The mist has left the greening plain,
The dew-drops shine like fairy rain,
The coquette rose awakes again
Her lovely self adorning.
The Wind is hiding in the trees,
A sighing, soothing, laughing tease,
Until the rose says "kiss me, please"
'Tis morning, 'tis morning.
With staff in hand and careless-free,
The wanderer fares right jauntily,
For towns and houses are, thinks he,
For scorning, for scorning,
My soul is swift upon the wing,
And in its deeps a song I bring;
come, Love, and we together sing,
" 'Tis morning, 'tis morning."
This poem is in the public domain.
Translated from Portuguese by John Keene Time is an essence I carry within me Time and its strands They've been coiled inside me since my navel was knotted It has as its complementary counterpart The space between time and its options Time, lord of the hours reigns sovereign Subtly, on a silver cord People don't kill time He is the killer.
Originally published in the December 2018 issue of Words Without Borders. © Cristiane Sobral. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2018 by John Keene. All rights reserved.
She, being the midwife
and your mother’s
longtime friend, said
I see a heart; can you
see it? And on the grey
display of the ultrasound
there you were as you were,
our nugget, in that moment
becoming a shrimp
or a comma punctuating
the whole of my life, separating
its parts—before and after—,
a shrimp in the sea
of your mother, and I couldn’t
help but see the fast
beating of your heart
translated on that screen
and think and say to her,
to the room, to your mother,
to myself It looks like
a twinkling star.
I imagine I’m not
the first to say that either.
Unlike the first moments
of my every day,
the new of seeing you was the first
—deserving of the definite article—
moment I saw a star
at once so small and so
big, so close and getting closer
every day, I pray.
Copyright © 2019 by Sean Hill. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 13, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
And now, having dismissed everyone as he
wishes he could dismiss his own dreams that make each
night restless—that same unswayable knowledge, and
the belief in it, that he is
king here, which means
being a stranger, at least outwardly, to even the least
trace of doubt—after all of this, the king has stepped
from the royal tent, is walking toward the sound
of water, where the river must be. There’s the river,
rivering south,
as rivers tend to. Beside the river,
two men are fucking. Young men. Almost too young
to even know about fucking, thinks the king, who can’t
help noticing how the men bring a somehow grace
to the business between them—a grace that some might
confuse with love. But the king
rarely makes mistakes,
which is to say, he knows mercy when he sees it. What
does mercy have to do with fucking? What does love
have to do with grace? What are dreams but the only
rivers memory knows how to make? There’s a kind of
music
to how the men routinely but unpredictably trade
places entering and withdrawing from each other. It’s as if
they’re singing a song that might go “I’m the king, no you’re
the king and I’m the river, no you’re the river.” On and on,
like that. Leave them; they do
no harm. The king making
his slow, insomnia-ed way back. The night dark but not dark
entirely: moonless, yes, but through the pines enough stars
still visible. Whoever goes there,
let me pass. Beneath
the brocaded cloak, each bead stitched to it by hand,
beneath the cloak of some more breathable, lighter fabric
beneath that, the king’s cock rests like tenderness itself
against the king’s left thigh. How soft the stars look.
From Star Map with Action Figures. Copyright © 2019 by Carl Phillips. Used with the permission of the poet.
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare;
But all the time
I’se been a’climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark,
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back;
Don’t you sit down on the steps,
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard;
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
This poem is in the public domain.
Now and then the phone will ring and it will be
someone from my youth. The voice of a favorite cousin
stretched across many miles sounding exactly as she always has:
that trained concentration of one who stutters—
the slight hesitations, the drawn-out syllables,
the occasional lapse into a stammer.
When asked, she says my aunt is well for her age but
she forgets. I remember the last time I saw my aunt—
leaning on her cane, skin smooth as river rock,
mahogany brown, gray hair braided into two plaits
stretched atop her head and held in place
with black bobby pins.
She called to say James Lee has died. And did I know
Aunt Mary, who had four crippled children
and went blind after uncle Benny died, died last year?
I did not.
We wander back awhile, reminding and remembering:
Me under the streetlight outside our front yard
face buried in the crook of my arm held close
to the telephone pole as I closed my eyes and sang the words:
Last night, night before, twenty-four robbers at my door
I got up to let them in... hit ‘em in the head with a rolling pin,
then counted up to ten while they ran and hid.
Visiting the graves of grandparents I never knew.
Placing blush-pink peonies my father grew and cut
for the occasion into mason jars. Saying nothing.
Simply staring at the way our lives come down
to a concrete slab.
Copyright © 2020 by Rhonda Ward. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 4, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
Now and then the phone will ring and it will be
someone from my youth. The voice of a favorite cousin
stretched across many miles sounding exactly as she always has:
that trained concentration of one who stutters—
the slight hesitations, the drawn-out syllables,
the occasional lapse into a stammer.
When asked, she says my aunt is well for her age but
she forgets. I remember the last time I saw my aunt—
leaning on her cane, skin smooth as river rock,
mahogany brown, gray hair braided into two plaits
stretched atop her head and held in place
with black bobby pins.
She called to say James Lee has died. And did I know
Aunt Mary, who had four crippled children
and went blind after uncle Benny died, died last year?
I did not.
We wander back awhile, reminding and remembering:
Me under the streetlight outside our front yard
face buried in the crook of my arm held close
to the telephone pole as I closed my eyes and sang the words:
Last night, night before, twenty-four robbers at my door
I got up to let them in... hit ‘em in the head with a rolling pin,
then counted up to ten while they ran and hid.
Visiting the graves of grandparents I never knew.
Placing blush-pink peonies my father grew and cut
for the occasion into mason jars. Saying nothing.
Simply staring at the way our lives come down
to a concrete slab.
Copyright © 2020 by Rhonda Ward. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 4, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
Let us, instead, consider the pockets
Martin Rodriguez sewed onto the insides
of his jacket and pants.
This was 5th grade.
This isn’t about the fact that he got caught
jacking a bunch of shit from Market Spot.
All of us wished we’d thought of it first.
We need
to stay focused on those extra pockets. How
big those caverns must have been—that fortune
of whispered temptation.
Boy-genius, we said.
Pockets for bags of apple-rings, beef jerky. A Pepsi
2-liter. Crunch bars. Cans of Cactus Cooler,
maybe. The lonely monster of desire bent us
away from boyhood, made it something small
that we wanted to toss rocks at.
Rolls of Oreos
in those pockets. Enough Doublemint gum
to anchor friends on a green recess field. A few
sheets of temporary tattoos to offer in class
while Mrs. Hawkins continued her lesson
on the Gold Rush.
I can see those pockets
pomegranate when pulled apart: a bloom
of endings across the Market Spot parking lot
as he tried to run. Bomb Pop ice cream bars,
or the cartoon kind with gumballs for eyes,
oozing out.
Look, I am talking about collapse.
As always. The rest of the poem wants to go
like this: I don’t know what happened
to Martin Rodriguez. He never came back
to school. But the truth is he returned to class
the next day.
We stood in a circle, laughing
about what he took until the day Manny
got caught smoking weed. Then we talked
about that until someone’s cousin got shot
after school by the computer lab. We played
Oregon Trail on Thursdays. None of us
could ever cross the river. I kept dying
of snake bite.
We got older and painted walls
for different crews. We became enemies, me
and Martin, drawing exes over each other. We
turned into no one, and then,
finally, we became
fathers. I saw him, years later, with his son.
We crossed each other on the street. Both of us
nodded and kept on moving toward the sidewalk.
So many years collapsing into each other,
I thought.
Someone has changed the sign
in front of the store. But if I say Market Spot
today, the homie points to where we watched
the cashier jump the counter and snatch Martin
into the air, splicing it with sugar. The sharp kick
of a boy’s legs. A body jolted into enough quiet
that police were called. Officers with notepads,
the cashier waving flies away from his face.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael Torres. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 16, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
for Chris Martin
To you
through whom
these sudden days
blowse & hum
thirst & quench
a tide of tensing trees
days tick by
beats in a song
my body grows
fuller each day
I think my life
has always been
for this quiet
darkness
your forehead
& eyelashes
face pressed
to my breast
your skin a texture
electrifying
my fingertips
wool on cotton
wool on glass
the fibers rise
& I can’t sleep
for being alive
Copyright © 2016 by Mary Austin Speaker. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 12, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
translated by Sasha Pimentel
The girls in Perth Amboy
add to the wind
their small tears
to loosen the torment.
I remember
the first time
on these grounds,
the mailbox, the snow,
your coupon book,
English class,
the smell of neglect
in the hallways.
So,
Winter,
the liminal sickness
of sidewalks.
The cold
at the corners of lips,
above the machines,
the counter
and vital signs,
Cold
intervening
the deep root of rage,
sowing what is solid
into the lawn,
heightening the rose’s stem,
and from your own kindness.
But I think,
dear Beth,
it must be true
that before us
was another tribe of wanderers,
shepherds of loss
these girls
in Perth Amboy
shaking the bedsheet,
cursing the weather,
their many errands,
and climbing regularly
the erect hill
of ire,
our
daily goddess,
the first language
we learned here,
our great, unexpected possession.
I ask myself
dear Beth,
is this bright,
hard, polished stone of rage
the land that we were promised?
Querida Beth
Las muchachas en Perth Amboy
agregan al viento
sus minúsculas lágrimas
para desatar la tormenta.
Recuerdo,
la primera vez de todo
en este predio:
el buzón, la nieve
tu libro de cupones
la clase de inglés,
el olor a desamparo
en los pasillos.
Entonces
el Invierno,
la enfermedad liminal
de las aceras.
El frío,
en la comisura de los labios,
arriba de las máquinas,
del mostrador
y de los signos vitales,
El frío
interviniendo
La raíz profunda de la rabia,
sembrando lo sólido en la grama
arreciando el tallo de la rosa
y de tu propia bondad.
Pero pienso,
querida Beth,
que debe ser cierto
que antes de nosotras
hubo otra peregrina tribu
pastora de la pérdida
esas muchachas
en Perth Amboy
sacudiendo la sábana
desdiciendo del clima,
de sus muchos oficios
y subiendo regularmente
la colina erguida
de la ira,
nuestra
diosa matutina,
la primera lengua que
aprendimos aquí,
nuestra gran posesión inesperada.
Yo me pregunto
querida Beth
¿es esta recia
lustrosa piedra pulida de la rabia
la tierra que nos prometieron?
Copyright © 2021 by Andrea Cote-Botero. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 11, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.