The Best American Poetry

Greg Masters: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greg Masters. Photo by Kate Previte

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At 20 minutes, 37 seconds

 

At 20 minutes, 37 seconds

into track one of a box-set

reissue of the Miles Davis Quintet

recording “Freedom Jazz Dance,”

a previously unissued rehearsal take,

the raspy-voiced bandleader instructs

drummer Tony Williams to play triplets.

Up to this point in the ensemble’s

working out of the tune, he’d,

uncharacteristically, 

been lagging, playing as if he were

still with Jackie McLean,

accompanying with a ring-a-ding-ding

on the ride cymbal.

But after first working out a bass part for

Ron Carter and a few run-throughs—

Wayne Shorter certainly had the head down

and Herbie Hancock seemed assured

with splashes of chords—

Miles instructs his teenaged drummer

to lay down a triplet pattern and, after a

few attempts, he hits on the pulsating

underlying momentum that, still,

50-plus years after recording,

transforms the seven-minute

master track into a miracle.

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Greg Masters co-edited the poetry magazine Mag City from 1977–85. In 1977–78, along with a crew of poet comrades, he produced a cable TV show, Public Access Poetry. From 1980–83, he edited The Poetry Project Newsletter. Over the past decade, he has issued 10 books of his writing from his imprint Crony Books. “At 20 minutes, 37 seconds” is from It Wasn’t Supposed to Be Like This (Crony Books, 2020).

[To hear the track referred to in the poem, go here.]

[For more on Tony Williams, click here.]

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Mary Ruefle: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Ruefle, photo by Hannah Ensor, 2017

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Little Stream

 

My heart was bright and shining

like a lobster boiling in water.

And then I was just a child

eating the leftover snow.

I’d lost my mittens and my belly button

was as good as gone, meaning

I couldn’t be born again, ever,

so I sat by a little stream

with my eyes closed.

I saw a woman carrying a child’s coffin

on her head. I saw a rat so friendly

he shined my shoes with his tongue.

I saw my mother leave the room, saying

“Now I am going to go drink some vinegar.”

I saw a surfer drink a wuthering wave

and go down gently into that good night.

I saw the daffodils praying together.

I saw a hummingbird cry out

for a comma between decades.

I saw the quick trimming the hair on their necks

and the wicks of their packaged feet.

I saw something small and in constant danger

of being blown away, like pepper.

I saw a monk set an umbrella on fire, for fun.

I saw an old man dwelling in a tiny fishing village

with a tangible vibrancy that was truly inspiring.

I saw a Venus flytrap eat a cheeseburger.

I saw my struggles were coming to a close.

I saw I would grow so old I would stop wondering

what life on Napa Rui was like, and forget

the first apple tree was in Turkey.

I had the constant feeling something of vital importance

had been lost sight of, was perhaps even gone.

It’s hard to say hello to every atom.

I got to know protozoans, though.

It took three days for my umbilical cord

to swim past. At the end,

the tattered carnation of my navel

seemed most like me, so I threw it in

and at once my eyelids opened,

never to close again.

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Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including Dunce (Wave Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize, longlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, as well as a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. She is also the author of My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016), Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013), Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has also published a comic book, Go Home and Go to Bed! (Pilot Books/Orange Table Comics, 2007), and is an erasure artist, whose treatments of nineteenth century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries and published in A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006). Ruefle is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert Creeley Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. She lives in Bennington, Vermont, where she serves as the state’s poet laureate. [“Little Stream” from Dunce. ©2019. Printed with permission of the author and Wave Books.]

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                        Hieronymus Bosch, The Concert in the Egg, ca. 1475

Charles North: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Philosophy of New Jersey

            (for Jill)

 Actually the sky appears older than it is. It’s 63 or 64 at most, not 75. The part with the

cliff face and the yellow crane could be in its early 30s. It wasn’t Wallace Stevens who

said, “They have cut off my head, and picked out all the letters of the alphabet—all the

vowels and consonants—and brought them out through my ears; and then they want

me to write poetry! I can’t do it!” It was John Clare. Wallace Stevens said—something

like—the best poems are the ones you meant to write.  That has a nice sound to it, but

it’s hard to see how he or anyone would know that.  It would be hard, for example, to

accept the notion that there are ideas one meant to have. Poems underneath

every peeling sycamore and inside every file cabinet, along with ideas about poetry

and uncountable other ideas.

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Charles North's recent Everything and Other Poems was a N.Y. Times New and Noteworthy Book, What It Is Like headed NPR's Best Poetry Books of 2011, and The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight (2001) was a finalist for the inaugural Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award. Other books include the innovative Complete Lineups and the essay collection States of the Art. With artist Trevor Winkfield North published the collaborations Elevenses and En Face, and with James Schuyler co-edited the poet/painter anthologies Broadway and Broadway2. ["The Philosophy of New Jersey," from The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight (Adventures in Poetry), is used by permission; © 2001 Charles North.]

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                                                           William Hilton, Portrait of John Clare (1793–1864). Oil on canvas, 1820.

 

An Féar Gorta [Terence Winch]

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An Féar Gorta

 

If I ever go back home again, we will drive

through the countryside just as it is getting dark.

We will gather together in the town’s only hotel,

eating, and telling jokes at each other’s expense.

 

My heart beats steady there, my spirit alive

to every gesture, every glance, the fire and spark

we find in those we love. Those to whom we tell

our dark secrets along with our idiotic nonsense.

 

Whatever route I take, I always seem to get lost.

I have a tendency to choose the wrong road

to the wrong place. I wind up confused and stranded

wondering if I’ll ever make it home.

 

But I want that ticket back, no matter what the cost.

At An Féar Gorta I want that rhubarb tart a la mode.

I am even willing to stand in the rain, and be reprimanded

for the sorry, soggy state in which I’ve left this poem.

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                                  at An Féar Gorta with cousins Monica (Guthrie) Donovan and Mary Guthrie, Oct. 2013

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An Féar Gorta is one of my favorite eating establishments in the world. Located in Ballyvaughan, in County Clare, Ireland, where I have many beloved relations, it is a place, as the poem suggests, that I look forward to visiting again. 

I originally thought the term meant "the hungry man," as "fear" is “man” in Irish. But the fada (accent) confused me---instead of "fear," it's "féar," which means “grass.” So, the name translates to "The Hungry Grass," a term going back to the Famine. More information can be found here, here, and here.

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                                      the garden at An Féar Gorta. Photo by T. Winch

Catherine Barnett: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Epistemology

 

Mostly I’d like to feel a little less, know a little more.

Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know.

Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cord 

to keep it from fraying?

Not the man who called my life a debacle, 

a word whose sound I love.

In a debacle things are unleashed.

Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary.

I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate, 

the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing. 

They don’t use words, but they can be said to love. 

They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another tree.

And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothing

stops them, it’s called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connect 

or join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare, 

to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth.

Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth

and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches.

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Catherine Barnett is the author of three books of poetry, Human Hours (2018 Believer Book Award); The Game of Boxes (2012 Academy of American Poets James Laughlin Award for Best Second Book); and Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced (Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Harper's, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, and The Washington Post. A Guggenheim fellow, she received a 2022 Arts and Letters Award in Literature, which honors exceptional accomplishment in any genre. She is a member of the core faculty in the NYU MFA Program in Creative Writing and a Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College. She lives in New York City, where she also works as an independent editor. 

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                                                   Susan Campbell, Windy Night, 2021, Fine art archival print

 

Major Jackson: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Grandfather’s Lecture

 

If punched, you punch twice as hard, and in the face,

a wop right in the nose. Use the flat counter of your fist

or the palm’s hard ridge. Lean into it but brace

your stroke with your back leg then lift

your whole blow into his mug. He’ll crumble.

If you’re lucky, blood will pour in rivulets

down his mouth and chin leaving him startled,

dazed like the newly awakened. Don’t relent.

Think what he’d do to you if given the chance.

Throw what we used to call a haymaker.

Nest fear inside but don’t tremble. Don’t parade & prance 

like you’re Ali. Don’t hesitate. Land a jawbreaker,

jab him in the gut. Did you know the Brown Bomber

never televised a hit, never reared back, just snuggled in,

leaned close shoulder to shoulder, calmer

than most then kapow to the ribs? Schmeling struggled

on the ropes. Life’s no boxing ring, but know your power,

what your shadow is made. Then always make up.

Show your adversary you’ve got class; don’t tower

over him. That’s for punks. Extend a hand. Help him up.

 

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Major Jackson is the author of five books of poetry, the most recent of which is The Absurd Man. His collection of essays, A Beat Beyond: Selected Prose, is forthcoming in Fall 2022. A recipient of fellowships from Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Whiting Writers Award, Major Jackson is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.

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     Praying with Grandpa by Henry Ossawa Tanner (American painter, 1859-1937)

Minnie Bruce Pratt: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Minnie Bruce Pratt 2.20.12 photo by Leslie Feinberg

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Getting Through the Night

 

At twilight, in the fold of this day’s pall,

you lift the bed covers up, and I climb in.

 

The bed is a cave, the sheets cool as stone.

The bed is a nest we fold flesh into, belly

to back, knee to knee-fold, wrist-bone to hand.

 

Our ribs brace the bed, a boat to carry us into,

through, the little death that lives in every night.

 

I wake again at three a.m. Our cardboard boxes

sit unpacked in every room. Taxes, losses, old

dishes, death. But you still breathe beside me.

 

If I can put each thing into its place, there will be

a place for the boat to land where the clock

doesn’t tick, where the body is unlocked from pain, 

where the wood thrush sings again after the rain.

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Minnie Bruce Pratt’s poetry on being a lesbian mother, Crime Against Nature, was honored with the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent book is Magnified, poems emerging from her life with trans activist and writer Leslie Feinberg. Her creative nonfiction essay, “The Queer South: Where the Past Is Not Past and the Future is Now,” was recently published in Scalawag. More information on her work can be found here.

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                                                                  Mary Pratt, The Bed, 1968

Anselm Hollo: Posthumous Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

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Parting

            after Hugo Ball

don’t go is what I want you to tell me

the rainless wind from the south

will make me long for you

 

tell me these are beautiful days

to have you here to look at your mouth

and to listen

                                    don’t go

tell me life pleases you

tell my voice to go on and on

tell me you will be happy and of good cheer

even when I am gone

 

tell me I’m stupid

a child or feathers and a small brain

held in your hand

then tell me I know my way back to you

even at night

                                    even in the rain

that hides the stars from my sight

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Anselm Hollo was born on 12 April 1934 in Helsinki, Finland. He died at age 78 on 29 January 2013 in Boulder, Colorado. For more information, click here.

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                                      Jani Hanninen (Finland), p. b. serie, acrylic on canvas, 2016.

Edward Hirsch: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edward Hirsch. Photo by Julie Dermansky

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A Partial History of My Stupidity

 

 Traffic was heavy coming off the bridge

 and I took the road to the right, the wrong one,

 and got stuck in the car for hours.

 

 Most nights I rushed out into the evening

 without paying attention to the trees,

 whose names I didn’t know,

 or the birds, which flew heedlessly on.

 

 I couldn’t relinquish my desires

 or accept them, and so I strolled along

 like a tiger that wanted to spring,

 but was still afraid of the wildness within.

 

 The iron bars seemed invisible to others,

 but I carried a cage around inside me.

 

 I cared too much what other people thought

 and made remarks I shouldn’t have made.

 I was silent when I should have spoken.

 

 Forgive me, philosophers,

 I read the Stoics but never understood them.

 

 I felt that I was living the wrong life,

 spiritually speaking,

 while halfway around the world

 thousands of people were being slaughtered,

 some of them by my countrymen.

 

 So I walked on—distracted, lost in thought—

 and forgot to attend to those who suffered

 far away, nearby.

 

 Forgive me, faith, for never having any.

 

 I did not believe in God,

 who eluded me.

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Edward Hirsch’s books of poems include Special Orders, Gabriel: A Poem, and Stranger by Night. His prose books include A Poet’s Glossary, One Hundred Poems to Break Your Heart, and The Heart of American Poetry.

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                       Neo Rauch, Aprilnacht, 2011, oil on canvas.

Maya C. Popa: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Is This Your Bag Please Would You Open It

 

The moment you know they are about to find something

pushing aside the mini marmalades

withdrawing the curler           with latex fingers

folding a flap           folding back                       another flap

your underwear grinning              not getting the situation

placed inside a box            PROPERTY OF HEATHROW;

it isn’t personal                      though it sure feels

like it’s personal                      when a man asks you

how long you spent in Romania             when moments ago

you said you were in London              and packed your own

bag                             who else would pack your fucking bag

 

but he thinks it’s charming

to get things wrong                             or maybe professional

to run on a hunch                                  he swipes the straps

for a bomb test                                           banters while your bras

feel badly for you       they never wanted this               in spite

of their lace    finally he finds the toiletries case          delays

the pleasure of admonishing you          for Alice-sized lotions

stolen from hotels                    into another box they go

it’s a job            remember            you can’t take it personally

            if he hands you his number on a food court receipt

                                                prettiest terrorist I’ve seen all day

is this your privacy                                          and can he . . .

 

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Maya C. Popa is the author of Wound Is the Origin of Wonder (Norton, 2022) and American Faith (Sarabande, 2019). She is the Poetry Reviews Editor of Publishers Weekly and a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London, writing on the role of wonder in poetry. 

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    Francesca Woodman, Untitled, from the series Space2, Providence, Rhode Island,1976.

Dean Young: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Archaic Torso of Me Too

 

There was the guy in the next room

screaming he wanted some goddamn sugar.

There was the lady who my first night

conscious tried to get me to pray while

a falcon-headed shade carried off

my biowaste, hexes welting the walls—

she was also a hallucination.  How

I was strapped to the face of a sundial,

names of drugs like archangels,

the breathing machine pulling in

an Army-Navy game and tolling

like Big Ben. Hovering beside me,

another me entirely free of pain

like the idea of a rainbow beside

a fading rainbow.  Huff of alcohol,

fentanyl, urine, red beets.  The one

I made leave because he couldn’t stop

acting triumphant.  It wasn’t only death

in costume.  But always there was my darling

who’d kiss me even though the pulse-spike

would bring nurses running.

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Dean Young was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania, the very place that Coleridge and Southey were thinking of founding their commune.  Maybe.  He is also maybe currently living in Cincinnati where he is trying to fit a two-bedroom house into a loft apartment.  His, hopefully next book, completing his IT’S ALIVE!! Trilogy, Creature Feature is almost finished.  Then from there on in it’s all petal drop blast radius.

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Saint Elizabeth of Hungary bringing food for the inmates of a hospital. Oil painting by Adam Elsheimer, ca. 1598           

Evie Shockley: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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quiet as it’s kept

 

no one tells you about these boys  :  their quiet feminism

grows like wildflowers  :  in their mothers’ gardens  :  you

should take a field

                                   trip  :  i’m telling you  :  they are

                                                                                             like

architechtural flourishes

                                             unseen

                                                            all about town  :  baroquing

libraries  :  finishing museums with clean modern lines  :  no

one tells you not to look past neat

                                                                 in search of

                                                                                          shine

or brawn  :  the masculinity that winks and whistles at you

like times

                    square or roars and kicks up dust like a pick-up

truck  :  the open

                                secret of such sexiness has its charms  : 

but the boys who open doors for men

                                                                      and

                                                                                women  :  who

catch you watching them adjust

                                                            their glasses and eye you

a smile  :  no one tells you what such subtle signs can mean 

:  i’m telling you that these boys

                                                            flowering

                                                                                 flourishing

and their quiet twinkling eyes can spark enough heat to warm

you through a massachusetts winter  :  pools of melt making

mud of your footprints  :  behind you

                                                                    the ice freezing silently

over your private spring

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Evie Shockley is a poet and scholar. Her most recent poetry collections, the new black (Wesleyan, 2011) and semiautomatic (Wesleyan, 2017), both won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; the latter was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the LA Times Book Prize.  Her poetry has appeared internationally in print and audio formats, in English and in translation. She has received the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Stephen Henderson Award, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and Cave Canem, among others.  Shockley is Professor of English at Rutgers University.

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      James Dunbar, Field of Wildflowers

Brandon D. Johnson: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In Concert

 

Earl grins and flicks ash from his shoulder.

he scans the scene, ears tuned for sirens,

says less gunpowder might blow just

the door off next time.

from our safe distance, we stare at the yacht’s cabin;

it flips, hits water, disappears like a penny in used motor oil.

one narrow smoke column mixes with moist air.

this guy counts on next times the way a wet thumb

snaps hundreds off a roll, lives for

on-the-job practice like a rookie surgeon

who never says oops.

 

I clamp the top buckle on my McIntosh,

push pant legs deep into gum boots.  it’s cold,

the boat’s bowels are water-logged, sinking.

my jaw is tight thinking how Earl

slings explosives the way he slaps

an upright; all feeling, no control.

it’s the reason they have so few gigs,

why gaps are filled clutching

black bags and looking around corners.

it’s been difficult explaining how discipline

and popularity are related but that’s what got

them interested in my proposal in the first place.

 

four men and Cynthia follow

me down the pier dragging heels,

scraping meaning

from all this.  match heads

crackle, smoke blows through lips

like dead whistles.   

 

I knew the woman could use a gun

the first time I saw her lips part

to loose a somber note.  she was not to be messed

with. the only one allowed to pack heat.  if she had to,

she could even do bullheaded Cedric, the drummer,

holding that sledgehammer to knock away

what Earl’s excess hadn’t already. 

Charles, the gloved pianist, refused anyone’s hand,

distrustful of others and the manly art of handshaking.

his fingers spin combo dials.   Kevin, wheel man,

player of anything needing wind, thought being smart

made him next in command.  No one fought him on it,

knowing he never shut-up when he thought he was right. 

he was not.

 

when riffing, they meshed like gear-teeth

but out here, someone is always to blame

for one misstep or another.

I thought it’d be easy to teach

a bunch of musicians

how to play off each other like the call

and response of alternating solos, but

this is the fourth time.

they should have it down by now.

my last two gangs, formed from scratch

and good liquor, did better, sooner.

but they weren’t as well-traveled

and they weren’t as young.

 

perhaps I’ve aged beyond this avocation,

the thrill of rousing people past abilities.

these pieces can’t be played alone.

I suppose, in a moment’s clarity, I’ll cool.

my head will settle.  I’ll accept

for this quintet, doing scores

is harder than sight-reading Mingus.

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Brandon D. Johnson is author of Love’s Skin, Man Burns Ant, The Strangers Between, and co-author of The Black Rooster Social Inn: This Is The Place. He is published in several print and online journals and anthologies. Brandon is also a photographer. Born in Gary, Indiana, he received a BA from Wabash College and his JD from Antioch School of Law. He lives with his wife and children in Washington, DC.

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        Charles Mingus record cover. Design and painting by S. Neil Fujita, 1959.

Myra Sklarew: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Birdland

                        for Sterling Brown

So I take my seven bucks

to buy a railroad ticket.

 

And with a little luck

hitchhike to the station.

 

The money comes from playing

in a dance band with Vinny Gallo

 

braying on his tenor sax

and Charley Panzner—

 

I forget the others—

and me on the piano.

 

When no one is looking I play

solo piano in taverns after hours

 

up and down Long Island’s South Shore,

singing Billy Strayhorn’s Lush Life.

 

I don’t tell my folks when I hop

on a train at age 14 and head

 

to Birdland where I sit

in the Peanut Gallery for nothing

 

and drink in Miles Davis,

John Coltrane, Count Basie

 

and Oscar Peterson. And not far away

you could go to the Embers

 

and hear Red Norvo on the vibraphone

play the Blues in E Flat.

 

And Stan Getz whose tunes I’d been trying

to play all year and ever since.

 

Sterling, this was before I met you.

Were you there too, singing your poems:

saying “Slim in Atlanta” and “After Winter”

and “Sister Lou.”  Or listening to “Ma Rainey”:

 

O Ma Rainey,

Sing yo’ song:

Now you’s back

Whah you belong,

Git way inside us,

Keep us strong…

O Ma Rainey,

Li’l and low…*

 

Sterling, you made us stand up

in your living room while you played jazz

 

on your phonograph and wouldn’t let us

sit down till we could name who was playing.

 

Sometimes we stood a long, long time.

It was Erroll Garner and Lester Young.

 

Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie.

And there was Satchmo who we loved.

 

I never told my folks where I’d been, pretended

to spend the night at a friend’s.

 

But I wouldn’t trade that smokey room

and that gorgeous music that filled us up

 

to the top until it was time to sneak out

of the house and head uptown to Birdland

 

once more. And years later, Sterling, to stand

in your living room, under the alms

 

of a great poet having us listen

to the music you loved and to the words

 

you wrote. Sterling, we could have stayed

there the rest of our lives.

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Myra Sklarew, professor emerita American University, founder of the MFA Program, former president of the Yaddo Artist’s Community, studied biology at Tufts, bacterial viruses at Cold Spring Harbor Biological Laboratory, and did research at Yale Medical School in memory and the prefrontal cortex. She has an  M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. Her twelve poetry collections include Lithuania: New and Selected Poems; Prose: Like a Field Riddled by Ants, Over the Rooftops of Time, An Invitation to a Country called Aging (with Patricia Garfinkel), and A Survivor Named Trauma: Holocaust Memory in Lithuania.  A new collection of essays on science and medicine, Lie Perfectly Still, is near completion. In 2011, Sklarew helped launch "A Splendid Wake"—a project to document poets, poetry movements, and literary organizations in the Washington, D.C. area from 1900 to the present, sponsored by the Special Collections Research Center at the Gelman Library, GWU, organized by local poets.  [For more on Sterling Brown, click here.]

(*from Beyond the Blues by Rosey E. Pool, The Hand and Flower Press, 1962, England.)

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Michael Palmer: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Palmer. Photo by Juno Gemes 

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Falling Down in America

 

Every three seconds someone over sixty-five

falls down in America.

Our records show

that you are over sixty-five

and may therefore have already

fallen down in America

maybe more than once.

Perhaps upon entering your bath

you slipped

and cracked open your skull

and subsequently drowned

in a pool of blood.

If so, disregard this notice.

Perhaps while gazing at the sea

distractedly one day

your balance failed

and the waves carried you away

toward the irradiated swells

of Fukushima.

If so, never mind—

the flesh has already peeled

from your limbs

and your eyes

have melted in their sockets

in which case

you should disregard this notice.

We need hardly remind you

that many of your friends

and relatives, perhaps beloved uncles,

aunts, cousins, your seven brothers

and sisters, parents assuredly,

may have succumbed in some manner

to the fateful equation

of gravity and age.

In addition, it is likely

that your investments recently caved

and as a result, from the shock,

you fainted upon the cheap

Mexican tiles

of your dining room floor

and days later awoke

among impersonal professionals,

masked and clad in white,

and addressing you

as if you were a child.

If so, you now know

that you are utterly alone

in this life.

Please favor us with a reply

regarding our one-time offer

which will soon expire.

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Michael Palmer was born into an Italian-American family in Manhattan in 1943 and has lived in San Francisco since 1969.  He has taught at numerous universities in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and has published translations from a variety of languages, in particular French, Brazilian Portuguese, and Russian. He has been involved in joint projects with many visual artists and composers in the United States and elsewhere and has also served as an artistic collaborator with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company for close to fifty years. His most recent poetry collection, Little Elegies for Sister Satan, from New Directions, was published in May of 2021.Early in 2022, Nightboat Books will bring out a new edition of a prose work, The Danish Notebook. [For more on Michael Palmer, see this link.]

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                                                                                                                       Laurel and Hardy in Hats Off, 1927

Elaine Feeney: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Red

 

I am growing in this dress.

 

I plunge my wide curves

to the taut edges and

lift my shoulders to the

raspberry red,

 

I almost trust the seams.

 

Soft on my rounded stomach,

my breasts full,

my charcoal deep eyes.

 

I am growing into this dress,

it is wearing me, moving

me along the street,

clutching and gathering,

in around my rib flesh.

 

Soon I will be this dress.

 

Some evening

with laughter lines

with less clutter in my head,

we will melt together.

 

But not this evening,

this evening is only practise,

this evening on

Grafton Street’s cobbles,

this is only dress up.

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Elaine Feeney is a writer from the west of Ireland. Feeney has published three poetry collections, including The Radio Was Gospel and Rise (Salmon Poetry). Her debut novel, As You Were (Vintage & Biblioasis), won the 2021 Dalkey Book Festival’s Emerging Writer Prize, The Kate O’ Brien Prize, The Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize (UK), and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the Rathbones-Folio Prize. Feeney’s work featured widely on Best of 2020 lists, and she was chosen by The Observer as a top debut novelist for 2020. Her short story “Sojourn” was published in The Art of The Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories, and she also wrote the multi award-winning drama, WRoNGHEADED, commissioned by the Liz Roche Company. She lectures in poetry at The National University of Ireland, Galway, where she is also a founding member of the Tuam Oral History Project.

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                                            Roderic O'Conor (1860–1940), Seated Woman in a Red Dress, 1929 (oil on canvas).

Michael Whelan: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dermot Healy at the Phillips

 

For the last half hour Healy’s been gone—

he’s digging up the potatoes he sees

in Rothko’s hazy fields of color, staring at them

from his bench, alone in their chapel at the Phillips.

Three days ago he turned a corner as we walked DC.

Helen and I found him in a tiny Arabic library that caught

his eye on N Street. So thrilled with the place,

he’s gone back each day to meander in obscure conversation

 

with scholars there about the first sounds

that made language, hints of them secreted still, he says,

on N Street in frail mystery-embedded manuscripts

that took his odd eye and confirmed what he holds

 

as his only faith: that every word is a

living entity with a soul of its own

that longs and morphs and heaves in its letters

sideways and forward chanting its history

in its agony of thanksgiving for living.

 

Healy has moved now from

Rothko’s potato chapel to a minuscule Klee

intricate in light blue lines. He’s traveling

inside its mysteries, multifarious in minutiae.

 

“Will we go home now for the tea?” he nudges.

In the short time of his stay, we’ve shaped a ritual

of tea round the Irish bread he found at the Dupont

Farmers Market. He cuts it thick and toasts it for us.

 

Then slathers it with butter and closes his eyes

in a way that puts the tea and toast

in league with the mysteries

of Rothko and of Klee.

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A set of poems by Michael Whelan, including “Dermot Healy at the Phillips,” on the late Irish poet and novelist, appeared in Éirways magazine.  Whelan’s spiritual memoir After God, published in 2014, is a poetic story of a lifelong lovers’ quarrel with God.  § Whelan won first prize in the juried Leitrim Guardian 2012 Literary Awards. His poems have appeared in The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Coachella Review, The Healing Muse, and The Little Patuxent Review.  His prose work has been published in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and online on the Irish Central site. [For information on Dermot Healy, click here.]

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    Rothko paintings at The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

Charlotte Boulay: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Pallikoodam

 

When it rained, even our shoes

turned green. The fan whirred

except when the power was out,

then we read by candlelight under

the mosquito net, or didn’t:

I feared it going up

around us, a fuzz of flame.

We lived with animals: small lizards

darting up the walls, lines of tiny,

imperious ants. Every night

we tried to trap the rat

in the rafters, baiting him with banana

until finally we awoke to a

snap. We had a small television

and we watched old sitcoms, new

pop videos, the twin towers falling

again and again. They said over

and over that nothing would be

the same after that, and for once

they were right. We ate chocolate bars

for their sweet familiarity, and we lined

books neatly on the shelves. We slept

holding each other and woke in the mornings

to hear someone singing, softly,

as she swept the yard clean.

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Charlotte Boulay’s first book of poems, Foxes on the Trampoline, was published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2014. She earned her MFA from the University of Michigan, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, The Boston Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Pinch, and Crazyhorse, among other journals. She lives in Philadelphia and works at The Miquon School as both a fundraiser and COVID prevention specialist.

*note: The word pallikoodam means “school” in Malayalam, the language of Kerala, India.

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                                      Ernst Stuckelberg, The Girl with the Lizard, oil on canvas, 2019

Dan Gutstein: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Fox Who Loves Me + Other Developments in the Faunal and Floral Kingdoms

 

1. Deep, deep in the shrubberies: behold the beaver. Being human and smart-alecky, one ponders the paddle. We’re told that the paddle is for dam building, but that can’t be all. The beaver, for example, knows love. What doeth the paddle during the love-making of the beaver? People paddle each other, although the paddle is not—organically—attached to them. You might think “furry, cute little critter” but I think not. I see a varmint that can chew through a tree. Knowing not what might aggravate the beaver, I keep moving along.

2. This massive heron floats down to earth. It is equal parts dinosaur, goose, and 747. A comedian. Slender and plump. Where are the myths about this fine specimen? How come no Leda and the Great Blue? It is a stoic. Perhaps it thinks me a stoic, as well. The two of us, trudging along in the miserable murk that defines our lives. Me ‘n’ the heron, we complaineth not.

3. Thank you for inquiring about the Early Girl tomato plant. Given the absence of bees on the balcony, Dear Reader, I hand-pollinated every single flower. Lo, the plant begat many dozen tomatoes! We had a terrific affair. As for the fruits themselves, well, they were quite tasty, as it works out. This bit of gardening provided me with an essential activity as my skeleton reeled from an injury.

4. During my convalescence from said injury (which continues at present) I watched some reruns of Law & Order. I would like to say that Claire Kincaid, played by Jill Hennessey, is my favorite character. Dunno how the show continued on without her.

5. I got bitten! Not only that, but the venom (of whatever bit me) tried to slay me. But I endured.

6. Given the seriousness of the injury, I hadn’t seen my BFF from the faunal kingdom in several months. But one day, as part of my rehabilitation walk, I thought I saw the little ears sticking up, out of the sand trap. So I says, “Hey mate,” in my silly Australian accent. “Hey mate, you’re a good-looking fox.” This is how all the animals in my orbit know it’s me. The silly accent. She sits bolt upright, curling the big brush of the tail behind her. I think she even whined a little bit. That really broke me up!

7. The fox, stirring.

8. The fox, running. She looks hale and hearty. She’s a good-looking fox, mate.

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   Dan Gutstein’s most recent collection of writing is Metacarpalism (poetry, Unsolicited Press, 2022). His poems and stories have appeared in more than a hundred journals and anthologies, including Ploughshares, American Scholar, The Iowa Review, Best American Poetry, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. He is also co-director of documentary project Li’l Liza Jane: The Story of America Through the History of a Song and vocalist for NPR-featured punk band Joy on Fire

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                                                    Winslow Homer, The Fox Hunt.

Lyn Li Che: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sobriqu(i)ets 

 

On the corner of 12^th and Market, a man says

            Nihao, China and I’m in love,  

I just don’t know it yet. One day, I’ll love  

            the slant of my eyes, their slashing stare.

I’ll love the ching-chong clamour of the old country   

            and my grandfather’s names: both the one  

he was given and the one taken away   

            by the registrar’s pen. None of his siblings  

had the same last name but I’ll love them too:  

            the Che’s and Chen’s and Chong’s, all laid out  

like a racist’s naughty nursery rhyme.  

            I’ll be shook by my buck-toothed gook

reflection. I’ll be cool with my coolie shape  

            and my sideways drape, how easily   

my body zipperheads into anything else –  

            a container of chowmein, a coin slot  

cooter choking open. I’ll be someone’s 

            bamboo chink and kimchee kink, though bitch,  

I’m not even Korean. I’ll stan   

            my Jackie Chan doyenne Chinaman  

brand. I’ll idealize this Oriental disguise.

            I hope I just don’t know it yet.  

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Lyn Li Che was born in Malaysia. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Michigan Quarterly Review, Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, Waxwing, PANK, Passages North, Tupelo Quarterly, BOAAT, River Styx, and others. A 2021 Kundiman Mentorship Lab Fellow, she currently lives in New York City, where she works in tech strategy.

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                Mohd Noor Mahmud, Siri Kala Kota Bharu series: Main Ayun, acrylic on wood, 2006