Poems by Maxwell Bodenheim

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

RATTLE-SNAKE MOUNTAIN
Every night the sky grips my shoulder, in pain.
The cows upon my slope
...

Rounded to a wide eyed clownishness
Crowned by the shifting bravado
Of his long, brown ears,
...

August sauntered down the mountain-side,
Dropping mottled, turbid wraiths of decay.
The air w...

A sky that has never known sun, moon, or stars,
A sky that is like a dead, kind face
Would ...

I Time has placed his careful insult
Upon your body.
In other ages Time gave rags
To hags wit...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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