Poetry – Page 2 – swamp pink

What We Treasure is Not Always Ours

—for my ex In the googled photograph, your hand placed squarely in the center of your chest as though laying claim, finally, to your own body—and at first I have to catch my breath. Though what I want to say is, yes. How beautiful to see you baring those dark eyes beaming their skylight to the whole of the wholeness...

Reruns

I’ve found myself going to bars with people I don’t like. Smoking cigarettes outside for supposed mouth feel. Drinking not enough to get properly drunk. Home before midnight in my boxers and socks, staring at the ceiling. Watching romcoms about strangers meeting on planes and trains, things far away from here. When I think about sex—well, younger-me sex— it’s like describing a favorite television episode for someone who’s never seen it. If I happen to talk to you at a bar, our conversation choices will be mediocre: a): my peers write erotic poems, whereas I continuously write about my dead parents (which’ll answer your follow-up question about what...

TRANSPLANTED FIG

And the spell was a compulsive, terrible thing, having a power over evil dreams and over spirits of ill; for it was a verse of forty lines in many languages, both living and dead, and had in it the word wherewith the people of the plains are wont to curse their camels, and the shout...

SAPPHO 33

χρυσοστέφαν᾿ Ἀφρόδιτα Aphrodite! It’s Stephanie. I’m not asking much. At least I don’t think so, though I can hardly trust myself to judge my own case. That’s why I’ve lit five candles, and scattered the dust of one rose petal before the slim makeup mirror you call an altar. I am, even at my age, a fleshly creature. How can you help me kindle reciprocal fire? Why do my friends, when I ask them, tell me just what I want to...

MOSHPIT SONNET

February 10, 2026

they keep us on our toes, absolutely we’ve touched where it matters which shape-shifting fool told u that the cruel hoe-bag is alone again dares too sloppy a slob & everybody knows it only crazy ppl have the time listing all the shows they’ve seen no one cares ! some of us have places to be like roombas stuck in corners don’t make me call...

Oh, Enviable Machine

February 3, 2026

I’m convinced I’ll die putting on or taking off my pants. Something will happen ¾ of the way through. My foot will catch. I’ll topple, as the great kingdoms, my dreams of celebrity, while outside, rain smears the landscape into kindergarten art class. And I will curate that moment, as “curator” is the new word for everything, war to wedding. And with these dreary piles of laundry shall I fortify my ruins. It’s a fundamental part of my planned obsolescence. Me and the refrigerator. You and a line...

New Crisis Homily

February 3, 2026

Roughly a quarter of suicides happen away from home, often in hotel rooms. They are “lethal locations.” People who work at hotels know this, but don’t talk about it. It’s not the sort of thing one advertises, but they think about it when going into a room, in that bit of time the corner of the bed and pile of sheets takes to resolve itself. And now that...

[The way you stood under those stars]

February 3, 2026

The way you stood under those stars like it was romantic, like it was like that, like it was. I want it to be how it was. Was it how you pictured it? I want you to name what it was. How high you were and who you were with when it was. Your eyes...

[Listen to this, flies against the thick]

February 3, 2026

Listen to this, flies against the thick panes. Did you know that people had to wash their own windows of the smog? To have clean windows wasto have status, like my sister with allher marriage beads. Both when I started and when I stopped communing with God, I threw away all of my old journals....

Neo-Noir Girlfriend Tries to Replace Me

February 3, 2026

We sit in the dark movie palace, bottle-blonde & conjoined at the armrest. She pulls a black mass from her purse. A gun. No— a wig. Her breath is hot in my ear: I want to be called Anastasia, she says. I won’t bea single syllable. The movie goes: two girls fighting to the death, pow pow, the late 90s hitches like a cola can in the freezer. We...

paper mirror

January 27, 2026

when iwrite my namewith my left hand,i instantlyfind him there: 6-year-old me, lookingback througha paper mirrorof sloppy lines,& quirky,anxious-lookingletters. there’s a6-year-oldpersonin our house, & shehas alreadylearnedhow toshape her nameperfectly, how to holda pencil steady, how tonotice herselfbecoming herself. & when i watch her,i’m remindedof the kidinside of me, whose handwritingwould becomehis solacein adulthood, & who...

Grounds (from “Fingerling Lakes”)

January 27, 2026

Jay likes the dead buildings The boilers groaning like cyborg organs The silverfish wriggling their malignant calligraphy His favorite is the derelict hospital where we pretend to be ill To have beautiful lesions in our brains that make the surgeons gouge out their eyes He’s got his black towels to spread on the gurney Candles from his mother’s bath bomb stash that smell of tortured apples ...