Ron Slate was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, and received an MA in creative writing from Stanford University in 1973. His collections of poetry include The Incentive of the Maggot (2005), chosen by poet Robert Pinsky for the Bakeless Poetry Prize and winner of the Larry Levis Reading Prize from Virginia Commonwealth University, and The Great Wave (2009).
I predict, like the one who was sucked to sea
and returned in an Arabian container ship,
all small worlds will be dashed and drowned.
...
Invented by the British to annoy
the French, so said De Gaulle.
The Belgians are rude but live to please,
...
I remember my mother squeezing
the camembert. She bought it five days
...
Feather duster in a child's grip
swished over bottles of Old Grand-Dad
in my father's liquor store,
...
This morning the peso is free-floating
above the unstable world of Borges.
He knew Buenos Aires was not a city
to die in. Geneva was that much closer
...