Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2022 i The American Poetry Review

Bonfire Brides The embers of a Thousand YearsUncovered by the HandThat fondled them when they were FireWill stir and understand——from Emily Dickinson’s “1383” Remember when we hurriedourselves into the evening’s sacral blaze: Our coal-covered bridal gownsdrenched in the long silver of our mother’s years? Our hearts ceaselesslysucking on their stars long dead? Our laughter pouring out of uslike a sacrifice to age and weather? If we had known what lay beyond the gatesof our hooded child, would we have even left? Would we have so happily run into the enflamed morningwith our fists and query and hunger? Should we have stayed? Sister, do you remember when we wanted god?Were all tendril? Sweet-cheeked for heaven? Do you remember when we were sick with Bible verses and hymns?Our mouths overcome with hallelujah?…

Self-Portrait as Foreign Body with Storm in My Lungs -ina: This suffix is used as an independent name,but doesn’t your little one deserve more?—a baby name origins website as in, I spent my playground days gasping endless into a machineas in, my elders blessed me with a second name, to ward off spirits who prey on sick childrenas in, I swallowed the name like it was a tinctureas in, the name is a diminutive pretending to be me (something I learned in English lessons)as in, I became the diminutiveas in, I grew smaller & smaller under empire’s eyeas in, I flew across the ocean to meet the settlers who raised me from afaras in, I was marked foreign before I was born, placed in ESL classes in fifth gradeas in,…

I have smeared my throat with lustre:a strip of cherry for planking, ice-bluegauze on oiled skin. I have slit the throat of the weeping animal, gauze pulled overcopper skin.I hang my dagger by the door. The sun paints herself a corner. The moonbleeds through. moon—cloud—howling animal—songabove its throat I have carved 4 contingencies: skylightbeastethernote My dagger restsinverted. I have bloodied just one quarter.I have squared my blood to a one-lane pool.My sword, a great gold icicle, my sword is 53 canticles. Do not mistakethis burst for blood. I have frosted the hands of the willow, her manytoes & hands. I am gauze on skin onskin. Anna Maria Hong is the author of Age of Glass (Cleveland State University Poetry Center), winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First…

My friend doesn’t eat animalmeat that still looks like the animal. The animal, dead, cannot come backto life. At least not without a miracle in which you can turnyour fingers into god and jigsaw the pieces back together. With crabsor lobsters, though, you can skip the puzzle. I am not going to pulla facade over anyone. I don’t contain much empathy for such things,but I am moved by my friend who does. She could fit a turtle into her humanshell. And not just a turtle, but a giant beach of turtle eggs, who could then hatchand all make it to the ocean. That world seems a lot kinder and a lot morebeautiful. Everything eats not to live but for joy. At some point in history,a single organism existed—call it God…

9.27.21 10:33 PM one month today this poem’s trackedcrisis calm and crisis againmuch boredom much time passedby narrating the passage of timewords clung to high brancheshow did I get way up hereI was asleep half asleepavoiding time or hidingbehind under in timetime won’t find me hereI’ve been with my familywaiting for my son to sleepI’m too tired haven’t Igiven enough given up 10:42 PM I’ve given enough given upsometimes love leaks out my poresI sweat it panting like our pupshe needs me like a mothereveryone else is a playmate or an auntbereft and forlorn she pinedby the window all day I was goneit doesn’t feel creepy or needyshe’s just living in her sensesthings I learned from my dogsit stay stop checking your phoneany book is better for your eyesno one…

The Key You have to go back to being immature,a timed regression essentialto running up a further lifetime of debt. I owe you, the polar bear says,an icy French OUI. A kiss on both cheeks,plus a wish to sit on a bench at the center of a green-painted park,your legs planted. The unique sensoryeffect of the mind holding onto itself while steadying the sky in orderto sustain the injury and the after effectsof the earthquake, the cut-off that occurs against your willwhere you have to turn off in orderto engage with the light that comes in to announce the day’s breathingand being in a complicated networkmade of mesh that allows everything to fall through. This goes on throughoutthe day and night where you dreamof being better than you ever imagined:…

The Curator of the Earth Museum Speaks of People We know that the people loved beautiful things.From their earliest kind they were fools for shineand order: necklaces strung with tiny seashells,amulets of amethyst and chalcedony. The peopleloved tall buildings with many gleaming windows;from these they would survey the land below them,parceled into fields or city blocks. In their later iterations,they crafted vehicles that required the earth’s bloodto run, but this they extracted in quiet violencesin remote places, and then it was as if their shiningtransports ran on nothing. The people lit their homeswith delicate glass globes, filaments vibratingwith a white-hot glow. Sometimes this glow camefrom the earth’s bones, which the people minedat great cost. Sometimes it came from scientists,who learned that atoms could be harnessed to fuel bothlight and ruin.…

A Procedure I had some minor surgery on Mondayyet I keep trimming the sheets aroundmy person with these, they put me to sleep for thisenterprising eel, eye-first, home movie the little man who’s fourgot us up for sunrise in the living roombecause it’s very beautiful he saidit showed nothing no explanation except my years, having assigned the blamethe doctors feel we may beginas color toweled off, the sunadjusting the face it wears all day, we start right after Christmas thenand then with drugs each nightbut mama it looks like the sunto sleep I count three things that weren’t completely intolerable that day Another Time It started another time in mea flock of Boy Scouts dispersing early morningfrom the summits down into the valleyin Rome the doctor German when I looked…

The Fault one morning on her way the wife felt somethingnipping at her ankle. She bent to the dirt paththrough the dry grass between her husband’shouse and the city where she once lived. Andthere it was, a little fault, all alone and nippy.Whose fault are you, little one, she asked,but the fault just began to cry. She stood therewaiting but no one came to claim it. So shepicked it up and put it in the basket of herbike. All day, through the city, no one hadlost the fault, no one was looking for it. Whenthe husband came home she said I have foundyour fault. You dropped it on the way to the public transport. No, no, said the husband. This isn’tmy fault. I am afraid it is your fault. Youdropped…

It reminds me of a moment I used to have in college. I’d put off my term papers every single time till the last minute. So I’d be up at 3 or 4 in the morning working on some damn thesis totally confused, completely exhausted, and I’d have this glorious inspiration. I’d put down my pencil, look up, and go, “I’m getting an incomplete.” It feels so good to give up, to surrender, to take the road most traveled.—Rick Reynolds, “Only The Truth Is Funny” PART 1: GIVING UP BEFORE YOU’VE BEGUN Sometimes when I sit down in the morning to write, the words arrive. It’s as if I’ve turned on a faucet and the water comes pouring out, hitting the page, leaving those dark little splotches that we can…

The Statue of Liberty was packed in crates of lentilsand there is a species of catfish with scalesso tough that piranhas can’t chew throughto red softness. I’m thinking of what is vital,today. The willow tree in my dreams that swaysand a little girl singing quiet approximations of hymns.To the night. To the flames which aretragic and kinetic and aren’t ever receding.I was the other day looking out overwhat I believe is a river—forgive mefor not knowing the vague taxonomies of water—and it was all noise, which is goodfor some who struggle to sleepor forget or change or learn or have any timethat isn’t quilted by pain.I was attempting to memorize the wet folds going by,imagining the smoothness of rockthat was hidden beneath it all,and composing another version of this poem.One…

In a bizarre and unprecedented move, the “Intro” for Todd Rundgren’s breakout 1972 album, Something/Anything? is placed seven tracks and nearly twenty minutes into the album’s run time. In addition to its odd sequential place, this intro is unique because it conceptually breaks the fourth wall, with Rundgren directly addressing the listener and acting as host of an auditory game that challenges listeners to identify any sonic and technical flaws that may have shown up on the record. Before we go any further, I’d like to show you all a game I made up. This game is called “Sounds of the Studio,” and it can be played with any record, including this one. You can play it, uh, with … you can even play it with your favorite record—you may…

The Shadow Cast Golden Gate Park As any poet will tell you, the weight of the lineis essential, but here these practitioners havemore on their minds than poems. The weight of their lines is uniformly light, the line selectedto land and then rest gently on the surface,its goal to capture the attention of surface-feeders found in nearby lakes. Back and forth, back and forth,the arm swings repetitively, predictably, the linethen cast out and over the pond until it comes to rest. In the late morning sunlight, the great treeslittering the pools with shadow, these studentsof sorcery practice unspooling their lines, their craft. We have come not to study magic but to escapethe boredoms of another Saturday morning.Slowly, we take a lap around the pools. Back and forth, the casters execute…

How I Stopped Praying After centuries of deferralto the white sky cloud cover God, who kept me on orange alert,babbling for mercies that were batted away sloppilylike dustballs in the wake of a sock, I turned to the Divine Creatrix,who built the short night, I was convinced, and forged the shaded grove,and opened the arms of her starry kimono. I flicked the sharp edge of devotion,ever vivacious without a tick’s slackening.She forgave so much, even the woodchuck whose nasty scuttling knows neitherchange nor shame. With her leaking colostrum she revivedanimals, plants. Why not me? She was a bucket, I a berry.My engineer, my Gibraltar made my person the topographyof an unheard-of city, made my knuckle a lithe shell,made my hair hot gray, made me put on jeans and a t-shirt.Made…

1. ENCOUNTERING THE POETIC LINE IN ENGLISH For me, and for generations of US readers before me, poetry has been defined by the appearance of the line break on the page, that ragged righthand margin signaling that something is at work in the arrangement of the words on paper beyond mere transcription, or perhaps, the suggestion that transcription might itself be a form of choreography. As a young person, only books offered me privacy. If I played the piano, practiced ballet, watched a VHS tape, or played a record, the sounds and sights were impossible to hide. But books put me out of reach, hidden in plain sight. The act of reading felt like a cloak of invisibility—though this may have had less to do with reading itself than my…

Untitled (For Lack of Free Time) late rent notifications made me a moonlight music man.a journal entry in the break room. an open bar on the weekend.a poor sport in the assembly line. a broken outlet.my barber asks well if not this then what?i stumble over socialist vocabulary then blurt out prison rumors.shouldn’t we be down for anything else since this has already killed us. This City Got Its Head on Backwards there’s an eviction notice for a sidewalkhouseless encampment next to a Teslarepair shop next to a Whole Foods nextto an open patch of land with a “FORLEASING” sign next to university housingthe mayor’s house is a stone’s throw froma bucket of stones gossiping about un-lit firesmaking no dents in city council meeting minutesif survival was on the agenda…

even in this abundance of dark? Even in this abundance of dark you have totake the stars on faith. Look: Under today’s dim sky there is a basket.In that basket there is a fish. Come night, you are the animal that will eat the best parts of it. And yetyou dread the smell of dead peonies. You know the last thing you’ll learn from your mother ishow to die; the second-to-last some fact about the oils of anhinga. This evening, children are at warin your yard, though not like children who are actually at war. They just call it that and yell BLAM!a lot. Despite this, they are losing. Everywhere they go, they find more shade swallows them whole.When their names are called, when they shrug and walk off into…

Remember that trick where there’s a dove inside a cage, thensomehow the dove remains after a magician takes it away?Every letter I place here absorbs sky into the blank page—Am I trying to stare straight at the sun?Can a sheet of just paper still keep me warm?What’s not a mirage, but like one? Lines too long to even lookbroken?Moon roofs, glass-bottom boats, mirrored windows, ice floessculpted into swans?Why does everyone expect to find “you” in this poem?Why do I keep writing “you” texts? (Where do I begin?)Would I rather dive into a pool or the ocean?Is every sentence that lies a horizon? Is every word polishedenough to seem clear yet—or reflective? Who cares? This isnot a rhetorical question. What besides light is immersive?What besides language takes risks? Mag Gabbert holds…