dream where every black person is standing by the ocean by Danez Smith

dream where every black person is standing by the ocean

  

& we say to her

                         what have you done with our kin you swallowed?

  

& she says

                         that was ages ago, you’ve drunk them by now

  

& we don’t understand

  

& then one woman, skin dark as all of us

                         walks to the water’s lip, shouts Emmett, spits

  

&, surely, a boy begins

                         crawling his way to shore 

 

April Snow by Matthew Zapruder

April Snow

Today in El Paso all the planes are asleep on the runway. The world

is in a delay. All the political consultants drinking whiskey keep

their heads down, lifting them only to look at the beautiful scarred

waitress who wears typewriter keys as a necklace. They jingle

when she brings them drinks. Outside the giant plate glass windows

the planes are completely covered in snow, it piles up on the wings.

I feel like a mountain of cell phone chargers. Each of the various

faiths of our various fathers keeps us only partly protected. I don’t

want to talk on the phone to an angel. At night before I go to sleep

I am already dreaming. Of coffee, of ancient generals, of the faces

of statues each of which has the eternal expression of one of my feelings.

I examine my feelings without feeling anything. I ride my blue bike

on the edge of the desert. I am president of this glass of water.

 

Unpacking a Globe by Arthur Sze

Unpacking a Globe

I gaze at the Pacific and don’t expect

to ever see the heads on Easter Island,

though I guess at sunlight rippling

the yellow grasses sloping to shore;

yesterday a doe ate grass in the orchard:

it lifted its ears and stopped eating

when it sensed us watching from

a glass hallway—
in his sleep, a veteran

sweats, defusing a land mine.

On the globe, I mark the Battle of

the Coral Sea—
no one frets at that now.

A poem can never be too dark,

I nod and, staring at the Kenai, hear

ice breaking up along an inlet;

yesterday a coyote trotted across

my headlights and turned his head

but didn’t break stride; that’s how

I want to live on this planet:

alive to a rabbit at a glass door—

and flower where there is no flower.

 

Girlfriends by Carol Ann Duffy

Girlfriends

 

That hot September night, we slept in a single bed,

naked, and on our frail bodies the sweat  

cooled and renewed itself. I reached out my arms  

and you, hands on my breasts, kissed me. Evening of amber.  

  

Our nightgowns lay on the floor where you fell to your knees  

and became ferocious, pressed your head to my stomach,  

your mouth to the red gold, the pink shadows; except  

I did not see it like this at the time, but arched  

  

my back and squeezed water from the sultry air  

with my fists. Also I remembered hearing, clearly  

but distantly, a siren some streets away – de  

  

da de da de da – which mingled with my own  

absurd cries, so that I looked up, even then,  

to see my fingers counting themselves, dancing. 

 

Summer, 1995 by John Freeman

Summer, 1995

Three rooms, sight unseen, rented from a nurse and

her husband, the floors filthy, one working burner

on the stove. Every morning I left her behind

in bed, holding me with a fierceness

I did not recognize as desperation, because

both of us were blind, we had invented this,

the parenthesis of a day between lovemaking,

the meals cooked naked, novels read to each other

aloud, the slow walks to a train station, floating,

holding hands as if one of us might zeppelin

away if untethered, and the pain, a knife through

the chest, at departing for just a few days.

I had six jobs, one for a traffic planning

firm, Tom and I would drive in the dawn hours

to an intersection, lay hose, then count cars

through our hangovers as they rolled to a four-

way stop. Someone, somewhere, would use

this data to widen roads, erect new signs,

trim the summit ash and red oak, so drivers

could reduce their speed in time. Astonishing

to realize there was such a thing as too much

beauty. I was nineteen, I had another lifetime to

learn this, but all I could do then was stand

near the flame, and marvel at the blisters.

 

Breezeway by John Ashbery

Breezeway

Someone said we needed a breezeway

to bark down remnants of super storm Elias jugularly.

Alas it wasn’t my call.

I didn’t have a call or anything resembling one.

You see I have always been a rather dull-spirited winch.

The days go by and I go with them.

A breeze falls from a nearby tower,

finds no breezeway, goes away

along a mission to supersize red shutters.

Alas if that were only all.

There’s the children’s belongings to be looked to

if only one can find the direction needed

and stuff like that.

I said we were all homers not homos

but my voice dwindled in the roar of Hurricane Edsel.

We have to live out our precise experimentation.

Otherwise there’s no dying for anybody,

no crisp rewards.

Batman came out and clubbed me.

He never did get along with my view of the universe

except you know existential threads

from the time of the peace beaters and more.

He patted his dog Pastor Fido.

There was still so much to be learned

and even more to be researched.

It was like a goodbye. Why not accept it,

anyhow? The mission girls came through the woods

in their special suitings. It was all whipped cream and baklava.

Is there a Batman somewhere, who notices us

and promptly looks away, at a new catalog, say,

or another racing car expletive

coming back at Him?

From the Towers by Heather McHugh

From the Towers

Insanity is not a want of reason. 

It is reason's overgrowth, a calculating kudzu.

Explaining why, in two-ton manifesti, thinkers sally forth

with testaments and pipe bombs. Heaven help us:

spare us all your meaningful designs. Shine down or 

shower forth, but (for the earthling's sake) ignore

all prayers followed by against, or for. Teach us to bear 

life's senselessness, our insignificance, and more; 

let's call that sanity. The terrifying prospect isn't some

escapist with a novel, fond of comfort, munching sweets— 

it is the busy hermeneut, so serious he's sour, intent on making

meaning of us all, and bursting from the towers to the streets.