Host by Jericho Brown

Host 

We want pictures of everything

Below your waist, and we want

Pictures of your waist. We can't

Talk right now, but we will text you

Into coitus. All thumbs. All bi

Coastal and discreet and masculine

And muscular. No whites. Every

Body a top. We got a career

To think about. No face. We got

Kids to remember. No one over 29.

No one under 30. Our exes hurt us

Into hurting them. Disease free. No

Drugs. We like to get high with

The right person. You

Got a girl? Bring your boy.

We visiting. Room at the W.

Name's D. Name's J. We Deejay.

We Trey. We Troy. We Q. We not

Sending a face. Where should we

Go tonight? You coming through? Please

Know what a gym looks like. Not much

Time. No strings. No place, no

Face. Be clean. We haven't met

Anyone here yet. Why is it so hard

To make friends? No games. You

Still coming through? Latinos only.

Blacks will do. We can take one right

Now. Text it to you. Be there next

Week. Be there in June. We not a phone

Person. We can host, but we won't meet

Without a recent pic and a real name

And the sound of your deepest voice.

  

Bear by Ellen Bryant Voigt

Bear

 

pressed full-length against the screen unzipping it

for a better grip to help him help himself to the seed and the suet

slung high under the eave by the man

who has charged down from the bedroom onto the porch

in his white loincloth like David against Goliath

but only one good lung shouting swearing

and behind him the woman caught

at the lip of the lit kitchen

                                                where was my sister

with her gun or would she be praying since she prays routinely

for a parking spot and there it is or would she be speechless for once

that this man so moderate so genial so unlike me

had put himself one body-length away from a full-grown bear

or would she be saying you my dear are the person who married him

which of course I did I did and I stood behind him

as he stood his ground on the ground that is our porch

                                                                                               you can see

the marks gouged by the famous claws on the wall inside new screen

now laced by a wire trellis on which nothing climbs

a vertical electric fence one of us thinks

the bear can hear it hum from the edge of the woods

watching us like a child sent to his room as we grill the salmon

we spiked with juniper berries the other one thinks

the plural pronoun is a dangerous fiction the source

of so much unexpected loneliness

Adlestrop by Edward Thomas

Adlestrop 

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

 

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name

 

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

 

And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. 

Limen by Natasha Trethewey

Limen 

All day I've listened to the industry

of a single woodpecker, worrying the catalpa tree

just outside my window. Hard at his task,

 

his body is a hinge, a door knocker

to the cluttered house of memory in which

I can almost see my mother's face.

 

She is there, again, beyond the tree,

its slender pods and heart-shaped leaves,

hanging wet sheets on the line—each one

 

a thin white screen between us. So insistent

is this woodpecker, I'm sure he must be

looking for something else—not simply

 

the beetles and grubs inside, but some other gift

the tree might hold. All day he's been at work,

tireless, making the green hearts flutter.

 

Dear March - Come in - (1320) by Emily Dickinson

Dear March - Come in - (1320)

Dear March - Come in –

How glad I am –

I hoped for you before –

Put down your Hat –

You must have walked –

How out of Breath you are –

Dear March, how are you, and the Rest –

Did you leave Nature well –

Oh March, Come right upstairs with me –

I have so much to tell -

 

I got your Letter, and the Birds –

The Maples never knew that you were coming –

I declare - how Red their Faces grew –

But March, forgive me –

And all those Hills you left for me to Hue –

There was no Purple suitable –

You took it all with you -

 

Who knocks? That April –

Lock the Door –

I will not be pursued –

He stayed away a Year to call

When I am occupied –

But trifles look so trivial

As soon as you have come

 

That blame is just as dear as Praise

And Praise as mere as Blame –

 

Sara in Her Father’s Arms by George Oppen

Sara in Her Father’s Arms

 

Cell by cell the baby made herself, the cells

Made cells. That is to say

The baby is made largely of milk. Lying in her father’s arms, the little seed eyes

Moving, trying to see, smiling for us

To see, she will make a household

To her need of these rooms—Sara, little seed,

Little violent, diligent seed. Come let us look at the world

Glittering: this seed will speak,

Max, words! There will be no other words in the world

But those our children speak. What will she make of a world

Do you suppose, Max, of which she is made.

Obit by Victoria Chang

Obit

My Mother’s Teeth—died twice, once in 1965, all pulled out from gum disease. Once again on August 3, 2015. The fake teeth sit in a box in the garage. When she died, I touched them, smelled them, thought I heard a whimper. I shoved the teeth into my mouth. But having two sets of teeth only made me hungrier. When my mother died, I saw myself in the mirror, her words in a ring around my mouth, like powder from a donut. Her last words were in English. She asked for a Sprite. I wonder whether her last thought was in Chinese. I wonder what her last thought was. I used to think that a dead person’s words die with them. Now I know that they scatter, looking for meaning to attach to like a scent. My mother used to collect orange blossoms in a small shallow bowl. I pass the tree each spring. I always knew that grief was something I could smell. But I didn’t know that it’s not actually a noun but a verb. That it moves.