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"From the Desire Field", Natalie Diaz

I don’t call it sleep anymore. I’ll risk losing something new instead— like you lost your rosen moon, shook it loose. But sometimes when I get my horns in a thing— a wonder, a grief or a line of her—it is a sticky and ruined fruit to unfasten from, despite my trembling. Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. Let me call it, a garden. Maybe this is what Lorca meant when he said, verde que te quiero verde— because when the shade of night comes, I am a field of it, of any worry ready to flower in my chest. My mind in the dark is una bestia, unfocused, hot. And if not yoked to exhaustion beneath the hip and plow of my lover, then I am another night wandering the desire field— bewildered in its low green glow, belling the meadow between midnight and morning. Insomnia is like Spring that way—surprising and many petaled, the kick and leap of gold grasshoppers at my brow. I am struck in the witched hours of want— I want her green life. Her inside me in a green hour I can’t stop. Green vein in her throat green wing in my mouth green thorn in my eye. I want her like a river goes, bending. Green moving green, moving. Fast as that, this is how it happens— soy una sonámbula. And even though you said today you felt better, and it is so late in this poem, is it okay to be clear, to say, I don’t feel good, to ask you to tell me a story about the sweet grass you planted—and tell it again or again— until I can smell its sweet smoke, leave this thrashed field, and be smooth.

#natalie diaz

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”, Wallace Stevens

I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the black bird. II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime. IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one. V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after. VI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause. VII O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you? VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know. IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. X At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply. XI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds. XII The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying. XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.

#wallace stevens

“After Anna Akhmatova“, Cynthia Zarin

The trees talk quietly among themselves the thrush sings its brown song brushed with blue the roses from the bodega open in the vase and under the streetlight the long shadows tarnishing the day as we know it—if I ask for a stone you give me a stone, if I ask for water I do not get water, everything I love weighted and found wanting, as if the world knew how to give answers to questions. In the long generous shadow of history, I wake and wonder how long it can go on, my lips touching your ear, asking, what are you thinking— while in the capital the lion stalks his cage and on the veld the scorched banyans bend under their fruit, the camps charred, no one to pick it. A long time ago, after months when death came so quickly to us it was as if we had written an invitation, crows settled in the ghost trees. There is my mother, you said, and my father. It goes on.

#cynthia zarin

“Things Said To Be Ineffable”, Mark Yakich

A book decorates A nightstand And a body Decorates a bed. The nightstand May be made Of plastic, metal, Or wood, And is normally The same Height as the bed. Even if they are Very married, Lovers tarry And aver And aver and Tarry. Finally One of them Rises To search The dictionary For a word The other has Made up.

#mark yakich

“Trolls One Two Three”, Ana Carette

1 i just realized that most of the time i have red lines under my tits because most of the time i wear a bra but i don’t get it because i took it off around 10 pm last night and i just put it on again and it’s 1:42 pm so what is that about i don’t get it so maybe the bra troll makes me wear one at night but the bra troll is careful and never lets me wake up the bra troll that evil fucker 2 the burger troll makes me want to eat burgers every day and i want to do push ups but instead let me eat burgers ‘let me eat burgers’ is code for ‘let me cry’ 3 the tear troll looks like a teardrop but it’s really a troll wearing a costume hiding where all the regular tears hide and it never comes out just keeps on trolling forever

#ana carette

Frank O’Hara, “My Heart”

I'm not going to cry all the time nor shall I laugh all the time, I don't prefer one "strain" to another. I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie, not just a sleeper, but also the big, overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!", all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera, often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart — you can't plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

#frank o'hara

“Proposal”, Tom Vaughan

Let’s fall in love — In our mid-thirties It’s not only Where the hurt is. I won’t get smashed up Should you go Away for weekends — We both know No two people Can be completely All-sufficient. But twice weekly We’ll dine together Split the bill, Admire each other’s Wit. We will Be splendid lovers, Slow, well-trained, Tactful, gracefully Unrestrained. You’ll keep your flat And I’ll keep mine — Our bank accounts Shall not entwine. We’ll make the whole thing Hard and bright. We’ll call it love — We may be right.

#tom vaughan

“Elegy”, Aracelis Girmay

What to do with this knowledge that our living is not guaranteed? Perhaps one day you touch the young branch of something beautiful. & it grows & grows despite your birthdays & the death certificate, & it one day shades the heads of something beautiful or makes itself useful to the nest. Walk out of your house, then, believing in this. Nothing else matters. All above us is the touching of strangers & parrots, some of them human, some of them not human. Listen to me. I am telling you a true thing. This is the only kingdom. The kingdom of touching; the touches of the disappearing, things.

#aracelis girmay

“Where Do You Enter”, Nikki Giovanni

At the same place I enter you with balance and trust and a jazzy sense of adventure Painting outside the lines wearing clothes cut against the bias with spices among the flowers A poem unfolds like a baby bat testing her wings or a kitten taking her first steps or a good dog moving arthritic limbs toward the door There is sadness as well as loss in the promise of love We begin a poem with longing and end with responsibility And laugh all through the storms that are bound to come We have umbrellas We have boots We have each other

#nikki giovanni

“White Tone”, Priscilla Becker

I think I prefer now being unloved and listening for my footsteps in the dark. There was a tree in the yard— not any more— whose crooked branch I’d watch. I held a ceremony in which I married my black dog. There is a certain smell that overtakes me, for instance once in a button shop. And then I came to disregard. Also a kind of nakedness that has to do with words. I made a list of things I’d like. I tied a string. The sound as when your foot breaks through the snow, that sound was in the house.

#priscilla becker

“Dirt Being Dirt”, Carl Phillips

The orchard was on fire, but that didn’t stop him from slowly walking straight into it, shirtless, you can see where the flames have foliaged — here, especially — his chest. Splashed by the moon, it almost looks like the latest proof that, while decoration is hardly ever necessary, it’s rarely meaningless: the tuxedo’s corsage, fog when lit scatteredly, swift, from behind—swing of a torch, the lone match, struck, then wind-shut… How far is instinct from a thing like belief? Not far, apparently. At what point is believing so close to knowing, that any difference between the two isn’t worth the fuss, finally? A tamer of wolves tames no foxes, he used to say, as if avoiding the question. But never meaning to. You broke it. Now wear it broken.

#carl phillips

“Naked in the Dark”, Kimmy Walters

here is the part of my body that acquires indentations shaped like bark when you climb trees here is the part of my body that acquires indentations shaped like strawberry seeds when you eat fruit here is the part of my body that whitens when you show your teeth here, here, here, and here: the part of my body that quietly fills with hair the part of my body that quietly fills with noise the part of my body that drowns sailors the part of my body that leaves at night and comes back in the morning

#kimmy walters

“They Ate the Bulbs of Tulips”, Mark Wagenaar

I’d have to hear it spoken in mind somehow, my father said, of the Frisian word for hunger, but I’d settle for memory, or grief, under the category things that undo me. It’s a funny thing to think. Who would be the speaker if not him? His mother, maybe, holding hands in the hospital with his father after 76 years. Married the day after the war, when the stores had no windows—the Nazis took the glass. The mourning doves might have the right vowels, or the red belly in the leafless dogwood, now winging through the sunlight peplummed through the pines, blue tarp peeled back on the cotton bales in the field beyond, Merry Christmas spraypainted in blue upon the white. Snowless, starless, a man goes on trial in France for helping refugees. Could’ve been your grandparents, my father says, your Pake hid in barns, woke once to mouse feet scrambling across his face, but in France it was a 2 year old in a ditch, dying of dehydration, & when I look down I’ve pulled the petals from the bouquet, & as I’ve neither French nor Frisian nor courage, all I can do is sweep the body of petals into my palms, & pour them into the cathedral of water in front of me.

#mark wagenaar

“This Morning”, Raymond Carver

This morning was something. A little snow lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green, as far as the eye could see. Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went for a walk — determined not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer. I passed close to some old, bent-over trees. Crossed a field strewn with rocks where snow had drifted. Kept going until I reached the bluff. Where I gazed at the sea, and the sky, and the gulls wheeling over the white beach far below. All lovely. All bathed in a pure cold light. But, as usual, my thoughts began to wander. I had to will myself to see what I was seeing and nothing else. I had to tell myself this is what mattered, not the other. (And I did see it, for a minute or two!) For a minute or two it crowded out the usual musings on what was right, and what was wrong — duty, tender memories, thoughts of death, how I should treat with my former wife. All the things I hoped would go away this morning. The stuff I live with every day. What I’ve trampled on in order to stay alive. But for a minute or two I did forget myself and everything else. I know I did. For when I turned back I didn’t know where I was. Until some birds rose up from the gnarled trees. And flew in the direction I needed to be going.

#raymond carver

“Rain”, Raymond Carver

Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read. Fought against it for a minute. Then looked out the window at the rain. And gave over. Put myself entirely in the keep of this rainy morning. Would I live my life over again? Make the same unforgiveable mistakes? Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

#raymond carver

“A Heart That’s Been Broken”, Maureen Owen

A heart that’s been broken has a tiny hinge And when it happens a second or third time it just swings open & shut like a gate.

#maureen owen

“Self-Portrait as Exit Wounds”, Ocean Vuong

Instead, let it be the echo to every footstep drowned out by rain, cripple the air like a name flung onto a sinking boat, splash the kapok’s bark through rot & iron of a city trying to forget the bones beneath its sidewalks, then through the refugee camp sick with smoke & half-sung hymns, a shack rusted black & lit with Bà Ngoại’s last candle, the hogs’ faces we held in our hands & mistook for brothers, let it enter a room illuminated with snow, furnished only with laughter, Wonder Bread & mayonnaise raised to cracked lips as testament to a triumph no one recalls, let it brush the newborn’s flushed cheek as he’s lifted in his father’s arms, wreathed with fishgut & Marlboros, everyone cheering as another brown gook crumbles under John Wayne’s M16, Vietnam burning on the screen, let it slide through their ears, clean, like a promise, before piercing the poster of Michael Jackson glistening over the couch, into the supermarket where a Hapa woman is ready to believe every white man possessing her nose is her father, may it sing, briefly, inside her mouth, before laying her down between jars of tomato & blue boxes of pasta, the deep-red apple rolling from her palm, then into the prison cell where her husband sits staring at the moon until he’s convinced it’s the last wafer god refused him, let it hit his jaw like a kiss we’ve forgotten how to give one another, hissing back to ’68, Ha Long Bay: the sky replaced with fire, the sky only the dead look up to, may it reach the grandfather fucking the pregnant farmgirl in the back of his army jeep, his blond hair flickering in napalm-blasted wind, let it pin him down to dust where his future daughters rise, fingers blistered with salt & Agent Orange, let them tear open his olive fatigues, clutch that name hanging from his neck, that name they press to their tongues to relearn the word live, live, live — but if for nothing else, let me weave this deathbeam the way a blind woman stitches a flap of skin back to her daughter’s ribs. Yes — let me believe I was born to cock back this rifle, smooth & slick, like a true Charlie, like the footsteps of ghosts misted through rain as I lower myself between the sights—& pray

that nothing moves.

#ocean vuong

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