The Best American Poetry 2014 (8 page)

Song birds enter the morning

the predawn before the fires,

you know, when the night floats away

like vapor on a lake,

or like kisses in the woods.

Songs that even creation

might not remember.

Continuous, threaded, as if

a cherry pit were stuck

in the throat

to produce the trumpet of the branches.

So varies, yet never, changing

through all the days, since

reptiles fell to earth.

I give up the reason for the sound

I give up the creature of sound

and the creator of the creatures

and of us and of dawn and

air and of vacuum

and human inhumanity.

I give up the song.

I give up the place.

from
The Nation

At the end of the road from concept to corpse,

sucked out to sea and washed up again—

with uprooted trees, crumpled cars, and collapsed houses—

facedown in dirt, and tied to a telephone pole,

as if trying to raise herself still, though one leg is broken,

to look around at the grotesque unbelievable landscape,

the color around her eyes, nose, and mane (the dapples of roan,

a mix of white and red hairs) now powdery gray—

O, wondrous horse; O, delicate horse—dead, dead—

with a bridle still buckled around her cheeks—“She was more smarter than me,

she just wait,” a boy sobs, clutching a hand to his mouth

and stroking the majestic rowing legs,

stiff now, that could not outrun

the heavy, black, frothing water.

from
The Threepenny Review

I spun the helmet on the ground and waited for it to stop. When it didn't stop, and probably two days had passed, I stood up and began snapping my fingers, just the one hand, my right hand, and I was kind of squatting a little, just bending my knees a bit, and tapping my right foot, and smiling I guess, like I was listening to something, something catchy. And after two more days of this, this finger-snapping, and after seeing that the helmet would continue to spin in the driveway, at this point I began to dance backward toward town, down the long dirt road toward the pavement that would take me to the highway that would eventually take me to town, always dancing and snapping, always moving backward, mile after mile, smiling, really getting down, never looking over my shoulder, falling and getting up, falling and getting up, traveling backward toward town, snapping, smiling, really covering some ground.

from
jubilat

At a Chamber Music Master Class

Use every centimeter of the hair.

That phrase needs elasticity, breathing room.

We need to hear the decoration more.

Her part has so many notes, it's almost a crime.

Tread lightly here—he's on his weakest string.

You can be perkier in the lower half of the bow.

Don't be so punctual; you're right but you're wrong.

Trios are three soloists. Soft doesn't mean slow.

Adjust your arm instead of the violin.

Attack, back off, and then attack again.

Let the sound of the chord decay before you go on.

When you have a rest, take it. You want your touch

to make the piano say, “Ah,” not “Ouch.”

Keep your hand rounded, as if it held a peach.

from
New Letters

Of all the forms of being—

I like a table

And

I like a lake.

The excitement of an upandcoming

Mistake:

Do not send word to your lover

If you cannot decide which one.

Involvement, like war, is a form

Of divination. Think

About what you said—or didn't—

That's why it hurts to swallow.

My first words in French?

Cruche, olivier, fenêtre
.

Et, peut-être,

Pilier, tour
.

Yeah, for a while they were “involved”—

Then they “delved” into

“Abjure.”

Uncertainty more exciting than sex!

We could do serious, but

My lover was NO FUN.

O creamy cloud, indecision, I love you. I love you. I love you.

So badly. So slowly,

I want to enter you

From behind.

O ignorant protagonist

The lineaments of my face—

We had an interval,

A ludicrous,

“Us,” the most fleeting

Of all.

I was

A tachiste, a revenant;

He a revanchist.

Yeah, what felt at what saw.

Listen: the next time you cry it won't be

At a train station

In France—you died at that scene—

To leave is to leave

Well enough.

I am so—

Not lonely.

Worn and dark was my . . .

Bright blue my . . .

Sometimes you just wanna press Send, thinking

If this is what ends it all, so I am.

I will send you Glück's purple bathing suit—

even if it kills us.

That's how I tell the story—“We were involved for a while—long was

Our distance—and, mostly—wrong—finally

I sent him Louise Glück's ‘Purple Bathing Suit'—

Never to hear from him again.”

The train schedule was an étude.

Was I no longer eager

To study my lover?

In my lap Coleridge's constancy to an ideal object.

In the end:

A newly cleared

Table.

And, if cleanly forgotten, a little lost

Lake.

from
Green Mountains Review

for Marcus Mosiah Garvey

Even here on the south side of this city

of wind and blood, news is good for negroes.

A fat-faced, true African man, one of

those black men you know never ever

had a doubt that he is a man and strong,

too; one of those magic men

who know what God must feel like

standing over an army of angels; one

of those men who's stood at the edge

of the new century and seen a wide

world of what could be; a man who,

when he heard what Dubois said

about the color line thought right off

that this is going to be a century

where everybody will be talking

about niggers like they are new money,

and he, sure as hell, is going

to shine and shine. A man

with two big hands and a head

full of words who knows the freedom

of nothing to lose; a man who

knows the long legacy of rebels,

those maroons whispering Akan

in the hills—knife men, cutlass men,

roots men, Congo men;

those yellow-eyed quiet men

who look at death like it is

a good idea that someone came up

with; a man who learned by

touching the split chest of a white

man, his heart still thumping,

everything inside him slick

with blood and water, his ribs

pulled aside where the doctor

tried; that all white men

ain't nothing but flesh, old rotting

flesh like everybody else—

a man who's done the math

and knows that for fifty years,

his people have been waiting

for something bigger than themselves.

Well, news has it that this man

is causing trouble in Harlem

and the world won't be the same

when he's done with it. Even

here, the excitement of it is

rushing through the blues joints

and people are strutting about like

they
have been marching, like

they
been waving flags, like
they
shouting

the name of freedom beside

the round-faced black man,

with his proud high voice

showering imperatives on the folks

who gather to hear him talk

with his sweet island singing.

Black man sweating, dressed

clean with high collar and good

shoes. Yeah, this is good news

walking, cause we all need a daddy,

a man with a good firm voice,

a man who knows what we must

do to change this wearying world,

a man with a head full of dreams

of ships, seven miles of them

coming into that gaping Hudson

mouth, red, gold and green flags

flapping in the air—seven miles

of ships as far as the eye can see,

coming in, coming in, coming in.

from
Hayden's Ferry Review