by David Lehman
“When I had no money, and a great book came out, I couldn’t get it. I had to wait. I love the idea that I have hardcover books here and at home that I haven’t read yet. That’s how I view that I’m rich. I have hardcover books I may never read.”
Defending Walt Whitman
Basketball is like this for young Indian boys, all arms and legs
and serious stomach muscles. Every body is brown!
These are the twentieth-century warriors who will never kill,
although a few sat quietly in the deserts of Kuwait,
waiting for orders to do something, to do something.
God, there is nothing as beautiful as a jumpshot
on a reservation summer basketball court
where the ball is moist with sweat,
and makes a sound when it swishes through the net
that causes Walt Whitman to weep because it is so perfect.
There are veterans of foreign wars here
although their bodies are still dominated
by collarbones and knees, although their bodies still respond
in the ways that bodies are supposed to respond when we are young.
Every body is brown! Look there, that boy can run
up and down this court forever. He can leap for a rebound
with his back arched like a salmon, all meat and bone
synchronized, magnetic, as if the court were a river,
as if the rim were a dam, as if the air were a ladder
leading the Indian boy toward home.
Some of the Indian boys still wear their military haircuts
while a few have let their hair grow back.
It will never be the same as it was before!
One Indian boy has never cut his hair, not once, and he braids it
into wild patterns that do not measure anything.
He is just a boy with too much time on his hands.
Look at him. He wants to play this game in bare feet.
God, the sun is so bright! There is no place like this.
Walt Whitman stretches his calf muscles
on the sidelines. He has the next game.
His huge beard is ridiculous on the reservation.
Some body throws a crazy pass and Walt Whitman catches it
with quick hands. He brings the ball close to his nose
and breathes in all of its smells: leather, brown skin, sweat,
black hair, burning oil, twisted ankle, long drink of warm water,
gunpowder, pine tree. Walt Whitman squeezes the ball tightly.
He wants to run. He hardly has the patience to wait for his turn.
“What’s the score?” he asks. He asks, “What’s the score?”
Basketball is like this for Walt Whitman. He watches these Indian boys
as if they were the last bodies on earth. Every body is brown!
Walt Whitman shakes because he believes in God.
Walt Whitman dreams of the Indian boy who will defend him,
trapping him in the corner, all flailing arms and legs
and legendary stomach muscles. Walt Whitman shakes
because he believes in God. Walt Whitman dreams
of the first jumpshot he will take, the ball arcing clumsily
from his fingers, striking the rim so hard that it sparks.
Walt Whitman shakes because he believes in God.
Walt Whitman closes his eyes. He is a small man and his beard
is ludicrous on the reservation, absolutely insane.
His beard makes the Indian boys righteously laugh. His beard
frightens the smallest Indian boys. His beard tickles the skin
of the Indian boys who dribble past him. His beard, his beard!
God, there is beauty in every body. Walt Whitman stands
at center court while the Indian boys run from basket to basket.
Walt Whitman cannot tell the difference between
offense and defense. He does not care if he touches the ball.
Half of the Indian boys wear t-shirts damp with sweat
and the other half are bareback, skin slick and shiny.
There is no place like this. Walt Whitman smiles.
Walt Whitman shakes. This game belongs to him.
SARAH ARVIO
* * *
Bodhisattva
The new news is I love you my nudist
the new news is I love you my buddhist
my naked body and budding pleasure
in the weather of your presence
Not whether your presence but how
Oh love a new nodule of neurosis
a posy of new roses proposing
a new era for us nobis pacem
Oh my bodhisattva of new roses
you’ve saved me from my no-love neurosis
You’ve saved my old body from the fatwa
Let’s lie down in a bed of roses
a pocketful that rings round the rosy
If this is the end of the world my love
let’s fall down in bed and die
Let’s give a new nod to nothing
Let’s give a rosebud to nothing at all
How I love the new roses of nothing
Oh my bodhisattva of nothing
boding I hope no news but this
For our bodies and souls I hope nothing
but the weather of us in our peace
from Poem-a-Day
DERRICK AUSTIN
* * *
Cedars of Lebanon
His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.
—Song of Songs 5:15
If you can see them, the snow-covered
cedars, crowning the hills, come
to the cabin between the two tallest,
their branches hooked
with the tantrums of crows.
~~
Will you find me without the pink and blue hydrangeas?
Will you find me without the spikes of St. Augustine grass?
Will you find me with the bloodied snow—where some frail thing was
raptured?
~~
If you find a stag and kill it,
throw its hind legs over your shoulder
and drag it to my cabin
between the tallest cedars.
Its blood on the snow is my voice pursuing you.
~~
I sleep on a cedar bed
with red fur blankets,
the wood of the gates of paradise,
wood which hid the naked couple.
Wood of shame. Wood of passage.
If you come, I’ll press my hand
to your chest. A key
to the fittings of a lock.
~~
You knock at the door.
Break several cedar branches
and dust off the snow.
Bring in seven for the bedroom,
seven for the fireplace,
then rest your head on my chest—
even bare
branches can make a kind of summer.
from Burrow Press Review
DESIREE BAILEY
* * *
A Retrograde
She crept into my room, took me outside into the mosquito night thick with the gutted hums of fishermen’s wives, piercing the flesh of a sleepwalking sky.
She taught me that cobwebs are hammocks for spirits, a stop along the way to rest their weary skins, a knot on the thread of their pilgrimage to a place they had almost touched once.
In those days, a village could grow legs. Wedge itself deep into the throat of mountains where horses couldn’t smell it, where footsteps couldn’t sear its memory onto peeling roads.
Dear mama:
The orchids have teeth
the machetes are ornaments
rusting upon the walls.
I want to build you a temple
of teeth
but m
y hands are too tender
my hands are for stringing
the rice grains of rosaries.
Dear mama:
On the ocean roams a shadow of splinters
the fish are hurling themselves onto the shore
the shore will break into birds of dust
the scales are mirrors
blinding the sun.
On the ocean roams a shadow of splinters
how will I swim to you
when the day is done?
from Muzzle
MELISSA BARRETT
* * *
WFM: Allergic to Pine-Sol, Am I the Only One
—lines from Craigslist personal ads
Hi. I react really badly to Pine-Sol. My eyelids swell up and my eyes
turn bright red. I am a REAL woman. It is January 1, 2014.
Educated men move to the top of the list.
We were both getting gas Wednesday evening. Fish counter, Giant Eagle:
My husband knows how attractive I find you.
You caught me singing loudly. Your name means “wind.”
This Christmas season marks my eighth year of being single.
Please have a car (truck preferably) and a job.
I collect candles and have two grown children who are on their own now
thank God. I already bought your birthday present—
It’s a tie. With swordfish on it. There are certain things
my nose can’t handle and smoking is one of them.
I signed up to volunteer at a local park for a Merry not Scary
trick or treat trail—it would be nice to have a companion.
Must be willing to be seen in public with a size 16 woman.
I’m a little bigger, but not sloppy-fat. Six one four five nine eight
two three one nine. I can swing a hammer and am a pro
at putting on makeup. Sexiness to me is you
plus a photographic memory. Do you have questions
you’ve always wanted to ask a woman? You left your receipt
and that’s how I figured out your name. I was behind you
at the Lane Avenue Starbucks drive thru and you paid
for my grande nonfat no whip Mocha Frapp.
Your silver hair was gorgeous. Wow. The first time
we made love our souls connected and intertwined
and seemed to remember they were destined for one another.
Let’s go to the shooting range. I have no business expertise,
but I’d love a guy who is good with rope.
from The Journal
MARK BIBBINS
* * *
Swallowed
When I see an escalator I have to kiss
everyone on it, don’t you? If you like these
pastries—our lawyer calls them perfidy rolls—
there are more on his helicopter.
He’s Serbian or something,
whole family wiped out
by his other family. But he’s fine now.
Drop a kiss on the cultural floor,
three-second rule applies. I don’t even know
who I’m kissing anymore, do you?
Sneak away to where the world snaps in half
and come back with sanctions, come back
with sauces, come back with Haribo,
come back with Inferno flashcards,
come back with the glottal nonstop.
Dear Ciacco, your flowers were delicious but barely
a lunch so we dug a new grave for the stems.
“Finish us up,” they sang, “or finish us off.”
Lie down in sewage to stay down; sit up
only for people-will-see-me-and-die-level fame,
smiling like your teeth are on fire.
Oh darling you know what they say:
why have one factory
when you can have five. Our lawyer always
reminds us, “Little hands, long hours.” Indeed!
If I could eat my voice I would, but I’m off
to seize the world, the inside of its machine.
This is the way Celan ends, not with a bang
but a river. Woolf, too; she goes out
the same goddamn way—
I mean, wind any creature tight
enough and it does what it has to do.
from Lemon Hound
JESSAMYN BIRRER
* * *
A Scatology
Abracadabra: The anus. The star at the base of the human
balloon. Close it tight as the sun, then let it unfurl:
Crepe paper, the spiraling heart of the pipecleaner flower.
Do you know what to do? Pry open that shopworn diary.
Easy. Use your fingertips, mirrors. See what you’re hiding
from yourself. Use spoons to reflect: Your ass, backwards,
goes raveling outward like an expanding universe.
Have you considered muscerdae, the soft and smooth
innumerable droppings of mice? Guano, the bats’ own
jellicate wallpaper? Read those fewtrils for alphabets and become
kahuna. Revere their secret dictations until,
like all things, the secrets reorder the order of your language.
Make those soft, inward labyrinths your own. Know them
not for their oubliettes alone, but for what they release:
Omina. Fortuna. The ways in which you see and might become.
Parousia. That moment in which the body feels least heavy, most
quiet, uncalmably calm. Consider: Between scatology and eschatology
remains only “he.” Not “the man” or “man” or “men” but Old English,
see? Us all, perhaps, though this is not the point. The point is
this: We can take in language from either end and make language
understood—again, from either end. Embrace your exits, where bloom
virginities of every orifice. Where bloom oracles: We are all full of shit.
We could choose to make this space in us so small no digit, no wind, no
x could ever pass through. Or we could open a world any finger or tongue
(yours?) could enter into and speak. We could make a primer. Have you considered:
Zero—the shape that comes to mind—in its most common, most practical functions
makes everything the same as or equal to itself.
from Ninth Letter
CHANA BLOCH
* * *
The Joins
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending precious pottery with gold.
What’s between us
seems flexible as the webbing
between forefinger and thumb.
Seems flexible but isn’t;
what’s between us
is made of clay
like any cup on the shelf.
It shatters easily. Repair
becomes the task.
We glue the wounded edges
with tentative fingers.
Scar tissue is visible history
and the cup is precious to us
because
we saved it.
In the art of kintsugi
a potter repairing a broken cup
would sprinkle the resin
with powdered gold.
Sometimes the joins
are so exquisite
they say the potter
may have broken the cup
just so he could mend it.
from The Southern Review and Poetry Daily
EMMA BOLDEN
* * *
House Is an Enigma
House is not a metaphor. House has nothing
to do with beak or wing. House is not two
hands held angled towards each other. House is
not its roof or the pine straw on its roof. At night,
its windows and doors look nothing like a face.
Its stairs are not vertebrae. Its walls may be
white. They are not pale skin. House does not
appreciate your pun on its panes as pains.
House does not appreciate because house
does not have feelings. House has no aesthetic
program. House does what it does, which is
not doing. House does not sit on its foundations.
House exists in its foundations, and when the wind
pushes itself to full gale, house is never the one crying.
from Conduit
DEXTER L. BOOTH
* * *
Prayer at 3 a.m.
I washed your father’s pants in the kitchen sink.
That should have been enough to tell you.
I am still convinced there is no difference
between kneeling and falling if you don’t get up.
The head goes down in defeat, but lower in prayer,
and your sister tells me each visit that she has learned
of a new use for her hands.
I’ve seen this from you both: cartwheels through the field
at dawn, toes popping above the corn stalks like fleas
over the heads of lepers. Your scarecrow reminds me
of Jesus, his guilt confused for fear.
The sun doesn’t know; the fog lifts
