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A Young Man

We stand together on our block, me and my son, Neighbors saying our face is the same, but I know He’s better than me: when other children move

Toward my daughter, he lurches like a brother Meant to put them down. He is a bodyguard On the playground. He won’t turn apart from her,

Empties any enemy, leaves them flimsy, me Confounded. I never fought for so much— I calmed my daughter when I could cradle

My daughter; my son swaggers about her. He won’t have to heal a girl he won’t let free. They are so small. And I, still, am a young man.

In him lives my black anger made red. They play. He is not yet incarcerated.

JERICHO BROWN

Circe

It was easy enough to bend them to my wish, it was easy enough to alter them with a touch, but you adrift on the great sea, how shall I call you back?

Cedar and white ash, rock-cedar and sand plants and tamarisk red cedar and white cedar and black cedar from the inmost forest, fragrance upon fragrance and all of my sea-magic is for nought.

It was easy enough— a thought called them from the sharp edges of the earth; they prayed for a touch, they cried for the sight of my face, they entreated me till in pity I turned each to his own self.

Panther and panther, then a black leopard follows close— black panther and red and a great hound, a god-like beast, cut the sand in a clear ring and shut me from the earth, and cover the sea-sound with their throats, and the sea-roar with their own barks and bellowing and snarls, and the sea-stars and the swirl of the sand, and the rock-tamarisk and the wind resonance— but not your voice.

It is easy enough to call men from the edges of the earth. It is easy enough to summon them to my feet with a thought— it is beautiful to see the tall panther and the sleek deer-hounds circle in the dark.

It is easy enough to make cedar and white ash fumes into palaces and to cover the sea-caves with ivory and onyx.

But I would give up rock-fringes of coral and the inmost chamber of my island palace and my own gifts and the whole region of my power and magic for your glance.

H.D.

Trust

Trust that there is a tiger, muscular Tasmanian, and sly, which has never been seen and never will be seen by any human eye. Trust that thirty thousand sword- fish will never near a ship, that far from cameras or cars elephant herds live long elephant lives. Believe that bees by the billions find unidentified flowers on unmapped marshes and mountains. Safe in caves of contentment, bears sleep. Through vast canyons, horses run while slowly snakes stretch beyond their skins in the sun. I must trust all this to be true, though the few birds at my feeder watch the window with small flutters of fear, so like my own.

SUSAN KINSOLVING

“Time does not bring relief; you all have lied”

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year’s bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go,—so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, “There is no memory of him here!” And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

blessing the boats

may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that

LUCILLE CLIFTON

The Words I Failed to Be

I’ll rip off this Coke label to reveal my love life: the ones I like enough, the ones I adore but can’t ever close. I’m drawn again to the frozen-food aisle: is this where I meet my new self, shuddering inside a box of waffles? Hey, a closeout on ice cream, maybe I’ll pile up on rocky road? I won’t mince anything: not the breakup, not hours before, each minute snapping shut on my wrist. I won’t dwell on what I said, only the words I failed to be. A watermelon, a half-off watermelon, it’s over: because I love the seeds, I spit them out.

BEN PURKERT

I’ll Open the Window

Our embrace lasted too long. We loved right down to the bone. I hear the bones grind, I see our two skeletons. Now I am waiting till you leave, till the clatter of your shoes is heard no more. Now, silence. Tonight I am going to sleep alone on the bedclothes of purity. Aloneness is the first hygienic measure. Aloneness will enlarge the walls of the room, I will open the window and the large, frosty air will enter, healthy as tragedy. Human thoughts will enter and human concerns, misfortune of others, saintliness of others. They will converse softly and sternly. Do not come anymore. I am an animal very rarely.

ANNA SWIR

[Sonnet] You jerk you didn't call me up

You jerk you didn't call me up I haven't seen you in so long You probably have a fucking tan & besides that instead of making love tonight You're drinking your parents to the airport I'm through with you bourgeois boys All you ever do is go back to ancestral comforts Only money can get—even Catullus was rich but Nowadays you guys settle for a couch By a soporific color cable t.v. set Instead of any arc of love, no wonder The G.I. Joe team blows it every other time Wake up! It's the middle of the night You can either make love or die at the hands of the Cobra Commander _________________ To make love, turn to page 121. To die, turn to page 172.

BERNADETTE MAYER

Scaffolding

Masons, when they start upon a building, Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points, Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall Confident that we have built our wall.

SEAMUS HEANEY

February

Winter. Time to eat fat and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat, a black fur sausage with yellow Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries to get onto my head. It’s his way of telling whether or not I’m dead. If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am He’ll think of something. He settles on my chest, breathing his breath of burped-up meat and musty sofas, purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat, not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door, declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory, which are what will finish us off in the long run. Some cat owners around here should snip a few testicles. If we wise hominids were sensible, we’d do that too, or eat our young, like sharks. But it’s love that does us in. Over and over again, He shoots, he scores! and famine crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits thirty below, and pollution pours out of our chimneys to keep us warm. February, month of despair, with a skewered heart in the centre. I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries with a splash of vinegar. Cat, enough of your greedy whining and your small pink bumhole. Off my face! You’re the life principle, more or less, so get going on a little optimism around here. Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

MARGARET ATWOOD

Emerging

A man says yes without knowing how to decide even what the question is, and is caught up, and then is carried along and never again escapes from his own cocoon; and that’s how we are, forever falling into the deep well of other beings; and one thread wraps itself around our necks, another entwines a foot, and then it is impossible, impossible to move except in the well — nobody can rescue us from other people.

It seems as if we don’t know how to speak; it seems as if there are words which escape, which are missing, when have gone away and left us to ourselves, tangled up in snares and threads.

And all at once, that’s it; we no longer know what it’s all about, but we are deep inside it, and now we will never see with the same eyes as once we did when we were children playing. Now these eyes are closed to us, now our hands emerge from different arms.

And therefore when you sleep, you are alone in your dreaming, and running freely through the corridors of one dream only, which belongs to you. Oh never let them come to steal our dreams, never let them entwine us in our bed. Let us hold on to the shadows to see if, from our own obscurity, we emerge and grope along the walls, lie in wait for the light, to capture it, till, once and for all time, it becomes our own, the sun of every day.

PABLO NERUDA

Headwind

Weak motion of grasses and tern before the sea. Worry’s school cresting here and everywhere as failings.

I pace the cliff path, my hands cupped above my eyes. The glare steals your progress, a kayak needling the wide open.

Love means you answer, this the child’s rebuke. A pattern crosses the point, hemming the horizon: steamship.

I didn’t know you were the green pitch unable to beat the storm to shore. You didn’t know I was the lookout.

Get accustomed to the sad girl picking you out of the sea, the knot caught in her throat, and the unraveling of her speech: an endless rope thrown out of me.

AMBER FLORA THOMAS

Rose of Jericho

I’m not sure about this gift. This tangle of dried roots curled into a fist. This gnarl

I’ve let sit for weeks beside the toaster and cookbooks on a bed of speckled granite.

What am I waiting for? Online I find Rose of Jericho prayers and rituals for safe birth,

well-being, warding off the evil eye. At first I thought I’d buy some white stones,

a porcelain bowl. But I didn’t and I didn’t. I don’t believe in omens. This still fist

of possibility all wrapped up in itself. There it sat through the holidays, into the New Year.

Through all the days I’ve been gone. Dormant. But today, in an inch of water,

out of curiosity, I awakened the soul of Jericho. Limb by limb it unfolded

and turned moss green. It reminded me of the northwest, its lush undergrowth,

how twice despite the leaden clouds, the rain, I found happiness there.

From tumbleweed to lush fern flower, reversible, repeatable. And what am I

to make of this? Me, this woman who doesn’t believe. Doesn’t take anything on faith. I won’t

let it rot. I’ll monitor the water level. Keep the mold at bay. I tend things, but I do not pray.

CINDY VEACH

Enemies

If you are not to become a monster, you must care what they think. If you care what they think, how will you not hate them, and so become a monster of the opposite kind? From where then is love to come—love for your enemy that is the way of liberty? From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go free of you, and you of them; they are to you as sunlight on a green branch. You must not think of them again, except as monsters like yourself, pitiable because unforgiving.

WENDELL BERRY

From Stone: 122

Let me be in your service like the others mumbling predictions, mouth dry with jealousy. Parched tongue thirsting, not even for the word— for me the dry air is empty again without you. I’m not jealous any more but I want you. I carry myself like a victim to the hangman. I will not call you either joy or love. All my own blood is gone. Something strange paces there now. Another moment and I will tell you: it's not joy but torture you give me. I'm drawn to you as to a crime— to your ragged mouth, to the soft bitten cherry. Come back to me, I'm frightened without you. Never had you such power over me as now. Everything I desire appears to me. I'm not jealous any more. I'm calling you.

OSIP MANDELSTAM (trans: Clarence Brown and W.S. Merwin)

Morning Song

A diamond of a morning Waked me an hour too soon; Dawn had taken in the stars And left the faint white moon.

O white moon, you are lonely, It is the same with me, But we have the world to roam over, Only the lonely are free.

SARAH TEASDALE

Chaplinesque

We make our meek adjustments, Contented with such random consolations As the wind deposits In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find A famished kitten on the step, and know Recesses for it from the fury of the street, Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us, Facing the dull squint with what innocence And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane; Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise. We can evade you, and all else but the heart: What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen The moon in lonely alleys make A grail of laughter of an empty ash can, And through all sound of gaiety and quest Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

HART CRANE

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