Another August by James Merrill

Another August

Pines. The white, ochre-pocked houses. Sky unflawed. Upon so much former strangeness a calm settles, glaze of custom to be neither shattered nor shattered by. Home. Home at last.

Years past—blind, tattering

wind, hail, tears—my head was in those clouds

that now are dark pearl in my head.

Open the shutters. Let variation

abandon the swallows one by one.

How many summer dusks were needed

to make that single skimming form!

The briefest firefly kindles to its type.

Here is each evening’s lesson. First

the hour, the setting. Only then

the human being, his clean shirtsleeve, anyone’s

chalked among treetrunks, round a waist,

or lifted in an entrance. Watch for him.

Be him.

Envoi for S.

Whom you saw mannerless and dull of heart,

Easy to fool, impossible to hurt,

I wore that fiction like a fine white shirt

And asked no favor but to act the part.

Black Ecstatic Ode by Airea D. Matthews

Black Ecstatic Ode

Praise to the father holding his sleeping daughter on the 52^nd

Street trolley

To the daughter sleeping through the pothole thrum

Praise to the diabetic with shorn feet and sugarcane blood

To the shooting nerve through the left hip and lower spine

To those flying gods on their routes

Praise to the red-headed Rasta and his ganja-laced T-shirt

To the Vietnam vet at Cass Corridor holding his sign

To the sign which reads: “I’m not homeless, I’m just Black”

Praise to the barbers trying to calm the fatherless boys in their chairs

To the mothers trying not to overhear this soothing

To soothing

Praise to razed skylines and ruins

To whatever replaces the horizon

To the lost toddler who refused to speak to strangers

To the strangers that would not let him be lost

To the police who’ve never discharged their firearms

To the neighbors who do not presume to be police

To sustenance delivered or grown or given

Praise to EBT undoing paper shame

To the hustlers selling EBT at Walmart

To the single dads working night shifts

To the work

 

Praise to sisters in love with whomever won’t love them

To others in love with whomever won’t bother

Praise to the lovers who left lessons

the lovers who left scars

To the memory of topography

raised surface, smooth to touch

To egos’ porcelain shards and leathery ids

fringed edges and the unrecalled

To remembering

 

Praise to boys who make beeswax fingernails

To little girls who wear fatigues and eye black

Praise to Miss Toto, Bambi Banks, Pearl Harbor

To bombs that never landed

To satellites that couldn’t be coaxed to Earth

To the dreams in bodies that won’t hold a lie

Praise to beauty that doesn’t suffer rules

To dollar store sheik and sleek vintage tins

To rouge, olive oil spray and nicks

To Type 2 wave and Type 4 curl

To wanting to be

To being

 

Praise to lust’s resurrection

To incising shame’s jugular

Praise to 7 ways pussy hallelujahs

Praise to the fingertips, 5 of the 7

Praise to every nipple manic and downtrodden

To the cock, eschewed, and the cock, swallowed

To le petit mort and box spring bang

To the frictive giving way to sublime

To the littered freeway and ordered garden

perfect parts and locs and press and knots

the impermanent and dead end

To Mikimoto and Medusa’s rocks

To motherfucking slingshots

 

Praise to the hard-won win against Chronos

To the stone wrapped in swaddling

the psychotic eaglet safe in hiding

the featherless sirens fostering seafamilies

the eye uncrossed, uncrowed

Praise to the overlooking

To the overlooked

 

Praise to boot houses

To children running over frayed laces

Praise to the old kitchen, half-gutted,

its gnats and winter flies

Praise to mice hugging corners

sweet scraps splayed on granite

 

Praise to that which endures

To old doors, layers of paint

To years of storm beating solid oak

Praise to the gable roof that is a ceiling

coffered ceiling that is also a floor

Praise to open wombs and caskets

To any mother who must decide either

Praise to what shoulders weight

To brackets and load-bearing walls

beams and spindly skeletons

sacred geometry and tangents

To levees and pregnant summers

the bullet-ridden body

To coilspring and wheel

 

Praise, soon, to the crown and seed lowering

To both the thorny and fertile soil

Praise to the ground unfastening

To every earthworm bristle

and every seraph’s six wings

Interlocked in songdance of welcome

 

To the body relenting only to dust

the spirit ascending straightway to stars

Praise to all who rejoice in becoming

To all who rejoice in return

Before You Cut Loose by Simon Armitage

Before You Cut Loose,

                                            put dogs on the list 

of difficult things to lose. Those dogs ditched 

on the North York Moors or the Sussex Downs 

or hurled like bags of sand from rented cars 

have followed their noses to market towns 

and bounced like balls into their owners’ arms. 

I heard one story of a dog that swam 

to the English coast from the Isle of Man, 

and a dog that carried eggs and bacon 

and a morning paper from the village 

surfaced umpteen leagues and two years later, 

bacon eaten but the eggs unbroken, 

newsprint dry as tinder, to the letter. 

A dog might wander the width of the map 

to bury its head in its owner’s lap, 

crawl the last mile to dab a bleeding paw 

against its own front door. To die at home, 

a dog might walk its four legs to the bone. 

You can take off the tag and the collar 

but a dog wears one coat and one colour. 

A dog got rid of—that’s a dog for life. 

No dog howls like a dog kicked out at night. 

Try looking a dog like that in the eye.