I think of much modern verse as language exhibiting unwonted, thus potentially interesting, behavior. When a text dents my complacency, as often as not I consume it without construing it; consummation without construction. 

A monstrance of sun held skyward by the blue-sleeved hills. (1)

In practical terms the transfer of energy achieved by a versification is more a movement of current than exchange of substance; a signing, not a signaling. 

Find my key in my camo pencil case, remember / what my boxing coach said about my strong chin. (2)

The gestural upheaval, compounded of compression and expansion and decontextualization, leaves me in a state such as: A moment ago I was approximately there; now I’m roughly here.

you gotta get metatextual with it, like / the refractory period is for the subjunctive! & that pineapple juice / shit does not work: (3)

You are me, assailed by whiffs of private idiom, you acquiesce to a condition of aroused consternation rather than one of perception or fathoming. 

horrid buttermilk tubes / loll through the iron gates / like vein casings for vodka sausages, (4)

The wordings, terse or prodigal, strained or common, joined or cleft, metered or splayed, do not resolve into other than constellations of themselves, presumably acting on a faculty that’s not what we regularly use to make language conform, convey, contain, or conduce. 

It’s there realizing the heathens / In the most tacky cascade imaginable (5)

There aren’t conclusions in modern verse; there are more like cryptic maneuvers: initiations, sallies, anacolutha, festivals of indeterminate reference, switchbacks and sharp veerings. 

i saw escape buttons pressed into bodies stacked behind your dinner party. (6)

It’s provoking, and, very occasionally, lights one up.  Does a text make whoopee with the delightment faculty of this bag of bones? That names it a poem.

… as the past gags us with the solution / in which it was preserved in case the chance / to complete its inkling of splendor ever arrived (7)

Note

All snippets are from Poetry, September 2026.

(1) Carolyn Forché, “The Bridge Before Dark.”
(2) Karl Knights, “I’m the Passenger, Giving Wrong Directions on Purpose.”
(3) Joseph Earl Thomas, “From the Precipice of Sexual Freedom.”
(4) Regan Good, “Zombie Dandelions.”
(5) Dorothea Lasky, “The Last Moments of the Egg.”
(6) Paul Martínez Pompa, “lit.”
(7) Matt Longabucco, “Theta.”

(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved