[aradiambicpentameter]

Dear One Absent This Long While

It has been so wet stones glaze in moss; everything blooms coldly. 

I expect you. I thought one night it was you at the base of the drive, you at the foot of the stairs, you in a shiver of light, but each time leaves in wind revealed themselves, the retreating shadow of a fox, daybreak. We expect you, cat and I, bluebirds and I, the stove. In May we dreamed of wreaths burning on bonfires over which young men and women leapt. June efforts quietly. I’ve planted vegetables along each garden wall so even if spring continues to disappoint we can say at least the lettuce loved the rain. I have new gloves and a new hoe. I practice eulogies. He was a hawk with white feathered legs. She had the quiet ribs of a salamander crossing the old pony post road. Yours is the name the leaves chatter at the edge of the unrabbited woods.

-- Lisa Olstein

[aradiambicpentameter]

Ramadan

You wanted to be so hungry, you would break into branches, and have to choose between the starving month’s nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-third evenings. The liturgy begins to echo itself and why does it matter? If the ground-water is too scarce one can stretch nets into the air and harvest the fog. Hunger opens you to illiteracy, thirst makes clear the starving pattern, the thick night is so quiet, the spinning spider pauses, the angel stops whispering for a moment— The secret night could already be over, you will have to listen very carefully— You are never going to know which night’s mouth is sacredly reciting and which night’s recitation is secretly mere wind— - Kazim Ali

[aradiambicpentameter]

March

Now I know that Spring will come again, Perhaps to-morrow: however late I've patience After this night following on such a day. While still my temples ached from the cold burning Of hail and wind, and still the primroses Torn by the hail were covered up in it, The sun filled earth and heaven with a great light And a tenderness, almost warmth, where the hail dripped, As if the mighty sun wept tears of joy. But 'twas too late for warmth. The sunset piled Mountains on mountains of snow and ice in the west: Somewhere among their folds the wind was lost, And yet 'twas cold, and though I knew that Spring Would come again, I knew it had not come, That it was lost too in those mountains chill. What did the thrushes know? Rain, snow, sleet, hail, Had kept them quiet as the primroses. They had but an hour to sing. On boughs they sang, On gates, on ground; they sang while they changed perches And while they fought, if they remembered to fight: So earnest were they to pack into that hour Their unwilling hoard of song before the moon Grew brighter than the clouds. Then 'twas no time For singing merely. So they could keep off silence And night, they cared not what they sang or screamed; Whether 'twas hoarse or sweet or fierce or soft; And to me all was sweet: they could do no wrong. Something they knew- I also, while they sang And after. Not till night had half its stars And never a cloud, was I aware of silence Stained with all that hour's songs, a silence Saying that Spring returns, perhaps to-morrow. 

-- Edward Thomas

[aradiambicpentameter]

Drone

Do strangers make you human

Science fiction visiting bodies as cold fact

What unknown numbers govern our genes or phones

A constant thrum from outer space

Snow makes a sound in sand

You are seen from far far above

Unheard and vanished

bodies dismember to dirt

Hardly alive, hardly a person anymore

Who will I be next and in that life will you know me

- Kazim Ali

[aradiambicpentameter]

“Cornel West makes the point...”

Cornel West makes the point that hope is different from American optimism. After the initial presidential election results come in, I stop watching the news. I want to continue watching, charting, and discussing the counts, the recounts, the hand counts, but I can­not. I lose hope. However Bush came to have won, he would still be winning ten days later and we would still be in the throes of our American optimism. All the non-reporting is a distraction from Bush himself, the same Bush who can't remember if two or three people were convicted for dragging a black man to his death in his home state of Texas.

/

You don't remember because you don't care. Some­times my mother's voice swells and fills my forehead. Mostly I resist the flooding, but in Bush's case I find myself talking to the television screen: You don't know because you don't care. /

Then, like all things impassioned, this voice takes on a life of its own: You don't know because you don't bloody care. Do you? /

I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recog­nition that a life can not matter. Or, as there are billions of lives, my sadness is alive alongside the recognition that billions of lives never mattered. I write this with­out breaking my heart, without bursting into anything. Perhaps this is the real source of my sadness. Or, per­haps, Emily Dickinson, my love, hope was never a thing with feathers. I don't know, I just find when the news comes on I switch the channel. This new ten­dency might be indicative of a deepening personality flaw: IMH, The Inability to Maintain Hope, which translates into no innate trust in the supreme laws that gov­ern us. Cornel West says this is what is wrong with black people today—too nihilistic. Too scarred by hope to hope, too experienced to experience, too close to dead is what I think.

-- Claudine Rankin

[aradiambicpentameter]

Pulled Over in Short Hills, NJ, 8:00 AM

It’s the shivering. When rage grows hot as an army of red ants and forces the mind to quiet the body, the quakes emerge, sometimes just the knees, but, at worst, through the hips, chest, neck until, like a virus, slipping inside the lungs and pulse, every ounce of strength tapped to squeeze words from my taut lips, his eyes scanning my car’s insides, my eyes, my license, and as I answer the questions 3, 4, 5 times, my jaw tight as a vice, his hand massaging the gun butt, I imagine things I don’t want to and inside beg this to end before the shiver catches my hands, and he sees, and something happens. 

- Ross Gay

[aradiambicpentameter]

Over Cooling Tea We Waited On the Dawn

Over cooling tea we waited on the dawn The dissipating steam a zone of ephemeral neutrality between us Rain lay soft hands across the window The wind’s insistent whisper telling us nothing That we did not already know Last night’s supper still hung on the air A collision of scents A confusion of tastes An opposition of desires Dishes were crash-landed in the sink Where the water held a skin of grease Like the first gathering of scar tissue across a self-inflicted wound Smeared sickly orange by a streetlamp’s alien glow Two empty wine bottles on the table One red, one white – was ever anything more obvious? A rubble of cigarette ends overflowing the ashtray And a letter crumpled illegible yet still absolute to the shape of your fist The clock’s awful signature shifting us unwilling into the day Increments of time, glacial, unyielding Tongues wrapped firmly around the false comfort of silence Each challenge, each denial, mutely articulate There was nothing more to say And we were finding all the ways in which to say it

- Simon J. Charlton 

[aradiambicpentameter]

In Transit -- Eki̇n Aydoğdu

[aradiambicpentameter]

How To Cut A Pomegranate

'Never,' said my father, 'Never cut a pomegranate through the heart. It will weep blood. Treat it delicately, with respect. Just slit the upper skin across four quarters. This is a magic fruit, so when you split it open, be prepared for the jewels of the world to tumble out, more precious than garnets, more lustrous than rubies, lit as if from inside. Each jewel contains a living seed. Separate one crystal. Hold it up to catch the light. Inside is a whole universe. No common jewel can give you this.’ Afterwards, I tried to make necklaces of pomegranate seeds. The juice spurted out, bright crimson, and stained my fingers, then my mouth. I didn't mind. The juice tasted of gardens I had never seen, voluptuous with myrtle, lemon, jasmine, and alive with parrot's wings. The pomegranate reminded me that somewhere I had another home. -Imtiaz Dharker

[aradiambicpentameter]

Brilliance

Maggie's taking care of a man who's dying; he's attended to everything, said goodbye to his parents, paid off his credit card. She says Why don't you just run it up to the limit? but he wants everything squared away, no balance owed, though he misses the pets he's already found a home for -- he can't be around dogs or cats, too much risk. He says, I can't have anything. She says, A bowl of goldfish? He says he doesn't want to start with anything and then describes the kind he'd maybe like, how their tails would fan to a gold flaring. They talk about hot jewel tones, gold lacquer, say maybe they'll go pick some out though he can't go much of anywhere and then abruptly he says I can't love anything I can't finish. He says it like he's had enough of the whole scintillant world, though what he means is he'll never be satisfied and therefore has established this discipline, a kind of severe rehearsal. That's where they leave it, him looking out the window, her knitting as she does because she needs to do something. Later he leaves a message: Yes to the bowl of goldfish. Meaning: let me go, if I have to, in brilliance. In a story I read, a Zen master who'd perfected his detachment from the things of the world remembered, at the moment of dying, a deer he used to feed in the park, and wondered who might care for it, and at that instant was reborn in the stunned flesh of a fawn. So, Maggie's friend? Is he going out Into the last loved object Of his attention? Fanning the veined translucence Of an opulent tail, Undulant in some uncapturable curve Is he bronze chrysanthemums, Copper leaf, hurried darting, Doubloons, icon-colored fins Troubling the water?

-- Mark Doty

[thesanderstans]

[aradiambicpentameter]

Moon Fishing

When the moon was full they came to the water. some with pitchforks, some with rakes, some with sieves and ladles, and one with a silver cup. And they fished til a traveler passed them and said, "Fools, to catch the moon you must let your women spread their hair on the water -- even the wily moon will leap to that bobbing net of shimmering threads, gasp and flop till its silver scales lie black and still at your feet." And they fished with the hair of their women till a traveler passed them and said, "Fools, do you think the moon is caught lightly, with glitter and silk threads? You must cut out your hearts and bait your hooks with those dark animals; what matter you lose your hearts to reel in your dream?" And they fished with their tight, hot hearts till a traveler passed them and said, "Fools, what good is the moon to a heartless man? Put back your hearts and get on your knees and drink as you never have, until your throats are coated with silver and your voices ring like bells." And they fished with their lips and tongues until the water was gone and the moon had slipped away in the soft, bottomless mud. 

--Lisel Mueller

[aradiambicpentameter]

The Man Splitting Wood in the Daybreak

The man splitting wood in the daybreak looks strong, as though, if one weakened, one could turn to him and he would help. Gus Newland was strong. When he split wood he struck hard, flashing the bright steel through the air so hard the hard maple leapt apart, as it’s feared marriages will do in countries reluctant to permit divorce, and even willow, which, though stacked to dry a full year, on being split actually weeps—totem wood, therefore, to the married-until-death—sunders with many little lip-wetting gasp-noises. But Gus is dead. We could turn to our fathers, but they help us only by the unperplexed looking-back of the numerals cut into headstones. Or to our mothers, whose love, so devastated, can’t, even in spring, break through the hard earth. Our spouses weaken at the same rate we do. We have to hold our children up to lean on them. Everyone who could help goes or hasn’t arrived. What about the man splitting wood in the daybreak, who looked strong? That was years ago. That was me.

- Galway Kinnell

[aradiambicpentameter]

Night of the Living, Night of the Dead

When the dead rise in movies they're hideous and slow. They stagger uphill toward the farmhouse like drunks headed home from the bar. Maybe they only want to lie down inside while some room spins around them, maybe that's why they bang on the windows while the living hammer up boards and count out shotgun shells. The living have plans: to get to the pickup parked in the yard, to drive like hell to the next town. The dead with their leaky brains, their dangling limbs and ruptured hearts, are sick of all that. They'd rather stumble blind through the field until they collide with a tree, or fall through a doorway like they're the door itself, sprung from its hinges and slammed flat on the linoleum. That's the life for a dead person: wham, wham, wham until you forget your name, your own stinking face, the reason you jolted awake in the first place. Why are you here, whatever were you hoping as you lay in your casket like a dumb clarinet? You know better now. The soundtrack's depressing and the living hate your guts. Come closer and they'll show you how much. Wham, wham, wham, you're killed again. Thank God this time they're burning your body, thank God it can't drag you around anymore except in nightmares, late-night reruns where you lift up the lid, and crawl out once more, and start up the hill toward the house. -- Kim Addonizio

[aradiambicpentameter]

History

Even Eve, the only soul in all of time to never have to wait for love must have leaned some sleepless nights alone against the garden wall and wailed, cold, stupefied, and wild and wished to trade-in all of Eden to have but been a child. In fact, I gather that is why she leapt and fell from grace that she might have a story of herself to tell in some other place. - Jennifer Michael Hecht

[aradiambicpentameter]

Ana, In Parts

I.

Fridays, after school. We take the 57 to St. Catherine's on Redondo Beach Boulevard to confess.

She always wants me to go first.

"I think you just like me to wait for you."

"And?"

"Fine."

She kneels, I enter. I spend fifteen minutes telling my weekly failures to the man behind the screen. Twelve 'hail marys' later I spend forty-five minutes in old-growth pew, stare at the crucifixion in reds and yellows above me.

Eventually she emerges. We take the 61 to her house off the 405 where we make- out in her closet, our bodies against the long mirror.

This is one of many rituals we perform to the rhythm of speeding cars outside her window.

This is the first girl I ever touch in slivers of orange sun.

"You look good against my wall in the afternoon," Ana says.

She lays down on a twin bed in the back of my shadows.

II.

"Hey, come here."

Ana whispers from dim hallway.

"Where have you been? You know your cousin's looking for you," I say.

She pulls my wrists into the waiting room where brides dress themselves.

"You look so beautiful. I just wanted to tell you that."

Her hands rest themselves on my hips, the heat from her mouth on my neck turns my cheeks the color of our quincenera dresses.

"Let's stay in here, mija. Just for a little bit."

Our gowns create a chorus of friction on the small bench near the door. I'm afraid it's enough to signal our sin to the outside.

"Not so loud," I say, my fingers losing themselves in her dark hair.

On the train the other day, I heard a woman's dress against a man's pant leg. It's been a song I just can't get out of my head, for days.

III.

Ana moves. Ana goes to other school. Ana acquires boyfriend. Ana has baby (Mario). Ana boards plane to Texas. Ana sends pictures in floral stationary to my college dorm, freshman year. Ana runs out of stamps.

I talk in my sleep. It's a bad habit, I know, but I just can't help it. Once in the bed of a one-night-stand I whispered, "No-- no me gusta adios, Ana." In the morning the woman told me I left my heart in Ana's suitcase. Funny thing. I knew exactly what she meant.

IV.

The phone alarms me from sleep.

"You still sleep until noon, eh?"

"Who's this?"

"Who's this."

"Ana? Ana! Ana."

"I'm in Compton for four days. Come take me out for a drink tonight."

This turns into take me to a hotel, then take me to the sheets, then take me...

In white daylight I want to ask her where she's been. Why did she take so long in confession. Does she still have the pictures we took on the Santa Monica Pier. Do I still kiss the same, awkward, excited. Instead I ask,

"Do you wanna go to I-Hop?"

"Yeah."

Ana rides in passenger seat of car. Ana says she'll call. Ana boards plane to Arizona...

I return to school. I acquire new girlfriend. I graduate. I move. I get teaching job. I publish. I never hear from Ana.

"Do you think we'll still know each other when we're old? Like twenty or something?"

"Yeah; hell yeah."

"'Cause my cousin, Mai, is twenty-two and she don't know nobody."

"Yeah, but your cousin's kinda boring."

"Yeah, that's true. We'll always know each other."

                      Mi Ana,                       Mi corazon es suyo                       Siempre.

I see this carved in the sidewalk at 25th and Mission on my way home from running.

- Meliza Bañales

[aradiambicpentameter]

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. 

- Robert Frost