Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2023 i The American Poetry Review

Midsummer I The teenaged girl is searching for a placethat goes through, the holeto put the tampon inside. When she finds itshe asks her mother, Is this where the penis would go?Yes, her mother explains.Then I will never have sex. II Sweltering New York City. She wears a red dress with a silver necklace, bangle, and earrings. A college friend she’s known for years says, I don’t think I’ve ever seen your body. He’s right. Though she thinks of her body constantly, she hadn’t realized how masterfully she’d hidden it. She has no idea what has freed her. III In midsummer, strawberries in the uphillgarden redden deeply. About twohandfuls haven’t been eaten throughby slugs and ants.She deliberates which one to pick. IV Mirrors lined the front wall of the ballet…

To Arthur Sze, dear friend, Keeper of the Acequia, now I remember … finding your poems in Tyuonyi, a small literary magazine published by the remarkable poet and editor Phillip Foss, during a time, the early 1980s, when both of you were teaching at the Institute of American Indian Arts. I wrote to Foss immediately, asking him something like “Who IS this guy?” Those memorable early poems, marked by jumps between strong images, quick-shifting punctuation (question marks, exclamation marks, dashes, ellipses), and your stated intention “to be open to all experience,” reflected your earlier university life in Berkeley where you began translating classical Chinese poetry. Already, your referential field was thrillingly global. The poems were as interested in classical Western subjects (Noah, Maximilian) as in Chinese (“Li Po,” “Wang Wei”)…

You who held me all my life inside your hands —Jane Hirshfield Without your skeleton you’d just be a pile of meatLarry said in his studio above the post officeIt’s snowing in April ocean all aroundChris draws a body beside the doorWe both look down at the wooden floor:me boneless at our feet a poolA skeleton hung from the ceilingbroken hands in the empty pelvissmall framed short a woman maybeHer bones yellow the holes in her hipsIt’s hard to buy one now Larry saidYou used to be able to get oneat a medical supply with a good reasonIt was my teacher’sThat’s your teacher’s skeleton I asked—Larry distracted by his baby book by trying to recallthe words from Romeo & Juliet carved onhis boyfriend’s stone: When he shall dieTake him and…

Poem with a Lie in It People let themselves down so hard they took to clappingwhen the plane lands. Sometimes even at the creditsof a movie. Their funerals turned out to be for the livingall along. You wouldn’t know how much they hatedcrowded trains by the way they kept boarding. What elsecould render even touch mundane? People tipped their waythrough the embarrassment of being waited on. Trippedthemselves into cruelty so often they invented ways to begentle in absence: walking around instead of throughfrisbee games in the park. Taking their care not to stepon sandcastles, apologizing for their dogs that loved everythingbetter but couldn’t get those soft parts right. Like that, I saw youat the ballfields. At the movies. At your mother’s homegoing.This morning on the subway. Lost in the beginning…

I’m having agirl I haveher She has itin for me Idon’t have itin me The familyhas three peopleNow twoand a halfWhat do Ihave I haven’tany time tomyself I haven’tmy anymoreI have anMFA I havesome French I havea headache anda terrible nightahead It’s notquite what Ihad in mindDo I havea mind Wouldyou mindputting thataside for justone minute ListenI have itbad I’veno one totalk toYou might thinkI had itcoming After allI had ababy She hadme at firstcry She has meby the breast thefinger the eyesI’ve had atime of itI’ve beenhad I havehad I havebeen Or havinghad, I havehardlybeen Now I haveeverything Have anice day Emma Winsor Wood is the author of The Real World (BlazeVox books, 2022), translator of A Failed Performance (PlaysInverse, 2018), and editor in chief of Stone Soup, the…

The Color of Us I’m looking at a photograph of a bearded Romaine Tenney on his hay mowerhitched to draft horses in a half-cut field. Tenney, whose Vermont farm was slatedto be swallowed by Interstate 91, immolated himself, rather than be forciblymoved. My son says, I may go off for an adventure, but I will always come backhere! He points to the ground. Tenney went off to war, came back. Didn’t everleave again. He was offered resettlement funds when the interstate was zoned,but what would such funds mean to someone partnered with a specific meadow?Our neighbor’s barn is full of hay despite it having been inordinately wet—sowet mushrooms explode across the forest floor. Tiny fungi are probably sproutingright now in the hay bales, too. Meanwhile, chanterelles sit in wet towels…

and boros, from bora, which in Greek means food,as in tail food, which is strange because usuallyfood is thought of as something other than self,but the larger you become, the more cosmosyou comprise, the less consumable othernessthere is, a shrinking slice of not-you, untilyou’re the whole thing, the world serpent, ouroboros, the yin and yang, the mouth of lightcoiled back into the darkness of your body,which you’ve always felt, guessed at, your mind nota discrete slice of consciousness splayed outon cosmic glass, but all of it, one bright cellinside of god and therefore all god, your nameimplying oneness, the word for tail, ouro Justin Rigamonti teaches composition, creative writing, and publishing at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon, while also serving as the program coordinator for the Carolyn Moore Writing…

Being Shepherd I put no name to her, knowingI would kill her. Read the books again, by flashlightIn the lean-to just over the hill; coyotes Rushing the bush. In the middle of the seasonWhat happened to the last is where to begin.Know your lambs well and do not ask; Do not be the cause of what runs themDown the slope, and when the sheep callBack to the others from the end of the truck, With that driver who pretends not to hearThe question, remember a name is notProtection, does not bring forth conditions Where there were none. You shall fallShort to remain within that gap,Owing what you do, owning what you don’t— What will you pay back to have seenEnough; difficult not becoming boundTo what is left, the lived-through, the…

The Score Sometimes I feel like I’m writing the scorefor a film that doesn’t yet exist, but everything that will happenin the film will happen to me. Is this what they call plot? This dailypicking up of the same things— glasses, coffee cup, pen, book, keys—and setting them back down again? Narrative has always troubled me,so I’ll leave that to someone else and write the mood instead, alsoapproximating setting: a little piano to suggest rain, and violin for a river,long and thin. That key change? A meander. If the score is plainand sweet, it’s because the life is— mostly. I don’t know how it ends,but given the budget, it will end quietly. One day I’ll find myself near a river,and I’ll realize, This is that film, the one I scored,…

Amerigun What is it now, a most 40 years?Don’t think I’ve always missed you, sometimesI’ve forgotten you, you and your Ameriguns,the ones Dad found in your apartment after you diedand dumped in Powell’s Cove—Why? When you told me you’d learnedyour lesson—but there are no lessonsfor Ameriguns, only more Amerigunsthey reproduce like rabbits, lol—Ameriguns, we give themto toddlers, we love the troubledboys to have them for ChristmasAmeriguns under the tree, all wrappedand waiting to be lovedAnd you (accident, accident)carry your Amerigun into the next lifeyou use it like an oar to ferry you overuse it like a metal straw to drink your milkit’s a telescope when you hold it to your eyeAmerigun with the extrachamber you forgot about, didn’t emptyas you emptied the othersas you joked about shooting yourselfas you shot…

Tomato Poem Jester-necked pile of ideasfattening by the cutting board.I have known the summer wall,it says slowly. The hillside facessouth into the valley.Dew on the tomato plants.Anything that grows, swarms,bunches itself against a stayand cannot stay. The vineswells forward and back,historical in its gestures,moon-radiant and radical.Along the brick wall, the apples areespaliered like penitents,rhododendrons burned dry.Tomatoes are socialist ashloaned by distant fireslike the change that settleson its curves. This tomatofollows its own thoughtsinto the frost. Leaves fade first,like faces of preschool friends.The redness of the tomatoreads your lips; it is a lip readerand what it reports backcondemns and compels.My rind holds the saddle,desert heat and sugared seedsthe cool nights you thoughtof home and that voicelessnesswears round toothat was present in its viningthe slow way you foundnothing to hold, or did…

You are sagging in my pocket. I cannot let you go.*Look, a beautiful person is dancing.*Wasn’t my face meant to be private? Wasn’t yours?*Think boots. Buy boots from a pop-up ad.*Webcam penguins waddle through a museum!*Alexa. What is this I’m feeling?*The government tracks my sadness.*I hold the Grecian shore in my palm.*I watch a Master Class on hostage negotiation.*If you put buds in your ears, sadness will listen.*My fingers shrink and enlarge other people’s successes.*Sadness once hung on a wall. Had a mouthpiece. A receiver.*hey period do you want me to pick up anything question mark*Planes leave white trails across the sky. Sadness fades an outline on my ass.*Suggested for you: the world’s oldest story and global myths.*The more you scroll, the more you scroll.*What can you do with my…

Field Notes by a Slender Path I held a birdin my hand. No. It was a game—a child’s game. No, my bird friend saidwhen he unstrung the mist net whereone bird hung mid- flight, between scruband sumac, by the slender path.Like this. He placed it so. In myopen palm—then closed my fingersfingers up. Female yellow warblerhe said, and he barely turned herleg to read the band there, while I—how can I say this—felt our heartsin one gray breath. Edge juvenile.In the game, as hard as you can,you clap your hands. Clench one fist—throttle your wrist. Maybe your friendpresses your thumb, so that it stings,goes numb, goes ash. The net is blowing.It’s delicate as a soft cloud.You count to ten. Now loosen—oneby one—your fingers … you know the rest. An Ocean…

Dinosaur Spine I don’t know my blood type there’s no direct through-line I’ve never seena tree bearing my ancestry as its leaves I just know two people made methough they probably shouldn’t have I say probably because I am alive andliving well mystery isn’t my genre If I don’t know already I don’t need tothe good questions don’t have answers and I don’t ask questions I don’t wantthe answer to I’d rather widen the lens or narrow it I don’t know exactlywhat they did to me memory is fickle and changes to protect its keeper Idon’t know the pills she was taking I don’t know if she was really going tokill me a voice just said run I don’t know the chances of children like mesurviving though I know they’re…

This Island Is Called Mull My wife kneels with our sonin the moss. Our basketis hardly big enough to holdwhat we’ve found—oh what luck: “They’re like buttons at first,”she tells him. “Then, they turn into trumpets—” Sphagnum moss is like stars.The field of it constellates under us:Rose, Roscoe, me Mushrooming again, Rosie and Conor find horn-of-plenty. Rahul compares themto tiny gramophone ears. We walk in pairs. We swim in the cold, cold loch. I clumsily take off my wetsuit, spraying a shoeful of wateron Jenny—giggling— At night, Linda roasts a chicken and we drink wine, clean the hornof-plenty: shear the stubs, open their passionate middles, part themslenderly, lay them on paper. Tea is on, again. And rain. Rachel and Drew feed us cake, coo over Roscoe.I can’t understand their accents…

For a month, I have been living here,and often sit near the back bedroomwall, mice scuttling behind the tiny framed self portrait of Rembrandt,laughing, skin crinkled like gold leaf.He’s Zeuxis in that one, I think— Zeuxis and Parrhasius, I rememberthe contest between them, how Zeuxispainted grapes so true—what do I mean here?— that birds flew down to feed, yet Parrhasiusdepicted a curtain concealing his work,the verisimilitude fooling his competitor. Yet of the two paintings, I’d most wantto see the grapes, not a curtain, of course,these grapes clustered purple, reminding me of walking with Marcel, one or twoblocks away from here, the mulberriesbloodied on the sidewalk. My son— he gathered in his small hands the fruitfermenting, this wild sweet melt, this jam scooped from the ground. It’s true. There were no…

Mother Americana [Warmup line for no baby blubbering]no background noise whatever but midnightcowboy, a dank sense of vernacular:that Americana myth of motheringI plagiarized [every hint of love]the rough kind, the dirtiest, sparkling slitsin the diamond eyes of the maker, starstuffin the god sky, flat hand to assat the backsassing articulationof my needs, inherited all of that—[less the sheen] I’m still a decent mother. Too Much the Night I eat too much, conventional sagespreach. Not what I consume, say others, butwhat I’ve invited in, I can’t let go.That mama whale now famous for carryingher cub, dead on her back for weeks, as ifshe alone were responsible for passageto the afterlife. Psychopomp mama.Ferrying mama. Excess + Hoarding. Loversholding hands beneath the covers—onlyone hiding the death secret in her belly.Her body a burying…

Allá Alláde donde yo soy es el único lugardonde unopuede agarrarse de la noche—como de una baranda— para no caeren la oscuridad. There There,where I come from, is the only place I knowwhere you cangrab the nightlike a railing to keep from fallingthrough the dark. Una Tabla Quisiera sersencillo como un árbol. Aún menoscomo una tabla. A Plank I wish I weresimple as a tree. Or even better,a plank. Color de Neblina Los cabellos se vuelven color de vientoy la piel cada vez más parecidaa la corteza de los árboles … La mirada es más débily la palabra más honda. El paso del tiempotiene el color de la neblinay la tristeza de las hojas secas. Sólo el corazón—guacal del amor—no tiene edad:desde que nace hasta que muerees el mismo. The…

The last time we were together, I remember thinking that I could write an entire book about how much I love you and I didn’t care if you saw it or not. The breaking of a heart. An immense underground water. Going on even when you were not here, even when you said it doesn’t work. This is the testament to actual immense loves that people carry through their years, lives, schedules. That maybe it was a mistake writing about war and keeping an eye out on dangerous horizons always. Ana who had lived through a real one, she always vouches for the love poem. She vouches for the pear and that you should sit down and eat one in her oma’s garden. That is what is needed. A wanted…

Poets who want to respond to the climate crisis need to find ways to acknowledge its variously manifest and yet overwhelming realities. Climate change is not just another new topic; it demands new ways of thinking about and writing poetry. A climate-changed poetry and poetics is less a matter of choice than of adaptation. In “Why Ecopoetry?”, I argued that what defines an ecopoem (a term I prefer to “ecopoetics,” which I reserve for theoretical and programmatic reflections) is not its form or style but its relation to its environment. Part of my goal at the time was to establish what counts as an ecopoem and what doesn’t. Since I published that essay, in 2016, climate change has made me doubt whether this “either/or” distinction is helpful. Instead, I’ve been…

nothing body nothing so lonely as the hospitalbed. nothing so lonely as beinglonely in the hospital bed. nothingso jargoned as the body sproutingbrush tuber cannula or rue. nothingso pure as the abstracted by which Imean exploded body, the body thatholds its skin up in semblance ofa body through the sheer repetition ofa name (maybe mother, maybe god).the doctor tends the hippocraticbody, unfurling like a frond intocommon speak, an inkwell’s claritywhere the ink is also the body. the roomloves the supinated body, dewy withasepsis and tendriling its arms into thesofthewn reaches where arms seldomgo. your body watching my bodywatching what we’ve made of my body:a nebula. a half-rabbit. that thing thattrees do when they split limb fromlimb to colonize the sky. I throw a dinner party come seamsters, prophets, fishwives, men.…

It was not until February that I heard them. Minor tones underwater. Plaintive. Asking for others to hear. Hear and not to act. To witness the wonder of the ways in which light and sound travel and still underwater. I felt it in my pituitary gland first. Then in my throat. A tightening and a deep reverberation. I would have missed it entirely, the winter swells in Waimea calmed enough for me to enter the clear water that day. Two local surfers called out to me, “If you put your head underwater you can hear the humpbacks signing to each other. Try listen.” I waited for a wave to break, then before the next one rose up, I jumped through the backclap and past the churn into the clear blue…

I will never forget the first day of freshman English,when my teacher mentioned she was vegetarianand a pimpled boy in an orange-billed Giants cap asked whyin the way only teenagers do—ingenuine and genuineat the same time—and the teacher paused, considering,on the brink of some cliff I couldn’t see, before she explained,matter-of-factly, under the pulsating fluorescent lights,how her older brother’s friend raped her when she wasour age, and the next day, as she watched her motherprepare a chicken for dinner, she felt exactly like the deadbird—fridge cold and raw—and as her motherseparated thigh from breast, our teacher decidedshe would never eat meat again. As you might expect,a roomful of fourteen-year-olds did not know howto respond, could only open and close their mouths like goldfishin fishbowls, the kind who seem to only…