Table of contents for April 2026 in Poetry

Last May, my friend Youssef Daoudi published a graphic novel about the filmmaker Orson Welles called The Giant: Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow. One of the many things Daoudi’s fascinating work highlights is how difficult it can be for artists to grow when their first public offering is considered a classic. Welles went on to have a long career, but nothing he did was as well regarded as Citizen Kane. He’s not the only artist to experience this. Ralph Ellison never published a novel after Invisible Man and Harper Lee never wanted the follow-up to To Kill a Mockingbird in the world. Lauryn Hill and Jeff Buckley each only recorded one solo album. Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting to someone who wasn’t a relative while he…

A Room of Its Own Sun butts into the greatAmerican breakfast area— malted vanilla wafflemaker, actual bananas. Every morning I selloff the world for parts, by bedtime find a dentedfender on my threshold (the blood on my doorpost’sonly there to spare itself). I need a cleanroom, glinting forceps to remove (is that flagstill up there ruining the moon?). A big ideais just waiting for me to occur to—I keep itin the safe behind this frame whose impetusis all it depicts. Don’t Look Up The name of that lake,the Russian one; if the pig-hearted manstill lives. When my pie chart of whatI need to know is complete, scratchon my plaque: she was one in a hundredpercent circumference. Some kids broke intothe mausoleum, threw the bones around,which is one way to see…

smokes After Mary Ruefle I’m always up for a smoke, says my sister.I, too, am always up for one, I say.so we bundle ourselves in hats, scarves, coats.at least we are outside, not in, says my sister,& I say the same. the ice of January changesto steam as we speak. the smokefrom the Lucky Strike burns in our throats.breath & smoke. smoke & breath.fire & mirror. cold & clear.& as an hour passes, the clouds pink above us.inside my head, she says, there is a sunthat never rises. & in my chest, I say,a bell that rings without end.what is seamlessly continuous except timeor nothing? then, out the dooran attendant pokes his head. time’s up, he says.I nod & my sister snuffs outher cigarette & disappearsinto the ward from its…

Enter Book Translated from the Arabic The book you held in your handsnow lies on the nightstand by your bed, in its heartthe lines you sketchedunder the sentences you read more than once, bewildered,before you put the book downand started pacing aimlessly between the rooms.You let it drown you for a full week,took it everywhere you went;you read it alone in bed,and stretched out on the sofa while the family’s voicesdrifted toward you from the other room.Whenever you’d lift your head,you found yourselfface-to-face with the world,glancing at the sky outside your window;ready, at last, to converse with the hills.Every book grants you the languageyou need to make contactwith something you had no idea even existed:a tree’s pores, a fox’s nose,sadness on a face, a nation’s suffering.Look how beautiful you look…

“There ain’t no preachers/b*itches in this park no more!” yells the man walking through the park, though the man I’ve just met while cruising & I can’t decide which group he is actually screaming about, the plosives striking the snails of our inner eardrums discordantly. We agree both answers are simultaneously true when the man follows up with a “hallelujah!” as he rummages through the park’s bins for plastics. He’s so right, of course; there’s so little of God in this park, so little of the shame I have carried most of my youth, just a nigga on his knees with a dick in his mouth while another stays wary of strangers stumbling through the night’s taut silence. Grandson of a preacher, so often I know better, but tonight I…

Untitled [“When I was eleven”] When I was elevenI found a private river movingThrough the horse’s skull.I carried that thing downThe mountain,Watching my small shadowFar awayOn the other hill.I buried it below my home;In the woods,Under the horrible violet myrtle,Near my father’s creek. ii Where I was afraid of something.There are rivers, like doves; wonderful,And your mouth …Tells me, your mouth,How difficultTo drink only through the holes in that skull.ForeverI will feel the foliage move above me;Will lie near the wet rootsAnd stems, hummingOn the waterMy song. We Manage Most When We Manage Small What things are steadfast? Not the birds.Not the bride and groom who hurryin their brevity to reach one another.The stars do not blow away as we do.The heavenly things ignite and freeze.But not as my hair…

Living in San Francisco during the AIDS crisis in 1990, I delayed getting an HIV test until any symptom—a bruise, a cough—fractured my sense of well-being. Back then, the blood draw led to weeks of anxious waiting, and the testing center refused to relay the results by phone in case the patient needed counseling for what was a terminal illness. By the time I arrived at the Mission District center, my dread was monstrous and implacable. When the nurse spoke, I was so certain I was seropositive that I mistook his “negative” for bad news. I must have gazed blankly, unresponsive. He said he would be back in a minute and returned with another nurse, who repeated my good news in Cantonese. Both of them were startled when I began…

Mask of Khonsu Let those who seek my soul be dishonored and shamed.—Psalm 35:4 Here you are, “on view”the mask that was placed over your head, your eternal breath,misting the tamarisk and acacia. You look at me, brother,across the palindrome of time bending the shackles of centuriesso we can each see the conquest fresh. It was long before youand long after me, still. Our peace lost in timesof warring madness. I try to block the wicked silhouette,the doubled deception of reflective glass, the border making lightof the too bright and blessed sun. A quiet sight when you appear and hold my eyes in yours,become ourselves again. Wandering the banks unharmed,unarmed with words of defense. They stormed through youand brought us down so low. Where can we standwhere their shadow won’t…

Y. Ni esto ni lo otro.Ni igual ni diferente. Puesto que se había pasadola nochequitando los puntossobre las íesy estaba nadandoen un mar tan picadoy resbaloso,hecho solo de ellos—que se excitabanal coincidir—,le aliviaba excluirsede ser una certeza. Y. Translated from the Spanish Not one thing or the other.Not equal nor different. Given that he had spentthe nightremoving the dotsover his i’sand was swimmingin a sea so choppyand slippery,made solely of those dots—they were elatedto collide—he was relieved to opt outof being something certain. L. Los higos están a punto. Algunos trozos muertos, diseminados después de un ataque de cotorras. El pañolón del viento es sedoso. La cabeza de gárgola del bote de jabón resplandece en el borde de la pila. Gotea la manguera medio enrollada en el suelo. “Estaría aquí…

My girl’s got Turner’s, but she’s spinning just fine. Shows up on the scan like a small planet, wrapped in hazy weather. Light pooling beneath her skin, a halo around her like the milky way. A neutron star tucked at the base of her skull, dense and impossible to look away from. The tech says nothing, but I see her. See her glowing on the screen. “One X,” the docs say. Like it’s less. It’s not. She’s already making orbits in my body. They see fetal hydrops. I see constellations and celestial matter. They see thickened nuchal translucency. I see a nebula, a pillow of stardust cushioning her head. They say she won’t be. I say she already is. Cradled light. Tethered to me, bending my love toward her like…

a four-hand poem the, the dead, the dead slave, the dead slave’s body, the dead slave’s body is, the dead slave’s body is thrown, the dead slave’s body is thrown overboard, the dead slave’s body is thrown overboard from, the dead slave’s body is thrown overboard from the, the dead slave’s body is thrown overboard from the ship, the dead slave’s body is thrown overboard from the ship and, the enslaved body is thrown overboard from the ship and the waves, the enslaved is thrown overboard from the ship and the waves wash, her body is thrown overboard from the ship and the waves wash it, my mother is thrown overboard from the ship and the waves wash her ashore. she, she rises, she rises and, she rises and swims,…

Innocence Didion said that it ends when you’re strippedof the delusionthat you like yourself.People burned themselves into my eyeswith their beauty and intelligence.I chose not to see them.The Quad opened onto a vast data centerin the Bypath Meadow.Seductive accountants murmured,“We love you. Now you must pay.”The attic in which I gathered the sordid sheetsof my artistic misprisions—the botched self-portrait, the miniaturized epic—became a womblike garretat the Museum of Lost Bohemias.My mother stood flickering on a porch,waving farewell, her silent filmdecayed beyond preservation.I was walking to Hart Crane’s resting placewhen I encountered a famed neurosurgeon,who held up finely tapered fingers,insured for millions,and made a tiny incision on the air.Tell me how I fell into your lapand didn’t break you.Tell me how we found this mouse holewhere we nibble crumbs and curl…

I first encountered Linda Gregg’s poems in a workshop at Columbia University in 1982. A fellow student slipped me a folded note with the words too bright to see scrawled inside. After class he handed over a copy of the slim, blue book by that name—Linda’s debut, recently published by Graywolf Press. The collection was like nothing I’d ever encountered: luminous and singular, it sang of seeing. I was astonished by what she could do with so little. Her poems were lessons in how not to name things, but to instead evoke the outlines of what is seen. Images were simplified, landscapes were drawn from her nomadic life: Marin County, Copenhagen, Greece, Western Massachusetts, New York City, among other places. Linda was the mistress of a certain kind of compression.…

Sophie Cabot Black’s* Geometry of the Restless Herd (Copper Canyon Press), was published in 2024. Her previous books include The Exchange (2013) and The Descent (2004), both published by Graywolf Press. DeeSoul Carson* is a poet and educator from San Diego, California. His debut full-length collection is The Laughing Barrel (Alice James Books, 2027). Kate Colby’s* books of poetry and essays include Paradoxx (Essay Press, 2025) and I Mean (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015). She lives in Providence, Rhode Island. P. Scott Cunningham* is the author of Self-Portrait as the “I” in Florida (Autumn House Press, 2026), winner of the 2025 Donald Justice Poetry Prize, and Ya Te Veo (University of Arkansas Press, 2018). Sara Elkamel is the author of Field of No Justice (Akashic Books, 2021) and translator for Dalia…

No one stole your money.No one stole your whole heartthen climbed into a stolen planeand stole away into the nightto disappear entirely, stealingdarkness itself, then dawn.What name would you even callinto the shadows betweenhere and gone, yours and no one’s,what color could you give it,this shade of somethingslightly less than life?Better to leave it whole.Pure death—like an unmined diamond.Keep the light of the fireaway from it—clean, untemperedby the tedious heat of language—safe from your magpie, morbid wayof turning and turningyour pain in your handsuntil you’ve crushed it to dust.And anyway, who are you to sayI lost the world? No one. To admitthat you held the world at all?…

S is for, with a Line from Keats Surely I must be in loveto make sabayon. To unshelf LarousseGastronomique, page to Zfor zabaglione, reassure myselfmarsala is customary, to ask eggsand brown sugar to be enough.Surely I want you to eat arrantlyat your midnight easel, oils,my crumbs, on your longfingers. Surely I am peaky,beat for minutes, requiring machinepower to achieve such volume.All to be folded with cocoaand salt, piped—pleasurenever is at home. Tangzhong, with a Line from Genet For you, my exhaustionis but a crumb. Gray afternoon, tenebroustrain clattering copper on the stove. Flourand water, milk and my beckoningspoon. I did not mean to be mean,alliterative, or misjudge. Let medraw trails in this thickening,just a smell starts me—slowly, the yawningburble, and I exist, improved.A man must dream a long timein order…

Movement flutters— what predictability is not. Outside,sunlight reigns ambiguous.You can do that with your life.Hope toward nothingbut continuance—flux& reframe. Orbital,the earth & moon. Oneimagines a nucleus, thocenters elude. For everythingan erotic surface. Todayi pick apple mintalong the roadside.Despair rattles language& later, after marking uppaper, after twisting stemsof calendula, i placemy feet in the pond. One daysmudges the next, eachrenewed by darkness. Heartbeats break as doors open wideunto elsewhere. A roundabout,small town, heavy metropolischoked in smoke, skyorange, burning spruce,lyric sullied,a paucity of beds.No future some can see.Yet witness, in friendship,the unruliness ofentanglement. Who paysupon arrival, who childof extraction, who’ll loosen,let love hasten?It’s beguiling—truths obviousthe truth, incalculable.i write to stay living,read & walk for similar reasons,yearn for uncontainables—moonlightbeyond creek slope,traffic & slow sex,water softening wood.The smudge outlasts us.We tongue & teethe what’s…

The Pelicans Can No Longer Reach You The pelicans can no longer reach youWatching droughts from windowsArctic snow shining shinglesFire cutting houses into koi ponds Humans pray in their languagePillaging, pills, & purgatoryRefuse stretching for prognosesDigging cranes into ecosystemsNever thank or leave the bones Blue whales sacked for winter sludgeBreached death to signal the angels Cancer now set in our capturingMortals ignore Earth for disaster A mother saves its kingdom. My Albatross On the mountain coast,Grass & arctic wings.You clicked in my ear.A three-meter hug.A bobble of gay song& battle grass. You fellLike a lily. TimidWe would never match.Fifty years is a life-Time I’d ask for again.Just to see you bow,Our anchor on the prairieLands. Remembering the ice,How you licked our lonely away.…

Linda Gregg and her poetry were one. Poetry seemed to emanate from her, to surround her like an aura. I observed this firsthand. She was my teacher, initially at the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center, and, shortly afterward, at Columbia University’s graduate creative writing program. Both inside and outside the classroom, Gregg was a thrilling mentor. She did not just ponder the technical aspects of a poem—she would explore with a student if the complex depths of a poem had been reached, or if the poet could go further. Sometimes she would tell her students to take their poem, turn it over, and, without looking at what they had written previously, write the poem (again). They contained the poem, she felt, and the pure poem would surface. Over the years,…

“Untitled [‘When I was eleven’]” is printed here for the first time and was found in the Linda Gregg papers at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University. Two apostrophes, indicating possessive nouns, have been added to lines three and twelve of the poem. A period has been added to line thirteen, following Gregg’s original document on which a period—handwritten—was inserted at some stage by the author. “Persephone to the Other Husband” was published in the spring 1987 issue of Antaeus. Both of these poems are published by permission of the Estate of Linda Gregg. The remaining poems were published in Gregg’s 2008 new and selected volume, All of It Singing. They all previously appeared in her earlier volumes and are reprinted here with…

NEW & RECENT TITLES THE MAP OF THE WORLD By Eiléan Ní Chuilleanain In The Map of the World, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanám continues her vital work “to hold in view / history’s patched lining, the sewing.” Within this patchwork, there are pilgrimages to holy wells, bishops and bookbinders, and poems in conversation with writers and artists, from Andrew Marvell, Milton, and Joyce to Irish painter Nano Reid and stained-glass artist Helen Moloney. There are also deft translations, as Ní Chuilleanáin writes Shakespeare’s Caliban into Irish alongside the Romanian poet Ileana Màlàncioiu. In this volume, the first since her Collected Poems (2021), we find a poet writing “both from the uncharted depths of grief and at the height of her powers” ('The Irish Times). $15.95, paperback TAKING LIBERTIES By Leontia Flynn…