Issue #30.5 A Triple Issue: Clint Margrave, J.R. Solonche, Jade Kleiner
A Poem by Clint Margrave
Keats’s Death Mask
My students complain that we focus too much on death in this class, that all the poets we study are obsessed with it,
so when I tell them I saw a copy of Keats’s death mask up for sale at Christie’s and joke, “Does anyone know if Christie’s takes credit cards?”
they don’t laugh and aren’t impressed, and just want to know what I’d do with it if I had the money.
I tell them I might pass it around at the next dinner party, or tie a string on it and wear it for Halloween or maybe just bring it to class and set it on this desk so we can all stare at it while discussing “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” 200 years after Keats died at their age.
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Clint Margrave is the author of several books, including the poetry collections Salute the Wreckage, The Early Death of Men, and Visitor, all from NYQ Books. His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Sun, Rattle, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others.
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A Poem by J.R. Solonche
My Life
When I was young, I was told many things. One thing I was told was not to stare at the sun.
If I did, I would go blind. I was not foolish.
I did not. Another thing was not to stare at the full moon through my bedroom window.
If I did, the moon would slice my life in half. I was foolish.
I did. And it did.
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Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of more than 40 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.
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A Poem by Jade Kleiner
After Stealing Another Poet’s Notebook
I stole your notebook. I did not do this to rob you I did it to enrich myself I have meticulously scanned edited and submitted the upper most marketable 22% of the syllables you scribbled in Q-4, twenty twenty four.
I saw you writing in your notebook, I have no need for more, I am in good health and I have health insurance this year.
So I have your notebook.
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Jade Kleiner is a writer and poet from New England. Her poetry can be found in manywor(l)ds, Neologism Poetry Journal, New Note Poetry, and elsewhere. Her fiction is upcoming in Bright Flash Literary Review. She is transgender and has practiced in the Plum Village tradition since 2020.
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