PhD Poets on the Page

Some Verses

There’s the universe, the multiverse, and the philosophers they try to hide from;

the zigzags of grandparents’ marriages, mirages of grandfather clocks;

then there’s the rising stock, the livestock, the market both super and not.

An old couple lifts a watermelon then drops it in their shopping cart.

When later they take turns holding and slicing it, before turning on the TV,

the perfection of their form brings the questioning of forms into question,

reversing our launch instead toward those midnight lights

in the marketplace where people who have nowhere to go can

safely bite the loudest apples.

Nitpicking the Gods

After hours in the kitchen,

the unclean oil begs to be scraped

off the pan. The crash-test dummy

flung from a model car’s windshield

can’t stop laughing

just because.

Because is the question

the gods never loved. Because,

like the engine

in the chest of a dove,

the river runs

counter to the plans of the sun.

One cloud cuts off another.

Hence, squalor. Rain, sun, thunder

just because.

Daniel Eduardo Ruiz is a PhD student in English & Literary Arts. A Puerto Rican and Cuban poet and translator, Ruiz published his debut collection, “Reality Checkmate,” with Four Way Books. Follow him on X or Instagram at @danielruizpoet.

Mary Helen Callier is the poetry editor for Denver Quarterly and a PhD student in English & Literary Arts. Her recent collection, “When the Horses,” was the winner of the 2023 Alice James Editor’s Choice award. You can follow her on Instagram at @maaaryhelen.

REPETITION

I say my mother was born

in a blue house in August

because the past is

static balm. Because the past is there

and is unchanging, I touch the small

bright scar like an explosion.

History is like this: devotion to the small.

A pain grown to

eclipse its cause.

We walk and the bats dip

down by our faces,

and the past is as patient

as polishing silver in a room

where the guests have gone home.

These are the necessary forms

of corruption. Speech is like this, asking

no questions: I carry the bucket of water away

from the house and carry my own face

away in the water.