by David Lehman
* * *
Here I Am
for José “JoeGo” Gouveia (1964–2014)
He swaggered into the room, a poet at a gathering of poets,
and the drinkers stopped crowding the cash bar, the talkers stopped
their tongues, the music stopped hammering the walls, the way
a saloon falls silent when a gunslinger knocks open the swinging doors:
JoeGo grinning in gray stubble and wraparound shades, leather Harley
vest, shirt yellow as a prospector’s hallucination, sleeve buttoned
to hide the bandage on his arm where the IV pumped chemo through
his body a few hours ago. The nurse swabbed the puncture and told him
he could go, and JoeGo would go, gunning his red van from the Cape
to Boston, striding past the cops who guarded the hallways of the grand
convention center, as if to say Here I am: the butcher’s son, the Portagee,
the roofer, the carpenter, the cab driver, the biker-poet. This was JoeGo,
who would shout his ode to Evel Knievel in biker bars till the brawlers
rolled in beer and broken glass, who married Josy from Brazil
on the beach after the oncologist told him he had two months to live
two years ago. That’s not enough for me, he said, and will say again
when the cancer comes back to coil around his belly and squeeze hard
like a python set free and starving in the swamp. He calls me on his cell
from the hospital, and I can hear him scream when they press the cold
X-ray plates to his belly, but he will not drop the phone. He wants
the surgery today, right now, surrounded by doctors with hands
blood-speckled like the hands of his father the butcher, sawing
through the meat for the family feast. The patient’s chart should read:
This is JoeGo: after every crucifixion, he snaps the cross across his back
for firewood. He will roll the stone from the mouth of his tomb and bowl
a strike. On the night he silenced the drinkers chewing ice in my ear,
a voice in my ear said: What the hell is that man doing here?
And I said: That man there? That man will live forever.
from The American Poetry Review
PETER EVERWINE
* * *
The Kiskiminetas River
It begins in the seepage of salt wells,
as if waking from a dream of the sea
before it gathers itself and runs
for twenty-seven restless, hardworking
miles, only to lose itself, swept inland
toward Pittsburgh and the vast Ohio Valley.
Kiskiminetas: the Lenape name means
clear stream of many bends or break camp,
the etymology unclear but apt:
whenever the Lenape tried to settle,
someone came along and moved them
to a place no one wanted.
My grandfather, in Italy a farmer, dug coal
not far from where it empties into the Allegheny.
His sons would inherit and divide his labor:
coal mines, steel mills, foundries.
The river turned sulfur-orange and stank
from all the mines draining into it—
nothing could live in its waters.
Even the stones of the riverbed took on
the petrified figures of the lost:
Shy Charlie, who took a header off the bridge;
Bobby, who slipped into the current
like raw sewage; my father, who flew
his car over its cindered embankment
in the hard winter of my birth.
Nothing is held in place by a name;
the river changes and is ever changeless.
Today, the mines are closed; the small towns
seem emptier and forlorn at night;
the river runs clear, its surface
shifting in the slant of morning light
or the passing shadows of its seasons.
On the bluffs, overlooking the valley,
my grandfather and his sons have come to rest
among the now, or soon to be, forgotten.
from The Southern Review
ALEXIS RHONE FANCHER
* * *
When I turned fourteen, my mother’s sister took me to lunch and said:
soon you’ll have breasts. They’ll mushroom on your
smooth chest like land mines.
A boy will show up, a schoolmate, or the gardener’s son.
Pole-cat around you. All brown-eyed persistence.
He’ll be everything your parents hate, a smart aleck,
a dropout, a street racer on the midnight prowl.
Even your best friend will call him a loser.
But this boy will steal your reason, have you
writing his name inside a scarlet heart, entwined
with misplaced passion and a bungled first kiss.
He’ll bivouac beneath your window, sweet-talk you
until you sneak out into his waiting complications.
Go ahead, tempt him with your new-found glamour.
Tumble into the backseat of his Ford at the top of Mulholland,
flushed with stardust, his mouth in a death-clamp on your nipple,
his worshipful fingers scatting sacraments on your clit.
Soon he will deceive you with your younger sister,
the girl who once loved you most in the world.
from Ragazine
CHARLES FORT
* * *
One Had Lived in a Room and Loved Nothing
One had lived in a room and loved nothing.
Full of spiders and what memory remained,
one had loved and she had forgotten things.
Clock stopped and aeroplane lost in the dark,
and who was that voice on the telephone?
One had lived in a room and loved nothing.
It was a rare sleep in helter-skelter;
one awakened a half-blessed and charmed fool.
One had loved and she had forgotten things.
One had lived in a room and loved nothing
left alone in her wedding gown and throne.
Who gave her a mantis kiss as jazz played?
The faceless lover and last known address,
a writing pad and table overturned,
one had loved and she had forgotten things.
What was day or night with no hours left
and who were the two in the photograph?
One had loved and she had forgotten things.
One had lived in a room and loved nothing.
from Green Mountains Review
EMILY FRAGOS
* * *
The Sadness of Clothes
When someone dies, the clothes are so sad. They have outlived
their usefulness and cannot get warm and full.
You talk to the clothes and explain that he is not coming back
as when he showed up immaculately dressed in slacks and plaid jacket
and had that beautiful smile on and you’d talk.
You’d go to get something and come back and he’d be gone.
You explain death to the clothes like that dream.
You tell them how much you miss the spouse
and how much you miss the pet with its little winter sweater.
You tell the worn raincoat that if you talk about it,
you will finally let grief out. The ancients etched the words
for battle and victory onto their shields and then they went out
and fought to the last breath. Words have that kind of power
you remind the clothes that remain in the drawer, arms stubbornly
folded across the chest, or slung across the backs of chairs,
or hanging inside the dark closet. Do with us what you will,
they fain
tly sigh, as you close the door on them.
He is gone and no one can tell us where.
from Poem-a-Day
AMY GERSTLER
* * *
A Drop of Seawater Under the Microscope
Who knew this little bit of spillage
contained multitudes of what we all
boil down to? Microorganisms
swim a surface the wet silver
of Poseidon’s eyes. Spiralized lines,
pulsing globules, tiny sacs filled with aspic.
Obscenely, you can see right through
them, sometimes down to their nuclei.
They come in lovely colors.
Is this natural or has the scientist
who slid their slide under the microscope
stained them orange, ochre and blue
for better viewing? Their outlines
waver like hand-drawn cartoons.
They resemble party favors,
tiny offspring of a bubble cluster
and the plankton alphabet.
Why, then, have I been so afraid
of what I am made of breaking down
into constituent parts, of one day
rejoining this infinitesimal assembly,
of becoming an orgy of particles
too (beautiful and) numerous to count?
from Valley Voices
DANA GIOIA
* * *
Meet Me at the Lighthouse
Meet me at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach,
That shabby nightclub on its foggy pier.
Let’s aim for the summer of ’71,
When all of our friends were young and immortal.
I’ll pick up the cover charge, find us a table,
And order a round of their watery drinks.
Let’s savor the smoke of that sinister century,
Perfume of tobacco in the tangy salt air.
The crowd will be quiet—only ghosts at the bar—
So you, old friend, won’t feel out of place.
You need a night out from that dim subdivision.
Tell Mr. Bones you’ll be back before dawn.
The club has booked the best talent in Tartarus.
Gerry, Cannonball, Hampton, and Stan,
With Chet and Art, those gorgeous greenhorns—
The swinging-masters of our West Coast soul.
Let the All-Stars shine from that jerry-built stage.
Let their high notes shimmer above the cold waves.
Time and the tide are counting the beats.
Death the collector is keeping the tab.
from Virginia Quarterly Review
JORIE GRAHAM
* * *
Reading to My Father
I come back indoors at dusk-end. I come back into the room with
your now finished no-longer-aching no-longer-being
body in it, the candle beside you still lit—no other
light for now. I sit by it and look at it. Another in
from the one I was just peering-out towards now, over
rooftops, over the woods, first stars.
The candle burns. It is so quiet you can hear it burn.
Only I breathe. I hear that too.
Listen I say to you, forgetting. Do you hear it Dad. Listen.
What is increase. The cease of increase.
The cease of progress. What is progress.
What is going. The cease of going.
What is knowing. What is fruition.
The cease of. Cease of.
What is bloodflow. The cease of bloodflow
of increase of progress the best is over, is over-
thrown, no, the worst is yet to come, no, it is
7:58 pm, it is late spring, it is capital’s apogee, the
flow’s, fruition’s, going’s, increase’s, in creases of
matter, brainfold, cellflow, knowing’s
pastime, it misfired, lifetime’s only airtime—candle says
you shall out yourself, out-
perform yourself, grow multiform—you shall self-identify as
still
mortal—here in this timestorm—this end-of-time
storm—the night comes on.
Last night came on with you still here.
Now I wait here. Feel I can think. Feel there are no minutes in you—
Put my minutes there, on you, as hands—touch, press,
feel the flying-away, the leaving-sticks-behind under the skin, then even the skin
abandoned now, no otherwise now, even the otherwise gone.
I lay our open book on you, where we left off. I read. I read aloud—
grove, forest, jungle, dog—the words don’t grip-up into sentences for me,
it is in pieces,
I start again into the space above you—grandeur wisdom village,
tongue, street, wind—hornet—feeler runner rust red more—oh
more—I hear my voice—it is so raised—on you—are you—refinery portal
land scald difference—here comes my you, rising in me, my feel-
ing your it, my me, in-
creasing, elaborating, flowing, not yet released from form, not yet,
still will-formed, swarming, mis-
informed—bridegroom of spume and vroom.
I touch your pillowcase. I read this out to you as, in extremis, we await
those who will come to fix you—make you permanent. No more vein-hiss. A
masterpiece. My phantom
father-body—so gone—how gone. I sit. Your suit laid out. Your silver tie. Your
shirt. I don’t know
what is
needed now. It’s day. Read now, you’d say. Here it is then, one last time, the
news. I
read. There is no
precedent for, far exceeds the ability of, will not
adapt to, cannot
adapt to,
but not for a while yet, not yet, but not for much longer, no, much
sooner than predicted, yes, ten times, a hundred times, all evidence
points towards.
What do I tell my child.
Day has arrived and crosses out the candle-light. Here it is now the
silent summer—extinction—migration—the blue-jewel-
butterfly you loved, goodbye, the red kite, the dunnock, the crested tit, the cross-
billed spotless starling (near the top of the list) smokey gopher—spud-
wasp—the named storms, extinct fonts, ingots, blindmole-made-
tunnels—oh your century, there in you, how it goes out—
how lonely are we aiming for—are we there
yet—the orange-bellied and golden-shouldered parrots—
I read them out into our room, I feel my fingers grip this
page, where are the men who are supposed to come for you,
most of the ecosystem’s services, it says,
will easily become replaced—the soil, the roots, the webs—the organizations
of—the 3D grasses, minnows, mudflats—the virtual carapace—the simulated action of
forest, wetland, of all the living noise that keeps us
company. Company. I look at you.
Must I be this machine I am
become. This brain programming
blood function, flowing beating releasing channeling.
This one where I hold my head in my hands
and the chip
slips in and click I go to find my in-
formation. The two-headed eagle, the
beaked snake, the feathered men walking sideways while looking
ahead, on stone, on wall, on pyramid, in
sacrifice—must I have already become when it is all still
happening. Behind you thin machines that ticked and hummed until just now
are off for good. What I wouldn’t give, you had said last night, for five more
minutes here. You can’t imagine it. Minutes ago.
Ago. It hums. It checks us now, monitoring
this minute fraction of—the MRI, the access-zone, the
aura, slot, logo, confession-
al—I feel the hissing multiplying
satellites out there I took for stars, the bedspread’s weave, your being tucked-in—
goodnight, goodnight—Once upon a time I say into my air,
and I caress you now with the same touch
as I caress these keys.
from Boston Review
JULIANA GRAY
* * *
The Lady Responds
after Sir Thomas Wyatt
Whoso list to hunt will need a hound,
a dog to lead the horses, chase the hare
and hind, dig the foxes from their lair.
How pretty their paws, tearing up the ground,
their white and crimson jaws when the prize is found!
But a mistress of hounds must take special care
not to treat one as a pet, to share
a morsel from her plate or let one bound
onto her bed. A dog must know its place,
at the mistress’s feet rather than her lap.
A beast who misbehaves deserves a rap
across his nose, a kick till he’s abased.
A cur that won’t be muzzled or made to sit
must bait the unchained bears in the fighting pit.
