phillip crymble

Nice

Asylum I cannot ask you to paint the tops of your bare mountains green or gentle your coasts to lessen my homesickness. Beggar, not chooser, I hand you the life you say I must leave at the border, bundled and tied. You riffle through it without looking, stamp it and put it out the back for the trash collector. Next, you call. I am free. I stand in the desert, heavy with what I smuggled in behind my eyes and under my tongue: memory and language; my rood and staff, my leper's rattle, my yellow star.

Lisel Mueller

Ha!

Sunday Afternoon The snow is falling, and the world is calm. The flakes are light, but they cool the world As they fall, and add to the calm of the house. It's Sunday afternoon. I am reading Longinus while the Super Bowl is on. The snow is falling, and the world is calm.

A late poem by Robert Bly for your Super Bowl Sunday

What a poem! Thanks for sharing.

She's so good. This might be my favorite of hers.

💯

The Bunny Gives Us a Lesson in Eternity We are a sad people, without hats. The history of our nation is tragically benign. We like to watch the rabbits screwing in the graveyard. We are fond of the little bunny with the bent ear who stands alone in the moonlight reading what little text there is on the graves. He looks quite desirable like that. He looks like the center of the universe. Look how his mouth moves mouthing the words while the others are busy making more of him. Soon the more will ask of him to write their love letters and he will oblige, using the language of our ancestors, those poor clouds in the ground, beloved by us who have been standing here for hours, a proud people after all.

Mary Ruefle, with the bunny content you didn't know you needed

A lovely and moving tribute, Gregory. So sorry for your loss.

Yes please.

Any chance you wrote an elegy for your friend?

CONFESSION To say I'm without fear— it wouldn't be true. I'm afraid of sickness, humiliation. Like anyone, I have my dreams. But I've learned to hide them, to protect myself from fulfillment: all happiness attracts the Fates' anger. They are sisters, savages— in the end, they have no emotion but envy.

Louise Glück

How many suitors did you have? Names please.

Such an honor to be able to feature your work in the magazine, Carl. Your contributors copy should be with you shortly.

The Brokenness Itself Days that are random, coincident, the way leaves and light coincide, the way sounds do. Not everything is music. Days that can never come back. Black earth. Black earth. Is this who I must be, or maybe just what I am? — And the branches, shifting, heavy with fruit, in the wind.

So moved by this Carl Phillips poem in our new issue.

Looking forward to reading a few of the new Carl Phillips poems featured in our winter issue at tomorrow's launch event. Do join us in person if you can. Zoom link available by contacting the email address below.

What a poem.

The Terrible Lottery I love unusual things & stay in love with strangeness, have not outgrown my deficits. Full of holes rain pours into, I remain. Older, indecisive, unsound. I am portal, I am process: energy shining out that no one loves. My pain, you see, sightistly, is not visible. What is invisible is unreal, like love, hunger, rage. I've played the terrible lottery we all play, the odds increase as we age. You might say it's natural to disintegrate. Each day is hot or cold, clear or cloudy, blue-skied above. Everything is green, or not, furred or feathered. Done in by weather.

Roxanna Bennett

Happy Pub Day to MORE FLOWERS! SUPPORT MINNESOTA! SUPPORT TRIO HOUSE PRESS! SUPPORT MORE FLOWERS! DONATE any amount to a cause in support of Minnesota or PRE-ORDER / ORDER any book or e-book from Trio House Press, DM me the receipt, and I'll send you a copy of MORE FLOWERS! Thank you for supporting people in crisis who matter deeply to me and for supporting a beloved Minneapolis-based publisher! Love and gratitude to all.

🌸 Happy Pub Day 🌸 to MORE FLOWERS! None of this happens alone & I’m grateful to so many for their support in bringing this book to life!

In honor of the release, I’d also like to offer some light where we need it most, so please consider donating or ordering a book from @triohousepress.org!

⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

WINTER SONG RAIN and wind, and wind and rain. Will the Summer come again? Rain on houses, on the street, Wetting all the people's feet. Though they run with might and main. Rain and wind, and wind and rain. Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow. Will the Winter never go? What do beggar children do With no fire to cuddle to, P'raps with nowhere warm to go? Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow. Hail and ice, and ice and hail, Water frozen in the pail. See the robins, brown and red, They are waiting to be fed. Poor dears; battling in the gale! Hail and ice, and ice and hail.

Katherine Mansfield, from Child Verses (1907)

Airplanes I get a gun and go shoot an airplane full of holes, and stare at the thing on the runway until it's covered with rust. This takes years. I turn forty somewhere, waiting for the jet underneath me to clear its throat of burned starlings.

An early poem by Larry Levis

Sure thing. It's a remarkable poem. Congrats.

Amazing!

Ha, I didn't even know wrote poetry until a couple of years ago.

FEAR Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive. Fear of falling asleep at night. Fear of not falling asleep. Fear of the past rising up. Fear of the present taking flight. Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night. Fear of electrical storms. Fear of the cleaning woman who has a spot on her cheek! Fear of dogs I've been told won't bite. Fear of anxiety! Fear of having to identify the body of a dead friend. Fear of running out of money. Fear of having too much, though people will not believe this. Fear of psychological profiles. Fear of being late and fear of arriving before anyone else. Fear of my children's handwriting on envelopes. Fear they'll die before I do, and I'll feel guilty. Fear of having to live with my mother in her old age, and mine. Fear of confusion. Fear this day will end on an unhappy note. Fear of waking up to find you gone. Fear of not loving and fear of not loving enough. Fear that what I love will prove lethal to those I love. Fear of death. Fear of living too long. Fear of death. I've said that.

One more by the great Raymond Carver

The Best Time of the Day Cool summer nights. Windows open. Lamps burning. Fruit in the bowl. And your head on my shoulder. These the happiest moments in the day. Next to the early morning hours, of course. And the time just before lunch. And the afternoon, and early evening hours. But I do love these summer nights. Even more, I think, than those other times. The work finished for the day. And no one who can reach us now. Or ever.

Raymond Carver, from All of Us: The Collected Poems (1996)

THE CURRENT These fish have no eyes these silver fish that come to me in dreams, scattering their roe and milt in the pockets of my brain. But there's one that comes-- heavy, scarred, silent like the rest, that simply holds against the current, closing its dark mouth against the current, closing and opening as it holds to the current.

Can't stop thinking about this Raymond Carver poem

"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

--Shirley Jackson, The Lottery

Biography of a Story - MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture A meditation on the scrapbook Shirley Jackson used to store the hostile letters from readers of her infamous short-story 'The Lottery'.

This might be of interest:

Speakerphone Your secret voice, / always a bit tired, lightly grazing / your throat, barely language To pray, not to ask, but to have the line open. To listen to the almost silence on the other end, to know your almost silence is being listened to as well (distant cars, clicks of a keyboard, a child laughing), to know your listening is being listened to (both sides on speakerphone, no one speaking) as you go about your respective days, tiresome appointments, dark highways. The sounds from either side coming through that narrow frequency range, the crackle and the hiss of this world, of that world. And OK, maybe a few words from you at the end of a hard day, a few words from the voice you haven't used: your secret voice, always a bit tired, lightly grazing your throat, barely language. You don't even know if it is coming from you or from the other side, the way when the leaves rustle we don't know if it's the wind or the tree that is speaking.

Raoul Fernandes, from the new issue of @thewalrus.ca