The Best American Poetry

Elinor Nauen: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

______________________________________________________________________________________

The History of Western Philosophy

 

Bertrand Russell had just about convinced me

there’s more to life than sex

I’d like to go to bed

with him but he’s dead      even windowless

monads are sexy     they remind me of gonads

careening around & bumping

each other     hitting on each other

 

I know more philosophy than that

 

you’re not supposed to mix

your muse with your mistress or they’ll both

fuck you     over     the real question

is

is there anything we can think of

which

by the mere fact that we can think of it

is shown to exist outside

our thought   

 

the answer is sex

therefore god exists

 

sex is a revelation

a reason

empirical

possible     credible     self-consistent

the best of all possible worlds

sex precedes existence

precedes essence

I fuck      therefore

I attract every body with a force

directly proportional to the product

of their masses

 

Buridan’s ass

unable to choose between 2 equidistant bundles of hay

died of hunger

call me up sometime     I’ll make you lunch

_________________________________________________________________________________

Elinor Nauen is a poet and prose writer who writes frequently about baseball, cars and driving, and place, and maintains a six-day-a-week blog (at ElinorNauen.com). Her books include Now That I Know Where I’m Going, American Guys, So Late into the Night (a book-length poem in ottava rima), My Marriage A to Z: A big- city romance, Cars and Other Poems, and, as editor, Ladies, Start Your Engines: Women writers on Cars & the Road and Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend: Women Writers on Baseball. She hails from South Dakota, lives in Manhattan’s East Village with her husband (Johnny Stanton) and a cat (Lefty), and studies Norwegian and strict traditional Japanese karate. She hosted (with Martha King) the Prose Pros series from 2007-2019.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Daniel Tobin: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Banshee

            The long, drawn-out howling of a dog

            shut up all night inside the auction ring

            out back of our B&B scares awake

            the owner's child so that she cries

            in the room below our bed, a duet

            that in my half-sleep seems to carry

            beyond Mount Eagle and Slea Head

            to my grandmother's Brooklyn apartment

            thirty years ago where, back-lit in her chair,

            she told me her story of the banshee,

            how as a child she heard it wail

            through the townland of Kilvendoney the day

            the neighboring farmer died; and again

            years later she listened to what sounded

            like the keening of an old woman

            under Sixth Avenue streetlights,

            and knew then that no prayer could save

            her oldest son lying in a coma,

            meningitis working into his brain,

            the pain like a small voice rising to a pitch

            beyond all hearing -- a noise so unlike

            the steady hum and beep of machines

            that monitored your induced sleep

            in the outpatient wing where they carved

            the lump from you, as it turned out,

            benign, the word soothing as the whisper

            this child's mother must use to calm

            the fractured music in her daughter's throat,

            Shush, shush, it's only an old watch dog,

            as moonlight softens the tin roof

            outside both our windows, and I draw you

            closer to me in our rented bed

            and rest my hand on your scarred breast.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Daniel Tobin is the author of nine books of poems, including From Nothing, winner of the Julia Ward Howe Award, The Stone in the Air, his suite of versions from the German of Paul Celan, and most recently Blood Labors, named one of the Best Poetry Books of the Year for 2018 by the New York Times and The Washington Independent Review of Books. His poetry has won many awards, among them the Massachusetts Book Award and fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. His critical and editorial works include Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney, Awake in America, The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, and To the Many: The Collected Early Works of Lola Ridge. His most recent work is On Serious Earth: Poetry and Transcendence. A trilogy of book-length poems, The Mansions, will appear in 2023. He teaches at Emerson College in Boston. [See also this link for more poems and information.]

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

                    Kiki Smith, American (born Germany), born 1954; Banshee Pearls (detail), 1991;  Smithsonian American Art Museum.          

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo by Jerome Sala

______________________________________________________________________________________

The Repairman

 

I can’t get rid of him. One day I found him sprawled on the floor tinkering

with the radiator. He was very vague about who had called him (not me)

but seemed to think he had every right to be there. Then he handed me a bill

for several thousand dollars. I said: “I can’t deal with this now, I’m late

for an appointment.” But when I got to my office, he was already standing

in the hallway tapping the walls with a concerned look. “Structural tests,” he said.

After that I began seeing him everywhere, like a shadow carrying a toolbox.

He followed me to school as sure as Mary’s little lamb. Later, he followed me

into a bar, sat a few stools away, sipped a beer, and made fun of my taste

in game shows. He even had the audacity to ring my mother’s doorbell on

Thanksgiving claiming he had come to look at the dishwasher, but instead

got into a discussion with her about fall fashions. In all fairness, he doesn’t

seem dangerous or malicious; he’s never tried any funny business. But I have

to ask myself if he’s fixed one thing. The answer is I don’t think he even tries.

He just seems to want to be with me. Meanwhile, the bills keep coming.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Elaine Equi’s latest book is The Intangibles from Coffee House Press. Her other books include Ripple Effect: New & Selected Poems, Click and Clone, and Sentences and Rain. Widely published and anthologized, her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Big Other,  the Brooklyn Rail, The Nation, The New Yorker, Poetry, and in many editions of the Best American Poetry. She teaches at New York University and in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at The New School.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

              "The Painter," collage by John Ashbery, 2014.

David McAleavey: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

This time tomorrow

 

this time tomorrow     where do you think you will be     in a car, a room

on a road, a floor     of a building with perhaps     many floors, rooms, doors

or lying on grass     playing with your retriever     looking for autumn

falling dogwood leaves     bees complaining for flowers     or by a window

awaiting cloudburst     light hardening, darkening     or fixing coffee

 

I’ve just won a prize     the E-Super-G Award     E stands for Ego

Super for Super     G for Gratification     it’s almost enough

some of you may now     finally and at long last     feel belief in me

of course the money     will send my kids to college     which makes them happy

raccoon coats and such     rah rah siss boom bah Go Team     which is romantic

I mean they think so     which increases my stature     as a lucky dog

I’m the first winner     it’s not like Nobel-stuffy    it’s so very nice

 

I do have duties     I’ve only started to hear     I have to do stuff

remove shrubbery     take out tree stumps and plant new     remove old driveway

remove old sidewalk     have to rent a jackhammer     replace old lamppost

make forms pour concrete     trim slate and lay it in place     got to wear those gloves

but not tomorrow     you can put this hard stuff off     you know how you can

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

David McAleavey has published seven books, most recently Huge Haiku (Chax Press, 2005), Rock Taught (Broadkill River Press, 2016), and Talk Music (Flying Islands Press, 2018), as well as one chapbook, David McAleavey’s Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2001), and has edited two collections of writing from and about Washington area writers. He taught literature and creative writing at George Washington University from 1974 to 2020. He has lived in Arlington, Virginia, since 1976.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Remembering Robert Hershon [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Like many others, I am deeply saddened over the death of my dear friend Bob Hershon on March 20, 2021. Bob was smart, funny, and generous. He was also a wonderful poet. Bob was the co-founder of Hanging Loose magazine and press, and helped bring the work of hundreds of writers (including me) to light. He was beloved by many, and earned that love through his great generosity of spirit. Here is a poem by Bob's from last August. It may very well be one of his last poems, but like all his work it is characterized by his warmth, humor, wisdom, and literary genius. Thanks to all of his friends and fellow writers whose tributes to Bob appear below. (More texts, photos, etc. will be added as they arrive.)

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A wonderful, characteristic photograph of Bob Hershon, at a memorial reading I organized for Harvey Shapiro at Stony Brook Southampton in 2013. Now Bob is gone. He was a man filled with humor, warmth and life. He had been ill for some time, but it’s still hard to grasp. —Kathryn Levy

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

My dear friend and Hanging Loose co-editor Bob Hershon’s passing has left a gaping hole in my heart. As John Yau recently wrote, he was a major American poet. The quickest of wits, he was an unapologetic city poet in the tradition of Charles Reznikoff and Harvey Shapiro. His knowledge of Brooklyn history, of baseball, popular music, movies and art was encyclopedic. If you ever shared the podium at a poetry reading with Him you made sure he went last lest you be upstaged before you ever got started.  —Mark Pawlak

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Here is the New York Times obituary for Bob.

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Did You Know that Robert Hershon is a Major Poet? by John Yau

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here to listen to

Bob reading at the DIA Art Foundation, November 10th, 2015

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Superbly Situated

you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to
right from the beginning—a relationship based on
good sense and thoughtfulness in little things

i would like to be loved for such simple attainments
as breathing regularly and not falling down too often
or because my eyes are brown or my father left-handed

and to be on the safe side i wouldn’t mind if somehow
i became entangled in your perception of admirable objects
so you might say to yourself: i have recently noticed

how superbly situated the empire state building is
how it looms up suddenly behind cemeteries and rivers
so far away you could touch it—therefore i love you

part of me fears that some moron is already plotting
to tear down the empire state building and replace it
with a block of staten island mother/daughter houses

just as part of me fears that if you love me for my cleanliness
i will grow filthy if you admire my elegant clothes
i’ll start wearing shirts with sailboats on them

but i have decided to become a public beach an opera house
a regularly scheduled flight—something that can’t help being
in the right place at the right time—come take your seat

we’ll raise the curtain fill the house start the engines
fly off into the sunrise, the spire of the empire state
the last sight on the horizon as the earth begins to curve

Robert Hershon, “Superbly Situated” from How to Ride on the Woodlawn Express.

Copyright © 1985 by Robert Hershon. Reprinted with the permission of Hanging Loose Press.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Introducing Bob Hershon   by Joanna Fuhrman

I wrote this to introduce Bob when he received his LiveMag lifetime achievement award.

My intro for the award: Robert Hershon's 15th collection, End of the Business Day, was published this year. His work has appeared in The Nation, APR, The Brooklyn Rail, the current issue of LIVE MAG and a million other journals! He has been co-editor of Hanging Loose Press since its founding in 1966. His awards include two NEA fellowships and three from New York Foundation of the Arts

I think we all know that Bob Hershon deserves a Goddamn pile of lifetime achievement awards, a sky-scraper full of awards, a mountain of awards.

He needs one for his wry poetry that captures the joy and pain of everyday life, loss, aging, friendship and marriage.

Another for his absurdist poetry that skewers literary fools and know-it-all know-nothings who fill up shopping mall bookstore readings and AWP soirees.

Another for more than fifty years of co-editing one of the best literary journals in the country (and wrangling the OTHER editors into some sort of order)

For publishing the work of high school students from all over the country and the world including some of my early poems.

As other presses embrace, the Ponzi scheme mode of publishing, Hanging Loose is unique in still not charging poets to submit poems, AND actually PAYING writers for their work

He-- of course --deserves another award for putting SO MANY beautiful books in the world (including work by so many of my favorite poets): Paul Violi, Jayne Cortez, his wife the lovely Donna Brook, Charles North, and Quote unquote “younger poets” like Tom Devany and Maggie Nelson

Another for being such a good friend to so many people for so many years. For writing poems to his friends so precise that we all feel like we are their friends too.

I’ve known Bob now for more than 30 years, and in this time his poetry has only gotten better: more honest, funnier and more absurd.

He’s the only poet I know to have a poem on the OP-Ed page of the NY Times AND the menu of a restaurant. I am hoping this publishing trend continues. I would like a Bob Hershon poem flashing underneath the tracks of the F train and in the information books at the hospital.

His work is what we need to make any kind of sense of this backwards world.

I’m looking forward to his 16th, 17th and 18th book.

AND his 50th, 51st and 80th lifetime achievement awards.

 

See also

Celebrating 50 Years of Hanging Loose Press In Conversation with Co-editor Robert Hershon

Interview by Joanna Fuhrman

 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bob Hershon, Dick Lourie, and Mark Pawlak. Photo by Gerald Fleming.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 Bob and Donna believed in me  by Mandy Smoker Broaddus

Over twenty years ago Robert Hershon (and others at Hanging Loose Press - Dick, Mark, Donna...) changed my life forever by publishing my collection of poems. It felt like an incredible dream.  Bob and Donna believed in me, guided me through a new world, boosted me up, and loved me. They became my forever Uncle and Auntie. I will miss him immensely. I will cherish the compliments, the constructive criticism, the witty email banter, coffee at the kitchen counter, after dinner drinks - but mostly I will remember your keen poetics, your bright eye and all the generosity. Thank you.  Thank you so much. 💔

                                                            Mandy Smoker Broaddus, Bob Hershon, Donna Brook

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Robert Hershon R.I.P.  by Michael Lally

Bob was six years older than me and felt like a big brother, a funny one (I had an ex-cop big brother named Robert who was twelve years older and a jokester as well). Hershon's quick wit, even when aimed at me, always made me laugh, which was an unexpected gift because my inability to be equally witty usually soured me on that kind of banter. But Bob Hershon's love for his fellow poets and friends, and most folks, radiated from his heart even when cracking wise.

In fact, his readings were known for the laughter his poems often generated, even sometimes when addressing serious subjects. Some thought of him as a stand-up comic as much as a poet. But he was one of our most wonderful poets and should have had the name recognition of our most famous ones. I think because his poetry was often humorous it sometimes wasn't taken as seriously as it should have been, and because he didn't fit into the categories that critics create for poetry movements and scenes.

In fact Robert Hershon was unique, as a poet, editor, publisher, co-founder and director of The Print Center (that made it possible for many small presses to publish), and husband, father, friend, and wit. His physical presence will be, and already is, deeply missed, but his printed and recorded presence will live on. Rest in poetry, Bob.

PS: here's the full text of the title poem from his 2019 collection

End of the Business Day:

I looked in every file and folder

under the fax and behind the

Xerox. I retraced my footsteps

and pawed through the waste

paper and finally

I found what I'd done with this poem

So I folded it in half and then in

quarters and then to the size of

a matchbook

and I put it in my breast

pocket and I gave it a pat

and I turned out the lights

and I locked the door

and I ran for my life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Lehman, Bob Hershon, Bill Zavatsky, Michael Lally

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

                                                               Bob with his daughter Elizabeth       

 

                                                             Bob Hershon and his sister Sue, ca. late 1940s.

Bob was my big brother who decided to teach me to read when I was 3 and gave me vocabulary tests every week. He loved being a big brother to “little sister Susie” and we went to the movies every Saturday as kids. He took me to my first ballet, my first opera, and my first off Broadway play.

He was always funny, and that got us through a rocky childhood. I became a.therapist, and he always wanted to write, and I loved his poetry. I don’t know if you ever saw his cartoons. I have many of them, and when he had a birthday I would give him one, as he never saved them but I did. They are very clever. We never fought, talked very often, and Donna and I were close friends, and close with Jed and Elizabeth. He was very modest and talented. He had an unbelievable memory for all kinds of things. He was one of a kind.

I miss him very much and hated that he suffered so in the last few months. I saw him 3 days before he died, and he held my hand. I bought him chocolate and a big jar of cashews, and he loved that. The nurse said it wasn’t good for him and we looked at her as if she was insane. Life wasn’t always easy for Bob but he was such a kind and loving guy and he knew how many friends were rooting for him. We were all so lucky he was in our lives. (Little sister Susie)

                                                               Bob Hershon and his son Jed

                                                             Bob Hershon as a young man

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mourning the Loss of Bob Hershon  by Thomas Devaney

His life-long work at Hanging Loose Press is beyond measure.

Bob’s poems, with their "downhome speech," lead with the heart.

The one where he puts his hand back to reach-out for his son's hand as they're crossing the street always hits me. The son much older now, Bob writes:

Don't fill up on bread

I say absent-mindedly

The servings here are huge.

My son, whose hair may be

receding a bit, says

Did you really just

say that to me?

What he doesn't know

is that when we're walking

together, when we get

to the curb

I sometimes start to reach

for his hand.

Bob was one of the great walkers in the city. Cut out of that same generous grain celebrated by Alfred Kazin and Walt Whitman, where he says: "Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else."

The streets of the city are before us: Bob's gait remains distinctive. His stride is deliberate with a range of tempos. His sense of being is transmitted in the stride of his line breaks and lines.

Notice the poem “Pace.” Yes, we never know which direction he might go, or the pace the poem may take to get there. But, in its own workaday way of that form, it’s also a concrete poem. Bob writes:

on skinny old

Lexington Avenue

I speed up

to pass this man

so I can

slow down

I take

great pleasure in the exact size

of my steps

 

The poems are living maps: all the worlds in all of the names, all the places, which continue to live in Bob's honest and vivid words.

Somewhere, I believe, Sherman Alexie credits Bob and Donna with saving his life. They published Sherman's first book with Hanging Loose Press. Later, even though his big publishers wanted him to publish all of his books with them, Sherman stuck with Hanging Loose for his poetry collections. His tribute to Bob helps to tell the larger story:

Bob's Coney Island

Let's begin with this: America.

I want it all back

now, acre by acre, tonight. I want

some Indian to finally learn

to dance the Ghost Dance right

so that all of the salmon and buffalo return

and the white men are sent back home

to wake up in their favorite European cities.

I am not cruel.

Still, I hesitate

when Bob walks us around his Coney Island:

the Cyclone still running

the skeleton of the Thunderbolt

the Freak Show just a wall of photographs

the Parachute Drop

which has not been used in 30 years

but still looks like we could

tie a few ropes to the top (Why the hell not?) and drop

quickly down, spinning, unravelling

watching Bob's Coney Island rise

from the ashes of the sad, old carnival

that has taken its place now, this carnival

that is so sad because, like Donna says

all carnivals are sad.

We drop to the ground, our knees buckle slightly

at impact. We turn to look at each other

with the kind of love and wonder

that only fear and the release of fear can create.

We climb to the top and parachute down

again and again, because there is an ocean

a few feet away, because Manhattan is just a moment

down the horizon, because there was a 13-year-old boy

who believed that Coney Island belonged to him

though we know that all we see

doesn't really belong to anyone

but I'll let Bob have a conditional lease

because I know finally,

somebody will take care of this place

even if just in memory.

 

—Sherman Alexie

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bob was my friend for more than 40 years, my publisher more than once, and a great sports fan, the Mets above all.  One of the bricks at Citi Field bears his name (a gift from his family).  He watched other sports, too, though not often the pickup basketball games at Murat Nemet-Nejat's annual summer poets parties—and even less me going one on one with Max Warsh, the son of Bernadette Mayer and Lewis Warsh. Bob looks so happy (and young) here, as do Ed Friedman and Marc Nasdor.  Me, I'm worrying about how to get past Max.

—Charles North

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

                                                                 Bob Hershon and Gerald Fleming

Bob Hershon was a stellar human being. The web of writers he brought together— some now gone from the earth and the many left who now mourn him—knew him not simply as "funny" nor classically Brooklyn-irascible, but profoundly caring and generous, deeply intelligent, steeped and conversant in both literature and art. That web of writers is wide both geographically and aesthetically: his tastes took in the whole spectrum of good literature without favoring gender or ethnicity, and both the magazine and the many Hanging Loose book titles attest to that.

I remember a Hanging Loose prose poem reading that Sharon Mesmer, Jack Anderson, and I did at the New York Public Library. Bob did the intro, and during that intro grouched about critics' obsession with defining the prose poem: "If it's good writing, who the hell cares?" That was Bob. (And it should be said that Hanging Loose, under Bob's, Dick's, and Mark's editorialship, was an early home for the prose poem—no raised eyebrows when a prose poem manuscript came over the transom.) It's people like Bob Hershon who keep our literature alive at its cellular level, and those of us who knew him, loved him, are aching.

—Gerald Fleming

                                                 Donna Brook and Bob Hershon. Photo by Gerald Fleming.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Here is Bob reading at the Paul Violi Memorial at the Poetry Project in June 2011. I can imagine that, during a pause between poems, he's recounting a wryly touching and pertinent anecdote, which will shortly be hitting the audience in the way this photograph hit me. [Photo by David Kelley]

—Tony Towle

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

                                             Bob out on the town

Bob sent me these pics a few years ago. It was 2016, he was just turning 80 and a bunch of us were eating some great Italian food after a gathering at Poet's House to celebrate his birthday and the fact that some of us had just had books come out from HL Press... I think no one at the table was aware that anyone was taking pics--I certainly wasn't--so it's all very real. ---Patricia Traxler

Yes, I remember that book party. Bob: pleased that the book party went off smoothly, pleased to be in the company of close poet friends, wine, and food. What I remember so fondly from many such annual events is the late night drive back to Wyckoff Street, sitting at the kitchen counter with Bob, the great pleasure he took in tallying up the book sales, recounting who showed up, who said what, etc. Then a nightcap and to bed in the wee hours.
---Mark Pawlak

The restaurant where those photos were taken on May 20th, 2016, by the way, was Gigino's, on Greenwich Street south of Duane. Mark was right on the money in his description---Bob was extremely happy to be where he was with the people that were there, after another successful Hanging Loose celebration, and after a good dinner with good wine (and maybe one pre-dinner cocktail). ---Tony Towle

top: Bob, Patricia Traxler, Dick Lourie, Mark Pawlak, [?], Tony Towle, and [???].
bottom: Michael Lally, Bob, Patricia Traxler, Dick Lourie, Mark Pawlak

______________________________________________________________________________________

Bob and Donna in Paris at an evening reading I'd arranged at a pal's apartment. Quite a few readers (including Kathryn Levy, who happened to be in town), and Bob was a big hit. (It took some convincing to get Donna to read, but read she did, and I think she was glad she did. Bob was especially happy about that.)  ---Gerald Fleming

________________________________________________________________________________________

                                                                  Bob Hershon, Ivy Chen, Keri Smith, Wang Ping in NYC

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

left photo: Jeanne Calvit, husband of Lisa Von Drasek, Sherman Alexie, Lisa Von Drasek, Wang Ping, Bob Hershon, Donna Brook
right photo: Wang Ping, Sherman Alexie, Bob Hershon

Bob and Donna visited Macalester College in 2015, with Sherman Alexie. The trio caused a sensation in the Twin Cities, with their poetry, stories, humor, and their bonds with each other. Sherman told many stories about how Bob discovered his poetry and has been publishing him ever since. I cooked a banquet for them at home. So many people came, and I had to borrow chairs from friends. One of the chairs was faulty, unfortunately. Bob sat on it, and it collapsed under him. I was terrified, but he got up and continued with the feast, with a joke that made everyone laugh. He was tough and funny. Hanging Loose Press published my first translation: New Generation: Poetry from China Today, with Dick Lourie, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman among the co-translators. It paved my path as a poet and translator for the future. Bob and Donna also hosted a baby shower for my firstborn child at their home. I still hold onto that stroller. Bob's last wish was a Chinese dinner. I am sharing a photo of us feasting on Chinese food at Hong Kong Noodles in Minneapolis. Hope he sees this and smiles from his new place. Bob has made many children of poets and writers. I'm one of them.
---Wang Ping

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                                                                                Dick, Ron, Emmett, Bob

Bob wrote a poem about Hanging Loose editors. That’s the one that, in the last few weeks, has really got to me.

We’ve been doing the same thing for fifty-five years: submissions to the magazine are screened, sent around, and voted on—mostly by mail, since we’ve never actually had all the editors living in one place. Then we meet together about three times a year. We spend a weekend sitting around a table, usually in Bob’s living room, to make final decisions. On warm, sunny days there’s a table in the back yard.

Nothing gets in the magazine until it’s been read aloud—we have to hear it. In the middle of the table there’s a pile of manuscripts. Depending on how long it’s been between meetings, there might be 40 or 50, or only 20 or 30. Ron Schreiber always took on himself the job of doling them out by turns. We never knew if Ron had some devious sorting plan of his own. That would have been in character.

Bob reads someone’s poem to us—his voice: I know it so well—first polishing his glasses with that characteristic gesture I also know so well. He’s right across the table from me. Then we vote (previous votes are disregarded; to make the cut it has to be heard). Because we are kind people, a tie vote always goes to the “yesses.” Ron’s on my right; he’s next; we always read clockwise. (Don’t ask.)

Then me, then Emmett Jarrett on my left; after he has retired into the clergy, Mark Pawlak is on my left; he’s been there forty years. After Ron died, we each had to choose our own manuscripts to read from the pile, and we didn’t need to think about tie votes any more.

Now Mark’s across the table and Bob is on my right, watchful so I don’t steal the pen he’s doodling with. We’re familiar, so joyfully and achingly familiar, with one another’s voices, and with each individual style of reading aloud. Because this is what we do. For a half-century.

Here is Bob’s poem.

The Editors Editing 

Nomi our neighbor 

Asks Donna what are those 

Guys doing out back 

Sitting around the table 

Table full of papers 

And one guy goes blah blah blah blah 

And the others all shake their heads 

And go ahum ahum ahum 

 

Then the oak leaves fall 

Then the white garden furniture 

Covered with gray city snow 

Bluejay walks across the table 

And down somebody's leg 

Blah blah blah blah 

 

Reflecting on it the week after Bob died, I realized why I was so moved by these fourteen lines. Of course, I thought, it’s a poem about eternal friendship.

---Dick Lourie

____________________________________________________________________________________________

I found another photo of Bob I took the last time I stayed with him, in 2019. I love that photo. He was sitting under his favorite painting, happy, content, at ease...full of dreams.  ---Wang Ping

_______________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

June Jordan: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

______________________________________________________________________________________

The Reception

 

Doretha wore the short blue lace last night

and William watched her drinking so she fight

with him in flying collar slim-jim orange

tie and alligator belt below the navel pants uptight

 

“I flirt. You hear me? Yes I flirt.

Been on my pretty knees all week

to clean the rich white downtown dirt

the greedy garbage money reek.

 

I flirt. Damned right. You look at me.”

But William watched her carefully

his mustache shaky she could see

him jealous, “which is how he always be

 

at parties.” Clementine and Wilhelmina

looked at trouble in the light blue lace

and held to George while Roosevelt Senior

circled by the yella high and bitterly light blue face

 

he liked because she worked

the crowded room like clay like molding men

from dust to muscle jerked

and arms and shoulders moving when

 

she moved. The Lord Almighty Seagrams bless

Doretha in her short blue dress

and Roosevelt waiting for his chance:

a true gut-funky blues to make her really dance.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

June Jordan was born in Harlem in 1936 and was the author of ten books of poetry, seven collections of essays, two plays, a libretto, a novel, a memoir, five children’s books, and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint. As a professor at UC Berkeley, Jordan established Poetry for the People, a program to train student teachers to teach the power of poetry from a multicultural worldview. She was a regular columnist for The Progressive, and her articles appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, Ms., Essence, and The Nation. After her death from breast cancer in 2002, a school in the San Francisco School District was renamed in her honor. [From the forthcoming volume, The Essential June Jordan (May 2021, Copper Canyon Press]. See also this link.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

June Jordan on being a poet (and to hear her wonderful laugh)---

 

 

Eamon Grennan: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

________________________________________________________________

Skunk

 

Night brims with his bittersweet.

Sometimes a squashed body does it: for miles

The highway blows his grief among the trees.

 

Other times it's fear that burns that incense

In the dark.  Or it could be just delight:

Two of them finding one another

Slow and curious

Among moist ferns and cool bluegreen shadows.

Black and white, warm as saliva,

Infinitely, as such things go, desirable.

 

Making no secret of what's between them,

They hang their lavish presence on the night,

Scattering anarchy in pungent waves

Through the dark beyond our bedroom window.

___________________________________________________________________

Eamon Grennan, a Dubliner, taught for many years at Vassar College. He has published (in Ireland and the U.S.) over ten volumes of poetry.  Recent collections are Out of Sight: New & Selected Poems (Graywolf); and There Now (Graywolf, and Gallery, Ireland), and Plainchant (Gallery, 2020, and Red Hen Press, forthcoming,  2022). Still Life with Waterfall (Graywolf) won the Lenore Marshall Prize. He has translated the poems of Leopardi (Princeton University Press, winner of the PEN award in translation)  He has also co-translated (with his partner, Rachel Kitzinger) Oedipus at Colonus (Oxford), and The Women of Trachis (Lever Press).  Facing the Music: Irish Poetry in the 20th Century is a collection of critical essays. In the past few years he has been writing and directing “plays for voices” on Irish historical and literary subject matter for a small Irish theatre group—Curlew Theatre Company.  He lives in Poughkeepsie and in Connemara.

______________________________________________________________________________

Loudon Wainwright III: "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road"

 

 

Clarinda Harriss: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

___________________________________________________________________________________

April 8, 9, 10: Dear Steve

 

The crows you heard as omens were omens.

Frost smashed your cucumber seedlings.

Watch the pot. It will boil.

 

Your burial day: sunny, then cold dusky dark.

The piper marched in late. We waited

shivering in wind-borne April snow.

 

The drive home: pink trees waggled

like slutty dresses. A girl walked by in jeans

with strings for her thighs to bulge through.

 

At home: our dog knew your ashes

had sat on my lap. She sniffed, then moved

to your side of the couch to mourn.

 

Note: At the grave, a strange woman

had hung around to be alone with you.

You'd laugh at how pissed off I was.

 

You told me  in Ireland "pissed" 

means "drunk."  My darling, I am so pissed.

Waiting for the day and days  to end.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Clarinda Harriss, professor emerita of English at Towson University and longtime publisher of BrickHouse Books, Inc., is the author, most recently, of The White Rail, Innumerable Moons, and Ash Wedding. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

   Cemetery in Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare. Ireland, 2018. Photo by T. Winch

 

Chris Mason: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

_________________________________________________________________________

Pocket Dial

 

Cell phone pocket dials daughter

            sleeping with boyfriend, pre-dawn.

Crickets, truck banging around, cell phone

            doesn’t dial cranky

exuberant Mrs. Deemer, or the

            bus driver

from Special Olympics.   My Dad is gone

            but still on the phone.

My sister found U. S. Savings Bonds

            grandparents sent us,

the note says, “We are proud of the

            young man you have become.”

Hard to dial up the sound of their voices,

            even in dreams

______________________________________________________________________________

Chris Mason’s most recent books and chapbooks include Something Something Morning (Blabbermouth, 2020), Some of the Methods of Performing Poetry Employed in and Around Baltimore from the Late 60’s to the Early Teens by Poets in Their Late Teens to Early 60’s (Primary Writing, 2019), and ­Hum Who Hiccup (Narrow House, 2011).   He is a member of 3 bands:  The Tinklers, Coocoo Rockin Time, and Old Songs.  The Old Songs group translates archaic Greek poetry and puts it to music.  He lives in Baltimore with his wife, Ann.

____________________________________________________________________________

 

Amy Gerstler: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

______________________________________________________________________

Lost in the Forest

 

I'd given up hope. Hadn't eaten in three

days. Resigned to being wolf meat...

when, unbelievably, I found myself  in

a clearing. Two goats with bells

round their necks stared at me:

their pupils like coin slots

in piggy banks. I could have gotten

the truth out of those two,

if goats spoke. I saw leeks

and radishes planted in rows;

wash billowing on a clothesline...

and the innocuous-looking cottage

in the woods with its lapping tongue

of a welcome mat slurped me in.

 

In the kitchen, a woman so old her sex

is barely discernible pours a glass

of fraudulent milk. I'm so hungry

my hand shakes. But what is this liquid?

"Drink up, sweetheart," she says,

and as I wipe the white mustache

off with the back of my hand:

"Atta girl." Have I stumbled

into the clutches of St. Somebody?

Who can tell. "You'll find I prevail here

in my own little kingdom," she says as

she leads me upstairs--her bony grip

on my arm a proclamation of ownership,

as though I've always been hers.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Amy Gerstler is a writer living in Los Angeles. Index of Women, a book of her poems, will be published in April by Penguin Random House. She is currently collaborating with Steve Gunderson on a musical play. 

________________________________________________________________________________________

Cornelius Eady: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

photo by Yoon Kim

_____________________________________________________________

Handymen

 

The furnace wheezes like a drenched lung.

You can’t fix it.

The toilet babbles like a speed freak.

You can’t fix it.

The fuse box is a nest of rattlers.

You can’t fix it.

The screens yawn the bees through.

Your fingers are dumb against the hammer.

Your eyes can’t tell plumb from plums.

The frost heaves against the doorjambs,

The ice turns the power lines to brittle candy.

No one told you about how things pop and fizzle,

No one schooled you in spare parts.

That’s what the guy says but doesn’t say

As he tosses his lingo at your apartment dweller ears,

A bit bemused, a touch impatient,

After the spring melt has wrecked something, stopped something,

After the hard wind has lifted something away,

After the mystery has plugged the pipes,

That rattle coughs up something sinister

An easy fix, but not for you.

It’s different when you own it,

When it’s yours, he says as the meter runs,

Then smiles like an adult.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

CORNELIUS EADY’s poetry collections include: Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize; The Gathering of My Name, nominated for a 1992 Pulitzer Prize; and Hardheaded Weather (Putnam, 2008). He is co-founder of the Cave Canem Foundation. [For more poems by and information on Cornelius Eady, click here.]

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Maureen Owen: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo by Rachael Pongetti

_________________________________________________________________________

 

Survival Song

 

Don’t worry about me        on latenight subways

coming home down snowy abandoned blvds.

I am La Coyote       she of the white track

loping through thick drifts          the stinging

crystals at my eyes        muggers drop their arms

at my approach     murderers withdraw back into

doorways   shivering       as my shadow floats over

the snow        trotting soundlessly up second ave

“German Shepherd,”  someone says to calm his

startled companion          but really I am La Loba

the she-wolf       a low hum in my throat

a terrible power in my yellow eyes          junkies

quiver           haggard & dangerous con men

skirt widely as I pass them moving at a low run

down 110^th     perverts howl & race for cover

I am La Coyote   invisible in the deepening snow

no one touches me   I make it home     everytime.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Maureen Owen, former editor and chief of Telephone Magazine and Telephone Books, is the author of Erosion’s Pull from Coffee House Press, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Balcones Poetry Prize. Her title American Rush: Selected Poems was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and her work AE (Amelia Earhart) was a recipient of the prestigious Before Columbus American Book Award. She has taught at Naropa University, both on campus and in the low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program, in Naropa’s Summer Writing Program, and edited Naropa’s on-line zine not enough night through 19 issues. Her  newest title Edges of Water is available from Chax Press. She has most recently had work in Blazing Stadium, Positive Magnets, Posit, and The Denver Quarterly.  Click here for her Poets on the Road Tour with Barbara Henning. She can be found reading her work on the PennSound website.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

 Jackson Pollock, The She Wolf, 1943

Ron Padgett: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ron Padgett by Siobhán Padgett, 2020

________________________________________________________________________

Morning

Who is here with me?

My mother and an Indian man.

(I am writing this in the past.)

The Indian man is not a man,

but a wooden statue just outside

the limits of wood. My mother

is made of mother. She touches

the wood with her eyes and the eyes

of the statue turn to hers, that is,

become hers. (I am not dreaming.

I haven’t even been born yet.)

There is a cloud in the sky.

My father is inside the cloud,

asleep. When he wakes up, he

will want coffee and a smoke.

My mother will set fire

to the Indian and from deep inside

her body I will tell her

to start the coffee, for even now

I hear my father’s breathing change.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Ron Padgett’s How Long was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry and his Collected Poems won the LA Times Prize for the best poetry book of 2014 and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. His translations include Zone: Selected Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars’ Complete Poems. Padgett has collaborated with artists Joe Brainard, Jim Dine, Alex Katz, George Schneeman, and Trevor Winkfield. Seven of his poems were used in Jim Jarmusch’s film, Paterson. His most recent collection is Big Cabin (Coffee House Press). ["Morning," from Collected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2013), is used by permission; © 2013 by Ron Padgett.]

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 (L-R) Jim Jarmusch, Ron Padgett, and Adam Driver attend the New York Special Screening of Amazon Studios and Bleecker Street's "Paterson" at Landmark Sunshine Theater on December 15, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Paul Bruinooge/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

 

Anne Harding Woodworth: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_________________________________________________________________________________

Looking Homeward

 

Bill Waldron spared my mother and father agony

by teaching me how to drive a stick in a cornfield.

 

Think of it as an H, he said of the lever that came

out of the steering shaft of his two-door Dodge,

 

which my mother called a coupay. We were on the two-rut road

around the field that the tractor took to get in and out

 

at planting and harvest. The grassy hump sometimes hit the underside

and Bill would say, Oh m'god, downshift, girl, easerup,

 

which wasn’t hard as long as I remembered to clutch—

or the car would stutter over itself

 

and on the passenger side, Bill would get thrown around

almost to bumping his nose on the dash.

 

He had a big nose, talked as if he had a cold,

and his eye was on my older sister, who dreamed of boys

 

and going to Africa. I felt pretty important as the vehicle

to her heart, though I knew Bill didn’t have a prayer.

 

My sister married a Rhodes Scholar and went to Uganda

for Uhuru. Bill married the daughter of the town monument maker

 

and took over the business

before he even had a chance to look away.

 

He marked my father’s, then my mother’s grave,

so they won't ever be forgotten in that town I drove out of.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Anne Harding Woodworth’s seventh book of poetry, Trouble (Turning Point, 2020), includes her persona cycle, “Hannah Alive,” which became a one-woman play in verse that was a finalist at the Adirondack Shakespeare Co. festival in Essex, New York. Harding Woodworth’s poetry, reviews, and essays appear in anthologies and journals, both in print and online, such as Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, Women & Language, Crannog, Gargoyle, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. She is a co-chair of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library and a member of the Board of Governors at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

John Yau: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Eve Aschheim

__________________________________________________________________________________

Things I Should Tell You Before It’s Too Late

 

Princess Sitting Duck isn’t my real name

I am not one of the ones marred

 

By inexplicable outbursts of an obstreperous nature

Most times I am a curtain of conviviality

 

Don’t make friends with my dog

I used to collect ideas until I realized

 

I don’t have any of my own

Learn to shirk your duties

 

With dignity I always say

I used to dress in a squirrel suit

 

and play in the forest

where it flanks the railroad tracks

 

leading to the haunted mines

I never reached the rank of colonel

 

You can hold my hand

as long as you don’t lose it

 

I serve drinks in tall blue glasses

I am never sure which principles are mine

 

Sometimes I get glassy-eyed

and pee on the neighbor’s porch

 

I no longer throw stones at children

I bow whenever I see a high-ranking dignitary

 

stop to tie his shoes

or zip up his fly

 

Princess Sitting duck isn’t my nickname either

____________________________________________________________________________________________

John Yau has published many books of poetry, fiction, and criticism. He has a book of poems, Genghis Chan on Drums, forthcoming from Omnidawn, and a monograph on the Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong, from Lund Humphries (both fall 2021). He is the publisher of Black Square Editions, and his reviews of art and poetry appear regularly in the online magazine Hyperallergic Weekend. He lives in New York City and teaches at Mason Gross School of the Arts (Rutgers University). [For more information on, and work by, John Yau, click here.]

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

                  John Yau, 1983. Oil on canvas by Robert Berlind

 

 

 

M.L. Smoker: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_________________________________________________

Borrowing Blue

I’m not the painter here. I leave that to you, but blue
is the color of my father’s camping cup, left tonight
on the Formica counter. This pen I am writing with.
and the beaded moccasins and belt I danced in
before my mother died.
My grandmother had made these for her as a child—
spelling out in blue beads on blue beads
each of our names, our collective history
in an invisible pattern only we would recognize.
Not the blue of Montana sky either,
not that at all, but the pulse of lake water lapping
at your ankles, the temperature rising
as a storm gathers on the plains.
The push and pull of forgiveness.
I’m already thinking of leaving again.
Did I tell you this? How can I speak of this wind,
how it has no color, no sense,
no guilt. It makes me feel even more lonely
than I would ever let on.
I’m guessing you figured this much already.
(We will never stop missing them, will we,
the parent each of us has lost.)
I’ll be honest, I have no idea what I would see
in the paintings if I were to visit you.
I like to think there would be some kind of end
to the blue, a visual end to what is never
adequate: blue flame, blue bead, blue ovary,
blue lung. See how easily we fail?
How can we believe that our secrets are in good hands—
yours resting at the bottom of Flathead Lake, mine held
in a small leather suitcase beneath the stairs.
I have not worn those moccasins or that belt for over
six years now. We should both be ashamed.
Look at us.  Look, as the grey fog
settles into your streets outside, how the near-white
canvases wait. You almost didn’t notice again.
Just like I almost didn’t notice the wind
dying down for evening.
So yes, let’s call it Montana blue, the vanishing point:
Maybe this is the real reason I have never learned
to trust in color. How can you take back
the kind of blue you’ve been dreaming of—trust
it will make something unhappen—
if it is the same blue you’re made of?

______________________________________________________________________________________________

M.L. Smoker is a member of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana.   She currently serves as co-poet laureate for the state of Montana, alongside her longtime friend, Melissa Kwasny. ◙ She holds an MFA from the University of Montana in Missoula, where she was the recipient of the Richard Hugo Fellowship. In 2019 she was recognized as an alumna of the year by the University. ◙ Her first collection of poems, Another Attempt at Rescue, was published by Hanging Loose Press in 2005. In 2009 she co-edited an anthology of human rights poetry with Melissa Kwasny entitled, I Go to the Ruined Place. She received a regional Emmy award for her work as a writer/consultant on the PBS documentary Indian Relay. ◙ She served as the Director of Indian Education for the state of Montana for almost ten years. In 2015 she was named the Indian Educator of the Year by the National Indian Education Association and was appointed to the National Advisory Council on Indian Education by President Barack Obama.  She currently works at Education Northwest as a practice expert in Indian Education. [For more on M.L. Smoker, click here.]

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Flathead Lake, Montana

 

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

Geoff Young, Dec 2020. Background-- painting (detail) by Morgan Bulkeley, called 'Facing Heroes.'  Photo by Lillian Anderson.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

His Apprenticeship Never Occurred to Me While I Was out Surfing

 

I want to thank Bob Dylan

Not only for the songs and movies

But for the March 1978 Playboy interview

In which he tells how he got turned on to folk singing

 

He was fifteen years old

He owned an electric guitar, he loved Elvis

And then he heard Odetta’s first record

He learned every song on it

 

Proceeding to Harry Belafonte and The Kingston Trio

Uncovering more & more as he went along

Until finally he was doing nothing

But Carter Family and Jesse Fuller songs

 

At 19, the discovery of Woody Guthrie’s music

Opened up a whole new world

And like a bullet shot from a bow he entered it

Somehow I always figured that Zimmy was born

 

With the complete history of blues and folk

Just taped to his lungs

That when he breathed the songs came naturally to life

With the likes of Leroy Carr, Blind Willie McTell,

 

Leadbelly, Bill Monroe, and Muddy Waters

All harried bluesmen in dark caverns playing for drinks

Living from one clean white shirt in a cardboard suitcase to the next

As if Bob never had to read Kierkegaard or even sheet music

 

Or woodshed for endless teen hours

In order to strum axe and blow harp

At the same time, remembering

All those words, distorting voice for chorus after chorus

 

As if he never had to drive himself nuts

Just to write the songs in the first place

After twenty years, he said, I’m still using

Those same three chords, the ones Odetta played

 

And thanks for admitting it, Bob

I mean about Harry Belafonte

And The Kingston Trio, too

Jesus, we could be brothers!

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Born in 1944, Geoffrey Young grew up in San Diego.  After a Fulbright year in Paris, he worked at La Galerie Sonnabend for a spell.  In 1982 he moved from Berkeley to Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  Over a thirty-year period, his small press, The Figures, published more than 135 books of poetry, art writing, and fiction.  ◙ Recent books of his poetry and drawing include Pivot (2020), and Asides (2020). The trilogy:  Alibi (2019), Sauce (2018), and Sight Unseen (2018) exist in small editions. ◙  For twenty-seven years he directed the Geoffrey Young Gallery, which closed as of Christmas, 2018.   Over the years Young has written catalog essays for more than a dozen artists. [For more on Geoffrey Young, click here.]

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Beth Baruch Joselow: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

____________________________________________________

Blacker Pacific

 

Travel this glass canyon

on your back, on a sled

pulled by dogs blue with fear.

 

As long as the blankets

are thick, and the medicine 

takes, you may arrive at base

 

without having lost it all.

Don’t tumble or drag

a finger through the snow.

 

Even the smallest arch

is a figure of strength, bending

its back to hold the load. That

 

scratch of the runners on glass can’t

come to seem musical, but with luck

it can be polished out

 

until what is reflected,

clear as a bell, is the journey

itself, the tale you’ll tell.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Beth Baruch Joselow is the author of numerous books and chapbooks, including Excontemporary (Red Hen/ Story Line) and Begin at Once (Chax Press). Her poems have appeared in dozens of magazines and in several anthologies. Joselow has collaborated on artists’ books with visual artists in the U.S. and Ukraine. Born in Baltimore, Joselow spent most of her adult life in Washington DC, where for many years she was on the faculty of the Corcoran College of Art + Design. She now lives in Lewes, Delaware, and works as a psychotherapist. [For a recent interview, click here.]

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Eamonn Wall: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eamonn Wall. Photo by August Jennewein

____________________________________________________________________________

The Grassy Garbage of Inwood

 

If anyone walks through here from out of town

he/she/it will hardly be pleased by grinding

boomboxes, the leaves of twenty autumns,

every brand of beer can, bottle, and cigarette

known to the bodega owners of this great city.

And I agree that Inwood Park is an unholy mess

and would be hard pressed indeed to write the

Fall/Spring/Summer/Winter verse The New Yorker

demands for each pristine season because I don't think

that he/she/it in the dentist's waiting room

in Cincinnati would like to read a nature poem

with a beer can in it. No way. Remember too

The New Yorker pays big money for nature poems.

Nevertheless, we are here as usual in the afternoon

and when we pass the first radio you wiggle your

little ankles to the beat and when I put you on the

grass you pull it as if it were the belly hair of paradise:

you find a Winston butt and show it to me before

diving into the vast anthropology of leaves. Your

mother said to me before we left the house: "Don't

let him near the trash," but what can I do,

a child must learn what his hands are for? Finally

it's time for the stream where a bird is drinking

beside a can of Heineken Holland Beer. You walk

on the stones, crouch, and let the water flow

through your soft fingers and I shout to The New Yorker

and the gardening weeklies that this is the natural world.

I take you away from it in tears, brilliant world of

grass and radios stretching out and bursting, and a

slinking butt lying there for you to notice it.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Eamonn Wall is a native of Co. Wexford, Ireland, who has lived in the US since 1982: in Wisconsin, New York City, Nebraska, and for the past twenty years in St. Louis. His books of poetry and prose include Junction City: New and Selected Poems 1990-2015 (Salmon Poetry, 2015); From the Sin-e Café to the Black Hills (University of Wisconsin Press. 2000); Writing the Irish West: Ecologies and Traditions (Notre Dame, 2011). Current projects include a new collection of poetry and a new book of essays on contemporary writing. He works in international education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

____________________________________________________________________________________

 

Grace Cavalieri: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

______________________________________________________________________________________

The Sound That Haunting Makes

 

I'd like to talk about how the day went, talk as we used to do,

not with singing words, but smaller celebrations gathered until

we noticed the ridges of each other—

the missing parts that no one else could see.

 

I don't mind that you’re away, an understandable

shift—aerodynamic in fact—you loved to fly—but

that you would forget me is impossible.

Did you see this sweater’s lost a button loop?

 

And that excessive fruit makes the basket spill?

Are you laughing at my decorating skill?

Are you assuring me the problem is in the straw,

its weaving, the oversized pear, the lopsided chair?

 

I'd like some decisions from you, yet I understand—

as a passenger of time—you are beyond my reach.

I need some help with perceptions, logistics—

teaching myself to live under the weight of visibility.

 

Since we seem to be of two different geographic climes,

can you direct me closer to you? You, who flew from Japan

to California using only the stars. Should I sit here in the sun

or move my hands, my heart, a little to the left?

 

I understand these are contradictory criteria—

the living and the dead—yet at times, through my devotion

to the past, plus my unreasonable emotions, I feel a

radiant warmth encircling me. Of course, at other times

The cumulative effect of memory left on its own is staggering.

Yesterday, you were solid as stone, rich with detail, revolving around me,

and other days like this one, I'm sure you understand,

It's as if it never happened.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Grace Cavalieri is Maryland's tenth poet laureate. She founded "The Poet and the Poem" for public radio, now from the Library of Congress, celebrating 44 years on-air. Her latest books are Showboat (2019), which centers on her 25 years as a Navy wife, and What The Psychic Said (2020, both books from Goss 183 Pub.). Her latest play is "Quilting The Sun," Theater for the New City, NYC, 2019. She was married for 60 years to the late sculptor, Kenneth Flynn. They had four children. Grace lives in Annapolis, Maryland.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

                Kenneth Flynn with one of his sculptures