The American Poetry Review January/February 2024

If They Wanted To For Tina Turner If they wanted to, they would. They’ve certainly built a fine table for themselves. Only the best favela linen and shanty pottery for them! Not that she cares one way or another. Or at least that’s the face she puts on. You should see the people they invite over for their weekend brunches. Shaking a lot of unclean hands and on the next banking day they’re summoned to deliver a harmonizing message about the eternal virtues of having faith and patience in cultural and state politics. He wants attention like any man. She’s in her place as the selfless woman beside her Maker. Of course she regularly says it was her choice. Feminism is all about choice these days. Or is there such…

“the possibility of joy in the face of death” —Georges Bataille I. Couldn’t get “I” nor “we” to settle down, stay unresolved in time in crisp white burial shirts could do bouts of theatrical weeping weary though exacting avant garde gestures of the carpenter ant (stoop-start-stop-dive) before they go underground to breathe miracle teachings, storm drain of the bye, bye, now, honey, whispery slow part of the blues song to sour our morals in the grey oyster wet of the rain weather’s excavation of a childhood doll, hello beautiful hello so many windows in the side of a grave and then an unveiling of an absolute shadow side, storm drain’s fungal spore glow worms neon green face up in expanding gasses in small voids between soil’s particles before emerging from…

Triple Sonnet for Taking the Money and Taking That Exit Rosebud asks me if I can just take the moneyand run when I tell her about the Sugar Daddiesof Instagram™ hitting me up, taking me backto my mid-twenties in Tempe, Arizona whenall the single dads of the neighborhood wouldtry to come into my yard—into my pool, and whatis it with pools and drama in film? It’s that touchof blue—David Hockney me, why don’t you,a little splash, like we’re lovers painting eachother on canvas. And in my early twenties, Idared a much older lover to throw me againsta museum wall, taking me right then and there.Right then and there. Right here and now, he saidin the museum elevator. Fade screen out. It’s all buttons to push anyway. Are you cute asa…

I. Overhearing an argument, something beneathmy cheeks like heat, like cowbells.I am at my most probable, most liquid,suddenly. I come when called. II. Over dinner, a man, melting, sells American pillowsthrough the television. The napkins are of a thick paper.The dishware, all rounded, the color of most bandages.I am impressed by my convincing father and loyal mother.Their face veins make clear they are not lying to themselves,not themselves. Faithfully, I am a large shardmade of their smaller shards. If you were toturn my ears inside out: hot skin, sleep, only trust your family. III. My father used to blow glass in California, sell plated jewelryfrom a dark grey suitcase, have regrets. My mother workedfor Eastern Air Lines and ate very little. Now, my mother livesalone and with my father in…

Have You Been Long Enough at Table is a debut collection that reminds us that for whom we write can be as essential as why. These are poems that can feel like eavesdropping, specific and intimate, curbed of excess exposition. Sometimes, I believe myself to be the audience and sometimes a witness to someone else’s exchange. Which leads to the question, who else is listening and when? In a collection that navigates Cuban American history, political instability, climate change, and their interlinked potential for displacement, where and when does language bring us? Throughout the collection, Sainz weaves a series of sonnets that address the orisha, but each invocation speaks widely toward the experience of exile and diaspora, with a speaker firmly aware of her own palimpsest: “I’ve left my outline…

Cloud’s Song Why don’t you openthe red gingham curtains now?It’s morning again. Get your hiking boots laced.Coffee percolatesthe scent of your homemade life. You can surrender yourselfto your mistakes. I willbe your witness. Isn’t that why you sent mefrom your childhood skyacross time and space? I set sail on the skyover the Catskills, overthe Green Mountains, traveling out to go in,the trail map left by thosewho came before. Each blazed blue markerpainted on a tree where the routeturns toward the summit is where you can leavea mistake behind. Go upwardover the ridge of falling stones. The closer you get to the peakyour mistakes will sink intothe carrion and moss and make you stronger and more mystic.Why do you think I merelyhide the presence of God? You can be yourselfin any…