Tomaž Šalamun (translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry)
Houses open their mouths, swallow
flowers. Lightning doesn't choose. I brushed
the spruces by hand. A car has a tire, a farmhand
a whip, trash cans are falling. We have
two natures.
from the journal
American Poetry Review
What Sparks Poetry is a new, serialized feature in which we invite poets to explore experiences and ideas that spark new poems. In the newest series, Life in Public, we ask our editors to examine how poetry speaks to different aspects of public experience.
- September 18, 2019
Emily Berry
Somebody said: 'I am a master of elision.' I veiled my tended wound. I veiled my narrative. Somebody called it: 'some kind of gratuitous beauty.' I veiled my photograph of her in sixties playsuit
- September 17, 2019
Jenny George
It could have been any gate, any moment when things go
one way and not the other—an act of tenderness
or a small, cruel thing done with a pocketknife.
A child being born. Or the way we move
from sleeping to dreams, as a river flows uneasy under ice.
- September 16, 2019
Wong May
Listen
if you listen carefully for long you will hear nothing
- September 15, 2019
Bradley Trumpfheller
This time, I’ll be a girl & you can be anything
alive. Take the rope off your wrists.
Somewhere far away from here,
a star’s unspooling its star-white curtain.
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