Carolyn Oliver
Temptation's lesson says: choose
the uncontested one, pear-shaped, alone,
red creeping along its side the way a blush
steals over a man's cheeks when he comes.

But I want the one in the middle,
the sweet green that holds its shape,
the round, sour taste of knowledge.
I want perfection. I want what's mine.

And if you think that table's impossible,
try obedience.
from the book INSIDE THE STORM I WANT TO TOUCH THE TREMBLE / University of Utah Press
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This is the first in a series of Eve poems I began writing a few years ago. Though they have since expanded into dialogues and toward all sorts of strange subjects, initially the poems were envisioned as monologues linking Eve with apples in various unexpected ways. Hence, here I imagine Eve gazing at Cezanne’s painting on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, defiantly and deliciously unrepentant.

Carolyn Oliver on "Eve Studies Cezanne's The Basket of Apples
Color image of an abandoned armchair in front of an open window
"Considering the Poetry of Molly Brodak"

"Brodak often seemed openly suspicious of any kind of cohesive structure. Her poem 'The Flood' opens with the line: 'Panic, because suddenly everything signifies.' Clarity and unity are treated not as false prophets, but worse, as enemies. The scariest thing is when the world makes sense."

via LITHUB
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Cover image for Waxwing, issue IV
What Sparks Poetry:
Robin Myers on Javier Peñalosa M.'s "The Crane"


"I’d describe 'The Crane' as a deceptively narrative poem, in the way that a dream can present what feels like a coherent story you’ll then struggle to recapitulate once you’re conscious again. The story, as it were, is more like a snapshot remembered: the speaker finds an injured crane in a boat by a riverbank and uses an oar to put the bird out of its misery, an act that fills him both with shame and with a feeling of identification he can’t quite describe."
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