R & R

BY 

Brian Turner

The curve of her hip where I’d lay my head,

that’s what I’m thinking of now, her fingersgone slow through my hair on a blue dayten thousand miles off in the future somewhere, where the beer is so cold it sweats in your hand,cool as her kissing you with crushed ice,her tongue wet with blackberry and melon. That’s what I’m thinking of now.

Because I’m all out of adrenaline,all out of smoking incendiaries. Somewhere deep in the landscape of the brain,under the skull’s blue curving dome—that’s where I am now, swayingin a hammock by the water’s edgeas soldiers laugh and play volleyballjust down the beach, while others tanand talk with the nurses who bring pillsto help them sleep. And if this is crazy,then let this be my sanatorium,let the doctors walk among us heremarking their charts as they will. I have a lover with hair that fallslike autumn leaves on my skin. Water that rolls in smooth and coolas anesthesia. Birds that carry all my bullets into the barrel of the sun.

If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert

Natalie Diaz 1978

I will swing my lasso of headlightsacross your front porch,

let it drop like a rope of knotted lightat your feet.

While I put the car in park,

you will tie and tighten the loop

of light around your waist —and I will be there with the other end

wrapped three timesaround my hips horned with loneliness.

Reel me in across the glow-throbbing seaof greenthread, bluestem prickly poppy,the white inflorescence of yucca bells,up the dust-lit stairs into your arms.If you say to me,This is not your new housebut I am your new home,

I will enter the door of your throat,

hang my last lariat in the hallway,

build my altar of best books on your bedside table,

turn the lamp on and off, 

on and off, on and off.

I will lie down in you.

Eat my meals at the red table of your heart.

Each steaming bowl will be,Just right.I will eat it all up,

break all your chairs to pieces.

If I try running off into the deep-purpling scrub brush,

you will remind me,

There is nowhere to go if you are already here,and pat your hand on your lap lightedby the topazion lux of the moon through the window, say, Here, Love, sit here— when I do,I will say, And here I still am. Until then, Where are you? What is your address?I am hurting. I am riding the nighton a full tank of gas and my headlightsare reaching out for something.

The World

Jennifer Chang

One winter I lived north, alone

and effortless, dreaming myself

into the past. Perhaps, I thought, words could replenish privacy.

Outside, a red bicycle frozeinto form, made the world falserin its white austerity. So muchhappens after harvest: the moonperforming novelty: slaughter,snow. One hour the sameas the next, I held my handsor held the snow. I was like sculpture, forgetting or, perhaps, rememberingeverything. Red wings in the snow, red thoughts ablaze in the warI was having with myself again.Everything I hate about the worldI hate about myself, even nowwriting as if this were a lawof nature. Say there were deerfleet in the snow, walking outthe cold, and more gingkoesbare in the beggar’s grove. SayI was not the only one who sawor heard the trees, their diffidencegreater than my noise. Perhapsthe future is a tiny flameI’ll nick from a candle. First, I’m burning.Then, numb. Why must every wintergrow colder, and more sure?

This Is a Photograph of Me

Margaret Atwood1939 –

It was taken some time ago.

At first it seems to bea smearedprint: blurred lines and grey flecks

blended with the paper;

then, as you scanit, you see in the left-hand cornera thing that is like a branch: part of a tree(balsam or spruce) emergingand, to the right, halfway upwhat ought to be a gentleslope, a small frame house.In the background there is a lake,and beyond that, some low hills.(The photograph was takenthe day after I drowned.I am in the lake, in the centerof the picture, just under the surface.It is difficult to say whereprecisely, or to sayhow large or small I am:the effect of wateron light is a distortionbut if you look long enough,eventuallyyou will be able to see me.)

BLACK POETRY DAY

 

"On October 17, Black Poetry Day celebrates the powerful voices, past and present, that have shaped and enriched the American cultural landscape."

https://nationaldaycalendar.com/celebrations/black-poetry-day-october-17

Blonde Bombshell

By Lynn Emanuel

Love is boring and passé, all that old baggage,

the bloody bric-a-brac, the bad, the gothic,

retrograde, obscurantist hum and drum of it

needs to be swept away. So, night after night,

we sit in the dark of the Roxy beside grandmothers

with their shanks tied up in the tourniquets

of rolled stockings and open ourselves, like earth

to rain, to the blue fire of the movie screen

where love surrenders suddenly to gangsters

and their cuties. There in the narrow,

mote-filled finger of light, is a blonde,

so blonde, so blinding, she is a blizzard, a huge

spook, and lights up like the sun the audience

in its galoshes. She bulges like a deuce coupe.

When we see her we say good-bye to Kansas.

She is everything spare, cool, and clean,

like a gas station on a dark night and the cold

dependable light of rage coming in on schedule like a bus.

Let Me Tell You What a Poem Brings

BY Juan Felipe Herrera

for Charles Fishman

Before you go further,

let me tell you what a poem brings,

first, you must know the secret, there is no poem

to speak of, it is a way to attain a life without boundaries,

yes, it is that easy, a poem, imagine me telling you this,

instead of going day by day against the razors, well,

the judgments, all the tick-tock bronze, a leather jacket

sizing you up, the fashion mall, for example, from

the outside you think you are being entertained,

when you enter, things change, you get caught by surprise,

your mouth goes sour, you get thirsty, your legs grow cold

standing still in the middle of a storm, a poem, of course,

is always open for business too, except, as you can see,

it isn’t exactly business that pulls your spirit into

the alarming waters, there you can bathe, you can play,

you can even join in on the gossip—the mist, that is,

the mist becomes central to your existence.