Poems by Maxwell Bodenheim

Perspiring violence derides
The pathetic collapse of dirt.
An effervescence of noises
Depends ...

I This red hush toppling over the sky,
Wanders one step toward the stars
And dies in a questi...

I Rows of blankly box-like buildings
Raise their sodden architecture
Into the poised lyric of ...

Sometimes jaded, sometimes tranquil,
Your eyes invade the tumult of your face.
Your lips are ...

The smile of one face is like a fierce mermaid
Floating dead in a little pale-brown pond.
The l...

Smiles are the words beyond the words
That thoughts abandon helplessly.
Upon this nervous shop-...

In 1892
When literature and art in America
Presented a mildewed but decorous mien,
He was bor...

Sedate and archaic, a twilight-frilled haze
Walks over the meadows like rolled-out centuries
Q...

I "Have you ever played a violin
Larger than ten thousand stars
And warmer than what you call ...

An old silver church in a forest
Is my love for you
The trees around it
Are words that I have ...

I You were in the room, yet your body
Was stone cut in drooping lines
And hued with decorous ...

The dust of many roads has been my grey wine.
Surprised beech-trees have bowed
With me, to the...

A negro girl with skin
As black as a psychic threat,
And plentiful swells of blonde hair,
Sa...

They have made me an airy apology
for the crude insistence of their flesh!
They have made me tw...

In me is a little painted square
Bordered by old shops, with gaudy awnings.
And before the sho...