THE SIGNS
nightshade
tomato
mandrake
lake bardo
years gone by
beneath the willows
the altar stone
light and feathers
take this cup
please remember
a flickering sign
leaks elixir
gone to seed
corn and thistle
your mission here
the embers whisper
paradise
is a motion
a simple face
lost in gazing
BORDERLANDS
He sat on the couch
and laughed like a man child
Mama said when he was a boy
Daddy tossed him up
and his head hit the ceiling fan
Now he listens to his Daddy’s
ruined jokes and laughs
like a chained dog barking
lighting in filagree
access the northern clouds
He stutters when he speaks
to echo the thunder
HYPOSTASIS
A promise
A priesthood
of the void
from which
all things flow
To be broken
in plain sight
to hear the
call
and answer
with a life
surrendered
into that
forever
opening
question
This blog was the successor to the poetry section of the now no longer existing The Argotist Online. This blog is also no longer active, and is now just an archive.
Poem by Stephen Bett
Novel Lines 101: 101 alphabetical poems, each riffing on the opening line of a postmodern novel or metafiction. Antonio Lobo Antunes, Act o...
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THE STUDIO The vista which then opened was one I never could’ve anticipated in the Nineties—the PAFA campus was set as a series of jeweled b...
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EQUATIONS #25 When I converse with N on the phone, in about my thirteenth year, our heads open up together, and we create an imaginative lan...
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EQUATIONS #26 Audrey, as a tangent to N, took the idea, not of broadcasting gossip but of sharing and disseminating literature, as a fait ac...