favourite poems of august

marge piercy circles on the water: selected poems of marge piercy: "for the young who want to"

marilyn chin fruit études

lisa olstein radio crackling, radio gone: "the hypnotist's daughter"

elizabeth willis address: "the witch"

jana prikryl the after party: "to tell of bodies changed"

diane seuss backyard song

alison c. rollings original [sin]

gerard malanga cornelius...cornelius gurlitt

todd boss rocket

beyza ozer to summarise a galaxy

john foy night vision: "woods"

clodagh beresford dunne ford galaxy

dorianne laux smoke: "heart"

anthony madrid like a cloud above the ravine

pascale petit swamp deer

frank o'hara maurice ravel

adonis selected poems: "desert" (tr. khaled mattawa)

sonja johanson three deer in oquossoc

melissa stein terrible blooms: "lemon and cedar"

w. s. di piero having my cards read

thomas hoagland bible study

peter campion big avalanche ravine

alberto ríos the smallest muscle in the human body: "rabbits and fire"

lena khalaf tuffaha water & salt: "mountain, stone"

josephine miles desert

jeanne murray walker invocation to convince a baby already more than twelve days overdue to come out of the womb

andrew hudgins the imagined copperhead

robert carr stargazing while sedated

mary ruefle among the musk ox people: poems: "blood soup"

jack collom red car goes by: selected poems 1955-2000: "bald eagle count"

mahmoud darwish to a young poet (tr. fady joudah)

kofi

The body is a formal constraint. It has this one life with which to make eternity.

Elizabeth Willis, from “Steady Digression to a Fixed Point”, Alive: New and Selected Poems

The Similitude Of This Great Flower

Elizabeth Willis

from Meteoric Flowers

Wesleyan Press, 2008

Elizabeth Willis, Alive: New and Selected Poems

When all the witches in your town have been set on fire, their smoke will fill your mouth. It will teach you new words. It will tell you what you've done.

— elizabeth willis, the witch

This is a film about a movie. A movie revolving around a star.

The sun is our star. It is the star of Rose Hobart.

We are watching the death of the Sun, a star disappearing, the bulb burning out. A body buried alive in a film, in a can.

The End is behind a curtain, it is in her purse, it is rising to the surface.

The cinema is going dark, snapping shut.

This is a movie about silence. About speaking with your eyes. The heart racing as she strides across the room.

A poem about a volcano, a film about the interior.

What is drawn in the drawing room. What is assembled in the basement. What is taken apart on the table.

The making of a body through a series of omissions.

The violence of the studio system. The California sun. The snowy taupe of the cathode light of Hollywood as seen on TV.

This is a poem about the star system and its ancient astronomer. About a poet of the outer boroughs, looking up. An image thrown into the sky like a searchlight.

This is a poem about a fox. An alligator. The misplaced animals of the backlot.

This is a poem about searching for light behind the deep purple gel of the jungle. A poem about the deep.

The stars resting above the longest night of the year. The winter palace. The rose palace.

This is a passage about being caught in the thatchwork outside the gate. Like a wolf.

About looking into the face of desire until it blinks.

—Elizabeth Willis, from "Steady Digression to a Fixed Point (for Rose Hobart, for Joseph Cornell)" (Poetry, February 2015)

The Young Blake by Elizabeth Willis

The Witch | Elizabeth Willis

A witch can charm milk from an ax handle. A witch bewitches a man's shoe. A witch sleeps naked. "Witch ointment" on the back will allow you to fly through the air. A witch carries the four of clubs in her sleeve. A witch may be sickened at the scent of roasting meat. A witch will neither sink nor swim. When crushed, a witch's bones will make a fine glue. A witch will pretend not to be looking at her own image in a window. A witch will gaze wistfully at the glitter of a clear night. A witch may take the form of a cat in order to sneak into a good man's chamber. A witch's breasts will be pointed rather than round, as discovered in the trials of the 1950s. A powerful witch may cause a storm at sea. With a glance, she will make rancid the fresh butter of her righteous neighbor. Even our fastest dogs cannot catch a witch-hare. A witch has been known to cry out while her husband places inside her the image of a child. A witch may be burned for tying knots in a marriage bed. A witch may produce no child for years at a time. A witch may speak a foreign language to no one in particular. She may appear to frown when she believes she is smiling. If her husband dies unexpectedly, she may refuse to marry his brother. A witch has been known to weep at the sight of her own child. She may appear to be acting in a silent film whose placards are missing In Hollywood the sky is made of tin. A witch makes her world of air, then fire, then the planets. Of cardboard, then ink, then a compass. A witch desires to walk rather than be carried or pushed in a cart. When walking a witch will turn suddenly and pretend to look at something very small. The happiness of an entire house maybe ruined by witch hair touching a metal cross. The devil does not speak to a witch. He only moves his tongue. An executioner may find the body of a witch insensitive to an iron spike. An unrepentant witch may be converted with a frttle lead in the eye. Enchanting witchpowder may be hidden in a girl's hair. When a witch is hungry, she can make a soup by stirring water with her hand. I have heard of a poor woman changing herself into a pigeon. At times a witch will seem to struggle against an unknown force stronger than herself. She will know things she has not seen with her eyes. She will have opinions about distant cities. A witch may cry out sharply at the sight of a known criminal dying of thirst. She finds it difficult to overcome the sadness of the last war. A nightmare is witchwork. The witch elm is sometimes referred to as "all heart." As in, "she was thrown into a common chest of witch elm." When a witch desires something that is not hers, she will slip it into her glove. An overwhelming power compels her to take something from a rich man's shelf. I have personally known a nervous young woman who often walked in her sleep. Isn't there something witchlike about a sleepwalker who wanders through the house with matches? The skin of a real witch makes a delicate binding for a book of common prayer. When all the witches in your town have been set on fire, their smoke will fill your mouth. It will teach you new words. It will tell you what you've done.

Discovering Elizabeth Willis’s fantastic syntax this weekend.

— The Witch, Elizabeth Willis

Elizabeth Willis

This is a movie about silence. About speaking with your eyes. The heart racing as she strides across the room. A poem about a volcano, a film about the interior. What is drawn in the drawing room. What is assembled in the 
basement. What is taken apart on the table. The making of a body through a series of omissions.

Elizabeth Willis, from “Steady Digression to a Fixed Point”, Alive: New and Selected Poems

ELIZABETH WILLIS 

Take This Garden

Take this gardenand inhale its fragrancespilling in the dark. Take this dawnbefore the sunriseand the singing of the lark. Take this honeysuckleclimbing the cherry treeand frothing down its bark. Take this sunriseand embrace the morning staras it travels in its arc. Kim M. Russell. 20th September 2023 It’s Wednesday and time to ‘Take This Poem’ over to What’s Going On, where the prompt is…

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Tiptoe Lightning by Elizabeth Willis

Tragedy saunters to the pit, swinging its depth charge. If you had X-ray vision you could watch these bones climbing the Mountain Vainglorious without quite touching the ground. Let's ruin our letters, erase all foreign prospect. So many expeditions are but fictive inflections, the garbled ambition of someone stepping up with, like, something less lovely than the legs of Rome. Thumb power instead of “timber:" The answer from above the stage rattles our windows, a modern letter sent from antiquity, its blurred flourish abundantly gutted.

from Meteoric Flowers, 2006