[The famous poets came for us they came on us or some of us] by Diane Seuss

[The famous poets came for us they came on us or some of us]

 

The famous poets came for us they came on us or some of us

at least on some of us they did not come their poems were beautiful

or not but either way we learned to call them beautiful they came

like honeybees to hyacinths to some of us they came in some of us

the ones they called unreadable but fuckable or readable and fuckable

others were unfuckable the flip the fat the fierce the frayed the flawed

the frail the flunky the funny-looking radical unshaved the frumps

the flabs the poets came for us their genius sprayed on us they preyed

on us they said they’d pray for us like honeybees they dumped their load

of gold on us like god they shot their wad on us they called us sweeter

than their wives with softer skin they called their wives by telephone

their hands over our mouths to muffle us they shuffled us like decks

of playing cards and settled into hotel beds their socks and underwear

and undershirts cast upon the shore and then we’d stumble out the door

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart by Jack Gilbert

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,

and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,

God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words

Get it wrong. We say bread and it means according

to which nation. French has no word for home,

and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people

in northern India is dying out because their ancient

tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost

vocabularies that might express some of what

we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would

finally explain why the couples on their tombs

are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands

of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,

they seemed to be business records. But what if they

are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve

Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.

O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,

as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor.

Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts

of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred

pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what

my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this

desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script

is not a language but a map. What we feel most has

no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.

Poof by Amy Gerstler

Poof

 

Here on my lap, in a small plastic bag,

my share of your ashes. Let me not squander 

them. Your family blindsided me with this gift. 

We want to honor your bond they said at the end 

of your service, which took place, as you’d 

arranged, in a restaurant at the harbor,

an old two-story boathouse made of dark 

wood. Some of us sat on the balcony, on black 

leather bar stools, staring at rows of docked boats. 

Both your husbands showed up and got along. 

And of course your impossibly handsome son. 

After lunch, a slideshow and testimonials, 

your family left to toss their share of you 

onto the ocean, along with some flowers.  

 

You were the girlfriend I practiced kissing 

with in sixth grade during zero-sleep 

sleepovers. You were the pretty one. 

In middle school I lived on diet Coke and 

your sexual reconnaissance reports. In this 

telling of our story your father never hits 

you or calls you a whore. Always gentle 

with me, he taught me to ride a bike after 

everyone said I was too klutzy to learn. 

In this version we’re not afraid of our bodies. 

In this fiction, birth control is easy to obtain, 

and never fails. You still dive under a stall 

divider in a restroom at the beach to free me 

after I get too drunk to unlock the door. You still 

reveal the esoteric mysteries of tampons. You 

still learn Farsi and French from boyfriends 

as your life ignites. In high school I still guide you 

safely out of the stadium when you start yelling 

that the football looks amazing as it shatters

into a million shimmering pieces, as you 

loudly admit that you just dropped acid.  

 

We lived to be sixty. Then poof, you vanished. 

I can’t snort you, or dump you out over my head, 

coating myself in your dust like some hapless cartoon 

character who’s just blown herself up, yet remains 

unscathed, as is the way in cartoons. In this version, 

I remain in place for a while. Did you have a good 

journey? I’m still lagging behind, barking up all 

the wrong trees, whipping out my scimitar far 

in advance of what the occasion demands. As I 

drive home from your memorial, you fizz in 

my head like a distant radio station. What 

can I do to bridge this chasm between us? 

In this fiction, I roll down the window, drive 

uncharacteristically fast. I tear your baggie 

open with my teeth and release you at 85 

miles an hour, music cranked up full blast.

The Facts of Art by Natalie Diaz

The Facts of Art

                                             woven plaque basket with sunflower design, Hopi, 

                                             Arizona, before 1935

                                             from an American Indian basketry exhibit in

                                             Portsmouth, Virginia

The Arizona highway sailed across the desert—

     a gray battleship drawing a black wake,

            halting at the foot of the orange mesa,

                  unwilling to go around.

Hopi men and women—brown, and small, and claylike

      —peered down from their tabletops at yellow tractors, water trucks,

            and white men blistered with sun—red as fire ants—towing

                  sunscreen-slathered wives in glinting Airstream trailers

                         in caravans behind them.

Elders knew these bia roads were bad medicine—knew too

     that young men listen less and less, and these young Hopi men

           needed work, hence set aside their tools, blocks of cottonwood root

                 and half-finished Koshari the clown katsinas, then

                        signed on with the Department of Transportation,

were hired to stab drills deep into the earth’s thick red flesh

     on First Mesa, drive giant sparking blades across the mesas’ faces,

           run the drill bits so deep they smoked, bearding all the Hopi men

                 in white—Bad spirits, said the Elders—

The blades caught fire, burned out—Ma’saw is angry, the Elders said.

     New blades were flown in by helicopter. While Elders dreamed

            their arms and legs had been cleaved off and their torsos were flung

                  over the edge of a dinner table, the young Hopi men went

                         back to work cutting the land into large chunks of rust.

Nobody noticed at first—not the white workers,

     not the Indian workers—but in the mounds of dismantled mesa,

           among the clods and piles of sand,

                 lay the small gray bowls of babies’ skulls.

Not until they climbed to the bottom did they see

     the silvered bones glinting from the freshly sliced dirt-and-rock wall—

           a mausoleum mosaic, a sick tapestry: the tiny remains

                 roused from death’s dusty cradle, cut in half, cracked,

                        wrapped in time-tattered scraps of blankets.

Let’s call it a day, the white foreman said.

     That night, all the Indian workers got sad-drunk—got sick

          —while Elders sank to their kivas in prayer. Next morning,

                as dawn festered on the horizon, state workers scaled the mesas,

                        knocked at the doors of pueblos that had them, hollered

                               into those without them,

demanding the Hopi men come back to work—then begging them—

     then buying them whiskey—begging again—finally sending their white

          wives up the dangerous trail etched into the steep sides

                to buy baskets from Hopi wives and grandmothers

                       as a sign of treaty.

When that didn’t work, the state workers called the Indians lazy,

      sent their sunhat-wearing wives back up to buy more baskets—

           katsinas too—then called the Hopis good-for-nothings, 

                 before begging them back once more.

We’ll try again in the morning, the foreman said.

     But the Indian workers never returned—

          The bias and dots calls to work went unanswered,

                as the fevered Hopis stayed huddled inside.

The small bones half-buried in the crevices of mesa—

     in the once-holy darkness of silent earth and always-night—

          smiled or sighed beneath the moonlight, while white women

                in Airstream trailers wrote letters home

praising their husbands’ patience, describing the lazy savages:

     such squalor in their stone and plaster homes—cobs of corn stacked

         floor to ceiling against crumbling walls—their devilish ceremonies

               and the barbaric way they buried their babies,

                      oh, and those beautiful, beautiful baskets.