American Poetry Read online

  seamed by water and

  left out to dry by a careless hurricane.

  The tide-suck in the stomach as

  the moon seduces the ocean away

  from her lover on the black land, my land.

  (Our wives—)

  (blood)

  list pinned to the zinc wall of the rum shop

  sea-gull canoe man-eaters wild-pig

  (no one)

  marlin callaloo google-eyed fish frangipani

  (wood word)

  * * * *

  A single tree—what name the tree have, yellow poui

  the blossoms never matter to me at all, the name lost

  in heaven and everything spoil, mash up: even the wave-dem

  (on sea-wall)

  some do the mashin’ dem call the police

  some go to jail, others to seed, some to all that trouble

  a graceful body that love the deep places

  white flowers to amuse a girl

  (no one to see)

  (voyage)

  I was coming back from Portland and took a mountain road that cut diagonal across the island, and at some points the wall of bush opened onto the valley meadows, with a pond and maybe a great house, and the spectacle caused me to stop and pick out the cows, not too many of them, and measure the acres by stretching my arms all the way out. You never see such a green. More driving very slow and out of no where a town and a roundabout, shops, bars, electric lamp posts, trucks. Pass and leave behind.

  The glimpse of the valley meadows, the empty beautiful land—still I was glad to see them, though I saw no one in six hours on any field much less a man planting anything to eat—and thought back to the old use it or lose it, to the Queen’s permission, and a planter in rum, with bad breath on top of a housekeeper: tumbling down the hill and I couldn’t stop the tumble, till I got back into the Mercedes and went on.

  (our wives—)

  mosquito: untuned violin

  coconut:

  woman’s hair like surf: sea’s navel

  that’s how lovely she is

  * * * *

  “We forgot how to read and cipher.

  The admiral would not leave his stateroom.

  The admiral—nothing more than an old shawl.

  He wrote letters, exonerations, mea culpas

  send reinforcements, send something

  (a sail! a sail!)

  The wind says:

  You are not ready for this much death—you need mops,

  furnaces, landfill dumps, sea trenches to hold civilizations.

  You are not equipped: for example, Mexico, San Domingo.

  What do you know about a man who shits in his pants?

  (error—a stray)

  * * * *

  “Each day we collected specimens. Of what?

  The botanist said: there is money in shells,

  the flowers are strong aphrodisiacs.

  The sky, the jungle, the sea—all hostile, choking.

  No one. We make do with the Indians.

  (—were we ever married?)

  (time)

  Amerindian graveyard: speech (skull) fragments

  (cause of madness)

  parrot, a tough meat

  utterance at climate level

  * * * *

  —as in the photo of two dogs fighting—

  —as in the mirror I carry in my pocket—

  * * * *

  “The soul grows desperate: the aromas

  of salt and rotting wood, the proximity

  of Sun’s plump face, or the crocodiles

  that navigate the rivers like gondolas …

  The thunder of surf has made me mad—.

  My lords, make of these islands what you will.

  (the yellowing heart

  (leaf)

  The curve surprises, with a loaded bus

  over the edge of a precipice, and green

  wetness on either side—am in it again

  with confidence in the machine to touch

  where the poui blazes and blue stretches

  like an embrace, to cull out the accents.

  (reef: shadow of green)

  —The wind kissed the chest, the surf dilated with the sand-crab,

  the night was a gentle breath that stirred the almond’s arms.

  Each’s Cot An Altar Then

  Susan Wheeler

  … from the service of self

  alone …

  grasses in low wind high sun

  (streamers of starlings)

  Joseph hauling the leg with his hands, corn stubble to stalk, horizon

  no house—

  Low animal flash in the riot of leg—

  all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in

  This one request I make if it mean foot or glove

  Repair, deplete the debt as I am out of love

  carrion calumny

  and come into the field of blade poplars glinting,

  leg pulled like a cart on the mule of the man

  grasshopper of cropduster sprawled in the sun

  desperate pastor all yield green pan

  Limb lost? Likely.

  Undone? Likely.

  Let us grant it is not amiss

  who bears the Count Chocula shipment up

  who razors the retractable in the joint

  who sings the bass of Anthony

  who cries mercy in the placid field,

  far now to go.

  to reel the streets at noon—

  so great weight in his lightness—

  So. Bike at door.

  On it. Avenue

  of the Americas (against traffic)

  a stream.

  The

  spareribs hot against

  his knees.

  fiduciary re

  no sib

  ability re-

  spond dis

  Eisenhower, Eisenhower

  sty

  pend

  sur

  plus one is

  x, solve for, solve

  vent

  A kind of Mamie-dress, that’s right, with the bodice—

  no—you’d need darts here first. But that kind

  of print—

  kind of

  a clear light above Joseph and his leg and the dry dry stalks and the

  clatter he makes

  seek a proper return for our labor

  Three Poems

  Ann Lauterbach

  FRAYED EDGES

  Domain at hitherto causation listening booth page

  will show you who is right, has stood the test

  anecdotal soul

  à la carte

  lay the blame on, bear the blame

  Too late na na

  new neighbors have arrived

  in their slender

  that’s another pair of shoes, dead men’s shoes

  they

  have descended the ladder

  to the philosopher’s hole, his

  spider and butterfly and bird.

  Here find the linear broken below

  a human form—

  hard shell of certainty,

  parody and reverence braided together,

  tiny beats of the heart—

  traced back to that other plan

  eternally existing

  the young doing such a thing,

  the big, what’s the big?

  cabinet of curiosities, what

  you may be looking at, unexplained.

  Now I am newly sad although my house is fine:

  a silver pencil, a distinction, a thing for him.

  In the gap between sadnesses

  a man is talking and I

  will come, it is probably a shame

  and you are a pattern of tact, come to deceive us, but I

  I cannot the infinite

  (as a child, no harm)

  but I’ll try

  aloud, not guessing, I would have telephoned,

  thirty
miles

  much, well, highly

  over what I have said, so

  so thought

  abraids first proof. This opinion flatters

  no previous flourishing

  no surefire procedure, as when

  three into six gets two.

  Five into five gets one.

  The catastrophic interim is here

  in the cold

  foxglove, foxglove.

  Against whose mercy shall I apply my wares?

  Clarity pins us to our cause

  as we walk down aisles of flameproof trees.

  I am pointing at what is not there.

  You are standing as close as a child

  Let us show the cat a film of crows.

  Explain

  one of the limbs or organs by which the flight of a bird, bat, insect,

  angel is

  effected, part in, corresponding to,

  supporting part,

  and comes on the wind,

  takes under, his are sprouting

  high, low, and the north was added on the beat

  which spread,

  and the arrow with eagle feathers, the shaft and ambition

  his spirit,

  the steps, the horse, the god

  and Victory, its way to its mate, the air

  Explain

  blue, brown,

  of day, in the wind’s, right, left,

  beam, mote, clap,

  up to the, open, wipe,

  throw, cast, hook,

  glass, bath, cup,

  bright, brow

  Now the sky seems beautifully organized

  but everything we care about is flawed.

  The pool fills with leaves.

  The funny pains of aging, artificial tears, and the false

  verdict in the note,

  drawing on her pride, her shame, her position

  and step at the start, before the mirror,

  without the medium, without coin,

  despite the prophet

  and the audience still waits for a voice from afar.

  Out in the yard sparrows itch at the ground

  and the grave flags flicker on their sticks.

  In the coming years, you will find

  a treasure,

  favor and mercy, at the feet where there is no sense in it, although the

  terms are reasonable. How do we

  ourselves? We must take it, it pays, it pays,

  almost impossible, but necessary

  with time to read,

  courage, heart,

  one’s way

  to where another is, crouching

  under the day in a ghost file.

  How bright the fence in sunlight!

  And how acute the transformation, in which

  a caterpiller becomes a butterfly

  and what is really there becomes a jingle about Paradise

  as a red car. The red car is really there

  driving along the big streets

  with the soprano singing her tune

  and the young man with long black hair

  smiling into the wind.

  The crowd

  behind the barricades, trying to see

  suggests something,

  a fine blossom, pierces beneath things,

  and that there is a reason in it, good

  enough for an outward display. Why did he do it?

  To give it away, to give her what is enough,

  and fair, to give it all away.

  The price is merely a sweltering crypt

  where drawings of saints,

  Saint Paul and Saint Michael, Saint Peter, Saint Andrew, Saint Elmo, Saint Bartholomew, Saint David,

  drip pink tears, and the two-note hum

  in the dead of night

  na na. kap shus

  rr rr

  loo ahs anpay kistre

  The churchgoers move inside, the chorus

  in another room sounds victorious. Someone

  drives by, blue canoe

  strapped on, headed for the river.

  The reverie begins again

  near the silt path in front of the trailer.

  People seem to need a reference

  else the shore

  is too far to be traversed. They want to know,

  is it typical as well as indigenous,

  is this an actual archival wound or repro,

  spliced together by the magician

  who would not have it, saying the living is in it, that it came to him free.

  In a sliding scale

  each thing refers to another,

  scandal and code

  fall together in a new font.

  We cross the Bridge of Triage

  swaying high over the river.

  Down through the murk

  a cluster of shapes, black

  and dandelion yellow, swift by.

  Today, at the House of Anemones,

  a woman called herself mad.

  She confused me, in her quiet barn.

  I bought a bouquet of violent flowers.

  The thing refuses its gospel.

  The humped range is not shiny enough

  to reflect instruction’s bliss,

  the luminous arc dispersed without shelter.

  Try climbing over yourself, try

  breathing on the glass a valedictory kiss.

  A dispatch of boys

  made the water rise,

  came forward roped into eddies, ripping

  lilies as they came.

  The Beautiful Writers

  in downtown Shanghai

  wear silver on their toes.

  They study aphoristic slang.

  The empty dress floats

  toward the horses

  galloping out from night’s tarnish.

  Na na, theater of vigilance, graphic cloud.

  Na na visceral digest, spitting birds.

  Leave, yes, but to where?

  Is Heaven? Did you read that? Are you going? Showed me they were, but does it touch our interests? Are you looking? Shall we, if prices fall now? I don’t know, to have is the sense of it, is the use of trying. Places they sing. I am weakest in facts. Your treasure. Go. You like it, send him. He will be taken care of, the ancients knew nothing, we know little. That’s it. Do you come from? Are you going? The whens are important.

  Na na.

  SPLENDOR

  The dream ascends its microcosm, making not sense

  and the atavistic goons clash

  at the edge of the park, sky

  sky plumed

  all prepared

  for the haunted bailiwick of strangers

  trailing incognito across the past.

  But the light seems musical, lowered

  against the ridge

  into andante

  shift shift shift

  News of earth: the fabulist knee-deep in mud,

  fists of green, tinsel dripping by degrees,

  shoe left in the meadow,

  the sentence elongated and

  patched onto the war zone.

  It could be dark, theater of dark,

  the unsheltered sentence bloodied,

  the opaque moon, the glassed in record,

  the will to rise.

  Call it the person things will go back to sleep

  as if forgotten and the difficult will seem easy

  walk into the light

  show the precarious stays

  set off fires from above

  there will be no one to count no two to include no three to beg for mercy

  the trail of time will be easy to follow

  good old oaks, billowing lilies along the roadside

  no four to divide

  the valley is incrementally cold

  down up down down

  mediated by the memoir’s fake torture

  and the one-way war

  panic of recognition

  dangerous evident sun.


  But in the slovenly small-eyed dream, surely

  we are victorious,

  our kisses stamped into wet clay,

  our harrowing ended in song.

  Rah! Rah!

  as the struts of tomorrow fall to ground

  and tears arrive from afar in new boxes.

  INTERLEAVINGS (Paul Celan)

  Snowfall, denser and denser,

  a knight’s breath

  Snowfall, as if even now you were sleeping.

  A collar of cold at his neck

  above it, endless,

  a foreign sky.

  Below, hidden,

  where my hand held the soft stuff

  was den Augen so

  prone, entire

  almost fetched home into its

  delay, the cast-off limb

  posted.

  The watch and music

  in twin branches:

  what body falls through the bridal mass?

  is the colored cloth a flag?

  Arc of His Slow Demeanors

  Clark Coolidge

  1.

  I didn’t respect him exactly but I collected his sensibility

  sun on gouged hull of the same pitched home

  he never tooted but fronted

  on a new loop to the belt in a carry

  the neighborhood wideners wouldn’t shun

  so neither of us fell for whose blinders?

  a soaking we didn’t?

  a melting back from the gladness tax?

  He would have chosen a diamond over a mirror any day

  the mustard pumps removed from his cable socks

  the better to mix an alarmist with the least of collateral bettors

  mimsy were the clasps to his carbons of will

  in a living room if had half a mind to

  rope from here to sausagery

  velvets in his background

  looms for vetted sailors

  felt crowns doffed in the forgetting

  I wouldn’t be writing this to him if I knew anything veteran

  are you sorry and only then do you brighten?

  I’ll bet he was the Kellogg of his math class

  rolled off a brass asbestos and to the windward

  they never had galleries in that landlocked burdenroad

  sky was his mention and pardon

  the trust woman clanking off for slaghorn stanchion and points Viennese

  Did we ever quite meet up?

  I doubt the drift of that

  flags forming on the upper staves as I watch

  harmlessly getting his own goat I only wish

  was a lot of trouble about the gray brakes

  worries lashed together into habits to be stepped off

  I’d make a wince of his ceiling belts to the public transom

  You get a throat for that door I’ll stopper it

  slopes off after January, maybe March

  maybe then April won’t rain so much

  curtains to contain a backyard in wires

  glows where you don’t notice

  won’t afix the phallus it’s wrinkled the first collapse I notice