When Inspiration Strikes

When Inspiration Strikes,

You never know what you could do

When Inspiration Strikes,

You could perform miracles.

When Inspiration Strikes,

You could dance a new dance.

When Inspiration Strikes,

You could cure a disease.

When Inspiration Strikes,

You could do the impossible.

Loving the “I”

BY KIM MOORE

After Sharon Olds’s “Take the I Out”I also love the I, the way it holds everythingI almost know in one great stroke, one great love,I draw it, though I don’t give it flitches,have never heard the word until I read it.Someone tells me about a village called Great Dunmowwhere the married couple judged the happiestare awarded a flitch of bacon. It sounds like hell,I say, knowing how competitive I am,imagining dragging my husband down the road,our smiles stretched across our faces,never being able to argue—can you imagine,having to testify: no I have never regrettedour marriage, not for one second, one minute,one hour, one day. Our arguments taking placein whispers, frantic snakes of words writhingin the air between us. All this is to say, my Idoes not have flitches. I teach it to my daughter,top to bottom, I, I, I, the easiest letterin the world to write. We draw a line of themmarching along the page. I tell her I love youand she sings out I love you too Mummy.It takes time for a child to refer to themselvesas I instead of in the third person by name.But the I is singing in her blood now.I know what I was before she came.Now my I throws down its spearand says I will stand here, and here,and here, and the I is a stem of a notewithout a head, the I is a missing table leg,the I is running through my poemlike golden thread, look, here I amtrying to write whilst she shouts again and againMummy, look at me! I am here!walk hilly paths home any longer.            How did they capture you in            solid stone rolled into a greenvalley? Yes, that’s right—rolled!            But first stones were rounded.            No, sacred work is never easy.My Olmec brothers, I saw you            with my own eyes, true & dark,            in the Museum of Archaeologyof Mexico City, tall & righteous,            & I love the red-hot peppers            baked into your maize bread.

My Brothers

BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA

You came by woven reed boats

            forced across angry water

            driven by mighty winds.

Or a swift long skiff ferried you

            here by twenty-four oarsmen,

            twelve on each side, six front

& rear, powered by the rotation

            of two shifts, all twenty-four

            who tugged along dreamwork

on waves. They rowed around

            sun & moon setting & rising,

            inhale & exhale, all as one

song of the whole crew rotating,

            pushing ahead until they saw

            green land, their oars parting

blue rhythms of what’s to come

            or being born on the other side

            of the world. Yes, my brothers,

you of bittersweet herbs & chants

            taken in sea breeze, what secrets

            & taboos, myths, laws, & oaths

did you bring here? I believe it was

            your laughing, thundering voices

            in the drums. Where did you hide

those days of wild cats, serpents,

            & plots? Did you arrive out of

            nowhere, always here, stout

& tall, hewn of stone miles away,

            but now rooted into green earth?

            Mystery how you rose or sprung

up, somehow you became almost

            another people, calling windswept

            sea waves at your strong backs.

If you were always here, brothers,

            you wouldn’t have danced feet

            bloody under a full moon. No,

the charts were blue-black skies,

            but not to worship hidden icons

            before & beyond, & you cannot

Afternoon Notes

BY WENDY XU

After Bei Dao

A squirrel alone with his thoughts

Spider’s geometry which you might avoid

by rotating your shoulder just so

None of this is meant to be of any consequence

A soreness three quarters up the leg

An engine is more than a mumbling

cutting with a wince into—

Nevermind

Rustling another green nut to the feast

is what matters now

Choosing the most simple

beautiful words

that won’t spoil on the half-day journey to meet you

A leg hair perks the wind

It stands up without shadow

without panic

without ambition

              Unable to be judged by standards of human dignity

From “Sleeping with Bashō”

BY DAVID TRINIDAD

at the yam festival

What a delicious life!

When I cut a sweet

potato in half, I get

the harvest moon.

stripped branches

What’s left after the wind

blows every blossom

off the dog cherry—

a tree of wagging tails.

surrender to the beauty of flowers

Be sure to wear

your flowered robe

when you come out

to view the blossoms.

family history

The bamboo sprout

cares nothing

about the stalk

that produced him.

wagging tongues

Every red leaf

rustling

with gossip.

lights out

Unhappily,

the new moon

has been sent upstairs

before her bedtime.

SAYŌNARA

Like wild geese,

we’ll only be separated

by clouds, my dear,

dear friend.

house call

How come the rich merchant

never sends a horse

to fetch the village poet?

seeing is believing

I found god

in plum blossoms,

not the great blank sky

beyond them.

Poem about My Right

BY JUNE JORDAN

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clearmy head about this poem about why I can’tgo out without changing my clothes my shoesmy body posture my gender identity my agemy status as a woman alone in the evening/alone on the streets/alone not being the point/the point being that I can’t do what I wantto do with my own body because I am the wrongsex the wrong age the wrong skin andsuppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/or far into the woods and I wanted to gothere by myself thinking about God/or thinkingabout children or thinking about the world/all of itdisclosed by the stars and the silence:I could not go and I could not think and I could notstay therealoneas I need to bealone because I can’t do what I want to do with my ownbody andwho in the hell set things uplike thisand in France they say if the guy penetratesbut does not ejaculate then he did not rape meand if after stabbing him if after screams ifafter begging the bastard and if even after smashinga hammer to his head if even after that if heand his buddies fuck me after thatthen I consented and there wasno rape because finally you understand finallythey fucked me over because I was wrong I waswrong again to be me being me where I was/wrongto be who I amwhich is exactly like South Africapenetrating into Namibia penetrating intoAngola and does that mean I mean how do you know ifPretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like theproof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blacklandand ifafter Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabweand if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even toself-immolation of the villages and if after thatwe lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will theyclaim my consent:Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people ofthe wrong skin on the wrong continent and whatin the hell is everybody being reasonable aboutand according to the Times this weekback in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problemand the problem was a man named Nkrumah so theykilled him and before that it was Patrice Lumumbaand before that it was my father on the campusof my Ivy League school and my father afraidto walk into the cafeteria because he said hewas wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wronggender identity and he was paying tuition andbefore thatit was my father saying I was wrong saying thatI should have been a boy because he wanted one/aboy and that I should have been lighter skinned andthat I should have had straighter hair and thatI should not be so boy crazy but instead I shouldjust be one/a boy and before thatit was my mother pleading plastic surgery formy nose and braces for my teeth and telling meto let the books loose to let them loose in otherwordsI am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.and the problems of South Africa and the problemsof Exxon Corporation and the problems of whiteAmerica in general and the problems of the teachersand the preachers and the F.B.I. and the socialworkers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am veryfamiliar with the problems because the problemsturn out to bemeI am the history of rapeI am the history of the rejection of who I amI am the history of the terrorized incarceration ofmy selfI am the history of battery assault and limitlessarmies against whatever I want to do with my mindand my body and my soul andwhether it’s about walking out at nightor whether it’s about the love that I feel orwhether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina orthe sanctity of my national boundariesor the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctityof each and every desirethat I know from my personal and idiosyncraticand indisputably single and singular heartI have been rapedbe-cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong agethe wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair thewrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographicthe wrong sartorial II have been the meaning of rapeI have been the problem everyone seeks toeliminate by forcedpenetration with or without the evidence of slime and/but let this be unmistakable this poemis not consent I do not consentto my mother to my father to the teachers tothe F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuyto Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardonidlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps incarsI am not wrong: Wrong is not my nameMy name is my own my own my ownand I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like thisbut I can tell you that from now on my resistancemy simple and daily and nightly self-determinationmay very well cost you your life

Mixed-Up Sestina

BY JORDAN PÉREZ

For José

We have been shitting and pissing in the sealed buses through the night,

then out, and stadium lights click on. Rows of stands standing empty.

I think of the stories of ancient Rome: lions or dogs tearing apart

the faithful in arenas like these. Then here, my own shaking hands.

Some say we will be shot at midfield, but no one is sure.

One dancer can’t forget his training. Still in first position, this man.

Electric barbed wire makes a soft click sound through the night.

Some say it is turned off during the day, but no one is sure.

We are here to learn to be men, so we rip out the grass with our hands.

The man beside me, whose shoe is untied, cries to himself, “Apart

from God, nothing” again and again. I suddenly feel like a man

who has returned from a trip to find his entire town empty.

We are even given a new alphabet. M for Marxism. R for Raúl. Apart

from this, a test: Walk until the soldier believes you are not a gay man.

There is no rice. The boat has not come from China. The empty

dishes could be my own wife’s dishes, so delicate in my hands.

Some say the ungrateful are stabbed with their own forks, but no one is sure.

Beside me, a painter with blistering palms who once did fine work.

They cut the stubborn ones with bayonets. We continue killing the grass, man

after man kneeling. The victory still marked on the scoreboard sits empty.

Someone says the umpires were very unfair that day, but no one is sure.

Many have lost their shoes, and so steal others until no one can tell his apart

from anyone else’s. A lawyer tries to make a point by sitting on his hands.

After we hear him die I can no longer sleep through the night.

We are brought to uproot fields thick with marabú until our hands

are covered in blood and thorns. I wonder if the Jehovah’s Witness thinks man

should be grateful to suffer as Jesus did. Carnations sprout in an empty

patch, but nobody seems to notice. Even together we are apart.

Castro inspects our work. The chicken he brought for his supper squawks until night.

Someone says he will soon move to reduce numbers, but no one is sure.

We stop caring and sleep on the dormitory ground, curled man to man.

The limestone soil is empty. The cottontail’s eyes are empty.

I cannot stop shaking as I pull the root and its own earth apart.

I remember the time my father and I sang by the sea long into the night.

I remember the morning when a frog sunbathed in my cupped hands.

I think my daughters would still know me now, but I cannot be sure.

Matthew 6:28—Sonnets

BY KYLE OKEKE

Two doors in the snow: two men inexcess. Beauty, theyre strain, likea grave. Its ghost, cold and falling.I was looking formeaning, too. I found a sidewalk:more doors laidlike planks. A vulture starving forlight, I found a knifeI sank in-to the white, soft wage:an angelcarved in his image.Arrestedby the path, knife wetwith glimmer, weapon left in snow—I felt hischest like a trapdoor.The inmatescarry themselves upin bouquets. In the closets, fieldsof lilies.

Walking with My Delaware Grandfather

By Denise Low

Walking home I feel a presence following           and realize he is always there that Native man with coal-black-hair who is           my grandfather. In my first memories he is present, mostly wordless,           resident in the house where I was born. My mother shows him the cleft in my chin           identical to his. I am swaddled and blinking in the kitchen light. So           we are introduced. We never part. Sometimes I forget he lodges in my house still           the bone-house where my heart beats. I carry his mother’s framework           a sturdy structure. I learn his birthright. I hear his mother’s teachings through           what my mother said of her: She kept a pot of stew on the stove           all day for anyone to eat. She never went to church but said           you could be a good person anyway. She fed hoboes during the ‘30s,           her back porch a regular stop-over. Every person has rights no matter           what color. Be respectful. This son of hers, my grandfather,           still walks the streets with me. Some twist of blood and heat still spark           across the time bridge. Here, listen: Air draws through these lungs made from his.           His blood still pulses through this hand.

In the House

by the Sea BY STACIE CASSARINOI admired the sea, most days,but not the heirs or millionairessailing in stiff-capped winds,buttoned for summer. After all,we were the spectacle, two womentouching in all the wrong places,furnishing rooms with no childrenin the hull of a house gone still.She had some guns, a half-missingfinger, an eye that pointed.Sometimes you need to be shot, she’d say.I hardly remember her name.How the sky came in obliquelythrough the window.How the skiffs were a study in silence.How I hid my body in a bathtub.What she meant was sometimes you’re hardto love. And that one nightI swore she was comingfor me, I just turned over and took it— and beyondthe blindless room, a wildnesstoo foreign to name, tomatoes tiedand splitting in the heat, couplessipping the wealth of bivalves, saltof the Sound with open lips, the gnarlof some animal, cocked and on the mark,in the distance a lighthousehaunting whatever darknesswas never ours to begin with.

A Revelation with Yeats

BY KIMIKO HAHN

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

The cyclone cannot feel the air;

The drain disavows the water—

The roof’s an outright liar.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The rancher cannot break her mare.

She’s broke and both will soon retire—

The cyclone cannot hear the air.

The teacher’s a screen, he’ll soon retire

“What is theory, what is crossfire.”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The children think they’re scoring higher,

But they just spin the virtual where

The cyclone cannot see the air.

Who will stay when oceans boil over?

Who will return when pavement catches fire?Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The cyclone cannot flee the air.