The fourth and final in our series featuring poems by Ed Skoog with photographs by J. Robert Lennon.  Read the first, and Ed’s introduction to the series, here. Space wants to be held away from its surface, between shape and place. Looking for solace, do I walk or drift? For protection, I wear a soup pot. When I call out sweet, when I try to get it alone, late and talking in the pool light glow. Across midnight’s white tile floor, like cough medicine, or the grass stains on her rugby shirt. In dark basement, saying her name toward the vernal scent of vetiver. Sacked city we are fleeing, bright on our backs. — Ed Skoog‘s first collection of poems, Mister Skylight, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2009. His poems have appeared in Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, and Poetry.  He has been a Bread Loaf Fellow and Writer-in-Residence at the Richard Hugo House and George Washington University.  He lives in Seattle and teaches at Everett Community College. J. Robert …

The third in our series featuring poems by Ed Skoog written in response to photographs by Robert J. Lennon.  Read the first, “What’s Your Beef,” introduced by the poet, here. Radial More and more the radial makes a horrible noise. My tires and I are made to the worksong noonwhistle of Goodyear Tire and Rubber in Topeka’s limited, endless grid, building two wheels into my surname rolling further from home & harangue to slash tires, shoot out lights, break into the old hospital to get high, admire the radical simplicity of whistling, which, not radial nor rubber, is air, — Ed Skoog‘s first collection of poems, Mister Skylight, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2009. His poems have appeared in Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, and Poetry.  He has been a Bread Loaf Fellow and Writer-in-Residence at the Richard Hugo House and George Washington University.  He lives in Seattle and teaches at Everett Community College. J. Robert Lennon is a novelist and photographer living in Ithaca, NY.  He teaches writing at …

The second in our series featuring poems written by Ed Skoog in response to photographs by J. Robert Lennon.  Read the first in the series, “What’s Your Beef,” with an introduction by the poet, here. Dean Less I see you through this stone, displeasure on your face as you wait for me to deliver this short curriculum in repose of armor, of landfall. Begin where we left, red world of symptom such as money and heart. In my deanship I lead a quaint faculty. Learn nothing. Threat of stone is release into the body, John Donne was Dean of St. Paul’s. Born a girl, I’d have been Pauline. It’s good to know your other name. Names are of interest. — Ed Skoog‘s first collection of poems, Mister Skylight, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2009. His poems have appeared in Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, and Poetry.  He has been a Bread Loaf Fellow and Writer-in-Residence at the Richard Hugo House and George Washington University.  He lives in Seattle and teaches …