Poems by Greg Delanty

American Robin


A robin bashes his blood-breasted body
           against a neighbor’s window pane. 
Maybe he sees bird-heaven within; his family
           past, present and future: chirpy friends,
mates singing merrily over a feast 
           of divine cutworms, angelic larvae. Or, he eyes
the Helen, Marilyn Monroe, Sheba, Aphrodite
           of robinesses. But the bird-book explains
how the  male American robin works himself 
           into such a territorial frenzy that he’s often seen
attacking his own reflection, convinced his own image
           is the enemy. Too easy to turn into allegory.



Spiritus Mundi


What’s the substance called, that incognito element in soda and fast food that makes us crave 
more? A kind of consumer tapeworm, shades of the stuff of myth, akin to Erysichthon, 
who, on hacking sacred trees, is possessed by Hunger, devours all before him till finally
he turns on his own flesh; the Hungry Ghosts, their giraffe necks so narrow they can’t get 
enough down to fill their humongous bellies; or that psychedelic vision of the insatiable spirit
lodged in King Cork, eating the province out of house and home. (You may have felt it  
yourselves, the growl in the belly). These lesser known gods can’t wait in the wings any  
longer, have come into their own. They jostle each other as they take center stage.






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Greg Delanty is the author of several books of poetry, including Book Seventeen (Louisiana State University Press, 2015), Loosestrife (Fomite Press, 2011), and The Ship of Birth (Louisiana State University Press, 2007). He is the recipient of the Austin Clarke Award, the Allen Dowling Poetry Fellowship, a Guggenheim Grant, and the Patrick Kavanagh Award, among others. He was the poet in residence at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont.

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