These poems first appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Forklift, Ohio, Rivendell, and Southern Poetry Review.

Martin Arnold teaches in the English Department at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. He earned an MFA from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he was the poetry editor of The Greensboro Review, and an MA from New Mexico State University. He is currently the associate poetry editor of storySouth. His poems have been published in Crazyhorse, The Carolina Quarterly, Poetry East, Denver Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere.

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Free Sample Poem
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Skeletons Copulating on a Tin Roof

Tonight, as we feed our host's furniture into the fireplace,
it's clear that tomorrow we'll have something

to regret. Perhaps men shouldn't
get intoxicated together
without expecting cruelty

to happen when John arrives
with his banjo. Perhaps expecting

sensitive guys to resist
the pack mentality of Manliness

that drives our tirade against banjos
doesn't give full credence

to how intoxicating it is
to go grocery shopping

for mammoth
by club. Above us,

the night's chest is so hairy
thousand-year-long spears of starlight

can't penetrate it
as our bellies shake like tambourines

and fingers of air pick
the steel vocal chords

inside our long, skinny necks.