August 2010
John Beer's first book, The Waste Land and Other Poems, was published by Canarium Books in April 2010. His work has appeared in Verse, The Brooklyn Rail, Denver Quarterly, Seven Corners, and elsewhere.
J. BEER 1969-1969
It was when they determined that I had been born dead
That my life became easier to understand. For a long time,
I wondered why rooms felt colder when I entered them,
Why nothing I said seemed to stick in anyone's ear,
Frankly, why I never had any money. I wondered
Why the cities I walked through drifted into cloud
Even as I admired their architecture, as I pointed out
The cornerstones marked "1820," "1950." The only songs
I ever loved were filled with scratch, dispatches from
Michelle Taransky lives in Philadelphia, where she works at Kelly Writers House, is Reviews Editor for Jacket2, and teaches writing at The
University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. With her father,
architect Richard Taransky, she is the coauthor of The Plans Caution
(QUEUE 2007), as well as the author of Barn Burned, Then, selected by
Marjorie Welish for the 2008 Omnidawn Poetry Prize (Omnidawn, 2009). Her
poems have appeared in publications including Denver Quarterly, VOLT,
How2 and New American Writing.
BARN BURNING, AN ECLOGUE
For those who say it is enough
Of the farmstead, not falling
Rain come last to bed and tearing
White sheets into small armies of animals
Where this keeper's concern meets
Old thrasher in the shed
Its keyhole patterned
After a breast and the calling
