Howls quiet, tears dry, homes empty, streets/Heavy with wounds after wounds. By now,/Sleep has become a ghazal that repeats itself—/Every ghazal reverberates into the afterworld.

We walk along slowly, as a way of catching our breath,
holding it close and unpolluted, the old radio,
in front of her breast like a compass:

I could do with a distraction/from the singing line,/the soft wail of the past/and noisy electronic riffs of the present./Let them open the future/with its crapulous saviours on YouTube.

Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Harvard Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. […]

A playground/in hard rain stands/deserted, swings still, slides/beaded and puddled, heavy drops/jeweling the jungle gym/while trembling

here in the lowland vines and tall grasses/there are plenty of fears/but i can live with that/because i get to live with hope/because hope does not exist in paradise…

We watched the grownups jump over the flames, control the fire, celebrate. No one explained the magic celebration to the children. So the children came up with their own myths to explain it

As soon as the lesson is learned
it’s a rock littering the side of the road
next to the Watch for Falling Rock sign

I can feel it coming\the last one\the lungs tip it off\coughing\pushing that last bit of\atmosphere up up and away

She washed the bar of soap\with my saliva as I spit\black and green in the sink\and thought,\“This tastes like shit!”