Terence Winch
DANGER ESTATE
There used to be a name for those corruption narratives
those fallen angels those abandoned cemeteries
those blizzards of meaning those assisted-living lunches
And everywhere tonight I hear that song about monotheism
and everywhere tonight I see the exhausted sky symbolizing eschatology
and everywhere tonight I feel the reckoning to come the mangled syntax of rectitude
and the wreck of the wrack and ruin of the burned bridges the broken fountains
Thank you nightfall for the strange disquiet of the sacred underworld
thank you nightfall for the high-def visions of exotic primates and reptiles
thank you nightfall for the empire of misdeeds and misbegotten heartache
There will come a time when the cake raffle and bingo game will return
there will come a time when a thousand stanzas have passed through the whirlwind
there will come a time when history, cooked on one side, will flip over to the other
SNOW HAS FALLEN ON THE SUBURBS
Snow has fallen on the suburbs
where our memories are all forgettable
where nouns are not as good as verbs.
The young people are out smoking herbs.
It makes everything seem edible.
Snow has fallen on the suburbs.
Gray slush piles up along the curbs.
That is, of course, inevitable
where nouns are not as good as verbs.
The bad weather to come disturbs
us. All weather, we feel, is regrettable.
Snow has fallen on the suburbs.
Snow falls on Croats and Serbs
alike, on the tasty and the inedible
and on all the nouns, on all the verbs.
Some believe snow’s blanket is superb,
but none of them, we think, seems credible
when snow has fallen on the suburbs
covering the nouns in random piles of verbs.
PRESENCE
You are always there, watching
everything I do. I do not like it. People
wonder why I am always pulling the curtains
Closed, snapping the blinds shut, stretching
dish towels across the kitchen window.
I have the white noise going so you can’t
Hear the sounds I am making. I have unplugged
the phones and put a piece of masking
tape over the camera on my monitor.
Nothing helps. I can feel your breath
on my neck. You creep me out. I hear
you thumping nearby. I can’t even
Remember your name anymore
but your presence sends a chill
through the already cold night
MERCY
It doesn’t rain here anymore. The roses
are fading. There are no changelings in the backyard.
The party is not over, however. Underwear is strewn
in the bedroom. Angels are still offering guidance.
Today I refused to kill a spider in the bathroom.
I asked him to disappear instead. I showed him some mercy.
We are serving little seven-layer cakes in the sunroom.
We like the smell of coconut. We are licking the tops of jam jars.
I walk past the beehive and the Metro parking lot. I remember
when the doo-wop groups harmonized so beautifully
as the trains roared in and out of the station. I remember Joe
Brainard, shirt open, cigarette smoking, talking quietly in the kitchen.
I want some mercy too. My departed friends are watching over me.
They tell me they want me to be happy. For which, I say, I need you.
Terence Winch’s latest books are It Is as if Desire (Hanging Loose, 2024) and That Ship Has Sailed (Pitt Poetry Series, 2023). He is the recipient of an NEA Poetry Fellowship and a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing, as well as an American Book Award and the Columbia Book Award. He is the guest editor of Best American Poetry 2025. Winch, the Bronx-born son of Irish immigrants, has also played traditional Irish music all his life.