June 16, 2023
energy
“Dark men must learn to bow to bright” — Benito Mussolini (via “Words for Mussolini” by Gwendolyn Brooks) the dark-skinned taínos lucayans the nubians of egypt slaves in spain in […]
June 16, 2023
what to do with the hedges
it turns out all legacies are connected: Europe’s charge through the West and the charge of the phragmites alongside it; the precipitate of industrial profits trickling in threads, beads of […]
June 16, 2023
Terrance Hayes Introduces Bernard Ferguson
Bernard Ferguson is a recent NEA winner, an accomplished essayist, and among the most gifted graduate students I have encountered. I thought of Ferguson’s poems for this Kenyon Review issue […]
June 16, 2023
Comfort Food
The hypogeal bud of the lentil blossoms underground like food for the dead. For millennia lentils have fulfilled the appetites of farmers near famine & kings fattened on feasts. Lentils […]
June 16, 2023
alchemical sirens
The Kenyon Review · Alchemical Sirens (with June Jordan, Diane di Prima, Lyn Hejinian, and the women who wore the tignon in eighteenth-century Louisiana and in the greater Caribbean before […]
June 16, 2023
Brian Teare Introduces fahima ife
I first read fahima ife’s brilliant debut, Maroon Choreography, shortly after reading visual artist Torkwase Dyson’s essay “Black Interiority: Notes on Architecture, Infrastructure, Environmental Justice, and Abstract Drawing.” Maroon Choreographyimmediately […]
June 16, 2023
Excerpts from Poem Bitten by a Man
The Kenyon Review · Excerpts From Poem Bitten By A Man A freight train passes through the frame into this sentence, childhood nights I think its mournful horn is the […]
June 15, 2023
Into
Into the artery of the neck that feeds the myelin Into the frost at the pillars of creation Into the energy from the stonework bubbling up from the spire The […]
June 15, 2023
Joanna Klink Introduces Charlie Decker
Charlie Decker was raised in Oklahoma in an evangelical house. “And one of the running beliefs,” he writes, which is intended as a comfort, I think, was that God was […]
June 15, 2023
Landfall
The Kenyon Review · Landfall Someone’s hung wind chimes on a low branch, the chord tossed slowly by wind. Once more the ghosthouse inside me, opening its doors. Once more […]
June 15, 2023
Desire
My life is an ignited forest. At the peak of the flame, I’m my own double, gargling desire. I’m an empty cup, A flower that refuses to open. The night’s […]
June 15, 2023
Locust Tree Forest
The clouds have dispersed. I can now see the turtledove plunging through the air and the whiteness of its breast in the diaphanous morning. In the background, the dry mountain […]