Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2022 i The American Poetry Review

On Becoming The painting is of a door, its wood so warpedwith moisture it cannot close. It stays ajar leaving a sliver of light—enough to suggestsomething sweet and almost unreachable behind the door—and you sit in yourroom working on the bills or those comforting lists that make you believe you havefinally created time, wide open spaces of emptiness, you are free to use or not use;but you keep looking at that gap, keep peering in, trying to see what is there,and occasionally you get up and touch it, as if you might feel it, what is there.I am being coy. I am not talking about you, but me. And it is not a door,but a painting of a naked woman sitting like a pear on a perch, her knees drawn…

Some begged, some climbed the side of my body looking for a window, some said they were on their way and did not come.—Warsan Shire & honestly, i have no solutions—our world a mad swarm of bees. forgive me my own devotion, the handsome clench. my first love masters a sinister arithmetic; his patrilineage swelling like a heavy god between his legs. i’m well-conditioned, my hands already working for the good of this sly new lord. blessed are the meek. at one point, i was a brief globe of possibility & then my father got to me. have i the option to love him, my mother’s delicate monster, & not write this poem? of course not. it is a woman’s mouth, after all, bleeding nuance into the Ferguson pavement. the…

THE CHILDREN Condemned to live inside the weatherof our moods JOY What are you doing? Filling this bucket with waterand dumping it into the water HISTORY They can’t excavate the amphitheater further because it extends backbeneath the houses DEATH We close their eyes not for thembut for us POETRY One mouth movinganother ZOO The plexiglass separating us from the animals brings them closer FRIENDSHIP In the instant we both blinkwe’re blind to each other it doesn’t matter HISTORY The man in the grocery storewearing an ankle monitor— tube sock pulled up over it MYTH Cyclops—who must wander the earth with an I in his head MEMORY His suffering inside that house becamethe house PANDEMIC My son’s recurring dream: sailing a balloonover an endless ocean MYTH Whose? THE FUTURE Our dead…

1. My earliest memory is letting go of a white ceramic mug (the kind favored by wedding caterers in India in the eighties) and watching it fall one story to crash on the cement floor of the family that lived below us. I remember being aware that I was only a child and would not be held responsible. 2. the first marriage always breaks— expose the fault line, glut the fracture with gold lacquer r from lac, from Sanskritmeaning many, or resinsecreted sap or gum gham from Urdumeaning sorrowlike grief chin meets floor the jaw unsettles skin meets chin—splits— the seam shimmersto gilded fractal bowl meets floor the mind unclenches the whole the patternholds where does it hurt here the shatter here,here Viplav Saini teaches economics at New York University.…

Commencement We never ended— as though we were first of a cloudless sky in our other places of extinct summers among dark berries even now as clocks are measuring space we simply began beneath the cold stars it was never night in the small brain let us be like beaks along ancient boughs in their feather gloves for the new graveyards— Middle Devonian You can’t kill it, mygood neighbor tells me. He means the halfacre of bamboo seeded from waste runofffrom the new development—just beyond the woods, there, beyond the creek bed. Can’tdig it out. Can’t blast it out. And you can’t hack it out with your macheteor a big old chainsaw. No way. But he’d ratherhave the bamboo than all the houses going up. Who are they?Why’d they rip…

Village gone silent in pandemic mode.School’s closed. One small girl with a bike is out.The narrow street recedes into its doubtof baker, butcher, neighbour. On the road,cars rarify, whisk by trees that explodein redbud, apple blossom, presage fruit.“Have you had your first, your second shot?”Masked conversations shrivel into code.When I was here last, I could walk three milesback to my histories in Arboras,sweater in backpack, if the wind turned cold.I could see people’s faces. Chatter wasabout elections, new café, roof-tiles.When I was here last, I was not so old. When I was here last, I was not an oldwolf enclosed all winter in a cave,no pack, no steppes, no prey, who didn’t starveexcept for conversation. I unfoldmemories like a blanket, stained with mould,out of some cupboard. Today, I can savewhat…

Poem for Hotel Soaps Maybe every choice is in some way false,like whether to wonder or worry,or feel alive or alone in Clevelandor Memphis or any standard double queentrying to unwrap a tiny hotel soap.There’s always another one waitingin the dish like a stale communion wafer,or an old school after-dinner mint,as if to remind me I don’t fitinto this world either. As if whispering,Good luck carrying your debt loadas housekeepers push past piloting schoonersof towels, more floats in the endless paradeof exploitation you hope leaving ten buckson a credenza fractionally absolves you of.Is the great obstacle anger or fear?Am I more straw or man?Under what circumstances are youprepared to give everything away?Tiny hotel soaps rarely smell the wayI hope, instead like an older generation’sfailed ideas of beauty, a living roomI’m…

In the morning when your hips go round on methey don’t turn in a perfect circle like a giantmixer at the Wonder Bread factory.There is something broken in your circle and the break differs with each turn.I can’t stop thinking of it.Speaking of bread and detachment,you debated whether to throw away your own mixing bowl rather thanglue it together a second time.On one hand, throwing it awaywould symbolize detachment, but how beautiful the glued cracks.You realize the worstof all attachments is that to detachment. Peter Waldor is the author of five collections of poetry, including Who Touches Everything, which received the National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. This poem appears in his collection Something About the Way, recently released by Kelsay Books.…

woodpeckers make insects make themselves small as possible marooned in nucleus of another shattered discourse your burning building appears suddenly in this poem a wall collapses revealing a line of detectives waiting to see if the soul is betrayed will we still believe in the body imagine imagine imagine us in the mouselike dream in the wall after your purchase nails come with small sounds lasting the duration of tapping them into coffin lids after which nothing awaits but quiet not one sympathy card has the word death if we set the rack on fire we can incinerate another lever of control one less blood donation to please the gods sunlight currently traveling 9 minutes through outer space to build our bones we repeat sunlight ETA is 9 minutes and…

Larger Papers I’ve seen enough films where a character nickshimself shaving or maybe has a bread knife slip and the thinrun of blood is supposed to stand for some violence,for something he did and is desperateto cover up, but the truth will out—I’ve seen enough that when I graze my own hand on the jagin the railing and find I’ve been cut, I ask what didthat symbolize, as though I’m some punyreporter hollering out at a sought director who is duckinginto a limo—OVER HERE! WHAT DID THE BLOODSYMBOLIZE??—and I never get an answer, I have to read itin other papers, larger papers, studios taking outfull-page ads so of course they get privileged access, I’m soresentful that I look away when I see them beingread on benches and beaches, all those…

I am doing the work of healing.As in:I cry to early-2000s Paula DeAnda.I wash the towels from our apartment.I find your resume onlineand critique it harshly for a ghost audience. I come up with new names for emotions, likeDISLODGED FITTED SHEET orDAMP SHOWER CURTAIN.I read self-help articles, mainly to critiquethe clichéd prose.I assure our friends that I am fine, tell a dozen peoplebless your soupbecause spellcheck feels insincere at a time like this:pretending to know which letters fit togetherand which do not, language no less a judgment callthan love. Three days into sleeping over at your place,I dropped the facade of eleganceand brushed my teeth the way I like:tongue hanging out, pink foam-drool pouringfrom the corners of my lips, down my chin.You watched from the doorway,smiled like I was something…

I Would Do Anything for Love, But I Won’t cook lobster. They’re loyal sea rubies and deservebetter than a pinch of lemon and herbed butter. But I’ll shower hot enough to brighten you, makezinnias of your shoulders and steal the towels when it’s over, your water-tattooed back a garden before itfades. I won’t shave anything unless I feel like it, but I’ll wax whatever part of your body you request.I’m not an empath, so I won’t cry when I do it. I’ll let your pain be yours. I won’t give up coffee or pistachiosor my dog. I know you wouldn’t ask, but I like to be up front about my boundaries. I bark mine like a seagull,touching my books, my mother’s china, my chest, but you’re fine with kindness. You…

Simile for Its Own Sake like a ghost ship in spacesomething see-through how the moon used to besomething impalpable untouchableor when you go to touch it your hand goes through itsomething haunted it takes something hauntedto haunt you like a lakelike a half a head of hair it looks idyllic and holds deep dark secretsit looks like it has a steady surface to go right straight throughlike bent and broken toes like the last few turns of a spinning wheellike a sponge dripping blood like a tired horselike a broken pillow like steel-toed shoeslike a long sharp winding strand of strange hair strange hair, hair that is strangethat comes from nowhere like a two-toned baby rattle or rattlesnakelike coca-cola like where you were bornlike where you come from like from…

say it in pig latin that you couldn’t feel more guilty that marking your path lent something enormous in you lent it to translators and children fire promises promises spreading, smoke and to disappear as slowly as it arrived and where fire passes it resembles it resembles a photograph on fire all the notes I wrote and the sound of the idea of horses I left in January when I was vulnerable to fantasy to someone else’s fantasy of January you shouldn’t be ashamed of yourself not now you can’t grieve everything we slowly learn to distinguish burning from a burning sensation like actors missing their cues we were embarrassed for each other we thought we thought we knew something about the other’s sound about their ideas how a poem…

Cento 1, What We Live For, What We Die For —based on first lines by Serhiy Zhadan Take only what is important. Take the letters,the dark shattered wicked winter. You hear everything passing,stories connected with murders, knife wounds. Remember how winter began in your town.The hot heart of the year is burning. Where are you coming from, dark caravan, you flock of birds?You will reply today touching the warm letters. Cento 2, What We Live For, What We Die For —based on 8th lines by Serhiy Zhadan Blown-up bodies.In times of peace, they were just considered members of a sect. Now we smell the burning even in our dreams.Take the letters, all of them, every last piece of bad news, and the announcer’s voice, caught in a random taxi:they were…

In the 1980s while scholars were obsessed with theory, I was in a course of study, Japanese language and literature, that barely seemed touched by such heady stuff. Fortunately, one professor offered a graduate class designed to familiarize us with Barthes, Jameson, et al. The theory that impressed me most then—and that has influenced me ever since—was Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s Poetic Closure (Chicago: University e of Chicago Press, 1968). The essence of her argument is stated at the very start of her book: “the conclusion of a poem has a special status in the process, for it is only at that point that the total pattern—the structural principles which we have been testing—is revealed.” Why did this theory immediately appeal to me? For one thing, I’d found a critical approach…

Be HoldingRoss GayUniversity of Pittsburgh Press, 2020 To say Be Holding g is about Dr. J is like saying Harry Potter is a book about an orphan. For while it is the unabashed fawning of a fan over his basketball hero; more, Be Holding directs our awe. The book-length poem begins by describing Dr. J’s obstacle-dodging, gravity-defying hook shot, and quickly extends to the flight—both in body and in spirit—black folks have managed for centuries. Through replaying a YouTube clip frame by frame, the speaker makes visual jumps from Julius Erving’s 1980 NBA finals’ baseline scoop to other photos, weaving a net of daydream, memory, and familial history, and ultimately questioning what it means to watch and be watched. Even as it digresses, Be Holding demands readers hold their gaze…

She said, “You just made this ge gesture with yourbody—” and opened her arms as if she couldbarely fit them around an enormous ball— “Make that shape again,” she said, and so I did.“Now let it change,” she said, and I did— slowly closing the space between my arms,fingertips converging until they touched— I watched my hands turn together, align pinkiesideto pinkie-side, I watched my palms open, pushing gently forward, leadingmy body forward, I watched them let a bird go, I watched my handsmake an offering— Dana Levin is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Banana Palace (Copper Canyon Press, 2016) and Sky Burial (Copper Canyon Press, 2011), which The New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Levin currently serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence…

It is 12:20 in New York a Fridaythree days after Bastille day, yesit is 1959 and I go get a shoeshinebecause I will get off the 4:19 in Easthamptonat 7:15 and then go straight to dinnerand I don’t know the people who will feed me So opens Frank O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died,” his elegy for the complicated and brilliant singer Billie Holiday, a woman entirely absent from the rest of O’Hara’s rambling ruminations on money, privilege, and the ambiguous social position of the White bohemian class. O’Hara’s poem is a list of things—bottles of Strega and cartons of Gauloises cigarettes, anthologies of Ghanaian poets, cheeseburgers and translations of French poetry lavishly decorated with drawings by Bonnard—all of which O’Hara purchases to feed himself, whether figuratively through aesthetic appreciation, or…

a i n a m followed—in front, as horses—into daisy& silver dancing, knowing the jaw who unkeysin the danced earth to drink me down to haints,& will go again. was willed. distrusted happiness, addicted to it.a god needs of a god. here, i don’t want to reachfor greeks, don’t know them Or*sh*s well & won’t play.what i know, & good: when joy was my moon, it was interruptedby other skies, i was laughing when my field turned to flies,falling into their flight, i toward your blued hands, but was lied,& so i opened the rest of my eyes. my deepest & most ashamed apologies to Assotto Saint who i called Assanto in my previous collectionwhich was edited by several well-paid folks & the ratbabble fuck of a poem (“gay cancer”)…

Farewell in Welfare Island (1953) It has to be from here,right this instance,my cry into the world. Life was somewhere forgottenand sought refuge in depths of tearsand sorrowsover this vast empire of solitudeand darkness. Where is the voice of freedom,freedom to laugh,to movewithout the heavy phantom of despair? Where is the form of beautyunshaken in its veil simple and pure?Where is the warmth of heavenpouring its dreams of love in broken spirits? It has to be from here,right this instance,my cry into the world.My cry that is no more mine,but hers and his forever,the comrades of my silence,the phantoms of my grave. It has to be from here,forgotten but unshaken,among comrades of silencedeep into Welfare Islandmy farewell to the world. Goldwater Memorial HospitalWelfare Island, NYCFeb. 1953 I am walking over…

Afternoon in the Woods What I love about the woodsis that you can screamand no one will come. Some dayssound’s the only way pain can fleethe body. I wish I was grownof wildflowers, but I’m all thorn. Years ago,my father came home alone from a bike ride,his face a broken window strangledby vines. He held out his arms and I raninto forest, headed for the treehollowI’d made a home of. At the hospital,my mother’s body plum-colored, her faceall stitches and bruise. My fatherthumbing the blood on her brow. I’m so sorry.I didn’t see you. How do we beareven the tenderest touch, knowingwhat we know? Wind, rustling leaves,pollution of contrails threading through clouds.Fading footsteps. Mangled bicycles. Flutterof wings, then birdcall. I lark. I longing. I graspfistfuls of grass, pull apart pine…

I am a birder, not a bird. Nevertheless, I write poems. And it is a kind of singing though every birder knows that for an offspring via lust, or for territory, it’s mainly male birds (save the fair-minded Cardinals, Grosbeaks, perhaps a few others) that hold forth, a rule to which the literary mafia held its human poets for centuries. There are categories, though, regardless of which gender gets to sing. Among birds, we have the Duos, those mating for life. Or the Solitaries, pretty much single-by-choice most of their days, thank you very much. Or Flock Birds—swallows or those heart-stopping elegant Cedar Waxwings—ho-hum-assuming the whole clan will hunt and gather and sometimes nest together, an inborn habit, a kind of cacophonous repetitive chamber music when they do sing. All…