Umbrella
A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose


Tim Kahl’s

work has been published or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, NimrodNotre Dame Review, The Texas Review, and many other journals in the U.S.

He has translated German poet Rolf Haufs; Austrian avant-gardist Friederike Mayröcker; Brazilian poets Lêdo Ivo and Marly de Oliveira; and the poems of the Portuguese language’s only Nobel Laureate, José Saramago.

He also appears as Victor Schnickelfritz at the poetry and poetics blog The Great American Pinup and is the editor for Bald Trickster Press, dedicated to works of poetry in translation into English.

His first collection is Possessing Yourself (WordTech, 2009).




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The Lesser Monsters

I rely on advice from some of the lesser monsters
who occupy the souls of fathers. Is that me

shouting again at the slightest infraction,
the vase on the table broken by a marble,
the pencil shavings dumped in my bed? I am

the author of my anger again in the cereal aisle,
raising my voice in emphatic no to a box of Frosted Flakes.

My two boys race to the produce; I take on the task
of crowd control, calling after themAqui, aqui, aqui.

There they go, the shape of a life is a beautiful
abstraction that the lesser monsters think out loud.

I am the author of my anger but not the author
of another destiny. I am the babysitter until more work
finds me. Is this one more day I’ve wasted

even as my kindergarten son asks me for permission,
and in his excitement, forgets, and calls to meMom?