The American Poetry Review

The world’s most exciting poetry-reading experience.

The American Poetry Review3 min read
Five Poems
A poem is a gesture toward home.It makes dark demands I call my own. Memory makes demands darker than my own:My last love drove a burgundy car. My first love drove a burgundy car.He was fast and awful, tall as my father. Steadfast and awful, my tall
The American Poetry Review3 min read
Two Poems
It had only given you one meaning it gave it early too you in your crib with that man sitting in a folding chair with Budweiser and a book reading the book out loud so even if you didn’t understand there was the sound the girl in the woods the doll i
The American Poetry Review2 min readPoetry
Become a Friend
Dear Reader, We are grateful for the support that you, a Friend of APR, have shown the magazine. We hope you will join us again now, in our 47th year, to keep The American Poetry Review going strong. In 2018, we published six outstanding issues repre
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Three Poems
He threw the pale pink envelopes into the trashand smashed the Mickey Mouse phone hanging up. And when his wife asked you okay? he said okay,then took a twistoff to the back, screaming FUCK so loud he spooked the treefrogs and cicadas.He’d got canned
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Three Poems
Whenever I am in one conversationI am thinking about another.Whatever room I am in my heart is not.Before a mirror, which face is true:the one that moves or the one that is moved?I flip a coin and wish for the opposite.Life, friends, is whoring.A war
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Two Poems
I dreamt I witnessed something(a child being humiliated in some way)& then recounted the event for someone.I dreamt the scene, watched the scene,Even retold the scene & yetI can’t remember it.As soon as I woke, it was forgotten.In the dream I cried a
The American Poetry Review5 min read
Three Poems
I read his decision to wear camo to the hospital as meaningful rushes and reedscross the body bend and breakartificial topiaries catch his thin cotton sheethis lone tab of blue thread, his far edgeoutside, the wind blows and the leaves, but the troub
The American Poetry Review6 min read
Two Poems
In a hotel in a small town in Norfolk I am listening to someonethrowing glass bottles into a metal bin: toss-shatter, toss-shatter.There are no other sounds; it’s a quiet afternoonbut the one tossing them has a sense of rhythm and I havea sense that
The American Poetry Review17 min read
Alive In The Ice And Fire
A Conversation August, 2018 SUSAN STEWART As I read your books, including If You Have to Go, I am struck, as I’m sure any reader would be, by their existential immediacy. You write in time as you undergo time, taking up especially the unfolding of ev
The American Poetry Review5 min read
Speech And Transcription
AP2 Books Ada Limón, The Carrying: Poems Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions Hardcover, 120 pages, August 2018 The world asks for transcription. That has been my experience, that if I recount any small terror, I will be asked for the proof of what has
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Five Poems
Moon river, swollen river, river of starholeand bright, harness river, lichen river,river we velvet with our filth.River of butter and river of witches, rivercracked open careful like egg, or burstapart, unleashing its violet load.River mouths, river
The American Poetry Review1 min read
Two Poems
I worried about my daughter,so I was shaken awakebecause I have no daughter, and whateverknowing looks, whatever cakeswe could have baked together, whatever giftswe could grant one another, they wereslipping out of sight, the way parents do,to those
The American Poetry Review3 min read
Three Poems
at first, trying to reach the accused, i swallowed burnt matchsticks, her hair a tar tumbleweedin the room’s south-facing corner. i did this to pray & i did thisto feel. & then i swallowed my old chant—his name, his name—like i’m not madeof my oppres
The American Poetry Review12 min read
At Odds With Humility
AP2 Books Michael Collier, My Bishop and Other Poems Chicago: University of Chicago Press Paperback, 80 pages, August 2018 Michael Collier has always been difficult to pigeonhole. Although he has been writing poems steadily since 1986, beginning with
The American Poetry Review3 min read
Two Poems
Our house in the 100-year flood plainflooded. They say thatfor another 800 years a hurricanelike this will not come. My internetis down and my smart phone hurts my thumbsarthritic. I’m running out of data.All my books are in boxes. Please referto my
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Five Poems
Mother, father, I’m handing you this child,little Erotion, the one I loved the most,so she won’t be too scared of Tartarus,his awful mouths, and all the shadow ghosts.She’d have been six in only six more days.Let her play with you there by her side,
The American Poetry Review5 min read
Ekphrasis For The Anthropocene
AP2 Books Vi Khi Nao, Umbilical Hospital 1913 Press Paperback, 84 pages, November 2017 When I was a kid, my parents took me to visit relatives in Ireland. The main thing I remember about that time is the sheep: long car rides, misty ruins, fabulous n
The American Poetry Review4 min read
Lima Is For Lovers
* Of course the President of Peru’s daughterlives in a flower-glutted casonain the Barranco District,hands down the most romantic in Lima.Of course she speaks four languagesand has 50K followers. *Sometimes, after Special Forces murdera few dozen Shi
The American Poetry Review4 min read
Three Poems
I heard a scientist speak about new discoveries on multitasking.Apparently, it is beneficial to multitask only when doing repetitive things that are meniallike dishwashing, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of babies,and not while doing something ce
The American Poetry Review6 min read
ANCESTRY & INNOVATION
TYREE DAYE Let me start by saying congrats on If They Come for Us. It’s a great book, and thank you for taking the time to do this interview. I have so many questions about the crafting of this wonderful book, but I thought we’d frame this interview
The American Poetry Review1 min read
Childhood Goes Kaleidoscope, Kaleidoscope, Kaleidoscope, Gun
We keep waiting to wake up & know what we’re doing;we’ve learned to be gratefulfor any colored shard of glass not shaped like a bullet. We are driving in a blizzard (not a metaphor,we could die, I have a lot of responsibilityhere) & our daughter is t
The American Poetry Review1 min read
Essay On Thunder
A woman made wary by misfortune, writes Stendhal,will not experience this soul-shaking upheaval. Soulshakingupheaval means something like what heelsewhere calls the curse of passionate love, althoughmy sense is that love here is better understood ase

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