Poetry
This is Thin Air Online’s Archive of pieces that are classified as poetry, both long form and short.
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Floridian Birds by Grace Chapel
The common blackbird like spilled ink,like a dead screen, like wrought ironfurniture, song like a coach’s whistleand the grating of plastic partsin a ten-year-old printer. The starling like oil spills, constellationedand hungry for spiders. The sparrow,perpetual baby, the delightof something small and youngeating french fries off the ground. The cardinal like menarche. Fincheswith many faces…
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stunning by Don Farrell
spring was here but he left, maybehe’s changing clothes againafter soiling his dress – so maddening. spring, this loquacious young man who lovesdressing up – heels and hair – keepsslipping on the ice into mud…starting over. so hard to understand.wear jeans and duck boots – let’s go…but no…a whole new cleanup and gown. a sundress…
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Chronoscope 277: I chose again not to rush by John Walser
The strawberry plant’s creptout of the garden plotand rooted in the lawn. Next almost summerwe’ll see what blossoms:next almost summerwe’ll taste what fruits. The only hints of fading:a smudge of burnt umberraw as an accidenta small flaw high onjust one maple treein the backyard: and the shrivel of hanging verbena.(I learned this year howto deadhead…
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Fretwork, in Back of Buddha by Cameron Weeks
The subject noses forward into buried strugglefull of themes, perils, stage directions (his brittle handshake, an epistemic trouble). Toting a briefcase, transfigured into the vagueand vaporous insubstance of doubt, taking a notefrom his breast pocket a sturdier reality flees. Stones protest the empty airand the ink in the snow of the page a dizzy resolutionborrowing the weight of penancewhere we break as a fold in…
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Receding by Eli Coyle
I watch her from the windowsof her parent’s house— through the stained-glass memoriesof pomegranate and yarrow, tea coloring leakingpheromones and salt. I watch her from where I am,there is music in our veins, in our handsand in our breath and we are alone together. The summer becomes the fallbut doesn’t recognize itself. I hold her…
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A Series of Poems about Peter Grandbois by Peter Grandbois
Peter Grandbois (Why is he Afraid?) Why is he afraidTo stand at the door betweenWorlds, air thinning to bare threads Like morning shifting through blueWinter emptying the trees Peter Grandbois (Why is he disturbed?)Why is he disturbed?He floats calm as a shot corkIn a fierce current He reaches out a tired handLike the tide, the…
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Generations by Ellen June Wright
We are the first generation to trace our lost ancestry back to regions of our motherlandthe answer was always inside We were always the keyto unlock where we came from before tribal wars before traders before doors of no return before the great sea something’s invisible inside usthat grounds us to the earth to the…
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October by Yana Kane
I wake up to whiffles of swift wings, a back-and-forth of whistles and trills—a flock of starlings is alighting in the crown of the old birch tree outside my window. Dawn light pours through the lacework of branches that still retains some fluttering, translucent leaves. The tree no longer shades my window against sunlight. Instead,…
