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Archive for 2013

  • Newsletter Issue #30 December, 2013

    Readers — Welcome to Issue # 30 of Plume. Let me begin with a break from precedent:  presentation of  material that appears…

  • Isle of the Narrator

    It's true these boots were taken from a dead man,

  • Seeking Alpha

    Praise for the one who can take us above

  • Slow Thinker

    Audiences love the slow

  • A Meeting

    Of all the disappointments

  • Cache

    Here lies a hectic site, la Cité

  • Three Poems from “Where Are the Trees Going”

    Inhabited uninhabited house subject to the air’s structure

  • Ant Story

    Each ant was given a different part of the message to carry.

  • The Water Returns

    The water returns. The pools teem with newborn fish.

  • Insomnia

    It is a stain that feeds on moons

  • The Poets

    They are farmers, really--

  • Mangos | Talking Animals | Bringing Things Back From the Woods

    We did not have mango trees back home on the prairies.  The climate and soil conditions were not conducive to that

  • Kneeling in a Pile of Leaves

    Kneeling in a pile of leaves

  • Rachel Zucker: The Pedestrians

      Introduction, by Rachel Zucker I am frequently asked, “What does your husband think about these poems?” When students ask…

    Issue #30 December 2013

  • Newsletter Issue #29 November, 2013

    Readers — Welcome to Issue # 29 of Plume. Yes, November — as noted: its quality almost-ness but not quite, a shadow-month…

  • A Bookstore in Hay-on-Wye

    In a Tudor castle now a vast used bookstore in Hay-on-Wye

  • Ancestors

    Farther back than my grandmother

  • Two Stories and a Poem

    Do you have a canned ham?

  • Your Brother’s Face

    You believe your brother will come down

  • Bailed Out

    And once we climbed over the wire fence

  • Crucifixion

    One minute he’s looking at you, full-size, in anguish,

  • On the Way to the Acupuncturist

    In the wrong lane, the slow one—

  • Mnemonic

    Leaves in the eaves

  • Killer

    When he saw me coming

  • Vega

    On my bed in late afternoon I am listening

  • You, Reader, As I Imagine You

    Why is it awkward to acknowledge

  • A Woman in Damascus That Year | While She’s Asleep In Baghdad

    Her soul’s in my hand and she knows I’m there

  • D. Nurkse: Early Anthropocene

    Plume: The closing line of the poem “Anthropocene”– published by the Virginia Quarterly Review in 2007- asks the question: Is…

    Issue #29 November 2013

  • Newsletter Issue #28 October, 2013

    Readers — Welcome to Issue # 28 of Plume. Yes, October, and here a tablespoon of fall. Of what to speak? AWP,…

  • Bunch of Asparagus and Asparagus

    Bundle on a wet bed

  • Idea for a Screenplay *

    A man sits on his porch and reads aloud to the yard, to some plants and to some birds, his feelings of paranoia, anger

  • Hail to Thee,

    I write, my wrist nodding

  • I Dreamed of Obama on the Night of His First Election

    He stirred the coals of my dwindling campfire. We were alone. Blue tendrils of smoke punctuated the Mesozoic haze

  • The Killing

    While Abraham binds his son’s hands,

  • Anti-Fundamentalist

    I remember that

  • Pathetic Fallacy

    Jog through this suburb at a blue hour

  • Myth

    The blind hobo who returned

  • Wooden Boards

    My father carefully rolls his pant leg up, places his leg between two wide boards. He tells my mother to jump hard on

  • Stairway

    In those days, so many stairways were said to lead to happiness, mainly of a sexual kind—and as I climbed those

  • Ode to the Google Maps Man

    Gold-suited spaceman, terranaut,

  • Why I Haven’t “Outgrown Surrealism,” No Matter What That Moron Reviewer Wrote

    I still love the sound of breaking,

  • Molly Lou Freeman: New Poems and Reflections from Shelter

    By way of introduction to this month’s collaborative “Featured Selection,” per usual first a brief introductory essay by the poet,…

    Issue #28 October 2013

  • Newsletter Issue #27 September, 2013

    Readers — Welcome to Issue # 27 of Plume. As in the Editor’s Note, I pause here, as I have paused many…

  • Aspect

    The spirit’s simulacra have obtained

  • George Orwell Sucks

    How can a word evocative of so much pleasure,. both adult and infantile, find itself used – by almost everybody – in

  • Fat

    I saw that I was fat and walked and walked toward a desert only to find a case of (not light) beer.

  • I’ve Lived Long with the Dead | The Word Stays Here

    I’ve lived long with the dead. I know their

  • Leopard Goes Through Hell Villanelle

    When I am sober my brain calls me names. 


  • January in West Texas

    Once, I preferred nights. How they arrived one tied to the next like silk scarves, knots of daylight between them. I

  • Dear Reader Are You Having a Good Day?

    Dear reader are you having a good day?

  • True Bug | I Will Be Good

    I’ve been talking to a bug all winter.

  • Bookish | Brush Your Fingers Through Your Hair, Why Don’t You?

    The bookishness that

  • Polaris Mall

    February,  9:37 p.m.  Two Canada geese,

  • Last Words

    If only for those you leave behind,

  • At the End of the Alphabet

    Books bloated and fanned

  • Bruce Smith by Bruce Smith

    By way of introduction to this month’s “Featured Selection,” first a brief introductory essay – or rather a self-interview by…

    Issue #27 September 2013

  • Newsletter Issue #26 August, 2013

    Readers — Welcome to Issue # 26 of Plume. As one shies from turning on the oven these hot days (so I’m told),…

  • Manet’s Asparagus

    Naked as an

  • Wilderness

    The mind is a wilderness like Bartram’s, razed, cemented over, marked by rows

  • Breakfast, the most important poem

    So far, pockets are good

  • Bear and the Crows

    So many in the winter trees they caw

  • God’s Man

    When I was twelve I found it

  • The Summer House

    I let the envelope fall to the floor unopened,

  • Poet’s Walk, Central Park Mall

    Shakespeare, Robert Burns, and Fitz-Greene Halleck

  • Charcuterie

    She penciled fanciful animals

  • Arf

    At the stoplight in Dogleg children swept metal

  • It Was A 3.8

    My mother said go get me a plum.

  • Vortex Street

    I tied my hands behind me so I won’t hurt you.

  • Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton: A POEM CYCLE

    By way of introduction to this month’s collaborative “Featured Selection,” first a brief introductory essay by the poets themselves, followed…

    Issue #26 August 2013

  • Newsletter Issue #25 July, 2013

    Readers — Welcome to Issue # 25 of Plume. After the relative hoopla surrounding last month’s “special” issue, we beat a…

  • Human Condition

    The human condition isn’t some grinning

  • For Michael Gottlieb

    All this time me on he leadéd

  • Elegy for a Landscaper

    The holes we find scraped out at the edge

  • Diptych

    I’m hammering nails into the stretchers,

  • Not Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening

    Promises to keep, was a lie, he had nothing. Through

  • Love Poem | Birthday Cake

    It’s an alliance,

  • Phoenix Hairpin Terrace

    Yes                              Feng-huang plus three syllables

  • To Anything at All

    Our father who is neither ours nor a father but farther and nearer,

  • Earthquake

    The voices of self are ended. A sepia

  • Boys’ Room

    French doors, curtains, panes of glass.

  • Breathing Room

    Not every week,

  • Saving The Spider | Diamond Dog, Unleashed in the Airport | Amulet

    I. Not

  • Daniel Bourne: On Krzysztof Kuczkowski

    By way of introduction to this month’s “Featured Selection,” first a brief introductory essay on Krzysztof Kuczkowski’s work by its…

    Issue #25 July 2013

  • Newsletter Issue #24 June, 2013

    Readers — Welcome to Issue # 24 of Plume. As you will soon see, this issue marks an anniversary: we are…

  • My Last Deidre | The City of the Orgasm

    I am a not woman.  I am an orgasm.

  • Difficulty

    It's difficult

  • Danger: A Triptych

    I thought at first it was a rock, a pebble my own tire had somehow kicked up in a weird curve.  I kept driving to my

  • Broadcast

    Five blank days of snow,

  • The Suicide’s Wife

    inhabits an invisible island

  • Even the Gun Does Not Want to be a Gun

    It denies the polish

  • Aunt Rolla

    She had the softest face

  • Big Finish

    Now that the last shaft of sunset has collapsed

  • Confusing Myself with the Whippoorwill

    Today, I was a madness of regrettable actions. At the convenience store, I eyed the cashiers warily as they slouched in

  • Thetis

    We see her through her element, not

  • Coal Bin

    Some witchy and slinky,

  • The Injured Future

    Far left cluster the listeners, their heads lifted toward the speaker.

  • Rachel Hadas: The Golden Road

    By way of introduction to this month’s “Featured Selection,” first a brief appreciation of Rachel Hadas’s new book of poetry…

    Issue #24 June 2013

  • Newsletter Issue #23 May, 2013

    Readers — Welcome to Issue # 23 of Plume. So: the “new” look of Plume seems to have met with your approval, and we…

  • Natural History of the Soul

    The song thrush hops, runs, stands,

  • Hatfield

    Such lovely matter, rain, abundant rain,

  • High Finance

    You looked up and saw across the field

  • Calendar

    Some people, after the day

  • Arête | Eurydice

    The Hemingway who wrote three stories in a crummy hotel

  • Vita Nova

    Born on the outskirts of the Romanian kingdom

  • The Pair

    Here’s how they climbed out of the nights’ custody.

  • Drink with Mountain, Remembered, Andalucían

    The rosé from Spain

  • Fragment

    The past is a point of departure

  • In the Waiting Room | City of Bridges

    Light poured

  • The House of Wittgenstein

    He never saw the malls of Petaluma, nor met the amazing cricketeer Montezuma. He never heard a laugh track. We’d

  • Exclusive Beautiful Grapheme War

    history means touch, bodies

  • Mark Irwin: Extracts from: Hyle: The fundamental question of poetry by Alain Borer

    By way of introduction to this month’s “Featured Selection,” first some thoughts from Mark Irwin, followed by the work itself,…

    Issue #23 May 2013

  • Newsletter Issue #22 April, 2013

    Readers — Welcome to Issue # 22 of Plume. As promised, our make-over, if that’s the word: connoting superficial changes,…

  • Halloween

    It is as quiet as the death of the dead no one knows

  • More Reason

    Though you may be a scribe in ancient Egypt

  • In the Vestibule

    The in-between is queasy

  • Your Brother’s Face

    You believe your brother will come down

  • Dew Point

    Because of the nipple crust riming a girl’s

  • Sharp Noises at Night

    When I travel to the Midwest, trains

  • La Bagatelle | Method | Dream Glance

    in cursive yellow hung above

  • Salons

    Your friends are all sitting

  • Obit

    At this beat-up plywood slab across the beat-up

  • And Now, As Promised

    How lousy are your prospects when you

  • The Night Was Born

    This night was born in an old and dust-filled pantry, and yesterday’s – in the

  • January 28 | Basho

    Today it is snowing again and I’m thinking of Borges.

  • Lawrence Matsuda and Tess Gallagher: Pow! Pow! Shalazam!

    About the work: In the late summer of 2011 Tess Gallagher and Lawrence Matsuda were e-mailing each other while she…

    Issue #22 April 2013

  • Glare

    It just goes so fast,

  • Indelible

    Having worn myself out naming Bewick's wren,

  • Ars Poetica

    The shell of the papershell pecan can easily be broken

  • An Intimate Moment of Protestant Despair Witnessed on the Four O’ Clock Train

    He put down his Wall Street Journal,

  • Newsletter Issue #21 March, 2013

    Readers — Welcome to Issue # 21 of Plume. And welcome home – if you made it there and back: the weather…

  • Hiroshima Bomb

    Confetti spirals flutter into dark green.

  • Imaginary Conversation | In the Orchard

    You tell me to live each day

  • Vernissage

    Survivors of a volcanic explosion, cross-

  • A Love Poem While Dissolving

    I’m trying to say I love you, but Buckminster Fuller declared

  • Early Elegy: Telephone Booth | Early Elegy: Cursive

    Its remains: a plexiglass crypt robbed

  • The Alone-Doors

    Don’t try this at home.

  • Taxidermy: A Translucent Love Poem

    We are bound inside of the taxidermied falcon.

  • Letter to a Young Orgasm | Elegy for the Last Orgasm | The Orgasm and the Magic Maid

    How could she not cry out when you pressed her to your flesh?

  • Kyoto, Without Me

    chills and goes dark.  At this very instant

  • Sarah Arvio: eleven poems from night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis

    eleven poems from night thoughts:  70 dream poems & notes from an analysis from a word to the reader: night…

    Issue #21 March 2013

  • Newsletter Issue #20 February, 2013

    Readers — Welcome to Issue # 20 of Plume. A short month, fortunately, and a short letter to match it – one…

  • On Sadness | On Beauty

    I noticed something strange and beautiful about the word “sad.”

  • Mirror of the Invisible World

    The crown of a milk tooth in a curve of jaw

  • Deceiving the Gods

    The old Jews rarely admitted good fortune.

  • My Courbet, by Jonathan Galassi

    My Courbet

  • The Epileptic

    Conversations with him are like waiting for thunder.

  • Two Stages

    The traveler was certainly sleep-logged when he slipped away from his hotel at sunrise

  • Armed Stasis

    I will make a fact with you Robert Frost.

  • Florida

    The prettiest state,

  • Writing Under the Influence of Me

    It means I drop things, and I keep turning

  • Circus

    How the squirrel, skittish, leaps, lobbing its orange

  • Elegy for a Young Garden

    Shattered bricks, flayed sockets

  • Handel in London, 1741

    Wedged in a chair near the open window,

  • Annunciation

    I learned to hide the wings, almost immediately,

  • The Caravaggio Room

    Yuck, you heave in front of that sick boy

  • Without Apology

    Things happen. We’ve been promised

  • Seventh Circle

    And after the fight the moment of awakening

  • Ars Poetica, with Cow

    She went back to look at the beast, which lay immobile except for one eye watching the girl who stood helpless beside

  • Poem with Allusions

    The thoughts that come on little cat feet

  • On Either Side of the Word Lie

    The letters that must be taken away

  • Wolf

    Ink black, shark toothed, slithering

  • Morgellons

    Jorge Luis Borges translated Thomas Browne

  • My Lovely Garonne

    Because every tenth poem or so the poet described

  • The Birthday Ceremony

    Seventeen rooms of long maroon

  • Spectacle | Dear Bathtub | Freeway

    Your eyewear and my eyewear,

  • Purity | A  Withered  Rose

    Amazing solitude.

  • The Gifts

    The closet where the black sweaters hang. Where the game of backgammon is played