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

For Every Man

For every man that stumbles into a room
feeling for the door, asking himself, “What did I wish
to do here now that I’ve come?”
there is a man who stays inside.

He had a good eye once that one who squinted against
the light that slipped through a crack
the way a buckle would slip through a hole to keep the
neck from turning, the tongue from falling.

Spittle left on grit teeth when it swayed among
the leaves. Birds’ wings flattened the banana
trees as in the war of every man that chose not
to speak to himself

but chose instead to draw his signature across
a face the way a body disemboweled itself. No
body “disembowels itself.” It takes two men.

by Lawrence Ypil
from The Experiment of the Tropics (2019)

BIOGRAPHY >