The American Poetry Review July/August 2024

Once a year I give myself permission to indulge in real tenderness. I dip an overripe fig in honey and eat it with yogurt. Then I allow some man to worship me. I make him go down on two knees and pray. “Pray for what?” he’d whisper. “Pray for whatever you like, as long as you pray to me,” I’d reply. “I am your goddess.” Then I’d fan my hair out on my bed, splay my legs, and he’d dip his head down, put his palms together, and purse his lips in concentration. Sometimes he wouldn’t know what to pray for, because his prayers had been answered. Sometimes he’d recite a novena he remembered from childhood. Sometimes he would take too long, and I’d watch him bend against the bed, his…

Metaphysics with Poppies I can’t understand, after years of reading, the relevanceof metaphysics. How does it account for the wants of my mind breaking apart my body? I prefer to think of poppies,the variety fated to bloom blood-red. Or, of planting poppies, any flowers in truth—how they come to us in plastic pots; howafter we shovel them a place in the earth, we extract the flowers from their vessels; how while we lower them downinto their potting hole, ganglionated roots and the dirt compacted around those roots retain the container’s shape. I am interestedin the shape of things. Is that the relevance of metaphysics? You know I’m hiding again, don’t you? Still the boybetween the cedar and the wedge of stone wall where, lying flat, he cannot be seen from…

Lullaby after Stephanie Burt and Poetry Unbound It’s Friday night, dusk, and I bring myself to The Hudsonto breathe. I listen to a poem that is part-prayer: someonewill probably love you; and I watch the clouds sweep over the moon;the poem sweeps into fact, then promise, and here is where I slideinto its sweep: I walk along the river’s lull, watching the mooniridesce and when it pulls through, I stop along the path, in starand in startle, noting the pull of my heart, as I catch the eyeof a stranger in the night, and feel that promise pull tightaround me, within me, thinking, there are ways to re-love somethingand I replay the poem, then I replay the poem of my life, the storyI tell myself, but this time, a little…

Apocalypse meaning: a great disaster.This one is happening slowly (lobsters, a simmering pot).There is time to course correct,but group projects so often end in failure. I admit the end of spring flowers brings me joy in this city forest. When summer revealsher toes in warm light, when snow recedes,and frost-tender field marigolds cede way to coneflowers. I admit I am relentlessly grief-stricken.Transitions take so much. Take, meaning require,meaning dues, meaning something diesso that something else might live. Grief attends such parties.You don’t need a list.But here’s a gift: knuckles, first blood, a mother’sseptuagenarian onion skin. A father’s delayedunderstanding, menopause, human ash, impotence,pill bugs on their backs, other armors,other detritivores and decomposers. We all have jobs to do.All moves on. Praise moving on. I am relentlessly grief-stricken. And enjoyingseems a crime,…

to remember which would require us to leavethis moment already deciding who we will carry with us across all that muted iceall that lonely light which is still just a paintingwhich is still just a mindmissing whoever it has to miss & if the hills dressed themselvesin grey merino repeating meanwhile? & meanwhile a womanstares at the same painting every day for many days? Some call this a narrative problem. Others suggest I try writing that in scene. Late morning in the shady chemo courtyard & you’ve already beaten me once at Gin Rummy & twice at Egyptian Rat Screw although by then your ports were closedyour nails hammered blackyour feet mausoleums. In the dark our eyes adjust. You were sick so sick suchbullets such bucketsof sick. When it rains…

Another Impulse A stick buried in grass is fabulous. Who knows what this means? The sky isa basket woven from shadows more subtle than shadows of the earth. Thisis to say, things are done quietly in the sky sometimes, too. You can partthe ferns and peer into clearings. You can deliver wisdom with force, whennecessary, until wounds heal as soon as they are inflicted. Extinction arriveswrapped in a gorgeous shawl of necessity. On the other side of the worlda stranger snaps her fingers, and you feel the depth and the value and thelength of ancient assimilations. To Dust For Christopher Phelps No one knows why their small bag contains a handful of stonesthat appear to be from another world. Even as it feels as ifsomething is an answer, our cherished…