Light the last light and lift—
and lift again in to that obscurity—
blue-skinned sky & what it cannot lead to—
the always immolated flesh of this world’s bone-shell—
what lasts? what goes like a trumpet blast
through the feathered
ear of the angel? There
& being & the evening air—
is in everything plummet—
& yet we go even some-
times rise—have you wondered?
that dark wick—flame both
inward & below light the first fire—
what does not burn
might still die—& yet
what does not might grow—may graft—
like leaf & branch together—
live this long lull
before the last:
let this
let my words
leave their black axe next to the tree
& may
the grace
of grace
feel through its fall
the way—
Copyright © 2019 by Dean Rader. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 9, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
—after Michael Heizer
I may be looking at the set of boulders
that is now in front of me, but it is you I am addressing.
You are near or you are far,
depending on the accuracy of the words I have chosen.
When my teacher told me to use this
instead of the, she was talking about the range between
the intimate and the conventional. The gray cluster
is radiant, but it is a melancholy radiance.
To describe it only seems to lean away
from what I intend. Maybe, then, touch is a better way
of explaining the pleasure of that
encounter: the surprise and familiarity of the plant
that you brush past in the dark of your
own house. Or maybe the always-new logic of a dream
is closer to the truth: the falling that takes place
in a place where there is no ground.
The boulders are there for me, an arrangement
and its warren of rooms. One door opening to foggy roses.
Another one opening to a dawn that is the color of tea.
Surely there will always be new language
to tell you who I am, imagination rousing
out of idleness into urgency, reaching now towards you.
I keep remembering my teacher and she is an image
of joy, the small and wordless music
of her silver bangles. This over the.
One of the rules for writing the poems of a lonely person.
Copyright © 2019 by Rick Barot. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 7, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Consider these parallel histories: An emperor once declared war on the sea, sent his men drowning toward victory, & the Red Sea is named for the dead algae blooming within it. Can you tell me the difference? Maybe I too am red for all the slaughter carried within me, bastard child of water, lake swelled with rotting fish. What are you searching for when you drag me from you? Your vein a riverbed dredged of impossible children. Cells tested for the echo of your mother’s name. Once you were carried in your mother, her belly a lake. If the child before you & all those after sunk, are you the blood or the water? A boat or the first unfinished wolf, wrenching itself from the sea? A bridge too carries bodies & the water carries it. Does this make the bridge a mother or a child? Your mother once told you that if she gave you life she could take it back. Does this make her the bridge or its necklace of nooses? The river or its surface tension? Liquor is lighter than water & so is gasoline. Both burn. Both stained-glass a surface in the sun. Common language says we drown in liquor, perhaps this means your mother is a lake beneath another’s surface. What does that make me? A bridge or a glass? Your mother’s mother? Sometimes I worry that you’ve forgotten me. Dry & sober as a boat. Your survival a matter of surface tension. Maybe you believe that you are the bridge, suspended above all your dead. Don’t forget, everything erodes. A canyon is just a river’s bastard child. Bruise deep in the dirt. All of man’s inventions topple, each bridge’s arches bullied down to cliché rust. Another history blooming the water red.
Copyright © 2019 by torrin a. greathouse. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 6, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Got up and dressed up and went out & got laid Then died and got buried in a coffin in the grave, Man— Yet everything is perfect, Because it is empty, Because it is perfect with emptiness, Because it's not even happening. Everything Is Ignorant of its own emptiness— Anger Doesn't like to be reminded of fits— You start with the Teaching Inscrutable of the Diamond And end with it, your goal is your startingplace, No race was run, no walk of prophetic toenails Across Arabies of hot meaning—you just numbly don't get there
From Mexico City Blues. Copyright © 1959 by Jack Kerouac. Used by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.
The Essence of Existence is Buddhahood— As a Buddha you know that all the sounds that wave from a tree and the sights from a sea of fairies in Isles of Blest and all the tastes in Nectar Soup and all the odors in rose arbour —ah rose, July rose— bee-dead rose— and all the feelings in the titwillow's chuckling throat and all the thoughts in the raggedy mop of the brain— one dinner
From Mexico City Blues. Copyright © 1959 by Jack Kerouac. Reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.
The night sounds like a murder
of magpies and we’re replacing our cabinet knobs
because we can’t change the world, but we can
change our hardware. America breaks my heart
some days, and some days it breaks itself in two.
I watched a woman have a breakdown in the mall
today and when the security guard tried to help her
what I could see was all of us
peeking from her purse as she threw it
across the floor into Forever 21. And yes,
the walls felt like another way to hold us in
and when she finally stopped crying,
I heard her say to the fluorescent lighting, Some days
the sky is too bright. And like that we were her
flock in our black coats and white sweaters,
some of us reaching our wings to her
and some of us flying away.
Copyright © 2019 by Kelli Russell Agodon. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 3, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Until all oppressed people
are free—
none of us are free.”
I.
the chains are different now—
lay on this body strange
no metal clanging in my ears
chains laying strange
chains laying light-weight
laying credit cards
laying welfare forms
laying buying time
laying white packets of dope
laying afros & straightened hair
laying pimp & revolutionary
laying mother & daughter
laying father & son
chains laying strange—
strange laying chains
chains
how do i break these chains
II.
the chains are different now—
laying on this body strange
funny chains—no clang
chains laying strange
chains laying light-weight
chains laying dishes
chains laying laundry
chains laying grocery markets
chains laying no voice
chains laying children
chains laying selective jobs
chains laying less pay
chains laying girls & women
chains laying wives & women
chains laying mothers & daughters
chains laying strange
strange laying chains
chains
how do i break these chains
III.
the chains are still here
laying on this body strange
no meta—no clang
chains laying strange
chains laying light-weight
chains laying funny
chains laying different
chains laying dyke
chains laying bull-dagger
chains laying pervert
chains laying no jobs
chains laying more taxes
chains laying beatings
chains laying stares
chains laying myths
chains laying fear
chains laying revulsion
chains laying strange
strange laying chains
chains
how do i break these chains
IV.
the chains are here
no metal—no clang
chains of ignorance & fear
chains here—causing pain
how do i break these chains
to whom or what
do i direct pain
Black—white
mother—father
sister—brother
straight—gay
how do i break these chains
how do i stop the pain
who do I ask—to see
what must i do—to be free
sisters—how do i break your chains
brothers—how do i break your chains
mothers—how do i break your chains
fathers—how do i break your chains
i don’t want to kill—
i don’t want to cause pain—
how—
how else do i break—your chains
Copyright © Anastasia Dunham-Parker-Brady 2019 for the Estate of Pat Parker. Used with permission.
We do not recognize the body
Of Emmett Till. We do not know
The boy’s name nor the sound
Of his mother wailing. We have
Never heard a mother wailing.
We do not know the history
Of this nation in ourselves. We
Do not know the history of our-
Selves on this planet because
We do not have to know what
We believe we own. We believe
We own your bodies but have no
Use for your tears. We destroy
The body that refuses use. We use
Maps we did not draw. We see
A sea so cross it. We see a moon
So land there. We love land so
Long as we can take it. Shhh. We
Can’t take that sound. What is
A mother wailing? We do not
Recognize music until we can
Sell it. We sell what cannot be
Bought. We buy silence. Let us
Help you. How much does it cost
To hold your breath underwater?
Wait. Wait. What are we? What?
What on Earth are we? What?
From The Tradition. Copyright © 2019 by Jericho Brown. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.
/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.
To pick a tulip from the garden, the red one. To put it on the desk In the small blue vase, here. No, Here. To incline toward it then, as if the flower could teach me something Of its art. Of my own art. When did we forget we were knit by waves, Not mind? Fomented in dirt, brazenly We rose from all fours and, from the wrenching losses of dusk, Conjugated our lullabies. To hear the red of the tulip searing air. And understand color, Then, as a way to parse The shy boson. The corals, dying. The man with burning eyes Who came up to me on the street today, asking for change. Anything, Miss, he said, then leaned in, conspiratorial. Just to get through.
Copyright © 2019 Clare Rossini. This poem originally appeared in Poetry Northwest, Winter & Spring 2019. Used with permission of the author.
When, at the end, the children wanted
to add glitter to their valentines, I said no.
I said nope, no, no glitter, and then,
when they started to fuss, I found myself
saying something my brother’s football coach
used to bark from the sidelines when one
of his players showed signs of being
human: oh come on now, suck it up.
That’s what I said to my children.
Suck what up? my daughter asked,
and, because she is so young, I told her
I didn’t know and never mind, and she took
that for an answer. My children are so young
when I turn off the radio as the news turns
to counting the dead or naming the act,
they aren’t even suspicious. My children
are so young they cannot imagine a world
like the one they live in. Their God is still
a real God, a whole God, a God made wholly
of actions. And I think they think I work
for that God. And I know they will someday soon
see everything and they will know about
everything and they will no longer take
never mind for an answer. The valentines
would’ve been better with glitter, and my son
hurt himself on an envelope, and then, much
later, when we were eating dinner, my daughter
realized she’d forgotten one of the three
Henrys in her class. How can there be three Henrys
in one class? I said, and she said, Because there are.
And so, before bed we took everything out
again—paper and pens and stamps and scissors—
and she sat at the table with her freshly washed hair
parted smartly down the middle and wrote
WILL YOU BE MINE, HENRY T.? and she did it
so carefully, I could hardly stand to watch.
Copyright © 2019 by Carrie Fountain. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 13, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you
This poem is in the public domain.
Is there a solitary wretch who hies To the tall cliff, with starting pace or slow, And, measuring, views with wild and hollow eyes Its distance from the waves that chide below; Who, as the sea-born gale with frequent sighs Chills with cold bed upon the mountain turf, With hoarse, half-utter’d lamentation, lies Murmuring responses to the dashing surf? In moody sadness, on the giddy brink, I see him more with envy than with fear; He has no nice felicities that shrink From giant horrors; wildly wandering here, He seems (uncursed with reason) not to know The depth or the duration of his woe.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 27, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.