by David Lehman
of your father’s backhand or the pine casket
he threatened to put you in? Only now,
miles and years away, do I wince at the jokes:
white trash, farmer’s tan, good ole boy.
And now, alone, I see your face
at the bottom of my shot glass
before my own comes through.
from Poetry Daily
JOAN NAVIYUK KANE
* * *
Exhibits from the Dark Museum
In a shop of bloat and blown glass,
I pry an iridescent green beetle alive
from my ear and chase a dwindled trail
paved dire with coins towards three skulls
enclosed in a box of Olympia beer. Pale
grass: vitiligo thrust from the tract
of his scalp, now mine. Your voice,
a sforzando of light as it strikes the rock-
ridge hung above the dwellings.
Or, your voice, a grim notation of the sweep
between us. All night along with you
our sons respire. I fever through memory.
The world that survives me but a dangerous place.
from Alaska Quarterly Review
LAURA KASISCHKE
* * *
For the Young Woman I Saw Hit by a Car While Riding Her Bike
I’ll tell you up front: She was fine—although
she left in an ambulance because
I called 9-1-1
and what else can you do
when they’ve come for you
with their sirens and lights
and you’re young and polite
except get into their ambulance
and pretend to smile?
“Thanks,” she said to me
before they closed her up. (They
even tucked
her bike in there. Not
one bent spoke on either tire.) But I
was shaking and sobbing too hard to say good-bye.
I imagine her telling her friends later, “It
hardly grazed me, but
this lady who saw it went crazy . . .”
I did. I was
molecular, while
even the driver who hit her did
little more than roll his eyes, while
a trucker stuck at the intersection, wolfing
down a swan
sandwich behind the wheel, sighed. Some-
one touched me on the shoulder
and asked, “Are you all right?”
(Over
in ten seconds. She
stood, all
blonde, shook
her wings like a little cough.)
“Are you
okay?” someone else asked me. Uneasily. As if
overhearing my heartbeat
and embarrassed for me
that I was made
of such gushing meat
in the middle of the day
on a quiet street.
“They should have put her
in the ambulance, not me.”
Laughter.
Shit happens.
To be young.
To shrug it off:
But, ah, sweet
thing, take
pity. One
day you too may be
an accumulation
of regrets, catastrophes.
A clay animation
of Psalm 73 (But
as for me, my feet . . .). No. It will be
Psalm 48: They
saw it,
and so they marveled; they
were troubled, and hasted away. Today
you don’t remember the way
you called my name, so
desperately, a thousand times, tearing
your hair, and your clothes on the floor, and
the nurse who denied your morphine
so that you had to die that morning
under a single sheet
without me, in
agony, but
this time I was beside you.
I waited, and I saved you.
I was there.
from Post Road
DOUGLAS KEARNEY
* * *
In the End, They Were Born on TV
i. good reality TV
a couple wanted to be -to-be and TV wants the couple-to-be
to be on TV. the people from TV believe we’d be good TV
because we had wanted to be -to-be and failed and now might.
to be good at TV make like TV isn’t. make like living in our living room
and the TV crew isn’t there and the boom isn’t there
saving the woman from TV’s voice that won’t be there
saying tell us about the miscarriage. in the teeming evening
and some dog barking at all we cannot hear.
ii. would you be willing to be on TV?
people in their house on TV are ghosts haunting a house haunting houses.
pregnant women in their houses on TV are haunted houses haunting a house haunting houses.
our living room a set set for us ghosts to tell ghost stories on us.
would you be -to-be on TV?
to be the we we weren’t to be and the we we’re-to-be to be on TV.
the pregnant woman agrees to being a haunted house
haunting flickering houses. yes ok yeah yes.
iii. forms
in the waiting room for the doctor to TV the pregnant woman’s insides
out on a little TV on TV. filling a form on TV is to flesh into words
on a sheet that fills up with you. yes yes and turn to the receptionist
only to turn back to a ghost waiting to be officially haunted yes.
a magazine riffles itself on TV; loud pages, a startled parrot
calls your name then alighting on magazines
and waddle the hall you -to-be and the TV crew that isn’t going to be there
on TV and the doctor and you are looking at her little TV on TV the doctor
says see? there they are. ghosts sound themselves out to flicker on the little TV.
there they go to the pregnant woman scared to be such good TV.
iv. cut
to one-more-time-from-the-top yourself
is to ta-daaaaa breathing. the curtain drops, plush guillotine.
would you talk about the miscarriage one more time? ta-daaaaa
v. all the little people out there
after she was a haunted house before we haunted us for TV then
the pregnant woman watched TV. vomit on her teeth like sequins.
our TV stayed pregnant with the people from TV’s TV show
pregnant with haunted houses wailing then smiling up into our living room.
it helps she said of the people from TV’s TV show so yes then to TV to help,
she said, the haunted houses in the living rooms we said yes to help
thousands of wailing houses.
vi. only with some effort
the best ghosts trust they’re not dead. no
no the best ghosts don’t know how not to be alive.
like being good at TV.
inside the pregnant woman, the -to-be of the family-who-failed-
but-now-might-be-to-be were good TV.
but the we-who-failed butterfingered and stuttered,
held our hands like we just got them.
we’ve been trying so long we said we can’t believe it this is finally happening.
vii. scheduled c-section: reality TV
and they’re born made of meats on TV!
the doctor voilàs them from the woman’s red guts
into the little punch bowls.
the new mother says I want to see them my babies!
the doctor shoves the new mother’s guts back, express lane grocer.
the demure camera good TVs up two meat babies into wailing ghosts.
off, the new mother’s blood like spilled nail polish.
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viii. ghost story
did you know about dogs and ghosts? one barking at one’s nothing?
ix. the miscarriage: exposition for reality TV
it helps to be on TV. we want to be good on TV. ok yes.
to help we want to be good TV. yeah yes.
please tell me about the miscarriage.
the woman from TV wants good TV and something specific that gets you right
in the tear to the eye to milk the pregnant woman’s breasts heavy with—.
good, we talk about the dead one on TV.
it was horrible, the blood was everywhere that morning a dog barks.
one-more-time-from-the-top. it was horrible, the blood was everywherrrrr
doggone dog goes on. on to take three and it was horriBOOM
in the boom goes the barking and bad TV! bad TV! we want to help
being good TV please tell me about the miscarriage
one more time it was
x. after the c-section was more like
the doctor shoving the new mother’s guts in, jilted lover packing a duffel.
xi. talking about the miscarriage: behind the scenes
please tell me about the miscarriage
please tell me about the miscarriage
please tell me about the miscarriage
please tell me about the miscarriage
the fifth take and it was horrible, that’s all.
they call them takes, again we’re robbed.
xii.
did it help watching a house fill with haunting every room
or help haunting the house? watch! here we are:
an expanding family of ghosts. we aren’t here but yes ok yeah yes.
did it help? and even now know yes they were born on TV
but before it was horrible wasn’t it must have been. please tell me
about the miscarriage for I don’t know how not to be telling
and the dog growls still and still and still
from The Iowa Review
JENNIFER KEITH
* * *
Eating Walnuts
The old man eating walnuts knows the trick:
You do it wrong for many years,
applying pressure to the seams
to split the shell along its hemispheres.
It seems so clear and easy. There’s the line.
You follow the instructions, then
your snack ends up quite pulverized.
You sweep your lap and mutter, try again.
Eventually you learn to disbelieve
the testimony of your eyes.
You turn the thing and make a choice
about what you’d prefer to sacrifice.
You soon discover that the brains inside
are on right angles, so the shell
must be cracked open on its arc,
which isn’t neat. The shattered pieces tell
a story, but the perfect, unmarred meat’s
the truth: two lobes, conjoined, intact.
One of two things is bound to break:
One the fiction, one the soul, the fact.
from Unsplendid
DAVID KIRBY
* * *
Is Spot in Heaven?
In St. Petersburg, Sasha points and says, “They’re restorating
this zoo building because someone is giving the zoo an elephant
and the building is not enough big, so they are restorating it,”
so I say, “Where’s, um, the elephant?” and Sasha says,
“The elephant is waiting somewhere! How should I know!”
When I was six, my dog was Spot, a brindled terrier
with the heart of a lion, though mortal, in the end, like all
of us, and when he died, I said to Father Crifasi, “Is Spot
in heaven?” and he laughed and asked me if I were really
that stupid, insinuating that he, a holy father of the church,
had the inside track on heavenly entry, knew where
the back stairs were, had mastered the secret handshake.
Later we saw a guy with a bear, and I said, “Look, a bear!”
and Sasha said, “Ah, the poor bear! Yes, you can have your
picture with this one, if you like,” but by then I didn’t want to.
Who is in heaven? God, of course, Jesus and his mother,
and the more popular saints: Peter, Michael, the various
Johns, Josephs, and Catherines. But what about the others?
If Barsanuphius, Fridewside, and Jutta of Kulmsee,
why not Spot or the elephant or the bear when it dies?
Even a pig or a mouse has a sense of itself, said Leonard
Wolff, who applied this idea to politics, saying no single
creature is important on a global scale, though a politics
that recognizes individual selves is the only one that offers
a hope for the future. Pets are silly, but the only world
worth living in is one that doesn’t think so. As to the world
beyond this one, as Sam Cooke says, I’m tired of living
but afraid to die because I don’t know what’s coming next.
I do know that Spot was always glad to see me, turning
himself inside out with joy when I came home from school,
whereas Father Crifasi took no delight at the sight of me
or anyone, the little pleasure that sometimes hovered
about his lips falling out of his face like the spark from
his cigarette when the door to the classroom opened
and we boys filed in as slowly as we could. Those
years are covered as by a mist now, the heads of my parents
and friends breaking through like statues in a square
in a foreign city as the sun comes over my shoulder
and the night creeps down cobblestoned streets toward
a future I can’t see, though across the river, it’s still dark,
but already you can hear the animals stirring:
the first birds, then an elephant, a bear, a little dog.
from The Cincinnati Review
ANDREW KOZMA
* * *
Ode to the Common Housefly
O Eternal Worrier, you strive to lick
your prints from every surface. O Six-Legged God,
O Tiny Resurrectionist, if I begged
you to stop, would you stop, would you nod
your clockwork head, would you promise to rot
in the corner after I’ve squashed you, silent
and uneager to raise your children from the dead.
Perhaps you aren’t to blame, O Careless Parent.
You spread your seed only where it takes,
and I left the dishes uncleansed, the fruit
clogging the trash with its seductive scent.
Dogged Companion, you wear your dark suit
with pride, eager to mourn whatever dies.
I’m not your friend! You’re not mine! What lies
we tell. I love the living, and you, the dead.
And here we are again, breaking bread.
from Subtropics
HAILEY LEITHAUSER
* * *
The Pickpocket Song
Tickle a backside, friend, jiggle the wrist,
hither then sterling, then amethyst, onyx.
Eager spills eel-skin, python, seal-leather,
platinum and plate, all cabbage, all cheddar.
I say of the cutpurses: Straighten, and sing. Let us
carol each quick sticky digit, all ten,
for my
kith can fleece your kin, and then some,
proudly and soundly, down sheer to the skin.
Only we dippers could psalm such a trilling,
cash-clips and coppers, all harmony belling.
Keen-fingered lifters, join in with them—
each bracelet, each necklace, each pearl-circled pin,
topaz and lapis, square perfect carats
swearing their ritzier whisper and pinch,
over and over the nimble thumb-catch.
Noble this music, good, noble, and able.
Grandeur for soul, chums, glad glory for table.
from 32 Poems
DANA LEVIN
* * *
Watching the Sea Go
Thirty seconds of yellow lichen.
Thirty seconds of coil and surge,
fern and froth, thirty seconds
of salt, rock, fog, spray.
Clouds
moving slowly to the left—
A door in a rock through which you could see
—
another rock,
laved by the weedy tide.
Like filming breathing—thirty seconds
of tidal drag, fingering
the smaller stones
down the black beach—what color
was that, aquamarine?
Starfish spread
their salmon-colored hands.
—
I stood and I shot them.
I stood and I watched them
right after I shot them: thirty seconds of smashed sea
while the real sea
thrashed and heaved—
They were the most boring movies ever made.
I wanted
to mount them together and press play.
—
Thirty seconds of waves colliding.
Kelp
with its open attitudes, seals
riding the swells, curved in a row
just under the water—
the sea,
over and over.
Before it’s over.
from Poem-a-Day
PATRICIA LOCKWOOD
* * *
See a Furious Waterfall Without Water
Never has an empty hand been made
into more of a fist, and Waterfall Without
it swings so hard it swings out
of existence. How will anyone get married
