poetry Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

At Western Psych

On the dayroom TV screen, the Gladiator hallucinates in the desert. Golden lions and ghost horses scream. Filmed light flickers like tears on drugged un/watchful faces. Everyone is shoeless, their socks dark green. The water fountain is bandaged in a towel, leaking like a bad burn. The inmates queue to drink the dribble, scolded by …

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PQ Poem

i am the sea

by Ali Whitelock

that january. prestwick beach. the sea heaves. swallows herself down like cough syrup in thick slow gulps. we’d sat on this rock just two days before, both of us with our backs to the world staring out across and into the thickness. i counted a thousand and one seagulls that day watched them huddle together, …

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Books

Terrance Hayes Tackles Current Life in “American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin”

by Fred Shaw

“Prismatic” is how the late poet Wanda Coleman once described her smart, resonant American sonnets in a 2002 radio interview with writer Paul Nelson. The impetus of her avant-garde style was to approach the old form in a new way, making it a more stimulating way to express anger and satire, allowing her to reach …

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PQ Poem

The Myriad Lives I Lead Inside My Own

by David Ades

Observe the day. Observe how it is spring warm in the middle of winter, the sky unclouded blue, the air full of undefined promise. Observe my daughter’s excitement at the prospect of a birthday party, running with arms flapping, singing for the joy of it, unbridled, unrestrained. Observe how picturesque all the houses look on …

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PQ Poem

Naming It

by Jen Ashburn

There should be a name for it: driving into a spring storm with the sun behind you, the spray kicking up from the interstate, the stacked periwinkle clouds, the sunlight still glowing into the trees, finding the naked white birch, the new green of the underbrush. Light has a name for high contrast chiaroscuro, and …

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Books

The Spirit of Animals Glows in Robin Becker’s “The Black Bear Inside Me”

by Fred Shaw

There’s a favorite scene in Don DeLillo’s sprawling masterpiece of a novel, “Underworld,” where a priest asks his student to name the parts of the boots the pupil’s wearing. The young man struggles with the assignment, allowing the priest to walk him through each aspect of this common accessory, an extension of the body, saying …

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PQ Poem

O Say Can’t You See?

by Samuel Hazo

We shout when we should be discussing, and the country in chaos accepts it. We shoot when we should be disarming, and the country in chaos accepts it. We claim that the poor are just lazy, and the country in chaos accepts it. We budget to build bigger prisons, and the country in chaos accepts …

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PQ Poem

Still Life with Leg Brace & Pontiac

by Jason Irwin

We’re standing next to my grandfather’s ‘73 Grand Prix — newly polished, royal blue — my mother, my grandmother and I. I’m five years old, dressed in a wide collar suit and plaid tie. Under my pants, my leg brace — with its cork lift, metal bars, and leather straps — reaches to my groin. …

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Books

Sheryl St. Germain Muses on her Son’s Overdose in “The Small Door of your Death”

by Fred Shaw

According to the National Institute of Health, more than 115 people in the United States die every day from opioid overdoses, adding up to well over 40,000 deaths a year. And while statistics lend a sense of scope to this epidemic, it’s often the tragic aftermath of a single death with its unanswered questions that …

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Books

Recalling Poet Muriel Rukeyser and her Work on the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Disaster

by Jody DiPerna

When she was just 23, poet Muriel Rukeyser drove from her home in New York City to the hollers of West Virginia, fueled by a desire to investigate and document the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel mining disaster. By the time she arrived in 1936, many of the men who had dug the tunnel were dead. More …

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Books

Aaron Smith Takes on Big Issues in Readable “Primer”

by Fred Shaw

Dualism, a philosophical concept, asks thinkers to consider the relationship between mind and body, often leading to inquiries such as: What is the self? What is consciousness? Do the physical and mental influence one another? Plato and Aristotle pondered the topic centuries ago, their questions often leading to more questions as humans continue to be …

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