Author Archives: Claire Bateman

“Almost as suddenly, I thought of all the important lines by others that have stayed with me through the years: ‘You must change your life’ (Rilke), ‘How soon unaccountable I became’ (Whitman), ‘practice losing farther losing faster’ (Bishop), ‘I have promises to keep’ (Frost), and so many others. I made a list of these well-known […]

“When the weather turns left I’ll turn into it,/reaching for washouts with my inherited pedipalps,/wagering grapeshot precision I can get home/before lightning thumbtacks me to the palisades./My middle game has never been that great,/a lame excuse, so I will always forget your birthday/but ontically be present for the moment of your death./You’ve left me, a […]

“The man at the table across from mine/is eating a painting with a knife and fork./It looks to be a lesser Pollack, or perhaps/a Clyfford Still, regardless, abstract/expressionism, surprisingly modern/for a restaurant with linen tablecloths/and a live string ensemble serenading/the diners with Ravel’s Quartet in F Major.”—By Doug Van Gundy Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman […]

“When fog hangs this thick there is the pinkest/odor of trouble     One chair at the table’s made/of painted wood and sits empty     Before we settled/this country     before we stole it    a mist like this/might fill the interstices of endless trees/When I read an address through a cellophane window/on […]

“All my life, in any place,/ for no reason, my grandfather’s 280 acres call out my name. Free and clear./Sister Gary, Gay, Gaynette. But all those stale breaths have gone somewhere/else. Cool dirt, open graves. I have outlived them all. My recollections/remain imperfect as I tell and re-tell the tales. As they are—or were/—not necessarily […]

“These days, though, I leave the lavender alone./I prefer brushing their velvety leaves accidentally, releasing/    their soapy scent, summoning the bees/whose hind claws are so compacted with pollen/they appear to wear tiny yellow combat boots/as they roll tipsily in bowls of tea roses and lilies./Standing beside them, I dig my toes into dirt,/knowing, finally, […]

“The world wants to tell you what it means./Words everywhere Messages: in the thin lines/of tide, in the waves’ foamed cursive left behind/on the flat, unrolled paper of sand./Bird skips, blank space, hieroglyphs,/wind against skin and the scent of raw sea—/awakenings that can teach you each solitary heart/contains all the world’s tribes.”—By Alexandra Thurman Speculative […]

“He raises one arm and you can’t tell if he’s pointing or offering his hand. Your clothes catch fire—you imagine both of you walking away from this alive. The burning man cocks his head to one side as if he’s never stood in the middle of his own destruction. Then a blast of light explodes […]

  “One little chicken shouldn’t cause/this much grief, Gary/says. There is no small grief,/I tell him, for all are/interconnected. One touch/sends tremors through our core/like the fly in the web/that wakes the spider at its center.”—By Lisa M. Hase-Jackson Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1 March 2022—Poet Lisa M. Hase-Jackson is the […]

“. . . and we float above the tallest of bone structures/ our heads tilt against the ceiling/ as we drink from the mouth of a whale/the last sliver of air/and I hum/and hold my son’s hand/and I think of the cow carcasses/in the drought-cracked soil of the Northeast . . .”—By Ananda Lima Speculative […]