the palindrome of time

- matthew shenoda

I kiss the back of your neck

- Timothy Liu

Love Poem: Hafez

Timothy Liu

Way in the back

of that used

bookstore, I found

a paperback

whose covers

had come loose

from its spine—

the glue cracked

underneath—

held together

by a green

rubber band

that crumbled

to dust when I tried

to open it—

The Lovers

Timothy Liu

I was always afraid

of the next card

the psychic would turn

over for us—

                              Forgive me

for not knowing

how we were

every card in the deck.

If I can’t

touch or kiss your

          face again, then I

                    really want it to be

          winter all the time—

my mind a machine

          no one around here

                    knows how to fix.

- Timothy Liu

I always

                                                                         hear echoes and reverses

when I am listening to language. It’s

                                              the field of my consciousness.

- Charles Bernstein

 I think with the poem not thr-

                                     ou-

      g-

h

                                                  it.

- Charles Bernstein

I saw time but it didn’t return my gaze.

- Charles Bernstein

I left my purpose in my other pants.

- Charles Bernstein

I believe in my disbelief, have faith in my reason.

- Charles Bernstein

   The taste of madeleine ain’t

             what it used to be.

- Charles Bernstein

I want to be understood,

                      just not by you.

- Charles Bernstein

To unthink my mind as broken

- Geffrey Davis

Some — the luckiest — 

          arrived at, then clung to, that point in love where

to be understood entirely stops being the main thing,

or a thing at all, even.

- Carl Phillips

When I think of desire,

it is in the same way that I do

God: as parable, any steep

and blue water, things that are always   

there, they only wait

to be sounded.

- Carl Phillips