Fists I Thought Were Made To Hold the Reins by Brooks Haxton

Fists I Thought Were Made To Hold the Reins

He delighteth not in the strength of the horse...He maketh peace...  - Psalm 147

Catfish, lacking scales, are beautiful

in their repulsive way, but they will give you

an infected wound if you're not careful.

The filets I rubbed with cayenne, chili, salt,

and ginger, skillet hot and dry, then drowned

with lemon. Even the kids, who don't eat fish,

left none. My wife and I stopped brooding,

and my right hand opened with me staring

into the empty palm, long having, if I ever

knew, forgotten when and how the reins

slipped free. I love equestrians,

but I let go the reins, unlike my heroes,

lacking their authority, and wishing now

to lack my lack as well. An unimaginable horse

is rippling at a gallop far away, unshod,

with hoofbeats as impermanent as stars. 

Letter by Franz Wright

Letter

January 1998

I am not acquainted with anyone

there, if they spoke to me

I would not know what to do.

But so far nobody has, I know

I certainly wouldn't.

I don't participate, I'm not allowed;

I just listen, and every morning

have a moment of such happiness, I breathe

and breathe until the terror returns. About the time

when they are supposed to greet one another

two people actually look into each other's eyes

and hold hands a moment, but

the church is so big and the few who are there

are seated far apart. So this presents no real problem.

I keep my eyes fixed on the great naked corpse, the vertical

      corpse

who is said to be love

and who spoke the world

into being, before coming here

to be tortured and executed by it.

I don't know what I am doing there. I do

notice the more I lose touch

with what I previously saw as my life

the more real my spot in the dark winter pew becomes—

it is infinite. What we experience

as space, the sky

that is, the sun, the stars

is intimate and rather small by comparison.

When I think of my past

can only be described as grace.

We are created by being destroyed.

I Would Like to Describe by Zbigniew Herbert

I Would Like to Describe

I would like to describe the simplest emotion

joy or sadness

but not as others do

reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light

which is being born in me

but I know it does not resemble

any star

for it is not so bright

not so pure

and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage

without dragging behind me a dusty lion

and also anxiety

without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way

I would give all metaphors

in return for one word

drawn out of my breast like a rib

for one word

contained within the boundaries

of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say—I love

I run around like mad

picking up handfuls of birds

and my tenderness

which after all is not made of water

asks the water for a face

and anger

different from fire

borrows from it

a loquacious tongue

so is blurred

so is blurred

in me

what white-haired gentlemen

separated once and for all

and said

this is the subject

and this is the object

we fall asleep

with one hand under our head

and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us

and taste the earth

with their tiny roots

which next morning

we tear out painfully

(Translated from the Polish by Peter Dale Scott and Czeslaw Milosz)

Prayer Rug by Agha Shahid Ali

Prayer Rug

Those intervals

between the day’s

five calls to prayer

the women of the house

pulling thick threads

through vegetables

rosaries of ginger

of rustling peppers

in autumn drying for winter

in those intervals this rug

part of Grandma’s dowry

folded

so the Devil’s shadow

would not desecrate

Mecca scarlet-woven

with minarets of gold

but then the sunset call

to prayer

the servants

their straw mats unrolled

praying or in the garden

in summer on grass

the children wanting

the prayers to end

the women’s foreheads

touching the Abraham’s

silk stone of sacrifice

black stone descended

from Heaven

the pilgrims in white circling it

this year my grandmother

also a pilgrim

in Mecca she weeps

as the stone is unveiled 

she weeps holding on

to the pillars

Lighthead’s Guide to the Galaxy by Terrance Hayes

Lighthead’s Guide to the Galaxy

Ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and children of the state,

I am here because I could never get the hang of Time.

This hour, for example, would be like all the others

were it not for the rain falling through the roof.

I'd better not be too explicit. My night is careless

with itself, troublesome as a woman wearing no bra

in winter. I believe everything is a metaphor for sex.

Lovemaking mimics the act of departure, moonlight

drips from the leaves. You can spend your whole life

doing no more than preparing for life and thinking.

"Is this all there is?" Thus, I am here where poets come

to drink a dark strong poison with tiny shards of ice,

something to loosen my primate tongue and its syllables

of debris. I know all words come from preexisting words

and divide until our pronouncements develop selves.

The small dog barking at the darkness has something to say

about the way we live. I'd rather have what my daddy calls

"skrimp." He says "discrete" and means the street

just out of sight. Not what you see, but what you perceive:

that's poetry. Not the noise, but its rhythm; an arrangement

of derangements; I'll eat you to live: that's poetry.

I wish I glowed like a brown-skinned pregnant woman.

I wish I could weep the way my teacher did as he read us

Molly Bloom's soliloquy of yes. When I kiss my wife,

sometimes I taste her caution. But let's not talk about that.

Maybe Art's only purpose is to preserve the Self.

Sometimes I play a game in which my primitive craft fires

upon an alien ship whose intention is the destruction

of the earth. Other times I fall in love with a word

like somberness. Or moonlight juicing naked branches.

All species have a notion of emptiness, and yet

the flowers don't quit opening. I am carrying the whimper

you can hear when the mouth is collapsed, the wisdom

of monkeys. Ask a glass of water why it pities

the rain. Ask the lunatic yard dog why it tolerates the leash.

Brothers and sisters, when you spend your nights

out on a limb, there's a chance you'll fall in your sleep. 

In the Plaza by Louise Glück

In the Plaza

For two weeks he’s been watching the same girl,

someone he sees in the plaza. In her twenties maybe,

drinking coffee in the afternoon, the little dark head

bent over a magazine.

He watches from across the square, pretending

to be buying something, cigarettes, maybe a bouquet of flowers.

Because she doesn’t know it exists,

her power is very great now, fused to the needs of his imagination.

He is her prisoner. She says the words he gives her

in a voice he imagines, low-pitched and soft,

a voice from the south as the dark hair must be from the south.

Soon she will recognize him, then begin to expect him.

And perhaps then every day her hair will be freshly washed,

she will gaze outward across the plaza before looking down.

And after that they will become lovers.

But he hopes this will not happen immediately

since whatever power she exerts now over his body, over his emotions,

she will have no power once she commits herself—

she will withdraw into that private world of feeling

women enter when they love. And living there, she will become

like a person who casts no shadow, who is not present in the world;

in that sense, so little use to him

it hardly matters whether she lives or dies.

On The Death of a Cat by Franz Wright

On The Death of a Cat

In life, death

was nothing

to you: I am

willing to wager

my soul that it

simply never occurred

to your nightmareless

mind, while sleep

was everything

(see it raised

to an infinite

power and perfection)—no death

in you then, so now

how even less. Dear stealth

of innocence

licked polished

to an evil

lustre, little

milk fang, whiskered

night

friend—

go.