The American Poetry Review

The world’s most exciting poetry-reading experience.

The American Poetry Review1 min read
The American Poetry Review
EDITOR Elizabeth Scanlon BUSINESS MANAGER Mike Duffy EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Thalia Geiger Hannah Gellman GENERAL COUNSEL Dennis J. Brennan, Esq. CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Christopher Buckley, Deborah Burnham, Jan Freeman, Leonard Gontarek, Everett Hoagland,
The American Poetry Review7 min read
Four Poems
After the Codex Yoalli Ehēcatl {From the Blue Vessel Emerges a Dark & Foamy Substance} From the substance, animated creatures. Winds. Winds who display characteristics of Quetzalcoatl. You think of what emerges from the vessel of you. Vessel inside a
The American Poetry Review6 min read
Unrequested Astonishment, Intricate Affection
New and Selected Poems Marie Howe W.W. Norton (2024) $28.99 In My Trade Is Mystery, Carl Phillips writes the following: “I’ve long been fascinated with the role of a first poem in a poet’s first book. It’s a bit like the literary equivalent of attend
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Two Poems
In high school my art teacher made me look at my reflection/gave me thirty minutes/to find beauty/I’ve never been able to look at myself in the mirror/againI spent five summers looking at the Texas skies/how each yearclouds outlive beauty/an old love
The American Poetry Review5 min read
Snow day & Other Poems
I set a tea kettle on top of a snowman.I’m pretending I don’t have laundry to do,that the drywall isn’t crackedin the bedroom, that I’m stillthe sixteenth inch thick bar of steelI was in my twenties, when if you bent meI sprang back to where I’d been
The American Poetry Review4 min read
Two Poems
I unsubscribed from the world’sscatter shot awfulness. That’s whyI always seem so out of the loop.I scroll the internet strapped.Buckled in. Ready to ride outanything disturbingto my Cancer quintessence.That’s how I nearly missed it,the baby elephant
The American Poetry Review9 min read
Two Poems
It was the summer the alewife ran aground earlyand the summer before they closedthe beaches at dusk. It was the summer after thechild nearly drowned in the quiet waters beyond the first sandbar, and it was the summer Ilost my favorite necklace to the
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Past Curfew
Home again, or back here at the houseI grew up in, I see three boys on bikesleave the woods at the dead end,the sun caught in the twig branchesabove them, the winter sky breath bluegiving way to purple, then to pink—a landscape cold to the eye even i
The American Poetry Review1 min read
Three Poems
Everything is easyat either endIt’s the middle And it’s all middleMy teeth are stillunbroken you will have to come closeto see Am I not the same donkeyon which you have ridden all your life?Have I treated you like this before? Here is my favorite par
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Five Poems
Inside this blue-blueforest and sweet oblivionof milk and stars. Your face and strangevoice come to mein dreams. Feral saint and orphandriving through death’s swarm, or morphinelike lullaby. Music, and the reverberatingchild’s white crib of night— Li
The American Poetry Review3 min read
Five Poems
what do we see when we see unfinishedAmerica? We don’t see Indians with arrowschasing cowboys with rifles, we don’t seethe vast and rocky mountains, the northwardbreaking Alaskan seas, we see cities,their standing towers taller than any of uscould ha
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Three Poems
There is a sundial in downtown Kannapolisbig as an above-ground pool. I watchan ROTC senior in full regaliapractice his pivot and step, his about face;an intersection; the idea of a manmarching in time– Damascus & Damascus.Sunpunctured loblollies lin
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Three Poems
O this is so painfulthe open concave of my broken heartthis boundary-less bordera kind of abandonment momentin resurrect. I remember how your lipsfeel on my handwhen you kissed—a whole worldand nothing else. Today the workers in their workgo. Cars so
The American Poetry Review26 min read
Encountering Seamus Heaney
Almost forty years ago, a graduate student at Harvard spent a spring term with a genius — then a lifetime reading his poems whose startling exploration of humanity’s propensity for violence still resonates today. 1 Last week, while searching the Inte
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Petitioning For A Hit
Blaspheme: a petitioning for a hit something opiate-likeblast me out of here not with a broom, swat, swatbut with a change in my brain chemistry not with a crowbaragainst my skull but a hummingbird-flutter in my veins radiating outto my exoskeleton m
The American Poetry Review5 min read
Family History in Abstract VIII & Other Poems
from The Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 Jul 1887, p. 4 A Carolina Romance Death of a Man Whose Life Was Blighted by Love A lie bloated in Carolina sun like a plum overripe, still clung but dreaming of release, the embrace of earth, marriage of dirt & seed
The American Poetry Review1 min read
On His Last Lucid Day
My stepfather asked for cupafter cup of hospital ice cream. He asked about my mother’sfat friend and whether watermelons weregrowing at home yet. How is Josh making outwith the balloon animals? We smiled, not sure if we shouldclarify or just go along
The American Poetry Review2 min read
A Vigil
Soon it was my turn to sit with my cousin’s body. They took away my navel orange and bottle of watersince to chew and swallow were acts now impossible for the body,offensive to its state in the bardo. The lawyers were sorting through thingsin his mus
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Three Poems
When I was young, the priest informedmy parents an old man was living inside me,and while he was not a demon, he wasbadly shaven and somewhat ill-temperedwhich perhaps explained why my deskresided in the hallway outside math class. The exorcism was m
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Five Poems
Most eye floaters are causedby age-relatedgarages that occur asthe vodka-like substance(vitreous) inside your eyesbecomes more liquid.Microscopic gemstone jewelryoutside the cartend to clumpand can cast tiny fur coats onyour retina. The fur coats you
The American Poetry Review11 min read
Rocking To A Rhythm
The Book of Genesis is the story of our planet’s beginnings, of Adam and Eve, of Noah and the flood, and then it tracks the nomadic family of Abraham and his descendants, their lineages and predicaments, including their odyssey to the land of Canaan.
The American Poetry Review1 min read
Winter Imaginary
A friend of minewith autism describes his feelings as paleyellow, then electric pink. He describesoppression as shopping malls: all those lightsoverwhelming as the same -ness of days now, fluorescentwith change. Today, I think he might be teaching me
The American Poetry Review3 min read
Two Poems
Because today, the leaves of the black walnut tree flicker a new season’s chartreuse,Because the pelts of both my cats gleam with the sheen of cherishment,Because Halloween-cobweb clouds in the blue blue blue blue blue,Because today, the only thing t
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Circus Fire
The big cat act was over, and The Great Wallendas were getting ready to workon the high wire. Not yet Arthur Konyot and his Hungarian Riders. Not yetLudwig Jacob emerging from the cramped quarters of his clown car. And let’ssay you and I have just wa

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