<![CDATA[Poetry Forum - Intensive critique and workshopping]]>

<![CDATA[Poetry Forum - Intensive critique and workshopping]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/ Fri, 25 Sep 2026 16:55:31 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[Tampered Plates]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27607.html Tue, 22 Sep 2026 05:59:41 +0000 Harroldinho]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27607.html Tampered plates

I miss that new car smell.
Fresh rose ribbon.
That piercing red
riding through the hood
like laser-guided
double-dutch strobes.
I hate your prickles
you should shave them.
They hurt my hands, and I’m a
Carpenter.
Not the last name though.
I pray to Juno,
we’ll be blessed with you know
the thing itself.
Little lamb, I can save
you from these sc
alprs — these paparazzi
birdhouse-looking clankers.
You’re getting scammed.
The flock arrives – a murder.
Anguish.

MINI-VAN ROOF-RACK
HA-LO SHIN-ING.
WRN-KL3S
RIP-PLE MY-PAINT.
SCH-OOL MOR-NING
TRA-FFIC MAN-EUVERS.
BAR-REL ROLLS
LE-AVE YOU-IN
FIX-ATION PLA-TES.

You’ve blessed my lens.
Stored in amber,
heard you deserved it.
Querying through clouds,
collected like hot wheels cars,
unhealed blisterpacks—
childhood scars.
I’m up here crucified
while you spread blatant lies.
In my black cap,
Joe Goldberg,
you stand out from the herd.
Wait, that’s not you.
You’re slimmer than I,
with my all-seeing eye.
I’m like your
big brother.

AL-BAT ROSS-CANT
SH-OOT MED-OWN.
PH-OTO SHOOT-IM
A-SELF DRI-VING MO-DEL.
THE-RES NO-SECRET.
IS-TRUT DOWN-THE
FREE-WAY. GET-YOUR
PAP-ER PLATES.
H4N-DL3 THE-SE
WIN-GS.

Imported, exotic.
I love your features.
Fluttering wipers
with a wide bumper.
You should show your
grille more! Wendy’s
biggiebag crumbs on the seats.
Love your handles
and the way you handle.
Unlike these American
Kia’s.

A-2002 TRANS FIRE-BIRD.
LAD -LAZA RUS-IRISE
WITH-MY RED-HAIR
EAT-MEN LIKE-EYRE.
RAT-HER CHOO-SE
THE-BEAR.]]> Tampered plates

I miss that new car smell.
Fresh rose ribbon.
That piercing red
riding through the hood
like laser-guided
double-dutch strobes.
I hate your prickles
you should shave them.
They hurt my hands, and I’m a
Carpenter.
Not the last name though.
I pray to Juno,
we’ll be blessed with you know
the thing itself.
Little lamb, I can save
you from these sc
alprs — these paparazzi
birdhouse-looking clankers.
You’re getting scammed.
The flock arrives – a murder.
Anguish.

MINI-VAN ROOF-RACK
HA-LO SHIN-ING.
WRN-KL3S
RIP-PLE MY-PAINT.
SCH-OOL MOR-NING
TRA-FFIC MAN-EUVERS.
BAR-REL ROLLS
LE-AVE YOU-IN
FIX-ATION PLA-TES.

You’ve blessed my lens.
Stored in amber,
heard you deserved it.
Querying through clouds,
collected like hot wheels cars,
unhealed blisterpacks—
childhood scars.
I’m up here crucified
while you spread blatant lies.
In my black cap,
Joe Goldberg,
you stand out from the herd.
Wait, that’s not you.
You’re slimmer than I,
with my all-seeing eye.
I’m like your
big brother.

AL-BAT ROSS-CANT
SH-OOT MED-OWN.
PH-OTO SHOOT-IM
A-SELF DRI-VING MO-DEL.
THE-RES NO-SECRET.
IS-TRUT DOWN-THE
FREE-WAY. GET-YOUR
PAP-ER PLATES.
H4N-DL3 THE-SE
WIN-GS.

Imported, exotic.
I love your features.
Fluttering wipers
with a wide bumper.
You should show your
grille more! Wendy’s
biggiebag crumbs on the seats.
Love your handles
and the way you handle.
Unlike these American
Kia’s.

A-2002 TRANS FIRE-BIRD.
LAD -LAZA RUS-IRISE
WITH-MY RED-HAIR
EAT-MEN LIKE-EYRE.
RAT-HER CHOO-SE
THE-BEAR.]]> <![CDATA[On Falling From a Bicycle, Hitting One’s Head]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27602.html Sun, 20 Sep 2026 23:26:44 +0000 matsunosuperfan]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27602.html On Falling From a Bicycle, Hitting One’s Head
Hard and Waking to a Not Unkindly Caretaker
Named Jean-Marie

Violence has always been a friend
to France, where the wineglass was invented
based on how a neck without its head looks
more or less like a young woman’s breast,
or so the story goes. I always want to ask,
What story? and Where does it go? but I know
being clever gets you killed, and I enjoy my life.
I don’t want to be separated quite yet
from the magic bean, the prune that stirs the drink. Amuse
ma bouche, Napoleon—I think that’s Gertrude Stein. It might just be
Joan Rivers though. There’s no way to be sure. If you’re blessed
with a strong idea, never look it up.
The facts too often prove it wrong, and then
what can you do? You can’t just go on fucking anything
that pulls off leather. Once they take your blood
there’s no pretending you’re not sick.
It was William Carlos who first called the hospital
contagious, clocked its hallways white as pain,
as valium and sheep. It’s a barbaric business, nowhere
anyone should hurry. You take one step
through those glass doors, the meter starts to run.]]> On Falling From a Bicycle, Hitting One’s Head
Hard and Waking to a Not Unkindly Caretaker
Named Jean-Marie

Violence has always been a friend
to France, where the wineglass was invented
based on how a neck without its head looks
more or less like a young woman’s breast,
or so the story goes. I always want to ask,
What story? and Where does it go? but I know
being clever gets you killed, and I enjoy my life.
I don’t want to be separated quite yet
from the magic bean, the prune that stirs the drink. Amuse
ma bouche, Napoleon—I think that’s Gertrude Stein. It might just be
Joan Rivers though. There’s no way to be sure. If you’re blessed
with a strong idea, never look it up.
The facts too often prove it wrong, and then
what can you do? You can’t just go on fucking anything
that pulls off leather. Once they take your blood
there’s no pretending you’re not sick.
It was William Carlos who first called the hospital
contagious, clocked its hallways white as pain,
as valium and sheep. It’s a barbaric business, nowhere
anyone should hurry. You take one step
through those glass doors, the meter starts to run.]]> <![CDATA[A Perfect Heron]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27574.html Thu, 10 Sep 2026 05:21:12 +0000 matsunosuperfan]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27574.html A Perfect Heron

Our bodies carved an X into the earth
where we had sat for hours watching
stupid birds dip their blue heads into the fog

collapsed around the lake, like they
couldn’t find another fish, or figure out
whose turn it was to brush the water’s hair.

Sometimes, when it’s late and no one’s there
to hear the silly things I say out loud
instead of doing myself harm, I pray.

There was a short man with a long gun
on that purple evening we took Aspen down
to run wild over all the sudden flowers.

You said it looked like someone
dragged a bag of seeds behind them
overnight, and in the morning,

every ant had its own sun. Sometimes,
I like the things you say so much
I have to kiss you.

It was a perfect heron
and he killed it with one shot.

]]> A Perfect Heron

Our bodies carved an X into the earth
where we had sat for hours watching
stupid birds dip their blue heads into the fog

collapsed around the lake, like they
couldn’t find another fish, or figure out
whose turn it was to brush the water’s hair.

Sometimes, when it’s late and no one’s there
to hear the silly things I say out loud
instead of doing myself harm, I pray.

There was a short man with a long gun
on that purple evening we took Aspen down
to run wild over all the sudden flowers.

You said it looked like someone
dragged a bag of seeds behind them
overnight, and in the morning,

every ant had its own sun. Sometimes,
I like the things you say so much
I have to kiss you.

It was a perfect heron
and he killed it with one shot.

]]> <![CDATA[Rapture]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27569.html Tue, 08 Sep 2026 19:29:18 +0000 GibbousOfTheNight1]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27569.html the world drops away,
I brush with night,
watch pieces of the sky
fall
into the hollow of my chest
where I digest
the coital cosmos
breathing velvet
breaths.

At glitter dusk,
when the world seems to rest
on the precipice of permanence,
I follow the last exhale of a winding day
up a dusty road
where hooded pines sway.
The fevered hue
darkened, subdued,
bruised in its final glow.
The blind moon
climbs the
vault of trees,
moving
with golden ease.

Standing in a
river
of wind,
my body snaps
into place
with a crack
like thunder—
I am alive,
Everything
momentarily
Exact.

At mid-day,
when the glass eye of afternoon
sweeps across the bay,
the westward windows cloud with cataract stare,
full of everything,
seeing nothing there.

I come to water,
hand to sun,
cupping delusions of contentment—
lake of curved alloy,
mercury-smooth,
where husks of
clover heads nod off
and dragonfly bellies
glow with liquid light
inside
a time-suspended beam.]]> the world drops away,
I brush with night,
watch pieces of the sky
fall
into the hollow of my chest
where I digest
the coital cosmos
breathing velvet
breaths.

At glitter dusk,
when the world seems to rest
on the precipice of permanence,
I follow the last exhale of a winding day
up a dusty road
where hooded pines sway.
The fevered hue
darkened, subdued,
bruised in its final glow.
The blind moon
climbs the
vault of trees,
moving
with golden ease.

Standing in a
river
of wind,
my body snaps
into place
with a crack
like thunder—
I am alive,
Everything
momentarily
Exact.

At mid-day,
when the glass eye of afternoon
sweeps across the bay,
the westward windows cloud with cataract stare,
full of everything,
seeing nothing there.

I come to water,
hand to sun,
cupping delusions of contentment—
lake of curved alloy,
mercury-smooth,
where husks of
clover heads nod off
and dragonfly bellies
glow with liquid light
inside
a time-suspended beam.]]> <![CDATA[Of Recognizable Women]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27560.html Wed, 02 Sep 2026 20:05:13 +0000 matsunosuperfan]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27560.html Of Recognizable Women

My mother scrubs her life down to the knuckle
in a cone of light. It is far enough away
to call this light the past: my mother, turning

from the past to look over her shoulder
calls me by the name
only she can get away with using.

Like the nuns of childhood
with their secrets and forbidden sex, restraint
is always at her side, a goat pulled by a string.

It’s Saturday, the world
is an embarrassment of dishes
but she doesn’t light a cigarette

or anything like that. A bistro in Atlanta
on the night before my first performance,
Madeleine Klink’s mother shoves a glass

under her nose. She knows my mother
doesn’t drink. Just smell it,

she says. In 1998 I watch my gorgeous sisters
drag themselves through various degrees
of what we didn’t call disordered eating,

boys with feather pillow lips
all parted in their wake. I remember
being on that boat, waving from the hull

as a man whose jackets rhymed
took pictures of the girls. Everywhere you looked, a dolphin
carving arcs as dolphins do,

waves and waves of gulls, the kind of morning
people kill for. In the air, a crying sound
that never seemed to end.]]> Of Recognizable Women

My mother scrubs her life down to the knuckle
in a cone of light. It is far enough away
to call this light the past: my mother, turning

from the past to look over her shoulder
calls me by the name
only she can get away with using.

Like the nuns of childhood
with their secrets and forbidden sex, restraint
is always at her side, a goat pulled by a string.

It’s Saturday, the world
is an embarrassment of dishes
but she doesn’t light a cigarette

or anything like that. A bistro in Atlanta
on the night before my first performance,
Madeleine Klink’s mother shoves a glass

under her nose. She knows my mother
doesn’t drink. Just smell it,

she says. In 1998 I watch my gorgeous sisters
drag themselves through various degrees
of what we didn’t call disordered eating,

boys with feather pillow lips
all parted in their wake. I remember
being on that boat, waving from the hull

as a man whose jackets rhymed
took pictures of the girls. Everywhere you looked, a dolphin
carving arcs as dolphins do,

waves and waves of gulls, the kind of morning
people kill for. In the air, a crying sound
that never seemed to end.]]> <![CDATA[(v2) On Finding Stairs to Nowhere in the Woods Behind Your House]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27540.html Wed, 26 Aug 2026 04:03:30 +0000 matsunosuperfan]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27540.html On Finding Stairs to Nowhere in the Woods
Behind Your House

Just in time, you are made to think
you might be getting somewhere, but a river
funneling the same chromatic fish back
to the puddle where it multiplied
is gravity, not progress.

My parents never looked at anyone
except each other, they would drive that bus
without regret through endless squares of nowhere
because Life’s too short or Hey, we've got the time.
So many cows we’d never meet,

hills stretched out like billboards,
the idea of vacation as a postcard
buried in my brother's swimsuit magazine
that made me scared of women. I didn’t want to die
without experiencing perfect breasts,

I knew my awful softness
not to want to die at all. The future looks the same today
as it looked to me then, which is to say: blurry.
It smirks back at me through the glass. It knows
something I don’t.

The past is running shirtless
through your wedding party flask
in hand, asking the MC if he knows where
to find a grand piano, touching all the bridesmaids
and embarrassing itself.

It always leaves a little less than what you need,
the reason addicts like you can’t help
coming back for more
and more
and more.

]]> On Finding Stairs to Nowhere in the Woods
Behind Your House

Just in time, you are made to think
you might be getting somewhere, but a river
funneling the same chromatic fish back
to the puddle where it multiplied
is gravity, not progress.

My parents never looked at anyone
except each other, they would drive that bus
without regret through endless squares of nowhere
because Life’s too short or Hey, we've got the time.
So many cows we’d never meet,

hills stretched out like billboards,
the idea of vacation as a postcard
buried in my brother's swimsuit magazine
that made me scared of women. I didn’t want to die
without experiencing perfect breasts,

I knew my awful softness
not to want to die at all. The future looks the same today
as it looked to me then, which is to say: blurry.
It smirks back at me through the glass. It knows
something I don’t.

The past is running shirtless
through your wedding party flask
in hand, asking the MC if he knows where
to find a grand piano, touching all the bridesmaids
and embarrassing itself.

It always leaves a little less than what you need,
the reason addicts like you can’t help
coming back for more
and more
and more.

]]> <![CDATA[A Dark Room Facing East]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27533.html Sun, 23 Aug 2026 15:48:37 +0000 Stan]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27533.html A Dark Room Facing East

A skylight lets flashes through,
the fan shuttering a thin shaft
on 35 mm sheets.
Scorched chair legs
smear faint ash shadows
to the rod-base, which smelts
a pitch gash from the covers.
In the heat, blades gather
under their wings
what shows in cracks:
The man’s face made up
of the strain he was mothering.]]> A Dark Room Facing East

A skylight lets flashes through,
the fan shuttering a thin shaft
on 35 mm sheets.
Scorched chair legs
smear faint ash shadows
to the rod-base, which smelts
a pitch gash from the covers.
In the heat, blades gather
under their wings
what shows in cracks:
The man’s face made up
of the strain he was mothering.]]> <![CDATA[Amy (v2)]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27531.html Sat, 22 Aug 2026 09:26:30 +0000 matsunosuperfan]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27531.html Amy

In some lean friend’s apartment, or a hotel room
gigged out by Island, tapping to the amped guitar,
toque of stormy bees on her dramatic head

more than half-toppled, hanging on for life
like everyone you’ll ever know. The song pours out
her body like a midnight train to anywhere but Memphis,

there’s an ashtray growing restless
on the bureau, she is picking gently
at withdrawal through her jeans. Don’t ask me how I know.

Someone turns the doorknob, the guitarist
tugs your heart out through your stomach,
and it’s something in the way she rolls her eyes to heaven

like she’s looking for approval
when she hits the high, the crowd below
collapses into one immense romantic O,

scatters east and west like little leaguers
with their hands spread out to catch the last fly ball
of every summer, and she’s gone

before her voice should break, or anything
as precious as a child.

]]> Amy

In some lean friend’s apartment, or a hotel room
gigged out by Island, tapping to the amped guitar,
toque of stormy bees on her dramatic head

more than half-toppled, hanging on for life
like everyone you’ll ever know. The song pours out
her body like a midnight train to anywhere but Memphis,

there’s an ashtray growing restless
on the bureau, she is picking gently
at withdrawal through her jeans. Don’t ask me how I know.

Someone turns the doorknob, the guitarist
tugs your heart out through your stomach,
and it’s something in the way she rolls her eyes to heaven

like she’s looking for approval
when she hits the high, the crowd below
collapses into one immense romantic O,

scatters east and west like little leaguers
with their hands spread out to catch the last fly ball
of every summer, and she’s gone

before her voice should break, or anything
as precious as a child.

]]> <![CDATA[Africa]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27520.html Mon, 17 Aug 2026 11:24:56 +0000 RiverNotch]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27520.html Africa

1. Delenda Est

First the verdure that was the Sahara then
a city for growing figs, a country for hosting
nonbelievers, that same country's harbors,

experiments in empire, vain dictators:
here you will always find some thing that cries
"destroy me!" and the universe's answer,
only what portion now maintains this echo?

2. Cabo Verde

The Mansa's ambition to find what long ago
Plato envisioned, what Erikson later found,
and what even later Columbus would despoil,

led him to gather Mali's nascent wealth
and purchase a fleet of ships, recruiting men
from all around the coast to be their crew.

At first, the winds blew straightly and steadily west
but then each day the sun climbed up the sky
lower and lower, Polaris drew nearer and nearer,

until they feared that they were trapped in a gyre
soon to restore them far too early home.
They were about to try and change their tack

when from the prow of their foremost a shout
rang even to the aftmost of the file:
"Land ho!" The sailors, at their captains' nod,

scrambled to skirt around the sight and find
safe harbor for their barks, only they spied
along a line of sand between the sea

and endless laurel forests familiar signs:
either from native stone or wood carved out
stood haloed crosses. To these Blessed Isles
they had been bested by some Irish jack.

3. Sénégal

Resistance to this foreign way of life
would have continued if another way
had not gone past intrusion through the trade

of human lives for manufactured goods
into conquest, a struggle borne through arms
more than through preaching ending not with vengeance

but with a lasting reprieve, the squabbling neighbors
sensing much greater harm in competition.
And now, in this part of the world, Islam is seen

as brotherhood's beating heart, while the Holy Rood,
raised for a Man who declared he came not with peace
but with a gleaming sword, is a dismal record

of depopulation through mass enslavement followed
by an abundantly pointless imperial project.
Wherefore, to those that denigrate, a question:
what kaftan passes through tall grass unstained?

4. The Congo

One theory goes that sunlight, when absorbed
by naked skin, transforms into nutrition
that helps a man grow tall, and in the dense

rainforests of these banks, such light could barely
enter the growth, the people turning "pygmy",
only in part through such a thoughtless name

they're often seen as less than people---some
would chain them up for work, while others even
as cattle may be butchered to be eaten

for senseless slaughter---better to remember
how in their vivid tapestry of tongues
they're fond to call themselves: Batwa, Bambuti,
Baka, Bongo, Bambenga, and Bakola.

5. Namibia and Botswana

Consider these two desert countries, neither
having much value in terms of their position
nor (when first by their colonial masters

spotted) in terms of nature's hardly hidden
gifts, today more stable than their neighbors
yet only one's more prosperous, the poorer

still caught up in the games its masters played,
facing first genocide then apartheid,
the richer completely superfluous---the former

never within its borders finding wealth,
the latter after freedom striking gems.
Stability is simply never catching

so much attention that what greedy empires
cast you a lurid glance still leave your borders
meek and organic, free from ethnic strife,

and what lands lie between them scarcely scoured,
whereas prosperity is just as simply
the luck of the draw, the proper set of cards

dealt at the proper time by a proper hand.
History, as it is, has little greatness
except in its consequences, in the burdens
carried by its survivors and their offspring.

6. Tithonus, King of Kings

The giant asked the god to be immortal
but not to be divine, neither to lie
nor sit nor stand nor even leap beyond

the limits of this flesh, for he knew well
Eos could offer one thing or another
but never both. To live as an idea

means vanishing in the instant that the mind
which spawned you passes into another room,
to live forever is to be the earth

on which all other lives proceed in courses
both more abrupt and worthier to take:
still, he could not conceive of any horror

greater than that of death, not even the body
withered so much that only the jaws, the throat,
the shoulders, the chest, and the diaphragm could move,

which is how both his offspring came to favor
risking their youth for senseless causes, Memnon
fighting to save a city he knew was doomed,

Alcides on the road to achieve his labors
by Emathion blocked, the noble line
that towering over all their Ethiopian
subjects governed as emperors cut short.

]]> Africa

1. Delenda Est

First the verdure that was the Sahara then
a city for growing figs, a country for hosting
nonbelievers, that same country's harbors,

experiments in empire, vain dictators:
here you will always find some thing that cries
"destroy me!" and the universe's answer,
only what portion now maintains this echo?

2. Cabo Verde

The Mansa's ambition to find what long ago
Plato envisioned, what Erikson later found,
and what even later Columbus would despoil,

led him to gather Mali's nascent wealth
and purchase a fleet of ships, recruiting men
from all around the coast to be their crew.

At first, the winds blew straightly and steadily west
but then each day the sun climbed up the sky
lower and lower, Polaris drew nearer and nearer,

until they feared that they were trapped in a gyre
soon to restore them far too early home.
They were about to try and change their tack

when from the prow of their foremost a shout
rang even to the aftmost of the file:
"Land ho!" The sailors, at their captains' nod,

scrambled to skirt around the sight and find
safe harbor for their barks, only they spied
along a line of sand between the sea

and endless laurel forests familiar signs:
either from native stone or wood carved out
stood haloed crosses. To these Blessed Isles
they had been bested by some Irish jack.

3. Sénégal

Resistance to this foreign way of life
would have continued if another way
had not gone past intrusion through the trade

of human lives for manufactured goods
into conquest, a struggle borne through arms
more than through preaching ending not with vengeance

but with a lasting reprieve, the squabbling neighbors
sensing much greater harm in competition.
And now, in this part of the world, Islam is seen

as brotherhood's beating heart, while the Holy Rood,
raised for a Man who declared he came not with peace
but with a gleaming sword, is a dismal record

of depopulation through mass enslavement followed
by an abundantly pointless imperial project.
Wherefore, to those that denigrate, a question:
what kaftan passes through tall grass unstained?

4. The Congo

One theory goes that sunlight, when absorbed
by naked skin, transforms into nutrition
that helps a man grow tall, and in the dense

rainforests of these banks, such light could barely
enter the growth, the people turning "pygmy",
only in part through such a thoughtless name

they're often seen as less than people---some
would chain them up for work, while others even
as cattle may be butchered to be eaten

for senseless slaughter---better to remember
how in their vivid tapestry of tongues
they're fond to call themselves: Batwa, Bambuti,
Baka, Bongo, Bambenga, and Bakola.

5. Namibia and Botswana

Consider these two desert countries, neither
having much value in terms of their position
nor (when first by their colonial masters

spotted) in terms of nature's hardly hidden
gifts, today more stable than their neighbors
yet only one's more prosperous, the poorer

still caught up in the games its masters played,
facing first genocide then apartheid,
the richer completely superfluous---the former

never within its borders finding wealth,
the latter after freedom striking gems.
Stability is simply never catching

so much attention that what greedy empires
cast you a lurid glance still leave your borders
meek and organic, free from ethnic strife,

and what lands lie between them scarcely scoured,
whereas prosperity is just as simply
the luck of the draw, the proper set of cards

dealt at the proper time by a proper hand.
History, as it is, has little greatness
except in its consequences, in the burdens
carried by its survivors and their offspring.

6. Tithonus, King of Kings

The giant asked the god to be immortal
but not to be divine, neither to lie
nor sit nor stand nor even leap beyond

the limits of this flesh, for he knew well
Eos could offer one thing or another
but never both. To live as an idea

means vanishing in the instant that the mind
which spawned you passes into another room,
to live forever is to be the earth

on which all other lives proceed in courses
both more abrupt and worthier to take:
still, he could not conceive of any horror

greater than that of death, not even the body
withered so much that only the jaws, the throat,
the shoulders, the chest, and the diaphragm could move,

which is how both his offspring came to favor
risking their youth for senseless causes, Memnon
fighting to save a city he knew was doomed,

Alcides on the road to achieve his labors
by Emathion blocked, the noble line
that towering over all their Ethiopian
subjects governed as emperors cut short.

]]> <![CDATA[Men and Women]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27519.html Sat, 15 Aug 2026 06:42:32 +0000 matsunosuperfan]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27519.html Men and Women

Men and women differ. We desire
differently: one wishes for the moon
to take them back, the other aims and fires
at the unexplained, mistakes a loon’s
elastic crooning in the dark for sirens
chasing death across a dotted line
and barrels naked, dazed and dripping, shining
through the sheets into a field of columbine
and dreams. Men I don’t pretend to know—
their mouths that always somehow taste of honeycomb
and razor burn, the alcoholic’s sting—
women understand a bird. I think
I’d like to be one for a life or two
and drink the night alone, alone, alone.]]> Men and Women

Men and women differ. We desire
differently: one wishes for the moon
to take them back, the other aims and fires
at the unexplained, mistakes a loon’s
elastic crooning in the dark for sirens
chasing death across a dotted line
and barrels naked, dazed and dripping, shining
through the sheets into a field of columbine
and dreams. Men I don’t pretend to know—
their mouths that always somehow taste of honeycomb
and razor burn, the alcoholic’s sting—
women understand a bird. I think
I’d like to be one for a life or two
and drink the night alone, alone, alone.]]> <![CDATA[West]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27505.html Sun, 02 Aug 2026 07:16:42 +0000 RiverNotch]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27505.html West

1. The Birth of Capitalism

A giant from the northern coasts of France
struck with a club the giant sat on the shining
cliffs of Dover, stomped on his slumping back,

and shouted "Now I'm lord of all this land!"
Wiping away the brains about the knot
of wood he used for a weapon, he drew a knife

and started to skin and butcher the corpse beneath him,
passing the ribs for braising and loins for frying
to gluttons he called peers---to himself leaving,

beside the nutritious offal, the foremost right
to settle any disputes that should arise
between his peers and the corpse's former dependents

kept somewhat free as labor-selling tenants.
Thus started a vicious cycle: with all this work
vended for mere subsistence and laws too rigid

to license overt exploitation, the emphasis shifted
to making the land more productive, to feeding the city
where workshops and factories sprang, to birthing a world
where markets could supplant both laws and lords.

2. The Fountain of Youth

This gift of God was found in Florida's tip
first by the peoples to whom the land was given
then by the peoples who through war and sickness

stole it: a drink which all those later founders
esteemed to grant them vigor, making them young
at heart and body, if not at mind and soul.

Rather, it proved the reverse. A single sip
and the vessel stays its course, gathering worms
while the crew is all replaced by mewling babes,

but how could the conqueror have learned all this
without experiment? Why should they trust
the word of beggared ghosts or beaten dogs?

And should a slave be risked to reach a state
for which the free repine? So thought the men
who first imbibed the fountain's blessed waters,

making immortal imbeciles of themselves:
a gloomy circle of gaunt and grey-haired figures
huddled around a pair of upturned gargoyles
that drool forever with divine revenge.

3. Acapulco

Here was another giant: a cruel frame
of bulging forehead, crooked eyes, and lips
perennially drooling, yet housing a tender soul.

Often he sat on the shore, dreaming of boats
that came in from the ocean laden with riches
his vision could only sketch, could only shape

and color as fuzzy forms, as mere abstractions,
for which he would offer the singular treasure he thought
he had in his hoard: silver and precious stones.

Often was monthly turned weekly turned daily turned hourly
turned every waking minute he'd rather spend
by the sea---he no longer slept---he was the shore,

his friends found moss and ferns and grass on his back
give way to shrubs and trees, the bones exposed
as an incoherent scaffold of white sand,
until all that was left of himself was his mad dream.

4. Guam

Their Empire's western border is the eastern
edge of the sea named after us: those islands
we once considered sisters, yet they never

fought for their freedom when we fought for ours.
Perhaps they believed that when our latest common
masters allowed us to leave, they would become

more than a stopping point for treasure-hunting
galleons turned into steamships on their westward
courses, that their lonely little boulders

floating like lost coconuts near the center
of the Pacific would instantly be considered
destinations in and of themselves, exchanging
the beggarly commonwealth for the one more brutal---

5. Pearl

Pearl of the Orient Seas: what does this mean?
What sort of pearl are we? Formed by a clam---
gigantic, oft mistaken for its shell

by lacking the usual luster---or by an oyster?
How are we built? A perfect sphere, a teardrop,
perhaps a malformed button or even something

completely uneven---again, more like the shell
of our molluscan mother---whence our color:
are we the white of noon? the pink of dusk?

the black of a moonless night? the golden spears
thrust by the sun across the sky at dawn?
or even some kind of rainbow, our nacre skin

burnished beyond recognition to something born
of earth and flame and not of flesh and water?
Were we dredged up or farmed? What sort of use

became of us: a bead in an endless string,
one half a pair of earrings, or the chief
draw to some tall crown or weighty locket?

Whose hands have held us? Who continues to hold?
And will we be passed down again or sold
or, as the parable goes, cast off to pigs
and crushed at last between their greedy teeth?

]]> West

1. The Birth of Capitalism

A giant from the northern coasts of France
struck with a club the giant sat on the shining
cliffs of Dover, stomped on his slumping back,

and shouted "Now I'm lord of all this land!"
Wiping away the brains about the knot
of wood he used for a weapon, he drew a knife

and started to skin and butcher the corpse beneath him,
passing the ribs for braising and loins for frying
to gluttons he called peers---to himself leaving,

beside the nutritious offal, the foremost right
to settle any disputes that should arise
between his peers and the corpse's former dependents

kept somewhat free as labor-selling tenants.
Thus started a vicious cycle: with all this work
vended for mere subsistence and laws too rigid

to license overt exploitation, the emphasis shifted
to making the land more productive, to feeding the city
where workshops and factories sprang, to birthing a world
where markets could supplant both laws and lords.

2. The Fountain of Youth

This gift of God was found in Florida's tip
first by the peoples to whom the land was given
then by the peoples who through war and sickness

stole it: a drink which all those later founders
esteemed to grant them vigor, making them young
at heart and body, if not at mind and soul.

Rather, it proved the reverse. A single sip
and the vessel stays its course, gathering worms
while the crew is all replaced by mewling babes,

but how could the conqueror have learned all this
without experiment? Why should they trust
the word of beggared ghosts or beaten dogs?

And should a slave be risked to reach a state
for which the free repine? So thought the men
who first imbibed the fountain's blessed waters,

making immortal imbeciles of themselves:
a gloomy circle of gaunt and grey-haired figures
huddled around a pair of upturned gargoyles
that drool forever with divine revenge.

3. Acapulco

Here was another giant: a cruel frame
of bulging forehead, crooked eyes, and lips
perennially drooling, yet housing a tender soul.

Often he sat on the shore, dreaming of boats
that came in from the ocean laden with riches
his vision could only sketch, could only shape

and color as fuzzy forms, as mere abstractions,
for which he would offer the singular treasure he thought
he had in his hoard: silver and precious stones.

Often was monthly turned weekly turned daily turned hourly
turned every waking minute he'd rather spend
by the sea---he no longer slept---he was the shore,

his friends found moss and ferns and grass on his back
give way to shrubs and trees, the bones exposed
as an incoherent scaffold of white sand,
until all that was left of himself was his mad dream.

4. Guam

Their Empire's western border is the eastern
edge of the sea named after us: those islands
we once considered sisters, yet they never

fought for their freedom when we fought for ours.
Perhaps they believed that when our latest common
masters allowed us to leave, they would become

more than a stopping point for treasure-hunting
galleons turned into steamships on their westward
courses, that their lonely little boulders

floating like lost coconuts near the center
of the Pacific would instantly be considered
destinations in and of themselves, exchanging
the beggarly commonwealth for the one more brutal---

5. Pearl

Pearl of the Orient Seas: what does this mean?
What sort of pearl are we? Formed by a clam---
gigantic, oft mistaken for its shell

by lacking the usual luster---or by an oyster?
How are we built? A perfect sphere, a teardrop,
perhaps a malformed button or even something

completely uneven---again, more like the shell
of our molluscan mother---whence our color:
are we the white of noon? the pink of dusk?

the black of a moonless night? the golden spears
thrust by the sun across the sky at dawn?
or even some kind of rainbow, our nacre skin

burnished beyond recognition to something born
of earth and flame and not of flesh and water?
Were we dredged up or farmed? What sort of use

became of us: a bead in an endless string,
one half a pair of earrings, or the chief
draw to some tall crown or weighty locket?

Whose hands have held us? Who continues to hold?
And will we be passed down again or sold
or, as the parable goes, cast off to pigs
and crushed at last between their greedy teeth?

]]> <![CDATA[Haiku 1 - Apples]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27504.html Sat, 01 Aug 2026 19:41:04 +0000 Mic]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27504.html picking apples in harvest
want sweet and crunch; sour]]> picking apples in harvest
want sweet and crunch; sour]]> <![CDATA[As in, "of the horizon"]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27499.html Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:28:21 +0000 matsunosuperfan]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27499.html As in, “of the horizon”

A summer day is something like a watermelon,
Ellis says, digging trenches with her toe, my accomplice niece.
We’ve come to watch seagulls steal bread, to lurk
among the bathers in their underwear like creeps.
I can’t resist—I ask her what she means. You know,
she says. With all the little seeds.

When you spy people from a plane, they look like seeds,
not ants. Ants are always moving chunks of watermelon
back and forth; people know
a hundred thousand different ways to sit. Garrisons of knees
entrenched in sand, vines of sunscreen creeping
down dilapidated towers, and off in the moat, lurking

like assassins: hungry teenage eyes. They lurch and lurk
their way between the waves like seeds
lashed out by trebuchets, creep
around the curl of tides, get washed up like watermelon
rinds along the beach. Ellis always picks her knees
up when she runs. I taught her that, you know.

Her mom’s been riding waves again. I know
the signs: a look over the shoulder, something lurking
in the eyes. Less cogent declarations: Owls have knees,
you know. They just don’t use them. Seeds
have memories and you can train them how to grow. “Watermelon
Sugar” is a remix of a Motown song. Radiohead stole “Creep”

from Pat Metheny. She calls me a creep
for screening her calls, and she’s not wrong, but I know
what goes on. I am properly vigilant: “Watermelon
Sugar” could be their word for the juice. The voice lurking
into my kitchen from a number in Bulgaria perhaps seeds
cells of dealers here who break men’s knees

like melons. I like my knees,
so I don’t mention any of this to Bethany, who creeps
into my room at night to make seeds
from my bones. I know
she’d love to feed me to the lurkers
on the corner with their watermelon

slice-mouths, but there’s vodka in the watermelon, seeds
to plant, and Ellis now is looking bored, lurking low, knees
rising as waves creep in like only they know how.

]]> As in, “of the horizon”

A summer day is something like a watermelon,
Ellis says, digging trenches with her toe, my accomplice niece.
We’ve come to watch seagulls steal bread, to lurk
among the bathers in their underwear like creeps.
I can’t resist—I ask her what she means. You know,
she says. With all the little seeds.

When you spy people from a plane, they look like seeds,
not ants. Ants are always moving chunks of watermelon
back and forth; people know
a hundred thousand different ways to sit. Garrisons of knees
entrenched in sand, vines of sunscreen creeping
down dilapidated towers, and off in the moat, lurking

like assassins: hungry teenage eyes. They lurch and lurk
their way between the waves like seeds
lashed out by trebuchets, creep
around the curl of tides, get washed up like watermelon
rinds along the beach. Ellis always picks her knees
up when she runs. I taught her that, you know.

Her mom’s been riding waves again. I know
the signs: a look over the shoulder, something lurking
in the eyes. Less cogent declarations: Owls have knees,
you know. They just don’t use them. Seeds
have memories and you can train them how to grow. “Watermelon
Sugar” is a remix of a Motown song. Radiohead stole “Creep”

from Pat Metheny. She calls me a creep
for screening her calls, and she’s not wrong, but I know
what goes on. I am properly vigilant: “Watermelon
Sugar” could be their word for the juice. The voice lurking
into my kitchen from a number in Bulgaria perhaps seeds
cells of dealers here who break men’s knees

like melons. I like my knees,
so I don’t mention any of this to Bethany, who creeps
into my room at night to make seeds
from my bones. I know
she’d love to feed me to the lurkers
on the corner with their watermelon

slice-mouths, but there’s vodka in the watermelon, seeds
to plant, and Ellis now is looking bored, lurking low, knees
rising as waves creep in like only they know how.

]]> <![CDATA[Eulogy]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27489.html Mon, 20 Jul 2026 02:29:30 +0000 etherealidyll]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27489.html Eulogy

Crimson-red brocade seethes,
whispering conspiracies through twisted limbs
Callously churning contortion of nature

In gaseous boughs, rising thick
Heavy and violent arsine clouds,
most warm and rapacious miasma

Breath falters as it pierces through tissue,
Childish cries smothered by folds of linen
as it penetrates the body and paralyses it

Rigor mortis, posthumous stillness
Vines form a funerary wreath
Vegetation thrives]]> Eulogy

Crimson-red brocade seethes,
whispering conspiracies through twisted limbs
Callously churning contortion of nature

In gaseous boughs, rising thick
Heavy and violent arsine clouds,
most warm and rapacious miasma

Breath falters as it pierces through tissue,
Childish cries smothered by folds of linen
as it penetrates the body and paralyses it

Rigor mortis, posthumous stillness
Vines form a funerary wreath
Vegetation thrives]]> <![CDATA[Boom boom, she says to no one]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27483.html Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:15:01 +0000 matsunosuperfan]]> https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-27483.html “Boom boom, she says to no one”
—Patricia Smith

Sometimes I think about breathing and
then it’s hard to breathe.
A rubber stopper fills the hole
air travels down into my lungs which,
irritable by design, shrug
and close up shop.

If we had been born fish,
life would not be so dramatic.
This constant need to open up
one’s mouth and suck transparent juice
thirty thousand times a day perhaps
explains our other failings:

no goldfish ever cheated
on his partner while off in Vancouver
on a business trip. At least,
not to our knowledge. And surely, no anemone
has ever missed a starring role because
they can’t pronounce her name.

Yesterday I caught my mother
holding her breath in the kitchen.
She was propped against the sink, watching water
cartwheel down a porcelain serving dish.
From behind, her shoulders
looked like some enormous bird.

When I called out, taking her
quite by surprise, the air shot out
her chest so fast the teacups
phalanxed on the drying rack
shivered in their boots. Then she took a sip
of nitrogen and oxygen, opening her body
just enough to say my name.]]> “Boom boom, she says to no one”
—Patricia Smith

Sometimes I think about breathing and
then it’s hard to breathe.
A rubber stopper fills the hole
air travels down into my lungs which,
irritable by design, shrug
and close up shop.

If we had been born fish,
life would not be so dramatic.
This constant need to open up
one’s mouth and suck transparent juice
thirty thousand times a day perhaps
explains our other failings:

no goldfish ever cheated
on his partner while off in Vancouver
on a business trip. At least,
not to our knowledge. And surely, no anemone
has ever missed a starring role because
they can’t pronounce her name.

Yesterday I caught my mother
holding her breath in the kitchen.
She was propped against the sink, watching water
cartwheel down a porcelain serving dish.
From behind, her shoulders
looked like some enormous bird.

When I called out, taking her
quite by surprise, the air shot out
her chest so fast the teacups
phalanxed on the drying rack
shivered in their boots. Then she took a sip
of nitrogen and oxygen, opening her body
just enough to say my name.]]>