Joshua Weiner is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish (2013); he is also the editor of At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn (2009). He is the recipient of a Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a 2013 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, among others. His poems and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The American Scholar, Village Voice, Chicago Tribune, The New Republic, Threepenny Review, Poetry, Washington Post, Slate, and elsewhere. Joshua has been on the editorial staff of Tikkun since 1987. He teaches at the University of Maryland and lives with his family in Washington, D.C.
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The World's RoomPoemsFrom"Lines to Stitch Inside a Child’s Pocket"
Boy now, man later; and all the story in between:
Yes breaking down to No, joy to pain.
Milk now, meat later; separation, fuse.
Swim the river rising and with patience take your aim.
Miss once, miss again; and your whole life seems a waste.
The target is yourself becoming brave.
Who soon, who later? – whatever happens next –
Someday you’ll lose us in the in-between.
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The World's RoomPoemsFrom"Mongrel Death Blues"
What’s that behind my back?
What’s that gnawing behind my back?
It sounds like a dog crunching bones for marrow.
Bones here so old, the sun’s dried up the marrow.
What kind of dog splinters bone like that?
Don’t turn around, I hear it getting louder.
Don’t turn, don’t turn, its growl is getting louder.
Oh, don’t you growl at me, nappy rabid dog.
The World's Room:Poems -
The World's RoomPoemsFrom"Epitaph"
He can’t remember what they bought,
two corner mausoleum plots or two
in the center, but he doesn’t trust
those bastards, they’ll take
your money and who knows what,
he wants to go back, watch
the deposit, make sure he gets what he paid for –
he wants the right spot, the one they picked out
together, not in the corner, in the center,
because they planned it all, and with his heart
he was going to die first,
and she’d remember where to put him.
The World's Room:Poems
Selected Works
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