American Poetry Read online

  3.

  Lily traverses

  where ink is penchant windows reconsider

  blue silt of fractional evenings

  petals strewn

  In a cast of syllables she could not have recognized,

  until seeing across one recognizable floor

  as threads in the heart of an opal.

  Light cunning conducts—so records nothing—returning

  body beyond form.

  Forgotten the arc of memory reaches only so far as what has not yet occurred

  Which she holds like a wand of crimson, illustrating diagrams in air.

  4.

  Diagrams of crimson

  An echoing glass shell,

  A glass dream with wooden breakers

  Emerald sight stuttered

  A child held in streamers wide

  Begins, skeleton repeated from previous bodies.

  Disrobes the dream—

  A candle encourages

  light through various windows to enter.

  A basket of light, filled with thought.

  5.

  A basket of thought is internal

  tempting the inner dawn.

  Neither this thought, nor the movement entailed by mirror’s gravity contain solidity.

  Both dissolve by approach.

  Sitting, the body changes, in this illusion of stillness

  the mind is transparent then, as if within water—

  which was her hope, to be indistinguishable.

  Steps from the known

  to encompass another form,

  (swathed in diaphanous clouds)

  there is the remnant of a former, less bright form, of less

  Fallen from permanent shoulderblades.

  —A mirage lovingly drowns

  To approach the former is to engage a solitary sea, a wind blown which covets a sail.

  She sought the opposite of setting out, to be oneself a catalyst, to remember the irreversible.

  Movement within the body which emanates from another source—

  Her instrument them, a flowering chain.

  6.

  Her instrument then—

  recites scattered wave upon stone.

  Locates breath, opens lips to intone.

  In reference to the body, breath betokens ink, inscribing form

  syllable of permission

  When speech yields milk she breathes

  neither up nor down

  the image dissolves.

  Body and name dissolve,

  Impearled instrument

  Invisible vibration

  7.

  A name impearled, by permission

  water coverlet

  Awakens to light what the body has forgotten

  kindling forehead—palm.

  Removing a darker garment, she covers herself in metrical

  hymns in the manner of exhaling a bird.

  In the manner of a tiny brush, red bowers of henna traverse her

  arms

  She enters the syllable—

  revolving the rays of the sun, buried embers, and counting the

  night in measures of water.

  8.

  Measures of water

  rest upon sky, sun rests upon the syllable

  sung as it is resting within all elements

  Blue of exceeding darkness

  reveals a person seen within sun

  whose eyes, and lips gold

  gold of exceeding eye

  The form of the person in the eye is the same as the form of a

  bower of sunlight.

  Worlds beneath the self within the eye.

  What wish, she asks, shall I obtain for you by my song?

  9.

  Which song shall I wish for this body, now a continuous child?

  Embers which yield

  opal—waters

  A wave of thought upon stone, in the manner of exhaling an

  ember

  invisibly hung upon brow

  At noon, brilliant, as birds fly without support beyond wings,

  carrying invisible winds to where they are needed.

  Two Poems

  James Tate

  WITCHES

  There are all kinds of druids and

  witches living in the hills around here.

  They don’t hurt anybody as far as we know.

  But you can always spot them at the grocery

  store. First off, they drive these really

  broken down old pick-up trucks, often with

  hand-made wooden shelters over beds

  like they could live in there. And they’re

  covered in layers of shawls and scarves

  and bedecked with long gaudy earrings

  and necklaces and bracelets. And always

  the long, long hair. They buy huge amounts

  of supplies, twenty pounds of cheese, giant

  bags of granola, etc. They move quickly

  as if afraid of being burned at a stake.

  We all know who they are and like having

  them amongst us on their secret missions

  to decorate their inner Christmas trees

  with bedevilled human chickenbones.

  NEW BLOOD

  A huge lizard was discovered drinking

  out of the fountain today. It was not menacing

  anyone, it was just very thirsty. A small crowd

  gathered and whispered to one another, as though

  the lizard would understand them if they spoke

  in normal voices. The lizard seemed not even

  a little perturbed by their gathering. It drank

  and drank, its long forked tongue was like a red

  river hypnotizing the people, keeping them in a

  trance-like state. “It’s like a different town,”

  one of them whispered. “Change is good,” the

  other one whispered back.

  Four Poems

  Honor Moore

  DELINQUENT MUSE

  heels dug in, the shoulders

  shape in darkness

  skin I must reach for

  washed with music

  can’t see eyes

  day through a window

  or back to desire

  at last it speaks

  what I can’t describe

  red of tanager

  handsome is

  rising like land

  the shoulders

  or laughter where

  he always stands

  waiting waiting for music

  so light breaks and I see

  an ocean there

  hand on his hand

  cliff edge slung down

  splash of flesh at the sleeve

  like night, the sun

  my arms a necklace

  through a cloud

  for his shoulders

  how do you paint

  my arms a laughing necklace

  a face?

  heels dug in and leaning

  here oh come here

  I see the future

  so I can see him

  at the shore, ocean, a globe

  in one hand

  at his cheek

  only once for the kiss

  how do you paint a face?

  or can you?

  smudged by rain, his

  face clear across the room

  hand at my back

  luxury as my eyes

  depict what’s vanished, shadows

  rest at his hairline

  shoulders

  and sweep

  how have you

  down the length of him

  where have you

  gone now, inexplicable

  face, its planes articulate

  feeling, no I’d call it

  light but the lips

  pain, paint the lips

  glass, then eyes

  one after the other

  finally again blue

  later I could
look and

  green, looking back

  remember early summer

  lashes

  dark slow to come

  at entrance shoulders

  music into night

  in the white room his flesh

  a way to understand

  the color of a rose

  what he is

  I remember in light

  after so much time

  the blue glass, he turns

  toward me now

  swear oh swear the question

  and the kiss

  THE LAKE

  Pale water, mountains almost black, clouds

  lifting from the lake—an old dock creaks

  at loose moorings, and from the summit, mountains

  until the horizon goes blind. What thousand

  do you count, walking a narrow bridge

  or bending as your canoe glides under it?

  This is a language we have written from

  always, though it bears its own fate—color

  of fern in shade, such a green it must tell

  the truth; a thatch of grass points to

  then obscures underground water, another

  tree dead across the path. Compare a sentence

  broken as you talk at a table, a gun

  in the pocket of a child, the survivor

  alone at her desk. She did not teach this—

  high heels, gray suit cinched at her waist, red

  lipstick, evident jaw. Tell me, how is it

  she comes back now? Nor did she teach this—

  to hear only one’s own voice in the quiet;

  or to think alone, out into the dark

  pardon of the night. She had no husband,

  her hair curled garishly. I can’t get back

  her voice, just her mouth gesticulating,

  and blond Peter who killed himself in London

  after we grew up. In the darkness, silent

  numbers etch themselves in red. I remember

  the pale disk traversed by hands, figures

  marking place along a circumference

  that lay in wait once, like the future.

  In the city night, a door closes—

  refrigerator, car, you can’t tell which.

  What does it mean, she asked us, to be good?

  I ask to understand the impulse toward

  murder. I ask to be loved. And quiet,

  my head between those wide hands, a river

  spreads north in autumn light, pale as a lake.

  I’ve seen the beginning of that river,

  narrow as a brook, nothing built at its edge.

  At the end of the path, a woman turns

  to look back, wearing white, holding roses.

  HOTEL FLORIDIA

  We are at the beach, Susan carrying her bed.

  I have no bed and night is approaching, the water is dark.

  Nor do I have appropriate clothes.

  All morning I dream what I want, the hot right at my collar breathing.

  I can see you don’t understand.

  I am scaring you.

  The sky is teal, the ocean, color of a razor.

  A woman carries a butter yellow umbrella and her daughters follow her.

  That evening in the city, his hand low on my back, we walked.

  When he kissed me on the hotel banquette he said he didn’t care.

  Ocean the color of a razor

  Once when I was a child, a small child, my father swept his long black cloak around me

  and we climbed the stone stairs.

  Already men were singing

  the roof struts meeting like fingers or the inside of a woman.

  Susan is carrying her bed.

  I have no bed. It’s colder.

  After he held me that way, he wouldn’t talk.

  I was the one to turn the shiny knob

  shut the door behind him

  not watching as he pressed for the elevator.

  I open the faucet and water breaks from it

  turning pale teal as the tub fills.

  Hot is on the left.

  It was evening. I could hear men singing across the street

  the bell in the tower.

  I saw my house collapse, and a man came to the door

  with two small children.

  He opened the gate and we climbed the stone stairs.

  It was cold, so he wrapped me in his long wool cloak which was heavy and black.

  During the last hour of sleep, Susan beckons me to the ocean, an ocean

  the color of razor blades for which I am not prepared.

  She carries a bed, but I have no bed.

  Children race from the sand into the water as the dark rises.

  We will sleep here.

  At morning sun fills the house so you can see every fault

  the chip in shiny white paint

  but at evening it is the leaves of ficus you see, grainy in the dark,

  evening still giving pale light through the white accordion blind.

  And so, she said, you come to him quite stripped.

  We have been friends for years now, and she has watched me.

  She has been with me through all of it,

  an ocean the color of razors.

  You must have been lonely, he said.

  I don’t know if I was lonely, I said.

  When we got near the avenue we stopped.

  All morning you dream what you want, choosing your music.

  DARLING

  You came to me one long night in two dreams.

  It was the day of your funeral, but you were still alive, vividly

  making last-minute arrangements, greeting guests.

  The room had the gray shadowy light of a place that has no use for day

  but then it opened to sunlight and the walls turned

  cream or peach, and there on a platform was a coffin the color of chalk

  awaiting you. You seemed to wear green, spring green, long-sleeved, green-sleeved

  and once in a flash you looked like a woman, as I imagine your mother—

  dark hair, decisive eyebrows angled in surprise across a narrow brow.

  Everyone we knew arrived, and people I didn’t know,

  a great gay poet, old now and tall, with a bright face, wearing glasses, a shawl

  handwoven of sienna brown wrapped around his head as if he were an Arab woman.

  You embraced. It was the first time I had seen one man kiss another and call him darling

  and I wondered what had brought you to look at each other that way,

  to call each other darling here at the edge of death.

  Suddenly there is no one in the room, the courtyard

  where the coffin is, where the death will take place, no one but you and me

  All at once, the coffin, which has been floating on water, on water faintly blue

  begins to disintegrate, to break apart

  like something soluble, and you, in your weakness and illness

  step into the water, which comes to your thigh, and, with some annoyance

  almost crying at the effort, try to raise it from the water to keep it whole.

  I watch, and then I am in the water with you, lifting.

  I wake from the dream, but in spite of the morning light, I am asleep again

  and you are there, almost well, turning on the stairs.

  As we climb to a large room, I tell you my dream

  about the tall gay poet, so old and distinguished in his shawl, who embraced you

  whom you held and called darling. Oh yes, you say, with a far off smile

  and take me in your arms, lift me and carry me as I protest. I don’t need

  to be carried, you are dying, you’ll hurt your back.

  You are dressed now, like a servant boy in tattered

  linens, as if costumed for a play.

  Dear one, I have met a man who touches me so it burns.

  I am weari
ng beautiful pale clothes, and we are standing in a room, my hands open as he

  feels at the length of me, as he looks seriously into my face, or down

  my body, his hand holding the place between my legs, waiting there or

  questioning, as I burn down into his fingers, my arms

  loosening, whoever I am sheared away.

  I tell you this even though I’m not sure what you’ll say back.

  In life you might have shrugged, keeping quiet

  all those years of sex, what happened those nights you left after dinner

  before you got sober, before the disease came that took you and all your friends

  and with them, a certain languor and handsomeness.

  I imagine that in death whatever kept our silence may have broken

  that you might now understand what this man’s hands force me to question

  how far desire takes the body before mindfulness leaves it,

  what it was for you when a man’s touch

  burned you open, or burned you back to such blankness and hope

  there was nothing you wouldn’t do to have him.

  From The Tango

  Leslie Scalapino

  is subjunctive—the man starving lying dying in garbage?—there not being black dawn—?

  no. not anyway—that is, anywhere.—or: subjunctive is only ‘social.’ both.

  then (when alive).—(subjunctive.)—black dawn isn’t?—so it has to pass. both.

  ________

  to ignore one’s shape/events ‘so’ it goes on wildly—and—anyway.

  magnolia buds—that haven’t opened—subjectivity/language only—both

  words ‘black dawn’ as shape (instance that has no ‘other’ occurrence) which is ‘their shape/and their conceptual shape.’

  to subordinate magnolia buds—that is real-time—both.

  ________

  ‘not’ for there to be ‘magnolia bud (not-opened)’—

  bud ‘dis-placing’ is lineage—both. single is ‘tree’s buds there’ (as only one’s ‘social’—at the same time.

  a given in space—dis-place blossoming trees.

  ________

  people’s behavior being blossoming trees—per se (just as that)—and the action of it (their ‘behavior’) in the trees blossoming prior—which is separate, sole

  bound as ‘split’ (one’s) ‘to’ conception of change as, or in, behavior—