Boys I loved to follow in the dark                climb up
find me                    on that bluff above the river
muddy swirl sparked with stars           I felt
something break apart                        my head saying

hang back             they won't love you like you love them
you'll have to pedal home                bewildered again
recall your icy chest            how a startled dove

exploded out of the sleeve wind made     of a shaken tree
when one of them leapt                  from so high up
you thought he'd die                   before he swam back to you
the bluff was that it happened                   that way                 the bluff

is that anytime                                I spat the word pussy
on the basketball court             with those boys          I wanted that
plosive sound on my tongue                    and nothing else

*

Born in a valley of bluffs,
I return to a bluff

cracked open by Union cannonballs,
called Red Paint Hill instead of Look at All This Blood;

bluff that accepted the wheels of a truck going over,
consumed by fire;

bluff overlooking a baptism,
the river that swallows a brief Hallelujah.

*

So I kept alive easy enough there in the smallness of wounds
      I carried like everyone else and waited for nothing to change.
So I met a girl, got married and had kids and went with it until
      something else broke or I did or it didn’t feel like love at all,

and by then it was too late. Stroll the baby, feed the horses,
      lie down next to a woman estranged from all she wanted
because of me. Imagine it. Such a small house and no wish
      fulfilled within it. I have regrets. To bluff: to say: to not.

*

Bluff meaning husband and forever;

bluff that hides a cave with a mattress inside
covered in lovesick graffiti,
where I reached for a boy’s hand then pulled back;

to bluff around the bush; to bluff up the wrong tree.

*

Eros an empty locker room.
Eros a jockstrap.

Earthy smell

I lingered undressing
to be nearer to.

And afterward, the slick,

steam-whittled showers
mystical with heat

held me there. Hang back.

Some beginning
with an end inside—

small-town fear. A boy

dragged behind a truck
was in the news.

I didn’t want to be the news.

*

Bluff no helicopter can reach when the suicidal leap,
posted with a sign: NO TRESPASSING;
bluff haunted even in daylight;

King's Bluff, where I got laid, or said I got laid;

bluff of the tourism slogan "Gateway to the New South";
bluff of the backward glance,
of our youth pastor saying I'll jump (not a bluff).

*

This other misdirection—
I've slept my way into so many rooms.
Marriage den, motel of my affair.

And it was never about the greasy,
incessant need of two people
fucking only for lust.

When I felt alone, there was always
a man or woman ready
to deadbolt the door behind us

for an hour, to give or receive,
then leave with nothing.
Cherry pits, an empty bottle of wine.

*

Bluff where I lost my keys, my nerve;

bluff I carry like a nail in the roof of my mouth;
bluff that says This is all I want.

*

I walk in late winter
some unscripted ledge
leading down to the river.

Landscape as wish.
Look at the way the bluff
breaks and holds, like desire.

Look: no doves or boys,
only a hunk of rock
somebody gave a name

because they wanted a way back to it.
from the journal MISSOURI REVIEW
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Primarily abstract photograph of a city scene

"Regardless of style or affiliation, the best poetry of our moment gains distinction not from content, but from what content demands—the renewal of poetic resources....new poetry collections by Myung Mi Kim, Lisa Jarnot, and Ahmad Almallah reconcile the urge to render and address social and political life with the desire to make the poem a self-sustaining work of the imagination."

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Cover of Brenda Hillman's book, Extra Hidden Life, among the Days

"'—kept losing self control,' the first line of [Brenda Hillman's] poem, exposes one danger of being in public, the danger of losing control. But is it in our best interest, or even rational, to demonstrate control over ourselves, our emotions, in the face of fascism or environmental collapse? What is the use of self control, the poem asks, as the speaker’s persona fractures on the page."
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