Robin Beth Schaer’s first collection of poems, Shipbreaking was published by Anhinga Press in 2015. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Saltonstall Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her poetry has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Barrow Street, Tin House, The Awl, and Prairie Schooner, among others, She has taught at Columbia University, Cooper […]
Armored with a netting of tires, the barge crawls, sets a path of moorings along the harbor. Summer anchors sink in the silt, their white floats bowing to current, waiting. I am tethered here, while you chart home, north through narrow clemency, spared between sharp Carolina coast and Atlantic beaten barrier islands. “Migration” first […]
There were no solid walls or impossible locks. I was the Queen of Birds, with a metal shim beneath my tongue and a shoulder slipped from the socket. My escape was always astounding; the art was finding the slack. Then you, my sweet locomotive, careened. Your impact shook loose sequins and concealed keys, released a […]
Run-off heavy and black as your hair, the river rolls moraine, in rapids strong enough to sweep away a horse. I believed a handful of you would protect me from the whole of you, the way an eye of blue glass will ward off the blue-eyed desert djinn, or claws and jawbones will spare the […]
Take this crime: I carried the alligator home through red mangroves, in my arms. His gnarled head cool against my neck, and his tail around me brushing my ankles. Brought inside the village, he shivered, needing swamp not land. My body would never keep him warm enough. I offered him strips of birch bark, rabbits […]
We sleep on stilts, above the floor, as if the air in between could change where we began, or a cheek against the ground might carry us underneath. “Insomnia” first appeared in Guernica (September 2005).
Thirst has made a god of me, and you my gift, my igneous bride. With goats milk-dry and wheat hunched in dust, the village will truss you in lapis beads and swear you can seduce me into rain. Without water, the only way to choke a fire is another fierce enough to steal its air. […]
Robin Beth Schaer, a Pushcart Prize nominee, talks about reading poetry aloud.