Poetry
This is Thin Air Online’s Archive of pieces that are classified as poetry, both long form and short.
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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,…
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May 5th By Mark Katrinak
Apricot trees stripped of anticipated fruitare left without their ornamental ways.High-desert’s cloak, post-equinoctial frostis gone, but unforgiven: another yearof barrenness is born—peach, cherry, plum;blooms—wedding-white, wind-torn—annulled.Junipers offering berries, a go-to gin,predominate the arid landscape, wind—intensifying—loosens peeling paint,labellum parching over time. One mustsubsist upon another sweetness ripeningwhen summer brings its heat and barking dogs,Sirius skies. The sunset…
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Cuttings by Alba Newmann Holmes
The gardenercognizant of thorns bends back the boughto cut an end editor of stems I see her glovesfalse roses printed on acid yellowor fluorescent green the dark palm laminatein tougher stuff. Yesterday when we walkedbeneath the overpass the mud was fillingwith what the snow became it ran and hidbeside the creek no one was saying…
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To Impossible Words by Elaine Katz
Being put in a refrigerator for two years does havocto time, drops you out.My arm is a rag at my side.My blue eyes turn brown.I study the world outside, the way streaks of rain twistthe pavement that had always been straight, smear the bark of the alder. Too…
