Donna Masini

Donna Masini Poems

Donna Masini Biography

Donna Masini is a poet and novelist who was born in Brooklyn and lives in New York City. She graduated from Hunter College and New York University. Her work frequently deals with urban life and the working-class. Her first book of poems, That Kind of Danger, received the Barnard Women Poet’s Prize, chosen by Mona Van Duyn. In addition, she has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant. Masini’s work has appeared in American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, the Paris Review, Ms., KGB Book of Poems, Georgia Review, Parnassus, Boulevard, and Lyric. Masini currently teaches poetry as a part of CUNY Hunter College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. She has also taught at Columbia University and New York University She married Judd Tully in 1986. She lives in New York City. She is currently working on a new novel of obsession, psychoanalysis and class.)

The Best Poem Of Donna Masini

Anxieties

It's like ants
and more ants.

West, east
their little axes

hack and tease.
Your sins. Your back taxes.

This is your Etna,
your senate

of dread, at the axis
of reason, your taxi

to hell. You see
your past tense—

and next? A nest
of jittery ties.

You're ill at ease,
at sea,

almost in-
sane. You've eaten

your saints.
You pray to your sins.

Even sex
is no exit.

Ah, you exist.

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