by David Lehman
The strawberries are not yet fully ripe—it is the cusp of the season—yet the field has been picked over;
we have come too early and too late.
Lush, parsley-green, the plants spread their low stalks to flower like primitive daisies and I seek the telltale flash of red as I bend to part the dust-inoculated leaves, spooking the lazy honeybees, but mostly there is nothing, the berries are pale, fuzzed nubs. Of the rest what’s left are the morbidly pale, overripe, fly-ridden berries belted into purple froth and those just at the bursting brink of rot—in the morning, if you bring them home,
these will wear a blue-green fur, becoming themselves small farms,
enterprising propagators of mold.
But here’s one perfect, heart-shaped berry, and half a row later, three more, in the shadows, overlooked. Where has my family gone? Where is everybody? I find myself abandoned in the fields, illuminated by shafts of sunlight through lavender clouds, bodiless, unmoored and entirely happy.
—
White eggplant and yellow peppers—
colored lanterns of the Emperor!
Lobular, chalk-red, weevil-scarred tomatoes—
a dozen errant moons of Neptune!
Vidalia onions seized by their hair and lifted
To free a friendly giantess from the soil!
Snapdragons!
They carry the intonation of Paris
on a rainy day in May, granitic odor of pears,
consensus of slate and watered silk.
Elizabeth snips a dozen stems
with flower shears
scented by stalks of sage,
rosemary, flowering basil, mint.
—
From here the city is everything to the east, endlessly ramified tile-roofed subdivisions of houses and garden apartments, strip malls, highway interchanges, intransigent farmers holding their patchwork dirt together with melons and leaf lettuce—the very next field has been harrowed and scoured and posted for sale—already in our years here it has come this far, a tidal wave of human habitation, a monocultural bumper crop. And to the west is the Everglades, reduced and denuded but secure, for the historical moment, buggered and cosseted, left hand protecting what the right seeks to destroy. And where they meet: this fertile border zone, contested marginland inhabited by those seeking refuge from the law or the sprawl or the iron custody of the market, those who would cross over in search of freedom, or shelter, or belief, those who would buy into this world and those who would be rid of it alike in their admiration and hope for and distrust of what they see. And what they see is this: Krome Avenue. What they see is the Historical Moment caged in formidable automobiles gorging on fast food, definitive commodities of the previous century to be supplanted by what? The next Historical Moment, and the next, like a plague of locusts descending upon the fields, or the fields descended upon, or these fields, now, just as they are.
—
This may be the end of it, I suspect, the last year we make this effort. The kids are getting older and less pliable, the alligators in the irrigation canals pushed ever farther west, carrying into the heart of the sawgrass the reflection of a world grown monstrous and profound. If so, I will miss the scratched hands and the cucumber vines, ranks of hibiscus focusing their radar on the sun, the taste of stolen strawberries eaten in the rows, chalky and unwashed, no matter their senselessness here, in fields reclaimed from subtropical swamp, these last remaining acres empty or picked over or blossoming or yet to blossom, again fruit, again spoilage, again heavy pollen dust.
No, the Third World does not begin at Krome Avenue, because there is only
one world—.
It’s late. Cars are pulling out, mobile homes kicking up gravel, a ringing in my ears as of caravans crossing the Sahara resolves to Elizabeth calling on the cell phone—hey, where are you? I can see her by the farm stand, searching the plots and rows, not seeing me, still drifting, afloat, not yet ready to be summoned back. It’s time to go—where have you been?
Where have I been, can I say for certain?
Where have I been?
But I know where I am—I’m here, in the strawberry field.
Here.
I’m right here.
from PEN America
JESSE MILLNER
In Praise of Small Gods
I’m all for leaving this world,
entering that bright space
of becoming like dewdrops
on the morning buttercups
I planted last week before all the rain came.
Already they bloom yellow with
first light—6:30 a.m., that
magic time when the palms
and pines emerge from the darkness,
when light clings to the edges
of bougainvillea and philodendron,
when the marsh rabbit fights
with the hungry ravens for fallen
seeds from the bird feeder.
I remember the colors
of last night’s river,
the minor Mississippi
that flowed through my dreams,
how I bent down toward the current,
pulled tiny, glimmering fish
from the branch shadows.
And this morning I awoke at dawn
and knew the time by the texture
of that early light—still, gray,
but gathering meaning.
And then, a cup of coffee
on the back porch, stars still
spinning in the heavens, moisture
gleaming across the yard
like a fallen constellation.
I breathe in
these small gods, these
scents and ghosts and shadows
that rise in early morning,
and I swear I see Eden
burning just behind
the wall of palm
that shields us from the drainage
ditch, where a million mosquitoes
buzz like tiny angels.
I praise this morning.
I praise drainage ditch and mosquitoes,
I praise the tiny insect stings,
which argue for my own life,
yes, with each bite
my flesh tingles with meaning,
and with each brightening
moment, the world around me
comes into greater focus,
until it is finally Florida, a feast
of flowers and bugs and light,
and I feel as if
I will linger forever in the bright
fields of this moment, that the dog’s
soft fur against my foot
argues for life
more than any priest,
more than any religion,
more than any supernatural
explaining of this sputtering, beautiful world
fired with the tangible meaning of root, stem, petal,
bone, feather, beak.
from Gulfshore Life
D. NURKSE
Psalm to Be Read with Closed Eyes
Ignorance will carry me through the last days,
the blistering cities, over briny rivers
swarming with jellyfish, as once my father
carried me from the car up the tacked carpet
to the white bed, and if I woke, I never knew it.
from Poetry
ED OCHESTER
New Year
after calling our son & daughter
to wish them happy & good luck
we get to bed early but get
a phone call from my mother
who died in April she doesn’t
say where she’s calling from though
I can hear laughter in the background
and she says Uncle Frank is making
his famous Manhattans which are
she adds gratuitously as always
a lot better than I was ever able to make—
“one of his really puts you to
sleep”—
and I have to reply “Mom do you know
that you never once so far as I can
remember have told me ‘I love you’ ”
and she says rather sadly
“You’ve always been somewhat of
a fool; don’t you remember how,
that time you passed out at my birthday party
one of your cousins told you later
I cried out ‘My son, my only son!’?”
from The American Poetry Review
PAISLEY REKDAL
Birthday Poem
It is important to remember that you will die,
lifting the fork with the sheep’s brain
lovingly speared on it to the mouth, the little
piece smooth on the one side as a baby
mouse pickled in wine; on the other, blood-
plush and intestinal atop
its bed of lentils. The lentils
were once picked over for stones
in the fields of India perhaps, the sun
shining into tractor blades slow-moving
as the swimmer’s arms that now pierce,
then rise, then pierce again the cold
water of the river outside your window called
The Heart or The Breast, even, but meaning
something more than this, beyond
the crudeness of flesh; though what
is crude about flesh anyway,
watching yourself every day lose
another bit of luster?
It is wrong to say one kind of beauty
replaces another. Isn’t it your heart
along with its breast muscles that
has started to weaken; solace
isn’t possible for every loss, or why else
should we clutch, stroke, gasp, love
the little powers we once
were born with? Perhaps the worst thing
in the world would be to live forever.
Otherwise what would be the point
of memory, without which
we would have nothing to hurt
or placate ourselves with later?
Look. It is only getting worse
from here on out. Thank God. Otherwise
the sun on this filthy river
could never be as boring or as poignant,
the sheep’s brain trembling on the fork
wouldn’t seem once stung
by the tang of grass, by the call
of some body distant and beloved to it
singing through the milk. The fork
would be only a fork, and not the cool
heft of it between your fingers, the scratch
of lemon in the lentils, onion, parsley
slick with blood; food that,
even as you lift it to your mouth,
you’d never thought you’d eat, and do.
from New England Review
ADRIENNE RICH
Endpapers
I
If the road’s a frayed ribbon strung through dunes
continually drifting over
if the night grew green as sun and moon
changed faces and the sea became
its own unlit unlikely sound
consider yourself lucky to have come
this far Consider yourself
a trombone blowing unheard
tones a bass string plucked or locked
down by a hand its face articulated
in shadow, pressed against
a chain-link fence Consider yourself
inside or outside, where-
ever you were when knotted steel
stopped you short You can’t flow through
as music or
as air
II
What holds what binds is breath is
primal vision in a cloud’s eye
is gauze around a wounded head
is bearing a downed comrade out beyond
the numerology of vital signs
into predictless space
III
The signature to a life requires
the search for a method
rejection of posturing
trust in the witnesses
a vial of invisible ink
a sheet of paper held steady
after the end-stroke
above a deciphering flame
from Granta
ANNE MARIE ROONEY
Lake Sonnet
It was July. It was my birthday. I
was still drinking then. I went with the men
to a lake with no clothing on. The men
who for a year I’d loved hardly and I
walked to the water. All that love hurt my I-
can’t-say-what. My hands knew nothing but men
that year. In snow I stand out. Every man
I’ve ever seen has seen me back. My eyes
sweat from it. Though from there the summer breaks
off, it felt sharp and bright through that last hour,
like glass fired to gold before it breaks
against its own heat. It’s soft and then it breaks,
and, seeing itself, shifts light. For our
trouble, we were cold and wet for an hour.
from Subtropics
J. ALLYN ROSSER
Intro to Happiness
They were dressed in distressed denim,
legs crossed and notebooks open.
I wished I didn’t have to explain
how difficult the course would be,
but I soldiered through the syllabus
assigning seventy chapters on sighing,
thirty-three articles concerning slings,
forty-nine on arrows,
countless miserable passages
they would be obliged to internalize
to get to, and appreciate, the happy ones.
To a hand raised in the back
I explained why joy—post-pubescent joy—
was reserved for more advanced classes.
To avoid any further confusion
I laid out the irrelevance of carnal thrills
and blisses originating in ignorance—
acknowledging the latter represents
the layperson’s misconstruction of happiness.
Next I dwelt conscientiously on how
familiar the lectures would begin to sound,
on the study groups that would dissolve
in tears, lamentation, or dispirited gazing at walls.
I was just getting down to the nuts
and bolts of quizzes on terms
they’d be using the rest of their lives,
plus oral presentations on the three Ds
(depression, despair, and ’ddiction)
that would prepare them for therapy,
when it became necessary for me to pretend
I didn’t notice as one by one they slunk
with downcast eyes out the double doors.
I tried not to show how relieved . . .
in truth the word is tickled . . .
no, how absolutely giddy I felt
to be facing only three scattered rows,
then one, then just a few knee-jiggling
pen-tappers, then finally the one student
who probably hadn’t heard a word
the whole time, dreaming out the window
or picking at the fabric on her knee,
when at last she glanced up, looked
around, and gathered her things.
“Be seeing you,” I said, perhaps too cheerily
since it only hastened her departure;
but I felt so lighthearted
I could scarcely keep my feet on the floor.
I wanted to strip down and dance
around that immovable podium
so dark and so heavy, piled high
with what I could never pass on
without bearing it again, all of it
al
l over again, myself.
from The Georgia Review
MARY RUEFLE
Little Golf Pencil
At headquarters they asked me for something dry and understated. Mary, they said, it’s called a statement. They took me out back to a courtyard where they always ate lunch and showed me a little tree that was, sadly, dying. Something with four legs had eaten it rather badly. Don’t overemote, they said. I promised I wouldn’t, but I was thinking to myself that the something-with-four-legs had certainly overemoted and that the tree, in response, was overemoting now, being in the strange little position of dying. All the cops were sitting around eating sandwich halves, and they offered me one. This one’s delicious, said a lieutenant, my wife made it. Seeing as it was peanut butter and jelly I thought he was overemoting, but I didn’t say anything. I just sat looking at the tree and eating my sandwich half. When I was ready I asked for a pencil and they gave me one of those little golf pencils. I didn’t say anything about that either. I just wrote my statement and handed it over—it was a description of the tree, which they intended to give to their captain as a Christmas present—I mean my description—because the captain, well, he loved that tree and he loved my writing and every one of the cops hoped to be promoted in the captain’s heart and, who knows, maybe get a raise. Still, after all that sitting around in the courtyard eating sandwich halves, I had a nice feeling of sharing, so when they asked me if I had anything else to say I told them that in the beginning you understand the world but not yourself, and when you finally understand yourself you no longer understand the world. They seemed satisfied with that. Cops, they’re all so young.
from Ecotone and Harper’s
MAUREEN SEATON
Chelsea/Suicide
for Joe
In every myth there’s a secret. Like the time I was looking for my childhood around the next bend after Newark and missed it, or the time teeth were discovered in my favorite uncle’s yard and he disclaimed ownership and sang falsettos.
I went to a meeting on 28th Street. The guy next to me had eyes exactly like yours, corpuscles hardening inside blue irises. He stood too close when he told me I would die if I didn’t ease up on myself. I thought he was right but I wanted him to step back so I didn’t have to see inside his liver, which was sodden, like mine, and dark with tinges of red, white, and rosé.
