“So Often the Body Becomes a Distraction”
Diode: “Portrait of the Alcoholic with Withdrawal”
FIELD: “What Seems Like Joy”
Guernica: “Tassiopeia”
Gulf Coast: “Fugu”
Harvard Divinity Bulletin: “Soot”
Hayden’s Ferry Review: “Personal Inventory: Fearless (Temporis Fila)”
Indiana Review: “Portrait of the Alcoholic with Home Invader and Housefly”
The Journal: “Orchids Are Sprouting from the Floorboards”
jubilat: “Besides, Little Goat, You Can’t Just Go Asking for Mercy”
The Literary Review: “Everything That Moves Is Alive and a Threat—a Reminder”
Lit Hub: “Long Pig”
The Los Angeles Review: “Portrait of the Alcoholic Stranded Alone on a Desert Island”
Muzzle: “Supplication with Rabbit Skull and Bouquet”
Narrative: “Do You Speak Persian?”
Nashville Review: “Portrait of the Alcoholic Three Weeks Sober”
New England Review: “No Is a Complete Sentence”
The New Yorker: “What Use Is Knowing Anything if No One Is Around”
The Offing: “Palmyra”
PANK: “The Straw Is Too Long, the Axe Is Too Dull”
Ploughshares: “Yeki Bood, Yeki Nabood,” “Ways to Harm a Thing”
Poetry: “Portrait of the Alcoholic Floating in Space with Severed Umbilicus,” “River of Milk,” “My Kingdom for a Murmur of Fanfare”
Poetry Society of America: “Heritage”
Puerto del Sol: “Some Boys Aren’t Born They Bubble”
Redivider: “Prayer”
Sixth Finch: “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before”
Sonora Review: “Despite Their Size Children Are Easy to Remember They Watch You”
Spoon River Poetry Review: “Milk”
THRUSH: “Portrait of the Alcoholic with Moths and River”
Tin House: “Every Drunk Wants to Die Sober It’s How We Beat the Game,” “Against Dying,” “Against Hell”
TriQuarterly: “Unburnable the Cold is Flooding Our Lives”
Vinyl Poetry: “Rimrock”
Virginia Quarterly Review: “The New World,” “A Boy Steps into the Water”
Waxwing: “Learning to Pray,” “Recovery”
West Branch: “An Apology”
ZYZZYVA: “Portrait Of The Alcoholic With Relapse Fantasy”
Portrait of the Alcoholic, a short chapbook containing several of these poems, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in January 2017.
“Fugu” was anthologized in Best New Poets 2016.
“Portrait Of The Alcoholic With Relapse Fantasy” was selected to be reprinted in Pushcart Prize XLII: Best of the Small Presses.
“Neither Now Nor Never” was anthologized in The Orison Anthology 2016.
“Palmyra” was reprinted for PBS NewsHour.
“Heritage” was awarded the Lucille Medwick Memorial Prize by the Poetry Society of America.
Deep abiding gratitude to Chris Forhan, Alessandra Lynch, Steve Henn, David J. Thompson, Carey Salerno, Bryan Borland, Seth Pennington, Don Share, francine j. harris, Eduardo C. Corral, Frank Bidart, Fanny Howe, Max Ritvo, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Arash Saedinia, Ruth Baumann, James Kimbrell, David Kirby, Jayme Ringleb, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Martha Rhodes, Robert Olen Butler, Kelly Butler, Solmaz Sharif, Yona Harvey, Kazim Ali, Nick Flynn, Jonathan Farmer, Sean Shearer, Gretchen Marquette, David Tomas Martinez, Zack Strait, Allison Wright, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Andrew Epstein, Damian Caudill, Chase Noelle, Carl Phillips, Alyssa Graffam, Darrian Church, Julia Bouwsma, Tomaž Šalamun, Michael Purol, Thaddeus Harmon, Wanda, Mammy, Arash, Mytoan, Nora, and Layla for their patience and love and support.
My thanks to Franz Wright, Reyhaneh Jabbari, W.H. Auden, Ali Akbar Sadeghi, Khaled al-Asaad, Carolus Linnæus, Aaron Weiss, Fanny Howe, Sohrab Sepehri, Lydia Henn, Leslie Jamison, Diane Seuss, Gertrude Stein, Kahlil Gibran, Max Ritvo, Dan Barden, and all other voices in the choir.
An eternity of wild love and gratitude to Paige Lewis, who all this is meant to impress.
for Dan
SOOT
Sometimes God comes to earth disguised as rust,
chewing away a chain link fence or mariner’s knife.
From up so close we must seem
clumsy and gloomless, like new lovers
undressing in front of each other
for the first time. Regarding loss, I’m afraid
to keep it in the story,
worried what I might bring back to life,
like the marble angel who woke to find
his innards scattered around his feet.
Blood from the belly tastes sweeter
than blood from anywhere else. We know this
but don’t know why—the woman on TV
dabs a man’s gutwound with her hijab
then draws the cloth to her lips, confused.
I keep dreaming I’m a creature pulling out my claws
one by one to sell in a market stall next to stacks
of pomegranates and garden tools. It’s predictable,
the logic of dreams. Long ago I lived in Heaven
because
