Carl Phillips

Rockabye

                      Weeping, he seemed more naked 

than when he’d been naked—more, even, than when

we’d both been. Time to pitch your sorrifying

someplace else, I keep meaning to say to him, and then 

keep not saying it. Lightning bugs, fireflies—hasn’t what

we called them made every difference. As when history

sometimes, given chance enough, in equal proportion

at once delivers

           and shrouds meaning . . . About love: a kind 

of scaffolding, I used to say. Illumination seemed

a trick meant to make us think we’d seen a thing more

clearly, before it all went black. Why not let what’s broken

stay broken, sings the darkness, I 

                                     make the darkness 

sing it . . . Across the field birds fly like the storm-shook shadows

of themselves, and not like birds. Never mind. They’re flying.

Michael Robbins

From Karpos

I glance at a twig, I take the twig to my bed, I tell it of manly love.

I tell my twig of the migratory song of the goose.
I tell it of the new form of companionship I propose in its name.
And now it seems to me I walked with my twig upon the brown earth
a thousand years ago, and a thousand thousand, before men were,
or women. It seems to me that a twig might sup with the president of
the United States,
and become president in its turn. And I will drop my twig in the gutter,
for I know other twigs in their hour will fall into my uncharted path
forever.

And I have said I am a brother to twigs, and I say I belong to their
nation,
and together we embrace the hay …

Carolyn Forche

The Colonel

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried 

a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went   

out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the 

cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over 

the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. 

Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to 

scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On 

the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had 

dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for 

calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of 

bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief 

commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was 

some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot 

said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed 

himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say 

nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries 

home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like 

dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one 

of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water 

glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As 

for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them- 

selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last 

of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some 

of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the 

ears on the floor were pressed to the ground. 

                                                                                     May 1978

Tracy K. Smith

 

Ash

Strange house we must keep and fill.

House that eats and pleads and kills.

House on legs. House on fire. House infested

With desire. Haunted house. Lonely house.

House of trick and suck and shrug.

Give-it-to-me house. I-need-you-baby house.

House whose rooms are pooled with blood.

House with hands. House of guilt. House

That other houses built. House of lies

And pride and bone. House afraid to be alone.

House like an engine that churns and stalls.

House with skin and hair for walls.

House the seasons singe and douse.

House that believes it is not a house.

Don Dellilo

first lines of Players

"Someone says: 'Motels. I like motels. I wish I owned a chain, worldwide. I'd like to go from one to another to another, There's something self-realizing about that.'"

Don Dellilo

from the story "Sine cosine tangent" Zero K

I was afraid of other people’s houses. After school, sometimes a friend might talk me into going to his house or apartment to do our homework together. It was a shock, the way people lived, other people, those who weren’t me. I didn’t know how to respond to the clinging intimacy of it, kitchen slop, pan handles sticking out of the sink. Did I want to be curious, amused, indifferent, superior? Just walking past a bathroom, a woman’s stocking draped over the towel rack, pill bottles on the windowsill, some open, some capsized, a child’s slipper in the bathtub—it made me want to run and hide, partly from my own fastidiousness. The bedrooms with unmade beds, somebody’s socks on the floor, the old woman in nightclothes, barefoot, an entire life gathered up in a chair by the bed, hunched frame and muttering face. Who were these people, minute to minute and year after year? It made me want to go home and stay there.

**********

The smell of other people’s houses. There was the kid who posed for me in his mother’s hat and gloves, although it could have been worse. The kid who said that he and his sister had to take turns swabbing lotion on their father’s toenails to control some hideous creeping fungus. He thought this was funny. Why didn’t I laugh? He kept repeating the word “fungus” while we sat at the kitchen table to do our homework together. A half slice of withered toast slumped in a saucer still damp with spilled coffee. Sine cosine tangent. Fungus fungus fungus.

Don Dellilo

from Mao II

 “The only private language I know is self-exaggeration. I think I've grown a second self in this room. It's the self-important fool that keeps the writer going. I exaggerate the pain of writing, the pain of solitude, the failure, the rage, the confusion, the helplessness, the fear, the humiliation. The narrower the boundaries of my life, the more I exaggerate myself. If the pain is real, why do I inflate it? Maybe this is the only pleasure I'm allowed.” 

*******

“He looked at a picture on the wall and saw everything that existed outside the room he was sitting in and the one he was trying to write about. It was a picture of fishing nets stowed in canvas baskets and it had sex, memories, cravings, names of old friends, principal rivers of the world. Writing was bad for the soul when you got right down to it. It protected your worst tendencies. Narrowed everything to failure and its devastations. Gave your cunning an edge of treachery and your jellyfish heart a reason to fall deeper into silence.” 

**********

“News of disaster is the only narrative people need. The darker the news, the grander the narrative. News is the last addiction before—what? I don't know. But you're smart to trap us in your camera before we disappear.” 

**********

“I don’t like not believing. I’m not at peace with it. I take comfort when others believe.” “Karen thinks God is here. Like walkin’ and talkin’.” “I want others to believe, you see. Many believers everywhere. I feel the enormous importance of this. When I was in Catania and saw hundreds of running men pulling a saint on a float through the streets, absolutely running. When I saw people crawl for miles on their knees in Mexico City on the Day of the Virgin, leaving blood on the basilica steps and then joining the crowd inside, the crush, so many people that there was no air. Always blood. The Day of Blood in Teheran. I need these people to believe for me. I cling to believers. Many, everywhere. Without them, the planet goes cold.” 

Don Dellilo

from White Noise

 A woman fell into a rack of paperback books at the front of the store. A heavyset man emerged from the raised cubicle in the far corner and moved warily toward her, head tilted to get a clearer sightline. A checkout girl said, “Leon, parsley,” and he answered as he approached the fallen woman, “Seventy-nine.” His breast pocket was crammed with felt-tip pens.

“So then you cook at the rooming house,” Babette said.

“My room is zoned for a hot plate. I’m happy there. I read the TV listings, I read the ads in Ufologist Today. I want to immerse myself in American magic and dread. My seminar is going well. The students are bright and responsive. They ask questions and I answer them. They jot down notes as I speak. It’s quite a surprise in my life.”

He picked up our bottle of extra-strength pain reliever and sniffed along the rim of the child-proof cap. He smelled our honeydew melons, our bottles of club soda and ginger ale. Babette went down the frozen food aisle, an area my doctor had advised me to stay out of.

“Your wife’s hair is a living wonder,” Murray said, looking closely into my face as if to communicate a deepening respect for me based on this new information.

**********

“The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps even something deeper like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works towards sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true.” 
― Don DeLillo, White Noise

James Tate

The Painter of the Night

Someone called in a report that she had 

seen a man painting in the dark over by the 

pond. A police car was dispatched to go in- 

vestigate. The two officers with their big 

flashlights walked all around the pond, but 

found nothing suspicious. Hatcher was the 

younger of the two, and he said to Johnson, 

'What do you think he was painting?' Johnson 

looked bemused and said, 'The dark, stupid. 

What else could he have been painting?' Hatcher, 

a little hurt, said, 'Frogs in the Dark, Lily- 

pads in the Dark, Pond in the Dark. Just as 

many things exist in the dark as they do in 

the light.' Johnson paused, exasperated. Then 

Hatcher added, 'I'd like to see them. Hell, 

I might even buy one. Maybe there's more out 

there than we know. We are the police, after- 

all. We need to know.' 

Don Dellilo

“slightly older men and women, they had professions and soft slacks with knife pleats and a certain ease of bearing and belonging, the package of attitudes and values known as lifestyle” 

― Don DeLillo, Underworld

“Cotter thinks he sees a path to the turnstile on the right. He drains
himself of everything he does not need to make the jump. Some are still 
jumping, some are thinking about it, some need a haircut, some have girlfriends in woolly sweaters and the rest have landed in the ruck and are 
trying to get up and scatter. A couple of stadium cops are rumbling down the
ramp. Cotter sheds these elements as they appear, sheds a thousand waves of information hitting on his skin. His gaze is trained on the iron bars
projected from the post. He picks up speed and seems to lose his 
gangliness, the slouchy funk of hormones and unbelonging and all the
stammering things that seal his adolescence. He is just a running boy, a
half-seen figure from the streets, but the way running reveals some clue to 
being, the way a runner bares himself to consciousness, this is how the
dark-skinned kid seems to open to the world, how the bloodrush of a dozen 
strides brings him into eloquence.” 
― Don DeLillo, Underworld

Justin Chin

from Burn

 “He has fallen asleep, passed out, is snoring like the last hog on earth, sweating like a lost marathon runner. His white t-shirt is drenched, the sheets and the pillows are drenched with his sweat. I want to sleep but cannot. I paw him, run my hands over his wet body but he cannot wake as I cannot sleep. I wipe his sweat off on m chest, I pull his shirt up and rub my face into his sweaty belly. I adore everything that comes out of his pores, his bitter toxic sweat, his stinky overheated body.

Our love is bound by chemicals. How I hold my arm out to him and let him run the vein into my vein. How beautiful my blood looks as it surges into the syringe, like a rare flower blossoming, and how beautiful it feels as he pumps it, chemical rich, back into me….”

Justin Chin

No Won-Tons for Whitey

The special’s not for you,

The brown rice much too white,

The soy sauce much too salty,

The noodles way too cheap.

No won-tons for whitey,

No nookie for you,

No razzle for baby,

No yum-yums for me.

Justin Chin

 

The Fisting Bottom

Soon, the carnival of me will be no more

than tossing sausages into an open cave.

The dark maw of Proud Monsters devouring

its shining arrogant young. For those who escape

the kill -- the wily, the motivated, the schemers,

the pure (certainly purer-than-thou), the chosen ones,

the untouchables -- the wreck is never far

from mind, never close at hand, but always sticks

to the back of the throat.

I have turned myself inside-out to turn

my understanding right-side-up or down; I have

wielded my weapon with cunning & grace & skill.

I have lived past the point

of impact; I have seen my disciples and my foes.

I have courted perfect loves and imperfect time; and still

I long to bloom. Rosebud

was never the name of my sled.

Juan Felipe Herrera

Radiante, 1967, by Olga Albizu

Radiante (S)

Jestered ochre yellow my umber Rothko

divisions my Brooklyns with Jerry Stern

black then oranged gold leaf & tiny skulls

perforations Dada sugar bread of Oaxacan

ecstasy Lorca’s green horse the daffodil head

corruptions of the State in tenor exhalation

saxophonics blossomings rouged monkey

Dalí roll down the keys the high G’s

underStreets of the undeRealms my hair.

Throttle up into hyper-city correlations =

compassion compassion

Jericho Brown

 Host

We want pictures of everything

Below your waist, and we want

Pictures of your waist. We can't

Talk right now, but we will text you

Into coitus. All thumbs. All bi

Coastal and discreet and masculine

And muscular. No whites. Every

Body a top. We got a career

To think about. No face. We got

Kids to remember. No one over 29.

No one under 30. Our exes hurt us

Into hurting them. Disease free. No

Drugs. We like to get high with

The right person. You

Got a girl? Bring your boy.

We visiting. Room at the W.

Name's D. Name's J. We Deejay.

We Trey. We Troy. We Q. We not

Sending a face. Where should we

Go tonight? You coming through? Please

Know what a gym looks like. Not much

Time. No strings. No place, no

Face. Be clean. We haven't met

Anyone here yet. Why is it so hard

To make friends? No games. You

Still coming through? Latinos only.

Blacks will do. We can take one right

Now. Text it to you. Be there next

Week. Be there in June. We not a phone

Person. We can host, but we won't meet

Without a recent pic and a real name

And the sound of your deepest voice.

Jericho Brown

Duplex

 I begin with love, hoping to end there.

I don’t want to leave a messy corpse.

 

       I don’t want to leave a messy corpse

       Full of medicines that turn in the sun.

 

Some of my medicines turn in the sun.

Some of us don’t need hell to be good.

 

       Those who need least, need hell to be good.

       What are the symptoms of your sickness?

 

Here is one symptom of my sickness:

Men who love me are men who miss me.

 

       Men who leave me are men who miss me

       In the dream where I am an island.

 

In the dream where I am an island,

I grow green with hope.  I’d like to end there.

 

Juan Felipe Herrera

 Crescent Moon on a Cat’s Collar

I come from a family of madmen and extravagant women.

My uncle, back in '26

wrote to the president of Mexico.

He accused him of murdering the potato eaters

by the millions.

So, they set him up for life

in a Goddamn Army hospital mental ward.

Another uncle

Xavier Levario got in with big business

making toys out of wood. I could have gone to France,

that’s where the art was, he said. But I joined everybody

in the States.

Armanda, my aunt whose hair has always looked like

gold dust,

a fleece,

owned the only swimming pool in the heart of Mexico City

near la Calle Uruguay. 

My father drove a pink Ford down the main drag in Tijuana.

All the women loved him, no one has ever smiled sweeter.

My pocket is full of ancient coins.

I keep a silver box of African and Zapotec amulets and hair

near my bed, a tarnished sword and acrylics.

Lightning zig-zags like a dog’s tail

everytime I throw a stone in Southern Arizona.

I have fallen in wells and risen.

All my enemies, including the governors and the wardens,

keep away from my eyes and especially

from the rhythms swelling up through my feet and out

of the opal triumph of my voice   

Jericho Brown

The Tradition

Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought

Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning

Names in heat, in elements classical

Philosophers said could change us. Star Gazer. 

Foxglove. Summer seemed to bloom against the will

Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter

On this planet than when our dead fathers

Wiped sweat from their necks. Cosmos. Baby’s Breath. 

Men like me and my brothers filmed what we

Planted for proof we existed before

Too late, sped the video to see blossoms

Brought in seconds, colors you expect in poems

Where the world ends, everything cut down.

John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.

Ilya Kaminsky

 

Author’s Prayer

If I speak for the dead, I must leave

this animal of my body,

I must write the same poem over and over,

for an empty page is the white flag of their surrender.

If I speak for them, I must walk on the edge

of myself, I must live as a blind man

who runs through rooms without

touching the furniture.

Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking “What year is it?”

I can dance in my sleep and laugh

in front of the mirror.

Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,

I will praise your madness, and

in a language not mine, speak

of music that wakes us, music

in which we move. For whatever I say

is a kind of petition, and the darkest

days must I praise.