by David Lehman
already covered in fatty
rot my mother filled a tiny
coffin with picture frames
I spent the year drinking
from test tubes weeping
wherever I went somehow
it happened wellness crept
into me like a roach nibbling
through an eardrum for
a time the half-minutes
of fire in my brainstem
made me want to pull out
my spine but even those
have become bearable so
how shall I live now
in the unexpected present
I spent so long in a lover’s
quarrel with my flesh
the peace seems over-
cautious too-polite I say
stop being cold or make
that blue bluer and it does
we speak to each other
in this code where every word
means obey I sit under
a poplar tree with a thermos
of chamomile feeling
useless as an oath against
dying I put a sugar cube
on my tongue and
swallow it like a pill
from Tin House
JULIA ALVAREZ
* * *
American Dreams
Queens, NY, 1963
All day I dreamed of candy from the store
on Hillside Avenue: barrels filled with
caramels, tins of pastel mints and tiers
of chocolates beckoning in the window,
and a tinkling bell that tattled I was coming
in the door, a skinny girl, who didn’t look
thirteen, still reeling from the shock of
losing everything, and hungry all the time
for candy, more candy than I’d ever seen,
a whole store dedicated to delights,
proof we had arrived in the land of Milk
Duds, Chiclets, gumdrops, from the country
sugar came from but candy never got to.
I roamed the aisles, savoring the names:
Necco Wafers, Atomic Fireballs, Butterfingers,
while the fat man owner watched me, sitting
on a stool by the cash register; his pale eyes
like ice mints behind his foggy glasses, lingering
at my chest, as if the swelling buds under
my uniform’s white blouse were Candy Buttons,
Jujubes I’d shoplifted; while his tiny, perfumed
mother in black pumps and white lace collar
waited on older patrons, boxing chocolates,
petit-fours, assortments made to order
for wives and sweethearts, May I help you, dahlink?
in a heavy accent, an immigrant herself
from some past purge or pogrom; her “boy”
born here, the obese product of an American
dream gone greedily awry. He chatted as I
lingered over barrels, asking none-of-your-
business questions about my parents, grades,
what my people did on holidays. He knew
my favorites, commenting as he rang me up,
I see you like those SweeTarts Candy Necklaces
sure are a hit with your set. A hit? My set?
It was an intimacy I resented; my cravings
were dark secrets I didn’t want to share.
Will that be all today? he asked, as if he hoped
I’d say, Actually, I would like something else,
to marry you and help you run your candy store.
Outside, my new America was waking up
to nightmare: freedom fighters
marching; storefronts, some with candy
stores like this one, burning; girls like me
in bombed-out churches; dreams deferred,
exploding; dreams I didn’t know
still needed fighting for; all I knew
was hunger, as I learned the names
that promised sweeter dreams beyond
these candied substitutes, Juicy Fruits,
Life Savers, Bit-O-Honey, Good & Plenty.
from America
A. R. AMMONS
* * *
Finishing Up
I wonder if I know enough to know what it’s really like
to have been here: have I seen sights enough to give
seeing over: the clouds, I’ve waited with white
October clouds like these this afternoon often before and
taken them in, but white clouds shade other white
ones gray, had I noticed that: and though I’ve
followed the leaves of many falls, have I spent time with
the wire vines left when frost’s red dyes strip the leaves
away: is more missing than was never enough: I’m sure
many of love’s kinds absolve and heal, but were they passing
rapids or welling stirs: I suppose I haven’t done and seen
enough yet to go, and, anyway, it may be way on on the way
before one picks up the track of the sufficient, the
world-round reach, spirit deep, easing and all, not just mind
answering itself but mind and things apprehended at once
as one, all giving all way, not a scrap of question holding back.
from Poetry
DAVID BARBER
* * *
Sherpa Song
Your rope, my rope. My tracks,
Your steps. Beneath my feet,
The drop. Around my waist.
Your weight. On my back,
Your stuff, my yoke, the works.
Your pace, my pace. My task,
Your quest. Underfoot, crack
After crack, the ice, the ice.
Above and beyond, our route,
The world’s roof, a roost of mist.
Over one shoulder, a yelp
Downslope, a whoop back up:
My jabber, your babble, our heart
To heart in the heat of our assault
On the last face, pitch by pitch.
Up top, tapped out: your breath,
My breath, gasp for gasp, our
Dragon clouds. Out there, nowhere
But here, where air comes dear:
No far, no near, the end of all roads.
Your neck, my neck. Your cross,
My wind horse. Your mule,
My ass: try soulmate, your muse,
My own man. Under my mask,
My real mask, your open book.
from Southwest Review
ANDREW BERTAINA
* * *
A Translator’s Note
The translation, admittedly, has a number of defects, which are at least partially attributable to the fact that I cannot read Italian. And yet I have tried when possible to capture the pure essence of what the esteemed writer’s language probably meant. In certain passages, I’d humbly argue that my translation surpasses those of all three prior translations of the author’s work. Those translators had at their disposal only a working knowledge of Italian and small academic grants that allowed them to spend countless hours in dim libraries, parsing his words and trying to account for all nuances of meaning before settling on the correct word. While I, being slightly older than all three, have the great and unattainable thing of which they can only dream.
I saw the great writer once at a book shop in Venice. It was near the end of his life and the skin sagged from his face like cloth from a sail. He was across the room from me, behind old leather-bound volumes, and a globe which showed an outsized version of Italy. His great white beard and unkempt hair, falling to near his shoulders, made him immediately identifiable. He was, this great man, leaning in very close to hear the words of a very beautiful woman, but I could see the twinkle in his eye, the soul not yet at rest. From that moment, I have gathered all of my inspiration for the text, and though it may differ occasionally in form, content, and certain
items of the plot, I confess to you, reader, that no one knew him better than I and that I can confidently declare this work the definitive translation.
from The Threepenny Review
FRANK BIDART
* * *
Mourning What We Thought We Were
We were born into an amazing experiment.
At least we thought we were. We knew there was no
escaping human nature: my grandmother
taught me that: my own pitiless nature
taught me that: but we exist inside an order, I
thought, of which history
is the mere shadow—
Every serious work of art about America has the same
theme: America
is a great Idea: the reality leaves something to be desired.
Bakersfield. Marian Anderson, the first great black classical
contralto, whom the Daughters of the American Revolution
would not allow to sing in an unsegregated
Constitution Hall, who then was asked by Eleanor
Roosevelt to sing at the Lincoln Memorial before thousands
was refused a room at the Padre Hotel, Bakersfield.
My mother’s disgust
as she told me this. It confirmed her judgment about
what she never could escape, where she lived out her life.
My grandmother’s fury when, at the age of seven or
eight, I had eaten at the home of a black friend.
The forced camps at the end of The Grapes of Wrath
were outside
Bakersfield. When I was a kid, Okie
was still a common term of casual derision and contempt.
So it was up to us, born
in Bakersfield, to carve a new history
of which history is the mere shadow—
To further the history of the spirit is our work:
therefore thank you, Lord
Whose Bounty Proceeds by Paradox,
for showing us we have failed to change.
Dark night, December 1st 2016.
White supremacists, once again in
America, are acceptable, respectable. America!
Bakersfield was first swamp, then
desert. We are sons of the desert
who cultivate the top half-inch of soil.
from The New Yorker
BRUCE BOND
* * *
Anthem
The music of the anthem has no boundary,
no sworn allegiance, no nation save
the one we lower into its dying body.
A soldier kneels over a soldier’s grave,
and the tune is not the name he reads
but the hand that brushes the dirt to read it.
If you search the anthems of the world,
you see grief turn to pride, pride to spite.
Soon a motherland is deaf with words.
The music of the anthem does not decry
the politics of dissonance or closure.
It affirms nothing. And thus, it never lies,
never breaks the news in secret, the sons
set down in steady heartbeats: one, one, one.
from Denver Quarterly
GEORGE BRADLEY
* * *
Those Were the Days
We were happy as pigs in whatever makes a pig happy.
We caught world-class nightcrawlers in the rise-and-shine, and the pinguid poultry was as much as we could handle.
Seamstresses back then were many and available and kept us in stitches any time.
It was all good as gold, whether it glittered or not.
We averted our eyes before we leapt, and we landed on our own two knees.
We took misunderstandings right out of each other’s mouth.
Sure, we had needy acquaintances: some things don’t change.
Our money insisted on a trial separation, and you’d feel foolish, too.
We proposed nonstop, but God was mostly indisposed.
We called all cookware colorless, to be on the safe side.
Clothes made the men and unmade the women, so everybody opted for T-shirts and cargo pants, and we grew to fit the container.
We used it up, we wore it out, we made it do, as do the trout.
A penny saved was half a cent.
We guzzled wine for auld lang syne and said the buzz was never better.
We lost the drum and kept on marching.
As a rule we were safe. In the end we were sorry anyway.
from Raritan
JOYCE CLEMENT
* * *
Birds Punctuate the Days
apostrophe
the nuthatch inserts itself
between feeder and pole
semicolon
two mallards drifting
one dunks for a snail
ellipses
a mourning dove
lifts off
asterisk
a red-eyed vireo catches
the crane fly midair
comma
a down feather
bobs between waves
exclamation point
wren on the railing
takes notice
colon
mergansers paddle toward
morning trout swirl
em dash
at dusk a wild goose
heading east
question mark
the length of silence
after a loon’s call
period
one blue egg all summer long
now gone
from Modern Haiku
BRENDAN CONSTANTINE
* * *
The Opposites Game
for Patricia Maisch
This day my students and I play the Opposites Game
with a line from Emily Dickinson. My life had stood—
a loaded gun, it goes and I write it on the board,
pausing so they can call out the antonyms—
My
Your
Life
Death
Had stood?
Will sit
A
Many
Loaded
Empty
Gun?
Gun.
For a moment, very much like the one between
lightning and its sound, the children just stare at me,
and then it comes, a flurry, a hail storm of answers—
Flower, says one. No, Book, says another. That’s stupid,
cries a third, the opposite of a gun is a pillow. Or maybe
a hug, but not a book, no way is it a book. With this,
the others gather their thoughts
and suddenly it’s a shouting match. No one can agree,
for every student there’s a final answer. It’s a song,
a prayer, I mean a promise, like a wedding ring, and
later a baby. Or what’s that person who delivers babies?
A midwife? Yes, a midwife. No, that’s wrong. You’re so
wrong you’ll never be right again. It’s a whisper, a star,
it’s saying I love you into your hand and then touching
someone’s ear. Are you crazy? Are you the president
of Stupid-land? You should be, When’s the election?
It’s a teddy bear, a sword, a perfect, perfect peach.
Go back to the first one, it’s a flower, a white rose.
When the bell rings, I reach for an eraser but a girl
snatches it from my hand. Nothing’s decided, she says,
We’re not done here. I leave all the answers
on the board. The next day some of them have
stopped talking to each other, they’ve taken sides.
There’s a Flower club. And a Kitten club. And two boys
calling themselves The Snowballs. The rest have stuck
with the original game, which was to try to write
something like poetry.
&nb
sp; It’s a diamond, it’s a dance,
the opposite of a gun is a museum in France.
It’s the moon, it’s a mirror,
it’s the sound of a bell and the hearer.
The arguing starts again, more shouting, and finally
a new club. For the first time I dare to push them.
Maybe all of you are right, I say.
Well, maybe. Maybe it’s everything we said. Maybe it’s
everything we didn’t say. It’s words and the spaces for words.
They’re looking at each other now. It’s everything in this room
and outside this room and down the street and in the sky.
It’s everyone on campus and at the mall, and all the people
waiting at the hospital. And at the post office. And, yeah,
it’s a flower, too. All the flowers. The whole garden.
The opposite of a gun is wherever you point it.
Don’t write that on the board, they say. Just say poem.
Your death will sit through many empty poems.
from The American Journal of Poetry
MARYANN CORBETT
* * *
Prayer Concerning the New, More “Accurate” Translation of Certain Prayers
O Lord of the inverted verb,
You Who alone vouchsafe and deign,
Whom simpler diction might perturb,
To Whom we may not make things plain,
Forgive us now this Job-like rant:
These prayers translated plumb-and-squarely
Pinch and constrict us (though we grant
They broaden our vocabulary).
Hear us still if we mutter dully
With uninflected tongues and knees,
Shunning (see Matthew 6) the poly-
Syllables of the Pharisees.
