The Best American Poetry 2012 (25 page)

The Lesson

Say you finally make it home after a particularly arduous day in eighth grade to find the front door standing open and the furniture gone, and wander awhile through the oddly spacious rooms like a paralytic drowning in the bathtub while the nurse goes to answer the phone. True, you were never the best behaved little girl who ever lived; still, it seems fair to say that this is the wrong surprise party for you. A little later, looking down from somewhere near the ceiling, you observe yourself letting a cheap unwashed wine glass slip from your fingers, bending over to select a large section of it from the kitchen floor and beginning, with intense focus and precision, to inscribe a fairly serious gash in your left wrist. That doesn't work out so well. Locating a dish towel, though, does keep you occupied, then cleaning up the mess you've made. And you refuse to cry. Smart move, you hear a voice say quite distinctly. You might really need those tears someday. And you have been telling yourself the same thing all your life.

from
The Kenyon Review

DAVID YEZZI

Minding Rites

This guy I know, a rabbi, Friday nights,

on his way home before sunset in winter,

always stops at a florist or bodega

and buys a bunch of flowers for his wife.

Every week the same, a ritual,

regardless of her mood that morning, fresh

upsets at work, or snarling on the bridge;

he brings her roses wrapped in cellophane.

But isn't there a ring of hokiness

in that? Why should a good man make a show

of his devotion? Some things go unspoken;

some things get tested on the real world,

and isn't that the place that matters most?

So when you told me I should bring you flowers,

I laughed, “But don't I show my feelings more

in dog-walks, diapers, and rewiring lamps?”

The flowers, I learned later, weren't for wooing,

not for affection in long marriage, but

for something seeded even deeper down,

through frost heaves, and which might be, roughly, peace.

(It's funny that I just assumed romance.)

Now there's no peace with us, I wonder what

they might have meant to you, those simple tokens,

holding in sight what no rite can grow back.

from
New Ohio Review

DEAN YOUNG

Restoration Ode

What tends toward orbit and return,

comets and melodies, robins and trash trucks

restore us. What would be an arrow, a dove

to pierce our hearts restores us. Restore us

minutes clustered like nursing baby bats

and minutes that are shards of glass. Mountains

that are vapor, mice living in cathedrals

and the heft and lightness of snow restore us.

One hope inside dread, “Oh what the hell”

inside “I can't” like a pearl inside a cake

of soap, life in lust in loss, and the tub

filled with dirt in the backyard restore us.

Sunflowers, let me wait, let me please

see the bridge again from my smacked-up

desk on Euclid, jog by the Black Angel

without begging, dream without thrashing.

Let us be quick and accurate with the knife.

And everything that dashes restore us,

salmon, shadows buzzing in the wind,

wren trapped in the atrium, and all

that stills at last, my friend's cat

a pile of leaves after much practice,

and ash beneath the grate, last ember

winked shut restore us. And the one who comes

out from the back wiping his hands on a rag,

saying, “Who knows, there might be a chance.”

And one more undestroyed, knocked-down nest

stitched with cellophane and dental floss,

one more gift to gently shake

and one more guess and one more chance.

from
The Gettysburg Review

KEVIN YOUNG

Expecting

Grave, my wife lies back, hands cross

her chest, while the doctor searches early

for your heartbeat, peach pit, unripe

plum—pulls out the world's worst

boom box, a Mr. Microphone, to broadcast

your mother's lifting belly.

The whoosh and bellows of mama's body

and beneath it: nothing. Beneath

the slow stutter of her heart: nothing.

The doctor trying again to find you, fragile

fern, snowflake. Nothing.

After, my wife will say, in fear,

impatient, she went beyond her body,

this tiny room, into the ether—

for now, we spelunk for you one last time

lost canary, miner of coal

and chalk, lungs not yet black—

I hold my wife's feet to keep her here—

and me—trying not to dive starboard

to seek you in the dark water. And there

it is: faint, an echo, faster and further

away than mother's, all beat box

and fuzzy feedback. You are like hearing

hip-hop for the first time—power

hijacked from a lamppost—all promise.

You couldn't sound better, break-

dancer, my favorite song bumping

from a passing car. You've snuck

into the club underage and stayed!

Only later, much, will your mother

begin to believe your drumming

in the distance—my Kansas City

and Congo Square, this jazz band

vamping on inside her.

from
The New Yorker

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