The Thief of Yellow Roses

Thirty-six new poems by the writer and critic Jonah Raskin.

Pre-poem Poem:

You call yourself a poet, write poems and 

perform them in public, but now you 

don't want to write poems with the

first person pronoun "I," which has

turned into a straightjacket, even as 

the earth has turned into an oven, 

and so you now write parataxis 

poems to cool down, break the 

ties that bind you and seek roses 

everywhere.