The Best American Poetry

Two Poems by Nicole Santalucia

Nicole and Deanna had a whale of a time in Provincetown two weekends ago!

Here is "Domestic Life" by Nicole Santalucia:

Domestic Life

I live with a deaf painter
she stares at me and moves her hands
I have no idea what she's saying
I just want to pull her pants down and run
but I smile and nod and pull my pants down
she knows what I'm saying when i just stand there

And here is Nicole's poem "Wife-Dog":

Wife-Dog

Meet Anthony my watchdog
Anthony is my wife too
her real name is Deanna

When you meet Anthony
you'll be introduced to Deanna
but it's really Antony my watchdog

-- Nicole Santalucia

"Doubting the Doubts" (by David Shapiro)

David Shapiro wishes Jasper Johns a happy birthday (May 15)!

Doubting the Doubts

A map dropped from my hands
And a voice cried, From now on
You will proceed in darkness.
Alas, he laughed, that is true.

Was it a black map?
I do not remember.

We all love clarity.
But you love darkness.
But darkness is clear.

We do not know now and we will never know.
White night, perilous night.

– David Shapiro

Questions (by Nin Andrews)

Questions 

What if love and poetry were the same thing?

Would you ever be able to say you were done?

Say . . . that's enough already?

Would  you repeat the same poems

like those small white lies . . .

That was great, no really, Honey,

I just loved every inch of it.

Or would you hem and haw, suggest, yes,

there were some great moments . . . good times, but . . .

Do good things come in 3s? Like the bad?

Are the good and dismal linked 

in an endless dance?

What is the shadow of sex? Poetry?

What is good in your opinion? Or great?

Define the ideal poem.  Or romance. 

Then define your ideal poem,

or  is there a difference?

What is your best first line?  And last?

Who is your critic?  Do you believe what he says?

Or she? 

Do you know her name? Her every disguise?

-- NA

Homosexual or Therapy (by Nicole Santalucia)

Nicole Santalucia took part in a downtown (New York) reading last night and made a big hit with the crowd. Here's a poem she read: 

Homosexual or Therapy

He is cute and pink and large and an elephant in the corner of the room

I want to be an elephant too and pink or purple as long as I am compatible to

             that one

in the corner of the room and I will do anything it takes to become an elephant

and anything it takes to get him to have sex with me

I’ll mind my business when he wants to play with the other boy elephants

I’ll hide my drinking habits and let him take advantage of me

I’ll stop sleeping with my brother and let him sleep with my brother if that’s

            what he wants

I won’t tell him I know he’s an elephant I won’t tell him that I want to be an

            elephant too

-- Nicole Santalucia

"A Letter" by Alexandra Zelman-Doring

Alexandra Zelman-Doring

A Letter

I look where I left you, conducting

long dialogue with the night.
Interrupting to ask of the moon with fear I have taken in me too, oh
my love.
Illusory the night watch thinking it hears
this dark, no that, the one on the water, the one in the eye, the increase the ripples dark and calm.

The infinitudes,
say.

-- Alexandra Zelman-Doring

"Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" by Sarah Binns

 

Here is a poem by Sarah Binns, the Mt. Holyoke College undergraduate who took second place in the the 85th annual Glascock Poetry Contest at Mount Holyoke College last month.  Previous winners and contestants have included Sylvia Plath, John Koethe, Kathleen Norris, Katha Pollitt, Mary Jo Salter, and Larissa Szporluk.  Sarah's ekphrastic poem was inspired by the Sargent painting, above.

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
after John Singer Sargent

Eden could have been like this: two girls,

            awake with wonder

                     glowing in their hands,

the carnations listening to the swish-swish-sway   
          
          of fabric in the breeze; nothing else

                       touches them here.

But someday the lanterns will hang from a veranda,

          and even the roses will have lost

                        all memory of the earlier garden.

Years after tonight, the lily’s pollen

            will be found, sprinkled

                        in the ruffles of a yellowed linen dress.

--- Sarah Binns

"Love in the Mind" by Alexandra Zelman-Doring

Here is a poem by Alexandra Zelman-Doring, the Brown University undergraduate who took first place in the 85th annual Glascock Poetry Contest at Mount Holyoke College last month.  Previous winners and contestants have included Sylvia Plath, John Koethe, Kathleen Norris, Katha Pollitt, Mary Jo Salter, and Larissa Szporluk.

-- DL

Love in the Mind

Why there watching the snow I fall

to my knee in prayer, why to you away there watching (the life of us

pass) to my heart`s prayer there watching

I fall and do not wish in

prayer to pass you there again

because to my knee in silence

only watching I fall because you watching my heart there do

not wish to pass in silence.

(What will always happen again.)

-- Alexandra Zelman-Doring

Poem: "I called my daughter a big ass quit dog" (by Mitch Sisskind)

Ten or twelve years ago
At the kids' gymnastics place
Doing the rope climb
Three-fourths of the way
She quit plain and simple quit

Took her for pizza later
Wrote on the pizza parlor napkin
Big ass quit dog
Slid the napkin to her side
The next week she climbed the rope

Now she’s going to U of Pennsylvania
Drove her to the airport last night
We stopped for pizza I said do you remembee
That time I wrote big ass quit dog on the napkin
She said no dad I don’t remember

No dad I don’t remember!
But my sin is always
Before my eyes
(Psalm 51)
I called my daughter a big ass quit dog

-- Mitch Sisskind

Abecedarian -- did someone say Abecedarian?

Anna K.

1.

Anna believed.

Couldn’t delay.

Every Friday

grew heroic

infidelity just

knowing love

might never

otherwise present

queenly resplendent

satisfaction trapped

under Vronsky’s

wild x-rated

young zap.

2.

Afraid. Betrayed.

Can’t divorce.

Envy follows

grim heroine,

inks judgment,

kills lust.

Mercy nowhere.

Opulent pink

quintessence radiates

suicide trip –

unique vacation –

worst Xmas,

yesterday’s zero.

-- DL

Haiku Corner: Garrison Keillor on Charlie Rose

Charlie Rose appeared
One night with a big shiner
And did not explain

Who or what hit him
Thinking this too trivial
For public TV

And allowed women
To think him heroic but
In fact he fell down.

– Garrison Keillor, April 2008

This is Garrison Keillor's contribution to the renga that Vickie Karp created for the "inside thirteen" blog of New York City's PBS outlet, Channel 13. Renga is the name of a Japanese "chain" form in which two or more poets collaborate in haiku or in alternating stanzas, a haiku stanza (three lines of five, then seven, then five syllables) followed by a two-line stanza, each line containing seven syllables.

-- DL

http://www.thirteen.org/insidethirteen/