Persistence of Vision: Televised Confession by Solmaz Sharif

Persistence of Vision: Televised Confession

You are like a daughter

to me—the prisoner’s

mother tells me. Meal by

meal she sets then clears. She

rinses some tablewear

the prisoner never

held, then a glass she did,

then recalls her daughter’s

mouth opening softly

to drink water on state-

run TV, then water

over everything. The

glass appears in hundreds

of frames before reaching

the prisoner’s lips. In

between each frame, the grief

our eyes jump to create

movement: dark strips to keep

sharp the glass lip, water

skin trembling, hand that

trembles it. These mothers

move as flipbooks, tiny,

stuttering pasts, sobbing

at the sink. It is death

that sharpens our sight each

sixteenth second, slender,

blocking enough light so

that the prisoner’s face

is again and again

alive each light-punctured

frame, her mouth: in hundreds

of stills is still opening

softly to drink.

 

The First Person Who Will Live to Be One Hundred and Fifty Years Old Has Already Been Born by Nicole Sealey

The First Person Who Will Live to Be One Hundred and Fifty Years Old Has Already Been Born

 

Scientists say the average human

life gets three months longer every year.

By this math, death will be optional. Like a tie

or dessert or suffering. My mother asks

whether I’d want to live forever.

“I’d get bored,” I tell her. “But,” she says,

“there’s so much to do,” meaning

she believes there’s much she hasn’t done.

Thirty years ago she was the age I am now

but, unlike me, too industrious to think about

birds disappeared by rain. If only we had more

time or enough money to be kept on ice

until such a time science could bring us back.

Of late my mother has begun to think life

short-lived. I’m too young to convince her

otherwise. The one and only occasion

I was in the same room as the Mona Lisa,

it was encased in glass behind what I imagine

were velvet ropes. There’s far less between

ourselves and oblivion—skin that often defeats

its very purpose. Or maybe its purpose

isn’t protection at all, but rather to provide

a place, similar to a doctor’s waiting room,

in which to sit until our names are called.

Hold your questions until the end.

Mother, measure my wide-open arms—

we still have this much time to kill. 

 

When You Are Old by W. B. Yeats

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

 

Death Barged In by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

Death Barged In

  

In his Russian greatcoat

slamming open the door  

with an unpardonable bang,

and he has been here ever since.  

  

He changes everything,

rearranges the furniture,

his hand hovers  

by the phone;

he will answer now, he says;

he will be the answer.  

  

Tonight he sits down to dinner

at the head of the table

as we eat, mute;

later, he climbs into bed

between us.    

  

Even as I sit here,

he stands behind me

clamping two  

colossal hands on my shoulders

and bends down  

and whispers to my neck,

From now on,

you write about me. 

 

Yellow Rain by Mai Der Vang

Yellow Rain

First, the sting

in your nose.

Then in your eyes,

a furnace flared

To hollow

your face.

Flies above

your empty sockets.

Maggots made

your split skin.

Another cow dies

from breathing

as you swallowed

from the same air.

How many days before

it wintered you gray

in this wilderness turned

makeshift-graveyard.

How many hours

before the lesions,

before your vomit

hardens the earthen

floor. Somewhere

a house ages cold,

no longer warmed

by the hearth

you once tended.

No one lights

any spirit money.

No one chants the way.

 

Another Country by Jim Harrison

Another Country

I love these raw moist dawns with

a thousand birds you hear but can’t

quite see in the mist.

My old alien body is a foreigner

struggling to get into another country.

The loon call makes me shiver.

Back at the cabin I see a book

and am not quite sure what that is.

 

Fusion by Rae Armantrout

Fusion

  

When we recognize we  “think again”

without knowing what or if

we thought before.

  

I confuse copper

with brass.

  

To recognize is almost

always a pleasure;

perhaps it is pleasure itself.

  

I confuse Melissa

with Melissa.

  

To recognize is not

only to give something a name

but to give it the very name

that was waiting for it

  

somewhere

  

as if thing and name had been

sad without each other.

  

That’s a woman

in an arctic-fox costume

singing,  “Don’t you worry

‘bout a thing,

baby.”

  

I confuse worry with

  

                *

  

Darkness in the shape

of leaves

flows over a building;

  

black ellipses

on the bay

  

slipping

and falling into place