Frederick Seidel’s latest collection is Peaches Goes It Alone.
Now and again, I feel a throb Passing through my body like a sob, Which is both painless and of no consequence, Like a wave washing up on a beach, But which feels like or prompts the thought It may be the beginning of a stroke,
But probably it is just the irregular heartbeat Of atrial fibrillation (AFib) Or starting up a reluctant motorcycle. The word throb makes it sound As if it had to do...
Richard Anderson, master Savile Row tailor, Opens the eleventh-floor hotel room door Wearing a new suit so blue It makes me smile, Something no suit has been able to do for quite a while. Welcome to room 1111 at the Carlyle.
When earlier in the morning Richard crossed the street To the pharmacy opposite, A stranger coming out of Zitomer’s cried out, ‘My God, that suit is
Every time I sleep I leave a stain. When I wake up, I climb out of a drain And step into my feet and it is plain That when I walk away I leave a lane Of garbage on the carpet in the train.
Francisco Franco (El Caudillo) pokes his head up from the drain Where he’s been hiding with Saddam Hussein. He waterboards the peasants with champagne. Now maybe they’ll vote to give this...
For Mitzi Angel
The man using the pay phone on Wall Street, His back to you, is using it as a urinal, And urinating – only logical! Our degradation is complete.
The young woman, a crazy smile pickled in brine, Cross-legged on the sidewalk in a T-shirt that says TOMORROW, Holds a sign telling her sad story. She’s reading a paperback of Lolita, stealthily, behind the sign.
...
A perfect week for digging up the block. If you care, you repair The infrastructure or it will despair. Bear with the noise! We aren’t made of air.Tyrannosaurus rex on tires, gorging horribly, Fucks the street in bursts and jerks. The operator riding it bucks and charges forward And resumes his hippopotamus mouthfuls.
The scene’s a slaughterhouse With dead meat screaming....
Frederick Seidel reads his poem ‘In Late December’.
‘A perfect week for digging up the block.’ Frederick Seidel reads his poem ‘Trump for President!’.
A popular clip on YouTube shows a local news reporter trying to interview a costume-shop owner who’d been charged with cyberstalking. The woman is dressed as a giant rabbit and refuses to...
Whether in person or in print, self-consciousness is unsettling. Self-conscious writers, like self-conscious speakers, can’t help betraying that they’re more concerned with their...
A year or two ago, Geoffrey Hartman urged literary critics to declare their independence. They should not regard criticism as an activity secondary to the literature it addressed, but as an art...
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