Lawrence Ypil (b. 1978)

1. BIOGRAPHY

2. CRITICAL INTRODUCTION

3. SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

4. SELECTED POEMS

• Porch

• Childhood

• Aria

• recollect

• The Nature of a City

• The Experiment of the Tropics

• In the Manner of Thinking

• For Every Man

SELECTED POEMS

Childhood

As when there was always something to be done:
Run the long yard. Hide the white sigh.
A red carpeted jump over the steps of stairs.
The soul asleep beside the body.

To be young was to love the blue intimacies,
Something tied like a knot 
Tumbling through the thorned bush,
Gathering quick the small keeps.

The birds asleep beside the strong wind.
So I made a pact with the green angels
Holding still the shattered pinion
Of their will against the marble

Of my eye beyond all treachery.
Bright house of a large and all the cutlery.
Still, an honest hide it was this pleasure still—
Displeasure’s still. As when it was beginning to be dark—

The day asleep beside the reckless rush home.
Jump from the highest hiding place.
Knife through the lonely run.
As when the promise of a waiting small’s long kept.

by Lawrence Ypil
from The Highest Hiding Place: Poems (2009)

SELECTED POEMS: “Aria” >