“The sun is wide, like an eye cut open,
and it blasts the man
so that his whole shadow
scuttles beneath his belly.”
-Max Ritvo
The Simile Museum
Tag: Poetry
December 25, 2020
December 12, 2018
“Sunrise was heating the ring of the horizon
and clouds were rising like leaves.”
-Derek Walcott
September 28, 2017
“Here is Henry outside of Ezeiza:
rangy, wry, smile like a clay pot
lovingly repaired and Spanish fly
in the pocket of his summer-weight suit.”
-Conor Bracken
November 16, 2016
“Only the animals are seasoned owners.
The lakes belong to frogs with broken voices.
Farms are inhabited by rabbits.
A fox barks like a landlord down the dark.”
-Alastair Reid
October 4, 2016
“Only two women in my family have poisoned their husbands. The rest curl in on themselves like dried pig ears, fish-hooked spines, walking question marks asking Is it safe here?”
-Lauren Albin
July 22, 2016
“It’s her birthday, so I smile
but I can’t stop the images
in my own untreated head
— dendrites sprouting threads
like untended ivy, brewing
storms of dopamine and serotonin,
everything out of kilter, ready
to blow.”
-Lauren K. Alleyne
July 12, 2016
The roads unroll like receipts — connecting
shopping cluster to subdivision,
the valley floor thickening with concrete
and plots of unnatural green—and run on,
unconcluded, in lines that buckle with heat.
– Claire McQuerry
May 1, 2016
“The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries
home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like
dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one
of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water
glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said.”
-Carolyn Forché
April 4, 2016
“Words are like leaves, some wither every year”
-Horace
The Simile Museum 