Cordite Poetry Review

for the tricentennial In the evening, out on Belle Isle when the forest floor expires a moisture from the warmth of the day (more like late May than anytime in April) and laces a fine haze among the newest saplings, …

The street quite still. Down the long corridor a light, several doors and a single pine. Conversations on the wires are quiet, sequestered from here to there, ear to ear. The most intimate jokes get lost sometimes, even simple questions …

In November last year, when every day was a round of doubts and tension, I became interested in the fate of a machine which had been launched into creation and disappeared during my boyhood. The thought of it roaming our …

This is not a history of the world. I acted as I did. If it helps I have come to appreciate the frailty of memory – things that never happened & the things that did happen. * Dr. S. just …

in a glass tube crushed in his hand the names blended into him he spoke to the boat RUDDER MAST SKULL                outfitted in plumes                he crossed ________ I pay          homage in repetition of your turns of phrase our cues to leave     someone …

i am a leaf on a tree, a node in a network of motes in the air i light up, i placate, i diffuse with the trade at the fair i blow up your body of l¬?grimas here i am …

There are a few computer science ideas that form part of the basis of this poem. Letters such as i,j,k,a,b,c,m,n,x,y and z are commonly used by novice computer programmers as variables, especially as “counter variables,” hence, and for other reasons, …

where will it end the count of the years wandering the toll the statistics of missiles in flight that fall back to the ground where a crater accuses? better hurled into space or into the crowd in Hell than to …

welcome to Texas, Devin Johnston a windmill has your name stubborn & American at off-rhyme to the arroyo-creased angular region here bald redheaded buzzards eat a rabbit struck by what it only understood as supernatural the birds bring to mind …

streaked song sparrow pecking up seeds from table in right foreground, blue jay on pine branch above it, green passion vine-covered fence on left    Ashbery's “today it is possible not to speak in metaphors,” Eliot's “gasworks” calling forth the whole …

horizontal line of a pink cloud above still dark plane of trees in the lower left corner, sound of wind moving tobacco plant leaves, wingspan of a jet passing overhead woman in green sweater recalling arriving with 105 degree fever …

sparrow landing on tobacco plant branch in upper right foreground, sound of drop falling into watering can next to green glass back door, waves breaking in channel    woman leaving message on phone machine noting her mother left her glasses at …

dried hemlock stalk slanting across still dark ridge, green passion vine-covered fence below it, cloudless blue-white sky overhead    man on the radio calling Jayne Mansfield “the swansong of pre-nude sexuality in films,” noting “her immensely voluptuous body”    woman on the …

Timmy and Tommy break a bar of taffy in the gutter Their tan lines are showing Their hard taffy candy breaks in two pieces that is its attraction. Even if you had no friend to share it with you would …

Three friends have I, Mr. Potato Head with bumps on it, and pink glasses, and Lady Bracknell, a broken record who always says the same thing twice,        and then there's my image in the mirror. This image, the most …

The blind now forces paper to put upon itself. What was read is blackened by the name of blood. I, says the cat, will sit upon the chest of my conquered curl. I, says the gun, will kill anyone who …