Bill Yarrow

Life

Life is a brazen Chevrolet
in whose locked glove compartment
Death, disguised as a map of
New York State, lies curling
at the edges.

https://billyarrow.wordpress.com/ is a website, not a sentence.

Bill Yarrow

Caller ID

When the heart
gets a call from a heart

better answer it
on the first ring.

Astoundingly, Bill Yarrow writes in lines that almost always form sentences.

Bill Yarrow

The Little Things

It’s the little things that trip us
up: a small hole in a level field,
an innocuous root in a well-trod
path, a disinclined sidewalk…
yet not every stumble is a fall,
even as by a certain age we’ve learned
to outmaneuver the looming yet
are still upended by tiny bagatelles
and that’s why age is a kind of irony
for while we ponder the solutions to
universal health care, world
hunger, and inequalities of wealth,
we are no longer able to safely cross
the street or even tie our shoes.

Astoundingly, Bill Yarrow writes in lines that almost always form sentences.

Bill Yarrow

Unseenly

Over the years, his face
began to alter, becoming
not round but rounder

not kind but kinder, not
ruddy but red, the map
of his complexion now

filled in with rivers of
creases, lakes of dis-
coloration, saharas of

psoriasis, waterfalls
of burst veins, tufts
of vegetation sprout-

ing with no or ungainly
purpose from above his
eyes or within his ears

not to mention the adjacent
crow’s feet, perpendicular
laugh lines, frown lines

and evidence of a habitual
bit lip, all these things
and others, about which

acquaintances commented
with savage nonchalance
“It’s not age, but character”

but to him it seemed rather
as if all his secret sins had
become suddenly visible.

Bill Yarrow proudly writes in sentences.

Bill Yarrow

Tomorrow

On the febrile edge of consternation,
I hear the howling vowels of aspiration.

Bill Yarrow is the author of The Vig of Love (Glass Lyre Press 2016), Blasphemer (Lit Fest Press 2015), and Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).

Bill Yarrow

People Who Go to Poems for Truth

What is
         wrong
             with
                 you?

Bill Yarrow is the author of The Vig of Love (Glass Lyre Press 2016), Blasphemer (Lit Fest Press 2015), and Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).

Bill Yarrow

Forgive Me, Leonard Cohen

There’s a price
on everything

and that’s how
the dark begins.

Bill Yarrow is the author of Blasphemer and other books.

Bill Yarrow

The Bitterness of Fat Tolstoy

He looked around and said, “The world, like Dostoevsky, is losing at cards.”

Bill Yarrow is a writer who puts on his poems one persona at a time.