Poem by Mark Irwin

Consider the fuel        


of Milk, our hands hooking 
things while our hearts corral. Consider the strings


of language untying our emotions: Mom
drawered in the earth’s toffee-dark while an infant’s
rhythmic crying courses through June


green. Urgent its blare, its blossom
raw as that plastic bag’s lung


collapsed in the roses I tend
to find their hilarious full-blown mouths 
clowning as any politician in noon


light, but the crying won’t stop and I follow 
its stream through yards, alleys, toward
the drive-up bank where the homeless mother leans


in the building’s shade and the child
screams like the sun.

Mark Irwin’s nine collections of poetry include A Passion According to Green (2017), American Urn: New & Selected Poems (1987- 2014), Tall If (2009), Bright Hunger (2004), and White City (2000). Recognition for his work includes The Nation / Discovery Award, two Colorado Book Awards, four Pushcart Prizes, the James Wright Poetry Award, and fellowships from the Fulbright, Lilly, NEA, and Wurlitzer Foundations. He is an associate professor in the PhD in Creative Writing & Literature Program at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles and Colorado. 

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