Marianne Boruch is the author of numerous poetry collections, including The Figure Going Imaginary (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), Bestiary Dark, and The Book of Hours, for which she won the Kingsley-Tufts Poetry Award. She has also published three essay collections about poetry, including The Little Death of Self, as well as a memoir, The Glimpse Traveler. A professor emerita at Purdue University, Boruch continues to teach in the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Photograph by Will Dunlap.

Two Poems

by Marianne Boruch

Bolus

Word for all of it sent down there: worst meal,

best meal, most memorable barley and mushrooms,
the lemon’s bite that
bites, any old slop made with love or indifference,
savored or rushed, rain pelting
window, kitchen in need of a good scrub, veering
toward toxic, finally the same
same ever-ending
you-know-what. Not a subject
for this pool of thought.
People on couch
To continue reading please sign in.
Join for free
Already a reader? Sign In