Michael Ruby
Michael Ruby is a poet, literary editor and journalist. He is the author of nine poetry books, most recently Sounds of Summer in the Country (BlazeVOX, forthcoming 2025), Close Your Eyes, Visions (Station Hill, 2024), The Star-Spangled Banner (Station Hill, 2020), The Mouth of the Bay (BlazeVOX, 2019), American Songbook (Ugly Duckling, 2013) and Compulsive Words (BlazeVOX, 2010). He also is co-editor of Bernadette Mayer’s early books; Mayer’s and Lewis Warsh’s collaboration Piece of Cake (Station Hill, 2020); and currently a large selected poems of Steve Dalachinsky. He lives in Brooklyn and worked for many years as an editor of U.S. news and political articles at The Wall Street Journal.
O Berlin, with its typical trashy European outskirts, the denkmal in honor of the victory in the Franco-Prussian War über alles, the former East's surveillance tower truly über alles, graffiti everywhere, NAZI RAUS, mustardy and fudgy dogshits
An animal with a mustache
and beard.
A monkey or dog.
These frosty blues and purples
aren’t an accident.
And inside the riding whip the tail on the walk home legislates our holster of this irradiated ketchup the women inside phones brave potable boys
At On the way to the polls with Louisa & Charlotte the at 10:40, I mortify Louisa. twilight’s I tap Brooklyn Borough President last Marty Markowitz on the arm and say, “Praise God!” gleaming Marty Markowitz shrugs.
All the spare parts to rarify
They really ice the migraine dead
Doozey up and explode coffee earrings
Superstitions and the perfect Rorschach bandage
Breathtaking, route-faking, peace-making
O’er a galleon, reflected in the river the frightened animal’s open mouth land a table covered with candles of a large hole at the top of the world the cars drive toward me with muffled headlights free an animal sitting high in a tree
