35
lamb
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
god forgets. he leaves the iron on and your beautiful city burns to the ground. god touches you and you are it.
alone in a desert of ash is a difficult game to win. home base is flame and smoke. once god said hunger. once he said fuck, and how could we tell him we’d figured it out on our own.
i’m waiting, god, for a watermelon. say pomegranate.
say city, say rib. an armadillo to sniff at my feet. it’s armor and nothing else. let’s lift it like a mirror.
put it to my ear like a shell. god puts the ocean in an armadillo shell. it rattles of whalebones. i remember water, but all the cacti are black. all the sand is glass beneath the ash, a calm buried sea.
god descends the sky like a spider. i can feel it.
he is everywhere, twiddling his thumbs.
i think he’s waiting for me.
36
the story of my beard
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
in my beard, a trailer park,
a cyclone fence, a forest.
dumpsters the skinny trash bears sneak out to root through at night.
their claws cast sparks. lightbulbs, porkbones. aerosol cans they eat and explode. in my beard, army tanks.
the thunder of anti-aircraft artillery.
everything’s blue from the trailers’
tvs. blue soldiers, blue birds building nests in the still-tepid barrels.
in my beard, the children are nothing.
they leave their bikes piled up
on the street. they run to the woods to play war within war. blue bullets rip through the chokecherry leaves.
home base is an exploded bear
to be beaten with sticks.
home is a foxhole you dug through the roots.
blue mound of dirt piled up at its lip.
in my beard, from above, a forest of dark foxholes. inside each
like a seed, a sleeping child waiting to be kissed and tucked in.
37
other people’s machines
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
the mustachioed one’s
childless
and hard
on the buses.
when he
brakes
they
scream.
38
winter museum
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
on one wall,
a window.
nothing out there
but a light snow
collecting in the shapes
of our names.
39
what we know
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
weren’t we superheroes, love-
smug, white-caped in wet snow,
braving the blizzard arm
in arm, invincible—
until the geese, half-buried,
half-asleep in paired mounds
honked softly hill to hill
as if answering
from the warm perfect faith
of their being.
40
the moments before the crash landing are clearest
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
i woke without you and the igloo seeming colder. i could peek
out the crawl-hole but if the entire spinning earth’s imaginary i don’t want to know.
i have my pelts and visions
of you asleep in your summer skin loving the deep heart of a tall grass prairie.
i have polar bears and snow
blindness. you have sunsets
striking the silent crows iridescent.
when they swoon to their own new beauty and the chorus frogs kick in, do you think of me thinking of you thinking of me?
i tell you what. if i had an albatross i’d let it lift me like a message to the jet stream just as the toothy flows ingest our empty love-shell. you would know me by the touch of ice on the tongue of the wind. you would wait with a bouquet of black feathers and the rest of our story still warm on your lips.
41
serendipity
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
the violins hiving like bees in us betray our bittersweet hello.
we smoke like signals
from the friction and things
begin to shower down.
for us, birds drop
backwards from their branches,
a whistling blanket of heart-
beats to bury the loving.
tonight, the meteorites.
later, the sea,
our little strings singing
to the astonishment
of lovesick whales.
42
safe shower
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
my cap is
a condom
stretched over my head.
we’re ready,
she
in her snorkel
and pink
water-wings.
43
stalactite
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
hang
on
little tooth,
said
the mountain
drawing strings
of bats like
a chirping
black
floss.
44
somewhere a buried bone awaits
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
not physics, but loosed dogs who lick the earth and make us spin. lost dogs, always almost catching their own dark tails in their teeth.
so we are dizzy and don’t know it, and this is the story of time. look inside a spider’s web and see. that constellation of dew is eyes shaking in their silk sockets to the thundering footpads. touch one.
reach through and pat the happy panting head of night. beyond the sun, a long black pelt stretched over the bones of dead stars.
one velvet ear is eons. when you die you curl up in it and they just keep running.
you can hear the click of claws tectonic.
even from sleep you hear the bright blinding howls and believe they are dreams.
45
for the dispossessed
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
so we sleep in the river.
the barely-touched. thirsty to the stones of our eyes for an intimacy like that.
some endless licking thing to talk us from the shallows and make
us glow from the strange collected light.
to that tongue we are accidental.
we slip away. finally, we flake
like scales and shine.
you may remember us. from your sleep you may surface with a fist of silt and find just what you expected.
46
in the night of the womb the spirit quickens into flesh
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
and so i
am nocturnal
gnawing big-eyed
at the moonlit years
with th
e wolves
and moths
while night
and its toothy stars
nibble me slowly
into shadow.
white day is for
others.
mother i am
not lonely,
i am nearly
the dark space
between the sun
and itself.
47
coyotes
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
one pain,
these howls
we hurl at the arc-
ed bone of her.
how
careless,
she turns
the mist
to impossible
milk.
how untouchable
her far
cold love.
48
chosen
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
one night i went that way with a pack of dogs.
beyond the streetlights.
we glistened,
we were dead set on it,
no one stopping to sniff
or lift a leg
to what was already forgotten.
49
world,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
just where
would you be—
and where
do you think
you’re going—
without
me?
50
levitator’s apprentice
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
i dream you who sleep
standing up like horses.
51
man of the year
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
trombones always swooned for you.
it was july with green twilight inking in and the feeding bats missing us by inches.
you were dancing with the long train of your beard thick in your hands as a river of birds. they grazed soundlessly.
how handsome, our envy. our star-speckled melancholy. we could only stand in our clothes and be ourselves.
what a relief, your fingers
spelling our gently dressed nudity.
when you snapped them: carolina
parakeets. like sparks the fledglings spat from your handsome arms
into the darkening green as if
they’d never been forgotten.
52
california
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
if you are mountainous, immovable, stand here and stare down the san andreas fault. stand statuesque at big sur and look west, wait for gray whales to sneak past, smuggling their songs like a secret you don’t deserve.
from the bluffs you are indecipherable.
turn and walk inland and grow larger in your mind. the highway, the headlands, a slug on the trail you can step over and feel saved. coyotes and car motors.
a howl deep in the engines of your bones.
they will move you. somewhere in the past, a lost lighthouse and a stair that disappears into the surf at high tide. ahead, the wild dogs of california crying the sun’s slow death.
they are always further off. if you are marvelous, follow them. in the dark their eyes like a new city scatter among the hills.
this is your city.
53
if nothing else
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
remember winter by the way
the puddles froze around their trash and became beautiful. useless,
how the skinny crows starved
scratching at their mirrors.
did we love enough, barefoot in our nest of broken grass blades.
at the edge of a forest
didn’t we drive through a deer’s lingering breath and forget everything.
someday we’re forgiven i think.
i always wanted you with
the cold green feathers of your iris folded back, waiting for the first fingers of sun. you were busy watching out the window past the antlerish limbs where you thought your shadow should be.
54
listen
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
oh the smalls of their backs.
how they break under
your kiss of smoke and cedar boughs.
press your ear to another
and you will understand.
how you become nothing
in the taking. how there you are, thirsty with the hills in the distance, growing quieter the closer you come.
55
i’ll pack a pretty shirt
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
lay me here in bluestem and baptisia and listen with your ear against the bowing wind. the day wants nothing but our long quiet looks.
do you hear the clovers closing
soft as eyes. i could kiss you blindly.
tell me something. nearly touch me as the sun forgets itself
and sets on a shoulder blade.
this is what i remember.
56
iowa poetry prize an d edwi n ford pi per poetry award wi n n ers
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1987
1994
Elton Glaser, Tropical Depressions James McKean, Tree of Heaven Michael Pettit, Cardinal Points Bin Ramke, Massacre of the
Innocents
1988
Ed Roberson, Voices Cast Out to Bill Knott, Outremer
Talk Us In
Mary Ruefle, The Adamant
1995
1989
Ralph Burns, Swamp Candles
Conrad Hilberry, Sorting the Smoke Maureen Seaton, Furious Cooking Terese Svoboda, Laughing Africa 1996
1990
Pamela Alexander, Inland
Philip Dacey, Night Shift at the Gary Gildner, The Bunker in the Crucifix Factory
Parsley Fields
Lynda Hull, Star Ledger
John Wood, The Gates of the Elect Kingdom
1991
Greg Pape, Sunflower Facing the 1997
Sun
Brendan Galvin, Hotel Malabar Walter Pavlich, Running near the Leslie Ullman, Slow Work through End of the World
Sand
1992
1998
Lola Haskins, Hunger
Kathleen Peirce, The Oval Hour Katherine Soniat, A Shared Life Bin Ramke, Wake
Cole Swensen, Try
1993
Tom Andrews, The Hemophiliac’s 1999
Motorcycle
Larissa Szporluk, Isolato
Michael Heffernan, Love’s Answer Liz Waldner, A Point Is That Which John Wood, In Primary Light
Has No Part
2000
Mary Leader, The Penultimate Suitor
2001
2005
Joanna Goodman, Trace of One Emily Rosko, Raw Goods Inventory Karen Volkman, Spar
Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Lug Your Careless Body out of the Careful 2002
Dusk
Lesle Lewis, Small Boat
Peter Jay Shippy, Thieves’ Latin 2006
Elizabeth Hughey, Sunday Houses 2003
the Sunday House
Michele Glazer, Aggregate of Sarah Vap, American Spikena
rd Disturbances
Dainis Hazners, (some of) The 2008
Adventures of Carlyle, My
andrew michael roberts, something Imaginary Friend
has to happen next
Zach Savich, Full Catastrophe 2004
Living
Megan Johnson, The Waiting
Susan Wheeler, Ledger
Document Outline
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Dear Wild Abandon We are not birds
Explain yourself
Among the beautiful illusions
Poem written on the mirror of her skin
Dear man on fire,
Tragic figure in a rearview
The moon
What I know of the moon
Strip mall
Birds of Paradise
Before sleep takes us
Swallows built their nest around it
When we were giant
Again I strike your window in full flight
Dear artificial heart,
Pledge of Allegiance
The face of Jesus in my bite bruise
Laundromat at the end of the world
Dear special theory of relativity,
You can hear it through the cumulative heartbeats
You never touched me
They molt in hopes of airier plumage
Dear quark,
Prove you wrong
The end
Dear catastrophe,
2 Something has to happen next Rehearsal
This or something like it
A cyclist passes with a cello on his back
Lamb
The story of my beard
Other people’s machines
Winter museum
What we know
The moments before the crash landing are clearest
Serendipity
Safe shower
Stalactite
Somewhere a buried bone awaits
For the dispossessed
In the night of the womb the spirit quickens into flesh
Coyotes
Chosen
World,
Levitator’s apprentice
Man of the year
California
If nothing else
Listen
It'll pack a pretty shirt
iowa poetry prize and edwin ford piper poetry award winners
Something Has to Happen Next Page 2
