Best American Poetry 2017
Page 13
EMILY VAN KLEY
* * *
Dear Skull
beloved braincase, body’s bleeding heart
helmet law
dear ribs thick with implied meat, disused central
railroad, reverse spec house unplumbed
to propitious frame
dear double-strung forearm, dear violin bow,
dear pachyderm-eared pelvis,
dear barnacle spine—
tolerate this animate interlude, nervous tic of cell & swoosh,
elasticity & vein
& you’ll emerge, democratically beautiful,
armature to nothing
you’ll make the case for stasis, grow
each year more ravishingly still
yes, the flesh is weak,
but you are forged of patience,
ill inclined to cheer or mourn
the extraneous
—respiration, cartilage—as it trundles away
from The Georgia Review
WENDY VIDELOCK
* * *
Deconstruction
The chickadee is all about truth.
The finch is a token. The albatross
is always an omen. The kestrel is mental,
the lark is luck, the grouse is dance,
the goose is quest. The need for speed
is given the peregrine, and the dove’s
been blessed with the feminine.
The quail is word and culpability.
The crane is the dean of poetry.
The swift is keen agility,
the waxwing mere civility,
the sparrow a nod to working class
nobility. The puffin’s the brother
of humor and prayer, the starling the student
of Baudelaire. The mockingbird
is the sound of redress, the grackle the father
of excess. The flicker is rhythm,
the ostrich is earth, the bluebird a simple
symbol of mirth. The oriole
is the fresh start. The magpie is prince
of the dark arts. The swallow is warmth,
home, protection—the vulture the priest
of purification, the heron a font
of self-reflection. The swisher belongs
to the faery realm. Resourcefulness
is the cactus wren. The pheasant is sex,
the chicken is egg, the eagle is free,
the canary the bringer of ecstasy.
The martin is peace. The stork is release.
The swan is the patron of grace and discretion.
The loon is the watery voice of the moon.
The owl’s the keeper of secrets, grief,
and fresh fallen snow, and the crow
has the bones of the ancestral soul.
from The Hopkins Review
LUCY WAINGER
* * *
Scheherazade.
after Richard Siken
comes wave after wave after wave the derivative & harvest, the myrtle tops of sandstorms & milk glasses, apple, horse & song, list, listen, light leaks from the spaces between the bubbles—call it foam—tender pocket of yes yes yes call it flesh—eat tonight & you’ll still have to eat tomorrow, eat tonight & it still won’t be over—eat tonight: peaches bloom even in the dark, as wet as a girl—hands & feet, horse & song, the same hole bandaged over & over, not a wound but its absence—a sum of histories—the nights colliding like marbles, & if there is an end then it’s too dark to see, if there is an end then it’s too bright to see, hands folding, unfolding, & you, Scheherazade!, milky goddess of recursion, best DJ in the city, you spin records, spin heads, cross legs & cross deserts, & always pause just moments before he
from Poetry
CRYSTAL WILLIAMS
* * *
Double Helix
~for Joseph J. Freeman and Richard P. Williams
~after Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series & Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns
~I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
Stanley Kunitz, from “The Layers”
I.
At night, my father played piano & sang, his voice our raft on a quiet lake, an island of gentleness & because gentleness is a choice, I know something—, I have told you something essential about my father & the history of black people in America. & because he looked at my mother & me as if we were divine, brilliant, bright children of god & because if gesture & spirit have weight, my father’s equaled two thousand blooming peonies, I have told you something about faith & the history of black people in America.
Scientists are full of news these days: We are rotting fruit lain to ground. In each breath we inhale thousands of humans collected on the tongues of leaves, in the pink eyes of peonies, on the powdery backs of pollen. Exhaled. With each draw, a millennium of history enters us & we cannot control, can only harness whom or what we host. Our traumas, the bright blue mysticisms & burnt orange murmurs, our joys & muddled currencies are archived in genetic code.
I am not of my father’s blood but am of my father, which is also the history of black people in America.
At my 6th birthday party, the parents drank martinis & sangria in white linen & silk as we played on the Slip-n-Slide while the desolate beast next door snarled & snapped through the fence, our jubilation magnifying his rage. He leapt & whipped into an ever-reddening frenzy. & because pain will out, & because hatred will out, & because my father sensed a shift in the air because he deeply believed my mother & me divine & the faithful have second sight, & because some Alabama-born malice had taught him a lesson to do with mercilessness, the way danger wets the wind, my father tore into the house emerging with a finger on a gun’s trigger. He stood sentinel the rest of the day, gun slack on his thigh, squinting at the feverishness at the fence—as we leapt & shrieked & ate cake.
This is what I was trying to explain to Avi when I sent him that book about the black migration from the American south. I was trying to say: we have cause to care for & track our wounds. To be anything other than enraged or dead is to be a success if black in America. To become a refuge, a safe harbor is to be a miracle if black in America.
His ailing father listened quietly as Avi read aloud passages about the vicious hand of the south & burnings & bodies & swinging, cold chicken & packed trains, escapees casting towards a northern brink they could not fully understand, away from an ending they did. & because hatred will out & because we cannot control whom or what we host. & because his father is a holocaust survivor, in a moment of lucidity, he asked sadly: “Son, why do you insist on reading me my story?”
So we, the Jewish son and African daughter, mouths bursting & soured with flowers & fauna, rotting leaves & peonies & men banging at the midnight door, stood as an ecosystem of gas & fire, double helixes & light, the story of-, the choices of-, our fathers knotted between us. & because I wanted to touch his face as my own, & because I felt his skin shudder as my own, understood his father’s stubble as my own & because what are we if not our brothers? & because there has always been binding & burning & escaping & enduring & because I know no better way to understand the history of humans than to tell you the story of my father’s choice to be a raft on a lake, which, no matter what more you might be told, is the true story of black thought, black life, black people in America.
II.
At night my father sang & because in each breath we inhale thousands of humans on the powdery backs of pollen I have told you something essential & because he looked at my mother & me as if we were divine & because we are really only rotting fruit lain to ground & because if gesture & spirit have weight my father’s equaled two thousand blooming peonies & at my 6th birthday party the beast next door snarled & snapped through the fence & because our mysticisms & currencies are archived genetic code & because hatred outs & because some malice had taught him mercilessness my father emerged from the house a gun’s trigger & for the rest of the day stood as a safe
harbor glaring feverishness down as we leapt & shrieked & then Avi read passages from the book & because we cannot control whom or what we host & because Avi’s father is a holocaust survivor he asked “Son, why?” we stood as an ecosystem of double helixes Alabama & Holocaust knotted between us & because I wanted to touch his face as my own as if we were divine & because I felt his skin shudder as my own as if we were brilliant bright gods understood his father’s stubble as my own & because what are we? & because there has always been binding & escaping & enduring & because I am not of my father’s blood but am of Avi’s father I know no better way to explain the history of humans than to tell you at night my father played piano & sang his voice our raft on a quiet lake an island of gentleness & gentleness is a choice is a miracle in America.
from The American Poetry Review
CHRISTIAN WIMAN
* * *
Prelude
Church or sermon, prayer or poem:
the failure of religious feeling is a form.
The failure of religious feeling is a form
of love that, though it could not survive
the cataclysmic joy of its inception,
nevertheless preserves its own sane something,
a space in which the grievers gather,
inviolate ice that the believers weather:
church or sermon, prayer or poem.
Finer and finer the meaningless distinctions:
theodicies, idiolects, books, books, books.
I need a space for unbelief to breathe.
I need a form for failure, since it is what I have.
from The Sewanee Review
MONICA YOUN
* * *
Greenacre
Gold flecked, dark-rimmed, opaque—
like a toad’s
stolid unsurprise—
the lake never blinks
its hazel eye.
Man-made, five feet deep,
the exact square footage of a city block.
Lakewater murk
precipitates
a glinting silt of algae,
specks of soil,
minnows wheeling in meticulous formation,
the occasional water snake, angry, lost.
Two pale figures in the lake,
half-
submerged, viewed
at an oblique angle.
At thirteen, I spent summer afternoons
reading in my treehouse, a simple platform
without walls,
like a hunting blind,
a white painted birdhouse,
without walls
so no bird ever visited it.
Leaf-light dissolving in still water.
Two pale figures in the lake,
half-
seen, chest-deep
in the mirroring
lakewater so they seemed all bare
shoulders, all lake-slick hair.
Standing face to face—
not embracing,
but his upper arm
entering the water,
half-concealed, at an angle that must have meant
he was touching her, beneath the surface.
Unblinking, the lake
giving nothing away,
caring nothing
for whatever shape
displaced it, unremembering,
uncurious. Did his arm bend,
and, if so,
to what exact degree?
At what point
did his hidden hand
intersect her half-submerged body?
The mirrored horizontal of the lake is where
memory presses itself
against its limit,
where hypothesis,
overeager,
rushes to fill the void, to extrapolate
from what is known. Because I knew them both:
Ann Towson,
a year ahead of me,
scrawny, skilled
at gymnastics, gold
badges emblazoning the sleeve of her green
leotard, her chest as flat as mine.
And John Hollis—
the most popular boy
in our class,
his tan forearms emerged
gold-dusted from rolled-up shirtsleeves.
He fronted a band called White Minority,
which played at weekend parties
across the lake.
We shared a bus stop,
a subdivision.
Once he spoke to me, the day I swapped
my glasses for contact lenses. Something’s different,
he said, eyes narrowing,
Yeah, no kidding!
I snapped back,
turning away. Later,
my best friend scolded me for rudeness.
Every day, boarding the school bus,
John Hollis
faced the bus driver
with a bland smirk—
What’s up, black bitch?—
as if shoving her face down into a puddle
scummed with humiliation, which was always
dripping from her,
dripping down on her—
she hunched her shoulders
against it, narrow-eyed.
Every day, some kids smirked,
some kids hunched down, stolid, unblinking.
Two pale figures in a lake,
half-
witnessed, half-conjectured,
a gold arm
like sunlight slanting down through lakewater.
But now a clinging, sedimentary skin
outlines every contour:
what is known.
No longer faceless shapes
displacing water,
the voids they once inhabited can’t be lifted
dripping from the lake, rinsed clean
enough for use.
What drips from them
coats the lake
with a spreading greenness—
an opaque glaze lidding the open eye.
from New England Review
C. DALE YOUNG
* * *
Precatio simplex
in memoriam Mavis Clarke (1936–2016)
Father, Holy Father, Prime Mover, God Almighty—
I have forgotten what to call you. Standing here
before the Pacific, I am tempted to call you
Poseidon, Green Neptune, someone I understand
more clearly than I have ever understood You.
The sea’s slow tide, its almost-hidden riptide dragging
handfuls of foam under the surface, has no answers
for me. Sitting here on the crest of the sand dunes,
there is no one by my side. I have come here
alone because I remember what the nuns
taught me, that You do not appreciate a show
of these things. Not success with words, not
the lottery prize now worth millions, not the
usual things I am sure others request: I come now
to ask for something unthinkable for one like me.
Almost 3,000 miles away, near the brighter coast
of this godless country, my aunt’s pain is
outpacing the cancer tearing her abdomen apart.
No amount of morphine can break it. I do not
come to ask You for miracles. I know better
than to ask for miracles. I know the world
is filled with miracles. No, no, not miracles.
Take her right now, Father. Here stands the cancer doctor
asking you to take his aunt because he cannot stomach
the idea of her in so much pain. Send me a small sign:
wheeling gulls, a sudden gust of wind, anything. Anything.
Just this once, Holy Father, don’t let me down.
from The Collagist
DEAN YOUNG
* * *
Infinitives
To pick up where Tomaž left off.
To pick off another oniony layer
down to the eye. To chomp.
To walk around all day buttoned wrong.
Light is coming from rocks, the little froggie
jumps even though he hasn’t been wound up.
Here’s where the wolves before us drank.
Too long, we have cock-blocked
day from mating with night.
The world is bluer than I thought.