Open for submissions — Thanks to the poets who responded to my urgent call for submissions. In view of the robust response, I will regularly include a note about submissions. Here is a link to pay the standard $3.00 submission fee. After you pay the fee, I invite you to submit 1–3 poems in an email with a brief bio to michael@indolentbooks.com. Submission fees are waived for paid subscribers once per month.
Brad Vogel
We Are Already Broken
after Walter De Maria
Herringbone gold invites it:
how many cast iron columns
parquet-ringed fasces
could they build
if we let them
take up the field
reconfigure this kilometer
of glimmering time we have left
a kilometer
is less than four months
a kilometer broken
is all of us arrayed
better than hammered
by fell hands
into a few tools
to hold some
fool ceiling
my eyes tell me
whether I believe them or not
there is heat rising
from each metrical foot
the columns built already shimmer
but we are still arrayed
seemingly pyritic
flawed, gaudy, foolish
but reflecting more
than lesser ore
heaven’s stairway
lieth amongst and in us
potent, radiant
barrels ready
that will not fire
we are better broken
than fixed for the wrong man
Brad Vogel is the author of the poetry collections Find Me In the Feral Pockets (Euphrosine Publishing, 2024) and Broad Meadow Bird (Euphrosine Publishing, 2015). His poems have appeared in Evergreen Review, Smartish Pace, Freshwater Review, No Dear, The Eel Pit, Alla Prima, and other journals. Founder and coordinator of NYC Poets Afloat, Vogel lives and canoes in Gowanus, Brooklyn.
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“We are better broken . . ..” Yes!!! I know that piece❤️ I love the alchemy or translation of his piece, of that artwork into this poem. The miles to go — if we can!