. The first 6 poems are reflections of that. The final four are set in China during the Cultural revolution. Anderson… Continue reading Richard Weaver (10 Poems)

Originally posted on Crime Poetry by Jonah Finn:
The Parents Those shoes were still tangibly his son and that smell was his sweat that lingered there. His father wore them to rallies, or just to the store: his son’s feet grew and then then grew no more, killed in the library with other of his… Continue reading The Parents

Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
At the Grave of Randall Jarrell The clunk and rasp of building a wood fire distracts but warms me. You love the grunt and groan of chores, talking to the cats, paying bills we can’t afford to pay. Meanwhile I’m picturing a pair of cypress almost doubled over with ice… Continue reading William Doreski (2 Poems)

Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
Nothing of Me on the Moon The moon where I live sucks up all darkness, it’s a pond upside down. The moon that I know casts a circle of brightness, a Chinese lantern in the sky. Like a pot of honey never falling, she just sits there, waiting for my… Continue reading Irene Hergottova (7 Poems)

Originally posted on Crime Poetry by Jonah Finn:
Writing this, I was reminded of how Seamus Heaney’s career is filled with elegies for those who died in the Troubles; the same might be done for those dead from all violence–in this case, school shootings. Danny Rohrbough 4/20/1999 God is the sidewalk where her son was… Continue reading Danny Rohrbough 4/20/1999

Originally posted on Crime Poetry by Jonah Finn:
The Old Spy Wears His Dead Father’s Suits Now The old spy wears his dead father’s suits now, a ghost of dusty clothes in the wardrobe, the simple business and the easy life he could have inherited, but for the war. The old spy sleeps in the… Continue reading The Old Spy Wears His Dead Father’s Suits Now

Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
Flowers of Dawn A yellow moon over the rooftops—striking in silence—blue sky, dark and twinkling—stars meld into street light—alleyways cluttered with bottles clink | a cat howls in summer heat— water washes away the smear | bleary-eyed and broken, I stumble among dust bins and sediment of the living—crowned with… Continue reading Pablo Cuzco (5 Poems)

Originally posted on Crime Poetry by Jonah Finn:
A short story (actually more of a brief glimpse) this week. It was written a few years before the Golden State Killer was captured, and in part it drew on imagining him, a serial killer in his 60-70s, who was never caught: Paul Ladas, 72. He had… Continue reading The One Who Was Never Caught

Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
Named and Nameless In the midst of the naming, the boy asks: What’s your name? The Voice remembers: years in the future, others will ask this question. The reply is the same: I am what I am. The boy: That’s not an answer. We’re all what we all are, nameless… Continue reading Tom Laichas: 9 Poems from “Naming the Animals”

Originally posted on Crime Poetry by Jonah Finn:
The Business of Hell If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell. I guess I will see them there soon. – CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton Being… Continue reading The Business of Hell

Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
While William Wordsworth is rightly known for his longer poems – whether on the poor and destitute, or his immortality ode, or the book-length Prelude – his sonnets are also something to be reckoned with. Here are a handful of them; if you know of others, do note them in… Continue reading Wordsworth’s Sonnets (Forerunners)

Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
Snowless Woods In snowless winter woods, tree trunk skeletons raise brown branches toward grey skies suspended softly inches above. Oaks cling to their few remaining dry dead leaves, like a mother, aware too soon her children will be lost. Under foot, crunch of leaves mold into the feel of soft… Continue reading Melissa Rendlen (6 Poems)

Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
While some of Emily Dickinson’s more well-known lines had been in my head for years, I didn’t sit down with all of her poems until a flight from Atlanta ages ago, to attend my grandmother’s funeral back home. As Dickinson says, time does not assuage; but her strange words and… Continue reading Emily Dickinson (Forerunners)

Originally posted on The Eclectic Light Company:
Not all images are intended to have a dual nature, and for a long time, prior to the Renaissance in Europe, many works of visual art appear to have been intended to be arrangements of flat symbols, closer to writing than to realist painting. Unknown, Rebecca and Eliezer,… Continue reading Seeing History: Is perspective learned or natural?

Originally posted on Underfoot Poetry:
from the collection The Indifferent World Trigger This is where I held my breath— a stand of red pine, needles and snowdust scribed about my boot, cold crescent resisting a swollen finger itchy-numb with November. This is where a buck held its breath— mouth mid-meal amid the mast, a single… Continue reading Ken Craft (6 Poems)

Originally posted on Daniel Paul Marshall:
∞ A green finch takes a liking to our Callistemon | already cozied up to sun & rain. The finch | itches its beak | nibbles insects & pollen dusts its feathers when it scoots from branch to branch— from this distance the blooms resemble lobster pincers | provide… Continue reading A green finch…