here among them the americans this baffling
multi people extremes and variegations their
noise restlessness their almost frightening
energy how best describe these aliens in my
reports to The Counselors
disguise myself in order to study them unobserved
adapting their varied pigmentations white black
red brown yellow the imprecise and strangering
distinctions by which they live by which they
justify their cruelties to one another
charming savages enlightened primitives brash
new comers lately sprung up in our galaxy how
describe them do they indeed know what or who
they are do not seem to yet no other beings
in the universe make more extravagant claims
for their importance and identity
like us they have created a veritable populace
of machines that serve and soothe and pamper
and entertain we have seen their flags and
foot prints on the moon also the intricate
rubbish left behind a wastefully ingenious
people many it appears worship the Unknowable
Essence the same for them as for us but are
more faithful to their machine made gods
technologists their shamans
oceans deserts mountains grain fields canyons
forests variousness of landscapes weathers
sun light moon light as at home much here is
beautiful dream like vistas reminding me of
home item have seen the rock place known
as garden of the gods and sacred to the first
indigenes red monoliths of home despite
the tensions i breathe in i am attracted to
the vigorous americans disturbing sensuous
appeal of so many never to be admitted
something they call the american dream sure
we still believe in it i guess an earth man
in the tavern said irregardless of the some
times night mare facts we always try to double
talk our way around and its okay the dreams
okay and means whats good could be a damn sight
better means every body in the good old u s a
should have the chance to get ahead or at least
should have three squares a day as for myself
i do okay not crying hunger with a loaf of
bread tucked under my arm you understand i
fear one does not clearly follow i replied
notice you got a funny accent pal like where
you from he asked far from here i mumbled
he stared hard i left
must be more careful item learn to use okay
their pass word okay
crowds gathering in the streets today for some
reason obscure to me noise and violent motion
repulsive physical contact sentinels pigs
i heard them called with flailing clubs rage
and bleeding and frenzy and screaming machines
wailing unbearable decibels i fled lest
vibrations of the brutal scene do further harm
to my metabolism already over taxed
The Counselors would never permit such barbarous
confusion they know what is best for our sereni
ty we are an ancient race and have outgrown
illusions cherished here item their vaunted
liberty no body pushes me around i have heard
them say land of the free they sing what do
they fear mistrust betray more than the freedom
they boast of in their ignorant pride have seen
the squalid ghettoes in their violent cities
paradox on paradox how have the americans
managed to survive
parades fireworks displays video spectacles
much grandiloquence much buying and selling
they are celebrating their history earth men
in antique uniforms play at the carnage whereby
the americans achieved identity we too recall
that struggle as enterprise of suffering and
faith uniquely theirs blonde miss teen age
america waving from a red white and blue flower
float as the goddess of liberty a divided
people seeking reassurance from a past few under
stand and many scorn why should we sanction
old hypocrisies thus dissenters The Counse
lors would silence them
a decadent people The Counselors believe i
do not find them decadent a refutation not
permitted me but for all their knowledge
power and inventiveness not yet more than raw
crude neophytes like earthlings everywhere
though i have easily passed for an american in
bankers grey afro and dashiki long hair and jeans
hard hat yarmulka mini skirt describe in some
detail for the amusement of The Counselors and
though my skill in mimicry is impeccable as
indeed The Counselors are aware some thing
eludes me some constant amid the variables
defies analysis and imitation will i be judged
incompetent
america as much a problem in metaphysics as
it is a nation earthly entity an iota in our
galaxy an organism that changes even as i
examine it fact and fantasy never twice the
same so many variables
exert greater caution twice have aroused
suspicion returned to the ship until rumors
of humanoids from outer space so their scoff
ing media voices termed us had been laughed
away my crew and i laughed too of course
confess i am curiously drawn unmentionable to
the americans doubt i could exist among them for
long however psychic demands far too severe
much violence much that repels i am attracted
none the less their variousness their ingenuity
their elan vital and that some thing essence
quiddity i cannot penetrate or name
Copyright © 1978, 1982 by Robert Hayden, from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
I do think of them
from time to time—
just now sucking the pulp
of a tangerine
the taste of which
is mostly texture,
in this spin-drunk season
that seems to forget
—us. —itself.
At the job I lost,
their husk carcasses
with the locust bean’s
cracked brown pods
rustled on the brick steps
leading into the white-walled
hours of computer screen;
their compressed toil
missing from the hives
they left agape in the backyard
of the next-door neighbor
who, recently divorced,
had brought us the jars
of honey I spooned into teas
I sipped in the break room
and watched at the window
as he continued to tend
the needle palm and hydrangea.
In the age of loss there is
the dream of loss
in which, of course, I
am alive at the center—
immobile but no one’s queen—
enveloped (beloved) in bees,
swathed in their wings’
wistful enterprise. They pry
the evolved thin eyelids
behind which I replay
the landscape as last I knew it
(crow feathers netting redder suns),
their empire’s droning edge
mindless in the spirals of
my obsolescing ears.
Beneath my feet
what kind of earth
I’m terrified to break
into sprint across to free
myself, to free them
from the myth they make
of me and then bury
below their dance
of manufactory;
what kind of future
they could die for if
punching into me their stings—
what future without risking
the same; and while, in either body
the buzzards of hunger conspire,
what kind of new
dread animal,
this shape we take?
Copyright © 2018 by Justin Phillip Reed. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 1, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
February on another coast is April
here. Astrology is months:
you are February, or are you
June, and who is
December? Who is books
read in spring, wingspan
between midnight
and mourning
Another starry tree, coastal
counterpoint where magnolia is
a brighter season
peach and pear
are grafted onto the same tree
fear and fat stick
to the same sprained bone
For this adolescent reprise
recycle everything trivial
but this time bring
the eye into sight:
make sight superior
to what is seen
A decade is to look at June
and see April
to look at April
and see February
Relief of repetition
seasons mean again,
one flowering branch suspended
in the half-light of spring
We sat on steps
beneath a tree
No: I walked by
The tree bloomed
and I looked up
Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Hayashida. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 22, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But 'twas no make-believe with you to-day,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover.
'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasting flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once—could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might our meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven't any memory—have you?—
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 25, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
Days are unusual. The owl sends out 5 zeroes from the pines plus one small silver nothing. Where do they float? Maybe out to sea, where jellyfish are aging left & right. They have some nerve. Today, no new wars, probably. No big button. The owl could be your scholar of trapped light or Walter Benjamin who writes a storm blows in from paradise. Thinking through these things each week, you cross the bridge: gold coils, fog, feelings… syllables also can grow younger like those jellyfish. You bring your quilt of questions in the car. At work, you’ll have to be patient at the risky enterprise of talking to other people; so little progress in this since the Pleistocene. Mostly, though, you’re calm when traveling: silver nothing, moving right & left; day releasing the caged stars; one thought mixed with no-thought, packed with light… for MK
Copyright © 2018 by Brenda Hillman. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 2, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
I wrote hard
on paper
at the bottom
of a pool
near a canyon
where the stars
slid onto their bellies
like fish
I wrote:
…
I went through
the mountain
through the leaves
of La Puente
to see the moon
but it was too late
too long ago
to walk on glass.
…
Near those years
when the house fell on me
my father told me
draw mom
in bed with
another man—
…
From a plum tree
the sound of branches
fall like fruit
I’m older
no longer afraid
my voice like water
pulled from the well
where the wind had been buried
where someone was always
running into my room
asking, what’s wrong?
Copyright © 2018 by Diana Marie Delgado. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 19, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
a love letter to traci akemi kato-kiriyama
does a voice have to be auditory to be a voice?
where in the body does hearing take place?
which are the questions that cannot be addressed in language?
which are the questions where promises lodge?
how do we hear what is outside our earshot?
when does distance look like closeness, feel like velvet sunrise cheek to cheek?
what are the objects, ideas, or experiences we drop beneath the more evident surfaces of our lives to the air or water or ground beneath? do we drop them purposefully? are they forgotten?
what word makes the body?
what body defies the word?
which figures, shapes, presences, haunts, methods, media, modes, ephemera, gestures, abandonments, models, anti-models, breaths, harmonics? which soil? which fields?
what does beginning sound like? what body does continuing form? what note does perseverance hum?
is a word a body?
which apertures? which hinges?
where does a body stand without settling?
through which holes does history break into our day?
where in the past does the future excavate?
where in the future does the past propel?
what are the distinctions between proximity and simultaneity?
where does a body resist without refusal?
can borders be exceeded? can borders be disintegrated?
where in the body does hearing take place?
where in the body does loving take place?
how do we make family with someone we do not know?
what do we carry with us and where in the body do we carry it?
might we be permitted a we this evening?
may I hold your hand? to feel your hand as its actual shape, clothed in its papery useful unequivocal skin, bones stacked like tiny branches, the balancing act of a bird, joints unlocking, span from thumb to pinky octaving out toward unfamiliar harmonics?
what space does the body occupy despite everything?
what does despitesound like? what does withsound like?
where does attake place? where does respite take place?
Copyright © 2018 by Jen Hofer. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 7, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
I will wade out till my thighs are steeped in burn- ing flowers I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air Alive with closed eyes to dash against darkness in the sleeping curves of my body Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery with chasteness of sea-girls Will I complete the mystery of my flesh I will rise After a thousand years lipping flowers And set my teeth in the silver of the moon
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 14, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.