Poetry month

ON THE BIRTH OF A SON
by SU TUNG-PO (translated by ARTHUR WALEY)

Families when a child is born
Hope it will turn out intelligent.
I, through intelligence
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope that the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he'll be happy all his days
And grow into a cabinet minister.

Poetry Month

A PRIMER OF THE DAILY ROUND
by HOWARD NEMEROV

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E's knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H's grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L's head,
And M takes mustard, N drives into town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
        Who happens just now to remember A
        Peeling an apple somewhere far away.

Poetry Month

THE RIVER ON OUR FACE
by EMMY PÉREZ

With el río grande~bravo
                                in our face
This river
                                at its mouth
                                at its source
With you at its source
                                its sources
With you at the snow
                                the evergreens
The million earth holes
                                of water emerging
                                emerald
Snakes, Gloria Anzaldúa's
                                grave
With this river
                                on our face

Neon green anole
                                swells its throat
                                pink-white
El río bravo~
                                grande on its face
Ocelots hunt
                                under six
                                foot shrub
                                canopies
With the drive
                                of the Continental Divide
                                with the pull
                                of tributaries
                                in their limbs
Chicharras
                                whining in the shade
                                rivers
                                in their timbals
Females laying eggs
                                in branches

The young border patrol officer
                                flashes sirens daily
                                lifts his gun
                                with the river
                                on his face

Upriver, Chihuahua
                                desert ancestors'
                                adobe bricks stand up
                                crumble down
With el río grande~bravo
                                on our face

You said you loved
                                the river
                                on my face
You said headwaters
                                the source
                                el río grande
                                rises from its source
                                saw the lines around
                                our mouths
                                saw adobe-brick lines
                                exposed

Monsoon season
                                granizo pelting
                                the facades

                                at its source
                                in my mouth
                                adobe mud
                                bricks in my mouth
                                the earth
                                holes, the sources
                                the snow
                                avalanches
                                granizo
                                Río Conchos de México
                                grandmothers'
                                Cueva de la Olla
                                at our face
                                Tarahumara
                                Rarámuri
Tidal confluences
                                in our face

Some crossed
                                with nuns during la
                                revolución
el río bravo~grande
                                on their face

Relatives
                                disappear
                                die detained
                                with tributaries
                                of many rivers on their face

In Ciudad Juárez, a mother hoped
                                her missing daughter
                                married a rich American
                                with the river far away

Constant helicopters finding heat
                                with the river as the source

To the west, crossers lift the tortilla
                                curtain
Walk deserts without water
                                on their face

Guanajuato ancestors crossed through Cali
                                with mirages
                                in their face

While
I shower daily
with el valle
river water on my face
Thank you and kiss you daily

Julia de Burgos
with el Río Grande de Loíza
Puerto Rico in your face

Julia
I can now speak of hurricanes
and being a dog at someone's feet

I remember El Paso's Inca doves
                                burrowing owls in the morning
                                barn owls in El Valle's cemeteries
                                great horned owl and mockingbirds
                                Harris hawks and pauraques
vecinos carrying signs
                                two communities
                                "¡No al muro!"
"¡Segundo Barrio no se vende!"
                                with the river on their face

A daughter and mother want their ashes
                                cattered
                                at Boca Chica
                                the river's mouth
                                the end, the start
                                another source
                                crabs collapsing
                                into bullets bursting out of holes
                                carrizo, bugambilia
                                seeds        petals         paper
rose
                                raspas
                                the mouth
                                the eddies
                                the tributaries
                                the flow
                                Río Conchos de México
                                the snow
                                granizo
                                the pelts
                                the sources
                                rising

The confluence
of people and god
                                tortugas
                                ribbon snakes in Roma
                                pigs and piglets jumping
                                from banks
with the river on their face
                                You can hear roosters
                                           crowing across
                                                       the water in Miguel Alemán

Hurricanes
                                disturb unsettled graves
with the river in our face

You said you don't want archaic chains
                                lowering you loudly with obvious labor six feet in
You want to hear the cool chachalacas
                                with the river on their legs
                                            flapping
                                                       from ébano to ébano
                                el chalán
                                the ropes
                                the pull
                                over green
                                water
                                under
                                blue sky
                                to Díaz Ordaz

I want to hear parrots
                                sabal palms
                                try again
With the river on our face
                                I want no medicine
                                no ambition
                                with the river in my face
I used to love you
                                with the river in my face
I still love you
                                when the river's on my face
I made a foot-deep grave
                                with the river on my face
I loved other rivers
                                with el río grande~bravo on my face

I want to oxbox lake

                                in this place where children stil speak and lose
                                                                multiple tongues
                                in this place where we still lose and grow
                                                                forked tongues
                                this place where white herons hunt and drink in the resacas
                                this place with el río grande~bravo
                                                                in its pipes
                                                                in its lungs
                                                                in our face

Poetry Month

HOW TO CHANGE A FROG INTO A PRINCE
by ANNA DENISE

Start with the underwear. Sit him down.
Hopping on one leg may stir unpleasant memories.
If he gets his tights on, even backwards, praise him.
Fingers, formerly webbed, struggle over buttons.
Arms and legs, lengthened out of proportion, wait,
as you do, for the rest of him to catch up.
This body, so recently reformed, reclaimed,
still carries the marks of its time as a frog. Be gentle.
Avoid the words awkward and gawky.
Do not use tadpole as a term of endearment.
His body, like his clothing, may seem one size too big.
Relax. There's time enough for crowns. He'll grow into it.

Poetry Month

BOUNDARY CONDITION
by CAOILINN HUGHES

From the platform, iron iterates way into time.
The tracks are staples intervaled along my father’s spine.

Before me might be somebody’s father, waited for — white
choker of a condor, dry lips of lifelong acolyte.

I barely brush his arm, so as not to make him start.
Who knows how he might play out: cave in, tear apart?

He deeds toward me, wet wood breakable. All in all
of direst bark. This is how it starts, at last, I recall.

“I thought you were someone, otherwise.”
The rail lines rattle like beetle files.

He frowns. Establishes his palms.
“Tell me. Does that happen often, lamb?”

Poetry Month

IN THE SECULAR NIGHT
by MARGARET ATWOOD

In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It’s two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller
with his big-band sound,
and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,
and cried for a while because you were not dancing,
and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.

Now, forty years later, things have changed,
and it’s baby lima beans.
It’s necessary to reserve a secret vice.
This is what comes from forgetting to eat
at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,
drain, add cream and pepper,
and amble up and down the stairs,
scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,
talking to yourself out loud.
You’d be surprised if you got an answer,
but that part will come later.

There is so much silence between the words,
you say. You say, The sensed absence
of God and the sensed presence
amount to much the same thing,
only in reverse.
You say, I have too much white clothing.
You start to hum.
Several hundred years ago
this could have been mysticism
or heresy. It isn’t now.
Outside there are sirens.
Someone’s been run over.
The century grinds on.

Poetry Month

THE PRINTER'S ERROR
by AARON FOGEL

Fellow compositors
and pressworkers!

I, Chief Printer
Frank Steinman,
having worked fifty-
seven years at my trade,
and served five years
as president
of the Holliston
Printer's Council,
being of sound mind
though near death,
leave this testimonial
concerning the nature
of printers' errors.

First: I hold that all books
and all printed
matter have
errors, obvious or no,
and that these are their
most significant moments,
not to be tampered with
by the vanity and folly
of ignorant, academic
textual editors.
Second: I hold that there are
three types of errors, in ascending
order of importance:
One: chance errors
of the printer's trembling hand
not to be corrected incautiously
by foolish professors
and other such rabble
because trembling is part
of divine creation itself.

Two: silent, cool sabotage
by the printer,
the manual laborer
whose protests
have at times taken this
historical form,
covert interferences
not to be corrected
censoriously by the hand
of the second and far
more ignorant saboteur,
the textual editor.
Three: errors
from the touch of God,
divine and often
obscure corrections
of whole books by
nearly unnoticed changes
of single letters
sometimes meaningful but
about which the less said
by preemptive commentary
the better.
Third: I hold that all three
sorts of error,
errors by chance,
errors by workers' protest,
and errors by
God's touch,
are in practice the
same and indistinguishable.

Therefore I,
Frank Steinman,
typographer
for thirty-seven years,
and cooperative Master
of the Holliston Guild
eight years,
being of sound mind and body
though near death
urge the abolition
of all editorial work
whatsoever
and manumission
from all textual editing
to leave what was
as it was, and
as it became,
except insofar as editing
is itself an error, and

therefore also divine.

Poetry Month

THE RIDER
by NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,

the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.

What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.

A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.

Poetry Month

BLUE
by CHRIS ABANI

                    I

Africans in the hold fold themselves
to make room for hope. In the afternoon’s
ferocity, tar, grouting the planks like the glue
of family, melts to the run of a child’s licorice stick.

Wet decks crack, testing the wood’s mettle.
Distilled from evaporating brine, salt
dusts the floor, tickling with the measure
into time and the thirst trapped below.

                    II

The captain’s new cargo of Igbos disturbs him.
They stand, computing the swim back to land.
Haitians still say: Igbo pend’c or’ a ya!
But we do not hang ourselves in cowardice.

                   III

Sold six times on the journey to the coast,
once for a gun, then cloth, then iron
manilas, her pride was masticated like husks
of chewing sticks, spat from morning-rank mouths.

Breaking loose, edge of handcuffs held high
like the blade of a vengeful axe, she runs
across the salt scratch of deck,
pain deeper than the blue inside a flame.

                    IV

The sound, like the break of bone
could have been the Captain’s skull
or the musket shot dropping her
over the side, her chains wrapped
around his neck in dance.

Poetry Month

ROMANTICISM 101
by DEAN YOUNG

Then I realized I hadn’t secured the boat.
Then I realized my friend had lied to me.
Then I realized my dog was gone
no matter how much I called in the rain.
All was change.
Then I realized I was surrounded by aliens
disguised as orthodontists having a convention
at the hotel breakfast bar.
Then I could see into the life of things,
that systems seek only to reproduce
the conditions of their own reproduction.
If I had to pick between shadows
and essences, I’d pick shadows.
They’re better dancers.
They always sing their telegrams.
Their old gods do not die.
Then I realized the very futility was salvation
in this greeny entanglement of  breaths.
Yeah, as if.
Then I realized even when you catch the mechanism,
the trick still works.
Then I came to in Texas
and realized rockabilly would never go away.
Then I realized I’d been drugged.
We were all chasing nothing
which left no choice but to intensify the chase.
I came to handcuffed and gagged.
I came to intubated and packed in some kind of foam.
This too is how ash moves through water.
And all this time the side doors unlocked.
Then I realized repetition could be an ending.
Then I realized repetition could be an ending.

Poetry Month

A MAN I KNEW
by MARGARET LEVINE

has a condo

a maid who comes
every other week

kids who won't

are on the dresser
they float forever

like a boat

Poetry Month

DEOLA THINKING
by CESARE PAVESE
(translated by GEOFFREY BROCK)

Deola passes her mornings sitting in a cafe,
and nobody looks at her. Everyone’s rushing to work,
under a sun still fresh with the dawn. Even Deola
isn’t looking for anyone: she smokes serenely, breathing
the morning. In years past, she slept at this hour
to recover her strength: the throw on her bed
was black with the boot-prints of soldiers and workers,
the backbreaking clients. But now, on her own,
it’s different: the work’s more refined, and it’s easier.
Like the gentleman yesterday, who woke her up early,
kissed her, and took her (I’d stay awhile, dear,
in Turin with you, if I could) to the station
to tell him goodbye.
                                           She’s dazed this morning, but fresh—
Deola likes being free, likes drinking her milk
and eating brioches. This morning she’s nearly a lady,
and if she looks at anyone now, it’s just to pass the time.
The girls at the house are still sleeping. The air stinks,
the madam goes out for a walk, it’s crazy to stay there.
To work the bars in the evening you have to look good;
at that house, by thirty, you’ve lost what little looks you had left.

Deola sits with her profile turned toward a mirror
and looks at herself in the cool of the glass: her face pale,
and not from the smoke; her brow a bit furrowed.
To survive at that house, you’d need a will
like Marí used to have (because, honey, these men
come here to get something they can’t get at home
from their wives or their lovers) and Marí used to work
tirelessly, full of good cheer and blessed with good health.
The people who pass the cafe aren’t distracting Deola—
she only works evenings, making slow conquests
to music, in her usual bar. She’ll make eyes.
at a client, or nudge his foot, while enjoying the band
that makes her seem like an actress doing a love scene
with a young millionaire. One client each evening
is enough to scrape by on. (Maybe that gentleman from last night
really will take me with him.) To be alone, if she wants,
in the morning. To sit in a café. To not look for anyone.

Poetry Month

FOR MY FRIEND WHO COMPLAINS HE CAN'T DANCE AND HAS A SEVERE CASE OF WRITER'S BLOCK
by NICK CARBÓ

Then, take this tambourine
inside the sheep barn,

listen to the anaconda's intestines,
the shark's walking stick,

learn the river insect's secret
neon calligraphy,

swim through Frida Khalo's hair
and come out smelling like orchids,

lift your appetite
towards the certified blue turtle,

feast on Garcia Lorca's leather shoes
and taste the sun, the worms of Andalusia,

don't hesitate in front of a donut,
a ferris wheel, the crab nebula,

excavate diamond-eyed demons,
Chaucer's liver, Minoan helmets,

paste Anne Sexton's face on a $1,000 bill
and purchase a dozen metaphors,

beware of the absolute scorpion,
the iguana with the limping leg,

permit indwelling, white words around the eyes,
the confrontation of windows,

never feed your towel to the alligator,
he will eat you and eat you and eat you.

Poetry Month

LOYAL
by WILLIAM MATTHEWS

They gave him an overdose
of anesthetic, and its fog
shut down his heart in seconds.
I tried to hold him, but he was
somewhere else. For so much of love
one of the principals is missing,
it's no wonder we confuse love
with longing. Oh I was thick
with both. I wanted my dog
to live forever and while I was
working on impossibilities
I wanted to live forever, too.
I wanted company and to be alone.
I wanted to know how they trash
a stiff ninety-five-pound dog
and I paid them to do it
and not tell me. What else?
I wanted a letter of apology
delivered by decrepit hand,
by someone shattered for each time
I'd had to eat pure pain. I wanted
to weep, not "like a baby,"
in gulps and breath-stretching
howls, but steadily, like an adult,
according to the fiction
that there is work to be done,
and almost inconsolably.

Poetry Month

CONJECTURE ON THE STAINED GLASS IMAGE OF WHITE CHRIST AT EBENEZER BAPTIST CHURCH
by MARCUS WICKER

For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

—1 Corinthians 12:13

If in his image made am I, then make me a miracle.
Make my shrine a copper faucet leaking everlasting Evian to the masses.
Make this empty water glass a goblet of long-legged French wine.
Make mine a Prince-purple body bag designed by Crown Royal
for tax collectors to spill over & tithe into just before I rise.
If in his image made am I, then make my vessel a pearl Coupe de Ville.
Make mine the body of a 28-year-old black woman
in a blue patterned maxi dress cruising through Hell on Earth, TX
again alive. If in his image made are we, then why
the endless string of effigies?
Why so many mortal blasphemes?
Why crucify me in HD across a scrolling news ticker, tied
to a clothesline of broken necks long as Time?
Is this thing on? Jesus on the ground. Jesus in the margins.
Of hurricane & sea. Jesus of busted levees in chocolate cities.
Jesus of the Middle East (Africa) & crows flying backwards.
Of blood, on the leaves, inside diamond mines, in under-
developed mineral-rich countries. If in your image made are we,
the proliferation of your tie-dyed hippie doppelgänger
makes you easier to daily see. & in this image didn’t we make
the godhead, slightly stony, high enough to surf a cloud?
& didn’t we leave you there, where, surely, paradise or
justice must be meted out? Couldn’t we see where water takes
the form of whatever most holds it upright? If then this
is what it’s come down to. My faith, in rifle shells.
In Glock 22 magazine sleeves. Isn’t it also then how, why,
in a bucket shot full of holes, I’ve been made to believe?

Poetry Month

D17: FEMALE, 37 YEARS OLD
by PAISLEY REKDAL

In Phnom Penh’s museum, the skulls are stacked
in aquarium tanks: grim toys for hooks to ply
free from the rubble. Here, each one gets a tag,
a mount, a photograph to suggest a life,
perhaps a name, might be envisioned. Yet I’m
more moved by what’s anonymous, past; imagine
fields of faces sunken with decay, eyes
jellied in their sockets, heel meats bruised,
bloated in the rain—
                                               Perhaps the skulls prefer
a lack of names as, scrubbed of self and skin,
they’re trauma’s best witnesses: fused
by time and pain to one crisis, never
to be separated. Lost as men, they become event.
in this, they achieve a terrible transcendence.

Poetry Month

MOSQUITOES
by KATHERINE HAUTH

Mosquitoes,

with needle-noses
sucking blood
from elbows, cheeks, and chin

why were you not
designed to thrive
on brine, on swine,
or likewise-spiny
porcupines?

                            SLAP!
                      SLAP!
                                        SLAP!

Poetry Month

HOW TO LISTEN
by MAJOR JACKSON

I am going to cock my head tonight like a dog
in front of McGlinchy's Tavern on Locust;
I am going to stand beside the man who works all day combing
his thatch of gray hair corkscrewed in every direction.
I am going to pay attention to our lives
unraveling between the forks of his fine-tooth comb.
For once, we won't talk about the end of the world
or Vietnam or his exquisite paper shoes.
For once, I am going to ignore the profanity and
the dancing and the jukebox so I can hear his head crackle
beneath the sky's stretch of faint stars.

Poetry Month

WATER DEVIL 
by JAMAAL MAY

Spout of a leaf,
listen out for the screams
of your relentless audience:
the applause of a waterfall
in the distance,

a hurricane looting
a Miami shopping mall.
How careful you are
with the rain-cradling
curve of your back.

Near your forest,
all are ready to swim
and happy to drown
in me: this lake of fire
that moats the edges.

From my mouth,
they come to peel the flames
and drink their slick throats
into the most silent
of ashes.

Poetry Month

RADIO
by LAUREL BLOSSOM

No radio
in car

No radio on board

No radio
Already stolen

Absolutely no radio!

Radio broken
Alarm is set
To go off

No radio
No money

No radio
no valuables

No radio or
valuables
in car or trunk

No radio
Stolen 3X

No radio
Empty trunk
Empty glove compartment
Honest

In car
Nothing of value

No radio
No nuthin
(no kidding)

Radio Broken
Nothing Left!

Radio Gone
Note Hole in Dashboard

Warning!
Radio Will Not Play
When Removed
Security Code Required

Would you keep
Anything valuable
In this wreck?

No valuables
In this van

Please do not
Break-in
Unnecessarily

Thank you
For your kind
Consideration

Nothing of value
in car
No radio
No tapes
No telephone