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stripped batting of cloud glimpsed ligaments dusk coming up under lithographic nibhatchings instruments click the finesprung locust replicate dinge along hilllines tailings of umber the rust smudge there is still that hemmed ocean of oaks the various reds the somehow silver cast over the browngold the underbrushed shadows how can there be more of their dispensing into air the nightopenings of the trees the thousand clefts into their corridors shiver and merge and piece apart there is no one beside what was once river only the carbons incoming accreting in leaves love of old oaks unencumbering rootbeauties brought through crude sieves of bare trees the few fastened leaves those pods are like tongues or like sickles the blades have been pulled from their sheaths the backs of the clouds now upturned they herd from pink seas they make their untouchable stream through regions of steep emptiness against which the trees have their gestures drop down drop down toward me your little sleek scars make your bed in rough cedars clangor of darks numbering in clusters of trunks and spoked lungs the thistles that work at the gumscopyright credit emily wilson winter journal threshed blue cardings dim tonsils from the keep copyright © by emily wilson reprinted by permission of university of iowa presssource the keep university of iowa press | 0 |
transient voyager of heaven o silent sign of winter skies what adverse wind thy sail has driven to dungeons where a prisoner lies methinks the hands that shut the sun so sternly from this mornings brow might still their rebel task have done and checked a thing so frail as thou they would have done it had they known the talisman that dwelt in thee for all the suns that ever shone have never been so kind to me for many a week and many a day my heart was weighed with sinking gloom when morning rose in mourning grey and faintly lit my prison room but angel like when i awoke thy silvery form so soft and fair shining through darkness sweetly spoke of cloudy skies and mountains bare the dearest to a mountaineer who all life long has loved the snow that crowned his native summits drear better than greenest plains below and voiceless soulless messenger thy presence waked a thrilling tone that comforts me while thou art here and will sustain when thou art | 1 |
the winter evening settles down with smell of steaks in passageways six o’clock the burntout ends of smoky days and now a gusty shower wraps the grimy scraps of withered leaves about your feet and newspapers from vacant lots the showers beat on broken blinds and chimneypots and at the corner of the street a lonely cabhorse steams and stamps and then the lighting of the lamps ii the morning comes to consciousness of faint stale smells of beer from the sawdusttrampled street with all its muddy feet that press to early coffeestands with the other masquerades that time resumes one thinks of all the hands that are raising dingy shades in a thousand furnished rooms iii you tossed a blanket from the bed you lay upon your back and waited you dozed and watched the night revealing the thousand sordid images of which your soul was constituted they flickered against the ceiling and when all the world came back and the light crept up between the shutters and you heard the sparrows in the gutters you had such a vision of the street as the street hardly understands sitting along the bed’s edge where you curled the papers from your hair or clasped the yellow soles of feet in the palms of both soiled hands iv his soul stretched tight across the skies that fade behind a city block or trampled by insistent feet at four and five and six o’clock and short square fingers stuffing pipes and evening newspapers and eyes assured of certain certainties the conscience of a blackened street impatient to assume the world i am moved by fancies that are curled around these images and cling the notion of some infinitely gentle infinitely suffering thing wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh the worlds revolve like ancient women gathering fuel in vacant lotscopyright credit t s eliot preludes from collected poems copyright © by t s eliot reprinted by permission of faber and faber ltdsource collected poems faber and faber ltd | 2 |
the bike path a bunnys body and blood where the head should be something has torn off its foot something has eaten its heart its entrails frozen in snow the plow growls past me this morning i left eggs behind the couch to incubate i spent last night walking until all the blood left my feet and my thighs throbbed the snow refuses to melt i refuse to wear a sweater set or heels instead of tv news i watch the sky when it darkens my ribs swell and i know it is not time to plant i wait for the beginning or the end—depending on the day soon there will be enough water for all of us to need to build a boat the sun falls into the street blinding the drivers heading north warming the snow from insidecopyright credit angela vorashills growing season from louder birds copyright © by angela vorashills reprinted by permission of pleiades press source louder birds pleiades press | 3 |
he snow arrives after long silence from its high home where nothing leaves tracks or strains or keeps time the sky it fell from pale as oatmeal bears up like sheep before shearing the cat at my window watches amazed so many feathers and no bird all day the snow sets its table with clean linen putting its house in order the hungry deer walk on the risen loaves of snow you can follow the broken hearts their hooves punch in its crust night after night the big plows rumble and bale it like dirty laundry and haul it to the hudson now i scan the sky for snow and the cool cheek it offers me and its body thinned into petals and the still caves where it sleeps copyright credit nancy willard “the snow arrives after long silence” from in the salt marsh new york alfred a knopf | 4 |
when i can no longer say thank you for this new day and the waking into it for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair and the ticking of the space heater glowing orange as it warms the floor near my feet i know it’s because i’ve been fooled again by the selfish unruly man who lives in me and believes he deserves only safety and comfort but if i pause as i do now and watch the streetlights outside flashing off one by one like old men blinking their cloudy eyes if i listen to my tired neighbors slamming car doors hard against the morning and see the steaming coffee in their mugs kissing chapped lips as they sip and exhale each of their worries white into the icy air around their faces—then i can remember this one life is a gift each of us was handed and told to open untie the bow and tear off the paper look inside and be grateful for whatever you find even if it is only the scent of a tangerine that lingers on the fingers long after you’ve finished peeling it copyright credit poem copyright © by james crews “winter morning” from gratefulnessorg poem reprinted by permission of james crews and the publisher | 5 |
under the magnolia a winterstarved hare stills and pretends it is not there and wanting less of fearfulness i pretend that i do not see my camouflage the wild promises in my gaze and step carefully by morning bitter morning— lack and awful patience wait at every compass point mourning mournful the prairie seals windscored stems with snow here inside a stalk of goldenrod a gall wasp will ride hard winter out here between my ribs wasps of lonely wasps of not yet not yet wait and ride hard winter out such a slow season laggard and mean i can’t explain the cardinals i’ve seen of late but the crows’ black fists the way they bully eave and air stab the morning with the sharpest awe i understand it now i see the reason and agreesource poetry may | 6 |
was the hard winter she came frozen larks plummeting through the gloam like falling stars each pail in the yard a slattern’s looking glass each dusk the house cobwebbed by creeping frost my husband slipped like a knife from an oyster my sons nestled like dormice in their cots i stood at my black window and oh the cold it pressed upon me like a lover held its hands to my throat my knees she came first through the trees a small glint amongst the poplars hoarfrost dripping from the velvet nubs of their antlers leaping fast to a shuddering pillar of flame her pelvis a cradle of jeweled tinder her ribs white kindling a holy thing— such furious unblossoming—and something profane i pressed my eye to the glass the crackling dark saw her heart catch light blackbirds flap frantic from the forks of trees— —woke shivering sweat between my breasts my tongue in my teeth every night then she came in the stolen hours between caring and dream the children vanished the drudging chaos of day put to sleep i have no words to tell of the shapes she scorched the frozen lock the copper key but that heat licked me raw as a wild love cracked the ice on my ribs and tossed in a flare all my life i have been a good woman compliant neat my children’s snow boots polished each snowflake of ash swept clean from my step i’ve worn obedience like a uniform the hoof of the iron cooling in my grate yet i riled in the witching hour tongue glittering my darling i whispered to my own dry bones for what do you burn three moons she has been absent though i wait at my window the chill persisting presaging snow and my longing rises hopeless as the carp in the pool i don’t know where she is living or if she lives at all— with women nursing in fevered sheets or scrubbing floors until their knuckles ignite but by dark when my sons sail the black cut of sleep and frost lays its terrible lace upon the grass when i am alone with my fretting with my dreams like black pearls in the clam of my mouth i press my fists to that tenderest wound—my soul— and christ how i burnsource poetry february | 7 |
rabbit has stopped on the gravel driveway imbibing the silence you stare at spruce needles theres no sound of a leaf blower no sign of a black bear a few weeks ago a buck scraped his rack against an aspen trunk a carpenter scribed a plank along a curved stone wall you only spot the rabbits ears and tail when it moves you locate it against speckled gravel but when it stops it blends in again the world of being is like this gravel you think you own a car a house this bluezigzagged shirt but you just borrow these things yesterday you constructed an aqueduct of dreams and stood at gibraltar but you possess nothing snow melts into a pool of clear water and in this stillness starlight behind daylight wherever you gaze copyright credit arthur sze first snow from sight lines copyright © by arthur sze reprinted by permission of copper canyon press wwwcoppercanyonpressorgsource sight lines | 8 |
for lucie brockbroidoit was delivered to me in the snow the kids were all sleeping in separate corners of the house like unfound crystals i wiped the flakes off holding what i thought could save me my neighbors were afraid i was disappearing the branches above trembled with hidden birds i didn’t know i read and kept reading the label until you heard mesource poetry january | 9 |
so when i walk down the street i hold hands with the wind there’s a chimney coughing up ahead a sky so honey i could almost taste it a cat struts away from me two yellow eyes become four just like that i’m the loneliest creature on this block soon the streetlights will come alive television sets will light up with blues stay with me while the sky is still golden hold the ladder so i can climb from the highest rung i can scrape away a drizzle of light to wear around my neck alone is the star i follow in love in solitude alone is the home with the warmest glowsource poetry december | 10 |
noon in the city in the park in the salted air in the cold cringe cringing two hands glued red to my cheeks i give away comfort to get it back oh look at the sun i must say to myself over and over so that i might look at the sun i rent a language guide to hold my hand while i sit sneezing in home’s direction—i am far away but i can see the ocean not so far nine children on the playground ten trees planted in a row so nice to be a swelling sleeper thinking at a jogger’s pace bees born from my fingertips burst toward all the dying lifesource poetry december | 11 |
oblique the eagle’s angle than the osprey’s precipitous fall but rose up both and under them dangled a trout the point of it all festooned a limb on each one’s favored tree either side of the river with chains of bone and lace of skin the river’s wind made shiver sat under them both one in december one in july in diametrical seasonal airs and once arrived home as i remember with a thin white fish rib lodged in my hairsource poetry december | 12 |
a bleary part of town i traverse the blackboard silence of snow through the slats of the cypresses flounce paperwhite feathers of snow on the red leaves of my palms distend melted messages of snow the road is iron anvil stinging with sparks of snow my nocturnal heart thrums in white wasp whir of snow moonlight purls like nectar sweetening the blandness of snow glaucous berries hang from the rowans like frostbitten pearls of snow mice hide in the lee of alders shirking the cold tusks of snow shadows vine like crewelwork on linen twill of snow around your black spade pupil lurks an avalanche of snow i wish you’d toss your cards like fireworks against cumuli of snow instead my name catches in your throat congealed in its amnion of snowsource poetry december | 13 |
christmas eves our dad would bring home from the farm real hay for the reindeer that didnt exist and after we were finally asleep would get out and take the slabs up in his arms and carry them back to the bed of his pickup making sure to litter the snow with chaff so he could show us in the morning the place where theyd stood eating their harness bells dulled by the cold their breath steam all while we were dreamingcopyright credit poem copyright © by princeton university press white lie from flyover country princeton university press poem reprinted by permission of austin smith and the publisher | 14 |
bowl of rose water dreams itself empty on the radiator its december and we can hardly afford the heat our milk money crinkling hungry over the cold counter of our convenience store the very last of our cash for creamer for pleasantries for cheap tea and cigarettes for the barely there scent of roses burning softly we trade our hungers for hearth for the clank and hiss of warmth small fires these but even we in our clamorous poverty demand pleasure steal sugar our neighbors flowers and never ever are caught thankless in better weathercopyright credit poem copyright © by christie towers sugar water in winter from nimrod international journal vol no fallwinter poem reprinted by permission of christie towers and the publisher | 15 |
the rowboat i tied her shoes and the river cussed and spat our feet swelled and our bellies begged the end is never how you expect this is where i lose her at the shoreline in sweet water we fed wild dogs overripe apples and herring my hands shine with hunger her hair hung in willow boughs mine in wild onion i reel the small fish of time the end never happens and always happens in winter we suet the trees the cardinals arrive like snow i braid her willow hair i tie her shoes once more it is winter again the birches like crooked combs why are you crying why are you crying begin but start with the end in spring she is pregnant in summer she is not the baby swims in every room see where our steps wet the hallway that was when we were swept awaysource poetry october | 16 |
he wagon and mule time and eternity stop to change places their lean and slopeback shadow my reservation the moon moves like infested flour at the river bloody victories meet bloody massacres they tell each other about their dead grandmothers eat buffalo instead of hamburger after supper guitar chords bite through gravestone then the one grandfather interrupts walking off with his own skull as a lantern into the polar night snowshoe hare cleans the ears of the sleeping and leaves prophetic dreams it is quiet one can hear the hair of the dead grow the woods itself dressed in frozen children’s clothes few of the living disguise themselves as pawned beadwork source poetry october | 17 |
s winter went on every morning’s spoon of buckwheat honey resembled more the taste of that isosceles at midpoint of your weight its smell brought sweetly back the pendulumlike pace moving us from windowsill to floor from floor to bed and back to floor mapping haste’s measure of the room our smell but also meubles book dust hanging smoke an open bottle everything connecting now for me as smells will do things that don’t connect may not be mine in memory like childhood’s corridors cats other’s bodies and maybe other minds all this from the spoon sweet grassy in my nose cloying almost bitter on the tongue yet as clear as memory of pace of smell of movement made— strange where is the sound of us as we moved with one another copyright credit matvei yankelevich a poem from from a winter notebook copyright © by matvei yankelevich used by permission of the author for poetrynowsource poetrynow | 18 |
know it wont be receivedor sent the page will bein shreds as soon as i have scribbled itlater sometime youve grown used to itreading between the lines that never reached youunderstanding everything on the tiny sheetnot making haste i find room for the nightwhats the hurry when the hour thats passedis all part of the same time the same unknown termthe word stirs under my handlike a starling a rustle a movement of eyelasheseverythings fine but dont come into my dream yetin a little while i will tie my sadness into a knotthrow my head back and on my lips therell be a seala smile my prince although from afarcan you feel the warmth of my handpassing through your hair over your hollow cheekdecember winds have blown on your face how thin you are stay in my dreamopen the window the pillow is hotfootsteps at the door and a bell tolling in the towertwo three remember you and i never saidgoodbye it doesnt matterfour oclock thats it how heavily it tollscopyright credit irina ratushinskaya pencil letter from pencil letter copyright © by irina ratushinskaya reprinted by permission of penguin random house llcsource pencil letter alfred a knopf inc | 19 |
our first houselet in london she drew on the tablecloth to createa calligraphic feast our friends all begged for her ink on their bodies alefs that rose up from one side to form a podiumonce i leaned her back mouth to mouth in the kitchen claimed a medal of my own but i never knew which words were holyshereen eize seret so i list our choices two movies set in egypt the braids on her challah deflate as they cool becoming rigid dustywith flour in the ridges she laughs no—it means i have a story to tell khaloosh on the sofa she said you know how i wished i couldget a tattoo lost in the museum gift shop she stood for hours studying colour charts the red too reluctant to spreadagainst the orange like ants’ faces to flames bat sheer songbird musedaughter of poetry from tel aviv she drove us miles into the desert she stayed upa crumbling blintz stuffed with mushrooms and rice to read shofet by the light of her phone moshe through shmuel esh she saidsof haderech it’s over it was good she’s almost a judge herself but at night she flips me over from sleep when i don’t protestshe says chetzi coach half strength half power i learned hebrew from a website after she drew my name in ink i asked her againto invade my body with it excusing myself i borrow her alphabet still i confuse ayin with tzadi—which is the body with a headoutside we are stalked by redbreasted robins when we visit her cousin in tel aviv they share a redlipped jointlost in the gift shop she separated pigments grids in her eyes daughter of poetry once i leaned her back mouth to mouthshe said you will never believe what happened al tarshah li her favourite bird a robinperched on a desert rock as she turns i spy red burn under the inkpeople may try to shoot her her guilt tries to shoot herwhen she walks riff out in the desert she slouches take a photo i kiss the calligraphyon her skin too holy to touch the words burn the words are mootcopyright credit shereen akhtar the rabbi’s red ink from rabbi robin copyright © by shereen akhtar reprinted by permission of blue diode presssource rabbi robin blue diode press | 20 |
man by the name of skinner becomes famousfor keeping caged pigeons whom his clock feeds or starves at random their tiny twitching heads exaggerate until one bird swings its weight like a pendulum one turns counterclockwise three times one aims its beak to the corner and sings my love let me break which has nothing to do with the cage the point is the pigeons invented their own religion aimed litanies at an empty sky until something broke and something was mechanicali still hold the shape of his skull to my sleeping chest and call his name over and overto the wrong man though the manna that fell was nothing but accident it conditioned the birds to aim weapons the accuracy with which they pecked the homing radar was unswayed by skinners pistols or pressure chambers—the centrifugal loop that swung their birdbones broken until their hearts were locked in placeif you feel pressure on the neck remember—lockets used to be a sign of mourning stuffedwith hair or cutouts of a lovers eyes ive seen love pecked to death and the godssculpted from that accident ive aimed my head to the corners of the sky and opened my mouth so wide ive thought my beak would break like clockwork i coo let me break my love and skin the feathersfrom that wound religion requires ritual to do the same thing over and over despite pressure in the skull or a pistol to the breast but i still remember my own young sunday the hollow sanctuary where behind the preachers head a bird flew into the window over and over and we just kept singingcopyright credit caroline harper new notes on devotion from a history of halfbirds copyright © by caroline harper new reprinted by permission of milkweed editions | 21 |
s important she says that summerflatten itself against autumn that it keep insisting yes yes its true yes the heatmakes things difficult she shows him how her shoulders have gone darker stillbut do you remember she looks with eyes wide how cold the cold is howwe can barely stand morning until hot showers—press the heat insideour bones again hes trying hard to let go a need for comforts to recallhow simple the skins instruction here she says pointing to the open nightwinds have come and now youve only a moment longer before the breathing beginsand itll be alright as you sleep and tomorrow everything changes again whenyoull see how summer knows how there isnt time for fuss just enterthe day she says just enter the poem just copyright credit jessica rigney the skins instruction from something whole copyright © by jessica rigney reprinted by permission of finishing line presssource something whole finishing line press | 22 |
ue rim a soft hole—tender meat trim—mind leitmotiv doe moss petal veinhart hilt waist fawn—incoherent slidestrewn rib—hooved mother—move treeto invoke sex—a dim refraineat harvest smoke stones pond—thin anklesvinetwist—artery rite beargod shank—night enshawls house—hook web goth twink—hare huntunfolds smooth rope choke—i hag sly sent violetsin these hips—moon climbs neck swigs acidshe blushes—war horse in a field—work it to vent—tug me soft devour it—to bone be doeheat doehue—trans vibe id perform porn—riven nerve red oval winter mooncopyright credit trevor ketner let me not to the marriage of true minds from the wild hunt divinations a grimoire copyright © by trevor ketner reprinted by permission of wesleyan university presssource the wild hunt divinations a grimoire wesleyan university press | 23 |
’s the first time you stayin the morning you bring taliban poems back to bedi drink cardamom coffee and you read their tender lines‘may you not be hungry in the desert my dear’their loving as ordinary as oursi see wilding men shouldering rpgs by the swimming poolof a warlord’s compound and think they’re beautifulwatch a dentist fall to earth from an aeroplane undercarriagerising over kabulhuman payload slipping from the landing gearfalling through swipes scrolls and clicksrewind the tapes see the little man flying upwardsreturning to his liferewind the tapeslike bruegel’s icarus he touches down with a splashin a rooftop water tank km awayhis suffering unnoticedexcept for a casual cell phone recordingtwenty years ago the twin towers man fell tootwisting and turning tie flutteringpast flames and smoke for a moment head first over manhattanrewind the tapes see the little men flying upwardsreturning to their livesrewind the tapeswe lie under a marigoldembroidered bedspreadbought in afghanistani’m afraid of younot you exactly but of falling for youmy old friend tom took me on that shopping tripin an armoured vehicle with his bodyguardand i remembered the summer before the end of unihow he and i sat up late drinking jamesonlistening to johnny cashand imagining our own deathstogether somewhere in a dusty alleyall golden light slow motion and elevated camera angleswe took it in turns who was doing the dyingand who was doing the cradlingcopyright credit anastasia taylorlind rewind from one language copyright © by anastasia taylorlind reprinted by permission of the poetry businesssource one language the poetry business | 24 |
teacher says of their cat now gone missing in his absence everything is still the small silvered line in a grieffilled night when my love arrived into my life they brought noise their ideas their laugh their loud joy they rumbled thunder in the distance then the dog came too noise his fluffyeared need to play before it had been so quiet my minutes looming to more minutes time oh time they came and the seconds collapsed entire months blurred love a time machine love a spaceship mystery on the morning i watch dolphins play in pairs my teacher tells me about their cat oceans in their eyes the dolphins play with each other they flirt one day when my loves leave be it by choice— theirs mine or god’s the sadness that threatens to take but oh today when the dolphins leave our sight the water is quiet still under the sunsource poetry januaryfebruary | 25 |
loved you since i was little on the playground breaktime brawled with you and your mismatched cuffs tufts of eileen brown hair pinned down like a sheep under a sheet you wanted love the way boys got loved begged for it with all that eileen swagger and jaw when we bump together at the bar i’m still trying to tackle the ball from under you kick my voice through the goal posts of eileen’s throat ripping our rumors from the jukebox years i thought i was a dog wrestling with what i was not allowed to eat climbing eileen shaped trees in my fresh whites getting in fights with any boy who claimed he was more fuckable than some dyke eileen my hilltophike my luckystrike watching from the other side of every woman i’ve kissed—leatherbombed cornerbound eileen you never left me lonely we’ve been nightterror brokers sixpackit tillitkillsus smokers i hope we make it to be quitters leave an eileen sized hole in the city and slip out the last train steal motorbikes build kites christen every sweetheart on the mtrack eileen and behind your back i’ll tell girls in cafs how fortunate i am to have found something i could chase down all my life—eileen illustration by haley jiang source poetry januaryfebruary | 26 |
all the boyswho asked meto dance and to all the boys to whomi said yes and to all the steps we tookright and left and to the one who boughtme a corsage of rosesto match my dress and tothe one who asked meif i wanted a kiss and to the one i kissed even thoughi didn’t want to kiss and to the one who kissed the girli really wanted to kiss— i wish my wishes were kisses source poetry januaryfebruary | 27 |
d it ends of course in fabulous heartbreak like anything—it’s not an if but when—so the trick is learning how to bendthe days you get nailing our flowers to the wall readingside by side memorize his body curving like a questionmark asking can we stay like this forever we canwe travel to his boyhood home to ancient rome tomy twenties where we laugh at what i thought was reallove we see art in every century we grow old togetherat different times we rebuild our ship from scrapsof former relationships—debris of who we havebeen or seen blueprints for our future past we hostour friends for cocktail hours we sign a lease on a housei meet his friends and through them i love him more i takehim to his first drag show he talks us through our first fightwe have the same fight again we kiss on corners just becausewe have fought hard for it we make up words for this i sayi have never been in love i ask how will i know what’s nexthe takes my hand he takes me home we meet as strangerson a blank morning and he says he doesn’t have much timeinstantly i recognize this man i’ve been waiting here for him illustration by matt huynhsource poetry januaryfebruary | 28 |
the building two women’s restroom in the strangest placesi want to tell you the most mundane things how this afternoonour favorite barista added a free extra shot of vanilla to mycoffee with a wink a just because it’s strong doesn’t mean it has to behard to drink around my straw i thought this is what the sharpness of wanting youtastes likesyrupysoftness of midnight shadow in quiet alleysi finish my own sentences after walking you homeis it too early to say my smile misses you my smile’s smile crescent moonygazedyour eyes radiantin the sabbath sungossamer sheengrove christmas tree multichromelike beestingi am afraid of my own swollen hearti am so afraid for yousource poetry januaryfebruary | 29 |
ffanyi’ve gotten used to sunlight with youbut no pressure just—spring doesn’t hurt as much anymoreyour softnessas the green seeps ini’ve got only ¢and some soulto spend on yousudden sunlight striking throughto find myself kneelingmy bones shatteredthen welded into this sudden page and youin a dorm roomwe make sin out of our bodiessuch joy despite illegalitythere is no shame in lovelike this our mouths opengasping white plumeswe send messages to the skyyesterdayi opened my coatand your yellow hair flew outlike a migrant birdi watched the wind take it upwardand i was beside you flying notes audio poem performed by the author with audio engineering and mixing by benjamin davissource poetry januaryfebruary | 30 |
ulling the foreign body off me— out of the dress up over my arms through the neckhole— he says you are more beautiful than a school spelling prize muezzin sirens us to break the fuck into a run the banquet table taps her feet in disapproval its bride season im his take on the call to prayer his sister sticks a sapphire in her ear for emphasis brothers like whiskered pears wanting kisses they already got stand well behind the language barrier the fair queen imitated an everyday and normal love for this the first occasion of my lips at her translucent cheek twice his whole smell on me alarms up and down my tunic she changes her mind out there on the balcony in full view of everyone what sounds from the street like storytime like singsong turned out to be a species of hostagetaking next year by this season at best i am the paper confetti is punched from the holes left that other joys straddle copyright credit karen houle guilt or dread what an amazing instrument you are from during copyright © by karen houle reprinted by permission of gaspereau presssource during gaspereau press | 31 |
s of october antitrans bills were under consideration across the united states seeking to deny trans people access to basic healthcare education safety legal recognition and the right to exist see translegislationcomi my beloved is called an inconceivable beast a spectacle diagnosed with teratoid genitalia a chaos of pronouns a body breaking the rules hair suture unexpected timbre outside the map my beloved is first in the firing line in the active shooter drill given no refuge we are expunged from curricula disallowed the toilet’s relief fascistic tendencies festering national evangelism of binaries taken as daily bread a congressman in florida jokes about putting us all to death a pastor in texas gives sunday sermon saying every gay person in america should be executed—lined up shot in the head the supreme court stuffs its mouth with theories of religion police steel our kin down to concrete coffin a brass parabellum cessation of breath interlude it is telling that western science has a term for animal behavior called “deceptive sex signaling” see marsh harriers hummingbirds for example all malleability a criminal betrayal for panic defense no opera for perpetual metamorphosis ii neither man nor woman i am water shorebird over tea we ask the hard questions how to reach beyond this periphery reverse the enclosures of mind all bodies in theatre all theatre life iii my beloved says we are cosmic faggots making new better pleasures generations of illegible exquisite extending possibility to the youngers we are years of chrysalides wild longings wing among the immortelles again then again again my beloved wields the syringe a chemical intramuscular intimacy i kiss his pectoral scars lick the summer beaded up in his clavicle he carries me to the bedroom where we make an ambient weather hold each other to the bone my beloved suffocates in the bind passing a difficult joy sorrow in the laboratory of our bodies experiment cobbles glimpses of freedom we tape our chests we punk drag leave norms in the gutter herald us a wreckage of genders name ourselves extraordinary monsters i take inventory in the holy hours find we are a transgression everywhere beautiful alive notes this poem is part of the portfolio “the chorus these poets create twenty years of letras latinas” you can read the rest of the portfolio in the december issuesource poetry december | 32 |
for carlthis love dares not speak its name in some states until your eyes say it on a beach in ft lauderdale staring into mine and the cosmos spins out of my iris y nos nubla y nos vuela into the postulated sky of matted matter and sparkling light safely in a haze of shadows and shine away from the marches against our marriages and the congressional bills against our histories being taught i cannot say how much i love you in brickell or tampa but i can look back at you painting perfectly a thousand ways for me to say “be mine” don’t you see this is not a barren love ours is a lust like hydrogen or helium once we have each other we need not be named to be elemental to be beyond city or state we need not be named to be animal raw and rocket shipped shooting through the universe with the engine’s torque pulling us even closer together than “skin to skin” could ever describe notes this poem is part of the portfolio “the chorus these poets create twenty years of letras latinas” you can read the rest of the portfolio in the december issuesource poetry december | 33 |
fter sonia sanchez sarah russell and barbara jane reyes with e her yg mac dre dorrough the supremes and joe bataan i wish i could tell you why i go back and forth between cities maybe i belong to the bridges freeway maybe loneliness is not an ending i want these songs to show me the way back to myself can i build you a playlist cold air over warm water topline fog walls on the peninsula the songs go dumb dumb s l i d e most nights i’m a slow jam a twostep a mist a fantasy i try not to think of other versions if i had three lives i’d you in two the other didn’t sonia sanchez write a way—for all the women who have ever stretched their bodies out anticipating civilization finding ruins can i show you places where cities have nearly broken me maybeucanhelp i’m having some trouble believing that bad good areoppositethings what if you came to see about me i would take you to a concert or a lake around hella ppl just to be alone then i would take you to a bookstore but not to read well what if we kissed too much ourlipsstackedlike booksontheshelf anticipatingtouch ‘there goes the day becoming shadow’ amongourwhispers i’m afraid i want to blur the lines i don’t plan on getting no sleep while we the premise these poems take place in the dark source poetry december | 34 |
here are so many things i’m not allowed to tell you i touch myself i dreamwearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour pretending that this skin is your skin these hands your hands these shins these soapy flanks the musicians start the overture while i hide behind the microphonetrying to match the dubbing to the big lips shining down from the screen we’re filming the movie called planet of love—there’s sex of course and ballroom dancing fancy clothes and waterlilies in the pond and half the night you’rea dependable chap mounting the stairs in lamplight to the bath but then the too white teeth all night all over the american sky too much to bear this constant fingering your hands a river gesture the birds in flight the birds still singingoutside the greasy window in the trees there’s a part in the moviewhere you can see right through the acting where you can tell that im about to burst into tears right before i burst into tears and flee to the slimy moonlit riverbed canopied with devastated cloudswere shooting the scene where i swallow your heart and you make me spit it up again i swallow your heart and it crawls right out of my mouthyou swallow my heart and flee but i want it back now baby i want it back lying on the sofa with my eyes closed i didnt want to see it this wayeverything eating everything in the end we know how the light works we know where the sound is coming from verse chorus versei’m sorry we know how it works the world is no longer mysteriouscopyright credit richard siken dirty valentine from crush copyright © by richard siken reprinted by permission of yale university presssource crush yale university press | 35 |
warm night of flesh pimples alonefear pressing between my eyes the mark of despair my thighs once a sanctuary guarding your precious cage of ribshave shivered to invisibility and do not existforget the oceanlove water falling from the gate of my soulfor the sea wiped its eyes sometimes agoand all is dry madnesswhat is this madnesshungry love bathed in hot cinderswaiting to be drenched in rain crying from your open poreslove the mystery of life the seed the master seed you said livesand like a bleeding locustfeeding from this treethe ripe plum of everlasting love i kneelhumbling myself before perfectionmy quick tears sagging the earthas i eat mud to touch the root of you notes this essay is part of the portfolio “jayne cortez i imitate no one” you can read the rest of the portfolio in the november issue“hungry love” is excerpted from firespitter the collected poems of jayne cortez nightboat books and was originally published in pissstained stairs and the monkey man’s wares we are grateful to nightboat books for their assistance in compiling this folio and to the estate of jayne cortez for their permission in reprinting this poemssource poetry november | 36 |
he first gun we knew came in a toolbox for the apocalypse hammer barrel crushed can pack of newports a ballpoint pen someone took apart momma said dont touch we didnt—because all that could happen next seemed obvious blue lights in the windows of houses already turned out for the evening boys with pockets clenched in their fists brother says it was there—next to the tv remotes the box of tissues—that the pistol became a whole thing one boy grabbed at anothers tshirt the sounds that came next were fire spreading up a staircase the sounds of a freight train with a cement block in its tracks the gun was afraid of nothing—not daylight not trouble— brother palmed it like he was drawing from a stack of discards when one boy jumped another opened his temple onto concrete where earlier in the afternoon two boys shot rock shot scissors soon there were spiderweb cracks in the laundromat window holes just big enough to fit our fingers there were stray shells that needed picking from the grass before another girl showed up with a lawnmower dont touch we told kids riding big wheels in nothing but diapers sunglasses kids with whole collections of shells in shoe boxes dont touch we told the dog his muzzle a divining rod his body a strung bowcopyright credit sarah carson dont touch from how to baptize a child in flint michigan copyright © by sarah carson reprinted by permission of persea books wwwperseabookscomsource how to baptize a child in flint michigan persea books | 37 |
visn’t it dangerous to be a woman surrounded by men questionsabout risktaking parenting i’m childless and personalrelationships are directed at me i am a female photojournalistguy is a photojournalist and ivor’s male gaze is just his ownhas anyone ever hurt you is what they are really asking theyhave but not in the field war depending on how you defineit is everywhere and home is the place where women andgirls face the greatest threat of violence it is safe here but notout there has been used to confine us for centuriesmy dad beat my mum and me too when i tried to protecther we all seek to reproduce the familiar conditions of ourchildhood even when we are trying to escape them violenceis familiar to me it has always been present in my life and myrelationship with it shaped my relationship with photographyi was less than a year old when i first watched a punchupfrom my mum’s arms and at a safe distance according toher we were at a gypsy horse fair in suffolk when around ahundred people beat each other in a beer tent over a trottinghorse crash thank god you were too young to remember mumsaid and i was because this was the first i’d heard of it vimy dad had been a teenage boxer in the east end like his dadit was him who taught me how to throw a punch the summerbefore starting high school coaching me through littletechniques – making impact while my arm was still tightlyinto my chest and keeping my weight centred tivvy highwas rough and he encouraged me to hit anyone who bulliedme he said anastasia some people only understand one languagemy dad was the first person i punched to stop him fromhitting my mum viii called the police for the first time at the end of july or beginning ofaugust bt had thrown plates at me and tried to strangle me i went tomy caravan then he repeatedly banged hard at the window andwalls and shouted abuse both i and the children were extremelyfrightened i phoned the police who came one man and one woman theyasked bt to stay in his caravan and me in mine for the rest of thenight which we did second time bt called the police he had continued with hisattacks on me through the month of august by hitting me andtrying to strangle me i had bruises on my face and neck he had cutmy telephone line and smashed a kitchen cabinet and wooden chestwith an axe bt was also at this time violent to anastasia it wasn’t till theautumn of that i took her to the doctor dr saville tiverton viii i do remember this being taken there not for treatment butto record the marks on my arms and legs after an attack ahumiliating clinical and methodical process the doctormade notes on the length and position of scratches maybehe photographed them i kept a straight face if i acted likeeverything was ok it would be polite process paperworkthe bureaucracy of violencei read these custody transcripts for the first time mum and italk it through she tells me about a time we were leaving fora party when dad gave her a black eyedid we go to the party yeswhat with a black eye is all i say ixthe second person i hit was laura packer for calling mypony melody ugly we were twelve and i knocked out one ofher front teeth at lunchtime at my school arguments weresettled when one party officially challenged the other to ascrap at a designated time word spread through classroomsand later a crowd gathered to watch the duel until someteacher heard the jeering and broke it up i hated school andgot in trouble oftenthe third person i punched was philippa cottrell in mathsclass a few years later she was one of the toughest bullies andi wasn’t quiet enough to go unnoticed telling the teachersdidn’t stop philippa on this day there was a faintheartedsupply teacher standing in the classroom belonged tophilippa from her elite position on the back row she used aruler to pelt the back of my head with chewed up jotter paperi sat in humiliating silence for a few minutes knowing thesupply teacher would not do anythingi found myself folded over philippa the fingers of one handtangled in her thick curly fringe while i pummelled her inthe face with the other i got two punches in before claireagnew pulled me off and the supply teacher went running forhelpi’d only bloodied philippa’s nose but i’d done it in front ofeveryone and i was never picked on again xthe first time i encountered violence as a photographer wason my st birthday i was making pictures for university at a gypsy fair in stoweonthewold and dad’s old friend mark palmer took me fordrinks that evening an altercation began between two men– each of them standing chests puffed removing their coatswith ceremony i realised too late that i was the only womanleft in the pub and then the whole room went at each otherwith fists beer glasses and chairsmark climbed onto his seat to get a better view and calmlyreviewed the chaos with crossed arms while the men next tous pushed me and a young boy under the table covering uswith their coats shaking and with my arms around the boy itold him don’t worry it’ll be oki know it’s always like this he said i stuck my head out onceduring the fight and saw through the window a group ofmen pulling down a lamppost and using it as a battering ramagainst the door beyond them stood a line of police – silentand still mark told me to get out and make pictures i didn’ti was too afraidwitnessing violence played out on many different scales ledme to become a pacifist to oppose violent solutions underany circumstances – personal or political sure i would neverhit anyone again xia cold december evening in a south london pub with a bigphoto crowd after an exhibition openinga few months earlier my friend guy had been blown up andthough now recovering would be disabled for life a baldthickset photojournalist in his late thirties came up to medrunk and looking for confrontation he insulted guy thewhole pub went silent watchingi tried ignoring him but he just got louder nastier pride andloyalty wouldn’t let me leave the room when i tried to speakhe shouted over me that we all know guy made money fromgetting injured i remember hearing that then i was staring into his eyeshitting him with a left then a right then ivor was draggingme awaytwo bystanders hoisted the man up he was shouting you’refucked in the head anastasia fucked in the head you’ve gotfucking ptsd xiii should not have hit him the illogic of violence only madesense in that moment of utter frustration when i was unableto reach this man with wordsanastasia some people only understand one languageand if i ask myself now – given the chance would i have shotthe libyan soldier who trained the mortar onto guy and hisfriends on tripoli street in order to stop him from firing thatlethal round the answer is yes and there it is – the systemand the structure and the indoctrination of the war machinethat drives people to kill in the defence of the man next tohim not his country and not his ideology but in defence ofhis friendpacifism is a privilege of the peaceful and empowered – insidethe home in our communities and on a global scale for themost part i own those privileges but when i don’t it’s harderto be a pacifisti’ve tried to tell these stories in professional discussions aboutviolence so many times but no one wants to hear themcopyright credit anastasia taylorlind from stories no one wants to hear vvii from one language copyright © by anastasia taylorlind reprinted by permission of the poetry businesssource one language the poetry business | 38 |
long empty roads stretching as long as the gas tank is willing— sixtyseven dollars left from last summer’s job but that doesn’t matter with the windows rolled down her hair blowing back she doesn’t push it behind her ear her hand is busy holding mine lana del rey on the radio turned as high as our consciences allow— going fifty on the smalltown back roads but who will care there’s no one but cows to witness our transgressions nothing but anthropomorphism to signal our sin at home there’s college and work and decisions to be made— here there’s only the sunset over dry empty cornfields and the rhythm of tulsa jesus freak playing on repeat until i know it by heart though i haven’t heard it before today our own freedom thrums through these bony teenage bodies and it’s clear we’ve only begun to explore there’s so much left to learn and so much time to learn it i turn lana up a few degrees more and step on the gassource poetry januaryfebruary | 39 |
’s boxing day and i’m nearly ten and a halfi got the camouflaged action man for christmasi told mum i wanted to open it on my ownbut my special scissors won’t cut the plasticjust as i start to stick my tongue out and sweatmum calls my name from the front roomi shuffle down the stairs on my bummum says i should use the stairliftshe taps me on the shoulder and says‘look at the telly this film’s got a boy like yousee he even flaps his hands like you he’s called kyle’on the screen a man and a woman standin a kitchen that looks bigger than oursher scarf is the same colour as my blue badgethe man rubs his face with his big hands and sayswhatever happened nic whatever happened to uskyle happened mum tells me to pay attentionbut the screen’s too bright the man is now standingin front of a house that posh people havehe shouts too loudly for god’s sake it’s autismhe doesn’t know what love ishe can’t tell the differencebetween a dog and a biscuit tinmum pulls my hands from my earsand points toward the person she thinks i amcopyright credit karl knights the difference between a dog and a biscuit tin from kin copyright © by karl knights reprinted by permission of the poetry businesssource kin the poetry business | 40 |
ugust and the drivein picture is packedwe lounge on the hood of the pontiacsurrounded by the slowburning spirals they sellat the window to vanquish the hordes of mosquitoesnothing works they break through the smoke screen for blood always the lookout spots the indians firstspread north to south barring progressthe sioux or some other plains bunchin spectacular columns icbm missilesfeathers bristling in the meaningful sunset the drum breaks there will be no parlanceonly the arrows whining a deathcloud of nervesswarming down on the settlerswho die beautifully tumbling like dust weedsinto the history that brought us all heretogether this wide screen beneath the sign of the bear the sky fills acres of blue squint and eyethat the crowd cheers his face moves over usa thick cloud of vengeance pittedlike the land that was once flesh each ruteach scar makes a promise it isnot over this fight not as long as you resist everything we see belongs to us a few laughing indians fall over the hoodslipping in the hot spilled butterthe eye sees a lot john but the heart is so blinddeath makes us owners of nothinghe smiles a horizon of teeththe credits reel over and then the white fields again blowing in the truetolife darkthe dark films over everythingwe get into the carscratching our mosquito bites speechless and smallas people are when the movie is donewe are back in our skins how can we help but keep hearing his voicethe flip side of the sound track still playingcome on boys we got themwhere we want them drunk runningtheyll give us what we want what we needeven his disease was the idea of taking everythingthose cells burning doubling splitting out of their skinscopyright credit louise erdrich dear john wayne from original fire new selected poems copyright © by louise erdrich reprinted by permission of harpercollins publishers inc | 41 |
dunbar castle or arcadewe rode with the exotic sheikthrough deserts of erotic flowersheld in the siren madonnas armswere safe from the billcollectors powerforgave the rats and roaches wecould not defeat beguiled by jazzbostrutting of a mouse and whenthe swell guy roused to noblest wrathshot down all those weakéd menoh how we cheered to see the good we weredestroy the bad wed never bewhat mattered then the false the trueat dunbar castle or arcadewhere we were other for an hour or twocopyright credit robert hayden double feature from collected poems of robert hayden copyright © by robert hayden reprinted by permission of w w norton company incsource collected poems of robert hayden w w norton company inc | 42 |
he zoo is tough terrain hillyi wheel as fast as i can —then mum shouts ‘keep up’i stop ‘hand me my crutches’i shakily get up tear off my splints’velcro straps and put them on heri sit her in the chair ‘you have a go’at first she spins in circles‘no’ i say ‘use both arms in unison’she still veers away zigzagging sweating nowpeople start to stare she blusheskeeps her head down after ten minutesshe’s heaving shirt drenchedi swing over to hercopyright credit karl knights how to wheel from kin copyright © by karl knights reprinted by permission of the poetry businesssource kin the poetry business | 43 |
ue darkness is in a child’s bedroom deep blackelsewhere there’s just a meager watery twilight in whicheverything in the end acquires a humiliating distinctnesscopyright credit petr hruška night from everything indicates selected poems translated by jonathan bolton copyright © by petr hruška reprinted by permission of blue diode presssource everything indicates selected poems translated by jonathan bolton blue diode press | 44 |
ll stiff and spinytry to make it to the other sideand risk savage thornswe who left home in our teenschildren who crossed boundaries and were tornby its thousand serrated tongueswe who bear scars that bloom and bloombeneath healed skins who have we becomei ask myself is home my ghostdoes it wear my underwearfolded neatly in the antique chestof drawers i bought twenty years agonest inside my blouse that hangsfrom one metal hanger i cannot discardis it lost between these lines of booksshelved alphabetical in a languagei was not born to or here on the lipof this chipped cupmy last lover left behindi carry seeds in my mouth plantturmeric cardamom and tinyaromatic cucumbers in this gardenwater them with rain i wringfrom my grandmother’s songsthey will grow i know againstthese blackthorn wallsthey can push through anything uncuti left home at thirteeni hadn’t lived enough to know hownot to lovehome was the caspian sea the busy bazaarsthe aroma of kebab and rice fridaylunches picnics by mountain streams i never meant to stay awaythey said come backand you will dieexile is a suitcase with a broken strapi fill up a hundred notebooks with scribblesthrow them into fire and begin againthis time tattooing the words on my foreheadthis time writing only not to forgetcomplacency is catching like the common coldi swim upstream to lay my purple eggsthey say draw sustenance from this landbut look how my fruits hang in spiralsand smell of old notebooks and lacewhat is a transplanted treebut a time beingwho has adapted to adoptionspirits urge and spirits gothey weep and wail at the door of the templewhere i sit at the edge of an abyssperhaps it’s only in exile that spirits arrivebut even this is an illusioncopyright credit sholeh wolpe the world grows blackthorn walls from abacus of loss copyright © by sholeh wolpe reprinted by permission of university of arkansas presssource abacus of loss university of arkansas press | 45 |
brother holds a snake by its head the whole length of the snake is the length of my brother’s body the snake’s head is held safely securely as if my brother is showing him something in the distant high grass i don’t know why he wants to hold them their strong bodies wrapping themselves around the warmth of his arm constricting and made of circles and momentum slippery coolness smooth against the ground still this image of him holding a snake as it snakes as snakes do both a noun and verb and a story that doesn’t end well once we stole an egg from the backyard chicken coop and cracked it just to see what was inside a whole unhatched chick where we expected yolk and mucus was an unfeathered and unfurled sweetness we stared at the thing dead now and unshelled by curiosity and terrible youth my brother pretended not to care so much while i cried though only a little still we buried it in the brush by the creeping thistle that tore up our arms with their speared leaves barbed at the ends like weapons stuck in the rattlesnake grass but i knew i knew that he’d cry if he was alone if he wasn’t a boy in the summer heat being a boy in the summer heat years later back from mexico or south america he’d admit he was tired of history of always discovering the ruin by ruining it wrecking a forest for a temple a temple that should be simply left a temple he wanted it all to stay as it was even if it went undiscovered i want to honor a man who wants to hold a wild thing only for a second long enough to admire it fully and then wants to watch it safely return to its life bends to be sure the grass closes up behind itcopyright credit ada limon cyrus and the snakes from the hurting kind copyright © by ada limon reprinted by permission of milkweed editions | 46 |
could tell you this marigolds are a night flowerin the hour of my birth there were men in the streetssome with knives and some between skin and somepeeling open buds with swollen hands trying to finda home to hide in my mother fingered a ripenedbowl of hot water carving out upon its surface the linesby which our family would occur five tracks waveringbefore being soothed to nothing papa came in withthe hands of smoke around his mouth a fingernailpressed into the back of my neck quiet now childrenrose like nightfires amidst decades in which no one spokeabove a whisper striking the petrified days with headsblack as matches among the dead old hua teacherjian chiensha from the building two doors downchengyi who said the food on the mainland was betteraunt ren and her pockets full of small oranges youngko and her sweet daughter who had lost teeth the dayprior each night we soothed time as if it were newbornas a song about marigolds prayed through the radioand we held death upon fingertips to count by in those yearsit was children like i that cut through our mothers spearingdarkened already in this world by the one we are fatedto return to worn patches in the cloth of the nationsalt of blood in the mouth immortal as anthem stay stilljust like youre dead we whispered to hear ourselves speakcopyright credit xiao yue shan the coming of spring in the time of martial law from the telling be the antidote copyright © by xiao yue shan reprinted by permission of tupelo presssource the telling be the antidote tupelo press | 47 |
can remember my father bringing home spruce gumhe worked in the woods and filled his pocketswith golden chunks of pitchfor his childrenhe provided this special sacramentand we’d gather at this feet around his legsbumping his lunchbox and his empty thermos rattled insideour skin would stick to daddys gluey clothingand we’d smell like mummas pine solwe had no money for store bought gumbut that’s all rightthe spruce gumwas so close to chewing amberas though in our mouths we held the eyes of coyoteand how many other children had fathersthat placed on their innocent anxious tonguethe blood of treecopyright credit suzanne rancourt whose mouth do i speak with from billboard in the clouds copyright © by suzanne rancourt reprinted by permission of curbstone pressnorthwestern university | 48 |
frank’s sister grew long blue feathers she said it was worse than cutting teeth she spent a month screaming in the cave pushing them out frank would lie in bed at night touching his own back crying praying it wouldn’t come to him but the day his sister flew to the house he stood by the window in awe giant blue spread coming in across the lake he heard the hunter’s shot before she didcopyright credit caconrad “frank’s sister grew long blue feathers” page excerpted from the book of frank copyright © by ca conrad reprinted by permission of wave bookssource the book of frank wave books | 49 |
her was angry when frank accused his brother of being a cartoon “but look” frank said “i can fold him into airplanes i can chew him into spitballs” “stop chewing and folding your brother he loves you very much” she said “then why doesn’t he say so” “because we can’t afford a screenwriter’s fee”copyright credit caconrad “mother was angry when” pg excerpted from the book of frank copyright © by ca conrad reprinted by permission of wave bookssource the book of frank wave books | 50 |
u’ve never seen a lilac in mississippi backstage you wear lotion laced with its chemical imitation a ballet mistress says relevé always as command lift onto the toe using only the heel your ankle’s bewilderment old as the horned owl gaze from your mother hunched in the audience you enter the stage as lilac fairy fairies make critical things happen though underneath your tulle brushing sleep over a kingdom you’re a mouse who gets eaten every night no audience wants to see that not the barbed feathers tucked in your mother’s cardigan if you pretend rescue is coming it might relevé meaning rise also relief lift your head along with the heel a boy your mother says is not a boy follows your pirouettes from the balcony already a wondering rise to what the ballet can’t perform without fairy tale the stage is safe for magic or at least pretend almost everyone gets a solo in sleeping beauty so no surgeon’s daughter has hidden your pointe shoes in the dressing room couch the boy was careful not to bring flowers but you can feel his eyes bending around the shoulders clavicle and neck you forgot existed when these minutes end these minutes of spinning his eyes in their own pirouette the world won’t allow you to leave in his red bronco not anymore already hope sounds like the adult word for magic relevé meaning how much choreographed relief a kingdom tolerates already you are learning the offstage rules about who gets rescued who throws flowers who catches themcopyright credit k iver sleeping beauty from short film starring my beloveds red bronco copyright © by k iver reprinted by permission of milkweed editionssource short film starring my beloveds red bronco milkweed editions | 51 |
watch kevin bacon conjure fake tears in a real hallway i am real tears in a fake hallway “procreation is gross though” i’m nine a half watching “the miracle of life” on my mother’s bed stirring my shells cheese i see that big ’s bush split in twain i drop my spoon surely i am not this bloody meat i march down to the kitchen make an announcement “i am never having a baby” my mother takes me to a sunday matinee of she’s having a baby in the dark we share a giant pickle in wax paper weep openly for poor kevin bacon there’s been a complication with the birth kate bush croons “ooh it’s hard on the man now his part is over ” in line to buy the soundtrack at sam goody my mother tells me a secret— “women who don’t give birth tend to get cancer” everything begins to split maybe the mother’s body or the pregnant calico or the way i learn my left how sometimes at night teacher hovers over my bed marker keeps score suck it in suck it up splayed on the table unseamed by coyotes splits before my right my dead dance with a black magic on my headboard she hisses squints i get addicted to split starring impossible people leading double lives screen sex comedies from the ’os in twin beds every adult i know is in a trial none of them whispering double separation seem to be entendres into a princess phone meanwhile under the microscope pond scum cells shimmer for god’s sake mitose something wicked falls sideways from my mouth “why don’t you have your own grandkids then” this is more or less what my mother does but not without complications— what an awkward sort of sadness to wait out in the hallway with poor kevin bacon while birth death sing their biggest hits without youcopyright credit karyna mcglynn i stand outside this womans work from things kate bush taught me about the multiverse copyright © by karyna mcglynn reprinted by permission of sarabande books incsource things kate bush taught me about the multiverse sarabande books inc | 52 |
los angeles california for me the movie starts with a black man leaping into an orbit of badges tiny moons catching the sheen of his perfect black afro arc kicks karate chops and thirty cops on their backs it starts with the swagger the cool lean into the leather front seat of the black and white he takes off in deep hallelujahs of moviegoers drown out the wah wah guitar salt butter highfives right on brother and daddy glowing so bright he can light the screen all by himself this is how it goes down friday night and my father drives us home from the late show two heroes cadillacking across king boulevard in the car’s dark cab we jab and clutch jim kelly and bruce lee with popcorn breath and almost miss the lights flashing in the cracked side mirror i know what’s under the seat but when the uniforms approach from the rear quarter panel when the fat one leans so far into my father’s window i can smell his long day’s work when my father—this john henry of a man— hides his hammer doesn’t buck tucks away his baritone license and registration shaking as if showing a bathroom pass to a grade school principal i learn the difference between cinema and city between the moviehouse cheers of old men and the silence that gets us homecopyright credit john murillo enter the dragon from up jump the boogie copyright © by john murillo reprinted by permission of cypher bookssource four way books wwwfourwaybookscom | 53 |
love is boring and passé all that old baggage the bloody bricabrac the bad the gothic retrograde obscurantist hum and drum of it needs to be swept away so night after night we sit in the dark of the roxy beside grandmothers with their shanks tied up in the tourniquets of rolled stockings and open ourselves like earth to rain to the blue fire of the movie screen where love surrenders suddenly to gangsters and their cuties there in the narrow motefilled finger of light is a blonde so blonde so blinding she is a blizzard a huge spook and lights up like the sun the audience in its galoshes she bulges like a deuce coupe when we see her we say goodbye to kansas she is everything spare cool and clean like a gas station on a dark night and the cold dependable light of rage coming in on schedule like a buscopyright credit lynn emanuel blonde bombshell from the nerve of it copyright © by lynn emanuel reprinted by permission of university of pittsburgh presssource the nerve of it university of pittsburgh press | 54 |
s a secrete the grls speeching mye hole inn the lindens wee go out playe footballe verie nashenallie how wee leeve a stall piteus wen the grls speech me this is how u make a porno cuping mye hole on the sportes feeld speech is wut grls do but speech doesnt a grl make reel its a secrete i wuld be a porno abot the see mye speech the speech off thees cloystred seescopyright credit jos charles xlix its a secrete from feeld copyright © by jos charles reprinted by permission of milkweed editionssource feeld milkweed editions | 55 |
don’t know why most mexicans in my hood wore nike cortez’s– why the breakers in my crew polished ‘em daily as if a little spit could salvage our childhoods– why we all know cortez’s are best for cwalking gang shit sick moves thrust upon an opponent’s pride– why we thought by wearing the name of our conqueror we might somehow become himcopyright credit ariana brown nylon black ‘ from we are owed copyright © by ariana brown reprinted by permission of grieveland llcsource we are owed | 56 |
consider the market consider the gross domestic product of korea call it kimchiferment culture in a brine of ks buried undergroundin the spring it comes out kbbq kpop kdramas consider that japan renamed corea during its occupationso japan would be first alphabetically consider the ways we want to be read by our colonizersthe impossibility of being written otherwise consider that koreas early exports were bodiescast across water women and children firstbrides and babies consider the ways they make us palatable call us cultureferment children in a brine of ks buried undergroundthey come out kids consider the connotations consider that my parents renamed me during my adoptionso that my name would be more conveniently exotic consider that a white girl taught mehow to write my name in hangeula ghost of my colonizers a koreaboo consider my mother at work receiving a phone callshe says she was very calm she did not cry consider that at work she called my nameout for the first time finally having language in my place consider that after work she went to the marketto buy groceries like any other day consider the marketcopyright credit chaelee dalton home economics from mother tongue copyright © by chaelee dalton reprinted by permission of gold line presssource mother tongue gold line press | 57 |
m sorry it wasnt till the end of the yearthat i asked you to write about yourselves you filled pages in may and june my armand wrist were sore from writingwow and oh my goodness in the margins as you shared stories from your livesabout the times you fell in loveor lost somebody or learned to ride a bike and so many of you wrote about your mothersas so many of the boys and girls ive taught sincehave written about their mothers to my mother for my mother ive read these wordsover and over for fifteen years and stillthey move me and that year my first time craning my neck to read them i didntunderstand how holy it was what i was doingholier than the masses i attended at the mission than the confessions i made or the readingsi assigned you dante and the bible and huckleberry finni wasted so many words and days bleeding the clock down forcing your silence when you broke itay maestro you would say tell us something newnow i cant remember anything i said i remember it felt strange not to know what word would comenext i remember thinking i did not likeletting go control and on the radios blasting as i walked home i heardpasame la botella and you singing along voy a beber en nombre de ellaand whizzing by me too on the bikes youd long since learned to rideay maestro ay dante youd call out a smile and a laugh at my nicknamebut yes even the snickers a grace i realize now i dont have the yearbook anymore from but i bet some of you do some of you were on student council rightput us back in touch i want more than regretfor my first seven months as your teacher want more than the cliché—you gave memore than i gave you—thats not enough though its certainly true theres anothermaybe better words can travel a thousand miles and what im thinking about nowis the or or your mothers traveled for our firstparent teacher conferences how nervous i was and did not know yethow much you loved them for the spanish speaking i knew enoughto say es un privilegio a enseñar a su hijo it is a privilegeto teach your son even then slow as i was to seehow holy it all was i saw that privilegio i say it stillin spanish that hasnt got much better to parents of boys and girlswho speak that tongue es un privilegio privilegio priv il lay hee ohthe word lighter in spanish than english floating through tongue and teethi learned it among many other things my first year with youcopyright credit zach czaia knucklehead learns a new word from knucklehead copyright © by zach czaia reprinted by permission of nodin bookssource knucklehead nodin books | 59 |
your mouth your tongueput it out let it waitlet it wait till it isdry and cool let it wait past the point long past itwhen you think here i ama grown man standing herelike a child then your hands hold them out too openthem and let them wait tooif you would understandwant to know what i knew you would wait hold yourselffor as long as you canin this way till the voicespeaks and you know the man though you cannot yet placefrom where you know that voiceand only now openyour eyes and now the choice is made though now you see himnow you are on the groundwhy why he asks why allwhy it is the only sound you can hear take it inyou know you must answerbut you dont know how toyour mouth is a dancer without music withoutrhythm without a clueof how to move you try—the words die within you he is no guide hes goneand you are left with whyit echoes in the darkit settles down to die lt penetrates your bones—you feel it in the thud—why beat why beat why beat why beatin the heart in the blood he lives and you know itlives like birds or treeslives like branches growingis shade is cool—is freecopyright credit zach czaia if you would understand what happened on the road to damascus from knucklehead copyright © by zach czaia reprinted by permission of nodin bookssource knucklehead nodin books | 60 |
when one is seen gliding through the woods and close to the observer it passes like a thought and on trying to see it again the eye searches in vain the bird is gone an infinite numbersaid champlain on the islandsin took a greatquantity fully as abundant asfish said the jesuit fathers inacadia incredible added storkfrom florida broke down treestook all food lawson historyof carolina they robbed avery great quantity of englishgrain complained winthrop plymouth colony then blessed their presenceit being incredible what multitudes ofthem were killed daily alexanderwilson spoke of a flight togreen river kentucky milesof packed skyestimated individualswho devoured bushels ofnuts every day their nests—over per tree—projected brokenlimbs ejecta like deep snow belowherds of fattening hogs gobbledeggs dead squabs light of noondaysun was obscured as byan eclipse quoth audubon soon after about a flight whichdarkened the sky for three daysas flocks alighted branches gaveway killing hundreds of birds belowtrees two feet in diameterwere broken off near the groundtheir winter roost noise waslike a gale passing through therigging of a closereefed vesselno one dared go into thewoods at night gatherings ofby far the most abundant birdin the world columba migratoriuspassenger pigeon extinct pigeoncomes to the mouthvia latin pipio piper when pope gregory was dictating his homilies in ezekiel a veil was drawn between his secretary and himself the servant peeked through and beheld a dove seated on gregorys head with its beak between his lips when the dove withdrew its beak the holy pontiff spoke dovearises from the gothic dubomeaning diveras columba from greekmeans also diverresemblance to gulls in out roundabout each passage pipio measuredlong as a fine bottle of champagneperfect profile dove brightskyblue back breast of clay redhead like an aerial chesspiece the flierto come down anywhere checkmate the field each pipio of passage had ashiny moving eye when the ladysaw him danceeggs began to roll when the gentlemansaw her settle down to broodpigeons milk wetted his cropeach pipio billed cooedbloody fightsmonogamous but not fanaticvoice like love each pipio stuck its black beak in drink suckedup continuous drafts of waterbirdunique all othersgargle at the moon each pipio of passagepumped blood into plump chest to pushpointed wings mph highlike a whistling arrowplumage peculiarly dense but easily detachedlove salt mud twelve feathers eachnarrowed obtusely sharp made upthe graduated tail rich beauties of each bird gone forever glosses of theyellow brown purplemetal the outer web edgings of the primariesorangecinnamon hollow bones theblack spot concealed in each wing or pure whiteeggs laid in afrail flat of twigs hoo woooo—hoo hoo hoo cries the scattered little sister there once was a passenger dove who divided to billions by love the infinite flights intercepted the lights that normally flowed from above the clef of that feathered eclipse let alignments of notes to the lips of the faces thereunder effusions of wonder the flotillas of lavender ships when the pigeons alighted the land was bedecked as by miles of sand each grain was a world that eons had whirled would flutter sing on your hand each feather was made of a million thin barbules that wove a pavilion of aerial moves beating nitrogen grooves light plough to sheer shine along sillion nobody knows what the brain of the dove did create or contain its particular way of perceiving each day plus intricate pleasure pain but its mind was an avian elf that spun for the sake of itself blue volumes of knowledge columbian college atmospheres continent shelf just like a lost city of wells cupping dark informational swells circling mesmeric streams of numbers dreams— single cell in the bellum of cells the paths of penultimate glory could be loud colossally gory— of delicate riots of intimate quiets chief pokagon tells us this story one morningon leaving my wigwam i was startledby hearing a gurglingrumbling soundas thoughan army of horses laden with sleigh bells was advancingthrough the deep forestsi concluded thatinstead of tramping horsesit was distant thunder and yet themorning was clear calm and beautifulnearer and nearer camethe strange commingling sounds ofsleigh bells mixedwith rumblings of an approaching storm i beheldmoving toward me in an unbroken frontmillions of pigeonsthey passed like a cloudthrough the branches of the high treesthrough the underbrush and overthe ground overturningevery leaf they fluttered allabout me gentlyi caughttwo in my handsand concealed themunder my blanket they were matingi sat down and carefully watchedtheir movements i tried to understandtheir strange language and whythey all chatted inconcert thegreat onmoving mass passed by mebut the trees were stillfilled with them utteringto their matesthose strange wooing notes ihad mistaken forthe ringing of bells lines broken ahh those pigeon mornings youd shoot enough before breakfast to load a hay wagon with the sides on full to the brim when the flocks came in the whole townd be out with flintlocks queens arms stringtied gun locks its been known that a fowler get birds with two flintlock shots and thered be clubs stones smudgepots raking poles and especially nets great grainbaited nets and pigeonbaited just take a pigeon and sew his eyes shut so hell flutter pin his legs to a chunk of wood the stool and watch em come pouring in like all the stars in the sky but a lot better eating those pigeons were unsuspicious walk into the woods and theyd be cooing all around you raising kids left and right the squabs were prime and cheap cause nature did the dirty work and of course were talking market market market huge and nationwide just one new york merchant sold pigeons a day and there were many more like him cities and town all over just gobbled pigeons up a delicacy trainloads of em were chugging all over america not just the meat—the feathers and down went into pillows and quilts gizzards guts blood and excrement sold as medical cures for damn near everything—gall stones stomachache dysentery colic infected eyes fever and epilepsy and the live birds for trapshooting took about a million a year one club would use up for a weeks shooting naturally piles of em would die in capture or during transport or break their necks or wings being hurled from the catapult still one sporting gentleman might kill in a day nobody thought the wild pigeons were anything but infinite bounty till about some diminishment was noted little years later the last great nesting took place near petoskey michigan acres of leftover beech telegraph spread the news and railways focused the thousand pro netters plus locals from all over like glassed rays on a bug every possible pigeon was slaughtered a million or more then where were they all the netters story was that vast numbers had drowned in lake michigan and in the ocean caught in storms other folk were scratching their heads about it decades later a great mystery such rich abundance to lose its coherence to go out like a light something cockeyed somewhere northern indians loved pigeon meat too but never killed till the squabs were ready to fly advantages of indian time they cajoled then threatened whites to exercise a like moderation to no avail a last quarter million descended from the north in for the passenger pigeon migrated any direction and nested near mammoth cave they might as well have nested at the bottom of the sea all but were slaughtered then the entire kill in boxcars was derailed some kind of railroad accident and every bird rotted by the tracks the last known wild pigeon was shot four years later by a small boy in ohio a future president rumor has it too much was not enoughthe party got too roughthe big old woodsdelivered the goods the pigeons flightwas massive purple lightuntil deathmechanized its dire breathtill bony chanceturned from a danceto a marchover the archmade of slaughterover the airwithoutwater out when royal commonality miles wide fifty feet thick pipes its own breath pigeons milk flows sweetlythrough the convulsions of the crowd—so thecrash of broken homes is just a tinkle in aroaring redblue song—so the parental billis a fluttering pipe organ forest vast enought to chart—so the rich blood wing to wing caresses the chance orphan—then the violent thinning of thatexplodes an atmosphere blows holesthrough a general mooncolored feathery fleshtatters population that itpisses its peculiar oxygen into nobirdsland already in the very center of the rich chaotic pigeoncountry they carried anywherethrough breathtaking thin airwas a white eye—the single egg absolutenumber color certaintycentral circle in a whirlwind of rainbows—a hole to stick a finger in curl tight jerk aint no maybes boss theres safety innumbers but not near enough of itsomebodys pushing pins into my giant singing poem myeverything syndromewhy not take all of me it is possible to lose my coherence though i am billions of breathing cometsit is possible to lose my coherence though i am billions of breathingit is possible to lose my coherence though i am billions ofit is possible to lose my coherence though i am billionsit is possible to lose my coherence though i amit is possible to lose my coherence though iit is possible to lose my coherence thoughit is possible to lose my coherenceit is possible to lose myit is possible to loseit is possible toit is possibleit isit hoo woooo—hoo hoo hoo they seemed to be all things exchangesof earth sky—feathers words pressed dry from flashinconcert to an isolate float lit up letting flysettling to rest infesting forest with violetviolence leaving reeking plaster overbronze landscape squattingiridescent figures of strong streamlineatmospheric opalsbut the very diamond is but buttonbright against the wonderdumbluster of the last crumb of terra firma crustcoming up—skybeing sucked out leaving a blot oceansgoing up in smokemolecules reforming is there an end to all things tectonic plateswiped clean we arebirds of passagebirds of passagebirds of passagewe arepipers in avernusgetting alongconcentrating levelingthe beating of infinite wingsplunges through the bodypasses the breath down throughspace barely shaped to perfection bird of passageeverything pointing at lightness to that mostcomplex occurrence double curls of geneticacid downto nothingone more time wake up okayin the shapes of leavessky i seesnarling little demons vast breathing pearly presenceextinguished by wonderfulintelligent cancer copyright credit jack collom passage from red car goes by selected poems copyright © by jack collom reprinted by permission of estate of jack collomsource red car goes by selected poems tuumba press | 62 |
what if you knew youd be the lastto touch someoneif you were taking tickets for exampleat the theater tearing themgiving back the ragged stubsyou might take care to touch that palmbrush your fingertipsalong the life lines crease when a man pulls his wheeled suitcasetoo slowly through the airport whenthe car in front of me doesnt signalwhen the clerk at the pharmacywont say thank you i dont remembertheyre going to die a friend told me shed been with her aunttheyd just had lunch and the waitera young gay man with plum black eyesjoked as he served the coffee kissedher aunts powdered cheek when they leftthen they walked half a block and her auntdropped dead on the sidewalk how close does the dragons spumehave to come how wide does the crackin heaven have to splitwhat would people look likeif we could see them as they aresoaked in honey stung and swollenreckless pinned against timecopyright credit ellen bass if you knew from the human line copyright © by ellen bass reprinted by permission of copper canyon press wwwcoppercanyonpressorgsource the human line copper canyon press | 63 |
saint augustine preached humility the need to simply be on the ground do you wish to rise he asked what would he say of these words then which after all are meant to replace us what would he say of the way i go back again again to the burning house the house weve already escaped these words— so quick the way they rise up like sparks or smoke a person could get lost in the sky watching them a person could lose track of the important things spot quiz whats the opposite of standing before a house on fire trying to understand the flames knowing you will never understand i want to enter into that moment my mother strikes her first match but im still asleep upstairs in the dream im walking through the marsh because only there surrounded by water am i safe are your hands the water are these words the flame the reeds are taller than i am the mud slows everything down in some ways i cannot imagine seeing you again but here l am kneeling as in prayer at your bedside counting our breaths what would stop me from taking your hand then placing it on my chest o lord help me be pure but not yet even as i write each word i am farther from god—sometimes i just cant find it if only i could have the faith i hear coming from the radio the way it always knows im listening one day these years will be known as the space between silence enough i still have trouble being alone in either which is why the radio is always on do you wish to rise augustine asks begin by descending copyright credit nick flynn saint augustine from i will destroy you copyright © by nick flynn reprinted by permission of graywolf press wwwgraywolfpressorgsource i will destroy you graywolf press | 65 |
kindergarten i find myself sitting crosslegged on the playground having a nosebleed steady like a saline drip across my lip into my mouth down my chin through my fingers then blooming in a constellation of tiny red supernovas across my leg warmers and the mulch i tip my head back mouthbreatheboth bloodied palms open to the girlsas they gather curious protectors shouldertoshoulder circling me with solemn heads bowed over mine angling for the best view they read the bloodspattered wood chips someone says the shapes look like a face mine i say yes that is me this is what i am made of now you all know me behold this wounded creature warning you too could be bloody nosed in the dirt see yourself in me see how we all can bleed ourselves out with no warning source poetry januaryfebruary | 68 |
u might be wondering how i got herered handed pants down under the bleachersby the football field with four other girls crossmy heart and hope to die it’s not what you thinkwhat had happened was i got my periodduring gym class we were running the milethere i was giving it my all chest tightcalves and quads seizing up really goingfor it defending my middle school recordwhen i felt an unnamed muscle deep deepinside of me tighten into itself like a slipknotand there was no girls’ bathroom by the trackbecause why would there be and the girlshad to come along because the hive mind lovesa spectacle and i needed some guidancefrom someone who had done all this beforeso naturally we gathered under the bleacherswhere the dim air was hazy with dustjust stirred and drugstore body mist sprayedwith a heavy hand by my friend to maskthe ripeness of our sweaty adolescencedamn we stink she said and looked at meas if i might agree as if i was not busyfinding the courage to stop myself upwith a cardboard applicator tamponfrom the depths of someone’s gym bagsaved for such an emergency as this as ifthree other girls weren’t watching medroplets beading at the back of my kneesand puddling in my many folded placeswhile i kind of bent a little to findthe right angle the girls looked onunsmiling as if to say welcome tothe rest of your life join the club andi was like i am the reigning mile championand two knuckles deep inside myselfand they cheered then grimaced becausewhat is our cult of girlhood if not looking onand feeling each other’s pain in our ownbodies then saying i have felt that too source poetry januaryfebruary | 69 |
remember this clearly am bed sheets riftedwith confessions waves of linen—mother’s riftedocean i pulled prayers pain from like my fatheri babied sucked sore thumbs on a bed the riftedcharacters mulled by tongue before leaving fourteenyears of solitude teeth i spoke to her rifts—her mother’s buried love while she stared back fromthe wrong side of the bed steady as all sons she riftedso quietly 不能接受 from her throat that is nowmy throat i am a mother’s child but she does not riftthis morning for me i am wombscented because i ammost keen to blood smothering resists me her eyes riftedme apart i spilled body turned outwards—beggingfor love drifting i wanted to tell her all about 裂痕s but her body is a sun drowning on the bed’s horizon sheonce dragged motherhood out from a girl to escape her riftedpast now thirtynine she rarely calls home all her lifeshe has met the wrong people never clearing out the riftsfull of her dead i was another fresh wrinkle she spoke intothat morning this is where i don’t remember the riftsin my memory brim with 我疼你s but i awoke to the soundof february rain the mountain of her still sleeping rifted the title loosely translates to “mother’s bickering missing mother” bùnéng jiēshòu—can’t accept in mandarin lièhén—rifts in mandarin wŏ téng nĭ—i love you in mandarin the direct translation is “i hurt you” illustration by matt huynhsource poetry januaryfebruary | 70 |
ll the secondgen immigrant berkeley moms somehow allwent to stanford i’m laughing becausei want to be in on the joke when i tell the joketo my mom she says she’s heard it before she doesn’tunderstand the punchline i want to be the daughter ofa mother who gives me octavia butler and ursula k le guinbook recs i want to be the daughter of a mother whocarries around her npr tote bag to the farmer’s marketi want to be part of a lineage of women who were taughthow to think beyond dystopias i want to own things that provemy family is smartat home my mom cries when i argue with herabout tampons it’s not that hard i tell her it’s likea syringe when she first arrives in californiamy aunt who works at the equal employmentopportunity commission makes fun of her for this fear of her bodywhen my mom first arrives from manila she becomesa nurse and never uses her marketingdegree from de la salle in an alternate universe i’m better at worldbuildingbut in this one i am when i tell my mom i don’t wantto attend the filam summer camp she blinks shrugs then nodsuntil dad enters the room that july he packs me into the car everymorning with my little sister driving half an hour toward some pinoyabsolution—reaching for whatever mighthold him later in the family group chat mom texts us how proudshe is that r’bonney gabriel won miss universe and i trynot to correct her pridein this one i am when i bring words like kapwa and bayanihanto the nonprofit icebreaker circle and for a moment become myancestorswildestdreams they roll their eyes i learn the word pamanameans legacy in tagalog an inheritance an assurancei can tuck in my back pocket proof that i amlapulapuchoppinoffmagellan’shead andoliviarodrigoslayingitatthevmas in an alternate universe i’m better at worldbuildingbut in this one i am when my cousin wears his stanfordsweatshirt inherited from his mom or dad or sisterto the family gathering and i know how to make my anger bitesized and intellectually interestingmy dad tells me prestige in french meansdeceit i tell him it’s also the final part of a magic trickthe things that weren’t there inevitablyreappear this is how the world worksin my family we talk only about the bonuseswe’ve earned the hard work we do—our goodsacrifice this is what lolo and lola would have wished forus the craftsmanstyle house the treelined neighborhoodsin palo alto and the good part of oaklandwhere the neighborhood has monthly meetingsand here families vote no on subsidized housingwhere the families’ kids put acab in their insta biosbefore changing it to harvard ’ a week laterwhere at the kids’ school the kids know how to askfor what they want they raise their handsand answer the questions the teacher smilesand the kids know they are smart so they askfor help and knowit will be givenhere we become the exception andthe exceptional the good student goodneighbor immigrant removed from immigrantness until it stopped being convenient so we shapeshiftedinto something other performed heartbreak in front of people whodon’t love us minutes to make your reader cry minute to proveyour resilience your mother’s resilience your classiceldestdaughterofimmigrant impression together we watch thesffa v harvard msnbc report on youtube and search for anasian american who looks like they came from her badgood junglecountry we are squinting at the game we are trying to find ourplace we are the contorted face of civil rights fighting forcivil rights the highest court in the land is finally fighting for us look how far we’ve come look how far we can gowhen i go to pomona’s bay area summerwelcome party where everyone else’s parents droppedk a year so their kid could attendharker or castilleja i feel luckythat an institution miles awayis choosing to invest in mewhen i hear the hummingof my white uncle’s whitetesla with the feel the bernbumper sticker slapped on i feel luckyi have this family half an hour frommy family when we all sit at their dinnertable my aunt says she feels luckyher son will be so close to homeand my mom under her breath mutters legacybut we all keep eatingbecause nothing should go to wasteinstead the word scurrieslike a roach under the table my momis unfazed an ipis in thephilippines would eatthat ipis for breakfast in an alternate universe i’m better at worldbuildinghere we condense the distance between our worldsuntil they are touchable and alivehere everyone knows how to love each otherwithout falling aparton a scrap of paper my momscribbles ipis a oneword poema spell an attempt at becoming the handbut not the object it holdswe make it a guessing gamecharades we take turns morphing into the wingèdbeasts but nobody can get it right so the word falls back into the bowl and multipliesagain and again we describe ourselveswithout describing ourselvesgive it a namewithout ruining the funof the game in the end we’ll all losenot because we’ve broken the rules but because we’re badactors shitty magicians we like to stay humble that way and i know we are losing but i have stopped paying attention instead i am watching my mom watch our family i am watching her mouth the word like the promise of a sogoodit’sbad joke the turn of a magic trick when something ordinary becomes something extraordinary the moment just before you realize you’ve become the thing you were trying to prove you could become illustration by haley jiangsource poetry januaryfebruary | 71 |
berrystained month of summer grandmother cups flour ½ cup sugar tablespoon baking powder ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon nutmeg brown eggs ½ cup milk ½ cup melted butter cups wild blueberries cinnamon sugar to taste heat oven to °f dig into flour to unearth inherited secrets watch your grandmother when she advises “let me show you a trick” use a knife’s flat edge to run over brimming measuring cups scoop slice pour repeat with sugar baking powder and salt scoop slice pour by the time you measure nutmeg proficiency coats your palms against another bowl’s lip kiss a brown egg until it breaks slippery yolk escapes repeat whisk until dizzying paleyellow streaks appear beat in milk melted butter and dry mixture let your hope run wild around the bowl add blueberries dollop batter into a greased muffin pan sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top listen to her say “don’t be shy” satisfaction sticks to your fingertips with every extra pinch bake fifteen minutes remove muffins while your grandmother presents a toothpick from her apron trust her when she suggests “try this” poke a muffin’s heart if it glides out gooey ask yourself “will i ever be as good as her” believe her when she whispers “patience” source poetry januaryfebruary | 72 |
heir names have been lostonly the winds only the mountainskeep them we’ve forgotten the namesof the mountains my people the morewe bent our knees to worship the gods of the city the gods with jaguar eyes who sit in the smog which could be mistaken for clouds but for the ink they leave in our lungs rorschach paintings doctors dissect what do you see my death certainlybut still no names of the women beforeme or the names of the mountains rivers the promises my ancestors madeto the spirits then betrayed when they fledexchanged land for new land what was hername i ask the room of my uncles am met with disinterest where did she comefrom i receive silence that must beit then she came from air from windfrom the earth stilling to quiet inthe right moment when the sun hitsthe water when no one is aroundwhen i can see the mountains breakingthe sky i can almost hear them the womenin my family the ones who remembertheir names source poetry januaryfebruary | 73 |
for jackie mendoza if even now i am excited about it every cow horse every canoe on the surface of pyramid lake— if at two hundred miles out i take a selfie with the bravoland cowboy record us driving by the tule elk reserve record two jetblack crows circling the morning’s blue wrist of light like a scrunchie then i can only imagine your excitement three years back the eldest daughter leaving home southern california a solid white line in the rearview mirror today i’m a regular sal paradise—a spider a rickety bar a softball game beneath floodlights tell me what did it take for your amá to let go to type chico state into google maps did she see those blue lines as umbilical cords did she feel a blue road being pulled out from deep within her body i think of my amá wish my america larger than lillian street larger than don jones park than its bougainvillea when you left did yours look up at the sky imagine the return trip home without her daughter o tell me how did you hide your excitement at grapes how did you get those dimples on your face to look less like car tires skidding illustration by rudy gutierrez source poetry januaryfebruary | 74 |
ur neighbor’s orange tree is in full bloom fat and overgrown and spilling sunbright fists over our fence onto our quiet shouts of scutch grass sugaring tender rot over our anemones which hardly grew all spring because my father chose a fertilizer with the wrong ph and wrong mineral content my father figures that since half of the tree is on our side half of the fruit belongs to us though our neighbor has lived longer than the two of us combined and the tree longer than him still on a sunday we gather beneath its wild knot of leaves steal fruit after fruit tear their rinds and shove their segments down our chronic mouths my father smiles all his teeth crooked and stained like shards of terrible sunlight bursting from his gums and i share his ugly find it one day years later ghosting his car’s silver hood furling under the heat his nose blooming onto my nose his yolkbright eyes instead of my eyes his neat ribbon of dark lips reaming over mine my father a smear of silt and wood worm over denim clean shaven until he stops until his beard threads in through his jaw thick as a tooth of basalt dark as one too dark as the one we found together in a field with no volcano in sight even he religionless then admitted it was a sign and i found him a month later in the shed palm sized photo of his mother trembling in his hands like a fledgling my father whiskey sour and smokebalmed in the dawn light gout globing at his ankle my father cyst blinking and blinking at his front lobe rust chewing at his faux rolex until it turns to dust alchemy my father calls it before fogging dirty sable rings onto my mother’s cheek with his wrist as he brushes away her hair my father who has only ever heard of simple fruits like apple peach and pear never the tangerines and persimmons of my poems who knows more about the war than i ever could who watched his brother drown and his village burn the trees falling one by one like piano keys struck for the first time and i am his cruel son reaching for an orange beneath his baffling frame bruised shoulders wide as sky son who’d sew his suffered life into all my poems write the man with the broken accent and broken hands i promised i’d never become but how could i have known how could i have known anything at all that in the end i would only finish as his failed ugly understudy our biology knitted wicked like this a violent alchemy lurking in both our luckless lungs but this is allcountless gnatbridled augusts away right now we are alive and together my father and i wondering how the smell of jasmine and citrus can come from the same tree chewing stolen fruit spilling the pulp laughing at the mess we are making with just our hands illustration by weshoyot alvitre source poetry januaryfebruary | 75 |
tells me i smell likeher mom—something flowery and the blackened endingsof a jointi feared her blotchy wraththat sometimes showed itselfand others slept like somethingwithout a hippocampusthis time she possesses no rageonly hurt about the lieshe’d say of me if askedi hold my things tight to my chesttill it’s only half possible to breathemy skin is impenetrablerubberyi lie to her more than she knowsone thing i am honest aboutare the dreamsi’m in grandma’s houseknowing that she is dead knowing her body is somewhere in therei’m careful not to look for iti use her bathroom where me and my cousin used to bathe—i fiddle keys on the piano in her sunroomlet her rocking chair screech beneath meif she were alive i would’ve done my things with hershared stories of my momher fluctuating daughtertalked about why we love her and why we hate having her aroundin her placei try to fit momconvince her that she is okayafter she’s taken too muchhold her hand when she says she feels likeshe’s dissolvingi assure her that she will not diebut am not surei don’t know death source poetry januaryfebruary | 76 |
wake butterfly—its late weve milesto go togethercopyright credit basho ”wake butterfly” from on love and barley haiku of basho translated by lucien stryk copyright © by lucien stryk reprinted by permission of estate of lucien stryksource on love and barley haiku of basho translated by lucien stryk penguin random house uk | 78 |
listen carefully—there is land or there is waterand a time whereyou may mistake one for anotherthere is day and there is nightthe only difference between themis that a body may pass through one livingto arrive at the other no longerif by land you will travelthrough the wutong mountains follow the pathto liantang cross over in luofangbring as much food as you can remember your nameand where you are going you will have to say the wordsas if you are not starvingat the red marks of paintedstone by the mangroves therei watched once a child searchingthe pockets of his fatherwho laid perfectly still in the summer stonesmouth filling with the rising riverwater is through the throat of baishizhou acrossshenzhen bay there will be men scanning the pathsso send your body low and fastinto the long taste of salt the sea—it is hong kongs they will not takeyou back from it it is the first test of the other sidesforgiveness to enter admitting you belong nowherethat you are no one dandelion banana skins the stems of sweet potatoes to boilthe roots of a mountain fern for its starch to stew grass untila dark vegetal paste collects in the pot and the tongue thickenswith mosses and oils bright scream of hunger ripping the bodyinto constellations famine has a smell—sunned ashes greyyellow in the shapelesswinter silence those that fed on barks and grasses would swell—flesh holding impressions like clay how seldom we thinkabout the substance of our bodies unnoticed untilit must be endured red searcd skin heavy in liquidbloom it was better whenthe people you loved stopped lookinglike themselves like watching a stranger die all this has been made by mothers into song we were arriving by the hundreds and so did not looklike people any longer the elderly the young men women camphorswires rain—all questions it was the seathat swam through me i heard my own criescoming out of anothers mouth forty years later on the shenzhen side a mancarves a passage in the lobbyof a luxury hotel and travels backforty years through it he was carrying meon his back before he fell his handaccusing the earth stranglingthe bullet air what we knew of the new worldbarbed fence twenty kilometres long earthburnsaltlick prying my mothers handshardened around a willow branch whiteeyed watchdogscarving their lethal arc in the spine one teststhe fit of death upon him putting it on like fireputs on smoke we rantaking what we knew with us the singing of our bodies to keep the land alivethe singing of our bodies to keep the land alivecopyright credit xiao yue shan exodus hong kong from the telling be the antidote copyright © by xiao yue shan reprinted by permission of tupelo presssource the telling be the antidote tupelo press | 79 |
can hear in your voiceyou were born in one countryand will die in another and where you live is where youll be buriedand when you dream its where you were born and the moon never hangs in both skieson the same night and thats why you think the moon has a sisterthats why your day is hostage to your nights and thats why you cant sleep except by forgettingyou cant love except by remembering and thats why youre divided yes and noi want to die i want to livenever go away leave me alone i can hear by what you sayyour first words must have been mother and father even before your own name motherlong before amen fathercopyright credit liyoung lee restless from book of my nights copyright © by liyoung lee reprinted by permission of boa editions ltd wwwboaeditionsorgsource book of my nights boa editions ltd | 80 |
that is no country for old men the young in one anothers arms birds in the trees —those dying generations—at their song the salmonfalls the mackerelcrowded seas fish flesh or fowl commend all summer long whatever is begotten born and dies caught in that sensual music all neglect monuments of unageing intellect ii an aged man is but a paltry thing a tattered coat upon a stick unless soul clap its hands and sing and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress nor is there singing school but studying monuments of its own magnificence and therefore i have sailed the seas and come to the holy city of byzantium iii o sages standing in gods holy fire as in the gold mosaic of a wall come from the holy fire perne in a gyre and be the singingmasters of my soul consume my heart away sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal it knows not what it is and gather me into the artifice of eternity iv once out of nature i shall never take my bodily form from any natural thing but such a form as grecian goldsmiths make of hammered gold and gold enamelling to keep a drowsy emperor awake or set upon a golden bough to sing to lords and ladies of byzantium of what is past or passing or to comecopyright credit from the collected poems of wb yeats edited by richard finneran revisions and additional poems copyright © by anne yeats editorial matter and compilation copyright © by macmillan publishing company reprinted by permission of scribner an imprint of simon schuster llcsource the collected poems of w b yeats macmillan publishing company | 81 |
he blades like irises turning very fast to see you completely—steelblue then red where the cut occurs—the cut of you—they don’t want to know you they want to own you—no—not own—we all mean to live to the end—am i human we don’t know that—just because i have this way of transmitting—call it voice—a threat—communal actually—the pelagic midwater nets like walls closing round us—starting in the far distance where they just look to us liked distance—distance coming closer—hear it—eliminating background—is all foreground—you in it—the only ground—not even punishment—trawlingnets bycatch poison ghostfishing—the coil of the listening along the very bottom—the nets weighed down with ballast—raking the bottom looking for nothing—indiscriminate—there is nothing in particular you want—you just want—you just want to close the third dimension—to get something which is all—becomes all—once you are indiscriminate—discards can reach of the catch—am i—the habitat crushed and flattened—net of your listening and my speaking we can no longer tell them apart—the atmosphere between us turbid—no place to hide—no place to rest—you need to rest—there is nature it is the rest—what is not hunting is illustration—not regulated are you—probing down to my greatest depths— meters and more—despite complete darkness that surrounds me—despite my being in my place under strong pressure—along with all my hundreds of species—detritus—in extreme conditions—deepwater fish grow very slowly—very—so have long life expectancy—late reproductive age—are particularly thus vulnerable—it comes along the floor over the underwater mountains—scraping the steep slopes—what is bycatch—hitting the wrong target—the wrong size—not eaten—for which there is no market—banned—endangered—such as birds—sometimes just too much—no more space on the boat—millions of tons thrown back dead or wounded—the scars on the seabed—the mouth the size of a football field—and if there is no one there there is still ghostfishing—nets abandoned in the sea they continue through the centuries to catch—mammals fish shellfish—we die of exhaustion or suffocation—the synthetic materials last forever ask us anything how deep is the sea you couldnt go down there pressure would crush you light disappears at feet ask another question can you hear me no who are you i am did you ever kill a fish i was once but now i am human i have imagination i want to love i have selfinterest things are not me do you have another question i am haunted but by what human supremacy the work of humiliation the pungency of the pesticide what else the hammer that comes down on the head knocks the eyes out i was very lucky the end of the world had already occurred how long ago was that i don’t know it is not a function of knowledge it is in a special sense that the world ends you have to keep living you have to make it not become waiting nothing is disturbingly visible only the outside continues but it continues so you have to find the way to make the inside continue your entity is fragile you are an object you own at least you were given it to own you have to figure out what ownership is you thought you knew you were wrong it was wrong there was wrongness in the mix it turns out you are a first impression years go by imagine that and there is still a speaker there will always be a speaker in the hypoxic zones is almost no more oxygen→then there is→no more→oxygen→for real→picture that says the speaker→who are you→where are you→going down into the dead zones→water not water→the deeper you go he says the→scarier it gets→because there’s→nothing there→there are no→fish→no organisms→alive→no→no life→so it’s just us→dead zones→bigger than the sahara he says→the largest lifeless spaces this side of the moon→he says→she says→who is this speaking to me→i am the upwelling→i am the disappearing→hold on→just a minute please→hold on→there is a call for youcopyright credit jorie graham deep water trawling from fast copyright © by jorie graham reprinted by permission of harpercollins publishers incsource fast harpercollins publishers inc | 82 |
s it okay to begin with the obvious i am full of stones— is it okay not to look out this window but to look out another a mentor once said you cant start a poem with a man looking out a window too many men looking out a window what about a woman today is a haunting one last orange on the counter it is a dead fruit we swallow dead things once in rio near leblon large seabirds soared over the vast south atlantic ocean i had never seen them before eightfoot wingspan and gigantic in their confident gliding black with a red neck like a wound or a hidden treasure or both when i looked it up i learned it was the magnificent frigatebird it sounded like that enormity of a bird had named itself what a pleasure to say i am magnificent and too they traveled as a team so i wondered if they named each other generously tapping one anothers deeply forked tail or their plumage glistening with salt air their gular sacs saying you are magnificent you are also magnificent it makes me want to give all my loves the adjectives they deserve you are resplendent you are radiant you are sublime i am far away from tropical waters i have no skills for flight or wings to skim the waves effortlessly like the wind itself but from here i can still imagine rapture a glorious caught fish in the mouth of a birdcopyright credit ada limon the magnificent frigatebird from the hurting kind copyright © by ada limon reprinted by permission of milkweed editions | 83 |
“this is your captain” frank says from the cockpit “all passengers wishing to bail out any time during our flight it is too late i have shredded the parachutes to confetti in celebration of our arrival”copyright credit caconrad “this is your” page excerpted from the book of frank copyright © by ca conrad reprinted by permission of wave bookssource the book of frank wave books | 84 |
que será el café of this holy incorporated place the wild steam of scorched espresso cakes rising like mirages from the aromatic waste waving over the coffeeglossed lips of these faces assembled for a standing breakfast of nostalgia of tastes that swirl with the delicacy of memories in these fortycent cups of brown sugar histories in the swirling froth of caféconleche que será what have they seen that they cannot forget— the broadleaf waves of tabaco and plaintains the clay dust of red and nameless mountains que será that this morning i too am a speck i am the brilliant guitar of a tropical morning speaking spanish and ribboning through potions of waisthigh steam and green cane oceans que será drums vanishing and returning the african gods that rule a rhythmic land playing their music bongó bembé conga que será that cast the spells of this rumba this wild birthright this tropical dance with the palms of this exotic confusion que será that i too should be a question que será what have i seen what do i know— culture of café and loss this place i call homecopyright credit contemplations at the virgin de la caridad cafeteria inc from city of a hundred fires by richard blanco © all rights are controlled by the university of pittsburgh press pittsburgh pa used by permission of university of pittsburgh presssource city of a hundred fires university of pittsburgh press | 85 |
le annotationshighlightsenseless here’s the man with the crystal contractions with the rumor of sand with a doll’s past tense at the hollow step in a bed of distress nevertheless present at the passage of spring spring tristan tzara wrote this poem during the summer of weeks after the end of world war ii and so this particular “spring” may refer to the horrific final season of the war man as long as he passes his stop is wall wall of heavy shoulders and now the light is black the sun salty water no longer quenches the children’s eyes their words wooden voices no longer recognizable in the little space left ajar in their gullets of sky and like justice at the bottom of the well verisimilitude verisimilitude the french word here is vraisemblance which combines vraitrue with semblant semblance or appearance it can translate to likelihood or verisimilitude here because perhaps the well in the previous line functions as a mirror truths appearance reflects the disorienting layers of reality in the weeks immediately following the war during which many in europe though newly liberated were still hungry ill and displaced reflects the tarnished gold of summer’s escapes the frankness of their hungers howling dogs outrageous vacations dogs with your tongues out tugging at the rope until you lose that rainy look in your hempen eyes lost lost in a fur pelt dogs who cheat the night in the well of justice true forged water and lose the sparkling stones the iron of the walls like never seen before horrors distresses faces passed passed over passed away from earth from potash from vitreous smoke sludge sludge on the horizon nothing but sludge where wewe ironically for a poem titled “speaking alone” this is the only firstperson pronoun in the poem and refers to a group of people docking in an isolated uncanny imaginary landscape henri béhar writes “tzara composed this poem while he was lodged at the saintalban psychiatric hospital in lozère where he had long conversations with the patients even befriending some of them from then on his poetry tried to speak not for them but from their point of view through a kind of empathy of which few poets are capable he puts his poetic practice at the disposal of the very strong emotional demand that he had felt in his interlocutors” dock and islands of grassy vertigo the cobblestones are deserted the loves uneasy why love only avarice and everywhere the void the laughable transparency of the ravine man among men and the ditch up front the wind underneath and from each side silencesilence this section with its layered images and metaphors enacts a mythic challenge to logic scholar elmer peterson citing tzara’s lecture posits that tzara believes “the essence of poetry is in the recapture and expression of these myths which our rationally ordered society has subverted” you entered the dwelling place of dead tenderness alive and in each step you recognized yourself as an enticing answer the world hasn’t changed from ash for you nor has anguish crucified itself a little loss a little gain it’s always the weight of windowpanes bearing down on your dark forehead but you are lucid in these hours that look like you walking among your footsteps which the scales tally through the starry years on the tree of painstarry years on the tree of pain stars and trees are two of the shapes used by joan miró in the vivid iconic lithographs he created for the original artist book publication of parler seul confined in the horizon of voices no wall can resist your warm memory faced with the broken voice rats can run between your legs the fine grass has yet to escape your call with an invisible noise on the mouth and fingers you came out alivealive marius hentea writes of tzara’s long period of isolation and silence during the war “even in the most damning solitude the need for personal connections and human warmth remains he continues it is through these connections that the final poem can end with a triumphant cry”copyright credit tristan tzara speaking alone from guernica magazine copyright © by tristan tzara heather green reprinted by permission of heather greensource guernica magazine | 86 |
he world is not as bad as our neighbors made it to be that day— we’ve seen worse days— and how beautiful they were these days living strife how we loved everything about not having to go to school i won’t describe the past for you i tell you i got held at borders i tell you i am used to it and what what is this record you play over and over don’t get used to it you shouldn’t it’s sad—i bow in recognition and after the long journey from border to border wanting only piece after piece of these walls around me to start breaking what does not getting used to it do for mecopyright credit ahmad almallah border wisdom from border wisdom copyright © by ahmad almallah reprinted by permission of ahmad almallah | 87 |
hen the clouds rolled in young is the night that is to say a cellophane softness ensued which blew across the sky like wisps of straw their firearms—a job well done young is the night and when the circus tent begins to blaze beneath the eyes speak no more of the delicate acrobat young is the night that is to say the blind snails sniffing in pairs went off to fields in search of worthless graves forgotten in the bones of forgetting that is to say wasn’t it only the pride of the night that mattered to the charcoal silences to the forests traveled the spurs of thorns that is to say that douse against the tree the roads monotony young is the night stuff chimneys of ships with roads hands over hands open flames braid the universe of eyes young is the night hammered with firebrands words cloud the face in ash once the somersault sun ceases to know itself dragged kicking and screaming short horses you’ve become roads and so along whole horizons armed with new zoologies tender waters are reborn in spasms of stone thoughts the circus winnowing the grimaces of memorycopyright credit tristan tzara walking horizon from noontimes won copyright © by tristan tzara heather green reprinted by permission of heather greensource noontimes won octopus books | 88 |
hing worth noting except an andromeda with quadrangular shoots— the boots of the people wet inside they must swim to church thru the floods or be taxed—the blossoms from the bosoms of the leaves fogthick morning— i see only where i now walk i carry my clarity with me hear where her snowgrave is the you ah you of mourning dovescopyright credit lorine niedecker “linnaeus in lapland” from collected works edited by jenny penberthy copyright © regents of the university of california published by university of california presssource collected works university of california press | 89 |
above the fresh ruffles of the surf bright striped urchins flay each other with sand they have contrived a conquest for shell shucks and their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed gaily digging and scattering and in answer to their treble interjections the sun beats lightning on the waves the waves fold thunder on the sand and could they hear me i would tell them o brilliant kids frisk with your dog fondle your shells and sticks bleached by time and the elements but there is a line you must not cross nor ever trust beyond it spry cordage of your bodies to caresses too lichenfaithful from too wide a breast the bottom of the sea is cruel ii —and yet this great wink of eternity of rimless floods unfettered leewardings samite sheeted and processioned where her undinal vast belly moonward bends laughing the wrapt inflections of our love take this sea whose diapason knells on scrolls of silver snowy sentences the sceptred terror of whose sessions rends as her demeanors motion well or ill all but the pieties of lovers’ hands and onward as bells off san salvador salute the crocus lustres of the stars in these poinsettia meadows of her tides— adagios of islands o my prodigal complete the dark confessions her veins spell mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours and hasten while her penniless rich palms pass superscription of bent foam and wave— hasten while they are true—sleep death desire close round one instant in one floating flower bind us in time o seasons clear and awe o minstrel galleons of carib fire bequeath us to no earthly shore until is answered in the vortex of our grave the seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise iii infinite consanguinity it bears— this tendered theme of you that light retrieves from sea plains where the sky resigns a breast that every wave enthrones while ribboned water lanes i wind are laved and scattered with no stroke wide from your side whereto this hour the sea lifts also reliquary hands and so admitted through black swollen gates that must arrest all distance otherwise— past whirling pillars and lithe pediments light wrestling there incessantly with light star kissing star through wave on wave unto your body rocking and where death if shed presumes no carnage but this single change— upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn the silken skilled transmemberment of song permit me voyage love into your hands iv whose counted smile of hours and days suppose i know as spectrum of the sea and pledge vastly now parting gulf on gulf of wings whose circles bridge i know from palms to the severe chilled albatross’s white immutability no stream of greater love advancing now than singing this mortality alone through clay aflow immortally to you all fragrance irrefragably and claim madly meeting logically in this hour and region that is ours to wreathe again portending eyes and lips and making told the chancel port and portion of our june— shall they not stem and close in our own steps bright staves of flowers and quills today as i must first be lost in fatal tides to tell in signature of the incarnate word the harbor shoulders to resign in mingling mutual blood transpiring as foreknown and widening noon within your breast for gathering all bright insinuations that my years have caught for islands where must lead inviolably blue latitudes and levels of your eyes— in this expectant still exclaim receive the secret oar and petals of all love v meticulous past midnight in clear rime infrangible and lonely smooth as though cast together in one merciless white blade— the bay estuaries fleck the hard sky limits —as if too brittle or too clear to touch the cables of our sleep so swiftly filed already hang shred ends from remembered stars one frozen trackless smile what words can strangle this deaf moonlight for we are overtaken now no cry no sword can fasten or deflect this tidal wedge slow tyranny of moonlight moonlight loved and changed “there’s nothing like this in the world” you say knowing i cannot touch your hand and look too into that godless cleft of sky where nothing turns but dead sands flashing “—and never to quite understand” no in all the argosy of your bright hair i dreamed nothing so flagless as this piracy but now draw in your head alone and too tall here your eyes already in the slant of drifting foam your breath sealed by the ghosts i do not know draw in your head and sleep the long way home vi where icy and bright dungeons lift of swimmers their lost morning eyes and ocean rivers churning shift green borders under stranger skies steadily as a shell secretes its beating leagues of monotone or as many waters trough the sun’s red kelson past the cape’s wet stone o rivers mingling toward the sky and harbor of the phoenix’ breast— my eyes pressed black against the prow —thy derelict and blinded guest waiting afire what name unspoke i cannot claim let thy waves rear more savage than the death of kings some splintered garland for the seer beyond siroccos harvesting the solstice thunders crept away like a cliff swinging or a sail flung into april’s inmost day— creation’s blithe and petalled word to the lounged goddess when she rose conceding dialogue with eyes that smile unsearchable repose— still fervid covenant belle isle —unfolded floating dais before which rainbows twine continual hair— belle isle white echo of the oar the imaged word it is that holds hushed willows anchored in its glow it is the unbetrayable reply whose accent no farewell can knowcopyright credit hart crane voyages i ii iii iv v vi from white buildings poems united states boni liveright public domainsource white buildings poems boni liveright | 90 |
ft him anhaga are gebideð metudes miltse þeah þe he modcearig geond lagulade longe sceolde hreran mid hondum hrimcealde sæ wadan wræclastas wyrd bið ful aręd swa cwæð eardstapa earfeþa gemyndig wraþra wælsleahta winemæga hryre “oft ic sceolde ana uhtna gehwylce mine ceare cwiþan nis nu cwicra nan þe ic him modsefan minne durre sweotule asecgan ic to soþe wat þæt biþ in eorle indryhten þeaw þæt he his ferðlocan fæste binde healde his hordcofan hycge swa he wille ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman forðon domgeorne dreorigne oft in hyra breostcofan bindað fæste swa ic modsefan minne sceolde oft earmcearig eðle bidæled freomægum feor feterum sælan siþþan geara iu goldwine minne hrusan heolstre biwrah ond ic hean þonan wod wintercearig ofer waþema gebind sohte sele dreorig sinces bryttan hwær ic feor oþþe neah findan meahte þone þe in meoduhealle min mine wisse oþþe mec freondleasne frefran wolde weman mid wynnum wat se þe cunnað hu sliþen bið sorg to geferan þam þe him lyt hafað leofra geholena warað hine wræclast nales wunden gold ferðloca freorig nalæs foldan blæd gemon he selesecgas ond sincþege hu hine on geoguðe his goldwine wenede to wiste wyn eal gedreas forþon wat se þe sceal his winedryhtnes leofes larcwidum longe forþolian ðonne sorg ond slæp somod ætgædre earmne anhogan oft gebindað þinceð him on mode þæt he his mondryhten clyppe ond cysse ond on cneo lecge honda ond heafod swa he hwilum ær in geardagum giefstolas breac ðonne onwæcneð eft wineleas guma gesihð him biforan fealwe wegas baþian brimfuglas brædan feþra hreosan hrim ond snaw hagle gemenged þonne beoð þy hefigran heortan benne sare æfter swæsne sorg bið geniwad þonne maga gemynd mod geondhweorfeð greteð gliwstafum georne geondsceawað secga geseldan swimmað eft on weg fleotendra ferð no þær fela bringeð cuðra cwidegiedda cearo bið geniwad þam þe sendan sceal swiþe geneahhe ofer waþema gebind werigne sefan forþon ic geþencan ne mæg geond þas woruld for hwan modsefa min ne gesweorce þonne ic eorla lif eal geondþence hu hi færlice flet ofgeafon modge maguþegnas swa þes middangeard ealra dogra gehwam dreoseð ond fealleþ forþon ne mæg weorþan wis wer ær he age wintra dæl in woruldrice wita sceal geþyldig ne sceal no to hatheort ne to hrædwyrde ne to wac wiga ne to wanhydig ne to forht ne to fægen ne to feohgifre ne næfre gielpes to georn ær he geare cunne beorn sceal gebidan þonne he beot spriceð oþþæt collenferð cunne gearwe hwider hreþra gehygd hweorfan wille ongietan sceal gleaw hæle hu gæstlic bið þonne ealre þisse worulde wela weste stondeð swa nu missenlice geond þisne middangeard winde biwaune weallas stondaþ hrime bihrorene hryðge þa ederas woriað þa winsalo waldend licgað dreame bidrorene duguþ eal gecrong wlonc bi wealle sume wig fornom ferede in forðwege sumne fugel oþbær ofer heanne holm sumne se hara wulf deaðe gedælde sumne dreorighleor in eorðscræfe eorl gehydde yþde swa þisne eardgeard ælda scyppend oþþæt burgwara breahtma lease eald enta geweorc idlu stodon se þonne þisne wealsteal wise geþohte ond þis deorce lif deope geondþenceð frod in ferðe feor oft gemon wælsleahta worn ond þas word acwið “hwær cwom mearg hwær cwom mago hwær cwom maþþumgyfa hwær cwom symbla gesetu hwær sindon seledreamas eala beorht bune eala byrnwiga eala þeodnes þrym hu seo þrag gewat genap under nihthelm swa heo no wære stondeð nu on laste leofre duguþe weal wundrum heah wyrmlicum fah eorlas fornoman asca þryþe wæpen wælgifru wyrd seo mære ond þas stanhleoþu stormas cnyssað hrið hreosende hrusan bindeð wintres woma þonne won cymeð nipeð nihtscua norþan onsendeð hreo hæglfare hæleþum on andan eall is earfoðlic eorþan rice onwendeð wyrda gesceaft weoruld under heofonum her bið feoh læne her bið freond læne her bið mon læne her bið mæg læne eal þis eorþan gesteal idel weorþeð” swa cwæð snottor on mode gesæt him sundor æt rune til biþ se þe his treowe gehealdeþ ne sceal næfre his torn to rycene beorn of his breostum acyþan nemþe he ær þa bote cunne eorl mid elne gefremman wel bið þam þe him are seceð frofre to fæder on heofonum þær us eal seo fæstnung stondeð notes original text dates c by an unknown author source language text is public domain copyright credit the wanderer” from the exeter book edited by george philip krapp and elliot van kirk dobbie new york columbia university press | 91 |
h i have slipped the surly bonds of earthand danced the skies on laughtersilvered wingssunward ive climbed and joined the tumbling mirthof sunsplit clouds—and done a hundred thingsyou have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swunghigh in the sunlit silence hovring thereive chased the shouting wind along and flungmy eager craft through footless halls of air up up the long delirious burning blueive topped the windswept heights with easy gracewhere never lark or even eagle flew—and while with silent lifting mind ive trodthe high untrespassed sanctity of spaceput out my hand and touched the face of god notes this poem is in the public domaincopyright credit magee john gillespie letter to parents september john magee papers library of congress washington dc manuscript in respectfully quoted a dictionary of quotations requested from the congressional research service ed suzy platt washington dc library of congress | 92 |
diagram of a diagram if properly decoded the first image which will appear is a circle or go backwards the last image a violin which it seems can be read by music and is only the length of a sheet of paper whatever a sheet of paper was in the year jimmy carter was elected — the longest piece of music included is called in english flowing streams played on the guqin it slurs like the human voice think scale and silence think vibrations and overtones think alone in a desert carrying a very old instrument swelling in the heat — image number taken from inside the exhibit foreground elephant bones large black rectangle symbolizing museum glass a thick frame perhaps bulletproof and pressurized and temperaturecontrolled to prevent further decay — number math number math with colors number a train with math — jimmy carter remix we billions we likely we rapidly hopeful messages construct survives any attempt profoundly live profoundly good will — pictured cotton picker grape picker supermarket recall touching all the fruit for ripeness recall colonial exploit strategic control whole lives spent plucking and spinning the juice always so sweet against your teeth — pictured the inside of a book on newton nothing about gravity nothing like the stillness of the middle of a book cracked open like a locket — playback images are made from signals to render an image scan all lines vertically and left to right milliseconds per line minutes per image — image number cell division magnified the lines clarifying separating their soft rounded shapes these are most likely human cells most likely benign — also in not pictured apple computers is incorporated discovery of legionnaires disease elvis presleys last concert star wars released in cinemas us park ranger roy sullivan struck by lightning for the seventh time snowfall in miami for the only time in recorded history— — sounds from earth wild dog tame dog — bluesgospel dark was the night cold was the ground a metaphor — greetings in languages take minutes and seconds the time it takes to go to the end of the driveway pick up the newspaper brush off leaves go back inside and shut the door the time it cakes to steep chamomile tea — picture number some kind of snow truck attempting to cross a deep ravine of course it is also cold in space and inside clouds and in the holds of airplanes and in the bottom of the ocean but there isnt any snow out there this mutable substance—its melts its landscape on the landscape — on the bottom a pulsar map and uranium that static like a tv no one ever unplugs like at airport security—the sound of the wand waved over your raised arms like a blessing recall also hiroshima really big static definitely do not look at that picture or picture it in the background with a small dog in the foreground or dont take a picture to begin with do not look back do not disseminate do not project into interstellar space — as one track volcano earthquake thunder as one track fire speech — of beethovens fifth only the first movement its opening a herald the knock of fate his three other movements are left out their systematic fragmenting of the heroic theme — the third to last picture a sunset with birds flying north or perhaps south over the water there is no register of season just the sun paused a split yolk on the horizon — as one track the first tools — as one track morse code between ships recall states of emergency recall the titanic onset of cold shock and cardiac arrest—ice again bad analogy try the bleating of sheep their dips and pauses the fuzz between radio stations lamps that clap on and off on and off — jimmy carter in sequence the united states of america our message — pictured the building that houses the united nations in daylight then darkness when the sun hits it is whole and smooth like a new book copyright credit katie willingham the golden record from unlikely designs copyright © by katie willingham reprinted by permission of the university of chicago presssource unlikely designs the university of chicago press | 93 |
order to assess the situation a good wall is necessary for strategic leaning and contemplative exhalations cast in smoke across the state highway the strip mall sits for sale its parking lot lamps empty umbrellas of spit and shine in this dead of the country night a passing trucker shifts gears to meet a hill and the outline of his hat rim its rope trim as he drives by is too much detail liable to make him less and so much more than just anonymous out of the distant turnpike din an exotic bird squawks as though being mercilessly mated or killed in the stand of skinny trees by the closed kum go but it could be a trap a maniac with a recorder a brigand baiting the curious neither twentyfourhour drivethru will serve pedestrians very few walls are no good for leaning oncopyright credit katie hartsock the let’s have a cigarette and assess the situation extended stay motel from bed of impatiens copyright © by katie hartsock reprinted by permission of able muse presssource bed of impatiens able muse press | 94 |
the dmz ravines north of the kaesong wastes edging south of the perfect ruler’s pink and prisoned paradise there is a climate paying no attention to us where cranes repopulate serpentine deltas another history than our own another spreadsheet than human another profit another prophecy chromosomal and intricate nowhere is abstract unless we are abstracted erasure held like a fierce lantern ruins in future tense this keyboard a particular blue light at the edge of shadows when orpheus lost in desolation and grief laments the double death of eurydice the bare land around him restores itself as forest one living unshielded tree at a time moves in closer to listen mouth open stained with tears there is nothing not alive to us even wasteland no place free of desiring just as i want you to read me and you only want to build a nest in leaves brainstem sanctuary –– here is a living angel –– cortex neocortex whose neurons bloom galaxies starmaps while you’re dreaming and dreaming an andromedasupernovaprefrontal incident eclipses your skybook’s immense shimmering invasion even if i forget radiation remembers –– our isotopes won’t desert us no harddrive can hold this storm nor the stillness after emptiness in earth takes the shape of their two bodies memory heals by forgetting overwrites us then memory remembers again –– a physical thing like a knot what leaks is body where train tracks converge the infinite our eyes can’t bear to see the visible let alone the invisible yet there is nothing that does not see us just as the world appears to quiet down a tanker in the northern seas spills its cargo in violet glacial ice her body arcs like a dolphin rosecolored haunches curl and open dripping stars milk firmament the hairs on your arm the raw blind mouth you tongue try to open the gate without its consonants conscience requires all the phonemes it can gather sounds in another’s voiceprint or chromatophoric gesture flaking into awareness into the fiery immensity of listening a brain floats over debris like a surveillance satellite unmanned missile unexploded ordinance now a bird calls into places we cannot endure to touch or enter everyday whited out the news goes unconscious and even though our minds cannot bear it some part of us sees what is unseen while in air crowded with the discourse of wifi the notyet extinguished cranes open their wings into an unowned world copyright credit meredith stricker the rewilding from rewild copyright © by meredith stricker reprinted by permission of tupelo presssource rewild tupelo press | 95 |
very morning opening the newspaper i am facedwith the thin line that divides disaster and deprivationfrom a world of luminous wealth tuesday january thfor instance bodies many of them children lie on the groundthey drowned in the canal trying to escape a weapons depot fireand explosion in lagos their heads are twisted in straw and dustnear the feet of onlookers whose cries we cannot hear and across two thinasbreath lines a cocktail shakerabout the same size as a body in the foregroundgleams quietly for in stenciled silverreflecting nothing in its lucent surface i have learned to compartmentalize to mentalizei can tell the silver shaker is beautiful in its way but to seeit glisten there separately something strange has to happen to my sight there are bodies on the ground there is a pristine cocktail shakerand two infinitely thin poignant lines the cocktail shakerlevitates to the foreground it is untouched by the chaos the lossthe weeping the wet bodies the smoldering munitionsheaven would restore our sight earthly paradisewould dissolve the lines heaven is not a gated community silver is coveredwith mud mud is covered with silver the woundedare cared for and made whole the dead are washedand mourned we would leave nothing outnot one atom of existence outcast this is no dream “parts of the canal were blanketed with hyacinthsa woman’s pink shoe a baby’s slipper and a bright orangeand red skirt floated among the plants” this is earth this is paradise—how one grain of paradiselooks on a day in january we are its eyescopyright credit meredith stricker the thin line from rewild copyright © by meredith stricker reprinted by permission of tupelo presssource rewild tupelo press | 96 |
his is how the story begins a touch a bump a hot mouthjostled skin in an elevator escalation tension even just the illusionof trespass it always seems the smallest contact triggers the firethe tip of a match struck along the lips of containment for a while my sister and i thought the world had no coloruntil the s convinced that old movies and photos were truerepresentations of history whole stories that color camebetween cartoons and civil rights and long before then the worldwas twotoned light and dark sometimes with flecks or aberrationsin the corners upon seeing pictures of our parents both blackandwhite and in color we asked what changed upon seeing picturesof greenwood both beautiful and burned i ask what storieshave i been taught to trust there are three parts to a ghost storythe specter—planes in the skydynamite dropped on a black crowda white mob a machine gun expellingbullets american flag high behind itfire and smoke in its wake a long marchpast husks of burnedout churcheseight days of interment of blacksby the thousands loops of litigationspraining the language of massacre intoriot insurance claims lost in the litterof legal destruction the apparition—a flat view of earthhas always made africa look littlesmaller than greenland a flat viewof earth is what schools only hadfor us to see ourselves a flat viewof us pinned back prosecution andpunishment for the mapmakerscartographing themselves outof the haunted history lyingflat beneath the earth the murmur—we know a lie when it unfurlsin our hands how consequences charirregularity into myth we know our hauntingsbecause a family keeps its ghosts close we knowpain we know plunder we know echoes this is how to listen to a ghost storyremember that there are no better angelsabove or beneath our skies above or beneathcharred churches and trees these angelstheir halos falling augustly deciduouslystories strapped to a branch lost against the forestheaven is a black place a smoky silhouettethe tintype tattles on heaven is full of anomalieshow do i explain my homesickness for thisi cant stop dreaming about flamesin my mouth in my palms and eyes at all timesi cant stop crying for tulsa and a hundred yearsspent dirtdeep and silent beneath our feet this is how to crossexamine a ghost rouse it with radarand listen to the echoes of old fire sometimes it takes a mouthto pronounce what the earth has been whispering for generationssometimes flecks in the corners of photos are morethan aberrations the black and white of it lying in plain sight this is how to give a ghost a home touch the dirtoutside your house and ask how different it might feelin greenwood ask if the sunken anomalies pushagainst the surface around town if those anomaliesstill burn down deep if the anomalies are still hotin their mouths their tongues boxes of unstruck matchesits the silence of fire that remains spectral substitutedfor memory—but no more little africa poundsheartfirst against the dirt and emerges tongue toothand throat in bonfire heritage unmortgageda ghostgirl beating back the map of her unmakingcopyright credit cameron barnett little africa on fire from murmur copyright © by cameron barnett reprinted by permission of autumn house presssource murmur autumn house press | 97 |
hese are your stones assembled in matchbox and tincollected from roadside culvert and viaductbattlefield threshing floor basilica abattoir—stones loosened by tanks in the streetsfrom a city whose earliest map was drawn in ink on linenschoolyard stones in the hand of a corpsepebble from baudelaires ouistone of the mind within uscarried from one silence to anotherstone of cromlech and cairn schist and shale hornblendeagate marble millstones ruins of choirs and shipyardschalk marl mudstone from temples and tombsstone from the silvery grass near the scaffoldstone from the tunnel lined with boneslava of a citys entombment stoneschipped from lighthouse cell wall scriptoriumpaving stones from the hands of those who rose against the armystones where the bells had fallen where the bridges were blownthose that had flown through windows weighted petitionsfeldspar rose quartz blue schist gneiss and chertfragments of an abbey at dusk sandstone toeof a buddha mortared at bamianstone from the hill of three crosses and a cryptfrom a chimney where storks cried like human childrenstones newly fallen from stars a stillness of stones a heartaltar and boundary stone marker and vessel first cast load and hailbridge stones and others to pave and shut up withstone apple stone basil beech berry stone brakeconcretion of the body as blind as cold as deafall earth a quarry all life a labor stonefaced stonedrunkwith hope that this assemblage of rubble taken together would becomea shrine or holy place an ossuary immovable and sacredlike the stone that marked the path of the sun as it entered the human dawncopyright credit carolyn forche the museum of stones from in the lateness of the world copyright © by carolyn forche reprinted by permission of penguin random house llcsource in the lateness of the world penguin random house llc | 99 |
vidence is sustenance is support is the law the ship is the captain is the crew perils is the trial is the rains is the seas is the currents jamaica is tobago is islands the case is murder kenyatta mesi nayo yooku ngena is justice africa is the ground is negroes evidence is sustenance is support is the law is the ship is the captain is the crew is perils is the trial is the rains is the seas is currents is jamaica is tobago is islands is the case is murder is justice is the ground is africa is negroes was oluyemi esugbayi adubifa ogunlesi akua copyright credit m nourbese philip zong from zong copyright © by m nourbese philip reprinted by permission of graywolf press wwwgraywolfpressorgsource zong graywolf press | 100 |
•ver•y ā verē n darkiss ¹blkmale chile foundateid in luv unlimitid fuck anthems ²jeesus fed ghettorious poet who blks on purpose ³sun god who looks like him mama daddy—not a monkey not a monkey not a monkey ⁴ebonic cullud dreamr wif cornbreadid vocal chords ⁵majestic rekkidlutionary who borrows dingaling on very special occasions such as birthdays tuesdays lonelinessis ⁶sweat shiny bloobrudda ⁷not a monkey not a monkey not a monkeycopyright credit avery r young avery from neckbone visual verses copyright © by triquarterly books northwestern university press published all rights reservedsource neckbone visual verses triquarterly books northwestern university press | 102 |
last i’m taking off this coat this black coat of a country that i swore for years was mine that i wore more out of habit than design born wearing it i believed i had no choice i’m taking off this veil this black veil of a faith that made me faithless to myself that tied my mouth gave my god a devil’s face and muffled my own voice i’m taking off these silks these lacy things that feed dictator dreams the mangalsutra and the rings rattling in a tin cup of needs that beggared me i’m taking off this skin and then the face the flesh the womb let’s see what i am in here when i squeeze past the easy cage of bone let’s see what i am out here making crafting plotting at my new geographycopyright credit imtiaz dharker honour killing from i speak for the devil copyright © by imtiaz dharker reprinted by permission of bloodaxe books ltdsource i speak for the devil | 103 |
even when we said we were alone there was noise on the radio there was noise in the car there was noise all over the internet there was noise in the atmosphere there was noise trapped in the system there was noise in the economy noise was the economy there was noise on the train there was noise on the road there was noise at the board meeting there was noise on the field there was noise on the kitchen counter noise in the cutlery drawer there was noise at the hospital where there was noise in the blood there was noise in the water supply there was noise in the ocean there was noise eating the ice caps the polar bears were drowning because of it washed up on the beaches then was a morbid offwhite noise there was noise in the street there was noise in the ozone a whole holes worth of noise just counting down the days there was noise in the photos of us because noise was on the lens there was noise on the brain scan there was noise during the exam where there was noise scratched into the desk there was noise in the texts there was noise in the census there was noise in the law there was noise on friday at the cinema there was noise at the seminar there was noise at the peace talks there was noise in the rent there was noise on the wellness podcast there was noise in the obituary there were little noise cookies remaining even after carefully choosing reject all there was noise in the inquest there was noise in the commission there was noise in the system you hear because noise was the system too noise was reform there was noise in the wounding there was noise in the wording of the apology the noisiness of which made entirely void the apology there was noise in the diversity statement there was noise in the group chat there was noise in the joke of it all there was noise in the delivery there was noise in the returns process in the practice in the prayer it was there in the room with us still even when we said we were alone even when we swore that we could not hear itcopyright credit victoria adukwei bulley noise from quiet copyright © by victoria adukwei bulley reprinted by permission of penguin random house llcsource quiet penguin random house llc | 106 |
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