Evening Walk by Charles Simić

Evening Walk

You give the appearance of listening 

To my thoughts, O trees, 

Bent over the road I am walking 

On a late summer evening 

When every one of you is a steep staircase 

The night is slowly descending.

The high leaves like my mother’s lips 

Forever trembling, unable to decide, 

For there’s a bit of wind, 

And it’s like hearing voices, 

Or a mouth full of muffled laughter, 

A huge dark mouth we can all fit in 

Suddenly covered by a hand.

Everything quiet. Light 

Of some other evening strolling ahead, 

Long-ago evening of silk dresses, 

Bare feet, hair unpinned and falling. 

Happy heart, what heavy steps you take 

As you follow after them in the shadows.

The sky at the road’s end cloudless and blue. 

The night birds like children 

Who won’t come to dinner. 

Lost children in the darkening woods.

Summertime by Derrick Austin

Summertime

A pipe burst somewhere. The record kept turning

Porgy and Bess. Granddad sang the old blues tune.

I told him my name. The water was burning

when we went to the coast, green and churning

like collards in the kitchen. It was June.

A pipe burst somewhere. The record kept turning.

He took worm-colored pills at ten in the morning,

sometimes he wandered off. I’d find him at noon,

streets away, calling my name. Water was burning

from Gulf Breeze to Grand Isle, the Gulf swirling

like vinyl. Egrets blackened the bayou.

A pipe burst somewhere. The record kept turning

when we watched the news in the nursing

home: men in white scanned the dunes.

I told him my name, that the water was burning.

He looked through my eyes and sang fish are jumpin. . .

I said his name, washed his feet, left the room.

A pipe burst somewhere. The record kept turning.

I told him my name. The water was burning.

 

The Fury of Sunsets by Anne Sexton

The Fury of Sunsets

Something 

cold is in the air, 

an aura of ice 

and phlegm. 

All day I've built 

a lifetime and now 

the sun sinks to 

undo it. 

The horizon bleeds 

and sucks its thumb. 

The little red thumb 

goes out of sight. 

And I wonder about 

this lifetime with myself, 

this dream I'm living. 

I could eat the sky 

like an apple 

but I'd rather 

ask the first star: 

why am I here? 

why do I live in this house? 

who's responsible? 

eh?

 

Swimming by Carl Phillips

Swimming

Some nights, I rise from the latest excuse for

Why not stay awhile, usually that hour when

the coyotes roam the streets as if they’ve always

owned the place and had come back inspecting now

for damage. But what hasn’t been damaged? History

here means a history of storms rushing the trees

for so long, their bowed shapes seem a kind of star—

worth trusting, I mean, as in how the helmsman,

steering home, knows what star to lean on. Do

people, anymore, even say helmsman? Everything

in waves, or at least wave-like, as when another’s

suffering, being greater, displaces our own, or

I understand it should, which is meant to be

different, I’m sure of it, from that pleasure

Lucretius speaks of, in witnessing from land

a ship foundering at sea, though more and more

it all seems related. I love the nights here. I love

the jetty’s black ghost-finger, how it calms

the harbor, how the fog hanging stranded just

above the water is fog, finally, not the left-behind

parts of those questions from which I half-wish

I could school my mind, desperate cargo,

to keep a little distance. An old map from when

this place was first settled shows monsters

everywhere, once the shore gives out—it can still

feel like that: I dive in, and they rise like faithfulness

itself, watery pallbearers heading seaward, and

I the raft they steady. It seems there’s no turning back.

 

When Lisa Told Me by Roberto Bolaño

When Lisa Told Me

When Lisa told me she’d made love

to someone else, in that old Tepeyac warehouse

phone booth, I thought my world

was over. A tall, skinny guy with

long hair and a long cock who didn’t wait

more than one date to penetrate her deep.

It’s nothing serious, she said, but it’s

the best way to get you out of my life. 

Parménides García Saldaña had long hair and 

could have been Lisa’s lover, but some

years later I found out he’d died in a psych ward

or killed himself. Lisa didn’t want to 

sleep with losers anymore. Sometimes I dream

of her and see her happy and cold in a Mexico

drawn by Lovecraft. We listened to music

(Canned Heat, one of Parménides García Saldaña’s

favorite bands) and then we made

love three times. First, he came inside me, 

then he came in my mouth, and the third time, barely

a thread of water, a short fishing line, between my breasts. And all

in two hours, said Lisa. The worst two hours of my life, 

I said from the other end of the phone.

(Translated by Laura Healy)  

 

Dead Butterfly by Ellen Bass

Dead Butterfly 

For months my daughter carried 

a dead monarch in a quart mason jar. 

To and from school in her backpack, 

to her only friend’s house. At the dinner table 

it sat like a guest alongside the pot roast. 

She took it to bed, propped by her pillow.

Was it the year her brother was born? 

Was this her own too-fragile baby 

that had lived—so briefly—in its glassed world? 

Or the year she refused to go to her father’s house? 

Was this the holding-her-breath girl she became there?

This plump child in her rolled-down socks 

I sometimes wanted to haul back inside me 

and carry safe again. What was her fierce 

commitment? I never understood. 

We just lived with the dead winged thing 

as part of her, as part of us, 

weightless in its heavy jar.

 

Lullaby by Ilya Kaminsky

Lullaby

Little daughter

rainwater-

snow and branches protect you

white-washed wall—

and neighbors’ hands, also

child of my Aprils

little earth of

six pounds—

my white hair

keeps your sleep lit.

 

We Should Make a Documentary About Spades by Terrance Hayes

We Should Make a Documentary About Spades

And here is all we’ll need: a card deck, quartets of sun people

Of the sort found in black college dormitories, some vintage

Music, indiscriminate spirits, fried chicken, some paper,

A writing utensil, and a bottomless Saturday. We should explore

The origins of a derogatory word like spade as well as the word

For feeling alone in polite company. And also the implications

Of calling someone who is not your brother or sister,

Brother or Sister. So little is known of our past, we can imagine

Damn near anything. When I say maybe slaves held Spades

Tournaments on the anti-cruise ships bound for the Colonies,

You say when our ancestors were cooped on those ships

They were not yet slaves. Our groundbreaking film should begin

With a low-lit den in the Deep South and the deep fried voice

Of somebody’s grandmother holding smoke in her mouth

As she says, “The two of Diamonds trumps the two of Spades

In my house.” And at some point someone should tell the story

Where Jesus and the devil are Spades partners traveling

The juke joints of the 1930s. We could interview my uncle Junior

And definitely your skinny cousin Mary and any black man

Sitting at a card table wearing shades. Who do you suppose

Would win if Booker T and MLK were matched against Du Bois

And Malcolm X in a game of Spades? You say don’t talk

Across the table. Pay attention to the suits being played.

The object of the game is to communicate invisibly

With your teammate. I should concentrate. Do you suppose

We are here because we are lonely in some acute diasporafied

Way? This should be explored in our film about Spades.

Because it is one of the ways I am still learning what it is

To be black, tonight I am ready to master Spades. Four players

Bid a number of books. Each team adds the bids

Of the two partners, and the total is the number of books

That team must try to win. Is that not right? This is a game

That tests the boundary between mathematics and magic,

If you ask me. A bid must be intuitive like the itchiness

Of the your upper lip before you sip strange whiskey.

My mother did not drink, which is how I knew something

Was wrong with her, but she held a dry spot at the table

When couples came to play. It’s a scene from my history,

But this probably should not be mentioned in our documentary

About Spades. Renege is akin to the word for the shame

You feel watching someone else’s humiliation. Slapping

A card down must be as dramatic as hitting the face of a drum

With your palm, not hitting the face of a drum with a drumstick.

You say there may be the sort of outrage induced

By liquor, trash talk, and poor strategy, but it will fade

The way a watermark left on a table by a cold glass fades.

I suspect winning this sort of game makes you feel godly.

I’m good and ready for who ever we’re playing

Against tonight. I am trying to imagine our enemy.

I know you are not my enemy. You say there are no enemies

In Spades. Spades is a game our enemies do not play.

Truant by Margaret Hasse

Truant

 

Our high school principal wagged his finger

over two manila folders

lying on his desk, labeled with our names—

my boyfriend and me—

called to his office for skipping school.

 

The day before, we ditched Latin and world history

to chase shadows of clouds on a motorcycle.

We roared down rolling asphalt roads

through the Missouri River bottoms

beyond town, our heads emptied

of review tests and future plans.

 

We stopped on a dirt lane to hear

a meadowlark’s liquid song, smell

heart-break blossom of wild plum.

Beyond leaning fence posts and barbwire,

a tractor drew straight lines across the field

unfurling its cape of blackbirds.

 

Now forty years after that geography lesson

in spring, I remember the principal’s words.

How right he was in saying:

This will be part of

your permanent record.

Prescription by Franz Wright

Prescription

While you lie in bed

watching the movie

of every last terrible

thing you have done, you

consider with high admiration

and envy the one

of unscared face

and conscience come

with his own slip of paper

proclaiming

bearer’s incontrovertible

privilege to sleep,

to ask

and receive it

right now

by sidereal name.