Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert

Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. 

It's the same when love comes to an end, 

or the marriage fails and people say 

they knew it was a mistake, that everybody 

said it would never work. That she was 

old enough to know better. But anything 

worth doing is worth doing badly. 

Like being there by that summer ocean 

on the other side of the island while 

love was fading out of her, the stars 

burning so extravagantly those nights that 

anyone could tell you they would never last. 

Every morning she was asleep in my bed 

like a visitation, the gentleness in her 

like antelope standing in the dawn mist. 

Each afternoon I watched her coming back 

through the hot stony field after swimming, 

the sea light behind her and the huge sky 

on the other side of that. Listened to her 

while we ate lunch. How can they say 

the marriage failed? Like the people who 

came back from Provence (when it was Provence) 

and said it was pretty but the food was greasy. 

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, 

but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Don't You Wonder, Sometimes? by Tracy K. Smith

Don't You Wonder, Sometimes?

          1.

After dark, stars glisten like ice, and the distance they span

Hides something elemental. Not God, exactly. More like

Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being—a Starman

Or cosmic ace hovering, swaying, aching to make us see.

And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure

That someone was there squinting through the dust,

Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only

To be wanted back badly enough? Would you go then,

Even for a few nights, into that other life where you

And that first she loved, blind to the future once, and happy?

Would I put on my coat and return to the kitchen where my

Mother and father sit waiting, dinner keeping warm on the stove?

Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep

Or charging through his veins. And he’ll never grow old,

Just like the woman you lost, who will always be dark-haired

And flush-faced, running toward an electronic screen

That clocks the minutes, the miles left to go. Just like the life

In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky

Thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands

Even if it burns.

          2.

He leaves no tracks. Slips past, quick as a cat. That’s Bowie

For you: the Pope of Pop, coy as Christ. Like a play

Within a play, he’s trademarked twice. The hours

Plink past like water from a window A/C. We sweat it out,

Teach ourselves to wait. Silently, lazily, collapse happens.

But not for Bowie. He cocks his head, grins that wicked grin.

Time never stops, but does it end? And how many lives

Before take-off, before we find ourselves

Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?

The future isn’t what it used to be. Even Bowie thirsts

For something good and cold. Jets blink across the sky

Like migratory souls.

          3.

Bowie is among us. Right here

In New York City. In a baseball cap

And expensive jeans. Ducking into

A deli. Flashing all those teeth

At the doorman on his way back up.

Or he’s hailing a taxi on Lafayette

As the sky clouds over at dusk.

He’s in no rush. Doesn’t feel

The way you’d think he feels.

Doesn’t strut or gloat. Tells jokes.

I’ve lived here all these years

And never seen him. Like not knowing

A comet from a shooting star.

But I’ll bet he burns bright,

Dragging a tail of white-hot matter

The way some of us track tissue

Back from the toilet stall. He’s got

The whole world under his foot,

And we are small alongside,

Though there are occasions

When a man his size can meet

Your eyes for just a blip of time

And send a thought like SHINE

SHINE SHINE SHINE SHINE

Straight to your mind. Bowie,

I want to believe you. Want to feel

Your will like the wind before rain.

The kind everything simply obeys,

Swept up in that hypnotic dance

As if something with the power to do so

Had looked its way and said:

                                                     Go ahead.

 

Apple Tragedy by Ted Hughes

Apple Tragedy

So on the seventh day

The serpent rested, 

God came up to him. 

"I've invented a new game," he said. 

The serpent stared in surprise

At this interloper. 

But God said: "You see this apple?" 

I squeeze it and look-cider." 

The serpent had a good drink

And curled up into a question mark. 

Adam drank and said: "Be my god." 

Eve drank and opened her legs

And called to the cockeyed serpent

And gave him a wild time. 

God ran and told Adam

Who in drunken rage tried to hang himself in the orchard. 

The serpent tried to explain, crying "Stop"

But drink was splitting his syllable. 

And Eve started screeching: "Rape! Rape!" 

And stamping on his head. 

Now whenever the snake appears she screeches

"Here it comes again! Help! O Help!" 

Then Adam smashes a chair on his head, 

And God says: "I am well pleased"

And everything goes to hell. 

Torso of Air by Ocean Vuong

Torso of Air

Suppose you do change your life.

& the body is more than

a portion of night — sealed

with bruises. Suppose you woke

& found your shadow replaced

by a black wolf. The boy, beautiful

& gone. So you take the knife to the wall

instead. You carve & carve

until a coin of light appears

& you get to look in, at last,

on happiness. The eye

staring back from the other side —

waiting.

 

The Abduction by Stanley Kunitz

The Abduction

Some things I do not profess 

to understand, perhaps

not wanting to, including

whatever it was they did

with you or you with them

that timeless summer day

when you stumbled out of the wood,

distracted, with your white blouse torn

and a bloodstain on your skirt.

“Do you believe?” you asked.

Between us, through the years,

we pieced enough together

to make the story real:

how you encountered on the path

a pack of sleek, grey hounds,

trailed by a dumbshow retinue

in leather shrouds; and how

you were led, through leafy ways,

into the presence of a royal stag,

flaming in his chestnut coat,

who kneeled on a swale of moss

before you; and how you were borne

aloft in triumph through the green,

stretched on his rack of budding horn,

till suddenly you found yourself alone

in a trampled clearing. 

That was a long time ago,

almost another age, but even now, 

when I hold you in my arms, 

I wonder where you are.

Sometimes I wake to hear

the engines of the night thrumming

outside the east bay window

on the lawn spreading to the rose garden.

You lie beside me in elegant repose,

a hint of transport hovering on your lips,

indifferent to the harsh green flares

that swivel through the room,

searchlights controlled by unseen hands.

Out there is a childhood country,

bleached faces peering in

with coals for eyes.

Our lives are spinning out

from world to world;

the shapes of things

are shifting in the wind.

What do we know

beyond the rapture and the dread?

Directly by Sharon Olds

Directly

Then, one late afternoon, 

I understand:  the harm my father 

did us is receding.  I never thought 

it would happen, I thought his harm was stronger than that, 

like God’s harm—flood, or birth without 

eyes, with mounds of tissue, no retina, no 

pupil, the way my father on the couch did not 

seem not to be using eyes 

but not to have them, or to have objects 

for eyes—Jocastal dress-brooches. 

But he had not been hated, so he did not hate us, 

just scorned us, and it is wearing off. 

My son and daughter are grown, they are well 

as if by some miracle.  The afternoon has a 

quality of miracle, the starlings all facing 

the west, his grave.  I come to the window 

as if to open it, and whisper, 

My father’s harm is fading.  Then, 

I think that he would be glad to hear it 

directly from me, 

so I come to where you are, bone 

settled under the dewed tangle 

of the blackish Northwoods moss like the crossroads 

hair of a beloved.  I come to you here 

because it is home:  your done-with body 

broken back down into earth, holding 

its solemn incapable beauty.

In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes by Eduardo C. Corral

In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes

in a Tex-Mex restaurant. His co-workers,

unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeño.

If I ask for a goldfish, he spits a glob of phlegm

into a jar of water. The silver letters

on his black belt spell Sangrón. Once, borracho,

at dinner, he said: Jesus wasn’t a snowman.

Arriba Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed

into a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.

Frijolero. Greaser. In Tucson he branded

cattle. He slept in a stable. The horse blankets

oddly fragrant: wood smoke, lilac. He’s an illegal.

I’m an Illegal-American. Once, in a grove

of saguaro, at dusk, I slept next to him. I woke

with his thumb in my mouth. ¿No qué no

tronabas, pistolita? He learned English

by listening to the radio. The first four words

he memorized: In God We Trust. The fifth:

Percolate. Again and again I borrow his clothes.

He calls me Scarecrow. In Oregon he picked apples.

Braeburn. Jonagold. Cameo. Nightly,

to entertain his cuates, around a campfire,

he strummed a guitarra, sang corridos. Arriba

Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed into

a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.

Greaser. Beaner. Once, borracho, at breakfast,

he said: The heart can only be broken

once, like a window. ¡No mames! His favorite

belt buckle: an águila perched on a nopal.

If he laughs out loud, his hands tremble.

Bugs Bunny wants to deport him. César Chávez

wants to deport him. When I walk through

the desert, I wear his shirt. The gaze of the moon

stitches the buttons of his shirt to my skin.

The snake hisses. The snake is torn.