Sea Rose by H. D.

Sea Rose

 

Rose, harsh rose,

marred and with stint of petals,

meagre flower, thin,

sparse of leaf,

 

more precious

than a wet rose

single on a stem—

you are caught in the drift.

 

Stunted, with small leaf,

you are flung on the sand,

you are lifted

in the crisp sand

that drives in the wind.

 

Can the spice-rose

drip such acrid fragrance

hardened in a leaf?

 

A Pile of Fish by Tomás Q. Morín

A Pile of Fish

 

Six in all, to be exact. I know it was a Tuesday

     or Wednesday because the museum closes early

on those days. I almost wrote something

 

     about the light being late—; the “late light”

is what I almost said, and you know how we

     poets go on and on about the light and

 

the wind and the dark, but that day the dark was still

     far away swimming in the Pacific, and we had

45 minutes to find Goya’s “Still Life with Bream”

 

     before the doors closed. I’ve now forgotten

three times the word Golden in the title of that painting

     —and I wish I could ask what you think

 

that means. I see that color most often

     these days when the cold, wet light of morning

soaks my son’s curls and his already light

 

     brown hair takes on the flash of fish fins

in moonlight. I read somewhere

     that Goya never titled this painting,

 

or the other eleven still lifes, so it’s just

     as well because I like the Spanish title better. 

“Doradas” is simple, doesn’t point

 

     out the obvious. Lately, I’ve been saying

dorado so often in the song I sing

     to my son, “O sol, sol, dorado sol

 

no te escondes...” I felt lost

     that day in the museum, but you knew

where we were going having been there

 

     so many times. The canvas was so small

at 17 x 24 inches. I stood before it

     lost in its beach of green sand and

 

that silver surf cut with pink.

     I stared while you circled the room

like a curious cat. I took a step back,

 

     and then with your hands in your pockets

you said, No matter where we stand,

     there’s always one fish staring at us.

 

As a new father, I am now that pyramid

     of fish; my body is all eyes and eyes.

Some of them watch for you in the west

 

where the lion sun yawns and shakes off

     its sleep before it purrs, and hungry,

dives deep in the deep of the deep.

 

[I’d speak if I wasn’t afraid of inhaling] by Fanny Howe

[I’d speak if I wasn’t afraid of inhaling]

 

I’d speak if I wasn’t afraid of inhaling

A memory I want to forget

Like I trusted the world which wasn’t mine

The hollyhock in the tall vase is wide awake

And feelings are only overcome by fleeing

To their opposite. Moisture and dirt

Have entered the space between threshold and floor

A lot is my estimate when I step on it

Sorry can be a home to stand on so

And see far to: another earth, a place I might know

Story of My Life by Jameson Fitzpatrick

Story of My Life

 

Two desires, like twins I tend to:

 

the one to be

and the other to hold.

 

The first looks like envy,

when the brunette in cowboy boots cycles past

smoking a cigarette, her hair in a French braid.

 

She isn’t sweating

like I am, through my shirt for the third time today.

 

She doesn’t hurry.

 

Or later, in the park

where I am killing time, when the woman

on rollerblades shows me the shape

 

of what I sit on the edge of,

the same cobbled circle as always.

 

Looping and looping in a short dress.

Pixie cut. Perfect port de bras.

Her own music in her ears.

 

I read a book about a woman

who loves a man.

I relate. My own music.

 

Now the other desire cries out,

as though I can only neglect him for so long—

 

And there he is, this time

taking the form of a skateboarder

so lithe and dark-haired it hurts to look at him

 

though of course I can’t stop,

knowing I’ll have to go eventually, or he will,

and then I may never again have the pleasure

 

of looking at him. The pain I mean.

In my teeth.

 

I think of an Elaine Scarry line—

“The first demand of beauty is to keep looking”—

 

but when I go to look it up later, it’s not there.

 

In fact, I wrote it, in my notes

on the book where I thought I’d find it,

the one about beauty and justice and error.

 

He’s not very good.

At skateboarding I mean:

 

he can’t quite clear

the base of the statue that’s drawn him here

and keeps tumbling away from his board.

 

Scarry says the first demand of beauty is replication.

 

I’ve already written this poem,

in this park, though it was a different statue

and a different man.

 

Is desire without pain possible?

Is desire possible without pain?

 

Really, I want to know.

I want to stop writing this poem.

I want him to say Yes.

 

And how graceful she is, avoiding his orphaned board

as it rolls her way.

Reward by Kevin Young

Reward

 

RUN AWAY from this sub-

scriber for the second time

are TWO NEGROES, viz. SMART,

an outlandish dark fellow

 

with his country marks

on his temples and bearing

the remarkable brand of my

name on his left breast, last

 

seen wearing an old ragged

negro cloth shirt and breeches

made of fearnought; also DIDO,

a likely young wench of a yellow

 

cast, born in cherrytime in this

parish, wearing a mixed coloured

coat with a bundle of clothes,

mostly blue, under her one good

 

arm. Both speak tolerable plain

English and may insist on being

called Cuffee and Khasa respect-

ively. Whoever shall deliver

 

the said goods to the gaoler

in Baton Rouge, or to the Sugar

House in the parish, shall receive

all reasonable charges plus

 

a genteel reward besides what

the law allows. In the mean

time all persons are strictly

forbid harbouring them, on pain

 

of being prosecuted to the utmost

rigour of the law. Ten guineas

will be paid to anyone who can

give intelligence of their being

 

harboured, employed, or enter-

tained by a white person upon

his sentence; five on conviction

of a black. All Masters of vessels

 

are warned against carrying them

out of state, as they may claim

to be free. If any of the above

Negroes return of their own

 

accord, they may still be for-

given by

 

                            ELIZABETH YOUNG.

 

Bound for Hell by Marina Tsvetaeva

Bound for Hell

 

Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured,

Is where we’re bound; we’ll drink the pitch of hell—

We, who have sung the praises of the lord

With every fiber in us, every cell.

 

We, who did not manage to devote

Our nights to spinning, did not bend and sway

Above a cradle—in a flimsy boat,

Wrapped in a mantle, we’re now borne away.

 

Every morning, every day, we’d rise

And have the finest Chinese silks to wear;

And we’d strike up the songs of paradise

Around the campfire of a robbers’ lair,

 

We, careless seamstresses (our seams all ran,

Whether we sewed or not)—yet we have been

Such dancers, we have played the pipes of Pan:

The world was ours, each one of us a queen.

 

First, scarcely draped in tatters, and disheveled,

Then plaited with a starry diadem;

We’ve been in jails, at banquets we have reveled:

But the rewards of heaven, we’re lost to them,

 

Lost in nights of starlight, in the garden

Where apple trees from paradise are found.

No, be assured, my gentle girls, my ardent

And lovely sisters, hell is where we’re bound.

 

(translated by Stephen Edgar)

Night Thoughts by Louise Glück

Night Thoughts

 

Long ago I was born.

There is no one alive anymore

who remembers me as a baby.

Was I a good baby? A

bad? Except in my head

that debate is now

silenced forever.

What constitutes

a bad baby, I wondered. Colic,

my mother said, which meant

it cried a lot.

What harm could there be

in that? How hard it was

to be alive, no wonder

they all died. And how small

I must have been, suspended

in my mother, being patted by her

approvingly.

What a shame I became

verbal, with no connection

to that memory. My mother’s love!

All too soon I emerged

my true self,

robust but sour,

like an alarm clock.