Cyrus Console grew up in Topeka, Kansas and recieved a doctorate in creative writing at Kansas University. He has worked as a metal worker and a waiter as well as a part time instructor.

Books

• Romanian Notebook (FSG Originals, 2017)

Poetry

• The Odicy (Omnidawn, 2011)
• Ok Tony (Songcave, 2009)
• Brief under Water (Burning Deck, 2008)

Return to Top of Page

---from Brief under Water

1101

It was your idea to name me Francois; it is my loss. I was born in Pontroise, at the foot of the class. At length my neck learns the weight of my ass. I know you’re going to be upset, so call the neighbors right away. Don’t let the stepkids into the house.

I consider two holes in the delicate ovoid of the skull, through which this thought, this burdensome device, might be blown. These haggard pilots from whom I descend: all they wanted was a little nap / while the sky was straight.

1111

Else I traced back through these circles, where around these condemned gathered the bereft, whom the abandoned crowded in upon, pressed by the lonely and disappointed, the multitude for whom things never came together to resemble those promises thrown by their respective magic lanterns on their respective childhood walls.

For the officer, psychic refuge was unimaginably distant and clean. I wished never again to live but possessed of a style and bearing consistent with the rank of officer.

11010

You have asked what you could possibly be doing. In point of fact I have watched this cup on the table. In the cooling tea a leaf is floating, a primitive timepiece. Elegant, plain as day, it has either no moving part or it has no stationary part. It’s nothing, a row of bushy trees flown over by spare clouds in the young moonlight. Above these clouds, more clouds, seeming not to move. Above, by the moment, the air grows thinner, unable to keep anything down. It wastes away. The next day, silence. In the end, in the meantime, tall men search the tall grass.

Return to Top of Page

• Ana Damjonov Poetry Prize
• Victor Contoski Poetry Prize
• William Herbert Carruth Poetry Prize

Locus Point
Article by Cyrus Console (Boston Review)
LAR review of books (Interview)
Lana Turner Journal