Bill Yarrow
My Books
My books wound you. They wound me
too. They are those undullable knives
they sell on TV, shards of glass you can
pick up only with gloves to which are glued
shards of glass. They are a rain of pins,
a bed short sheeted and stuffed with nettles,
a nylon backpack of burrs. All the pinches
Prospero inflicted on soft Caliban. All the false
promises he made to resilient Ariel. In the
middle of the night, I hear them groan. They
are torturing each other. They use their spines
as swords. What do they want? What does
torture ever want? Screaming information.
Quick, toss your books. The milk has turned.
Bill Yarrow is the author of WRENCH (erbacce-press, 2009), Wound Jewelry (new aesthetic, 2010), and FOURTEEN (Naked Mannekin, 2011). His poems have appeared in many print and online magazines including Poetry International, Confrontation, Rio Grande Review, Ramshackle Review, Istanbul Literary Review, BLIP, DIAGRAM, Pif Magazine, LITSNACK, Now Culture, blue five notebook, Right Hand Pointing, Whale Sound, PANK, and Metazen. He is one of the poetry editors of THIS Literary Magazine. He lives in Illinois.
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