Behind My Eyes: Poems

100 Favorite Books of Poetry (100 books items)

""A Hymn to Childhood" Childhood? Which childhood? The one that didn’t last? The one in which you learned to be afraid of the boarded-up well in the backyard and the ladder in the attic? The one presided over by armed men in ill-fitting uniforms strolling the streets and alleys, while loudspeakers declared a new era, and the house around you grew bigger, the rooms farther apart, with more and more people missing? The photographs whispered to each other from their frames in the hallway. The c"

Read in 2016 (97 books items)

"Excerpt from "In His Own Shadow" "He reads: While all bodies share the same fate, all voices do not." "Have You Prayed" "When the wind turns and asks, in my father’s voice, Have you prayed? I know three things. One: I’m never finished answering to the dead. Two: A man is four winds and three fires. And the four winds are his father’s voice, his mother’s voice . . . Or maybe he’s seven winds and ten fires. And the fires are seeing, hearing, touching, dreaming, thinking . . . Or is"