To My Seventeen-Year-Old Self by Edward Hirsch

To My Seventeen-Year-Old Self

 

Your friends are sniffing glue

from a paper bag

in the back of an Impala

tooling around Niles

and Morton Grove

looking for something

to escape

whatever boredom

or childhood damage

everyone suffers,

but don’t get high

with them

in a sputtering car

that your girlfriend

refuses to enter,

don’t lie to her

after she moves away

and lie down with her friend,

don’t sob in the locker room

after the game

or lose your mind

from repeated blows

to the head

on the football field

at Niles West High School,

I mean whatever locker

you hit or don’t hit

in desperation

born of the suburbs,

just stand and wait

for the unexpected night

when poetry climbs through

the unlocked window

in the basement

of the split-level house

on Sherwin Avenue

and sits down at your desk.

Equator by Robin Coste Lewis

Equator

 

One day I come out onto a street in New York. A very old man is on the sidewalk selling antique maps. I smile. I walk up to him.

 

“Sir, do you have any of the Arctic?”

 

His eyes look into mine more deeply now. For one quick second, we make love, the way strangers who are not really strangers—they just have never met before—touch each other deep inside with their eyes.

 

“Of course I do, Darling,” he says in a thick and gorgeous Urdu accent. “But,” he hesitates, and holds up his index finger: “I have only one.”

 

We smile at each other. We are suddenly in love, and we understand our whole love affair—from beginning to end—will take place right here, between our words, for only these few moments.

 

I look at the map. On the small sheet of paper, there are two frames: the North Pole is on top, the South Pole on the bottom. All the water is white. The scattered lands are green. Besides the fine black print, these are the only colors. In large bold letters across the middle of both poles is the word UNEXPLORED.

 

Later I will think: how like this map I am. The top and bottom of me—both—so unknown. My most essential pivots: uncharted yet toggling in perfect geometry. My heart a country called Greenland, yet always covered in ice. My brain an Iceland, but greener than every sea. Prehistoric elephants embedded beneath my skin, along with carved ivory ornaments ten thousand years old that belonged to me when I was someone’s wife during the last ice age. Always something in me freezing harder, while another part insists on melting. And then this equator in the middle of my body—so hot, so lush—I can visit, but only for a day.

 

I buy the map. It is fifteen dollars. The man and I smile at each other. His face is a whole flock of starlings, which suddenly alights upon me—me, bare winter tree. In one minute, we have lived fifty years together. In one minute, we’ve had ten children. I’ve tended a goat and brought him a cup of its frothy milk. He’s covered my head with a white muslin scarf, then stood beside me while we cremated my father. We’ve grown gray together. I have loved his body and mind thoroughly. I say goodbye. I rub red ochre into the middle part of my hair. I throw garlands of marigolds into his casket before the moment closes the lid.

An Alcoholic Enters the Gates of Heaven by Czesław Miłosz

An Alcoholic Enters the Gates of Heaven

 

What kind of man I was to be you’ve known since the beginning,

since the beginning of every creature.

 

It must be horrible to be aware, simultaneously,

of what is, what was,

and what will be.

 

I began my life confident and happy,

certain that the Sun rose every day for me

and that flowers opened for me every morning.

I ran all day in an enchanted garden.

 

Not suspecting that you had picked me from the Book of Genes

for another experiment altogether.

As if there were not proof enough

that free will is useless against destiny.

 

Under your amused glance I suffered

like a caterpillar impaled on the spike of a blackthorn.

The terror of the world opened itself to me.

 

Could I have avoided escape into illusion?

Into a liquor which stopped the chattering of teeth

and melted the burning ball in my breast

and made me think I could live like others?

 

I realized I was wandering from hope to hope

and I asked you, All Knowing, why you torture me.

Is it a trial like Job’s, so that I call faith a phantom

and say: You are not, nor do your verdicts exist,

and the earth is ruled by accident?

 

Who can contemplate

simultaneous, a-billion-times-multiplied pain?

 

It seems to me that people who cannot believe in you

deserve our praise.

 

But perhaps because you were overwhelmed by pity,

you descended to the earth

to experience the condition of mortal creatures.

 

Bore the pain of crucifixion for a sin, but committed by whom?

 

I pray to you, for I do not know how not to pray.

 

Because my heart desires you,

though I do not believe you would cure me.

 

And so it must be, that those who suffer will continue to suffer,

praising your name.

(Translated by Czesław Miłosz and Robert Haas)

Privilege of Being by Robert Hass

Privilege of Being

 

Many are making love. Up above, the angels

in the unshaken ether and crystal

of human longing

are braiding one another’s hair, which is

strawberry blond

and the texture of cold rivers. They glance

down from time to time at the awkward ecstasy--

it must look to them like featherless birds

splashing in the spring puddle of a bed--

and then one woman, she is about to come,

peels back the man’s shut eyelids and says,

look at me, and he does. Or is it the man

tugging the curtain rope in that dark theater?

Anyway, they do, they look at each other;

two beings with evolved eyes, rapacious,

startled, connected at the belly

in an unbelievably sweet

lubricious glue, stare at each other,

and the angels are desolate. They hate it. They

shudder pathetically

like lithographs of Victorian beggars

with perfect features and alabaster

skin hawking rags

in the lewd alleys of the novel.

All of creation is offended by this distress.

It is like the keening sound

the moon makes sometimes,

rising. The lovers especially cannot bear it,

it fills them with unspeakable sadness, so that

they close their eyes again and hold

each other, each

feeling the mortal singularity of the body

they have enchanted out of death

for an hour or so,

and one day, running at sunset, the woman

says to the man,

I woke up feeling so sad this morning

because I realized

that you could not, as much as I love you,

dear heart, cure my loneliness,

wherewith she touched his cheek to reassure him

that she did not mean to hurt him with this truth.

And the man is not hurt exactly,

he understands that life has limits, that people

die young, fail at love,

fail of their ambitions. He runs beside

her, he thinks

of the sadness they have gasped and crooned

their way out of

coming, clutching each other with old, invented

forms of grace and clumsy gratitude, ready

to be alone again, or dissatisfied, or merely

companionable like the couples

on the summer beach

reading magazine articles about intimacy

between the sexes

to themselves, and to each other,

and to the immense, illiterate, consoling angels.

  

What Did You Leave Behind by Solmaz Sharif

What Did You Leave Behind

A pool

lined

with evergreens,

 

needles falling

into the water,

floor

 

painted a milky

jade. A car

in the driveway.

 

A mother.

 

Another mother.

 

A cockatiel

in the hallway

squawking

 

next to the plastic

slippers.

Glass

 

after beveled glass.

Secret

after beveled secret.

 

Letters from a

first crush

now dead.

 

Killed.

We wanted

to be asked

 

of these things.

We spent

much of our lives

 

imagining.

 

To tell of them

was to live

again.

 

We rathered

and rathered,

 

scraping the soft

moss

off

 

the gravestones

of our early

dead—

A Course in Miracles by Meg Freitag

A Course in Miracles

 

Forgive yourself the fire you set in your trash can

And the lemons you stole from the tree in the churchyard.

Forgive yourself what money you spent

On drugs. Forgive yourself the days that soured

Before you had a chance to open them up.

Forgive yourself the melon liqueur

You poured hastily into the grass on the side

Of the highway, and the animal you left for dead.

Forgive yourself the ages of swelling, the ages

Of eating only what’s meant to make you thirsty.

Forgive yourself the fires you didn’t even try

To put out in time. Forgive yourself the ghosts

That follow you around like skinny shelter cats,

And the sugar water you feed them

And the little velvet box you place them in

Before you get into bed each night so that they’ll stay.

 

Vita Nova by Louise Glück

Vita Nova

 

You saved me, you should remember me.

 

The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats.

Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms.

 

When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling.

 

I remember sounds like that from my childhood,   

laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful,

something like that.

 

Lugano. Tables under the apple trees.

Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags.

And by the lake’s edge, a young man throws his hat into the water;

perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him.

 

Crucial

sounds or gestures like

a track laid down before the larger themes

 

and then unused, buried.

 

Islands in the distance. My mother   

holding out a plate of little cakes—

 

as far as I remember, changed

in no detail, the moment

vivid, intact, having never been

exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age   

hungry for life, utterly confident—

 

By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green   

pieced into the dark existing ground.

 

Surely spring has been returned to me, this time   

not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet   

it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.

The Last Days of April by James Tate

The Last Days of April

 

Through the ceiling comes

the rain to cool my love

and me. The lime carpeting

 

darkens, and when we cross

to retrieve our glasses

of gin from the mantle, our

 

feet sink as into drifts

of leaves. We have a deep

thirst, for it is the end

 

of April, and we know that

a great heat is coming soon

to deaden these passions. 

The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes

The Dream Keeper

 

Bring me all of your dreams,

You dreamers,

Bring me all of your

Heart melodies

That I may wrap them

In a blue cloud-cloth

Away from the too-rough fingers

Of the world.

The Death of Poetry by Ada Limón

The Death of Poetry

 

Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower

and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot,

enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy

and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis

of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god

not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds,

enough of the will to go on and not go on or how

a certain light does a certain thing, enough

of the kneeling and the rising and the looking

inward and the looking up, enough of the gun,

the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost

letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and

the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough

of the mother and the child and the father and the child

and enough of the pointing to the world, weary

and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border,

enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough

I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate,

enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high

water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease,

I am asking you to touch me.

Theology of a Mosquito by William Olsen

Theology of a Mosquito

 

A thorn for a mouth, thirst for belief

          and brevity for a god—

imagine putting that face on even a day.

There Is Absolutely Nothing Lonelier by Matthew Rohrer

There Is Absolutely Nothing Lonelier

 

There is absolutely nothing lonelier

than the little Mars rover

never shutting down, digging up

rocks, so far away from Bond street

in a light rain. I wonder

if he makes little beeps? If so

he is lonelier still. He fires a laser

into the dust. He coughs. A shiny

thing in the sand turns out to be his.

[I hope when it happens] by Diane Seuss

[I hope when it happens]

 

I hope when it happens I have time to say oh so this is how it is happening

 

unlike Frank hit by a jeep on Fire Island but not like dad who knew too

 

long six goddamn years in a young man’s life so long it made a sweet guy sarcastic

 

I want enough time to say oh so this is how I’ll go and smirk at that last rhyme

 

I rhymed at times because I wanted to make something pretty especially for Mikel

 

who liked pretty things soft and small things who cried into a white towel when I hurt

 

myself when it happens I don’t want to be afraid I want to be curious was Mikel curious

 

I’m afraid by then he was only sad he had no money left was living on green oranges

 

had kissed all his friends goodbye I kissed lips that kissed Frank’s lips though not

 

for me a willing kiss I willingly kissed lips that kissed Howard’s deathbed lips

 

I happily kissed lips that kissed lips that kissed Basquiat’s lips I know a man who said

 

he kissed lips that kissed lips that kissed lips that kissed Whitman’s

 

lips who will say of me I kissed her who will say of me I kissed someone who kissed

 

her or I kissed someone who kissed someone who kissed someone who kissed her.

The Notes by Victoria Chang

The Notes

 

I stay in bed and

listen for any music.

Today is cheerful,

it has overshot itself

and is tomorrow.

I’m left behind, waiting for

the birds to return.

They’ve moved on. I now know that

being birdless doesn’t hurt.