The Best American Poetry 2013 (14 page)

Politicians put their heads together when they had to, Fredric March

And Franchot Tone gave their speeches about democracy and shared values

In
Seven Days in May
and
Advise and Consent
, and we muddled through.

Everett Dirksen, Jacob Javits, Charles Percy—remember them?

They weren't eggheads or Democrats (let alone beatniks), yet they could

Talk to eggheads and Democrats (I'm not sure about beatniks),

And sometimes even agreed with them. It was such an innocent time,

Even if it didn't seem particularly innocent at the time, yet a time

That sowed the seeds of its own undoing. I used to listen to the radio,

Curious as to what the right was on about now, but I'm not curious anymore,

Just apprehensive about the future. I'd rather listen to “Take Five”

Or watch another movie, secure in the remembrance of my own complacency,

The complacency of an age that everyone thought would last forever

—As indeed it has, but only in the imagination of a past that feels fainter

And fainter as I write, more and more distant from a bedroom where I lie awake

Remembering Sputnik and piano lessons, bongo drums and beatniks, quaint

Old-fashioned Republicans and Democrats and those eggheads of yore.

from
The Virginia Quarterly Review

Beautiful Anne

I had not seen you for so long

But then I saw you again

In the form

Was it Angelo?

What was his name? The other man.

But that wasn't him

What story is it that will be the real one?

Icy eyes and the smoothest skin

That's the way I remember you

On walks to the hospital

Light gold suitcase in tow

She too had your skin

Clear and faintly rosy

Immaculate also in white dress

With black headband

The other Anne had kohl-lined eyes yes

Below electric eel lids, Deco crystal cuff on right arm

She sipped her words

Almost Cleopatra

The lamplight on that face

To say the thing I couldn't

To say the word

I couldn't say

You wore the blackest clips in your short hair

I saw a pantoum leg across the table from mine

Anne Sexton, your black hair is always in my memory

To see it shine along winter seascape

While I bit your black heart

No you bit mine

No not black

What bit

Your heart was as red as anything

Although even the other Anne's lips parted were not red

No no they were blue

No no green

No not that. They were mine.

from
Conduit

Let me sing, dear heart,

in these dark hours.

Let me suck the chilled wind

through the spaces

between my teeth.

Let me follow you

past the trashcans

stuffed with oily rags

as you strain under

the awkward weight

of the metal ladder

and traipse the perimeter

of the house, lean it

against the roof

where it will sing

in the weak, brief sun,

rung by tin rung,

and I'll hold it steady

while you climb,

my beloved, to the gutters

of dead leaves, sodden

by rain, swarming

with worms and bird droppings,

and scoop them

in your gloved hands

like a wild-haired surgeon

excising gobbets of decay,

pulling the dark muck up,

proffering it, glistening,

to the light, before christening it

a clogful, burning, hurtful stuff,

and flinging the muddied clump

with a delirious thud

onto the bright new grass.

Let me sing of your strong, wide back

and bucktoothed grin,

your threadbare jeans

that slip down your hips

with each stretch and reach

of the clustered muscles

beneath your scarred arms.

I could drown in joy.

Time is no friend. I can't

love you more and so,

my Ascension angel,

my husband, my hinged window,

my triptych, my good right side,

my open door, my bowl

of foreign coins, let me praise

your raised fist

gripping the slick layers

of our falls, our winters,

the fires you will build

from windfall branches,

the thousands of suppers

we will share without speaking

in front of the TV, our bodies

dropped like rag dolls

onto the torn velvet couch,

my hand on your bent knee,

my life streaming

behind your closed eyes,

your dreams leaving

their tea-colored stains

on my chokecherry heart.

Descend slowly now,

carefully, one tightly cinched

boot at a time, let me touch

the rosary of your spine,

your wing nubs.

Let me sing as you climb

back to me, as you turn

to face me again

and we stand

in a bed of roses and thorns,

the quagmire garden

we have made, carpet

of brown petals, split twigs,

the latticed backs of sowbugs

crushed beneath our feet.

Let me hold you a moment longer

in my mortal arms and sway.

Let me open your mouth

with my mouth. Let me sing.

from
River Styx

and by now it has almost lost its scent—

your
scent, as when you were here and turned

towards the wall while I pressed my body

into your body and sighed, “You smell like candy”

into your T-shirted back. Yes, the smell is yours

the shirt warmed by your lean torso, tufted

and delicious. I've washed my clothes in your soap,

but that wasn't it—there must be something sweet your pores

pour forth. In three days you will be here and we will drink

from and with each other, sleep in close quarters,

naked, awake to heat and singing cells and slickness. But now,

too tired even to please myself, I breathe the shirt that covers

my pillow and dream—our
yes
and
yes
and
yes
opening and opening—

from
Vitrine: a printed museum

The time my horse got stuck in the mud.

(Two paragraphs; no, one.)

Went blind in right eye, took some medicine,

I could see again. Scary detail: when the Dr.

first shined the little light

into my pupil, he drew back, startled.

(Three paragraphs.) Later HS: broken heart.

(Since this happens rarely, milk for three, four

paragraphs);
milk
, speaking

of which: I helped my father peddle it,

in a square white truck in a small round town.

College, my 20s: I recall little to interest you.

I did cover many pages with writing

and read, and turned, a thousand

pages for every one on which I wrote.

(Don't see how I can say what else happened then

and be honest.) My 30s? Wore funny glasses.

(Maybe a two-sentence self-deprecatory joke?)

My 40s–50s? The best part

was a child, named Claudia. I could say some funny

things about her, but so could every father.

Besides, family is personal, private,
blood
.

(With above exception of daughter, those two decades:

a paragraph; maybe two, if I insert

journal entry on day of her birth?)

I can't bear to write of her mother, whom I hurt.

Lately? Read like a hungry machine,

in a new room, in a house I love; there is still

my child to love, and friends,

and a beloved, named Jenny.

My vital signs are vital.

I tend a little garden, have a job.

(No way I could write more than a few sentences

on these years

under the sentence, again,

of happiness.) If I live a thousand lives,

then I'll have enough truths, maybe, and lies

to write
my
memoir, novella-sized.

from
The American Poetry Review

Once upon a time,

There was a beautiful shark.

She combed her long, blonde hair,

And it made the halibut bark.

It made the chicken oink,

And the whale to run for Congress.

A man should never obstruct

The course of material progress.

Yet a lamb cannot but weep

When the kiddies come home from college.