Blood Argument by April Bernard

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend March 1, 2016   Blood Argument   April Bernard

You insist that the world belongs to a stony-hearted goat-god— how every time we act, we enact his vileness; how this is no ecstasy, just a bad labored joke.   Your body in spasm longs to strip the flesh, but if you do there will be nothing left but the busy bone-clatter of tactics.   *   I will listen instead to the river, cold as time, smelling of blood-brown leaves.              Copyright © 2016 April Bernard. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “Although this is not a sonnet, I got interested in the possibilities of argument as a poetic mode when I started studying sonnets in depth. I keep playing with two voices, or more, or just the self arguing with itself—in a refusal of consensus, an insistence on the unresolved.” —April Bernard   April Bernard is the author of Brawl & Jag (W. W. Norton, 2016). She lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she teaches at Skidmore College and in the low-residency MFA in Writing program at Bennington College.   Photo credit: Marion Ettlinger  Poetry by Bernard   Brawl & Jag (W. W. Norton, 2016) "Sea Rose" by H. D. "Alcove" by John Ashbery "Prayer for a Birthday" by Mark Wunderlich Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038