Brooks Haxton

Rating: 4.67
Rating: 4.67

Brooks Haxton Poems

Gripping the lectern, rocking it, searching
the faces for the souls, for signs of heartfelt
mindfulness at work, I thought, as I recited
words I wrote in tears: instead of tears,
...

2.

Cattle egrets in the dry grass waded
like white clerics at the hooves
of brood cows, heifers, and new calves.
...


When fever burned the last light out of my daughter’s eyes,
I swore to find and kill the ones to blame. Men
must mount the long boat in the dark with spears.
At dawn, where the flowering spicebush hid my scent,
...

4.

The waterfall in sunlight is God
talking to herself. Her voice
poured into the trees asks
nothing, to prove nothing,
...

The pelican in scripture is unclean. It pukes dead fish
onto the hatchlings, and it roosts alone, like Satan
on the Tree of Life. Nobody told me. I liked pelicans.
I liked owls, too. I used to lie awake and listen,
...

I made sackcloth my garment once, by cutting
arm and neck holes into a burlap bag.
A croker sack they called it. Sackdragger
they called the man who dragged a croker sack
...

On a hillside scattered with temples broken
under the dogday sun, my friend and I drank
local wine at nightfall and ate grapeleaves
in goat-yogurt glaze. The living grape vines
...

The wine of astonishment
is house wine at my house.
The whiskey of it is a sauce
we savor. The cocaine
of thy judgment also
...

9.

It was the fortieth year since Buchenwald: two thousand
Jewish refugees in Sudan starved while Reagan visited
the graves of Nazis. CBS paid off Westmoreland
for their rude disclosure of his lies and crimes:
...

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Psalm 42

Down from twilight into dark at noon,
through darker, down until the black
could not be more devoid of star
...

OK. Let’s not call what ditched us God:
ghu, the root in Sanskrit, means not God,
but only the calling thereupon. Let’s call God
Fun. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
...

In the hidden part thou shalt make me to know
wisdom. Psalm 51
That young man
firing his Kalashnikov
...

Brooks Haxton Biography

Brooks Haxton, born in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1950, is the son of the novelist Ellen Douglas and the composer Kenneth Haxton. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation, Haxton teaches in the writing programs at Syracuse University and Warren Wilson College. He lives in Syracuse with his wife and three children.)

The Best Poem Of Brooks Haxton

Salesmanship, With Half A Dram Of Tears

Gripping the lectern, rocking it, searching
the faces for the souls, for signs of heartfelt
mindfulness at work, I thought, as I recited
words I wrote in tears: instead of tears,
if I had understood my father's business,
I could be selling men's clothes. I could be
kneeling, complimenting someone at the bay
of mirrors, mumblingly, with pinpoints pressed
between my lips. That was the life I held
in scorn while young, because I thought to live
without distraction, using words. Yet, looking
now into the room of strangers' eyes, I wanted
them to feel what I said touch, as palpably
as when a men in double worsted felt
the cuff drop to his wrist. There was a rush
in the applause of gratitude and mercy:
they could go. A teenager, embarrassed
for himself and me, lefthandedly
squeezed my fingers, and said thanks.


Anonymous submission.

Brooks Haxton Comments

Joyce Evans 15 January 2022

I call Brooks 'stud deluxe'.

0 0 Reply
Joyce Evans 22 December 2020

Call me please

1 0 Reply
Joyce Naron Evans 17 December 2020

Vivid imagery of ethereal scenery in nature.

0 0 Reply
Joyce Naron Evans 16 December 2020

Impressive work. The images that you describe are vivid and full of life.

0 0 Reply

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