Volume 16:1, Winter 2015
The Sonnet Issue
Subject to Change
Let us shove the last 73 minutes down the garbage
disposal and vacuum up all traces of the past 17 years
and stuff them in a plastic bag and be done with them.
Lets scrape our alternative versions of everything
we have learned since 1981 off the ground and flush
them all down the toilet. Im worn out by my misdeeds.
My hands hurt, my fingers wont curl anymore.
Im in the emergency room at Holy Cross hoping
all is not lost. I have no one to pray to, just the vast
empty sky, the black hole inside the black hole
that swallows up everything whole. They make
me lie down on the blank slate. Dr. Baker is running
late. Then the nurse lifts the curse and Baker says
youre a lucky man. It could have been worse.
Terence Winch has published ten books of poems, the most recent being It Is As If Desire (Hanging Loose, 2024) and That Ship Has Sailed (Pitt Poetry Series, 2023). Winner of an American Book Award and the Columbia Book Award, he has also published two story collections and a novel. He is the guest editor for Best American Poetry 2025 and the editor of the Best American Poetry blog’s “Pick of the Week” feature. Winch is the recipient of an NEA poetry fellowship, a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing, and multiple grants from DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities and the Maryland State Arts Council. Also a musician and songwriter, he co-founded the original Celtic Thunder, the traditional Irish music group.