Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2020 i The American Poetry Review

Window But that’s not, he said to me, to cut me off, the limitof empathy. There was, I thought, a breeze somewhere nearby, but I didn’tknow. I faced the wall, and after all was indoors. This not speaking for months—that’sa choice you made. You didn’t have to. I had become aware of glass, which I knew movedso slow, though someone still had called it solid. Empathy doesn’t havean endpoint. It’s something you decide, you decide where to stop. A little lessof the light this morning harbored in the palm outside the window. Whichalready I knew I’d use for an image— icon of a haven, or destruction, whenit waves. Don’t act like this isn’t a choice. Sonnet written walking under the mess some magnolia made Even with my nose up here…

Ode on Departed Slang Are you still there, bitchin—word I used in Hawai’ito describe a wave, a friend’s hair, my pink bikini—bogart, book, banzai, boss, stoked, psyched, all the surfing slangthat faded when I moved to Dixie, the land of dang,Christ all mighty, Jesus bird dog, mash, ornery, lick,as in you don’t have a lick of sense, the ugly stickdames were hit with, all the words that have been lostin the great lingo sea, words I loved or used then tossedeither because their time had passed or I had moved onto another realm, as when my hippie world was goneflip out, far out, freak (as in he’s a freak—a good thing)became a geek with horns or someone who was singingGreat Balls of Fire naked in the courtyard of the world,but…

It rained, as we left that last day. What did the trees meanto explain, bent as they wereto the unruly street? What did the wind speakof ordinary time? Does anything left behind ever loosefrom us? The string. The balloon. The wrist. The sky that never stopsmoving. We left childhoods, tinygalaxies, perched at the kitchentable. We left with more than we hadwhen we arrived. What can we ask of time, except to forgive us,again, another moment& another? Listen to the cicadas, all abuzz.The world, dark. There is a moment in some futurecountry, where we are uncertain as snow. Yesterday, the wind calledto the hydrangeas. Each blossom,loud & red. The house, suicidal as a widowed bride,with-child. Tell me who we werewhen we first stood at that door, asking to be let in?…

No One Is Proud No one is proud of a drug addictionor a son with addiction or a cousinwho stops calling his mother no oneis proud of an accident no one is proudtheir grandmother was mean like a doga secret smoker no one spends Saturdaystalking about house painting how theywould have made it pro at house paintingif they could have figured out schooland going to class more times than notno one is proud as they get hooked on painkillers wrapping car after car around the same treeno one I know goes to church and believesmuch but it’s nice to see everyone no one likeswhen they can’t find a job and spend hourssurfing the internet for what might take themaway a little feel a certain way or feel anythingat all even…

Kama 1. How on the Kama River the eye grows dark,when the cities stand on oaken knees. Disguising itself in a web, beard to beard,the burning pine grove runs, younger in the water. The water resisted one hundred and four oars,bearing them up and down to Kazan and Cherdyn. There I floated on the river with a curtain in the window,with a curtain in the window, with my head on fire. And with me my wife, who didn’t sleep for five nights,didn’t sleep for five nights, but bore the three guards. 2. How on the Kama River the eye grows dark,when the cities stand on oaken knees. Disguising itself in a web, beard to beard,the burning pine grove runs, younger in the water. The water resisted one hundred and four…

Lineage When my father calls my grandfather, he becomes a son.He calls me to become, again, a father. My son would have made me a father and my fathera grandfather. The expectation: this would continue, one long trail of names passed like a candle.I carry the weight of my father’s name. Some sons say that.My father carries my grandfather to the car, his body no heavier than a bundle of kindle. He mistakes my fatherfor his father, so my father is my great-grandfather,until he lays the body down. If my grandfather dies, my fatherwill become an orphan. If he dies, I will become the son of an orphan. We have no word for a parent who’s lost a child.A widower is “empty.”In Hebrew, “robbed.” My wife refused to call the…

Everything is a clock inside, gearedand oiled to sing and turn—the body, even, no different than that of medievalmechanical monkeys lining the bridge in the park at Hesdin, re-pelted in badgerfur every year. For the surface of life runs by a mere series of cause and effects,buried beneath with care and craft. In grief, the gears and springs spin on.The water pumps through the pipes, and the body moves. We were all once partof a set of nesting dolls, a robot designed in the body of another robot, and as always,mechanical replication fails—the shell falls away, rusts, decays. An engineered failure.Early automata were considered miracles, but of course, had no sense of their makers.They never saw their mother’s body graying on display, or felt themselvesunmade by absence, as if a…

Woke Up at the Edge of Hasbro Woke up at the edgeof Hasbro,at the guardrail,with the stingerstill interred.Helmet free,I drank my spit.Extracted five-plus yearsof garbage from my ears.Had to unlearnmy learningin the navellesscomics of Prince Valiant.Spoke sternlyto my two-tailed mammoncurled against its tree.Our punishments,we devoured themby hand.Ground themto a kind of talc.Unharmed nowby the chipped platedropt, one depthswollen withdepth’s becoming,but not preparedfor solitude.Its corridorswere large and wakeful.Where a stonecould amass,or a callus on a thumb.In the bedpan,watched the namingof my parents,saw them ledbeneath the vaultingof a manger,charred and cold,to stand before the overseerfilling in his ovals.Studied the back blow,sipped fromthe birth-horn,looked up towarda ceilingof access fobsand entry wands,a whole lifetime of themsealed thereinin gelatin.And had the twonot shrieked?I might have offeredimmortality. Sonnet (You Can Tell It’s Mattel) Modeled from foam…

I. Carrying his toy guitarthe boy-god laughing looks awaythe bees climb the columns] stone bees on stone columns [the head of Hercules inside the mouth of the lionhe killed the lion hewears the head as a hood his eyes look outhis mouth ] is he carrying my wife askshis penis in his hand no I saythat’s his club [ is his broken clubfear cannot forget itself once the marble memorizes fear] gorgon logic [ the motion that has noprecedent hairswept back by the violent turnof the heads looking back at what horrorpursues them boy’s twin-sister, his mothertheir mouths open I think they arescreaming ] but I hear no scream [toddler-apollo is laughing and the laughsounds like footsteps on the granite stairs going up likeI know the pollen being gathered is…

The Ghost Forest Neighbors call the stand of pinea ghost forest—t because when glaciers melt,the sea steals onto the land, the saltseeps in, and long established marshes, once fresh, now salt, seizefrom bleach and blacken at the rootof grubby shrubs, grasses, stands of sweet gum and loblolly pine—true, these trees are less susceptible to the longvisitingfloods that now belongto those insinuating sea waters. True, the stranger sea and swindler saltwaterbecome lodgers that coax their salt tenderlyinto the tendrils that have rooted one to a home until one is rooted out.True, the residents have long lived throughthe come-ons—not just the flashes of seizurenor a familiar’s bolt—look— after a drought, after the saltwaters move inwithout being seen, every thingturns to a moldering spine so that nowany who remain in a cul de…

I imagine your ghost as thinand dark as your body claspedaround the armor of the officer who perhapsin another two seconds might have pepperedyour flesh with bullets chargedyour form with the sharp sting of voltagelifted his arms and squeezedthe life from your lungseither way you are lifeless nowand I cannot stop seeing youreaching from harm to harmtears cutting a path downaround your nose and cheekas if a streamon the face of a mountainand the snow was melting—sweet boy—how high the pitchand steep the frequencyof your sufferingin my dreams you never survive the frostbut in death walk slowly along the gravelof a slender winding roadup the side of the sierrathough weightless the earth shiftsbeneath your feetin acknowledgement of your matterof how you make the ground holy—hosanna sweet boy hosanna—you are ascending…

In Water Your body becomes dangerousin water, after you watch Memoirs of a Geisha & learn aboutthe eel & the cave, knowing it’s a metaphor for sex but alsotaking it literally, imagining what animal mightswim up into you as you wade, nakedin the lake under a crescent moon, white as chalk,your body in dark water, your feetsinking down into the muck & thisis just the fear of lake creatures, doesn’t countthe men on shore who are hiddenor not & waiting or the daylight nightmareof bleeding through your bikini, the shameof a tampon string sliding out despite your careful attemptsto tuck it in & around your lips so it wouldn’tcome loose, reminding the crowd that you are withhole, with blood how, if you were in ocean water,you could call a shark…

He leans frowning like a tuned-out janitorsteam cleaning the Jersey shore,beer can, beer can, door hinge, hardly Caesar’sgladius or filigree from the lostlast Incan temple. He doesn’t care,eyes us with suspicion as we point and shoutuntil off come his headphones.Your ring’s gone in the hissing sandand like the dying we have a surplusof expedient faith, at which he shrugs,claims he once tugged up the keyto a BMW, still looking for the car.But a rust-fuzzed wind-up clock,a Caribou Lounge tin coaster surrenderonly worthless mystery compared to himletting you hold the prophet’s staffas he guides it across his back. It beepsand you laugh like anyone surprisedby their own misunderstood power.I shouldn’t envy him a few twisted piecesof Iraq though later as my hands sweepyour body in the dark I fight the urgeto…

A skeleton walked on a pier holding a balloon. It was a mild Sunday; not too windy. The balloon had a drawing of a shark on a surfboard. The skeleton sat down on a bench and stared at the waves. Plenty of seagulls flew overhead. Some seagulls landed on the pier looking for food. The skeleton smoked a cigarette. Then it walked to the end of the pier just as the sun was setting. The skeleton took a photo of the sunset and posted it on Instagram. It loved living on the west coast. When it started to get dark, the skeleton headed back home on a black bicycle. It tied the balloon onto the bike frame as it rode in the moonlight. Jose Hernandez Diaz was born in Anaheim,…

Apz Books All the Gay Saintsby Kayleb Rae CandrilliSaturnalia Books, 2020Paperback, 100 pages It is clear that if I communicate all the ways I hurtI will lose my usefulness. So begins the second poem of Kayleb Rae Candrilli’s much-anticipated second book of poetry, All the Gay Saints. This collection—which won the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz—focuses on the poet’s joy and faith in their future, in spite of the condition of the world today. Candrilli—who uses the pronouns they, them, and their—acknowledges the tenuous state of the world and country in this second poem, aptly named “On Wanting Top Surgery in the Fascist Regime.” The poet also acknowledges some readers’ problematic expectations: that queer and transgender people must only write about their pain and suffering. Trans poet…

Radiantly Indefensible 1. The central thing I want to think about is the mystery of—I want to call it profundity, which seems all wrong for Stevie Smith. But impact seems inadequate. No, it is inadequate; impact just means that one is struck; profundity means that when one is struck, one sees deep stars. So profundity. Stevie Smith’s poetry had a profound impact on me, how about that. I was looking for Stevie Smith, so hard. I turned over libraries and bookstores for years, trying to find her. I didn’t know her name or anything about her; I didn’t know what country she came from or what kind of poetry she would write or that it would have little drawings. All I could find was not-her. I would find a piece…

bring home baby pitbull in a Nike shoebox,her mother left tied to a post in the Bronxafter the owner sold her kids. The puppy hops on hind legs when happy, pees in a pot of yucca,licks the hollow in my throat when sleepingon my chest. Muslims believe a dog’s saliva is nagasah, dirty impurity. Dread runs forwardas a dripping line of slobber slugged at their bodies.I don’t soap myself seven times after her tender kiss. I want to muzzle Muslims. I’ve seen themscrub hands raw when a pug sniffs it, weavethrough speeding cars just to bypass a poodle like it can spit hellfire. A dog won’t attackthe owner who abuses it. We learned helplessnessby shocking dogs. It goes: a terrier was charged with protecting a baby. The couple found itwith…

This essay is adapted from a lecture delivered at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, on January 10, 2010, at the winter residency. My thanks to The American Poetry Review for their graceful and gracious assistance in the adaptation. In Phillis Levin’s introduction to The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, she writes that “fourteen lines do not guarantee a sonnet: it is the behavior of those lines in relation to each other—their choreography—that identifies the form” (xxxvii–xxxviii). Later she explains, “We could say that for the sonnet, the volta is the seat of its soul” (xxxix). The volta, or the turn, is crucial to the identity of the sonnet. For many theorists, the volta itself marks not merely the emergence of a new form, but the formal…

lii. Pollen is everywhere.Blossoms are at the very edgeof becoming & there is no more winter(global warming is destroying our idea of what we’ve come to know),except for the winters of our memory, winters where the girlin the blue snowsuit (a sister) tasted snow for the first time.There is no more winter except for the wintersof our memory. Winters where we mourned,trapped in the mind’s circling inferno & could not get out,the winter where the boy surpassed the age in which his mother’s sister,forever young, departed. liv. Hustling her new book on NPR, a marriage counselorsays most marriages survive out of kindness. Romanticism has been a detriment to us, a philosopher cants.The reason motherhood was largely excised from poetry Before the 1960s is because poets feared exposing truthto their offspring,…

It is common for English-language accounts of Mandelstam’s life to begin with an account of his death. Consider the first sentence of a twosentence biography that appeared in The New York Review of Books in 2016 to preface a translation by Andrew Davis: Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) was persecuted for his poetry and died in a transit camp near Vladivostok, Russia.1 Or the subtitle of a piece by Eimear McBride in The New Statesman in 2017: The cat-and-mouse game between the poet Osip Mandelstam and the Soviet dictator could only end in death.2 Elsewhere writers take up Mandelstam’s biographical circumstances as a lens through which the supposed obscurity of the later poems can be understood: The later poems of Osip Mandelstam, whose poems were never easy, are in part obscure because…

How to Manage Your Adult ADHD 1. Stop the action. 1a. Does that include apologizing? 1b. Because I’m sorry about this poem. I’m so embarrassed. Please forgive me. 3. Tape pictures of policemen all around the house, especially on the refrigerator. 7. Cheap tops. 49. Cheap tops. ii. Cheap tops that no fit now, nor ne’er will, Captain! 4. Airline miles, baby [rub hands together greedily]! 8. See the future. 9. To soothe yourself, recite Ghostbusters. 99. Again. 999. Let’s show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown. 12. I’m sorry again. 1221. [Mechanic lopes in wiping his oily hands on a rag] Welp, I’m pretty sure you had yourself a full-fledged nervous breakdown back there! 13. Stop apologizing. 13a. Right?!? Fuck you! [breaks beer bottle] 13af. [Steven Seagal-style]…

One day I stopped the swipe,left or right. One dayI started to believelike the Shulammite,the ashen haired ancestorthat I am my Beloved’sand his desire is toward me, whether I ask for it or notbecause that’s what faith isbecause that’s what Shulammite means:Oh Daughters of Zion.The time for singing has come. His nameis perfume poured out on my name. This truth procedureis a composition that is notof the forefinger and a screen and a selfie stick.A society of love cannot be provenin three sporty photos, a yoga pose,a bike ride in Vermont, a car selfie. The more I swiped, the more love eludedme. Come away from your computingchildren. Truth is the oar in the water.The hand gripping. Beliefis the birdcall of Saints.For the screen does not blossomforth frankincense or liquid myrrh.…

Venice Beach We came here to fondle the glassoctopi. Rosy crystal dragons, psychedelic phalluses in jewelry cases. Eyeglasses, butterflies.Black market rocker leather; Do ItIn Muscle Beach tees. The indecisive sea.We ate a slice of boardwalkpizza topped with anchovy, a grub on a skateboardsmiling in his diaper rolled past—Things aren’t what they used to be from a lifeguard tower. I’d watchthe night come, a Rothkoin elated charcoals… The shapes of men, clandestine.In sand, the chill wavesleapt, dark green. Since your stint in Tent City,monotony.No calls, slurry. No calls.Tonight:the corpse off my balcony as if Francis Bacon had painted a rose.It was like this, that evening.The daylight only seeming. That afternoon you purchaseda pipe, disguised as red lipstick.But I haven’t heard from you, lately. Shoreditch “But what are kings, when regiment is…