June 15, 2023
As the Forest Burned
To Rocío My friend may have died, Oh! Glory of the air and of dreams: We slumber and about us the world perishes covered in dew! — Javier Heraud The mountains […]
June 15, 2023
Ashes
To Néstor Perlongher There are ashes that fly in the tropics. There are ashes that dissolve beneath a mere wingbeat. There are ashes that dissipate like a breath in the […]
June 15, 2023
The Wind Against My Shadow
Even the blade of grass, more transparent than memory. Even the passing that happens unexpectedly like the cutting of a branch. Even the delirium grinning behind a mask. Even the […]
June 14, 2023
A Flower that Refuses to Open: Toward a Decadent Ecopoetics
A specter is stalking ecopoetics — it is the specter of Decadence. To be sure, “decadence” is an almost exclusively pejorative term in Anglo-American poetics. From the point of view of commonly […]
June 14, 2023
Death Styles 1.8.21
On the common merganser, that clock-faced duck A black-bordered letter arrives from your mother I mean mother-me, the mother duck who rides on the river pulls up her hood to […]
June 14, 2023
Aquarium Glass
When our colony of streaming astronauts adrift in undulation became wind-filled sails beneath the manta’s flight, we gathered our boats to watch the sea anemone’s solitary polyps morph into the […]
June 14, 2023
Triptych
I. Sound We returned as if to the surface of the earth we raged — slumped rockpiles’ threadbare tarps choking the pipes & rusted upon arrival. The infection they said was […]
June 14, 2023
Walking in the Redwoods with My Mother
Sequoia semperverins, she reads from the musty guidebook. Resting on a log, under dogwood we listen for the rattle of the salamander, roots of red snow plants drawing sugars from […]
June 14, 2023
Arthur Sze Introduces Jennifer Elise Foerster
I’ve included a poem in the form of a letter to an ancient Chinese poet, Tao Qian (365–427 CE), and I have added a translation of a poem by contemporary […]
June 14, 2023
Ice Anglers
In the reservoir near my house, when winter comes, you can see some ice anglers, each one squatting in an old army overcoat. From a distance, they look like crows […]
June 14, 2023
A Letter to Tao Qian
The Kenyon Review · A Letter To Tao Qian I wish to tell you but lose the words — more than a millennium later, on another continent, in another language, I […]
June 14, 2023
New Union Dawns
The Kenyon Review · “New Union Dawns” by Jordan Nakamura Before the sun rose in the dew-dark ear a scent of bread wove through dust kicked up from public gardens […]