Marianne Boruch is the author of eleven poetry collections, including Bestiary Dark (Copper Canyon Press, 2021), The Anti-Grief (2019); Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing; Cadaver, Speak; and The Book of Hours, for which she won the Kingsley-Tufts Poetry Award. She has also published three essay collections about poetry, including The Little Death of Self, as well as a memoir, The Glimpse Traveler. A professor emerita at Purdue University, Boruch continues to teach in the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College.

Photograph by Will Dunlap.

Three Poems

by Marianne Boruch

My Ears Aren’t Right

When bodies floated up out of their graves after

the hurricane,
I had no TV to watch.
But too much rain
can translate anything to unspeakable.
First it’s awful,
a downpour, my yard out there, the last
worst place for insects that can’t
burrow deep, even secret ones
they haven’t yet pinned to a lab board, haven’t
crowned with little white slips to say so.

People on couch
To continue reading please sign in.
Join for free
Already a reader? Sign In