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25 Articles

THE DARK WHISPERS

i. We ride horses in the slowly-falling snowand you tell me it is Summer, it is warm,and I don’t quite believe you, but I love you,so I go along with the oddly humorous deception. My mother says “Love is blind”and “Hindsight is 20/20,” but it doesn’t help.The horses trot, the rhythm transmittedthrough our bodies, the horses somehow one with us, and we are terrible beasts,half man, half horse, truly and fully awful.You say we have so much in common, so many of the same life experiences, but those are liesas well. You lie and lie and lie as if breathing.And I believe. I believe. I stupidly believed. ii. In the early 18th Century, it finally appears in English:from the Latin manipulus and brought by the French,the word manipulation quickly became common.In the word we find hands,…

TEN POEMS Translations of Rafael Alberti

Paradise Lost Throughout the centuries,through the nothingness of the world,I, without sleep, search for you. Behind me, imperceptible,without touching my shoulders,my dead angel keeps watch. Where is Paradise,Shadow, you who have been there?I ask silently. Cities of no answers,rivers of no speech, summitsof no echoes, silent seas. Nobody knows. Men,stone-still, standing on the edgeof graves, ignore me. Sad birds,their petrified cantos,in ecstatic formation, fly blind. They know nothing.Without sun, ancient winds,inert, leagues still left to go, they rise,reduced to ashes, then fallto their backs, saying little. Diluted, without formand hiding a truth within,the heavens escape me. Already, at the end of the earth,at the farthest edge,the eyes slipping, hope dying in me,that green porticoI search for in the black vacuum. Oh, chasm of shadows!Hotbed of the world!What a confusion of centuries! Back, back! How awfulthe dark with no voices.How lost, my soul. Wake up,…

END OF MESSAGE On Norman Dubie

1. “Are you by your machine?” he says. “Yeah, I’m here.” I turn the phone on speaker, set it on my desk, open a Word doc. By “machine”—I know by now—he just means computer. I don’t think I ever hear him say that word: Computer. I know he did, once, when he told an interviewer in 1989, “About the computers—the university gave me one, but I gave it back.”1 As far as I know, he only touched one once in his life, which ended in the early morning hours of February 20, 2023, after congestive heart failure. Laura Johnson, one of Norman’s former students and a longtime assistant, said that in the early 2000s she tried to teach him how to log in to his email. When Norman sat down in front…

The Poem Fails If the day is not in it—some bitof its weather, its key, as toldby the ginkgo leaves. The weatherholds time, exquisite information. Life is not a dream like a scenein a novel I’ll never forget. I mean,it happened to me, and I will forget.It’s that kind of dream. If the poem fails, it failsto save my life. It failswith almost holy intention.An upward spiral. A thought in the night.L’appel du vide. The voidhas no color, it has no shade.It is not like a tree. Experiment on a Bird The news comes through so slowly.Some men in an eighteenth centurypainting are going to kill a bird.A paint child can’t bear to look. Birdcage empty, moon is full.And here, the winter sun lights upmy dust. A drafty window. A feathermay fall from a throw pillow. It’s time…

selections from YOU ARE HERE: POETRY IN THE NATURAL WORLD

As part of her signature project, You Are Here, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón commissioned fifty-two contemporary American poets to observe and reflect on their place in the natural world. The volume was published by Milkweed Editions in April 2024. Snapdragon Kevin Young Of late the deadhave quittheir midnight visits. They askto swing bysometime, without ringing first—Thank you, no.Think I’ll stay here, friends, in sunlightat the startof summer, the snapdragons & daylilies brightmy son plucks. Down the roadthe dandelions bloomin a garden of stone. A garland of souls. Like the vinesI’ll climb—like children who join their limbs to the silvermaple’s, wavingto all who pass on by. There Are More Ways to Show Devotion Hanif Abdurraqib than we can ever know in this lifetimeonce you traced a finger along the trafficof webs in the distance stitched alongthe top right corner of the window frame troubling the…

Thicket & Child In the middleof spring, in the centerof the thicketa family of finches are making a slogof dinner, wormsthat, pulled outof the ground become somethinglike an elegiacwitness to hunger,the birds’ hunger, the thicket’s starvation,the yellowed grass’sthirst. Or not.I suppose I’m feeling all powerful again,like last night,when I watcheda family of raccoons walk throughthe shelter of the thicketand then into the darkyard with just a clip of moonlightlike a half-secreton the furry tipsof their ears and said to no-one:Look at that!An index of deathis arriving too late for love! I’m a goon.I cannot reckonmy own lifeso I make up lies about another life—finch life, raccoon life,my sister’s, mother’sbrother’s life. I can’t believeI’m allowed to drivea car but also wantto be held like a baby again. I can’t believeI’m supposed to bea father but alsoeveryone’s son. In the centerof my mind, in the…

We wish to express our gratitude to everyone who donated to the 2023–2024 Friends Campaign and our thanks to the following individuals for their particularly generous contributions. Benefactor Dana AsherMargot Berg and Robert EpsteinJonathan KatzWilliam KistlerTerri E. MorelandEthel RackinAva SeaveMark Stein and Carol BakerNicole SteinbergPeter WaldorBank of America Patron Judy NewmanAlicia OstrikerCarol Parssinen Sponsor Linda Lee AlterKenneth BoockvarMarianne BoruchIra BrindWerner GundersheimerElizabeth JacobsonJames LenfesteyAnne Marie MacariKathryn SlottPage Starzinger Supporter Anthony AlbinoAndrew AnwayBridget BarnesDennis BrennanMarianne E. BrownAnn ButchartNancy Naomi CarlsonOscar ChamberlainHenri ColeBrian CronwallHal DavisThomas DevaneyCarolyn DilleDavid FenzaJennifer FlanniganDiane GaniereBill GothorpeSusan GrossmanRobert HasselbladAnnie HeckenbergerJane HedleyJazan HigginsBrenda HillmanJane HirshfieldDitta Baron HoeberMajor JacksonJoann KargesClaire KeyesAndrea King-BrockmanDavid Kirby and Barbara HambyMillie Lane-BergRon LauderbachMaryEllen LetarteDana LevinRobert LynchThomas J. MarnochaJames McCorkleRichard G. McGuireChristopher MerrillRichard MilazzoBill NathanJohn T Obrien, Jr.Eugene O’ConnorKJ PageBruce RabbPeter V. RengstorffJ.E. & G.W. RockJeanne Ruddy and Victor KeenRobert J SavinoTimothy SchaffnerLee ScheingoldNorman SinelRandall…

[Blossoming purple] a golden shovel after Richard Wright To realize a girl blossoming is to figure purpleas disquiet. A flower forgotten (even an artichoke)if only to safekeep. In time, the daughter becomes agranddaughter budding in the darkof the mind’s cupboard. [I have lost] i. a golden shovel after Richard Wright She stayed busy so as not to ruminate so Itook her by the shoulders and said, I have lived in these reflecting woods. You’ll feel lost but that’s the reward. In mywoods I flinched each wayback to childhood street and stoop. In that home, I was a stray. In ahome I’ve grasped, I’ve the strangesense of an incurable town.We can look forward to this route at dawn, if only to admit a fruitful nightterror. I continued—No need to fear abasement of remains, a sky of…

Learning Lines Even songbirds learn to singThey listen to their fathers We babble our way to syntaxWe listen to our mothers Oh, said my mother, my first word Without a father, an isolate songWithout a mother … When I took him to watch the planesthe orphan boy said ’lane, his third word The songbird teaches his isolate songHis offspring teach the same song ’ird, said the boy, his fifth word But after a few generationsthe isolate song begins to revert Live and learn, said my father But after some yearsAnd with no offspring … The woman in the nursing homesaid nothing but five five I opened my mouth andOpened my mouth and sang Last One Up And then again, as if that tuneplayed on for us—you know the one,the last we played. Turned out the moon was playing too, a big balloonagainst the busy foolish…

from SCENES FROM LATIN POETRY

Qui tacet consentire videtur. Silence gives consent.Veritas odium parit. Truth creates hatred. Willow flower You know how you can know some thingsbut forget you know until it’s time to remember.Mom met her third husband Billy whenshe was a teacher helping convicts get their GEDs,and he was incarcerated at that prison.When he was paroled, they wed in the backyardwith the petunias. Plighted their troth,as they said, while I sang a song, lyricsfrom the Song of Solomon. A garden inclosedis my sister, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.And then Mom brought this Billy personinto the house with my actual sister, who at fourteenwas skinny as a willow in flower.Eight years older, I was far away, gone, useless,just the three of them in that house.Billy had looks and strength, a crewcut and a drawl.And…

Dear Winter, Today the sky the samecolorless grey as rocksalt, truck-scattered overFulton Street. Trees leafless darkershades of bark. I walk. CrossDeKalb to the hospitalwhere people wait& wait. Lines to get shots. A blanknessfills the air bundledlike a quilt of longing& time. Fluffy dog on a leashin the crosswalkturns to me with her wet noseas if ponderingtoo or expectingsomething. Always mightbegin flurrying again. Dirty yellow taxiscircle by the glassemergency room door. I slip my mask downjust a few seconds to take a cold breath& exhalea streak of cloudshaped like a field I reach for & tryto holdopen palmed—like one would a Junebubble from a wand but I can’t,of course it dissipatesin an instant under the dead branchof what I thinkmay be a honey locust. Yours. Grandmom’s Round Moon Cookies Mun kichel: poppy seed cookie. Everything round. The rabbi says we are everythingturning. Peasant sweet the hands of my grandmombody swaddledin…

House Cleaning waking up in the bodyin early spring, being touchedby the first signs of daylight,the sounds of leaf blowers & birds,a distant airplane, people speakingnear the yard, in the garden— my house is out of eggs,so i quickly toast a bagel,leave my dishes in the sink,& eat my breakfast downthe sidewalk, through the street. for four hours & one-hundreddollars, i clean the houseof two parents, two kids,enough room for two cars,two cats, & two house cleaners. i hand wash their dishes& do four loads of laundry,take their trash, sweep their floor,fold tiny children’s clothes,no children of my own. i come home to do my owndishes, & my housematesdo some of them too, six of ussharing & renting & caringfor one another. i leave myself for hourson the couch, eat home-cookedsalmon & broccoli, watch tv,check my…

“The cosmogenetic principle states that the evolution of the universe will be characterized by differentiation, autopoiesis, and communion throughout time and space and at every level of reality.”—The Universe Story by Brian Swimme & Thomas Berry Differentiation For some reason, the primordial flaring forth of everything.For no reason, a microcosmic grain and then a billion galaxies. Lightning made greenAcross this just-so planet. Across a continuous tightrope between scatter and collapseAlong a curvature, a tautness Along many momentary suspensions of isnessOf constant mutation and surprise. The force of metamorphosis keeps tinkeringKeeps dabbling. Keeps winding up for the next curve ball. It’s staggering, cataloguingThe countless novel ways in which life articulates itself. Give up and give a yeehaw, a hee-haw to creation.Climb aboard this aimless vessel Set adrift into loveofthenewInto an always becoming born. Autopoiesis A plant is prepared to be eaten.My skin…

What Is a Leftist? when white supremacistsproudly enunciate murderwith the hard R like a butcherknife splitting crosshairsbetween palatable resistanceand acquiescent silent gesturesor maybe i should askwhen we stopped believingin tomorrow’s ability to bloomfrom the palm of our fists tightwrapped around pitchfork politicsor when did we stop tryna be dangeroushow dare we shout optimismbut practice helpless acceptancewhat good is hopewhen either way i sit stagnant withoutconviction to rectify the persistent howlsof emptiness in my neighbor’s belly Instead of Raising Wages the Gov’t raised the roof clean off an entire Black section of the cityinflated gas prices to the size of a senator’s helium egobuilt an unstable bridge made of worn hundred dollar billsover the atlantic to make a plantation(democracy) of new territorysent a blank check to a settler colony and said make a wishsent…

It was deep summer. The grasseswere all golden. Amber balesof hay, rolled tight as cinnamon buns, lay dottedaround a lone field oak, with horsesgrazing between. Years later, after we were married, after the birthof our son, the deathof our daughter, we went to see a neighbor’s Appaloosas,thinking they’d be prancing the whitefencing of their pen, a lush rug of green grass unspooling downto a cobalt fishpond. Idyllic. Butthe horses had less than a quarter-acre to pace back and forth on land that was wornof all grass. Anything green was shorndown to the red clay, so that the horses which were spotted fawn and creamhad stained themselves pinkwith their rolling. We took our son to see themas therapy. Isn’t that what you dowith a clinically unhappy child? But he was scared, and the flies were bad,and the farm dog…

A DIFFERENT HISTORY MAY EMERGE On Anthony Cody’s The Rendering

Start with a rendering: to give again, to give back, to yield, as in letting go, giving up or giving in, surrendering; to pay up, give out, give off, or bring up, as in vomit, throw back; the act of returning or restoring something, or to bring forth, bring about: to cause to be or become. Some of this has to do with memory, with remembering. The haphazard sign system of internal storage, when what leaks out is not the fidelitous translation of an original but its stuttering utterance. The way that the tradition of storytelling counters capitalist logic; how nothing here really gets accumulated, only retrieved and redeemed, only repeated differently with each successive rendering; how the sometimes inaudible and extant cry or call of the flesh staves off…

A DIFFERENT HISTORY MAY EMERGE On Anthony Cody’s The Rendering

RESPONSIBILITIES OF ATTENTION

Sometimes driving, you see a dead animal in a roadside heap of its own wreckage, but it’s just a shredded truck tire turned back on itself in a kind of visual agony. That’s a common mistake, though who talks about it? My wife does. Usually a deer or a dog, maybe a smaller chunk that is a raccoon. Or even a skunk because you imagine you see a white stripe involved in the collapsed un-sculpture of debris lying there on the lonely shoulder. Speaking of shoulder, I wish my wife were leaning her head on my shoulder. We’ve had a terrible fight, and I know the distance between the way I’m seeing how I hurt her and the way she’s angry is nearly a vast gulf, though I’m hoping that we…

Finistère 1 Elizabeth’s favorite pastime is gathering flowers along country lanesso our drive progresses slowly, pulling over at ditchesand churchyards to collect what she desires on a grey afternoon. No blossoms as beautiful here as in West Corkbut the place looks Irish—the rain, the cows, the hedges—albeit with fewer stone walls and a different dialect, closer to Cornish or Welsh than Irish, descendedfrom the original Brittonic—these are the original Britons,fled across the channel to escape Saxon subjugation, the last Celtic tribes, snug in rocky obscurity along the western edgeof the continent, Galicia or Galway, Cornwall or Cornouaille.Finistère is Land’s End. A Briton is a Breton. A Celt is a Celt is a Celt. 2 Obelisks in meadows of salt hay, long lines of standing stones.Menhir, dolmen, cromlech: Celtic words.Fishermen gone down to the sea, sailors lost to…

Heresy I waited forever for my parents to die so I could say at least one true thingbut mean. And so I wouldn’t die myself with those two unaccounted for in a Hades of voles and worse. The die-hards that they were? I wanted to say it.The riot of horror and all out foxy that those two together were when I was a kid living in a house called Malt and Rye that meant that they’d abandon me?I wanted to get at least that right. Oh and how he said “thang” and she “britches.” Her caftans. His bandanas. His girlfriends. His cigarettes. Her cigarettes& handmade quilt for every kid. Their lack of God. Their absolute lack lack lack of God. And then my parents did die after living a number of other storiesnot necessarily all…

Dinner at Horses A hologram of a horse galloping makes me anxious.It can’t stop going nowhere.How can I walk past it? We are late,led through the sexesto a quiet courtyard where I see a babycarriage, not the baby.Nobody cries for me at Horses.We are seated between two couples:On my left, a man rubs his hands between his knees.On my right, a man tells a womanevery five years something almost kills him,a metaphor sometimes,once a heart attack, often his own unfaithfulness.She hums in understanding,which seems to heat him like a lamp.Why does her acceptance of himmake me lonely? More than you I blamethe moon behind your head.More than you nothing is enough for me.More than crying you hand meno napkin. You say the way I look at youis all disgust now.I say…

Keyhole Esplanade Natural disasters happening around the country this week includea hurricane off the east coast and historic wildfires in the west.JEEZ. And then it’s back to contemplating joint tape, joint compound,and paint, so we can get out of town for one more “get out of town”before it’s back to work. Leaving is a great answer to the questionof “fun things to do around here,” especially as I’m on the last pageof my notebook (the little purple one) and I’m going to be starting upa new one I bought in Philly, PA last month, Scotland Tartan.It’s a way of saying there are things to look forward to, as my mothersaid to me last night, “You don’t want to be known as the onewho circles your potatoes.” Ever since she’s been dead,…

Sonnet for my new name Did you wait for mein the riverbed, undera smooth stone?Did I have to earn you,like a Chicago summer?A seed sproutingin harsh conditions?Stand in a long linefull of crossed fingers,all the whileyou lit up the marquee.Can I keep you?When they callyou, will I turn my head? Tove’s Cento: Childhood Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin,and you can’t get out of iton your own. None of the grownups can standthe song in my heart or the garlands of wordsin my soul. You can’t tell by looking at themthat they’ve had a childhood, and you don’t dare askhow they’ve managed to make it throughwithout their faces getting deeply scarredor marked by it. I think my mother is fantasticallybeautiful because she has no sense of having abandonedme. I imagine a…

She came in // about one pm // on a Monday // she had a gun //In math class //they got the memo //Lockdown is a scary word //only if you’ve neverdone it //I ask them what it meant //a “lock-and-teach” //they saidjust that //but there’s another classification: //“lock-and-hide” //that’s when you’reallowed to start wigging out //silently //keep the kids silent too //that’s the hard part She came in //she had a gun //just like they’d practiced //their laptops droned on //the kids get it //bored, facingtheir screens //earbuds dangling stupidly like broken necklaces //you know you’re notsupposed to have those //such a pain in the ass to discipline for that // Keep working on your pretests //door locked, heartbeats steady //not so bad //at leastwe don’t have to hide //“Will it…

THIS LITTLE MYSTERY On Diane Seuss’s Modern Poetry

Modern Poetry: Poems by Diane Seuss Graywolf Press, March 2024 Hardcover, $26.00 When I got out of bed, the floor was speckled, completely covered in dirt. I was inside, wasn’t I? And awake? It had rained all night long, the sound of the wind whipping through my dreams. The mud must have been forced through the screen while I lay sleeping but the window was closed. Surely, I had lowered it in the early morning hours without noticing the rain-drenched floor, then forgotten all about it, the way one does when doing things in the night. This was the only possible explanation. One has to get on with it when mysteries happen. I did not clean the floor, wanting to preserve a little longer the sense that things occur we do not understand. What a…

THIS LITTLE MYSTERY On Diane Seuss’s Modern Poetry

THE FIRST DAY OF JUNE

Outside, a thunderstorm. Ice water and ice cream. Our 15-yurt commune is dissolving into acrimony and acorn flour. My dog was sent to a canine inn whose sign flashes neon purple, All Dogs Welcome. He is a 160-pound dingo, so they might kick him to the curb before the weekend is done. My well-muscled legs are in the process of converting to tentacles. Lightning once struck my first love and he gained the ability to do an ollie. You don’t have to believe me. I reread the teaching application I submitted in a fog of financial panic. There are so many typos it looks like a scam email: Hi I’m Moriel! and I just need 80 dollarsfor a ticket on the only dollars to professorof Emblish I am stranded? My daughter is asleep in the other room. The vegan ice cream leaves…

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