I Dare You by Dorianne Laux

I Dare You

 

It’s autumn, and we’re getting rid

of books, getting ready to retire,

to move some place smaller, more

manageable. We’re living in reverse,

age-proofing the new house, nothing

on the floors to trip over, no hindrances

to the slowed mechanisms of our bodies,

a small table for two. Our world is

shrinking, our closets mostly empty,

gone the tight skirts and dancing shoes,

the bells and whistles. Now, when

someone comes to visit and admires

our complete works of Shakespeare,

the hawk feather in the open dictionary,

the iron angel on a shelf, we say

take them. This is the most important

time of all, the age of divestment,

knowing what we leave behind is

like the fragrance of blossoming trees

that grows stronger after

you’ve passed them, breathing

them in for a moment before

breathing them out. An ordinary

Tuesday when one of you says

I dare you, and the other one

just laughs.

 

It’s autumn, and we’re getting rid

of books, getting ready to retire,

to move some place smaller, more

manageable. We’re living in reverse,

age-proofing the new house, nothing

on the floors to trip over, no hindrances

to the slowed mechanisms of our bodies,

a small table for two. Our world is

shrinking, our closets mostly empty,

gone the tight skirts and dancing shoes,

the bells and whistles. Now, when

someone comes to visit and admires

our complete works of Shakespeare,

the hawk feather in the open dictionary,

the iron angel on a shelf, we say

take them. This is the most important

time of all, the age of divestment,

knowing what we leave behind is

like the fragrance of blossoming trees

that grows stronger after

you’ve passed them, breathing

them in for a moment before

breathing them out. An ordinary

Tuesday when one of you says

I dare you, and the other one

just laughs.

You Want Me Pale by Alfonsina Storni

You Want Me Pale

 

You want me pale,

Made of sea foam,

A mother of pearl.

Made of white lily,

Untouched among the others.

Made of thinning perfume.

Petals sealed.

 

Not touched by moonbeams,

Not called 'sister' by the daisies.

You want me like snow,

You want me white,

You want me pale.

 

You have had all

The cups in your hands,

Flowing fruit and honey,

Staining your lips dark.

You have been in the banquet

Laced with grapevines,

Relinquishing your meat,

Reveling in Bacchus.

You have been in the gardens,

Black with deception,

Wearing red and

Running into ruin.

 

You have kept your

Skeleton intact, and by

Miracles I do not know,

Still expect me to be white

(God forgive you for it),

Still expect me to be spotless

(God forgive you for it),

Still expect me to be pale.

 

So flee into the woods,

Run into the mountains;

Clean your mouth;

Live in a cottage;

Touch the damp earth

With your hands;

Nourish your body with

The bitter root;

Drink, like Moses,

From the rocks;

Sleep upon the frost;

Rejuvenate your flesh

With saltpetre and water;

Speak with the birds,

Rise with the sun.

And when your body

Has returned to you,

When it's become entangled

In the bedroom of your soul,

Only then, good man,

Can you expect me to be pale,

Expect me to be snow,

Expect me to be untouched.

 

(Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Fletcher)

We Wait by Adam Zagajewski

We Wait

One afternoon

Alfred Cortot plays Chopin

but only on a record

So what

There is eternity

There is delicacy

and dark powers

that drowse

We all wait

what comes next

There is eternity

but it ends soon

Sounds are lightning strokes

they can’t be stopped

We can be stopped

just like that

stop

(Translated by Clare Cavanagh)

My Aunts by Adam Zagajewski

My Aunts

 

Always caught up in what they called 

the practical side of life 

(theory was for Plato), 

up to their elbows in furniture, in bedding, 

in cupboards and kitchen gardens,

they never neglected the lavender sachets 

that turned a linen closet to a meadow. 

 

The practical side of life, 

like the Moon’s unlighted face, 

didn’t lack for mysteries; 

when Christmastime drew near, 

life became pure praxis 

and resided temporarily in hallways, 

took refuge in suitcases and satchels. 

 

And when somebody died--it happened 

even in our family, alas—

my aunts, preoccupied

with death’s practical side, 

forgot at last about the lavender,

whose frantic scent bloomed selflessly 

beneath a heavy snow of sheets.

Don’t just do something, sit there.

And so I have, so I have,

                    the seasons curling around me like smoke,

Gone to the end of the earth and back without sound.

(Translated by Clare Cavanagh)

Without by Joy Harjo

Without

The world will keep trudging through time without us

When we lift from the story contest to fly home

We will be as falling stars to those watching from the edge

Of grief and heartbreak

Maybe then we will see the design of the two-minded creature

And know why half the world fights righteously for greedy masters

And the other half is nailing it all back together

Through the smoke of cooking fires, lovers’ trysts, and endless

Human industry—

Maybe then, beloved rascal

We will find each other again in the timeless weave of breathing

We will sit under the trees in the shadow of earth sorrows

Watch hyenas drink rain, and laugh.

The Wind, One Brilliant Day by Antonio Machado

The Wind, One Brilliant Day

 

The wind, one brilliant day, called

to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

 

“In return for the odor of my jasmine,

I’d like all the odor of your roses.”

 

“I have no roses; all the flowers

in my garden are dead.”

 

“Well then, I’ll take the withered petals

and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.”

 

the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:

“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”

 

(Translated by Robert Bly)

Things My Grandmother Said by Amit Majmudar

Things My Grandmother Said

 

Turmeric can heal anything

but a broken heart.

I’ve got some Benadryl I bet could shush

that dog of yours. Sounds fun

but what does it pay. You can’t shoot

the spots without shooting the leopard.

If dressmaker’s dummies could cook,

we’d all be old maids.

Poetry? You’re grinding water

with a pestle of ice,

but when you’ve never thirsted a day

in your life, I guess

you can play. I know plenty

of family history, but don’t ask me

where green eyes got into the bloodline.

India invented recycling, we called it karma,

but trash now is trash later.

I wasn’t crying, I was dicing onions

in a memory in Ahmedabad.

Every time I stand up

there’s Rice Krispies in my knees.

This girl is perfect for you, I know

her aunt. Read that to me at

my funeral, boy, right now my show is on.

I got to be this old by nibbling a little

raw ginger every morning.

Ambition’s a sinkhole that deepens

the more you dump in it,

but that doesn’t mean don’t get a job.

In the old days, families were so big,

counting nephews felt like counting stars.

Every kite forgets its string.

Sure, the Ganga is holy

but who told you to drink from it?

In the Afterlife by Mark Strand

In the Afterlife

She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn’t. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. When no one remembers, what is there? You, whose moments are gone, who drift like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything.

Loving After Loss by Cass Donish

Loving After Loss

 

for RP

 

when two people kissing             

reinitiate each other’s foundation

—Malva Flores (trans. Jen Hofer)

 

 

 

all night long, the curtain was pulled back

and dawn drew me toward it, through the dark hours

in which, missing you, and feeling the strangeness

of missing you along with her, I swarmed above the pages

of a book searching for a lost syntax that could lead me

to this new form of desire, desire after obliteration,

I shouldn’t overstate this, the death of myself

when she died, I shouldn’t overstate it:

obliteration

 

                              the first time I saw you

I was already held in your arms,

we held each other standing in the grass in a storm,

it was the night my basement flooded and my house

vanished do you remember how the first time

we met we were already making love

in the rain we were already walking between

two houses at dawn we were already right here

in the early summer storm and then

you were in another city and I was already

missing you the day we met and realizing

I was in love with you the day we met you were

out of town and I met you in the dream I had

of walking by your house and looking up

just as you were opening the window

 

                      [when a lover’s mouth

                      reinvents a lost equation]

 

the first time I saw you, you were standing in the street

in front of my house and you waved hello

and said something from under your mask

the pandemic was ending soon on our block

we only had to be careful for a few more years

we didn’t touch for several more years

talking all night on the porch as we grew older

looking at our watches, turning pages on calendars

the first time I saw you, you were seconds

from being inside me for the first time

the first time I saw you I was pulling you

toward me, one foot on the earth,

one in the water, one star above us the first time

I saw you I was in a field without you

with the smell of thyme, animals wading in the river,

the heat of dusk on my skin, the air soaked with dusk-light

layered with dawn-light where we met for the first time

laughing nervously because we hadn’t slept

and we heard the birds beginning to fill with sound

 

           [how a lover’s voice

           reignites a new sensation]

 

                                             you were remarkable

                                            we were going to make love

for the first time and we knew it, I kept seeing

you at each moment for the first time and never

wanted this to end, resisted the urge

to know the end, I want to learn a different way to

            love I always want you         I always want to

see you for the first time and meet you

for the first time every time I wake up beside you

each morning resisting an anxiety I carry

under the surface of my skin because I am falling

in love for the first time and seeing you for the first

time each time I see you and I know the cost of love

            and yet poured forth this wish and yet couldn’t

have imagined you which is why I float in the half-night

sleepwalking with my eyes open

a sight that frightens even the animals

wading in the river and the butterflies

landing on my face who try to close my eyes for me

I tell them I’m on fire, that I carry love now

under my skin, that the love in me obliterated

me when she died and now it’s rebirthing

me into myself, this my own return

to my own transmuted bedrock the way

the way we touch becomes its own occasion

 

American Dreams by Julia Alvarez

American Dreams

                                          Queens, NY, 1963

 

All day I dreamed of candy from the store

on Hillside Avenue: barrels filled with

caramels, tins of pastel mints and tiers

of chocolates beckoning in the window,

and a tinkling bell that tattled I was coming

in the door, a skinny girl, who didn’t look

thirteen, still reeling from the shock of

losing everything, and hungry all the time

for candy, more candy than I’d ever seen,

a whole store dedicated to delights,

proof we had arrived in the land of Milk

Duds, Chiclets, gumdrops, from the country

sugar came from but candy never got to.

I roamed the aisles, savoring the names:

Necco Wafers, Atomic Fireballs, Butterfingers,

while the fat man owner watched me, sitting

on a stool by the cash register, his pale eyes

like ice mints behind his foggy glasses, lingering

at my chest, as if the swelling buds under

my uniform’s white blouse were Candy Buttons,

Jujubes I’d shoplifted; while his tiny, perfumed

mother in black pumps and white lace collar

waited on older patrons, boxing chocolates,

petit-fours, assortments made to order

for wives and sweethearts, May I help you, dahlink?

in a heavy accent, an immigrant herself

from some past purge or pogrom; her “boy”

born here, the obese product of an American

dream gone greedily awry. He chatted as I

lingered over barrels, asking none-of-your-

business questions about my parents, grades,

what my people did on holidays. He knew

my favorites, commenting as he rang me up,

I see you like those Sweet Tarts. Candy necklaces

sure are a hit with your set. A hit? My set?

It was an intimacy I resented; my cravings

were dark secrets I didn’t want to share.

Will that be all today? he asked, as if he hoped

I’d say, Actually, I would like something else,

to marry you and help you run your candy store.

Outside, my new America was waking up

to nightmare: freedom fighters

marching; storefronts, some with candy

stores like this one, burning; girls like me

in bombed-out churches; dreams deferred,

exploding; dreams I didn’t know

still needed fighting for; all I knew

was hunger, as I learned the names

that promised sweeter dreams beyond

these candied substitutes, Juicy Fruits,

Life Savers, Bit O-Honey, Good & Plenty.