Ed Pavlic’s newest collection of poetry, Let’s Let That Are Not Yet: Inferno (National Poetry Series, Fence Books, 2015) was featured in The New York Times Sunday Book Review. His other most recent books are But Here are Small Clear Refractions (Achebe Center, 2009), Winners Have Yet to be Announced: A Song for Donny Hathaway (University of Georgia Press, […]
—after Miles There’s plenty that think we’re twins. By 18 we’d both wished secretly that it was true, & that it wasn’t. Since we were 9 we met here on stealth banks of August, each year another savior & sweet thanks be to Jesus for that old row boat. Remember my instructions when we met? […]
“Why? It don’t matter why.” —Billie Holiday, “Deep Song” Don’t sing it to me. Or I’ll stay under here motionless & blue gilled. I’ll drift away from the shattered place of irruption. Where the summer song crossed the winter street, the corner where we met. & don’t worry about me, I’ll stick close to pockets […]
i The ceiling moved & woke you. The night gave none of the heat away. Beads of sweat inch & run slopes of skin. You ask yourself, what about the hard work? Before you knew what easy pain becomes, you thought hard work had to hurt. A stack of sixteen pound block on the wall […]
Remember what you want to Bobby, no one taught crawfish to open pinchers into open air when dropped from the railing. No one taught the howl in my belly when you & Todd marched them across noonday traffic on the Division Street bridge. No one taught real secrets like how payback runs crazy, yellow jackets […]
of What If & When if this was a wet blouse there’d be the shadow of fingers if a leaf poured from a can of paint there’d be veins stiffened by the cold if this was summer wind there’d be laughter from across the lake if an abandoned well it’d smell of broken […]
Last time I saw you on your feet, we climbed Mt. Shavano to have lunch on the angel’s hip. Year by year step by step you led me up past the line where trees grow past the line where shrubs cling to rocks and you tell south by the lichen. I hesitate when my lungs […]