The Best American Poetry

"Last Will and Testament" [by Kimberly Steele]

Last Will and Testament

Life is a molehill of unreadable documents and death
is a stapler. If you live long enough, your footsteps
will trace out a giant Rorschach test. You can give
this to posterity. But, really, let’s face it: perception
is secondary—sight, merely a pair of training wheels,
taste, an open clamshell robbed of its meat. Don’t look
toward smell or sound—a powerless rotting carcass,
a broken carburetor. As for touch? Well, everything
touches, but only a few things I’ve heard of can feel.
Just once, I would like to grasp onto a peppermint
red and tell someone about its loud edges. Or savor
a harmonious physics equation, trace the pattern
of its oblique angles. I want to resurrect Saint Paul
and give him a vagina, then sit back and watch him
react. If you live long enough, you’ll have fixed
opinions about these sentiments, and, of course,
chaos theory. The overwhelming pity is that your
ink blots will seem just like everyone else’s, scattered
by the will of the breeze, and if you ever end up
knowing anything at all, it will certainly turn out
to be something you never wanted to know, at all.
Your children will still stop at the crosswalk and look
both ways for speeding cars. On second thought, let Paul
keep his testicles—why waste another good twat?

-- Kimberly Steele

--

The head of the Office of the Independent Counsel was just about to go insane, because he wanted so badly to possess a copy of a certain satirical quarterly publication.  

Indeed, you might even say he was Starr craving MAD.  

Mannequins

These photos, taken in Ithaca by Richard Rand, seemed so suggestive to us, and so evocative of certain noir films of the 1950s, that we thought we would base an informal challenge on them. To wit: write a brief plot summary of a movie from which these are stills; preferably under 125 words, in the form of a comment. The winner as judged by one of our heroic fellow window-shoppers will earn bragging rights and a toast at Cafe Loup.

"Shearing Day" (by Laura Orem)

Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full.
One for the master, one for the dame,
And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

Seems like a lot of wool for one sheep, but you'd be surprised. This week, Nathan, our shearer, came to give Ike and Izzy their annual haircuts. It's amazing to watch him - he flips them onto their butts, pulls out the electric clippers, and in about fifteen minutes releases a very relieved sheep with about half the volume of when he started. There's a specific technique to shearing: the idea is that the fleece should come off essentially in one piece. Then, the wool is gently washed to remove the lanolin, carded (this means combing the tangles out), and spun. Washed but uncarded wool is called "locks"; carded but unspun wool is "roving"; and spun roving is "yarn."  At the York County Fair each summer, there is a contest called "From Sheep to Shawl," in which teams of four or five members shear, wash, card, spin, and knit wool into shawls in a given time frame, usually about four hours. It's one of the most popular events at the fair.

Shearing day is fun. Everyone has a good time, and the sheep, although a bit astonished, feel much better afterward. Ike and Izzy are Babydoll Southdowns, which is considered a small breed (they weigh about 175-200lbs), and their fleeces fill up a king-sized bed sheet each. So "three bags full" isn't an exaggeration. I thought I'd share some before and after shots with you.

The "before" shot - Dinner before Nathan arrives


Once on their butts, the sheep freeze
and let Nathan go to work.




Almost done - the fleece is coming off in one piece


Voila! A complete fleece and a relieved sheep.


The "after" shot - until next June

Cracks in Everything: Parenthood and the Writing Life (by Tess Callahan)

"Ring the bells that still can ring,/ Forget your perfect offering./ There's a crack in everything./ That's how the light gets in." – from Anthem by Leonard Cohen.

In her comment on yesterday’s post, Poem as Fissure: Geophysics and the Value of Frailty, poet and artist Laura Orem wrote that she keeps these lyrics in her art studio as a reminder. A reminder of what, I wonder? To avoid sealing up the cracks, as if that were possible? Perhaps even to embrace them? And what are the cracks, anyway?

Cohen’s Anthem speaks on many levels – globally, politically, and environmentally – yet it hits me in a personal way. Everyday I wake up with an idealized version of how my day will go, the perfect offering. I see myself having a nice conversation with my kids over breakfast. We hear the wren singing outside, and see - far below the house - the rush of the river, flush from rain. We aim to do our tasks in the morning, then head to the lake after lunch. This morning’s plan is for me to write this post, and for them to play piano, do some summer reading, and practice their online math program. I’ve been up here in my office for about an hour now, (granted, most of that was spent listening to various renditions of Anthem on YouTube), and have yet to hear any notes from the piano. Hm…

Just as I am about to go down to investigate, I hear my son’s footsteps trudging up the stairs. His sister has been on Webkinz all morning, he reports, and has not let him do his math. This, from the boy who claims to be allergic to algebra. Boo hoo. Nevertheless, I am required to make the trip downstairs to say the obvious: No computer games until the other stuff is done. 
 
On the way down, I hear the fan running in the empty bathroom. The shower door is ajar, lights on, wet towel and pajamas on the floor. Am I surprised?  Then, I peek into the bedrooms. Every so often a bed is actually made without my asking; today isn’t one of those days. I make my way down to the kitchen. Cereal bowls half filled with milk adorn the table. I make my usual lame announcement that the maid is off duty today. My kids only groan. Has anyone thought to brush teeth? I don’t bother asking. I give them a new set of orders. Forget piano and math for the moment. For now, I tell them to take care of their rooms, their clothes, and their teeth. I tell them I will check back in a few minutes, and throw in some warnings about deductions from their allowance.

Then, back upstairs to this blog post. Where was I? Ah, yes, cracks. My perfect vision of a productive morning and relaxing afternoon is already splintering. What gets me most is the bickering: She took a book off my shelf without asking! He hit me with the dog’s chew toy!  A lifelong conflict-avoider, I am turned inside out by these run-of-the-mill quarrels. I try not to show it. I tell them it’s normal for siblings to fight sometimes, and they know how to work it out. They have plenty of practice.

Finally, I hear my daughter’s notes on the piano, and before long, my son’s footsteps as he stomps up the stairs again. He has forgotten the password to the online math program. “Can’t you just hit remember?” I say. It’s another trip down the stairs because I, too, have forgotten, and must look it up. “We’re not going to make it to the lake, are we?” he says. “And it’s all her fault.”

I imagine the Anthem lyrics refer to bigger cracks than my petty grumbles; true fractures in the realm of death, divorce, illness, and war. But these distractions and disruptions are the little splinters that make up my day as a parent. Okay, Leonard, where’s the light? By my calculation, I should be sunburned by now, except that we are still in the house, not at the lake, and our prospects of getting there are dwindling.

Maybe my perfect offering was too contrived. Maybe my kids won’t make big leaps in math this summer. Maybe my blog posts won’t be brilliant. Maybe it will take awhile longer before my children load the dishwasher without being asked, (I’m not giving up on that one, though!) Maybe the cracks are the spaces where we actually encounter each other in the most raw and honest ways. Idealized pictures, with their soft, faded edges, are never as engaging as the real thing.  Any image I may form of who my daughter and son might become, and how they will relate to each other, will surely be wrong, so I try not to speculate. We only have the moment at hand, this sunny afternoon and the desire to be out in it after so many weeks of rain. Enough of math, piano, and blogging. Let’s ring the bells that still can ring. We’re off to the lake to enjoy this singular day, cracks and all.

But before we leave, put away your snacks!

"We should take great care to preserve this ancient Sumerian city,"

Tom said, urgently.

Did you hear about the orator

who was painfully aware of his own mortality?  Every chance he got, he seized the dais.

"Nostalgia" [by Kimberly Steele]

Nostalgia

Out of all my previous lives, I think I miss jousting the most.
I can taunt the minivans that catapult past my driveway,
but soccer moms internalize rage, and even cab drivers
find no sport for their trouble. If you’ve ever lain awake
wondering how to snag the next thrill, you’re not alone—
there’s no shame in thirsting for combat. Take a serious
lesson I once learned watching a beggar woman get (merely)
tapped by the front bumper of a Jaguar XK—her breasts
bouncing under her ramshackle coat; the driver too hurried
to claim his trophy. Just enough time left to laugh.

-- Kimberly Steele

Poem as Fissure: Geophysics and the Value of Frailty (by Tess Callahan)

The title here comes from a comment made by poet Debra Wierenga on yesterday’s post, Michael Jackson's Enablers and Ours: “I like the idea of poem as fissure, the artful crack in the mask through which authentic feeling becomes palpable to the reader.”
We’ve created a culture that worships strength - physical, social, psychological and professional - but is it possible that a degree of fragility is vital to our wellbeing? French geophysicist Xavier Le Pichon says yes. Featured recently on NPR, Le Pichon is famous for his comprehensive model of plate tectonics, or the large scale motions of Earth’s lithosphere.

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/fragility/

The earth’s surface is made up of constantly moving plates shifting against one another. You might suppose that a solid, steel-like lithosphere would make for a more stable structure, but the opposite is true. The pressure, tension, and sublimation between the shifting plates - much of which occurs beneath the ocean floor - is one of the reasons the planet can sustain life. The earth’s seemingly stable surface and molten interior are in constant dialogue, sometimes manifested as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis.

The human parallel is striking. The more ductile our outer surface, or ego, the more seamlessly we can flow with the subterranean shifts in our awareness and understanding. Poetry is one conduit. The poet accesses the deep, unseen currents and invites the reader to follow. Nature is another portal, as are music and art. But if our ego is too stiff and rigid, like the dense rock surface of the San Andreas Fault, we cannot make the tiny, ongoing adjustments to our own inward movement. The ego and the soul become disjointed, causing pressure to mount until the correction comes in one cataclysmic jolt.

The character Oliver in my novel April & Oliver exemplifies this. He has a created such a fixed, closed outer reality that he has left no room for the influence of more subtle, interior energies, such as insight and intuition. In fact, he is afraid of the power of those blocked off magma chambers, which harbor the musical sensibility he has long buried. Disowning one’s power is a dangerous thing, however, and the seismic adjustment for Oliver will be, by necessity, catastrophic.

The metaphor is illustrated by this poem taught to Le Pichon by his mother. Can it be a coincidence that the boy who memorized this poem in childhood went on to become an expert in plate tectonics?

Le Vase Brisé (The Broken Vase)
by Sully Prudhomme

The vase where this verbena’s dying
Was cracked by a lady’s fan’s soft blow.
It must have been the merest grazing:
We heard no sound.  The fissure grew.

The little wound spread while we slept,
Pried deep in the crystal, bit by bit.
A long, slow marching line, it crept
From spreading base to curving lip.

The water oozed out drop by drop,
Bled from the line we’d not seen etched.
The flowers drained out all their sap.
The vase is broken: do not touch.

The quick, sleek hand of one we love
Can tap us with a fan’s soft blow,
And we will break, as surely riven
As that cracked vase. And no one knows.

The world sees just the hard, curved surface
Of a vase a lady’s fan once grazed,
That slowly drips and bleeds with sadness.
Do not touch the broken vase.

Painting: The Broken Pitcher by Bouguereau

The artful cracks in our masks are the seams through which compassion can enter in and issue out. It took me a long time to get my novel right; every day I sat down and drank tea with my old friend, dejection. But failure and loss can be powerful teachers. Six months after sending my revised manuscript to the last agent I was ever going to try, I made a decision to purge my house, donating old clothes and children’s toys, and throwing away cartons of old manuscripts – first drafts, teacher’s comments, everything. I saved nothing. I had not given up writing, just the dream. Two weeks later, the agent called and asked to represent the book. Two days after that, she sold it. I’m not suggesting cause and effect, only that the fissures created by so much failure allowed me to release old energy, like a long exhalation, and invite in the moment at hand.

'Hung' and the gluten-free Neruda cranberry-walnut bread

Tonight, HBO will premiere Hung, its latest attempt at a half-hour sitcom since it forgot Eastbound & Down was as good as Sex and the City. Hung is about Ray, a high-school athletics coach, a middle-aged divorced dad, most of whose house has recently burned down. He's strapped for cash, his kids and ex-wife more or less hate him. Desperate, Ray attends a make-your-dreams-come-true motivational speech in which he's urged to find his essential talent to achieve success. Or in the words of the speaker, to "identify your own tool." If you take that phrase and the show's title, are you surprised when I say the show is about Ray and his gigantic penis?

Yes, this is the essentially one-joke premise of Hung. Ray becomes, in the words of one character, a "man-whore," servicing women for money. But that character is more interesting than Ray. She's Tanya, a poet. A poet who's also in the identify-your-tool class, and whose own get-rich-tediously idea is something she calls "lyric bread": "a croissant folded around Maya Angelou's 'Phenomenal Woman', or a raisin loaf with Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' swirled in." She also suggests a "gluten-free Neruda cranberry walnut bread." Says the motivational leader: "Food for the body, food for the soul: I like it!" Ray, who is dubious, advises her to "laminate the poems" so they don't melt in the bread. 

Tanya and Ray unite because Tanya, who had a one-night fling with Ray some time ago, knows his "tool" truly is something special, and says she's "hoping to give women more than they've been seeing for centuries." In other words, says Ray, you "want to be my pimp." Correct, says Tanya.

Tanya is played by the wonderful Jane Adams, whom you may recall as one of Niles' girlfriends on Frasier. Adams has huge eyes and a low voice and redeems a lot of the lousy penis jokes. Looking at advance reviews of Hung, I find my Entertainment Weekly review leaves me in the minority. Other reveiwers are more impressed with the show, and find in it metaphors for and comparisons to a deflated economy.

It occurs to me that the ideal reviewer for Hung may be Nin Andrews, who would bring her own special talent to bear on Hung. It would also be interesting to hear how other poets react to Tanya and her poetry bread. Let me know if you watch. And if you'd buy "lyric bread." 

--Ken Tucker