Everything I Have Has Humps and Hooves

Everything rouses and grunts and moves
with stiff resolve from day to day (my loves, 
my dreams, my appetites). Away, along the grooves
of dunes, my mornings and my afternoons, 
away they rock on creaking clogs of bone
(my prayers, my doubts, my fears of being left alone)
built to endure, and long.
                                          And still, too soon
I know each one will grind the pestles of its knees 
into the sand, not far from some mirage of trees, 
where I will find it sagging broken where it lies
in a cloud of flies. 
	                             Everything I have will stray, 
my bundled caravans unstrung and swept away. 
And if I try to call them back (my joys, my shames)
I’ll find I can’t recall their names. 


A sonnet by Todd Boss that first appeared in 32 POEMS.
Read by Todd Boss.

Everything I Have Has Humps And Hooves

Things, Like Dogs


I came home last night to find that my
laptop had crawled up onto the table

in anticipation of my being there, 
and the piano light had switched itself on,

and two eggs had cracked themselves
into a skillet on the stove. It was odd

because I never make eggs for dinner, 
but beyond that, it was kind of nice. 

Kind of nice to know that things, 
like dogs, grow fond and want

to be had, to be used, to be played. 
I stood in the emptying window light, 

my shirtfront swelling with gratitude. 
I was just about to say something aloud

to the contents of my house, something
grand and at the same time tender, when

the first word caught
in my throat. I stood there alone

till at last a chair I hadn’t known about
nudged the backs of my knees

and a dusty Kleenex sneezed itself out
of a nearby box I hadn’t put there. Had 

I slept I might have dreamed of rocking
gently under the stars on a ship whose

crew was foreign, whose maps
were thumbed in sand on deck each morning. 

My mantel clock rang out a warning, 
and later I found this poem at the back door, 

looking softly up at me and wagging
its little tail.

Things, Like Dogs

She Rings Me Up


four frozen dinners 
and a pint of politically
correct ice cream. 

I say real casual, 
“I don’t need a
bag, or nothing.” 

She looks at me 
like I’m a fruit 
with no sticker, 

then mutters, 
“Anything.” 

“Huh?” I say.

And she says, “I 
don’t need a bag, or 
anything.” 

I’m completely 
confused. It doesn’t
make sense. Why
would my cashier
need or not need 
a bag, when I’m 
the one carrying
the groceries in 
this relationship? 

I just stand there
while she swipes 
my VISA card and
cups her tattooed 
hand over the slot 
in the register 
where the receipt 
comes out.

I say, “I don’t 
quite follow you.” 

“You said nothing…”
she says, and winks, 
though her wink
doesn’t match her
tone, and now I’m 

doubly confused (I 
hadn’t said nothing
since before I’d 
said anything to this
woman, with her
multiple piercings
and her strange way
of talking) “… not 

nothing,” she’s
saying now. “It’s
anything,” but I’m 
no longer listening.

I’m tired. It’s been
a long week, it’s 
getting on evening, 
and I skipped lunch
this afternoon. And
I’m in the middle 
of a difficult time.

At that very moment,
inspiration kicks in, 

and I realize it’s a
guy / girl thing.

Of course. That’s it. 

She’s talking about 
love. It’s no wonder 
I don’t understand her. 

She hands me 
a pen taped with a
pink plastic daisy. 

“It’s your diction,” 
she says softly. 

I check my fly before
signing my name.

She’s right, it’s my
diction. I’m back in 
the game. I remember
this as flirting: two 
people in a confusion 
transaction. It’s been 
a long time since 
I spoke this tongue. 

I decide to take a paper
bag after all, just 
to throw her, just to 
keep the dervish 
of the conversation 
whirling while I 
think of something
cool and cryptic and
casual to say.

I shake it out with a 
bang, and collect my 
frozen things, their 
boxes all frosty. 

Have I been right
to believe myself
attractive, despite
so much rejection? 
Will I still get a
chance to claim, 
if only innocently, 
what might be mine?

Then she says, “Hi,” 

and I say “Hi”—before
I see she’s talking
to the next guy in line.

She Rings Me Up

One Can Miss Mountains


and pine. One 

can dismiss
a whisper’s 

revelations 
and go on as 

before as if 
everything were 

perfectly fine. 
One does. One 

loses wonder 
among stores 

of things. 
One can even miss

the basso boom 
of the ocean’s 

rumpus room 
and its rhythm.

A man can leave 
this earth 

and take nothing
—not even 

longing—along
with him.

One Can Miss Mountains

Nocturne


We tend
 to sleep better

when the clock
 is wound

than we do
 when it’s all 

wound down. 
 I don’t know 

why we settle
 to the sound.

Somehow
 the regular

click and chime
 of passing time,

like water, turns
 a water wheel

that turns a gear
 that turns a stone

that turns upon 
 another stone

and fine and
 finer in between

our dreams like grain
 are ground.

Nocturne

My Son Climbs In 


beside me, falls asleep
in a lump, all his jump

and shimmy plum
run out. He’s about

as wide and as deep 
as a pillow, plumped. 

And I—propped 
slumped and reading, 

needing no one to 
tuck me in, needing

nothing really—
eventually I take

to nodding, nodding 
with all I know and have

known, toward the un-
known. Later I wake, 

my book in my lap, 
the lamp still bright, 

to find him grinding
his tiny white teeth

with all his might.

My Son Climbs In

My Joy Doubled


to drive my daughter
through the jeweled
morning light
this morning: 

joy to sigh, 
“What a lovely morning!”
and see the glimmer
in her eye 
in the rear-view mirror
as our light went green,

and joy to show her how 
the ochre sunrise hadn’t 
yet washed down 
from the cross 
on the steeple 
at the top of town. 

The temperature 
was three degrees,
the bank sign said. 
“Wake up, old Mr. Sun,”
we called as if he were
our corner grocer, 
not the ember burling
distant crowns.

A mile we rode in silence
while the nickel-purple
crystal of the world
was poured with light.

I need to think she saw it all 
as it sped by—
the rink in spun 
chain link, the outlet mall 
in mist—and loved 
the pinks and golds
as I do. She is so young.
If I can’t train her eyes
to love, how else then

praise the lapidary, 
who cuts our days 
like diamonds 
from the carbon cold above?

My Joy Doubled

How It Must Have Been for Him


Their life was a bicker.
 
In fifty hard years on the farm together
pleasure never pulled the plow,
 
so how, at the break of the day she died
did it feel to find her unawake
at last the worse for wear
   tucked beside him in a bunch
   her slippers on the floor
   the thermostat down
   eggs unbroken in their icebox divots
   the Marshfield paper at the step
   and chores to be done
 
how rode his farmer's fingers
in the dial-holes of the slow, foundering 9
and the two brief 1’s
 
and in which of fifty fields
did he find the words
to say to the end of the line
not her name, not
a pronoun merely
but my wife…
 
my wife has died, send someone . . .

How It Must Have Been For Him

Blind


One day the doctor tells you that you’re blind
 to the truth. It’s physical; something about 
the retina, rods and cones. Truth is a wave-
 length in the spectrum you’re unable to detect. 
All your life you’ve been compensating,
 convincing yourself you could see what you
could not. Suddenly you’ve got questions
 about religion and politics and art, but what
you finally ask is about treatment. No, he says,
 there’s little medical science can do. We know 
it might be genetic; it’s likely one or another
 of your parents can’t see the truth any better 
than you. Also, we know this condition tends 
 to grow more acute with age. But frankly, 
what doesn’t? he says, trying a smile. Well, 
 that does it, you think to yourself, as you 
press the button in the elevator that will 
 drop you gently to the ground. Your wife  
and kids were right all along, as were your
 friends, who spent their lives dispensing 
advice you repeatedly waved away. In a way, 
 it’s a relief, isn’t it. Now you can get down
to the business of apologizing, to everyone, 
 for what has been in fact an honest disability,  
one that shouldn’t keep you from, say, driving
 a car, but which has gradually and progressively  
made you the truth-less husk of a man you 
 always knew, somehow, at your core, that you 
are.

Blind

Apple Slices

A Waltz For The Lovelorn

A Blessing


May the good 
Lord grant you
a little pride,

since of Creation
He Himself was
more than a little

satisfied. And 
while He’s at it
may He cede 

some greed, 
from Heaven
where His gold is

guaranteed. 
And envy too
upon ye pour, 

He who will not
suffer any other
gods before. 
	
And wrath!—oh, 
yes, God grant
you wrath; 

Noah knows
how much
God hath. 

A glutton for
praise, may He
see and raise ye

(if He can admit
He’s got ’ny)
gluttony. 

And I protest: 
if all men must
steer clear of lust, 

how come He
carved Eve such
a curvy bust? 

It isn’t just. 
Seven flames
for the moth;

the Arsonist on 
His arse, too lazy
to snuff them out,

the sloth.

A Blessing

Restraint


A three-point
harness it ain’t.
Its threads are
thin, the kind
arachnids spin.
We think we 
have it, but we 
don’t. We eat 
and drink and 
say and think
and repeat 
what we say we 
won’t. We go 
despite bright 
gossamers of 
no. It’s on least 
gusts of yes
we blow, with
no tomorrows
in our plans. 
There are no
pylons between
spans. There are
no limits on 
the dash. We 
call it “accident,”
the crash.

Restraint

Eve


How could she—twisting it from her teeth
for the first time, sugarsap rivering like meath
down wrist and chin, her tastelets shivering
from that first crunch-spritz & its delivering 
pomblast & peel-sting, its pithmash a perfect
discrumpulation in the mouth, so fruct-
uously crushbursting & rush-luscious—yes, 

how could she not, on finishing the best  
crash course in astonishment naturally devised—
how could she not have looked into his eyes
as juices further traced her waist, her breast, 
& beckoned him to sample from the rest—
& how could he, her husbander, her flesh, 
not take & eat & champ the world afresh—?

Why Empty Barber Shops Draw Me, I Don’t Know


—	it’s romantic. I
end up snapping

photos through the
windows: chair

convened there by
chair, by chair, 

mirrored, clean,
someone the night 

before having 
swept up all the 

cut hair, light 
streaming in from 

the street printing
whatever’s on the 

plate glass crooked
across the floor, 

CLOSED sign askew
in the door. We do

want community,
we do — but we also

don’t, we want to be
held close & left

alone, we want 
to talk when we want

to talk & we want
sometimes instead

to sit quietly while
someone touches us

all about the head
with the edges of a

scissoring scissor
& the neat teeth

of a comb. Small 
comfort, but lucky 

for us, the wealthy 
as well as the poor, 

that there are
a few things left 
	
in this old world 
we still need other

people for.

Why Empty Barber Shops Draw Me, I Don’t Know

Someday the Plan of a Town


—	right down to its sidetracks and back
alleyways — will match — or so goes 
the dream—with some identical patch 
of neural network your rogue thoughts 
roam in — overlay it like those musculo-
skeletal transparencies with which 
anatomy textbooks come bound — and
you’ll be at home in its dogleg jointwork 
of cobbled kinks — and your body will 
resound at every fork, tuning-fork-like —
and every road you ever rambled will be
re-scrambled to appear to have brought 
you here, where you fit so perfectly, where
you can practically predict where to find 
every bench or postbox, and where you 
can cue every little old lady who leaves
her flat to buy bread — as if she were
locking up a little room in your head 
and trading your idea of money for your 
idea of food before returning to wipe 
her shoes on the mat your mind’s laid flat 
and fit her flat key to its shoulder into 
the strike plate keyhole through which you
daily romance her as she grows older — 
that worn, dome-topped slot that looks 
as if two question marks met on the road 
to kiss and mate and make one question
opening, opening — each forever the 
other’s only answer.

Someday The Plan Of A Town

Men, Then, Maybe


How to say it not louche:
Men too’ve got lashes as
lovely sometimes, their 
locks sometimes as lush. 
Couldn’t I love one just as
much, and touch one just 
as generously? Men are as
leisurely over the Sunday 
paper Sunday mornings,
aren’t they? Linger over 
coffee just as languorously 
don’t they? I’ll admit, 
my gaze is lately on them
more than formerly a bit.
Here I get to harmlessly  
wondering how seamlessly
this one’s arm heavily 
linked on mine might be. 
Or how might that one’s 
shapely upper lip between 
my top and bottom fit. 
Men aren’t faultless, oh, I 
know. Now and then a prick, 
okay, but let’s just say the 
“fairer” blooms I’ve picked 
so far, though lovely, are 
no prick-less clutch. So, 
men, then. Maybe. Huh. 
The hot mechanics may yet 
be a mystery, but at least 
I know the parts already. 
A body’s a body, after all,
a tenderness a tenderness. 
Probably we’d most of us 
be off better genderless. 
A martyred saint for the
desert storms of your
hetero-norms anymore, 
I ain’t. Sorry. So, strip me
of my rank, and shave me. 
Issue the smart khaki
shirt and tent. Save me
a spot near the flag up
front. Gimme a nickname.
Start me a grunt.

Men, Then, Maybe

I Find It Lovely That We Name Our Boats

Golds Within


Like the tavern owner 
 negotiating with 
the contractor over 
 the entryway color, 
like the corner grocer
 sorting the order 
in the morning before
 opening, we artists 
are keeping going 
 our poor concerns. 
Last night while I 
 meant to be sleeping,
I was bent over one
 unkempt square meter, 
fussing for more 
 than an hour. The night 
before, I went up a 
 metaphorical ladder
and found so much 
 to do up there it was
dawn by the time
 I came down. Is it
worth it, or is it a
 quackery, to work so
exquisite a taquerie 
 or so outré an atelier 
so far from the heart
 of town — to lavish 
our grief and our 
 glee in them, to 
belabor a life in the
 feeble belief that
someone might see
 what we see in them? 
A job at Daimler-Benz
 building cars, the 
whistle blowing us 
 into the bars — ours 
aren’t assembly line 
 aspirations, we’re 
driven to something 
 worse. No pension
awaits. Art’s never 
 done doing. There’s 
always another machine
 wants unscrewing, 
always a richer beer
 that needs brewing, 
and this is our cure
 and our curse. Our 
beautiful things fill 
 the halls of kings, we
ought to have it made. 
 But the straw we spin
spins golds within, 
 an undervalued braid.

Golds Within

Be Glad Your Parents Fucked


you up. What luck you’re 
far from flawless, right? 
Well-adjusted people 
frighten most folk, or get
stuck in well-adjusted 
paper-pushers’ jobs. Be
glad it was half-assed, 
the job your parents did 
on you. You’d rather be
whole-assed — or worse, 
no-assed-at-all? 
 		          Artists in
Japan hex off perfection, 
marring prints that lift
too clean off inky blocks
of wood. The perfect is
the enemy of the good.
Be glad your parents hid
your fineness underneath 
a well-placed scar. How 
awful people would be
to you if they knew how
faultless you actually are.

Be Glad Your Parents Fucked

At the Sofitel


in Budapest, alone,
regretting leaving,
	estranged from 
	my daughter six 
	years almost, 
		believing it might 
		be six and six more 
		before she texts or
			answers when I call, 
			trying to remember
			how it all began,
				I find that I can.
				Every ball thrown
				at her, every tear, 
					every tatter. Very 
					matter-of-factly now
					I can recall exactly.

Even so, I saw her
at the funicular
today, in her
	old winter downs,
	12 years younger, 
	chattering away! 
		I reached to help 
		her up before  
		I became aware 
			she had her own 
			father there, 
			clutching his pass. 
				And we rose
				while I fell, 
				the tall Sofitel
					and the Danube									gliding away 
					outside the glass.

Sophie, tell your 
story. Say you’re 
sorry or not sorry. 
	Sophie, tell of 
	life, your studies,
	your plans. From 
		Sofitel to Sofitel 
		I go, it’s a mockery,
		soundproof doors
			closing behind me
			as if a quiet so bad
			could be improved. 
				Sophie. Tell Dad
				how much longer
				you plan to be
					the stronger one, un-
					moving, unmovable,
					unmoved.

At The Sofitel

Always That Last Trip to the Airport


in a taxi… always the city through 
the windows seeming unexplored,
no matter how exhaustively I toured.
Always the temptation to cancel
flights and remain, a new resident.
If the world is, aren’t I too in pencil, 
a sketch of a man? It’s no accident
I’m grafted here, drafted here, a
figure stenciled on a foreign scene, 
rogue, but increasingly road weary, 
denizen of the requisite in-between. 
Not all who march march for a cause.
I travel like some drink — to be lost. 
My bags may as well be stuffed with 
gauze for all the blood my journey’s 
cost. Then: Airline? asks the driver. 
I check my phone. I can’t remember.
We seem to be here early. We seem
to have navigated the stars. Seems 
I’ve been studying my chauffeur in 
the mirror — tanned Britannia, brown-
eyed Qur’an — reading and re-reading
there, I swear: How I could love. How 
I could love anyone. How I could love 
anyone and anywhere.

Always That Last Trip To The Airport

There's a Poem in That is a new podcast in which poets help strangers discover the poetry in their most intimate stories. This unreleased Episode 1 features guest stranger Joan, a singer whose loss of her singing voice is bound up with three miscarriages and a historic train collision.

If you think there's a poem in your story, leave a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line: 808-300-0449.

Read all three poems for Joan, and her reactions to them: poeminthat.com.

TAPIT Episode One: Joan

A poem from PITCH by Todd Boss (2012, W. W. Norton & Co), now available in paperback wherever books are sold.


This Morning in a Morning Voice

 to beat the froggiest 
of morning voices, 
 my boy gets out of bed
and takes a lumpish song
 along—a little lyric 
learned in kindergarten, 
 something about a 
boat. He’s found it in
 the bog of his throat
before his feet have hit
 the ground, follows
its wonky melody down
 the hall and into the loo
as if it were the most 
 natural thing for a little 
troubadour to do, and lets
 it loose awhile in there
to a tinkling sound while
 I lie still in bed, alive
like I’ve never been, in  
 love again with life, 
afraid they’ll find me
 drowned here—drowned  
in more than my fair 
 share of joy.

This Morning in a Morning Voice

A poem from PITCH by Todd Boss (2012, W. W. Norton & Co), now available in paperback wherever books are sold.


The World Is in Pencil

—not pen. It’s got

that same silken 
dust about it, doesn’t it, 

that same sense of 
having been roughed 

onto paper even  
as it was planned. 

It had to be a labor
of love. It must’ve

taken its author some
time, some shove. 

I’ll bet it felt good
in the hand—the o

of the ocean, and
the and and the and 

of the land.

The World Is In Pencil

A poem from YELLOWROCKET, the debut book of poems from Todd Boss (2008, W. W. Norton & Co), now available in paperback wherever books are sold.


The Hush of the Very Good

You can tell by how he lists 
                                              to let her
kiss him, that the getting, as he gets it,
is good. 
               It’s good in the sweetly salty,
deeply thirsty way that a sea-fogged
rain is good after a summer-long bout
of inland drought. 
                               And you know it
when you see it, don’t you? How it
drenches what’s dry, how the having 
of it quenches. 
                          There is a grassy inlet 
where your ocean meets your land, a slip
that needs a certain kind of vessel,
                                                         and
when that shapely skiff skims in at last,
trimmed bright, mast lightly flagging 
left and right, 
                      then the long, lush reeds 
of your longing part, and soft against 
the hull of that bent wood almost im-
perceptibly brushes a luscious hush 
the heart heeds helplessly—
                                               the hush 
of the very good.

The Hush Of The Very Good

A poem from PITCH by Todd Boss (2008, W. W. Norton & Co), now available in paperback wherever books are sold.


It Is Enough to Enter

the templar 
halls of museums, for

example, or 
the chambers of churches, 

and admire 
no more than the beauty 

there, or 
remember the graveness

of stone, or 
whatever. You don’t 

have to do any
better. You don’t have to

understand 
the liturgy or know history 

to feel holy
in a gallery or presbytery. 

It is enough
to have come just so far. 

You need 
not be opened any more  

than does 
a door, standing ajar.

It Is Enough to Enter

A poem from PITCH by Todd Boss (2008, W. W. Norton & Co), now available in paperback wherever books are sold.


Feast

             —Let me taste
the kitchen in your skin. 

Now that company’s gone
& the kids are tucked in, 
let the real feasting begin. 

Let me lay you out on the 
bed like a spread of bone 

china. —Yes, I want a 
piece of you. 
                       Yes, I do.

Give me your garlic, and 
the sting of your pepper.

The plenty of your hair
(cinnamon, cardamom). 

Here a hint of coffee, & 
there, in the cup of your 
shoulder, I swear, a lick 
of salted butter. 
      But first: 
your wrist, your palm’s   
sweet meat. 
                      Dip your 
fingers in my kisses—
star anise—lemon zest—
                                     
Say a grace, my fare,
my flight, 
                 & let’s re-light
the candles tonight…

Feast

A poem from YELLOWROCKET, the debut book of poems from Todd Boss (2008, W. W. Norton & Co), now available in paperback wherever books are sold. 

Ere We Are Aware

A poem from PITCH by Todd Boss (2008, W. W. Norton & Co), now available in paperback wherever books are sold. 

Broke

When My Mother Says Tough Luck

it’s like the rough tongue of
leather in a boot somehow,

the way you dig your 
thumb in there when it gets

stuck to curl it out again
against the topside 

of your foot and pull it flat
so you can truss it up, 

or like the slap of milk
on milk in a metal bucket

carried up the ramp 
to be dumped in the bulk-

house tank with the rest, 
or the clank of the bucket

handle against the bucket’s 
flank once the milk’s 

poured out and the bucket’s 
done its chore, or like the 

prayer a shucked off pair 
of garden gloves cough 

softly when they’re chucked 
from the hand and land

filthy on the back porch floor.

When My Mother Says Tough Luck

1. 

The sculptor 
made a giant of the boy
who killed the giant
with his slingshot
big as a hammock
and his rock

as big as a boy. 
He made his brow
Neanderthal, 
triangulating for
the viewer’s 
gaze, so he’s

not to size
in more ways
than immediately
meets the eyes.
Chiseled
and chiseled 

from a 12-ton stone 
in the heart of town
lying down, 
one historian 
describes him rising
from the marble math

“like a person being
slowly revealed as
water drains
from a bath.” 
Machines to hoist 
and move the kid 

had yet to be 
invented, so they did 
a ropy frame on 
a greasy skid
till—bare,
twisted on one

dropped hip,
balanced on one 
foot, supported 
by the other lifted—
there he stood
in the square—

a marble 
elegance, a 
paragon of power, 
naiveté in its 
finest hour, 
bold

gaze fixed 
on a distance 
that—
in a minute—
would have a 
giant in it, 

stone cold,
laid out flat.


My mind could not stop imagining it. An earthquake hits the center of Florence. Liquid waves roll under the rigid city: The church bells ring out of time, terra cotta tiles rain down from the Renaissance rooftops, priceless paintings rattle off the walls of the Uffizi. Meanwhile, inside the Accademia Gallery, the David’s pedestal begins to tilt. Slightly at first, just enough to shift the statue’s gaze, so that he looks not at his old enemy anymore—the implied Goliath off in the distance—but at a new one: the floor he’s been standing on for 134 years. 

… Finally, the compromised ankles reach their angle of maximum stress. They begin to slide along the old microfracture faults—an earthquake within the earthquake—and the David’s legs and ankles are crushed by the weight of the body above. He begins to truly fall.

The first thing to hit the floor is his left elbow, the arm that holds the heroic sling, and it bursts … Then the rest of the marble will meet the floor, and the physics from there will be fast and simple: force, resistance, the brittleness of calcite crystals, the shearing of microscopic grains along the axes on which they align. Michelangelo’s David will explode.

—Sam Anderson in The New York Times


2. 


Denying the boy
a shock-proof 
plinth, Italy 
takes a terrible
chance: Each
thunder or 
underground 
rumble makes

David’s varicose
fissures 
advance. Little
by little he 
heads for a
stumble, our 
soldier sans pants,
our humble young
prankster. We 
couldn’t or wouldn’t or
didn’t do a thing,
and the stone 
has long since left
the sling

so the cracks 
up the backs 
of his ankles
floss
transvisible as 
arachnid’s goss,
a crumble
marbling 
the marvelous
marble that
dates to its  
quarry in
Carrara’s moss. 

And when,
nose to nose
with that last 
disaster at
last he goes,
he’ll be blasted
into scattershot as
brittle-white as bone

—just like that 
which
flaked 
around him
when at first
the master 
found him
in the stone.



3. 

And then we’ll live
in a post-David world
—like the pre-David 
world but aware 
he once existed—
although, pre-Michel-
angelo, they knew
of David from the Bible, 
so…  

Of flesh made word
and flesh made stone, 
immortality favors 
one. Words
set man in stone 
more so than stone, 
but even they, some day, 
like granite in reverse,
beneath earth’s surface 
will submerse at last
when all is done, 
and with our stories 
of the universe gone, 
our sun will be nothing
but a sun, our moon 
a moon
like every other one. 

And there’ll be 
no such thing as man. 
And there’ll be 
no such thing as art.
And there’ll be 
anymore such things
as boys or wars 
or stones or slings. 
The world 
will fly apart.

And God, 
if there should be a God,
will go at last alone,
unsung, unwritten, 
and unseen,
the bash
from smash to finish
past, 

the slate of Him again

wiped clean.


This poem originally appeared in Left Hooks, an online journal of poetry.

The Sculptor Made a Giant of the Boy

This poem, which originally appeared at Terrain.org, with audio adaptation by composer John Hermanson, explores the terrible beauty that awaits us as agents of and audience to the destruction of our planet.

SHE'S GOING TO BE BEAUTIFUL

She’s going to be beautiful as she goes, 
isn’t she? Gorgeous plumes of cinder
blooming rose in dying light. She’s going

to give a stunning show. The melting ice, 
the slow decay of zones. Our drones 
will play it all in full HD, and lavish insult 

on the injury. All the satellite imagery. 
The National Geo photography. She’s 
going to be calendar worthy stuff

if ever again a calendar there be.
Like forcing someone to disrobe
and wishing you don’t want to watch. 

The moon will touch her everywhere goodbye.
An elephant—the last—inelegantly,
will pass in a savannah gleaming gold.

The cloud formations no one’s ever 
seen, in towers shimmering with ash, 
we will no longer wonder to behold.

All the coastal cities under sea. She will be 
beautiful, of course she will. And 
devastatingly.

She's Going to Be Beautiful (feat. John Hermanson)

THE MIND WILL WANDER

—as water will seep; 
as mice will yonder 

creep the clover deep
and still nose home; 

as a wren will dither
daily in the dome and

remember the nest’s
address; as honeybees

comb September for
pollen—so the mind

will wander between
the lines (of music or 

news or conversation), 
will spend attention on

wonder’s fine wines, 
will even tend toward

understanding, and,
swollen with booty or 

duty or beauty, survive
to wend a way back

to the studious hive 
and the subject at hand.




This poem originally appeared in 32 Poems.

The Mind Will Wander

I’d Like To Go Through All Your Rooms


one by one and turn out lights

and unplug appliances so there’s
nothing left humming or

glowing or ticking or storing
anything in memory or listening

for the radio beam of a remote
to tell it what it ought to do 

and then I’d like to lay you down 
in a quiet as deep as blankets 

and let the snow do all the hard 
thinking that still needs doing and

put the moon in charge of making   
old ideas new again and then 

I’d like to put my hands against
whatever you’ve got in storage

and push it across your attic floor
so there’s room for us to do 

what we don’t need one damned
thing in the world to do while

out on the lawn the auctioneer
begins the bidding oh yes the

bidding who will start the bidding
and let the bidding of the cosmos

yes yes the bidding of the cosmos
going once going twice undo us

of everything worldly we possess.

I’d Like To Go Through All Your Rooms

Todd Boss is a poet, public artist, librettist, and film producer in Minneapolis. His poetry collections are SOMEDAY THE PLAN OF A TOWN (2022), TOUGH LUCK (2017), PITCH (2012) and YELLOWROCKET (2008), all from W. W. Norton & Co. His poems have appeared in THE NEW YORKER, POETRY, NPR, THE LONDON TIMES, and many other publications. His choral collaborations with composer Jake Runestad have premiered at Kennedy Center and elsewhere. His large-scale public artworks include a 2022 augmented-reality "Dakota Spirit Walk" in downtown Saint Paul, a 2012 installation in the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis to mark the 5th anniversary of the 35W Bridge collapse, and a 2014 block-wide projection of poetry films onto Saint Paul’s historic Union Depot. He is the founding Executive and Artistic Director of Motionpoems, an initiative that partners with major publishers and film companies to turn great contemporary poems into short films, with 150 in its archive. More at toddbossoriginals.com and motionpoems.org.

Todd Boss

Popular tracks