Sticks by Thomas Sayers Ellis

Sticks

My father was an enormous man

Who believed kindness and lack of size

Were nothing more than sissified

Signs of weakness. Narrow-minded,

His eyes were the worst kind

Of jury—deliberate, distant, hard.

No one could outshout him

Or make bigger fists. The few

Who tried got taken for bad,

Beat down, their bodies slammed.

I wanted to be just like him:

Big man, man of the house, king.

A plagiarist, hitting the things he hit,

I learned to use my hands watching him

Use his, pretending to slap mother

When he slapped mother.

He was sick. A diabetic slept

Like a silent vowel inside his well-built,

Muscular, dark body. Hard as all that

With similar weaknesses

—I discovered writing,

How words are parts of speech

With beats and breaths of their own.

Interjections like flams. Wham! Bam!

An heir to the rhythm

And tension beneath the beatings,

My first attempts were filled with noise,

Wild solos, violent uncontrollable blows.

The page tightened like a drum

Resisting the clockwise twisting

Of a handheld chrome key,

The noisy banging and tuning of growth.

San Biagio, at Montepulciano by Yves Bonnefoy

San Biagio, at Montepulciano

Columns, arches, vaults: how he knew 

The ways you promise what you lack; 

And that your bodies, like your souls, 

Always slip from our grasping hands. 

Space is such a lure . . . Swift to disappoint, 

As they raise and topple clouds, the sky's 

Architects still offer more than ours, 

Who only build a scaffolding of dreams. 

He dreamed, all the same; but on that day, 

He gave a better use to beauty's shapes: 

He understood that form means to die. 

And this, his final work, is a coin 

With both sides bare. He made in stone, 

Of this great room, the arrow and the bow.

(Translated by Hoyt Rogers)

Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World by Sherman Alexie

Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World

The morning air is all awash with angels . . . 

                                            - Richard Wilbur  

The eyes open to a blue telephone

In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.   

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber, 

Proctologist, urologist, or priest? 

Who is most among us and most deserves

The first call? I choose my father because 

He’s astounded by bathroom telephones.

I dial home. My mother answers. “Hey, Ma,  

I say, “Can I talk to Poppa?” She gasps,  

And then I remember that my father  

Has been dead for nearly a year. “Shit, Mom," 

I say. “I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry— 

How did I forget?” “It’s okay," she says.

“I made him a cup of instant coffee  

This morning and left it on the table—

Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years— 

And I didn’t realize my mistake 

Until this afternoon.” My mother laughs 

At the angels who wait for us to pause

During the most ordinary of days 

And sing our praise to forgetfulness

Before they slap our souls with their cold wings. 

Those angels burden and unbalance us.

Those fucking angels ride us piggyback. 

Those angels, forever falling, snare us

And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.

My Brother My Wound by Natalie Diaz

My Brother My Wound

He was calling in the bulls from the street.

They came like a dark river — 

a blur of chest and hoof — 

everything moving, under, splinter — hooked

their horns through the walls. Light hummed

the holes like yellow jackets. My mouth

was a nest torn empty.

Then, he was at the table.

Then, in the pig’s jaws — 

he was not hungry. He was stop.

He was bad apple. He was choking.

So I punched my fists against his stomach.

Mars flew out

and broke open or bloomed — 

how many small red eyes shut in that husk?

He said, Look. Look. And they did.

He said, Lift up your shirt. And I did.

He slid his fork beneath my ribs — 

Yes, he sang. A Jesus side wound.

It wouldn’t stop bleeding.

He reached inside

and turned on the lamp — 

I never knew I was also a lamp — until the light

fell out of me, dripped down my thigh, flew up in me,

caught in my throat like a canary.

Canaries really means dogs, he said.

He put on his shoes.

You started this with your mouth, he pointed.

Where are you going? I asked.

To ride the Ferris wheel, he answered,

and climbed inside me like a window.