by David Lehman
I want to say the same thing in a variety of different ways. Or I want to say many different things, but merely one way.
Perhaps there is only one word after all. Beneath all languages, beneath all other words: only one. Perhaps whenever we speak we are repeating it. All day long, the same single word over and over again.
Choose something dark. Choose a dark line to hang above you. If you want to see what light can do, always choose the dark.
Out on the ice, the light can blind you. The annals laced with men who set out without the protection of darkness. All finished blind.
Blackbirds, black bowhead whales, the raven, the night sky, the body inside, blue ink, pencil lead, chocolate, marzipan. Like us.
All water is a color. But what does that have to do with you and me, Matthew?
Maybe life is just this: walking with each other from one dark room to another. And looking.
Sometimes the paintings come to life. Sometimes you just love the word pewter. Sometimes the ocean waves at you. Sometimes there are goldfish in a jar. A bowl of oranges. Sometimes a woman steps down out of a frame and walks toward you. Sometimes she discards the white scarf, which covers her, and reveals her real body. Sometimes she leaves, moments later, covered in a striped jacket and leather hat.
Our lady of the dressing table.
Our lady of the rainy day.
Our lady of palm leaves, periwinkle, calla lilies.
Our lady of acanthus.
A garden redone three times.
Sometimes someone you love just falls through. Gone. The blue massive ridges of pressure shift, float away, move. Sometimes the ice breaks open. That’s it. Sledge, dogs and all.
I fell through once. I’d grown cold, so I stood up and walked to get my coat. I was told it was hanging on the far wall of a very dark room. Because it was dark, I could see, really see—for the first time—how a particular gold thread sparkled on the collar. I reached out my hand. But before the wall, there was a large hole where stairs were being built, which I could not see. I walked into air and landed on my head. Underground.
Everything then turned a vivid black.
I wonder, Matthew, when you were out on the ice for years, trying very hard not to fall through, I wonder whether—like me—you ever thought of the same woman over and over again, whether you ever imagined her draped in a loose-fitting emerald robe, seated in a pink velvet chair, engulfed by a black so bright it was luminous?
I do.
Sometimes I lie here in bed before the fire, unable to move—this cane, this hideous cane, this glorious cane, cutting cane—and imagine that one particular curl falling forward toward her forehead. I imagine the same curl at this angle, then that. A recurring dream. When my bed becomes a vast field of frozen ice the color of indigo, and I cannot move, I begin to see her face. Each strand of her hair becomes a radiant small flame, twisting and burning so quietly. Then I look at your picture, you out on the ice, and I wonder if you ever feel like that, Matthew?
Like a woman, faceless and flung over
a desk, at rest or in tears, exquisite
quickly drawn ruffles about your shoulder,
halos of wide banana leaves
hovering just above your head?
Were there images you could not fling
from your mind? Events that clung
to you, coated you, repeating
themselves in a series: movements
or instruments in a symphony?
Objects that would not let you go:
an avocado tree; a certain street
at night where someone exceptionally kind
once took your arm as the two of you walked
along a wet sidewalk; trying
to remember the light on that certain gait:
your mother twirling a parasol, also walking
through a grove of olive trees?
Did you begin to find comfort
in the serial, the inexplicable and constant
reappearance of things, people, sensations,
every moment symphonically realized
and reentered. The way the days begin
to rhyme. Every moment
walking into the room again.
Sledge after sledge.
Matthew?
I fell through, into a hole in the floor. I landed far below, on my head. Sometimes I still forget my name. Sometimes I forget yours. Sometimes I forget how to spell the. Regularly I am unable to remember Adam Clayton Powell. Or how to conjugate exist. Sometimes I lie in bed and cannot feel my legs. It’s like something quietly gnawed them off while I was in the kitchen making tea. From the knees down: this odd sensation, not nothing, but something, just not legs. If ice were not cold perhaps. Or the memory of a leg. I cannot feel my legs, but I can feel their memory.
In conversation, my face goes numb. It starts at my mouth and spreads out. When I am quiet it recedes. Why is numbness ascribed the color blue? It’s not. It’s red.
By the end of the day, my left hand has disappeared from the end of my arm. I ignore it. Hold my pen. Smile at you. What year is it, darling? I once lived where? With whom? Where is she now? What was her name?
I remember nurses. Their faces. Someone very, very kind—a woman—began to tape a pen inside my hand. I remember being suspended in a harness. Being lowered down into a warm blue pool. All the other patients there were very old. Here is how we all learned to walk properly again. Underwater. Blue.
Once I fell through—into the dark.
Braces and casts.
Being told not to write.
Being told not to read.
Forgetting someone I once promised I would never forget.
Remembering her finally, one year, then forgetting her again, the next day.
Remembering not remembering I’d forgotten.
Forgetting them completely.
When I look at photographs of Matisse, unable to walk, drawing on the wall from the bed, his charcoal tied to the end of a very long pole, I stop breathing.
Him, I think. Yes. I could marry him.
I could slip into his bed.
We could talk about real things.
I could be his dark line hovering above.
We could watch the light turning the room every color.
from Gulf Coast
DAVID MASON
* * *
First Christmas in the Village
It was unanticipated, the birth,
and late at that, stormy and close,
as we were gathered in by the hearth.
Nothing about it called for words,
though the widow had no children
and taught a game with playing cards.
A fisherman brought an octopus
that sizzled on a metal grate
over the pulsing olive coals.
The widow’s father leaned to the fire
and with a dark blade sawed off a leg
and laid it burning on my plate.
It tasted like a briny steak
with tentacles like tiny lips
oozing the savor of the sea,
my first octopus, its brain afire.
And the illicit cards—Don’t tell the priest—
a wink at caution in the game of living.
That night all human struggle ended,
or recollection wants it so.
That night all murders were forgotten
in the salt abundance and the storm
and the warm fire in the widow’s house
when the vast peace was said to be born.
That night I carried a bucket of coals
back to my rented dwelling, wind
trailing the fading sparks behind—
a small fire, for the warmth it made
as the stars held steady in the dome,
and sleep became an open grave.
from The New Criterion
ROBERT MORGAN
* * *
Window
There is
a kind of oak, a black
or maybe Spanish oak, whose leaves
turn only after a hard freeze
to reddish orange with just a hint
of silver in the sheen, so subtle,
unique, you have to stop and drink
it in among the now bare woods.
The color might be something in
a chapel tower, above an altar,
a place to pause and to attend,
beyond the cattails in the ditch,
the dying weeds, the rotting mulch.
from Southern Poetry Review
AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL
* * *
Invitation
Come in, come in—the water’s fine! You can’t get lost here—even
if you wanted to hide behind a clutch of spiny oysters. I’ll find you.
If you ever leave me at night, by boat—you’ll see
the arrangement of golden sun stars in a sea of milk
and though it’s tempting to visit them—stay. I’ve been trained
to look up and up all my life, no matter the rumble on earth
but I’ve learned it’s okay to glance down once in a while
into the sea. So many lessons bubble up if you just know
where to look. Clouds of plankton hurricaning in open
whale mouths will send you east and chewy urchins will slide
you west. Squid know how to be rich with ten
empty arms. There are humans who don’t know the feel
of a good bite and embrace at least once a day. Underneath
you, narwhals spin upside down while their singular tooth needles
you like a compass pointed toward home. Deep where
imperial volutes and hatchetfish live, colors humans have
not yet named glow in caves made from black coral and clamshell.
A giant squid finally let itself be captured in a photograph
and the paper nautilus ripple-flashes scarlet and two kinds
of violet when it silvers you near. Who knows what
will happen next? If you still want to look up, I hope you see
the dark sky as oceanic, boundless, limitless—like all
the shades of blue revealed in a glacier. Let’s listen
how this planet hums with so much wing, fur, and fin.
from Poetry
HIEU MINH NGUYEN
* * *
B.F.F.
I lie in the dark & stretch the portrait
of a white woman across my face
until it splits. Beneath my bed, a catalogue
of half-faced women sing me to sleep.
I’ll start with Amanda Elias
& how I thought, in order to be worthy
of desire, I had to wear her skin.
For four years I sat across from her
in the lunchroom, mimicked her posture
blinked when she did, became the mirror
so concerned with the rise & fall
of each one of her blemishes
I even took her to the winter formal
watched, in the green glow of the gymnasium
at how I—she danced, chiffon willow
silk mystic. I watched how the boys held her
whispered a joke in her ear that made me laugh.
Stupid boys. Stupidstupid boys.
I tell the man in the chatroom
I am a platter of soft curls. Send him her photo.
Crack an egg & remove the yolk.
He could marry me, you know? You don’t.
She would never. Once, after another heartbreak
she came to school with cuts on her wrist
& maybe my rage was out of concern—I was
after all, a great friend, unflinching in my kindness
or maybe I hated how ungrateful she was
or maybe I thought her technique was pathetic
horizontal, barely breaking the first layer
or maybe I wanted a bigger opening
to attach a zipper, slip on her hand-me-downs
& somehow she must’ve known all along
her body was a dress I hung for motivation
the way she cried while I held her wrist
dabbing it with cold water, inspecting the damage
how she kept on saying, Sorry Sorry.
from BuzzFeed
ALFRED NICOL
* * *
Addendum
Give to Caesar what is his,
namely, everything there is.
I see a lot of eyebrows raised.
Let’s check the books. You’ll be amazed.
An x. An o. A hug and kiss.
Render unto Caesar this.
Render unto Caesar that.
His the dog, his the cat.
Render up your reading time.
Render, too, your reverie.
Render up the uphill climb,
render what you hope to be.
If God is dead, does Caesar get
the flip side of the coin? You bet!
Render up. You’ll never win.
The croupier will rake it in.
Caesar’s arms are open wide;
your whole estate will fit inside.
from First Things
NKOSI NKULULEKO
* * *
Skin Deep
Pardon the black water
in the sink, restless &
tyrannical in its wading.
The plate’s shellacked
face folds into my own,
reflects another face I
have inherited these past
few years. The faucet
runs endlessly, so fluid
with brisk pace, it seems
to almost be entering the
mouth of which it exits.
I look into the water, now
blackened from a series
of elements like foam &
foreign liquid making its
home in this metal bowl,
factory of carved ceramics
& glass forms. I heard the
spoon bends when we can
deny its existence but of
course you can’t deny this:
Race, so permanent upon
ourselves, it becomes our
own tombstone with names.
I once tried to drown my
skin & be human without it.
Jump in, said the knife &
I did, through the soap, slick
debris of white foam, glazing
this fine black creek. I dived
skin first, then the body,
wading, wading, waiting
for something to clean me.
from The Adroit Journal
SHEANA OCHOA
* * *
Hands
I see them daily managing their way
around my body, my house, the pages
I turn. Hands of my father, sinewy
and scarred, they splinter the cold.
Hands of my mother, feline
and fearless, they wade the moon’s
pools. With age I have noticed cracks
overcrowding the skin. Perhaps
there was a time when my fingers
awoke spring petals from hibernation,
crafted Nahuatlan sundials, slayed
minotaur charging by the sea.
There is a map in the seat of my palm
—a plan of a city I’ve never been,
instructions to the lost poetry
of Sappho, or a codified explanation
for the Milky Way—but a wheat
brown mole covers the key.
from Catamaran
SHARON OLDS
* * *
Silver Spoon Ode
I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth
and a silver knife, and a silver fork.
I would complain about it—the spoon was not greasy,
it tasted like braces, my shining access
to cosmetic enhancement. And I complained about
the taste of my fillings in my very expensive
mouth, as if only my family was paying—
where did I think the rich got
their money but from everyone else?
My mother beat me in 4/4 time,
and I often, now, rant to her beat—I wear
her rings as if I killed her for them, as my
people killed, and climbed up over
the dead. And I sound as if I am bragging
about it. I was born with a spoon instead of a
tongue in my mouth—dung spoon,
diamond spoon. And who would I be
to ask for forgiveness? I would be a white girl.
And I hear Miss Lucille, as if on the mountain
where I’d stand beside her, and brush away the insects,
and sometimes pick one off her, sometimes
by the wings, and toss it away. And Lucille
is saying, to me, You have asked for enough,
and been given in excess. And that thing in your mouth,
open your mouth and let that thing go,
let it fly back into the mine where it was brought
up from the underworld at the price of
lives, beloved lives. And now,
enough, Shar, now a little decent silence.
from The Nation
JACQUELINE OSHEROW
* * *
Tilia cordata
Here, near the desert, the air’s so dry
even the scent of lilac and peony
won’t carry very far. And they’ve been gone
for a good few weeks now. It’s the end of June,
the foothills’ transitory emerald
