John Poch Q&A talks about the first poem he ever wrote
John Poch talks about the first poem he ever wrote.
admin
The Battlefield
~for Darrell Burton That night a mantle of snow fell over all of the bodies, sharp and fine like sky grating itself. Limbs twice brittle, cold on corpus morta, sunk while ground and horizon grew to touch each other. Five months, the icy shards fell like one name, cataloguing every breathless man as […]
Quagmire
~Provincetown, MA Forget the lily-pads angled up out the water, green lids insects gnaw like winged goats. Forget the hawk, who probably thinks the feeling mutual. Forget the pine needle garnishes, gnats bounding the pond’s skin, mosquitoes engrossed in bloody games of tag. Matter of fact, forget green— the way it […]
Emaciation
I keep thinking you can’t eat god. You can’t eat god—his second four will consume him because you can’t eat god. The billboard along the interstate asks LOOKING FOR A SIGN FROM GOD? Half a mile later: Here It Is—the backgrounds a clean china. Another sign GOT FAITH?: water from a faucet ferments to burgundy […]
Tour
The glass bottom poem floats on poured stone surfaces. The windows set in its belly show you nothing— no arks, ancient relics, or species paved over. No more reason to bury here. People are smallest shadows of the city. The city realizes the city and must forget itself to the ground to dream its hereafter, […]
Piccolo BLACK ART
~for the anxious among us All our back-speak tanned blue by a chiding sun—nothing we did, said, or asked of the day. Within the [flesh] within those distant holds —bodies almost living lingua franca—all the smuggled tongue. Within us, all the palaver stolen and run against the grain of who we are until […]
Screen Test, 1965
after Andy Warhol Four severe minutes. Every absent color in the world coalesces in the left hand of these frames— a black half-veil. It is unsure where the poet’s face survives the shadow. The face pivots left (its left) and light holds a line at the nose while darkness, wounded, eats the cheek […]
1980
86° not counting the ring lighting heaped upon them. The king leads with his mind, bluffs with his fists. Can’t fool Cosell: “Ali’s posturing and talking, but not punching.” His head bobs like a sunflower in a violent wind. Let this match be punctuation, for not going down like Joe. Tightlipped, Holmes’ skin […]