Tag: minimalist poetry
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Elegy for a Future Death
Elegy for a Future Death began as a refusal. I wanted to write an elegy that didn’t console, didn’t mythologize, didn’t reach for metaphor. The poem strips away atmosphere and sentiment, leaving only the physical residue of absence: chain, pan, towel, nail. It’s a lyric of erosion—of what remains when return is no longer possible.…
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After the Movie
“After the Movie” emerged from the residue of a theater’s disassembly—the rupture of communal silence into the flicker of screens and the crackle of wrappers. I wanted to capture the moment when the film ends but its emotional architecture lingers in the objects and gestures left behind.
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The Transparent Mother
The Transparent Mother began as a refusal to sentimentalize disappearance. I wanted to write a poem where the mother’s vanishing wasn’t metaphor but physical fact—bare feet, bloody toes, a face turned away. The poem inherits her instability without naming it.
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Morove Cemetery
Morove Cemetery” began as a walk through memory and inheritance. I wanted to write a poem that refused sentimentality while still holding grief in its architecture. The poem is built from objects—signs, stones, flowers, fences—that carry the emotional weight without commentary. It’s a landscape elegy, where the dead are marked by what survives them: rust,…
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TICONDEROGA
TICONDEROGA began as a meditation on the physical relationship between body and object—specifically, the pencil as a site of memory, refusal, and violence. I wanted to write a poem that treated the pencil as a forensic artifact. The bite marks, the flaking paint, the taste of wood—all of these are real, bodily details. The poem…
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Wail
Wail began as a test of restraint. I wanted to write a death poem without ornament, without metaphor, without reaching for comfort. The whale song emerged early—strange, bodily, and distant—and I kept it because it refused explanation. The poem is about sound that leaves the body and doesn’t come back. It’s about the final sleep…
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Before My Memory Began
Before My Memory Began” comes from the earliest story I was ever told about myself—a moment I cannot remember but have carried as if I lived it. The poem moves between a beach scene and a hospital room, two images that have followed me for years. I wrote it to examine how memory is inherited,…
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Late January Arrives
“January Arrives” emerged from a moment of stillness fractured by motion—a hare vanishing into snow, my dog’s bark echoing through the cold. I wrote this poem to honor the tension between presence and disappearance, between the human gaze and the animal trace. I wanted to create a lyric that holds without reaching, that observes without…
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Reverb
Reverb” emerged from a moment of quiet recognition—when I realized I was speaking in my mother’s cadence, carrying her grief as if it were my own. The poem is built as a series of couplets that echo generational sorrow without resolving it. I wanted the rhythm to waver, to enact the instability of grief itself.…
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Getting There
“Getting There” emerged from the rhythm of my mornings—each act of survival measured, each gesture a hinge between mortality and renewal. I wrote it after noticing how my routines—feeding the dog, checking blood sugar, making coffee—had become a kind of metronome, ticking the sacred rhythm of the day. The poem honors that rhythm and the…
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Prometheus’ Last Day
Prometheus’ Last Day began as a meditation on endurance—what it means to rot without rescue. I wanted to strip the myth of Prometheus down to its final gesture: not defiance, but surrender. The poem resists metaphor and dramatization, choosing anatomical precision and ethical collapse.
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J’s Sky
“J’s Sky” emerged from the final moments I shared with someone I loved deeply. I wrote it in the hush that followed her passing, where grief had no metaphor—only gesture. The poem resists sentimentality and instead ritualizes consequence through pared-down language and elemental imagery. The sky becomes a container for ash, not answers. I wanted…
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Finalities
Finalities emerged from a moment of ritual clarity after my mother’s passing. I wanted to honor not just her memory, but the gestures others made to restore her—clipping her hair, dressing her in youth, renaming her Elsi. It stages mourning as a quiet choreography of speculative grace. It’s about the transformation of a woman into…
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Ten Prayer Requests Folded Like Love Notes
This poem began as a private act of grief and ritual—a way to place prayers where no one would find them but God. I wrote it in a shaky, illegible hand, not for clarity but for sincerity. The poem explores themes of sacred concealment, ethical restraint, and the refusal of spectacle. It’s a gesture of…
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Blue Mercy
“Blue Mercy” began as a quiet observation—a fly, a door, a gesture. But beneath its domestic stillness, I found a philosophical hinge: mercy as both restraint and release. The poem is an allegory of consequence, where the blue swatter becomes a symbol of ethical tension—between intervention and surrender, between light and disappearance. My wife’s presence,…
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Soft Closure
Soft Closure” emerged from the quiet aftermath of loss—when grief no longer demands spectacle but settles into the architecture of daily life. The poem is built around a single domestic gesture: a door closing softly. It resists sentimentality and instead leans into restraint, letting silence and echo do the emotional work. I wanted to evoke…