Innholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2023 i The American Poetry Review

Memento How thoughtlesslyI took it, this castiron Aunt Jemima doll hauled from the trunkof my whitefriend’s car. Another of T’s, her Jamaicanhusband’s, mementoshe collected as a joke. Not unlikethose figurinesI recall a college friend once exhibited, who’d boughtAunt Jemima spoons,shirts, piggy banks, left his apartment strewnwith UncleRemus albums scavenged from thrift shops: someterrible gaghe’d invite friends over to witness: we’d sitand try not to look,or to look and laugh with the sameirony he’d cultivated,though of course it couldn’t be the same. Hewas Black and wewere not and didn’t each of us still havesome cupboard stickywith the drippings from these crystallized red caps, a boxof Uncle Ben’sgrowing rancid in the pantry?My friend, I don’t think,enjoyed his figurines so much as our discomfort, the facthe could see us for the first timesee…

On theatre I wrote a play, out cold in urgent care. Heated blankets toweling my sweated hair. When staged, the actress playing Mother held a wicker broom for acts two and three, with which she beat and beat the rug—a heavy tapestry rolled across the deck. It jumped with fleas—a cast of tiny specks that leapt with urgent hunger as she swept. Lucidly, I slept. I always do, when in duress (no escape from the world of the page). So I wondered how I would create the effect on stage—what props and practical effects—and who would clean up the mess? I quit theatre/because it spoiled other/darknesses for me. On dreaming I walk across the wide array of teeming arrow barns. A hundred teeming prefab barns with silver hoop-house roofs. Inside,…

### thankgod for swampfinishesmy thoughts ### now hear swallows returningsoundless but somehow i feelwingwinds feel wingwindslittle infant shuddersof sipped air out ashelved book howlong reach downya buncha paper sniffers callinthe operator for a quickchomp on the tempof april soil ### prod a gill trace thisgrace light lightlygo draw fawner’s heartson old white washbarn walls you arenot supposed to drawlno hearts ### suppose posein it go numbskin on a crumbclean to whomwren nest in the raspberriesby mites overcomelint mouse rice teethpickle seed saltyfor dream jam sake doreach around ### where gumptionwent outwith the metal moneycomin infor the bulktankthought throw back out and didheavy thoughtsmake wheels walklike world fresh lambs ### repeat after methe adventures of creek sandas told by foxatrot along deerroaddogfacelick bowlin balls away ### i know you welllow on…

Via the wisdom of science fiction writer, MacArthur genius, and visionary Octavia Estelle Butler, this HIIT for the ♥ ritual will help you to create a LIFE-AFFIRMING blueprint for your life. It’s for when you’ve lost sight of your true purpose, and there is no blueprint, no guidebook. It’s for writing your own master scheme and finding your own ways to thrive when you get sideswiped by life and the question isn’t how to fix things/yourself [you won’t] but how to be well within chaos and/or urgency. HIIT for the ♥ is a workshop format I adapted from fitness coaching; HIIT, or high intensity interval training, is a training protocol that alternates short periods of intense or explosive anaerobic exercise with brief recovery periods until the point of exhaustion. Athletes…

Translated from the French by Nancy Naomi Carlson Genesis In every cosmogony, the same primary idea is found.In the beginning, there’s onlyan undifferentiated mass tumblingIn the great vacuum of space—A vast savanna plowed by the eternal eland’s hooves:The imposing Taurotragus oryx who reigns over all the landsWhere they’re fluent in languages full of clicking soundsAnd eat to their hearts’ content. Genèse Dans toutes les cosmogonies, on retrouve la mêmeidée principielle.Au commencement, il n’y a qu’une masseindifférenciée tourneboulantDans le grand vide sidéral—Une grande savane labourée par les sabots del’éternel éland:L’imposant Taurotragus oryx qui règne sur toutes lescontréesOù l’on parle facilement des langues riches en clicsEt où l’on mange amplement à sa faim. Fiat Lux Then comes the act of separationresembling a birth beyond measure.The sky breaks free from the mass of…

Solzhenitsyn Playing Tennis He steps to his practicedforehand. He laughsas he hits the ball. Freedomfrom necessityfills his aura and dimsas the game comesto a close. His bodyguardsscan the sky, the tree,the roof. A walkalong the river, they ask him.Da, he says. They walk amidstwinding cameras.He steps over the railsand descends intobrush. A trail opens.Solzhenitsyn saysIn the January issueof Nature, 1869,there is an interrogativeconcerning “MusicalNotes from Outflowof Water.” I hearan E, he says, but my earis not tuned so well.Will someone heretune my ear? Laughter.They stop and slowtheir perceptionover the water,the drag of sunlighton the gossamerkairotic robed stones,and fall quietuntil the quietbecomes a dirty stanza.Then with the dartof a well-struckserve, Solzhenitsynsays, I’m thirsty.He squats forward,cups some water,drinks. Acrossthe water, a vixenasleep nearthe entranceof her den, liftsher head. Sheknows better,but when shereceives…

Meditation on Isolation This poem is for everyperson who will neverread it either by choiceor circumstance I writeit in silence wherethe most realparts of our liveslive like a shoe lostin an alley or an emptyboat in a black sea butmore like the fallenleaf on the other sideof the planet you neverknew had grown inthe garden outsidethe small town thatto you does notexist nor the womanwho dug the hole witha spoon given by hermother on the eveof her wedding herown life no morea mystery than thisone and yet evenin the solitudeof this poem Iam not lonelyeven in thisdarkness at 3:47am the housedark the streetsdark the city darkthe winter treesoutside my windowdark the oceanbehind them so darkthe dead deepbeneath darker stilland yet a manin this same darktouches another mana woman holdsher daughter…

For the sake of living longer, we should noteat this. The bottomless pan of mac and cheese stringing itself from itself to the porcelain plateas the television drones and the men with glasses like mine—the frames that make us looksmarter than what we are—talk about Florida, its shores, its hurricanes, prisons and poisons, before All that killing,killing, killing, for the sake of killing, my mother says as we split the tender meat falling from the bone of the bird buriedin barbecue. To sleep peacefully, I’ve made a habit of watching videos of greyhounds hunting plastic eggs for the treats inside.Always another animal wants to feed on our insides, to lick the walls of our throats. The buffalo with its head bowed ready to bluntthe horse carrying empire. The steel spread…

This Landscape It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.”—Simone Weil Midwest landscape with its leftoverWWII factory aesthetic. Churchafter church and a Krispy Krunchy Chickencum gas station on the corner. Border between the setting and the self blearing, hot highwayshimmying into sky. Better to let each featureof scenery speak for itself, best to let the litter restagainst the fence: empty vienna sausage tin,mega millions scratcher with its eyes scratched out. When the scale is nothing(0) to the worst pain you can imagine (10), the scaledepends on my power of imagination. The Pea Shoots with Their Thin Tendrils grope stupidly for the solace some seek in churchor nature, stable rung to lay their weightand lift themselves towards light, the highest heightat the top of…

A Lovely World I am walking through the hotelEvery time I am so sadThat I want to die It’s a place where I can keepEverything I’ve never beenBrave enough to get to Poets have moons and moneyTo get themselves throughThe longest night imaginable But I’ve had these roomsTo beckon meWith their own brand of patience The warmest rose emanatesFrom the hall near my bedroomI’ll enter if you will I know that in this worldI will always be waitingBut you let go of life, with a thud Instead I waited for youHiding here in plain sightLike a flower Strange Humor The key to surviving in hereIs to pretend every room is hauntedEven when it isn’tAll these old buildingsEverything still lives here For years I have wokenIn the middle of the nightKnowing…

What’s Left to Say In the interview I say, The poem knows more than I do.In the bedroom I say, Fuck yes! I say, Mmhmmmm. I say, I’m tired.In the classroom I say, The desire for pattern is innate.In the kitchen, to the dirty sink, I say: Le sigh.In the nursery I say, Baby, do you want some milky on the other boobie?On the sidewalk I say, Oh, a dead sparrow—a finch?I say, I don’t remember which kind is bad luck.In the garden I say, I’m sorry I neglected you.In the bedroom I look out onto the amber street and say nothing.In my life I have said, I love you to whomever would listen.In my life I have said, I shouldn’t have said that.I have said, I didn’t realize how…

Cups Hovering near the line I watch a ladyorder coffee and ask for a second,empty cup. But once she has the cupin hand she thinks better of itand, leaving, drops it in the trash.I know about cups. They’re treesground to a pulp and coated with thinskins of plastic not unlike condomsthat make recycling impossible.In ninth grade I kept a Subway cupin my locker and cradled iteach day at lunch beneath my coatas I trudged through subzero windsand gusting snows to the franchise,where I’d blend in with the crowdwho’d already ordered, then stepboldly toward the soda fountainpatrolled by the staff and fill my cupwith Sprite, Dr. Pepper, Mello Yello,Cherry Coke, making what we calleda graveyard. I had the cup so longI named him. Bathed him dailyat the drinking fountain near the…

Books I Do Everything I’m Told by Megan Fernandes Tin House Books, 2023 paperback, 104 pages, $16.95 Megan Fernandes’ latest collection of poems, I Do Everything I’m Told, begins with an epigraph from Gwendolyn Brooks: “Sit where the light corrupts your face.” Fernandes takes this instruction to heart—the fresh light of each poem works to destabilize the lyric ‘I’. Much like Fernandes’ last collection, Good Boys, the title itself deals in contradictions. On one hand, I Do Everything I’m Told indicates domination and systems of power where marginalized people are rendered both invisible and hypervisible. It captures the demand to become easily identifiable under threat of violence, and how responses to these demands are ignored, humanity willfully misunderstood or erased. On the other, I Do Everything I’m Told is Fernandes’…

Wake Up or Get Out We thought the babies pre-languagewere learning to hold crayonswere scribbling for the revelation of colorand making a mark but what if they were transcribingthe movements of birdsbefore 3 million disappeared from North America?This is what I think about when everyone has left for the dayafter feeding the conveyer of split attentionthe V-shaped chip in my front tooththe school drive the unpaid plumber and the shifted posture of treesbecause the marine layer is enoughto drop the ceiling on a neighborhoodto slow the wildfire in Big Sur 30% contained it is January PG&E tries to fix somethingwith helicopters and alerts I realize when the power cuts outI’ve been floated by a persistent hum of machines I hear the battery clocktick across the face of an hourwhen a…

Socrates with Fleas After his mom dropped him offhe attacked his tail like it didn’tbelong to him. So I scooped him up ten pounds of resistance in my armsand Mike applied the chemical potioncareful not to sting his eyes while I held him in the tub like a babyon my chest facing the worldflea shampoo running down our legs while the dog named for a philosophertried to flail out of my arms like a caught fishat the bottom of a boat his last chance before being gutted. Wateryin certain lights he is morelike a furtive land-bound prey. His rabbit heart leapt into my palmslamming the wall of his grizzled chest.He was wary of Mike for two days but I was the favorite—followedfrom couch to bed to toiletas if I were…

In Public Abstract, Jane Huffman demonstrates a steely commitment to an aesthetic vision. For Huffman, form—inventing it, bending it, subverting it, putting it to novel use, especially if working with forms passed down through time—becomes content: not merely expressive vehicle, but heraldry loaded with meaning. Form in this book is also feeling: tonally cool, the repetitions and hard turns at work in these poems express with passion. They can signal uncertainty, anxiety, skepticism, inquiry, and a wish for revelatory knowing. Huffman accentuates lyric poetry’s elemental qualities, where feeling is primary and the events and situations that incite feelings secondary. This, coupled with their inescapable focus on form, makes the poems in Public Abstract resistant to the question, “What’s this poem about?”—a question that prefers explanation to experience, and one that…

Year of the Rabbit Unlike the churning shit-show-roar of whateverthat was we just left behind, this year, onlinechatter tells me, will be one of contemplationand hope. Maybe. Right now, I’m holding stillthe best I can, having followed once again thissame path to this same hill with its one treeI can’t name, accompanied by Gloria the pug,harbinger of nothing, prowl-snorting for any scrapshe can find. I’m trying to hold still, to allow someof what the world gives back just now to summona faith in change—pug pant, wind rummagingbranches, bird fussing with a length of yarn,Pleasant Street traffic slosh—but truth be toldthis half-ass attempt at mindfulness isn’t offeringmuch. Last week, I wrote to a friend whosehusband’s body has betrayed him again and, as ifI’d forgotten the way words work, was surprisedhow weightless…

Lavender Hymn Milton Lake, Rahway, NJ Two girls, side by side and turningtowards each other. Her two fingers onher left hand, and there they are,forehead to forehead. I am rooting for them, fromwhere I kneel in the grass. I digmy toes into the soil and praythat what’s between them growsdeep into the earth. Meditations in an Emergency After Frank O’Hara and June 24, 2022 It’s a beautiful day to beterrified, don’t you think?Everything outside looks morealive than usual. This morning,with the bird songs, people withovaries call out to their ownkind. They gather bluebells,poppies, daisies and baby’s breath—flowers that are equally beautiful in lifeand death. Am I the assholefor hating straight womenwho wish that they were gay? Ora hypocrite who secretly knowsqueerness is convenient, too.From the pendulum of mydesire, honey drips…

One Hundred Demons It’s Tuesday and my partner tells meI smell of vacation—so, salt, pine needles,perhaps cantaloupe—depending onthe Tuesday. As a child in the woods,I woke every morning to bad hair daysand mountain breath. Rain-water collectedin gullies of blue tarps slung over cordsof firewood, upturned lids of trash cans,abandoned cement buckets. Stagnantand ever breeding, I watched the mosquitosborn to the hot greens of Pennsylvaniain summer. Each bite as insatiableand swelling as the last. Before we burnedthe hide of a poached bear, my jalapeñogarden burned bright with capsaicin. Marco, our neighbor, showed me howto tend the heat, and sat me downto watch The Godfather, parts one throughthree, Casablanca, too. There are lessonsto be learned from the Italian men that findfamily wherever they look. Twenty yearslater, Marco will die from an unidentifiedinfection…

because she’d already answered the calling she knewwhat threats were on the other line. There was no need to add ringing to that already in her ears:the bangs of 16 errant bullets bouncing against her eardrums;the drumming of the police officer’s blackjack,held in one black inmate’s hand and then another’s,against her exposed body at the Law’s order. What didn’t kill herdidn’t kill her, so she wheeled on toward freedom—with the Freedom Ballot,Freedom Summer—singing hymns to her comrades the whole bus ride. By the time they arrived in Atlantic City for the DNC,the convention hall was buzzing. There was a pulsethat defied death as she did any other day. Fannie Loucame to represent, to inoculate a Mississippi strainof illiberalism within the democracy, to take a literal seatat the proverbial table that…

Books Vexations by Annelyse Gelman University of Chicago Press, Phoenix Poets, 2023 paperback, 56 pages, $18.00 Maybe the world should end as it began, in verse recited by a poet. Homer in a folding chair staring blindly at the sea, Troy’s towers burning behind his eyes. Twins of the Popol Vuh. Gilgamesh and Beowulf. Verse around which our notion of what a world might be is woven. In a day and age in which apocalyptic novels and shows dominate our attention, Annelyse Gelman’s Vexations reminds me, across 1320 lines of brilliant verse, that a poem—built whole by enjambment’s continual breakage, that knows A no longer leads to the easy logic of B then C—alone is the form that can tell us this story: the story of an end. Vexations…