Innholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2021 i The American Poetry Review

The Lonely Humans A type of hickory, it grows by water.So are we fools to drive to the riverthe day after our most savage stormshave finally stopped to seea tree we’ve never seen before?To hike in cold mud through a leafless forest,to behold clearings now clutteredby whatever fell last night—mostly oaks,no hickory—to attend the mad performanceof a newly roaring current.I do not want to call it singing,the wounded poet’s head howlingdownriver. Remember we scornedhis broken heart, broken rashlyby himself, some say, for wanting lovetoo soon. You say I am unfair, that too muchrain is what makes the river rush (there is no “we”in what you say, dear): we hear itas mythology. We hear it outsideourselves, a surfeit of music quickeningwind against winter trees, branch-tapsI mistake for premonitions. Of what? That…

Throwing the Crown by Jacob Saenz, winner of the 2018 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, is available in APR’s online store at www.aprweb.org and at other outlets. Throwing the Crown was chosen by guest judge Gregory Pardlo. JACOB SAENZ is a CantoMundo fellow whose work has appeared in Pinwheel, Poetry, Tammy, Tri-Quarterly and other journals. He has been the recipient of a Letras Latinas Residency Fellowship as well as a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. He serves as an associate editor for RHINO.…

When I write I like to listen to the same song over and over again, although need to listen feels a more accurate phrase. This repeated listening returns me to a place where I can see the next thing I want to say, although of course I don’t mean see with my eyes, just like I don’t mean returns me to a place exactly, e although I wish I did. Let me try this again. When I sat down to write about one of those songs, it returned me to the place where I first heard it, the place it came from and even the place where I’m listening to it now. These places have nothing in common except inside of me, which is the place a story begins, as…

The Understanding The rain is splashy.The baby is fat as apat of butter.Mother is sleeping.No one is crying.Because it was timeto live with strangersbaby was born.Hearing the rainjumping in puddleshe feels another eventis due in time.Not knowing what,not guessing what,he listens to the rainas if it were a figmentof his new home.He doesn’t know it’sthe lonesome denialof all he wished for.Da, he says, Da da da. Manger Story Today they are storing the manger.The lamb and the donkey get folded flatand put in a box with a hand-paintedsign Do Not Disturb! Manger Scene!Watch that angel goddamnit gets yelled.Mary and her baby collapse in a cratewhere she can’t quite hold him.They get stuffed with the hayand fall asleep, like we do afterour dinner, only longer, and longer,like prisoners of their own…

St. Roach (c. 1973) For that I never knew you, I only learned to dread you,for that I never touched you, they told me you are filth,they showed me by every action to despise your kind;for that I saw my people making war on you,I could not tell you apart, one from another,for that in childhood I lived in places clear of you,for that all the people I knew met you bycrushing you, stamping you to death, they poured boilingwater on you, they flushed you down,for that I could not tell one from anotheronly that you were dark, fast on your feet, and slender.Not like me.For that I did not know your poemsAnd that I do not know any of your sayingsAnd that I cannot speak or read your languageAnd…

I’ve known Melissa Broder for almost a decade. I invited her to my first book party because I was a big admirer of her writing and I wanted to meet her. She was smart and funny and I could tell she wanted to know something about what any of us are doing here (which is also something I want to know). Over the years she’s become a real friend and I’ve continued reading her with even more interest. Her new book, Superdoom, is a selected poems, offering the best from her last four poetry collections: When You Say One Thing but Mean Your Mother, Meat Heart, SCARECRONE, and Last Sext. She’s also written two novels, is one of the few non-cringe voices on Twitter, and is at work on multiple…

When did my brother become God-fearing?Over the phone, we caught upon the past few months: the protests,Black Is King, and our side hustles.I need to be more present. Communicate.I’ve been so driftless,living in sublets in temporary cities.If the peace he’s looking for is a roomwith many windows within himself,I worry he won’t find me there. From the window, I notice the men who always smoke outside the deli are missing the loudest one today; Amazon trucks zip to and fro; and thin blue masks are being swapped for thicker, more durable fabrics. Bought myself a luxury this week:body wash from a perfume houserun by Carthusian monks in Capri.It’s so extra I couldn’t resist.It arrived today in a beige and white box.My skin doesn’t break out.The bathroom smells of lemon and…

Menu Once you’ve found your upholstered seatand a slightly elevated vantage pointfrom which to enjoy the war, perhapsyou’ll wish to consider our menu. The seared tuna with lemons, halvedand roasted on the grill, provides an aptaccompaniment to the sophisticationof modern combat. The ruby flesh nearly melts on the tongue, the bed of arugulaand shaved cabbage serving as a welcomebit of structure. Might we also recommenda lightly oaked chardonnay to accompany the drones hovering in over the desert?Its slight muskiness complicates the aridityof what is essentially insect-delivered weaponry.Our marinated pulpo can be followed by a salad of fennel, dill, and pine nutthat will lightly cleanse the palate.When the concussion of distant artillerythrums up through your espadrilles nothing really hits home like our moltenchocolate gateau laced with bourbonraked with AK-47 fire then…

Chasing monarchs in the milkweedyou say also, also, wanting more.This is nothing unusual.Other children in other gardensare putting noses to horsemintwhere bees hum in nectar they’ll turnto honey. Nothing unusual.The corpse flower, its purple spathean upturned skirt, stinksof rotting flesh to attract beetlesand flesh flies for another chanceto bloom. I must rememberthe dance of strobes in the swarmof lightning bugs is not innate,not a trick, as a scientist claimed,created by our blinking. The fliescopy those around them until theysynchronize. There existsan explanation. If I forget,I’ll waste a summer eveningin the silence of a field’sempty theatre edged by woods,watching the spectacleand thinking it’s a showing onlyfor me. Things die and arereplaced. Also, also.Clouds pass as voyeurs on our joywhile you chase butterfliesin the garden. If I’m not careful,I’ll forget to see…

Something about a tree in shallow sleepListening for what it wants to remember: The note of a seed, its neck sliding throughDirt and its confusion—nothing cleansed Of struggle. The weight lost after death,A confrontation of death. John Coltrane Even in death is a perfect instrumentOf water and working the day past its zero— The fires in the trees, a legless rabbitDrifting across the sky—dream of a mule Covered in crows opened in front of a muleCovered in crows, their wings beating against him Like skin. An autumned tree in autumnWatching fire autumn the other trees. It doesn’t have to make sense now; it canMake sense later on. A mule covered in crows— Sometimes, you got to stick a little grassIn your mouth to sound like God. Allow crows. Something about…

The Ballet The dancersIn a terribly brightLight blue gauzeRetained the mystery Skating on a lakeBlue and iceAn illusionary timeWhere poetry feels inevitable The terrific clownWho lies insideEvery blue dressDoes he see me Always a starAlways a rootHorrible aurasAt the door But no matter where we startIt all ends in an oceanHard and fastOn the approaching blue dawn Until thenA deep low whisperWhat is language anywayAn ending that never happens Love is like a butterfly When you’re aroundIt’s like the smallest lilacsAre in bloom forever Between usI feel the tiniest tender flowersThe smallest little lilacs Between us like many glowing eggsThat we gently volleyAnd roll back and forth between us as a song Despite the world and all its crueltyWe dare not break themWe use every ounce to give them care…

The words I put in him he troubles withand over, shifting in reverse the syntax of,as though a poet troubling the linewith malaprop, but not a poet yet. He’s three.He’s lived less time than mostof the anxieties I’ve nursed for him.Please don’t roll over on the other boy,I whisper from the ball pit’s burbling edge.Three years after he opened into the fluorescentannunciative light of the extraction roomhis eyes, I case the boiling pit’s perimeterfor his lit smile and failto understand one thing he feels,this human foal, vortex of appetite, machineof noise, child who won’t blowthe softest sound into the pennywhistle,this charming man who can’t quite purse his lipsto activate the bubble wand, tiny muscles refusingto hoist the necessary sails. The future promisescountless encounters with useless specialistswaving in his face wands,…

Poem Beginning to Sound Myself as echo, failed synonymDisappeared music returns to my father’s houseplaying against a white painter’s cloth nailed to the wall (a flag was waving distantly)(the perimeter wet with flowers) Like a child burying favorite words in the sandboxI filled the undying year with tasks(I keep at it)Planting fingers in the gaps between linesI wrote notes into an openingfor he who departed in color, I knew only lightly (across from the oil-filling station, rosettes of cloud) It’s Saturday and I’ve made promises to remember the dead Some circuitry ticking painfully in the forehead now that Uncle is gone A needle-work of electrical wire passingthrough the young heads of treesOld books begin to bore me, their yellowing answersBirds squawking poetry beside a rusty pond and Uncle in my…

Strata You don’t understand, he says, again,from the backseat of the car, my son, who only months ago, could not fallasleep before whispering, first, some secret in my ear. When I lookin the rearview, he turns toward peaks in the distance, and when I ask him toexplain, shaking his head, he sighs as if it isn’t worth the trouble. I hadthe same words for my father, and one day, cursing, pushed him through the doorwaywith the full strength of the body I had grown into. At forty-five, he couldhave pinned me to the wall, but at what cost? It’s a story we don’t liketo tell, though my son and I ride between the rocky hillsides in silence untilhe asks how long it takes to get there, an apology in the…

Pompous Symmetry all the young Jesuses look the same // and that’s why I’m afraid // of deserts // we’re obsessed with trust // we’re obsessed // with origin stories // the guns I shot out in the desert // watching the saguaros // that ripped flesh // and I couldn’t stop getting caught in moshes // take down the tall one, someone always said // and that’s why // all the young Jesuses look the same // this extermination of meaning // sticks to my hands // it’s the pompous symmetry of desert towns // their false sense of self-reliance // that’s why // I try to forget // how to build a house // I try to forget // saying I don’t need anybody // out here in…

Like many of you reading this, I mispronounced words growing up that I first encountered in books. These words gained a life of their own in the quiet hallways of my mind. This internal sense of sound and language had a tendency to trump the world’s, at least for a while, forming a music that was more reliably vital and personal than our shared lexicon. This is why it delights me when my students rhyme Goethe with both, pronounce ennui as anöoey, or say penal as an echo of banal (which is frankly an improvement); they are giving themselves away as autodidacts, and revealing the soundtrack of their interior life. One of the first moments I recall this inner lexicon breaking the surface was in the midst of a second…

There’s the tension I’m feeling when I’m anxious and the tension I feel when I have to puncture.I’ve always wanted to stab myself dead but at this point I’m used to the maintenance my body needs—I have the routine made like muscle memory. I’m going to live forever taking care of myself,I’m going to have to respect my body or die. Before medicalization there’s tension in the lacking,and I do so want to task myself with a further need to care for myself like I care for others.Offer me a kindness I’m quick to give away. There’s the tension of falling into the arms of anesthesiaand how I have forgotten again to prepare to be caught; the first incision that splays me open.I don’t always tell the truth, but what…

When Prince Was Filipino It was 1983 I was 14 years old the nightCharmaine Makaiyak led me in secretto the basement kitchen of St. Matt’s cafeteriaShe put her lips on my left earlobeand soft-sang two choruses of Prince’s “Do Me”so I might finally learn how to slow dance rightWas it winter?—because the prettiest sophomoreat the Annual Filipino Family Galatook my hand and an icy waveclimbed up my banks a blizzard windshook both my alleys and all my leavesfell off my trees What’s a bony floppy-haired boy to dobut keep his eyes wide open acknowledgethe tabernacles of silence built above himand then open his armsto enter the thick religious mistof grape hair spray that surrounds the girlwho is about to kiss him? Every once in a while it is goodfor us…

All that matters is feeding the lake.I don’t matter. The lake matters.You must keep feeding the lake. —Jean Rhys There’s a goddess forme attended by two tall black dogsnamed Rage & Grief. You’re humiliated,just like this, wheneverthe familiar arrives. You believe nothingyou have ever knowncould save you now. Stark tallblack dogs attend the Goddess, with hertall head toward the sea. There’s a goddess for me,or anyone. That’s the pattern, but sometimes, you sayI feel like food for a lake I can’t seeor buy property on. I bend over my workwhile the Goddess hovers writhing in famous stillness,like a paused fly, between the two magnetsinside of her dogs. I serve her.My reasons though my ownremain unknown to me. Something is mineonce I cannot touch it. I pace the strandwith my hands…

Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party by Chessy Normile, winner of the 2020 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, is available at APR’s website, www.aprweb.org, and at other outlets. Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party was chosen by guest judge Li-Young Lee. CHESSY NORMILE received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at University of Texas Austin, where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets University Prize in 2018. She lives in New York and edits a zine series called Girl Blood Info.…

The Hawthorn A woman thoughtshe saw Christin a tin pail of milkon the barn floorrain outside His faceblue as marblein the predawnmilking what were Hiskeepsakes as a childa stone maybestashed in the dirta conker like onesboys collected forfuel and left rottingin heaps nearrailway stationsduring WWI the casingsreminded Him ofHis mother the shapeher hands madedays she foundher temper—lostwe say—but is thattrue? the woman knewit’s always therein the tree in the limbs’restraint beneaththe shell the solventthe hard darkseed chemists rushedto ferment then sentto trenches mencut from the farmlanda woman sawChrist in the mistfertilizer’s stale scentcome in throughthe eaves come Jesusin the sweethay dampening The Monarch Once, I was decorative, couldstand very still, quiet as a thumbtackholding up what was important.I was handsome, too, in the rightweather, my heart like a pool ofmetallic…

Our dog died in the ugly disasterthat is aloneness. She died onthe first floor, in my sister’s apartmenton a makeshift pad shifted halfway from beneath her. And I caught the centerof her dying, the shake, the after-bittongue swelling from her mouth.My girl. Good girl. She half-died alone and finished with us there.My sister and I rubbed her sideand she shook and blinked then blinkedno more but breathed a slow breath as I rubbed her head then kissed herforehead. Even in death she was mineto kiss. She was not ugly. Much likethe story of the boy from school who was shot in the head and lived to talkabout it and lived to hear us all talk about it,the hole that needed the help of othersto close. And his neighbors around him…

Void After three weeks of being left to dry and set,the two Eastern tiger swallowtails I brought back from the dirt roadwe hiked, both dead and broken into pieces like the painted partsof a small mechanical 20th century toy, cleanly run over while puddling,two males searching for salt and amino acids in the sipped water that allows what drives them,were eaten, all save the wings. Of course, these are my favorites parts:the sooty tusk-like stripes pouring from the arched top wing, the velvety blackborder on the bottom of both, and now sadly, the thorax gone like Hepworth’s oval void.It is the year of the hole says Henry Moore in 1932. I am afraid it still is.I mean, the year of the hole. I mean 1932. My husband, for our anniversarybought…

APR announces the Thirteenth Annual Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize for poets under 40 years of age. ▶ A prize of $1,000▶ Publication in APR▶ May 15, 2022 deadline A prize of $1,000 and publication of the winning poem in The American Poetry Review will be awarded to a poet under 40 years of age in honor of the late Stanley Kunitz’s dedication to mentoring poets. The winning work will appear on the feature page (back cover) of the September/October 2022 issue of The American Poetry Review. All entrants will receive a copy of the September/October 2022 issue. Poets may submit one to three poems per entry (totaling no more than three pages) with a $15 entry fee by May 15, 2022. The editors of The American Poetry Review will judge.…

The American Poetry Review and The Honickman Foundation are happy to announce the winner of the The APR/Honickman First Book Prize is an award of $3,000 and publication of a volume of poetry. Natasha Rao’s Latitude, with an introduction by Ada Limón, will be published in September 2021, with distribution by Copper Canyon Press through Consortium. The prize is made possible by the partnership between The Honickman Foundation and The American Poetry Review.…