Poetry by Justin Brock: Poetry is nice because it doesn’t always have to rhyme – although my poems usually do.
I’ve recently redesigned the website. Sadly, one of the things I lost were comments. Here’s the conversation that happened around this poem. Laurence – a breath of fresh air, reading this – and when you get to the end of the last word of the last language you know, which feels far too soon every [...]
There is not distance between your kisses To sense them as more than one. And living, as I do, in this perpetual novelty, I forget where you touch me, Dimpling my soul like water ‘neath the legs of an insect.
Would you harass my age to tell their names? You know them well: Shammua, Shaphat, Sethur, Palti, Igal, Guel, Gaddi, Nabbi, Gaddiel, Ammiel, Joshua and I surveyed the land – a man for each tribe, but ten of them lied. Faithless had they spied and fearfully had spoken. I cried, “Go up at once! Are [...]
“Only stones,” you say! Child, do you see that river? What can you know of the fear, the wild panting down our necks that chilled the bravest hearts of men? The dust behind those chariots filed across the desert like death-wind, and had each questioning his God and lisping Moses with his rod. But when [...]
This poem came to me over Christmas break, 1998-1999. My dad, brother-in-law and I were looking over some acres in rural Mississippi where Dad was hoping to hunt. Having walked through the woods for a while, we came upon a clearing piled high in the center with bulldozed trees. My brother-in-law and I enter the [...]