Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2017 i The American Poetry Review

+ Out of quarry-dust he comes running. Running as a crab runs he comes out of the hills the hills that own him— as a lie comes to own its person, like that. And the hackles of the land rise up behind him. + On the sub-zero range-land the deer bed down. He— harrowed, and holds rivers of snow and forgetting—he beds down. + In the morning, he— stooped and stretches— sings a song of praise from long-ago, while a little sun strikes a little frost on the skin of the earth: Some say the gate out is the river some say the gate out is rain— but I agree with those who say that every gate is a gate of praise . . . then the sagebrush rattles then…

I walked down a side street in Srinigar. They were all side streets it seemed, under chenar trees, nearly as ancient as the shadows of the Himalayas. The River Jhelum had stopped flooding now after days of rain. The British houseboats rode low on Dal Lake. The floating peddlers went on singing like waterbirds at dawn— their small boats heaped with treasures from Tibetan temples. They’d come the three hundred miles from China, robbers, singing all the way. I found the clinic easily by following a line: bowed women in hijab walking behind their husbands. The men raised loud voices, complaining. They grew silent at the clinic door, stepping aside slowly to let their wives enter. The doctor signaled to me over their veiled heads. She was “Hindi,” therefore hated.…

To Talk About Me My father and mother are meeting secretly again, with my brother off to one side looking on, as he never did in life, so absorbed in what he was doing, so oblivious, so resolutely out-of-the-house, and my sister also, although less so, almost only a shadow among them now since she’s still alive, still the honor student, the prom queen, the blonde Student Council President, and me, the baby, the problem, the subject of discussion, the most remote of all, smug and sarcastic, watching them together as if in a glass cube caged like pets, like venomous spiders unable to scale the glass, bewildered, harmless, trying and flailing, slipping down, again and again, unable to comprehend where they are or how to adapt— nor am I,…

We Lived Happily During the War And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house. I took a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth month of a disastrous reign in the house of money in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money our great country of money, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war. While Helicopters Circle the Avenues Yes, I bought you a wedding dress big enough for the two of us And in the taxi home we kiss a coin from your mouth to mine. The landlady might’ve noticed…

Poem with a Gun to Its Head The following proposal for the allocation of government surplus money to pay for the execution of the following work, to be held in a warehouse (marked for demolition) of the author’s own choosing, will be ventured via submission of the abovenamed work itself, a poem oftentimes troubled by an undetermined malaise, entitled “Poem with a Gun to Its Head,” in which the author, 23% of an unsavory person named Danniel Schoonebeek (hereafter known as “the client”), 29 years of age, and rumored to be a resident of an unincorporated village populated solely by a fringe network of radio hijackers, puts forth the following terms, necessarily on the grounds that quote, “already a new death is here to bargain with you,” and quote, “already…

Dwelling that winter it was so cold I had nowhere to go but inside my heart was a clock on the kitchen wall and I tacked up curtains to keep anyone from looking in on my liver up river snow kept coming and the aching thing ached still husband it was yours for the taking I clanged pots against my radiator thighs duct-taped my mouth all the doors if only we could lose the hour if only we could witness a single bloom listen if spring ever comes I will open these windows to you and beat this old rug of a soul clean the house will be pristine and I will be your wife again Snow “Every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination” —Oliver…

If you asked me what God I believed in in political philosophy, it would have to be the notion that there is no such thing as individual freedom, that human freedom is finally, always, a project of making a world with others. —Wendy Brown1 WE BOUGHT AN OLD GARAGE SURrounded by fruit trees—apple, pear, peach, plumb, apricot, and cherry— planted a decade ago by Dan, the previous owner, who, in addition to gardening, made soccer goals (“Goal Oriented” was the name of his business). Three years ago Dan’s wife died and after that, he let things go. Compass weed (an opiate) and thistle (good for tea) grew thigh high all around the trees. Volunteer elm sprung up to compete for light, water, and soil. Berry vines choked tree trunks, spiraling,…

Yannis Ritsos Athens was welcoming to those who had come from the sea —Mahmoud Darwish Yannis, you held him in the glare of the diamonded sea, unteaching him his practical mantra of liberation, seeing in him a son to take care of you in your loneliness, loneliness varnished by your detention in the house made of flower stems that thrust through the rocks in the prison-yard, its roof made of the unscannable lines of rain. You revealed to him the sound of the rusty-hinged door, how it would swing sadly open and reveal no homeland beyond at all. He came from the sea dragging his anklets of keys. Did you teach him then how the old locks and houses of his hometown were already all broken? Yannis, in the end…

I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT CARING. WE say we are going to care for our children or that we care if something happens or that we don’t care for artichokes. But what do we mean? A simple look back through the word’s etymology suggests that its true root is something along the lines of sorrow, but by the 16th century it began accreting other meanings—to take in one’s hand in care for, for instance. It also bears a strong eye-relation to the Latin caritas or charity, though there is no etymological connection there that I know of. But maybe we can think there is: we sorrow, we hold, we try to do good. That seems about all we could ask for as we try to conduct ourselves in the world. To…

Our House The house we are living in we call ours, the view from here a painting that anyone would recognize, by an artist whose name you forgot. But there is always a catch. If the house has a door, we have to invite people in; we have to latch it and keep others out. The floor beneath our feet and the earth beneath that are home to worms. And so at night, we lie in bed in our house. We don’t sleep, for worrying. So many worms are underfoot; we hear them speak, but only to each other in their own languages, and not aloud. Our footsteps tread lightly on them. We tiptoe and whisper; they don’t mind; they don’t cry out. Shower Epiphany with Lasagna How the shampoo…

This interview took place on November 20, 2016. PHILIP METRES Can you talk a bit about your origins in Odessa, Ukraine? Your education as a poet there? ILYA KAMINSKY When I return to Odessa—I try to go once a year—I walk by the streets that no longer exist; some have different names, but others actually are no longer there. I walk through them anyway, saying hello to neighbors that once lived in these now-imaginary buildings of a now razed and empty area of Odessa. A poet is not born into a country. A poet is born into childhood. And, those who are lucky, stay in that domain. Childhood doesn’t stop when one is issued a passport on one’s 16th birthday. It doesn’t stop when the country suddenly breaks down and…

For Night I don’t think it’s my place to breathe, Mr. Night. I don’t think it’s my place to say any fucking howdy-do to anyone in this polite asylum of a world, not any more, not after everything that’s happened to you and to me. There used to be a silence you could count on like a thick rope dropped down from heaven, but the voices have come back from the dead even if the bodies haven’t, and they fill my head with their last words which are not always Goodbyes, but sometimes a plea for more light, or for a forgiveness impossible to give them. I have known you more than once in foreign dark, where you finally spoke to me, your code a shiver through my body, showing…

Foreign Movies Movies almost always had happy endings, unless they were foreign. —Andrew Grant Jackson, 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music What’s with you foreigners? We don’t like that downer crap over here. Oh, wait, we do: when the Shangri-Las recorded “The Leader of the Pack” in 1964, it shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, and not because Jimmy and his girl Betty rode off together on his motorcycle and lived happily ever after, either, since her folks were always putting him down (down, down) and saying he came from the wrong side of town, so when she had to say goodbye, all she could do was cry, I’m sorry I hurt you, the Leader of the Pack—easy words to sing, surely, though getting all that…

Wolf My mother married a wolf, but everyone insisted that he wasn’t a wolf. Everyone felt sorry for him because he had been raised by wolves, and often my mother would tell me how lucky I was not to be raised by a wolf, even though I was being raised by a wolf. When my mother died, my wolf father married another wolf. They asked me why I wasn’t a wolf. I said, I thought you weren’t wolves, and as they tore into my flesh, they said of course we’re wolves, you stupid sheep. Wolf and Fox Wolf loves Fox, which wolves don’t do. Wolf loves Fox, which makes all the other wolves hate him. All the wolves are named Wolf, which usually works fine, but now that Wolf loves…

In Czech there is a word for getting around paying to flash a signal, this, prozvonit, is what my mother and father did when I was young and he was away first in the Navy and later for work, him calling home on the land line, which was then the only line, and hanging up. It meant he was safe. It meant, I love you. It meant, The world is not holding us apart at all but is just between the dots we are on the great grid. In the hospital I buzzed my brother on the nights I slept home until the nurses said, Males cannot stay; only the daughter. In the night, I huddled next to her listening to the tides of her breath. Lost in a pool…

If Next Week Is Good Friday Today is Not Bad Friday— sunny soggy milky mild for March. Went to see The Witch (a movie) yesterday with Jerome. It is an accurate portrayal of how too much religion with too little distraction could be a recipe for disaster. We stayed up late— cookies oranges wine and now I am transfixed, staring into space. Is staring a kind of prayer? I think so—yes. A bodiless male voice: “What’s up?” floats in a sound-bubble past my window. Another one answers: “There you go.” More Unisex Colognes ALIBI Buy two because you never know when you’ll need one. Made from a complex blend of masking fragrances, this protean scent will cover your tracks. No questions asked. MARTINI Crisp. Dry. Pristine. Perpetually chill. Works equally…

The Bearded Man His chin-hair hardened like enamel from meat and bone-blood, says: This is how man was. With all of my weight on you I want you to feel how man was: Take the whole plate into your mouth and see what becomes of two things not meant to touch each other. The Hedonist If you were God, I’d be a whore with a gargantuan tongue. If you were a puppet, I’d leave your spine like an unswept floor. If you were a soldier, I’d shrink your uniform. If you were a lifeguard, I’d drown you. If you were a thief, I’d steal your hipbones. But we’re not finished yet. I’d kiss her behind my back, too. I’d lie to her for a compliment. Haven’t we already fed the…

Water On a Sunday in Paris a woman is looking for a grave. We arrived at the hour of champagne flutes, we were promised a toast so we stayed. Philip says you won’t call like you’re needed so be a calm person in all my dark clothes. Well, how easy. The curtains part weekly and the neighbors look in unimpressed. What is aging exactly? There are new jobs and people and someone dies before noon every day. I am swimming and swimming . . . in May or an ocean, I don’t see the reason. “But that’s unimportant,” you said. “Just keep doing it over again until one day you can’t.” Spring excites us and we know what it is every time. The minutes in meetings are life’s most undistinguished;…