ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of September 2025
Tag: Clint Margrave
Two Poems by Clint Margrave
Going Away
“Six months is a long time,” Fred says
at our last lunch together before I go abroad.
He says that one of his poetry books
is being translated and published in France
and they might even fly him out to Paris
which would be great because he really wants to do
more traveling himself.
He’s decided to wait another three years before retiring
at 75, that he just got a raise, and besides, they need him
at the machine shop until they can hire someone
new to do the tasks that only he knows how.
It’s a warm January on the coast,
and Fred drinks a cold beer,
his red and white Hawaiian shirt
complemented by sunshine
and the beach behind him.
In two weeks, his wife Joan will email me frantically
in the middle of the night,
my bags half-packed,
to tell me Fred is dead.
But that’s still in the future
and we’re here now,
sitting on the patio of the Belmont Brewing Company
thinking six months is a long time.
*
Monument to the Soviet Army, Sofia
I’ve always admired how someone
built a half-pipe
in front of the old Soviet army monument,
with its towering soldier
raising his rifle to former glory,
surrounded by a Bulgarian man
and a woman with her child.
A place where teenagers could gather
to ride skateboards and bikes
instead of praising the past,
eat sandwiches while sitting on the base,
feet dangling over the bronze reliefs
depicting more scenes of glory
with more soldiers
that in recent times
have been painted by artists
to look like superheroes
or Ronald McDonald
or Santa Claus, and more recently
the blue and yellow national
colors of Ukraine.
Two years ago, the city decided
to dismantle the monument
despite its symbolic power
already diminished,
the figures on the pedestal removed
and put in a Socialist graveyard,
the base fenced off
and covered by scaffolds,
where around it today
I notice they’ve built
a winter skating rink
for parents and children
to hold hands
and laugh and glide
over the ice.
*
Clint Margrave is the author of the poetry collections Salute the Wreckage, The Early Death of Men, and most recently, Visitor, all from NYQ Books. He is also the author of the novel Lying Bastard and editor of Requiem for the Toad: Selected Poems of Gerald Locklin (NYQ Books). His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Sun, Rattle, and B O D Y, among others. In 2024-2025, he served as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Bulgaria, living in Sofia, and teaching creative writing at Sofia University. He lives in Long Beach, California.
15 by Clint Margrave
15
Your death is a teenager now.
Your death has acne,
is insecure,
has possibly even kissed someone.
In another year, your death
can get its driver’s license.
And after that,
your death will graduate high school
and I’ll have to ask it
if it ever plans to move out
and find a place to live.
But your death knows
it isn’t going anywhere.
Your death knows it’ll
stay here no matter
how much I try to kick it out.
Your death has mostly
been a good guest,
quiet, respectful,
staying out of my way
especially now that it’s older,
to the point where sometimes
I almost forget it’s there,
unlike the infant who used
to kick and scream
and keep me up all night.
Your death stays in its room
with the door shut
most of the time now,
like I used to do to you
when I was a teenager,
when I’d threaten to kill myself,
and light candles in my room,
sit on the floor,
thinking about how lonely I was,
your death, I’m sure,
is lonely too.
*
Clint Margrave is the author of several books of fiction and poetry, including the poetry collections Salute the Wreckage, The Early Death of Men, and Visitor, all from NYQ Books. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, The Sun, Rattle, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. He is currently a 2024-2025 U.S. Fulbright Scholar living in Sofia, Bulgaria. When not abroad, he lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Rereading Thomas Bernhard’s Concrete by Clint Margrave
Rereading Thomas Bernhard’s Concrete
The same copy
I first read twenty years ago
with only one
sentence underlined:
It is our misfortune that we always decide
in favor of something
that turns out to be contrary
to our wishes.
And I wonder about
the young guy who marked this,
if he still agrees with it
and what he wished for
and whether or not
he got it.
*
Clint Margrave is the author of several books of fiction and poetry, including the novel Lying Bastard (Run-Amok Books), and three poetry collections Salute the Wreckage, The Early Death of Men, and most recently, Visitor, all from NYQ Books. His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Rattle, The Moth, ONE ART, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others.
Two Poems by Clint Margrave
Heart Failure
Tonight in bed
reading a book of Williams Matthews’s poems
and noticing
the short dates of his life
only 55,
not much older
than I am now.
Maybe poets have weaker hearts
than other people.
Larry Levis
Allen Ginsberg
Robert Lowell
Emily Dickinson
And even when
it isn’t heart failure
it’s usually some other attack on the heart,
failed love, disappointment, depression
Berryman, Plath, Crane
Weldon Kees disappearing
by the Golden Gate Bridge,
that foggy day in San Francisco,
the keys still in his car’s ignition.
Maybe heart failure is too perfect a metaphor
since every poet knows
the importance of a good end.
Maxine Kumin says
you should think of it
like closing a door
that it might
involve stepping away from your subject.
She was the last person to see
Anne Sexton alive.
*
My Neighborhood Little Free Library
I find a copy of Jack Gilbert’s The Great Fires
in the stacks
among the worn romance novels
and self-help titles,
and wonder who would leave it.
Inside, a reminder card
for a past due doctor’s appointment
stuck between pages,
next to the lines,
“Love is not/ enough. We die and are put in earth forever/
We should insist while there is still time”
Take a book or leave a book,
the sign says.
I take it.
*
Clint Margrave is the author of several books of fiction and poetry, including Lying Bastard, Salute the Wreckage, The Early Death of Men, and most recently, Visitor. His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Rattle, The Moth, Ambit, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others.
Three Poems by Clint Margrave
My Colleague Dies during Covid
The email says that they don’t have
any other contact information for her,
that there won’t be a funeral,
that there’s no address to send flowers.
“I wonder if anyone has a photo to help
us put a face with the name,” somebody
writes in the thread.
But what is a face in an age of masks?
What is a name?
*
A Poem Is a Grave
marked by words.
You have to dig deep
to find its bones.
You have to bury
yourself in it.
*
Destroy Unread
I heard that the famous novelist
wrote this on one of his notebooks
before he died.
I guess it’s only natural
to want to sanction the narrative of your life
after you’ve gone,
especially if you’re a writer.
When my father died,
he left no instructions
for a literary executor,
much less for a grieving son.
*
Clint Margrave is the author of the novel Lying Bastard (Run Amok Books, 2020), and the poetry collections, Salute the Wreckage, The Early Death of Men, and Visitor (Forthcoming) all from NYQ Books. His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Rattle, and The Moth, among others.
One Poem by Clint Margrave
Egon Schiele: “A Trieste Fishing Boat” (1907)
There is no one fishing
in Trieste today.
They’ve been ordered to stay home.
The boat abandoned.
The world abandoned too
beyond the painter’s old frame.
The water is a murky pink,
a toxic dump,
reflecting off
a sky full of ash
or dust.
The boat sinks.
The colors leak
black as oil,
down into a
slick shadow,
down
into the dates of
my 2020 wall calendar.
*
Clint Margrave is the author of the novel Lying Bastard (Run Amok Books, 2020), and the poetry collections, Salute the Wreckage, The Early Death of Men, and Visitor (Forthcoming) all from NYQ Books. His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Rattle, and The Moth, among others.