Poetry

“The bird lies still while the light goes on flying.”From “Unknown Age,” by W. S. Merwin Those with strapped-on wingsfor ages dreamt of flying like the birds and fell from cliffs broke limbs or died.But when I ask for the wind’s help getting beyond the mi

For Sister Rosemary Johnson, R.S.M.And a river went out of the place of pleasure to water paradise.—Gn 2:10Adam…could not have inferred from the fluidity and transparency of water that it would suffocate him….—Hume The botany that blessed Mendel’s pisum—Has

The editors of America are pleased to present the winner of the 2015 Foley Poetry Award.

I’ll return for one night, carrying youpapaya. Thickly cut. Resembling driftwood scattered below the parking lotI can see from Sacramento’s river bridges. I’m taking I-5 south to 99. Cut tomatoskins roll in foil. My chest drops like ocean swells I could onlysee once

“I am rebegot/ Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.” — John Donne, “A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day” Again and again, from nothingness I’m born.Each death I witness makes me more my own.I imagine each excess line of mine erased,each muscle

The lady of the cleanersdoesn’t care.She really doesn’t care.She writes your fatein a steamed infernoand presses with despair.Three pins in mouth—Judas, Cassius, Brutus,—she greets you lowand points with tail,like Cerberus,to where the stainedand spotted go.“Come again,