February Poetry Curator Richard Greenfield

Poetry Doesn’t Let Us off the Hook

Richard Greenfield teaches creative writing at the Creative Media Institute at New Mexico State University. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, Subterranean, and is one of the founding editors of Apostrophe Books. Zócalo’s poetry curator for February, Greenfield chatted with us in the green room about Korean army stew, Navajo poet Sherwin Bitsui, and finding hope “in the face of everything.”

What Millennials Want

 

We want to weigh 150 tonnes
and be covered in grey-blue skin
smooth as oil. We want our lungs
to deflate into our chests
when we hunt
the midnight zone

A pile of white styrofoam heads

Contagion

 

When the arena of war shifted to the planet,
when we listened for the scrape of pangolin nails,
the black beat of rhinos, the crex of corncrakes
who would not …

Knotwork

 

a knot for the nettles and ditches
   a knot for the ragwort’s scald
a knot for the ghosts at the holy well
   a knot for the missing child

a knot for …

White-tailed Eagles

 

Iolair Mhara

Two eagles lock talons in mid-flight
and tumble together towards the water

    as if they’ll never stop falling,

but they disentangle just in time
and ascend to the top

    of …

LETTER FROM THE COUNTRY

 

My brother
what do I do now

with my impulse
to tie our shoes together

and launch them into the wire
the way I think

you think
sublime vistas are conjured

I prepare a …