The Teasers by William Empson

The Teasers

Not but they die, the teasers and the dreams, 

Not but they die, 

and tell the careful flood 

To give them what they clamour for and why. 

You could not fancy where they rip to blood 

You could not fancy 

nor that mud 

I have heard speak that will not cake or dry. 

Our claims to act appear so small to these 

Our claims to act 

colder lunacies 

That cheat the love, the moment, the small fact. 

Make no escape because they flash and die, 

Make no escape

build up your love,

Leave what you die for and be safe to die.

 

Baptism by Erika L. Sánchez

Baptism

 

When the soft mouth of a word unhinges,

it is sticky, it is feral. Beneath the plum tree

I’ve woven my gray hair into a blanket.

Do you think I’m pretty crouched like this?

See, I am my own whore. Watch me

swallow my own fingers. My head a wild tangle

full of creatures. Do you hear that — the lovely hooves

and mangled pianos? The egg I hold inside my chest,

it’s what the darkness ate. In the hot swamp,

in the battering sunlight, I tie my braid

around my neck and bury my name

until it’s silent as a jewel. Feel my salt

burn in the cracks of your lips, feel the fat

pulse of my tender throat.

It’s the shudder of beauty. No,

no, the shutter. Watch me dance

on borders in this dirty dress,

until my wig catches fire. 

 

Florida Again by Randall Mann

Florida Again

             I forgave myself for having had a youth.

                                                    —Thom Gunn 

At the Fashion

Square mall,

back

of Waldenbooks, 

I saw my younger self

haunting

the magazine rack.

Ripping out pages 

of Blueboy,

tucking them 

in a Trapper

Keeper. 

Turn back.

His eyes met mine,

animal

and brittle, 

a form

of gratitude

that a man

kept his stare. 

Any man.

I half-smiled

some admission,

and though 

he couldn’t

see it coming,

I excused him

his acid jeans; 

two Swatch

watches,

two guards.

He, I, 

must have been

nineteen:

sex was “safer”

then— 

scribbles

on the mall

men’s room stall;

malaise 

of saxophone

and PSAs.

How

did I 

even

learn how to live

in 1991?

Landlocked, 

cock-blocked,

Spanish moss

festering.

I forgive him.

 

Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

     The night above the dingle starry,

          Time let me hail and climb

     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

          Trail with daisies and barley

     Down the rivers of the windfall light. 

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

     In the sun that is young once only,

          Time let me play and be

      Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

          And the sabbath rang slowly

     In the pebbles of the holy streams. 

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

     And playing, lovely and watery

          And fire green as grass.

     And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

     Flying with the ricks, and the horses

          Flashing into the dark. 

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

          The sky gathered again

     And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

     Out of the whinnying green stable

          On to the fields of praise. 

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

     In the sun born over and over,

          I ran my heedless ways,

     My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

     Before the children green and golden

          Follow him out of grace, 

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

     In the moon that is always rising,

          Nor that riding to sleep

     I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

          Time held me green and dying

     Though I sang in my chains like the sea. 

 

The Year the Law Changed by Carol Muske-Dukes

The Year the Law Changed

 

Waiting hours, each of us in a curtain-stall.

Two men outside, mopping the floor and hall,

Shouting “Murderers!” at us. Were they janitors?

Or medics who’d read our charts & diagnosed?

If men could get pregnant, it would end up

a sacrament, Gloria said. Simone said We

know that no woman takes it lightly. So

could both be true. In class in San Francisco

our teacher spoke of his wife who lost

a child to leukemia, haunted by her ghost

& told by her shrink to write about blood.

She wrote about a vampire and her book shot

to fame so maybe she forgot the one who

never grew into her name. When my name

was called I went to have it done and then knew

I had my life back but covered myself with blood —

mine and some not — but still of me. I don’t know

what I mean by “of me,” it’s undefined & even

the shouting accusers won’t cross that line. I had to

swear I was clinically mad to have it done. What’s

madness to the men in white: they clean the world

of residue like me and all the blood from both of us. 

 

A Few Words on the Soul by Wisława Szymborska

A Few Words on the Soul

We have a soul at times.

No one’s got it non-stop,

for keeps.

 

Day after day,

year after year

may pass without it.

 

Sometimes

it will settle for awhile

only in childhood’s fears and raptures.

Sometimes only in astonishment

that we are old.

 

It rarely lends a hand

in uphill tasks,

like moving furniture,

or lifting luggage,

or going miles in shoes that pinch.

 

It usually steps out

whenever meat needs chopping

or forms have to be filled.

 

For every thousand conversations

it participates in one,

if even that,

since it prefers silence.

 

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,

it slips off-duty.

 

It’s picky:

it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,

our hustling for a dubious advantage

and creaky machinations make it sick.

 

Joy and sorrow

aren’t two different feelings for it.

It attends us

only when the two are joined.

 

We can count on it

when we’re sure of nothing

and curious about everything.

 

Among the material objects

it favors clocks with pendulums

and mirrors, which keep on working

even when no one is looking.

 

It won’t say where it comes from

or when it’s taking off again,

though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

 

We need it

but apparently

it needs us

for some reason too.

(Translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh)

 

To a Straight Man by Eduardo C. Corral

To a Straight Man

All zodiac all 

        radar your voice

                I carried it

across the Atlantic

        to Barcelona

                I photographed

cathedrals

        cacti mosaic

                salamanders

I even photo-

        graphed my lust

                always

your voice skimming

        a woman’s skin

                mattress springs

so noisy so birdlike

        you filled her room

                with cages

camera bright

        in my pocket map

                unfolding

in my mind

        I explored a park

                leaves notched

& enormous

        graffitied boulders

                then

three men

                tall & clean

closed in

        they broke open

                my body

with their fists

        insufferable

                your red wool cap

insufferable the way

        you walked

                away from me

come back please

        the buttons

                on your jacket

are finches

        I wanted to yell

                as you vanished

into a hotel

        to drink with

                your friends

there was nothing

        more

                you could do

after my attackers left

        before I got up

                I touched my face

almost tenderly

 

Remaking the Music Box by Geoffrey Hilsabeck

Remaking the Music Box

 

First unhurt the accidents.

Plant yourself in what remains

dressed in bright colors a brightly colored urn.

Hear a frequency distant, spectral.

 

Lay down newspaper

(like the roses covering your bones)

and drag your palm across the surface

as if it were a horse’s heaving flank.

 

Be proud, disagreeable, hidden, joyful, bewildered:

you’ll need a Kent

to carry your rainbow, a Fool to insist that a

rainbow is just a rusty parabola.

 

No sadness just disaster

no meanness just thrift.

Out of nothing something and out of something

nothing: all in a day’s work. 

 

The Cry by Paisley Rekdal

The Cry

A man can cry, all night, your back

shaking against me as your mother

sleeps, hooked to the drip

to clear her kidneys from their muck

of sleeping pills. Each one white

as the snapper’s belly I once watched a man

gut by the ice bins in his truck, its last 

bubbling grunt cleaved in two

with a knife. The way my uncle’s rabbit

growled in its cage, screamed

so like a child that when I woke the night

a fox chewed through the wires

to reach it, I thought it was my own voice

frozen in the yard. And then the fox,

trapped later by a neighbor, who thrashed

and barked, as did the crows

that came for its eyes: the sound

of one animal’s pain setting off a chain

in so many others, until each cry dissolves

into the next grown louder. 

Even if I were blind

I would know night by the noise it made:

our groaning bed, the mewling

staircase, drapes that scrape

against glass panes behind which

stars rise, blue and silent.

But not even the stars

are silent: their pale waves

echo through space, the way my father’s

disappointment sags at my cheek,

and his brother’s anger

whitens his temple. And these

are your mother’s shoulders shaking

in my arms tonight, her thin breath

that drags at our window

where coyotes cry: one calling to the next

calling to the next, their tender throats

tipped back to the sky.

 

Endangered Species by Dan Beachy-Quick

Endangered Species

 

Even this

brief thought is endless. A

man speaks as if unaware of the

erotic life of the ampersand. In the

isolate field he comes to count one by

one the rare butterflies as they

die. He says witness is to say what

you mean as if you mean it. So many

of them are the color of the leaves

they feed on, he calls sympathy a fact, a

word by which he means to make a claim

about grace. I have in my

 

life said many things I did not

exactly mean. Walk

graceless through the field. Graceless so

the insects leap up into the blank

page where the margins fill

with numbers that speak diminishment.

Absence as it nears also offers astonishment.

Absence riddles even this

briefest thought, here

is your introduction to desire, time’s

underneath where the roots root down

into nothing like loose threads

hanging from the weaving’s underside.

No one seeing the roots

can guess

 

at the field above. Green

equation that ends in yellow

occasions. Theory is

insubstantial. The eye latches on

to the butterflies as they fly

and the quick heart follows, not

a root in nothing but a thread across

abstraction. They fly away.

What in us follows we do not name.

What the butterflies pull out us

as in battle horses pull

chariot, we do not

 

name. But there is none, no battle,

no surge, no retreat, a field

full not of danger, but the endangered,

where dust-wings pull from us

what we thought we lost, what theory

denies, where in us ideas go to die,

and thought with the quaking grass quakes.

Some call it breath but I’m still breathing.

So empty I know I’m not any emptier.

On slim threads they pull it out me,

disperse—no

one takes notes—disappear, &

The American Defense Against Foreign Enemies Act by Lucie Brock-Broido

The American Defense Against Foreign Enemies Act

Why do you feel “most vulnerable.” Where,

In Damascus, were you born. To whom do you

Pray. What does it mean to have winged

Brows. Have you ever spoken through

A mesh. Was it dark speech that you made.

Is it hot inside your burqa. Who

Was Frank Sinatra. Why was our war

Called “Civil” and who won.

Can you keep a bright gaze. How tall

Was Allah. What once was Palestine.

What most displaces you. Have you visited

Somalia. Have you ever crossed a border

In a boat, by night, to another land.

Sir, in all how many died.

Is your wife considered meek.

Point to Mecca from right here.

Why is our court Supreme.

What does “The Sound and the Fury”

Mean to you. Who was Huckleberry Finn.

Has your husband ever travelled to Afghanistan.

In Sharia, when a woman’s hair is loose,

Is she a prostitute or slave.

Do you understand what “Red State” means.

Do you speak American. Here,

Read that aloud.

Do you have tattoos. What does

Paranoia mean. In what season

Do we vote for President. How much freedom

Does the First Amendment cost.

Which is the tallest tree. You were once

A doctor; how is it, as you say, you’ve

Come to selling vegetables.

How tall was Jesus in bare feet;

Do you consider him a refugee.

Have you a disease that is contagious.

What are “The Hunger Games.”

Who sang “Moon River” best.

Do you have friends or relatives

Who are barbarians.

What is the Blues.

What is a Second Sleep. What

Most once made you weep.

When was Lincoln. Who is Stephen King.

Explain what “obfuscation” means.

Have you been lashed.

Who were our pilgrims; why did they come.

Have you ever eaten eel.

Why do you bring just one small son.

Where are the other ones.

What are your other sons.

 

The Surly One by Theodore Roethke

The Surly One

1

When true love broke my heart in half,

I took the whiskey from the shelf,

And told my neighbors when to laugh

I keep a dog, and bark myself.

2

Ghost cries out to ghost–

But whose afraid of that?

I feel those shadows most

That start from my own feet.

 

Accidental Pastoral by Maggie Smith

Accidental Pastoral

I must have just missed a parade—

horse droppings and hard candy

in the road, miniature American

flags staked into the grass, plastic

chairs lining the curb down this

two-lane highway, 36 in the open

country, briefly Main Street in town.

When I was small, I sat on a curb

only a dozen miles from here, my feet

in the ashtray-dirty gutter, and watched

stars-and-stripes girls wheeling

their batons, slicing the sun-dumb

air into streamers. I can still hear

the click of cellophaned candies

on pavement. I didn’t want to

leave town, not then, and I never left.

I am not a parade, my one car passing

through Centerburg, Ohio, too late.

The chairs are empty. The children

are unwrapping golden butterscotches

in the cool, shuttered houses.

But look up—the clouds are stories

tall, painted above Webb’s Marathon,

and flat-bottomed as if resting on something

they push against though it holds them.

 

Independence Day by Gerald Stern

Independence Day

There were packs of dogs to deal with and broomsticks

whacking rubber balls and everyone stopping for

aeroplanes and chasing fire engines

and standing around where sidewalks on hills turned almost

level, and horses and horseshit, and ice in the cellars;

and Saturday I wore a dark suit and leaned

against my pillar and Sunday I put on a necktie

and stood in front of a drugstore eating a Clark bar.

The Fourth of July I stayed in my attic resting in

filthy cardboard and played with my bats, I stretched

their bony wings, and put a burning match

to the bundle of papers, especially to the ropes

that held them together, and read the yellow news

as it went up in smoke and spoke for the fly and raged

against the spider, say what you will, and started

my drive to Camden to look at the house on Mickle Street

and walked—with him—down to the river to skip

some stones, since Ty Cobb did it and Jim Thorpe did it

though it was nothing compared to George Washington

throwing silver dollars, and for our fireworks

we found some brown beer bottles and ran down Third Street

screaming, but he had to go back home and sit

in his rocking chair for there was a crowd of Lithuanians

coming and he was a big hit in Vilnius

the way he sat in his mound of papers and gripped

the arms, though I was tired of Lithuanians

who didn’t know shit, not to mention Romanians,

to pick a country out of a hat—or I was

just tired and Anne Marie was right, I shouldn’t

be driving at night, I should be dead, I don’t

even know how to give instructions, I don’t even know

my rabbi’s name—she and her motorcycle—

imagine them speaking Babylonian over

my shoebox—imagine them throwing flowers—fleabane,

black-eyed Susans, daisies—along with the dirt.

 

The Galleons by Rick Barot

The Galleons

 

The galleons want to go to the opera

because they want to hear emotions as big as their emotions.

 

When the spurned lover sings

his booming aria, they think of the oceans that cover

 

the world almost completely.

When the young maid sings her way

 

to being the queen of a kingdom,

they think of the months-long journeys that will pick off

 

their crews one by one, in terrifying

weather followed by boredom. And then the galleons want

 

to shop in the mall in the suburbs.

Everything they see there is like the secrets

 

they once carried in their holds.

Racks of blouses like sacks of gold, tiers of blenders

 

like crates of silver. The food courts

remind them of their full bellies before the trips home,

 

the weight in the center of the body

after it has eaten everything, the stomach glossy and pink

 

as a shopping bag. And then the galleons

want to visit the boy who loves making model boats

 

in the basement that his parents have given up

to his hobby. Wearing a magnifying

 

visor, at a table with glues and tweezers and exact

bits of wood, the boy puts together long ships

 

and carracks in exquisite minute scale.

The galleons approve of the galleon he has been making

 

for months, imagining the huge tonnage

of the actual ships, their cannons arrayed on the sides

 

like judges. And then the galleons, on certain

other days, want to go back to the forests

 

they came from, to reel the blood-soaked narrative

back to the stands of pines and oaks

 

that will become their keels and decking,

hulls and masts. Back to the mountains being mountains,

 

their iron in the ground like gray thoughts.

Back to the birds being birds.

 

Back to the lakes being lakes, deeply shining,

like the black velvet gloves of a prince in an old painting. 

 

Morning Song by Sylvia Plath

Morning Song

 

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry

Took its place among the elements. 

 

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival.  New statue.

In a drafty museum, your nakedness

Shadows our safety.  We stand round blankly as walls. 

 

I’m no more your mother

Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow

Effacement at the wind’s hand. 

 

All night your moth-breath

Flickers among the flat pink roses.  I wake to listen:

A far sea moves in my ear. 

 

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral

In my Victorian nightgown.

Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s.  The window square 

 

Whitens and swallows its dull stars.  And now you try

Your handful of notes;

The clear vowels rise like balloons.