Douglas Kearney

Aug 21, 2024 | poets.org | Douglas Kearney |Rowan Ricardo Phillips

On certain corners cars circle ceremoniously & couriers carry cake to circumvent cases. Classics & coupes constellate  Crenshaw, Carey, Compton. Cobalt chrysanthemums,  candles, & champagne celebrate cherished companions ‘cause comrades collaborated to counter crooked cops              & corrupt civic commanders cannibalizing our cities, coloring us cancerous  Courts, Congress & CEOs conspired to confine citizens in coffins & cells, like crack was contagious.

Jul 3, 2024 | zocalopublicsquare.org | Douglas Kearney

by Douglas Kearney | https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/To-Ghost-Is-To-Stay-Douglas-Kearney_final.mp3grieving gets its discipline done,that’s who’s not gone’s abidingrehearsal—biding’s ghost shit,right?

Jun 18, 2024 | theparisreview.org | Douglas Kearney

Photo by Matthew Septimus, courtesy of Harper's Magazine. It is dangerous to excel at two different things. You run the risk of being underappreciated in one or the other; think of Michelangelo as a poet, of Michael Jordan as a baseball player. This is a trap that Lewis Lapham has largely avoided. For the past half century, he has been getting pretty much equal esteem in a pair of distinct roles: editor and essayist.

Oct 17, 2023 | poetryfoundation.org | Douglas Kearney

The jolt that comes to bones inside a tumbled streetcar is what the painter considers as she strokes her- self into story. There is less to the jolt that comes as he shuts his eyes before the monitor, save what he imagines—a lightning bolt, a god tapping the shoulder. He imagines the sky swelling with ceiling fans or the guano of extinct birds, a jolt riding from his shoulder blades to his eyelids, dropping with roller coaster clacks to his fingers. Here, he dreams of Frida Kahlo.

Oct 12, 2023 | poetryfoundation.org | Douglas Kearney

Read Douglas Kearney’s poem “Every Hard Rapper’s Father Ever: Father of the Year.” Then, listen to the poet reading this poem out loud at least once. A few questions you might consider, either in writing or in conversation with others: What do you notice about how the poem looks on the page? What do you notice when Kearney reads the poem?