Poetry
The Origins of the English Novel
Some mornings, waking early
in the business cycle, I breakfast
on serial metonymy and find you shipwrecked
on the posturepedic,
your body pooling up and emptying out,
your hair a metaphor
for a rainy day, and I know I’m ready
to abandon the gold
standard and the family pharmaceuticals
for a unit by the sea, the wind
rattling the windows to the rhythm of
prime numbers, the waves crashing
like waves only
then you lift your head
and the absentee ballots arrive
with tales of the epidermis:
the room begins to shake
off its dream— the walls
are white, the bedding blue—
and somewhere
beyond the deadbolt and swirling gases
a world grows cool and firm:
the changing of clothes begins.
Contributor
Matthew BroganMatthew Brogan's is a poet and the executive director of Seattle Arts & Lectures.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Five Poems from Pavilion
By Gabriel PalaciosNOV 2019 | Poetry
Gabriel Palacios lives and writes poems in Tucson, Arizona, where he recently received an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. Recent work can be found in West Branch, The Volta, Typo Magazine, Territory, Spoon River Poetry Review and Bayou Magazine.

Kevin Carey’s Set in Stone: poems
By Christopher X. ShadeJUL-AUG 2020 | Books
Carey renders poetic moments of breakaway energy in a tight game of memory, reflection, loss, and regret. He feeds the ball again and again to what hurts him. Carey eschews the technical for poems that ground the reader in a vivid place and tell as clear a story as possible.
3 poems
By K. Desireé MilwoodDEC 20-JAN 21 | Critics Page
K. Desireé Milwood is a Panamanian-American poet & author of Poems for My Namesake released in 2016. She is known for her witty & thought provoking style of haiku. She currently resides & creates in Newark, New Jersey.
Joyelle McSweeney’s Toxicon and Arachne and Rachel Eliza Griffiths’s Seeing the Body: Poems
By John DominiJUNE 2020 | Books
Together, Joyelle McSweeneys Toxicon and Arachne and Rachel Eliza Griffithss Seeing the Body: Poems go a long way towards providing this dark moment its definitive accompaniment. More astonishing still, the poets bring off triumphs distinctly different. Youd never mistake McSweeneys heartbroken stammer for Griffithss blue wail, yet either outcry will set your back-hairs prickling. Either could wind up a prizewinnerthough good luck choosing between themand in any case the texts will go on providing their unique, adult consolations for whatever sorrows lie in wait.