April Lindner

Tulips, NYC Today as I prep for tomorrow's poetry class by reading A. E. Stallings's Olives, I thought I would share one of that book's many ravishing poems: Tulips These tulips make me want to paint: Something about the way they drop Their petals on the tabletop And do not wilt so much as faint, Something about their burnt-out hearts, Something about their pallid stems Wearing decay like diadems, parading finishes like starts, Something about the way they twist, As if to catch the last applause, And drink the moment through long straws, And how, tomorrow, they'll be missed. The way they're somehow getting clearer, The tulips make me want to see -- The tulips make the other me (The backwards one who's in the mirror, The one who can't tell left from right), Glance now over the wrong shoulder To watch them get a little older And give themselves up to the light. Cut flowers always break my heart.  The minute I put them in a ...

Today my characters travel from Athens to Delphi--that is, if I can get myself to settle down and actually write.  (It's one of those jumpy, hyper-caffeinated days when I can't even seem to get started.) In the meantime, I thought I'd share one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, A. E. Stallings, an American expat in Athens: An Ancient Dog Grave, Unearthed During Construction of the Athens Metro It is not the curled-up bones, nor even the grave That stops me, but the blue beads on the collar (Whose leather has long gone the way of hides), The ones to ward off evil. A careful master Even now protects a favorite, just so. But what evil could she suffer after death? I picture the loyal companion, bereaved of her master, Trotting the long, dark way that slopes to the river, Nearly trampled by all the nations marching down, One war after another, flood or famine, Her paws sucked by the thick, caliginous mud, Deep as her dewclaws, near the riverbank. In...