Copyright © 2017 by Alex Manley. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 27, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
Christmas Eve, 2016 Before everyone died – in my family – first definition I learned was – my mother’s maiden name, ULANDAY – which literally means – of the rain – and biology books remind us – the pouring has a pattern – has purpose – namesake means release – for my mother meant, flee – meant leave – know exactly what parts of you – slip away – drained sediment of a body – is how a single mama feels – on the graveyard shift – only god is awake – is where my – family banked itself – a life rooted in rosaries – like nuns in barricade – scream – People Power – one out of five – leave to a new country – the women in my family hone – in my heart – like checkpoints – which is what they know – which is like a halt – not to be confused for – stop – which is what happened to my ma’s breath– when she went home – for the last time – I didn’t get to – hold her hand as she died – I said I tried – just translates to – I couldn’t make it – in time – I tell myself – ocean salt and tear salt – are one and the same – I press my eyes shut – cup ghost howl – cheeks splint wood worn – which is to say – learn to make myself a harbor – anyway – once I saw a pamphlet that said – what to do when your parent is dead – I couldn’t finish reading – but I doubt it informs the audience – what will happen – which is to say – you will pour your face & hands – & smother your mother’s scream on everything – you touch – turn eyelids into oars – go, paddle to find her.
Copyright © 2019 by Kay Ulanday Barrett. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 8, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
In my favorite fantasy I am given permission I am prone face toward the light beach queen bathed in body A thought that comes from a coming-from the sweet place where a sunset isn’t indescribable something simply looked at The sun sets I sit sinless in sand I sip only once
Copyright © 2019 by Chase Berggrun. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 9, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Scrolling through the at-the-limit list of names,
I’m caught unaware: my phone displays a friend
I’ll never be able to call again.
Now that all that’s left of her are memories
I can’t delete her entry, it seems too final,
as if it would erase our entire past together.
Phones are democratic: jumbled together
are lovers and colleagues, name after name
in alphabetical order. It was she who finally
convinced me to get a phone; the day my friend
and I went to buy it is still a vivid memory:
I was having one of those lapses of memory;
not long before, he and I had spent the night together.
We run into him on the street; both he and my friend
expect an introduction, but I’ve forgotten his name.
I’ve now forgotten so many boys; only their names
remain, stored in my phone’s memory.
Those I can delete, but not my friend’s.
It’s as if all that remains of our friend-
ship is this metonymy of her name
on a SIM-card full of memories and names.
From Deleted Names (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2013). Copyright © 2013 by Lawrence Schimel. Used with the permission of the author.
I want to grow old with you.
Old, old.
So old we pad through the supermarket
using the shopping cart as a cane that steadies us.
I’ll wait at register two in my green sweater
with threadbare elbows, smiling
because you’ve forgotten the bag of day-old pastries.
The cashier will tell me a joke about barbers as I wait.
He repeats the first line three times
but the only word I understand is barber.
Over the years we’ve caught inklings
of our shrinking frames and hunched spines.
You’re a little confused
looking for me at the wrong register with a bag
of almost-stale croissants clenched in your hand.
The first time I held your hand it felt enormous in my own.
Sasquatch, I teased you, a million years ago.
Over here, I yell, but not in a mad way.
We’re laughing.
You have a bright yellow pin on your coat that says, Shalom!
Senior Discount, you say.
But the cashier already knows us.
We’re everyone’s favorite customers.
Copyright © 2016 by Ali Liebegott. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 30, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
I’m few deja-vus from repeating my whole life
I need to study the shapes of things before death
Before declaring myself a better failure:
waiting mostly for files to get uploaded or downloaded.
My movements are by the book.
I will remember history, all of it, before uttering the next sentence
And in its silence, I will navigate my headache
“something is not what it is”
And we are lost several worlds over
Exploring the art of other civilizations
After we subjugate them
And leave the trees behind
To carry on the sensitive task
Of clearing the air
Stop and think of the pointlessness of desire
We keep going, wasting days between orgasms
And thousands of poems
To keep the pleasantness of clothes
We are all implicated
In the father’s death,
The mother’s death etc.
Copyright © 2018 by Maged Zaher. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 16, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Copyright © 2019 by Omotara James. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 23, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
English is your fourth language
the baby of the family
the one your mouth spoils
favorite by default
who may one day be sold off by its siblings
in hopes to never return
all of your other tongues have grown jealous
your country has over 200 dialects
that’s over 200 ways
to say Love
to say family
to say I am a song
to say I belong to something
that does not want to kill me
& does not want to siphon the gold from my
blood or the stories from my bones
Copyright © 2019 by Pages Matam. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 6, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
when I dropped my 12-year-old off at her first homecoming dance, I tried not to look her newly-developed breasts, all surprise and alert in their uncertainty. I tried not to imagine her mashed between a young man's curiousness and the gym's sweaty wall. I tried not picture her grinding off beat/on time to the rhythm of a dark manchild; the one who whispered “you are the most beautiful girl in brooklyn” his swag so sincere, she'd easily mistaken him for a god.
Copyright © 2019 by Mahogany L. Browne. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 7, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
This fireman comes every afternoon
to the café on the corner
dressed for his shift in clean dark blues
This time it’s the second Wednesday of January
and he’s meeting his daughter again
who must be five or six
and who is always waiting for her father like this
in her charcoal gray plaid skirt
with green and red stripes
She probably comes here straight from school
her glasses a couple nickels thick
By now I know that she can sit (except
for her one leg swinging from the chair)
absolutely still while her father pulls
fighters’ wraps from his work bag
and begins half way down the girl’s forearm
winding the fabric in overlapping spirals
slowly toward her fist then he props
her wrist like a pro on his own hand
unraveling the black cloth weaving it
between her thumb and forefinger
around the palm taut but
not so much that it cuts off the blood then
up the hand and between the other fingers
to protect the knuckles the tough
humpback guppies just under the skin
He does this once with her left then again
to her right To be sure her pops knows he has done
a good job she nods Good job Good
Maybe you’re right I don’t know what love is
A father kisses the top of his daughter’s head
and knocks her glasses cockeyed
He sits back and downs the last of the backwash
in his coffee cup They got 10 minutes to kill
before they walk across the street down the block
and out of sight She wants to test
her dad’s handiwork by throwing
a couple jab-cross combos from her seat
There is nothing in the daughter’s face
that says she is afraid
There is nothing in the father’s face
to say he is not He checks his watch
then holds up his palms as if to show his daughter
that nothing is burning In Philadelphia
there are fires I’ve seen those in my lifetime too
Copyright © 2018 by Patrick Rosal. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 23, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
the blk(est) night
be a blk girl
she think
her hair
too good
& her waist
too small
& her fit
too cute
& her jeans
too flyy
& her mama ain't nothing
like her
& the bitches
on the corner
ain't nothing like her
& can't nobody sweat her style
but jesus
Copyright © 2015 by Mahogany Browne. From Smudge (Button Poetry, 2015). Used with permission of the author.
imagine your heart is just a ball you learned to dribble up
and down the length of your driveway back home. slow down
control it. plant your feet in the soft blue of your mat and release
it is hard but slowly you are unlearning the shallow pant
of your childhood. extend your body—do not reach
for someone but something fixed and fleshless and certain—
fold flatten then lift your head like a cobra sure of the sun
waiting and ready to caress the chill
from its scales. inhale—try not to remember how desperate
you’ve been for touch—yes ignore it—that hitch of your heart
you got from mornings you woke to find momma hysterical
or gone. try to give up the certainty she’d never return
recall only the return and not its coldness. imagine her arms
wide to receive you imagine you are not a thing that needs
escaping. it is hard and though at times you are sure
you will always be the abandoned girl trying to abandon herself
push up arch deep into your back exhale and remember—
when it is too late to pray the end of the flood
we pray instead to survive it.
Copyright © 2018 by Brionne Janae. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 22, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
for Tomica
My love is as ancient as my blood.
And of course my blood is still mine
because a woman, sweetened black
with good song, pulled me from the river
like an axe pulled back from the bark.
I learned love, first, as scar.
And of course my love is only mine
because I found the nerve to say it is.
Ha, My love is mine.
But was first my mother’s. Not the how
but the why. But was first her mother’s.
Not the how but the why.
Not the how; Not the how; Not the how;
Not the how; Not the how; Not the how.
I am bored with this beat. I seek
a different dance toward death.
Lord, listen up. Lean in:
I crave a love that happens as sweetly
as it was named. If love must be swung,
let it soften. Not split.
Copyright © 2019 by Donte Collins. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 8, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
I am taken with the hot animal
of my skin, grateful to swing my limbs
and have them move as I intend, though
my knee, though my shoulder, though something
is torn or tearing. Today, a dozen squid, dead
on the harbor beach: one mostly buried,
one with skin empty as a shell and hollow
feeling, and, though the tentacles look soft,
I do not touch them. I imagine they
were startled to find themselves in the sun.
I imagine the tide simply went out
without them. I imagine they cannot
feel the black flies charting the raised hills
of their eyes. I write my name in the sand:
Donika Kelly. I watch eighteen seagulls
skim the sandbar and lift low in the sky.
I pick up a pebble that looks like a green egg.
To the ditch lily I say I am in love.
To the Jeep parked haphazardly on the narrow
street I am in love. To the roses, white
petals rimmed brown, to the yellow lined
pavement, to the house trimmed in gold I am
in love. I shout with the rough calculus
of walking. Just let me find my way back,
let me move like a tide come in.
Copyright © 2017 by Donika Kelly. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 20, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
Like any mother I lived for my children. Bone of my bones, gave them my body as house, gave them my house as home. I was fruitful. I multiplied. Nothing was ever my own and I called this sacrifice, devotion. What I called them became their names. Some grew and some did not. Some were angry and some were not. Some murdered, some tended the flocks, some built boats to escape the flood. Some built towers into the sky. Some became pillars of salt. I fed them by the sweat of my brow. Some needed more than I could give them, though I saved only thorns and thistles for myself. God was a voice in the sky with no tree to burn. God was a shower of burning sulfur, a snake winding through the dirt. If I had a moment to spare, I might have bent to hear what he was saying.
Copyright © 2018 Holly Karapetkova. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review, Summer 2018.
imagine a tulip, upon seeing a garden full of tulips, sheds its petals in disgust, prays some bee will bring its pollen to a rose bush. imagine shadows longing for a room with light in every direction. you look in the mirror & see a man you refuse to love. small child sleeping near Clorox, dreaming of soap suds & milk, if no one has told you, you are a beautiful & lovable & black & enough & so—you pretty you—am i.
From Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Danez Smith. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.
In this field of thistle, I am the improbable
lady. How I wear the word: sequined weight
snagging my saunter into overgrown grass, blonde
split-end blades. I waltz in an acre of bad wigs.
Sir who is no one, sir who is yet to come, I need you
to undo this zipped back, trace the chiffon
body I’ve borrowed. See how I switch my hips
for you, dry grass cracking under my pretend
high heels? Call me and I’m at your side,
one wildflower behind my ear. Ask me
and I’ll slip out of this softness, the dress
a black cloud at my feet. I could be the boy
wearing nothing, a negligee of gnats.
From Prelude to Bruise (Coffee House Press, 2014). Copyright © 2014 by Saeed Jones. Used with permission of The Permissions Company on behalf of Coffee House Press.
you cannot read what you do not collect
the rain came in algidity after
suffocating heat still the ravaging of
marow is worth it tendons swollen &
seasoned with need madness is always
a hunger that i
am even able to eat is its own feat
i have learned to swallow charitably
cede my mouth to the gristle cede my tongue
to cartilage
a former fixation on writhing now what is
left? what is present when the flesh
rots away?
when the spirit returns to the magnitude it
belongs? when my
mother
taught me
how to
properly eat
chicken, she
told me truly
nothing had to
be left behind.
there is
meat through
the bone. this
makes
sense like
Matter.
nothing is
ever lost.
nothing is ever
gone if
devoured
completely.
Copyright © 2018 by jayy dodd. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 18, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
Grandma’s rosebush
reminiscent of a Vice Lord’s do-rag.
the unfamiliar bloom in Mrs. Bradley’s yard
banging a Gangster Disciple style blue.
the dandelions all over the park putting on
Latin King gold like the Chicano cats
over east before they turn into a puff
of smoke like all us colored boys.
picking dandelions will ruin your hands,
turn their smell into a bitter cologne.
a man carries flowers for 3 reasons:
• he is in love
• he is in mourning
• he is a flower salesman
i’m on the express train passing stops
to a woman. maybe she’s home.
i have a bouquet in my hand,
laid on 1 of my arms like a shotgun.
the color is brilliant, a gang war
wrapped & cut diagonal at the stems.
i am not a flower salesman.
that is the only thing i know.
From Wild Hundreds. Copyright 2015 by Nate Marshall. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
I am going to die.
No such thought has ever occurred to me
since the beginning of my exclusive time
in air, when God, having made my mind,
first began to wrap it, slowly and continuously,
in strips of linen soaked in a special admixture
of rosewater, chicken fat, and pinecones
studded with cloves to stop them from dripping.
Nor is it likely I would ever have had such a thought
in the time required by Him to finish the job,
if someone else had not first introduced the thought
into the process, thereby interrupting it,
however briefly. But who?
Copyright © 2018 Mary Ruefle. This poem originally appeared in Kenyon Review, September/October 2018. Used with permission of the author.
You might say fear is a predictable emotion & I might agree. Whenever my husband leaves for his graveyard shift, when he prepares to walk out into the abyss of black sky, I am afraid tonight will be the night I become a widow. I don't want to love like this. But here we are: walking hand in hand in our parkas down the avenues & he pulls away from me. I might be in some dreamy place, thinking of the roast chicken we just had, the coconut peas & rice he just cooked, & how the food has filled our bellies with delight. How many times can I speak about black men & an officer enters the scene? I don't want to love like this. But there is a gun in the holster & a hand on the gun in the holster & my husband's hands are no longer in his pockets because it is night & we are just trying to breathe in some fresh evening air, trying to be unpredictable, to forget fear for a moment & live in love & love.
Copyright © 2018 by DéLana R. A. Dameron. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 25, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
These days, I refuse to let you see me
the way I see myself.
I wake up in the morning not knowing
whether I will make it through the day;
reminding myself of the small, small things
I’ve forgotten to marvel in;
these trees, blood-free and bone-dry
have come to rescue me more than once,
but my saving often requires hiding
yet they stand so tall, so slim and gluttonous
refusing to contain me; even baobab trees
will split open at my command, and
carve out fleshless wombs to welcome me.
I must fall out of love of the world
without me in it, but my loves have
long gone, and left me in a foreign land
where once I was made of bone,
now water, now nothing.
Copyright © 2019 by Mahtem Shifferaw. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 6, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
I ripped my mother being born
and I am the only.
The oldest ripped my grandmother
and still came more.
We have a family history
of losing our heads,
of no one listening,
of telling someone before.
We are raucous and willful,
loud as thunder.
No one can forget us,
we bear our teeth.
We pass through bodies
like summer heat. We eat
and thicken, worry men.
They plead and suffer, come again.
I entered the world
a turning storm,
but no one stopped me
though they’d been warned.
Copyright © 2019 by Remica Bingham-Risher. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 12, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
I ripped my mother being born
and I am the only.
The oldest ripped my grandmother
and still came more.
We have a family history
of losing our heads,
of no one listening,
of telling someone before.
We are raucous and willful,
loud as thunder.
No one can forget us,
we bear our teeth.
We pass through bodies
like summer heat. We eat
and thicken, worry men.
They plead and suffer, come again.
I entered the world
a turning storm,
but no one stopped me
though they’d been warned.
Copyright © 2019 by Remica Bingham-Risher. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 12, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
We used to say,
That’s my heart right there.
As if to say,
Don’t mess with her right there.
As if, don’t even play,
That’s a part of me right there.
In other words, okay okay,
That’s the start of me right there.
As if, come that day,
That’s the end of me right there.
As if, push come to shove,
I would fend for her right there.
As if, come what may,
I would lie for her right there.
As if, come love to pay,
I would die for that right there.
From The Crazy Bunch by Willie Perdomo. Copyright © 2019 by Willie Perdomo. Published by arrangement with Penguin Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
You don’t love me, you say, and deflate
our air mattress, meeting me at the fold.
We’re in a bad lesbian performance piece
You don’t eat the sandwich I make you.
I puncture your yoga ball. Or, the dog did
This is a drawing of the dog.
I meant to watch something and be still
for a long time.
I'm not sure what belongs to me.
It’s your money
stop asking me what you mean
Porcelain skunk, perfect Q-tip holder.
Ceramic parrot, good for something.
If you don’t trust me with this cup then wrap it yourself.
The dog hasn’t stopped barking in hours—anxious.
I know you can lift the chair, what you can do
is not the point.
from Without Protection. Copyright © 2019 by Gala Mukomolova. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Coffee House Press.
“Child with continuing cling issue his No in final fire”
-Gwendolyn Brooks
sapphires are lovely as the Star of Bombay revered by Child.
she embodies its six rays replacing spoiled limbs. with
heat she hopes to change her lack luster, halt the continuing
spectrum a cousin sapped from her. a vampire’s cling,
she remembers his as cornflower blue. a distracting issue
a lover is not guilty of. how does he know it’s a turn off? he
cannot enter her that way nor retire to any position. No
moment to gaze without recall. shadows cannot swing in
the amber light. she admires little if at all. a final
twinge when lover pinch upon entering Crayola blush fire.
Copyright © 2019 by LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 18, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
My mother said this to me
long before Beyoncé lifted the lyrics
from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,
and what my mother meant by
Don’t stray was that she knew
all about it—the way it feels to need
someone to love you, someone
not your kind, someone white,
some one some many who live
because so many of mine
have not, and further, live on top of
those of ours who don’t.
I’ll say, say, say,
I’ll say, say, say,
What is the United States if not a clot
of clouds? If not spilled milk? Or blood?
If not the place we once were
in the millions? America is Maps—
Maps are ghosts: white and
layered with people and places I see through.
My mother has always known best,
knew that I’d been begging for them,
to lay my face against their white
laps, to be held in something more
than the loud light of their projectors
as they flicker themselves—sepia
or blue—all over my body.
All this time,
I thought my mother said, Wait,
as in, Give them a little more time
to know your worth,
when really, she said, Weight,
meaning heft, preparing me
for the yoke of myself,
the beast of my country’s burdens,
which is less worse than
my country’s plow. Yes,
when my mother said,
They don’t love you like I love you,
she meant,
Natalie, that doesn’t mean
you aren’t good.
*The italicized words, with the exception of the final stanza, come from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song “Maps.”
Copyright © 2019 by Natalie Diaz. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 20, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?—
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.
From A Street in Bronzeville by Gwendolyn Brooks, published by Harper & Brothers. © 1945 by Gwendolyn Brooks. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
no one speaks of how tendrils feed on the fruits
of my demise these dead hands for instance that alight phlox
wild strawberry and pine this is my body out of context rotting in the wrong hemisphere
I died so all my enemies would tremble at my murmur how it populates their homes
so I could say to the nearest fellow dead person I know more than
all my living foes I’ve derived sun-fed design for once from
closing my oak eyes now they’ll never snare the civilian
pullulating my throat
Copyright © 2019 by Xan Phillips. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 26, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
My son wants to know
his name. What does he look like? What does
he like? My son swims
four days a week. When my son swims
underwater, he glides
between strokes. When he glides underwater, he is
an arrow aimed
at a wall. Four days a week, his coach says,
Count—1…2…—before
coming up for air.
My father had blue eyes, blonde hair,
though mine are brown.
My father could not speak
Spanish and wondered, How can you love
another man? We rarely touched.
When my son
is counting, I count
with him. I say, I am
your father, too. 1…2…
Copyright © 2019 by Blas Falconer. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 18, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Outside the water sings
its tortuous note,
devoid of the parrot,
devoid of the quetzal.
A song without ears,
a dry silk wrapped around the throat,
neither warm nor cold
but a vacillation between the two.
A hammer swinging
through the aether of the flesh,
the mind’s red line.
Tonight a part of me shivers, liking it,
my whole body in one place,
where steel drags along.
I wonder if the body wants more
to open or to shut.
Copyright © 2019 by Stephanie Adams-Santos. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 27, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
In some other life, I can hear you
breathing: a pale sound like running
fingers through tangled hair. I dreamt
again of swimming in the quarry
& surfaced here when you called for me
in a voice only my sleeping self could
know. Now the dapple of the aspen
respires on the wall & the shades cut
its song a staff of light. Leave me—
that me—in bed with the woman
who said all the sounds for pleasure
were made with vowels I couldn’t
hear. Keep me instead with this small sun
that sips at the sky blue hem of our sheets
then dips & reappears: a drowsy penny
in the belt of Venus, your aureole nodding
slow & copper as it bobs against cotton
in cornflower or clay. What a waste
the groan of the mattress must be
when you backstroke into me & pull
the night up over our heads. Your eyes
are two moons I float beneath & my lungs
fill with a wet hum your hips return.
It’s Sunday—or so you say with both hands
on my chest—& hot breath is the only hymn
whose refrain we can recall. And then you
reach for me like I could’ve been another
man. You make me sing without a sound.
Copyright © 2019 by Meg Day. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 1, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
1.
Propped against a tree on a sidewalk next
to the trash cans, shorn of sheets, its fabric
a casing for its coils, harborer of secretions
seeped and dried, its phosphorous surface
glitters abandoned skin flakes in moonlight,
shingles from roof sides of humans. Mucous
trails pearlescent from a snail crawled up
the trunk of the tree upon which this bed
formerly slept on now leans. Loved upon?
Perhaps. Dreamt on most definitely. Hands
on skin most definitely, the stains it harbors
are the trails of dreams, the shotguns aimed
at baby carriages, molars boring holes into
the palm upon which they are cast like dice,
and the mystery of love as scratchy and fine
smelling as the needle tree that carried you
off with its scent of resin: it’s a hideous thing.
2.
Sheet marks on the face won’t disappear into
the water filling the basin. Under the eyes dark
lakes before the resinous reflection of window
cast into mirror by interior lights set against
the night. Do you wonder if I dream of your
shattering? Marks on the face don’t melt into
the water. It would be strange to dream that
hard for a stranger, even for you who became
strange within an hour. Yet, I am waking from
the press of your face against my face. Carried
off over the shoulder, hauled through doorways,
receiving your murder, once this mattress was
bent at its middle, sagged profuse as a gaping
blouse, and bore stains of which I was never
aware while asleep. You knew. You were there
too. You will dream of congress between us.
I withdraw my hand. I refuse. Haul me away.
Copyright © 2019 by Cate Marvin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 15, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
/1/ What forest is there to run to, other than the one within another’s heart? What appears to be deeply rooted is half dead drowning and sucking at the sun. /2/ I hate to say this but what is stable can be easily disrupted, and what is easily disrupted can cloud even the clearest of days. This is what I have come to know after being turned on, turned over, and turned round. /3/ I want to spark the heat of this body with the heart, with the heart of the heart, with the heart of the heart of this body, with the whole body of the heart, and then I want to slow it down and tinker with it. I want to slow it all the way downdowndown to a gentle timber, or fall. /4/ To pioneer is to take part in the beginnings of something. Come, Pioneer. I am tired of shepherding this heart. Help me to believe. Come. I am near willing to give it up and over. Come, before I bury it all under.
Copyright © 2019 Leah Umansky. This poem originally appeared in Poetry Northwest, Winter & Spring 2019. Used with permission of the author.
I wake in the golden belly of this abode
and sense some diurnal grace at work.
I take my body to the fall, to bathe
and anoint my genitals with shea.
I have made my journey to the cold hills
to commune with my people there.
I come for the second beautiful harvest
and have waited long to look into its eye.
The harvest hosts libations, the meal
and my desire—so I drink the deep
heady liquid of its languid stare, under
the hum of many voices: burgeoning
friendships and reunion in the low light.
I break into the soft weirdness of injera
and dip my fingers into the meat stew,
to celebrate the glory of the kings.
The clear splendor of the serving boy,
his slow blink as of a camel, does not
distract me—here to reap but seduced
by the second beautiful harvest.
Copyright © 2019 by Dante Micheaux. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 14, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
three girls ago
bloodroot: it was Eid
Al-Adha: a man
I loved shoved
my face into
German reeds
I can still feel his sweat
when I unsleep: the cleave
of his breath-lice
warming chains
of my necklace
I was without people
oh so summerful
I invented my girlhood
I languaged myself
a knife-body
yet all uncles said
I’m badly woven: bad
muslin: say forgiveness
comes easy say freckledirt
buried the faces
of my sisters: lakewarm
& plentiful—
we kiss we touch
we Magdalene each
other it’s true
during the adhan I pulled
down my tights
nylon black like the chador
of my mother
I licked from my yesterlove
the salt licked
real good—to pluck it again
I must whorl ad nauseam
for the addendum
of flesh the soft
sumac, cottonwood hard
as the nipples
he circled
we are singing
it’s spring and God to my song
is unlistening, unlistening
o Maryam o Miriam
o Mary we are undying
we are not gone
are not slayed we are
unslaying—our hand
wields this life
and I ply myself
out come here
between my legs
come in all are welcome who believe
Copyright © 2019 by Aria Aber. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 9, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.