Anthony Madrid

 Like a Cloud above a Ravine

Like a cloud above a ravine is the hell you already know:

That sublime work of the imagination by Dante Alighieri. 

But the rain that falls from that cloud is not made up of human souls. 

It rains, and the rain funnels down into the something-other-than-human sewer.

Look how a Chinese writing brush ends in a cone of rigid horsehair. 

Loaded with ink, the cone will flex, will leave a wet trench in the rice paper.

It will leave an attractive trench, and the daylight sucked into the ink 

Will give it a reflective “shine dot” — like looking into an animal’s eye.

Which of you has looked into the looking-up eyes of a hair-trigger fox? 

A backyard fox or a campsite coyote: Daoist, unintelligible, brave  . . .

Which of you knows how not to part the pebble on the beach from its colors? 

The songbird from its social network? the fruit from its multifaceted peel?

Oh, that sugary piece of phosphorus in its form-fitted velvet casing! 

That unappreciated Egyptian sarcophagus meant | to be opened from the inside.

And each seed-bearing fruit has an atmosphere. Each has its several moons,

Has tides (subject to gravity), changing weather, lunar eclipses . . .

But should an arrow suddenly snatch the waiting pomegranate out of your hand, 

If it snatches the cap off your head, recall: its circuit has only begun . . .

For the arrow of the luckless archer returns to the middle of his or her back. 

There, between athletic shoulder blades, is a diploma tube full of arrows.

Is a diploma tube full of arrows, and so | it is time for graduation. 

The genie’s gone back to his bottle; the devils to their fallow hells.

And the Chinese writing brush, and the cloud above the ravine (wherein 

The charged particles have sorted themselves along their up-and-down axis),

And the looking-up eyes of the fox, and the sarcophagus, and the campsite

Are irreducible to a system, are each of them floating over a void.

Truly: “All hells and hierarchies are works of the imagination.” And equally: 

“It is not the part of the Daoist sage to conjure meaningless hells.”

John Ashbery

In sooth, I come here sadly, 

not trembling, not against my will, 
hoping you will set the record straight. 
You can, you know, in a minute 
if the wind is right and no felon intervenes. 

And we sit and you tell me how crazy I am. 
I shall petition the other board members 
but am afraid nothing will ever come right. 
It has been going on too long for this to happen, 
yet it was right to go, to go on as it did, 
even if there was a strangeness in the rightness 
that no one can see now. They see the night 
in its undress, plaits unplaited, brushed, 
the sound of the surf churning on distant rocks, 
can think only about how heavenly it would have been 
if it had all happened later of differently. 

Now, according to some sources, 
new golfing trends are a commodity, 
along with silence, and sweetness. 
Doucement, doucement . . . 

And when the sweetness is adjusted, 
why, we’ll know more than some do now. 
That is all I can offer you,  
my lost, my beloved one.

Nin Andrews

Poets on Poets

                                notes from AWP

—I’m pretending not to see him so I can eat my lunch.
—But who reads that shit? About as true to life as a
   velvet grape.
—I think he judges poetry with his dick. And poets, too.
—What’s the scoop on her? Is that her husband, or is he
   just hanging out in her hotel room for the duration?
—Personally I prefer not to think about his dick.
—His latest work, especially the poems about his dead father,
   begin to sound human.
—Think of it as a conductor’s baton.
—Granted, she wins all the prizes, but talk about grandiose.
—The latest inductee into the goddess cult. Like back in the
   sixties when sex and war were the metaphors for
   consciousness-raising.
—I bet they’re really confessional, and she’s a total
   pervert too.
—He knows how to network, who to climb, and when.
   Timing is everything.
—Insomnia, maybe chronic fatigue syndrome. I think it’s
   just frayed nerves.
—I always admired your work but can’t figure why it’s been
   so marginalized.
—You want my phone number?
—The illusion of the narrative appears in your work, but
   there’s really a thread of the unspoken narrative, right?
—Are you married? Do you have children?
—Never even answered my inquiries, the pompous bastard.
—That’s really sweet. Thank you.
—I think I have a blindspot when it comes to his work.
—Must be great to get away.
—I don’t know why they don’t just fire the asshole.
—Reminds me of a gilt frame with no picture inside.
—She’s eloquent enough, a nice cocktail poet.
—Did you see what he was wearing?
—She says it’s none of my business what she writes.
—Poetry is a private affair. A kind of masturbation. An
   endless self-portrait.
—So what if he is another excellent specimen of the dead
   father poets.
—Where are the dead mother poets?
—I like the way you think,
—Yet another vapid, beautiful wind-blown babe-poet for
   the cover of APR.
—Let’s go out for a beer somewhere.
—I sure wouldn’t want to live in his skin.
—A local dive would be nice.
—The way I see it, you’re better off not getting famous
   too soon.
—I never even send out my work.

Agha Shadid Ali

Did we run out of things or just a name for you?
Above us the sun doubles its acclaim for you.

Negative sun or negative shade pulled from the ground …

and the image brought in one ornate frame for you.

At my every word they cry, “Who the hell are you?”
What would you reply if they thus sent Fame to you?

What a noise the sentences make writing themselves—
Here’s every word that we used as a flame for you.

I remember your wine in my springtime of sorrow.
Now the world lies broken. Is it the same for you?

Because in this dialect the eyes are crossed or quartz,
A STATUE A RAZOR A FACT I exclaim for you?

A Ghazal for Michael Palmer

The birthplace of written language is bombed to nothing.

How neat, dear America, is this game for you?

The angel of history wears all expressions at once.
What will you do? Look, his wings are aflame for you.

On a visitor’s card words are arranged in a row—
Who was I? Who am I? I’ve brought my claim. For you.

A pity I don’t know if you’re guilty of something!
I would-without your knowing-take the blame for you.

Still for many days the rain will continue to fall …
A voice will say, “God, I’m burning in shame for You.”

Something like smoke rises from the snuffed-out distance …
Whose house did that fire find which once came for you?

God’s dropped the scales. Whose wings will cover me, Michael?
Don’t pronounce the sentence Shahid overcame for you.

Dan Beachy-Quick

The Jeweler's Solstice, His Madness

I know you, smaller than Circumference
Of Bone—smaller than Orbit—than Silver

Flask in Pocket—more delicate than Mints
On Tongue shrinking into Sweet Breath from Sour.

I know the Summer-stained streets must fill, twice—
With Milk, with Flood—of Moon—and Blight.

I know how the Forest leads its Shallow life
First, to splendor—Jade, Ruby—then Right

Of Dismissal. The Heir, I know. The Emperor
Of Laced Bone made Outlaws of Wrists, Ribs,

Liquor, Hands? Name me: Relief. A Jeweler—
Fashions Clasps to stall a season. Earring Stubs . . .

Now dark Blood pulses through the white Wrist's Gate—
Must forge—from Winter—How—its gemmed Bracelet.

Carrier Pigeon, Anonymity

Retrieve? Ask the bird's claw, bare and riven
Where the message fell, where it diminished— 

Where the note filled—a Hand, unbidden . . .
Writing that bore my own hand's mark, vanished?

Result: a wrist smiles weakly, unable to lift.
Result: a tooth grays, a lost tongue, a lisp.

"Consider the knot's weight a loosened threat,"
The Manual said. "Consider the wind, the cusp

Of breath—an objection, an unwinding, a debt."
I left your envelope unsealed. I bought

A tattered wing, a cataract, from a merchant
Of cuttle bones, and birds. Months passed. I thought

You were weakening, ill. I wrote: Why
Does this comfort me so? Signed—no name—Me.

Billy-Ray Belcourt

 

from 

Books are so solid and insistent, but somehow they put me in mind of my impermanence. They surround me and, because of this, have become a form for my living. When I’m at my desk, I feel the presence of a literary history, of which I am apart and can subvert in my own modest ways. I feel fortunate to forge a life and a living through literature. Even if I were to tidy up the space, to clear off my desk, to relieve the shelf of some weight, the area would return to its state of controlled disarray. I have no aspirations to fix it or to change as a person. I aspire to read and to write as much as I can. If I’m lucky, as I am right now, I’ll get to do so in front of a window out of which I can see trees ache and bloom all summer. Really, I want to live as though the world were one long summer of aching and bloo

Billy-Ray Belcourt

PRESENCE: THE HEARTSPEAK OF INDIGENOUS POETS: BILLY-RAY BELCOURT

BY BILLY-RAY BELCOURT

November 7th, 2018

As a poet, I struggle with language—the English that America force-fed down my ancestors’ throats during assimilation and the Boarding School Era. My mouth struggles to reclaim the language of my ancestors as I try to learn words in my mother tongues.

I write these words while sitting on Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho lands. I type, We are still here, fingers on keys, and think about what it means to live as an Indigenous person in the United States, on Turtle Island today. I see no borders; I wish everyone could see through these eyes.

I think about my First Nations relatives to the north and our relatives from south of these manmade borders in what is known as México. I think about the caravan of relatives traveling north, the voter suppression of Indigenous people in North Dakota and of our Black relatives in Georgia, and the heavy history of a country that has weaponized words in so many unspeakable ways.

These times where my heart struggles to speak are when I need poetry the most.

November is Native American Heritage Month and in celebration I would like to fill the white space of the page with the words of Indigenous poets whose work nourishes my soul. The presence of these poets’ pulses through the literary landscape to help us survive our loneliness and silences, to bless us with light, and to bear witness to our presence in all forms.

– Tanaya Winder

Billy-Ray Belcourt

from  NDN Homopoetics

3. 

I am a body of knowledge, not one of chemical compounds. Which is to say that I live as ideas do. This is the fate of NDNs. It is on the rez that one can hear sentences speak as though in a chorus. To tear the page is to tear our world apart. What shame to be a sentence on its knees! The day I obtained my driver's license, I followed a cumulus cloud through a maze of dirt roads until it evaporated. Forty minutes. That was all it took. I bore witness. It did not ask this of me, but I wanted to keep watch of the dying everywhere, so I could figure out how to care for a bleeding sentence. 

4. 

What to an NDN is the intrinsic goodness of mankind? Maybe justice is a lover who regurgitates the English language so it comes back sweeter. Canada, why are your elevators filled with mud water? What is it about a palm that makes a country feel like a garden? I dug and dug. I pulled out a bouquet of skyscrapers. I kissed each window softly. Is this not what an NDN does in a poem?