your side, across your breasts.
The delicate patterns branch and weave,
swoop down the curves
and glide across the planes and slopes,
embossed and subtle decorations,
flesh on flesh.
The lines entwine, and seem to spell our love,
our family, our thirty years together.
Opera Season1
I couldn’t attend the opera this season.
The thought of your seat empty next to mine
was too much to bear.
I put our tickets in a kitchen drawer,
then mentally buried that drawer with you.
Like Therese RaQuin I am haunted
by your ghost in every corner.
Like Rigoletto, that which was most precious to me
was taken away from me.
Like Butterfly, I confidently wait for our reunion
in this intermission between life and death.
Shadow Friends1
I worship shadows like my daughter worships sun.
I don’t mean those so crisp and dark
beneath a noon-time sun,
or shadow soldier squads
before a picket fence. Those underneath
a harvest moon are more my style; the way
they hide and watch
from low bushes, then dance around
the lifted skirts of swaying trees,
like witches in a forest glen.
I’ve lured them home with low-watt bulbs
in gargoyle sconces under overhangs.
At night my friends uncoil
on walks and walls, then call me to their yard
to stroll and see my life in grays and blacks.
And in my den the shy ones come to watch
me read by candlelight. They come, pull back,
grow bold, then sly; so while I sip my scotch
and swirl the ice I’m not alone. I’m not
depressed.
Dean Young (b. 1955)
Only One of My Deaths2
Because it seems the only way to save the roses
is to pluck the Japanese beetles out of
their convoluted paradise
and kill them, I think for a moment,
instead of crushing them in the driveway,
of impaling them on the thorns.
Perhaps they’d prefer that.
Mark Cox (b. 1956)
Geese1
We were in love and his uncle had a farm
where he took me hunting
to try to be in love even more.
He wanted me to have what he had:
black coffee,
toast buttered with bad light
in a truck stop splotched with smoke,
then moonlight on the hills and snow
like a woman stepping out of her dress.
And it was good even as we killed it.
The stalks lightening,
the sun rising like a worn, yellow slicker
over us, bent over panting
because it wasn’t hit cleanly
and had run us both dizzy
before settling down.
There was a particular knife he used
to make the asshole bigger.
After that, one could just reach in
and remove anything that wasn’t necessary,
and thinking about it now, I see
the old school desk behind his uncle’s house
put there for that reason,
see my husband sadly hosing it down,
as if regretting how and what men are taught…
I’m lying…
though the diner I see belongs
in a small town where I went to school,
the desk had no drawers, was in fact a table,
and he was whistling as he washed it.
The sun didn’t rise
like something to keep the rain off us;
it hung, like a cold chandelier
in which I could see each filament
in each flame-shaped bulb
beating itself senseless against the light—
brilliant and hollow,
beautiful and inhumane…
But I wanted so badly
to forgive his hands, forgive his lovers,
and to forget how, driving home, I was fooled
by half an acre of decoys
and some camouflage netting,
how I wanted to honk but didn’t,
and how the whole scene made me realize
that mannequins mate for life too,
in department stores, wearing back-to-school clothes,
made me remember that if you press hard enough
on a bird’s dead breast, it will betray its own kind,
that when he took its neck and broke it
I said his first name.
Style1
Today, a coed with a black eye
and bruised cheek stopped me
in the hall to ask, anxiously,
where does one put “Jr.”
according to standard manuals
on style?
“In jail?” I said. “No, really,” she said,
“This is important.”
Jim Daniels (b. 1956)
Wheels1
My brother kept
in a frame on the wall
pictures of every motorcycle, car, truck:
in his rusted out Impala convertible
wearing his cap and gown
waving
in his yellow Barracuda
with a girl leaning into him
waving
on his Honda 350
waving
on his Honda 750 with the boys
holding a beer
waving
in his first rig
wearing a baseball hat backwards
waving
in his Mercury Montego
getting married
waving
in his black LTD
trying to sell real estate
waving
back to driving trucks
a shiny new rig
waving
on his Harley Sportster
with his wife on the back
waving
his son in a car seat
with his own steering wheel
my brother leaning over him
in an old Ford pickup
and they are
waving
holding a wrench a rag
a hose a shammy
waving.
My brother helmetless
rides off on his Harley
waving
my brother’s feet
rarely touch the ground—
waving waving
face pressed to the wind
no camera to save him.
Gu Gheng (1956 – 1993)
Ark1
Translated from the Chinese by Donald Finkel
The ship you’ve boarded
is doomed to go under—
vanish into the breathing sea.
But you still have time to stare at the flag,
or at the dark, unfolding plain,
or at the white birds twittering
over their watery grave.
You still have time to lean on the rail,
puzzled by a sound in the passageway—
though the whole ship is empty,
though every door is ajar—
till cool flames float up
from every cabin.
Li-Young Lee (b. 1957)
Eating Together2
In the steamer is the trout
seasoned with slivers of ginger,
two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.
We shall eat it with rice for lunch,
brothers, sister, my mother who will
taste the sweetest meat of the head,
holding it between her fingers
deftly, the way my father did
to sleep like a snow-covered road
winding through pines older than him,
without any travelers, and lonely for no one.
Persimmons1
In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose
persimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down the newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew on the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet,
all of it, to the heart.
Donna undresses, her stomach is white.
In the yard, dewy and shivering
with crickets, we lie naked,
face-up, face-down,
I teach her Chinese.
Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.
Naked: I’ve forgotten.
Ni, wo: you and me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon.
Other words
that got me into trouble were
fight and fright, wren and yarn.
Fight was what I did when I was frightened,
fright was what I felt when I was fighting.
Wrens are small, plain birds,
yarn is what one knits with.
Wrens are soft as yarn.
My mother made birds out of yarn.
I loved to watch her tie the stuff;
a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.
Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class
and cut it up
so everyone could taste
a Chinese apple. Knowing
it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat
but watched the other faces.
My mother said every persimmon has a sun
inside, something golden, glowing,
warm as my face.
Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper,
forgotten and not yet ripe.
I took them and set them both on my bedroom windowsill,
where each morning a cardinal
sang, The sun, the sun.
Finally understanding
he was going blind,
my father sat up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
I gave him the persimmons,
swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love.
This year, in the muddy lighting
of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking
for something I lost.
My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,
black cane between his knees,
hand over hand, gripping the handle.
He’s so happy that I’ve come home.
I ask how his eyes are, a stupid Question.
All gone, he answers.
Under some blankets, I find a box.
Inside the box I find three scrolls.
I sit beside him and untie
three paintings by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.
He raises both hands to touch the cloth,
asks, Which is this?
This is persimmons, Father.
Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,
the strength, the tense
precision in the wrist.
I painted them hundreds of times
eyes closed. These I painted blind.
Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.
Julia Kasdorf (b. 1962)
What I Learned from My Mother1
I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned to believe
that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor I learned to create
from another’s suffering my own usefulness,
and once you know how to do this,
you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
Ruth L. Schwartz (b. 1962)
The Swan at Edgewater Park1
Isn’t one of your prissy rich peoples’ swans
wouldn’t be at home on some pristine pond
Chooses the whole stinking shoreline,
candy wrappers, condoms
in its tidal fringe
Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck
into the body of a Great Lake,
swilling whatever it is swans swill,
Chardonnay of algae with bouQuet of crud,
while Clevelanders walk by saying Look
at that big duck!
Beauty isn’t the point here; of course
the swan is beautiful,
but not like Lorie at 16, when
everything was possible—no
more like Lorie at 27
smoking away her days off in her dirty kitchen,
her kid with asthma watching TV,
the boyfriend who doesn’t know yet she’s gonna
leave him, washing his car out back—and
he’s a runty little guy, and drinks too much, and
it’s not his kid anyway, but he loves her, he
really does, he loves them both—
that’s the kind of swan this is.
Patience Agbabi (b. 1965)
Transformatrix1
I’m slim as a silver stiletto, lit
by a fat, waxing moon and a sance
of candles dipped in oil of frankincense.
Salt peppers my lips as the door clicks shut.
A pen poised over a blank page, I wait
for madam’s orders, her strict consonants
and the spaces between words, the silence.
She’s given me a safe word, a red light
but I’m breaking the law, on a death wish,
ink throbbing my temples, each vertebra
straining for her fingers. She trusses up
words, lines, as a corset disciplines flesh.
Without her, I’m nothing but without me
she’s tense, uptight, rigid as a full stop.
Kate Clanchy (b. 1965)
War Poetry2
The class has dropped its books. The janitor’s
disturbed some wasps, broomed the nest
straight off the roof. It lies outside, exotic
as a fallen planet, a burst city of the poor;
its newsprint halls, its ashen, tiny rooms
is low-key as a smart machine. They group,
regroup, in stacks and coils, advance
and cross like pulsing points on radar screens.
And though the boys have shaven heads
and football strips, and would, they swear,
enlist at once, given half a chance,
march down Owen’s darkening lanes
to join the lads and stuff the Boche—
they don’t rush out to pike the nest,
or lap the yard with grapeshot faces.
They watch the wasps through glass,
silently, abashed, the way we all watch war.
David Berman (b. 1967)
Snow1
Walking through a field with my little brother Seth
I pointed to a place
where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.
He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.
Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.
Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.
I didn’t know where I was going with this.
They were on his property, I said.
When it’s snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.
Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.
We returned to our shoveling,
working side by side in silence.
But why were they on his property, he asked.
Jackleen Holton (b. 1969)
American History1
First semester of my senior year,
Mr. Severin, American History teacher,
would wave his giant arthritic hands—
fingers unmoving—as he spoke of past
presidents and foreign wars.
Oftentimes he’d sketch himself
into these lectures, remembering
how a dark theatre fell silent
as the newsreel delivered the wreckage,
the death toll at Pearl Harbor.
His wife, a sweet-faced brunette,
had been a hard catch until the night
he showed up at the soda fountain
with the girl who had a reputation.
Against a backdrop of black-and-white
war footage, their courtship endured.
The Giant Book of Poetry (2006) Page 51