In the wake of a prefabricated passenger ship
the ocean, as if with an old cotton blanket

weighs deeply on a body wide awake
The sky in the eyes of a scattered school of fish

grows brighter and brighter. The bridge that spans the
brine crosses also the opaque middle-aged mind

dark path between two precise terms
My mother grieving

writes to her faraway son
Waterbirds, lonely, follow the lights

toward regions of cold where they hover
This evening the hotel room's thermosystem

thundered without rest. Number 634
said the key in the unlit hallway

In my homeland some valuable
persons are disappearing
from the journal  THE MANHATTAN REVIEW
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Cover Art for Lawrence Joseph's A Certain Clarity: Selected Poems
Must-Read Poetry for March

Nick Ripatrazone reviews seven poetry collections published this month, including books by Traci Brimhall, Carl Phillips, Lawrence Joseph, Jane Hirshfield, Virgil Suárez, Craig Santos Perez, and Adam Clay.

via THE MILLIONS
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Cover of The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
What Sparks Poetry:
Martha Rhodes on Theodore Roethke's "The Geranium"

"I really heard him. He was talking to me. He was sitting on my bed, drunk and slurring as he said it and he was saying (confessing) 'And that was scary' to himself, but also—I repeat—to me. I was stunned. I thought, 'He can do that? He can do that?'"
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