Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday.

Said Regression

I get up in our story
& walk to the door

I think into the crowd
& with any slight envy
wear my crown

But the lead of language
sinks

They cried into onions

Fools like me in the rain

Like steel down a
garbage chute

Shrill in these times
of coal

Their tears

The intrusion of poetry
light bent out of shape
& eventually shattered

The mirror

Coins flattened
by trains

Loyalty never
lost to loved
ones

Eliot Cardinaux was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1984, and spent time growing up in Geneva, Switzerland. He is the author of a poetry collection, On the Long Blue Night, published by Dos Madres Press in 2023. In addition to being a writer and translator, he is a pianist and composer working in the field of jazz and improvisation. He studied briefly at Manhattan School of Music, and Conservatorium van Amsterdam, before completing his undergraduate degree in music at New England Conservatory. He went on to acquire an MFA in poetry at The University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He has toured extensively in the US and Europe.

His poems have appeared in Jacket2, Café Review, Fortnightly Review, Spectra Poets, Big Big Wednesday, Talisman, Caliban Online, Bloodroot, Spoon River Poetry Review, and other journals. His translations have appeared in Solstice and Tupelo Quarterly. His albums include American Thicket, Sweet Beyond Witness, Out of Our Systems, and Pavane. Eliot is also the founder of The Bodily Press, an independent chapbook press and record label. He has taught at UMass Amherst, and worked as a bookseller at Amherst Books.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx