Get Lit Anthology

If I must die,

you must live

to tell my story

to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth

and some strings,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven in the eye

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh

not even to himself—

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there

bringing back love

If I must die

let it bring hope

let it be a tale

Alone

Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don't believe I'm wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can't use

Their wives run round like banshees

Their children sing the blues

They've got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone.

But nobody

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely

I'll tell you what I know

Storm clouds are gathering

The wind is gonna blow

The race of man is suffering

And I can hear the moan,

'Cause nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

I Don’t Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We’ve Done to the Earth

so I count my hopes: the bumblebees
are making a comeback, one snug tight
in a purple flower I passed to get to you;

your favorite color is purple but Prince’s
was orange & we both find this hard to believe;
today the park is green, we take grass for granted

the leaves chuckle around us; behind
your head a butterfly rests on a tree; it’s been
there our whole conversation; by my old apartment

was a butterfly sanctuary where I would read
& two little girls would sit next to me; you caught
a butterfly once but didn’t know what to feed it

so you trapped it in a jar & gave it to a girl
you liked. I asked if it died. you say you like
to think it lived a long life. yes, it lived a long life.

[you fit into me]

you fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye

Nine Spice Mix

First they tango on my tongue,

nimble couples careening,

then together

form an Arab-style line dance

stepping, stomping, swaying.

West Indies allspice dazzles,

berries tangling with cinnamon sticks,

while cloves, Indonesian natives,

lead with a spirited solidarity solo.

Coriander seeds offer greetings in Hindi

as others toast comrades in languages

beyond borders and blockades.

Lifting up sisterhood, sun-wizened nutmeg

starts a sibling dance with mace.

Cumin demurs, then surprises

with subtle exultation.

Queen of spices cardamom,

host of the party, gives a nod to flavors

in hiding: lemony, sweet, warm,

fragrant, nutty, pungent, hot.

Encouraged, feisty black peppercorns

shimmy center stage, organizing

the unique union of nine

for a vivacious global salute.

Trash

Attack, balderdash, blackness (they call from the rafters), blather

-skite, claptrap, crap, codswallop, a dollop of damns in generally

pristine prose or speech, drivel, dross, effluvia, fiddle-faddle, flap

-doodle (a personal favorite), folderol, garbage, guff, hogwash,

hokum, horsefeathers (you can almost envision Pegasus mid-flight),

humbug, imitation (not the thing itself but the accusation), jazz, junk,

kaput, lambast, loss, malarkey, mass entertainment, mass incarceration’s

psychic aim (a problem isn’t real if you no longer see it), muck, mush,

nonsense, nuts, oblivion, piffle, poppycock, quagmire, refuse, rubbish,

slush, tommyrot, tosh, trash (as in the everyday phenomenon but

also talk), twaddle, undercard (ostensibly), underdog (mentally,

you recite their harms before the fight begins), vilipend, wreckage,

excess, extra, yack, youth that cannot be used, zip, zero, easy.

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Second Helpings

I wear my heart on my sleeve,

or rather both sleeves, since

it's usually broken.

Sometimes when I join my hands

to pray, the jagged edges

briefly touch,

like a plate that fell and cracked

apart from being asked

to hold too much.

a song in the front yard

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.

I want a peek at the back

Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.

A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now

And maybe down the alley,

To where the charity children play.

I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.

They have some wonderful fun.

My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine

How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.

My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae

Will grow up to be a bad woman.

That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late

(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.

And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,

And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace

And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

Paul Robeson

That time

we all heard it,

cool and clear,

cutting across the hot grit of the day.

The major Voice.

The adult Voice

forgoing Rolling River,

forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge

and other symptoms of an old despond.

Warning, in music-words

devout and large,

that we are each other’s

harvest:

we are each other’s

business:

we are each other’s

magnitude and bond.

Labor

I spent what light Saturday sent sweating

And learned to cuss cutting grass for women

Kind enough to say they couldn’t tell the damned

Difference between their mowed lawns

And their vacuumed carpets just before

Handing over a five-dollar bill rolled tighter

Than a joint and asking me in to change

A few lightbulbs. I called those women old

Because they wouldn’t move out of a chair

Without my help or walk without a hand

At the base of their backs. I called them

Old, and they must have been; they’re all dead

Now, dead and in the earth I once tended.

The loneliest people have the earth to love

And not one friend their own age—only

Mothers to baby them and big sisters to boss

Them around, women they want to please

And pray for the chance to say please to.

I don’t do that kind of work anymore. My job

Is to look at the childhood I hated and say

I once had something to do with my hands.

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is a light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you can’t beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvelous

the gods wait to delight

in you.

There You Are

There you are

this cold day

boiling the water on the stove

pouring the herbs into the pot

hawthorn, rose;

buying the tulips

& looking at them, holding

your heart in your hands at the table

saying please, please to nobody else

here in the kitchen with you.

How hard, how heavy this all is.

How beautiful, these things you do,

in case they help, these things you do

which, although you haven’t said it yet,

say that you want to live.

excerpt from “Black History Month (As Told By My Spam Folder)”

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New Message Draft

Subject: How Do I Put It?

My existence can be boiled down

to a litany of companies trying

to sell back to me their abuses.

My freedom is conditional and therefore

worth only as much as I’m willing

to subscribe. My life cannot be bought

but it can be marketed to. Question:

If a Black person is alive but no one

is around to profit off of them,

do they make a sound? A different way:

Can anyone hear me when I ask

to be left alone? What are my wishes

worth? Does the hand that feeds me

reach out to smother me in my sleep?

Does anyone see the hand? If

it kills me, who lays claim to my

bones? How much will it make them?

Somehow

You visit me in a dream after passing,

after I’ve been awaiting you for weeks,

because Chinese belief teaches us our

loved ones will appear when we’re asleep.

It’s real when I enter the hotel restaurant

in the middle of nowhere town I live in,

as the Midwest architecture transforms

into Kowloon at evening time. We eat

bird’s nest soup, and I remember the time

my father ordered me this four-hundred-

year-old delicacy at Hong Kong airport.

Out comes the Peking duck, and I ask you:

“Why did it take you so long?” You answer:

“I arrived once you were strong and ready.”

Celebrate Good Times

The regime is having a birthday party, so we turn off the lights

and pretend we’re sick. All night, happy americans

honk their horns. We did it! they scream into our window.

In the morning, We is all over the floor. We sweep We

into a paper bag and label it EMERGENCY. The good news

is that things will go back to the way they were,

which is also the bad news. Meanwhile, I cut

an onion, and it’s onions all the way down, and that’s a fine

reason to cry at the sink on a Monday after the empire

congratulates itself on persisting again. No, thank you,

I’m stuffed, I couldn’t possibly have more hope. I haven’t finished

mourning the last tyrant yet. I haven’t said enough

goodbyes to—oh, what was her name? And hers?

How many We’s did they cut out of me? And whose country

was I standing on, the last time we survived?

breaklight

light keeps on breaking.

i keep knowing

the language of other nations.

i keep hearing

tree talk

water words

and i keep knowing what they mean.

and light just keeps on breaking.

last night

the fears of my mother came

knocking and when i

opened the door

they tried to explain themselves

and i understood

everything they said.

whose side are you on?

the side of the busstop woman

trying to drag her bag

up the front steps before the doors

clang shut i am on her side

i give her exact change

and him the old man hanging by

one strap his work hand folded shut

as the bus doors i am on his side

when he needs to leave

i ring the bell i am on their side

riding the late bus into the same

someplace i am on the dark side always

the side of my daughters

the side of my tired sons

Like You

Like you I

love love, life, the sweet smell

of things, the sky-blue

landscape of January days.

And my blood boils up

and I laugh through eyes

that have known the buds of tears.

I believe the world is beautiful

and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

And that my veins don’t end in me

but in the unanimous blood

of those who struggle for life,

love,

little things,

landscape and bread,

the poetry of everyone.

I'm a Fool to Love You

Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,

Some type of supernatural creature.

My mother would tell you, if she could,

About her life with my father,

A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman.

She would tell you about the choices

A young black woman faces.

Is falling in with some man

A deal with the devil

In blue terms, the tongue we use

When we don't want nuance

To get in the way,

When we need to talk straight.

My mother chooses my father

After choosing a man

Who was, as we sing it,

Of no account.

This man made my father look good,

That's how bad it was.

He made my father seem like an island

In the middle of a stormy sea,

He made my father look like a rock.

And is the blues the moment you realize

You exist in a stacked deck,

You look in a mirror at your young face,

The face my sister carries,

And you know it's the only leverage

You've got.

Does this create a hurt that whispers

How you going to do?

Is the blues the moment

You shrug your shoulders

And agree, a girl without money

Is nothing, dust

To be pushed around by any old breeze.

Compared to this,

My father seems, briefly,

To be a fire escape.

This is the way the blues works

Its sorry wonders,

Makes trouble look like

A feather bed,

Makes the wrong man's kisses

A healing.

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper

At sixteen, I worked after high school hours

at a printing plant

that manufactured legal pads:

Yellow paper

stacked seven feet high

and leaning

as I slipped cardboard

between the pages,

then brushed red glue

up and down the stack.

No gloves: fingertips required

for the perfection of paper,

smoothing the exact rectangle.

Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands

would slide along suddenly sharp paper,

and gather slits thinner than the crevices

of the skin, hidden.

Then the glue would sting,

hands oozing

till both palms burned

at the punchclock.

Ten years later, in law school,

I knew that every legal pad

was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,

that every open lawbook

was a pair of hands

upturned and burning.

Come Let Us Be Friends

Come, let us be friends, you and I,
E’en though the world doth hate at this hour;
Let’s bask in the sunlight of a love so high
That war cannot dim it with all its armed power.

Come, let us be friends, you and I,
The world hath her surplus of hatred today;
She needeth more love, see, she droops with a sigh,
Where her axis doth slant in the sky far away.

Come, let us be friends, you and I,
And love each other so deep and so well,
That the world may grow steady and forward fly,
Lest she wander towards chaos and drop into hell.

Lady Jordan

It didn’t matter that I married the game

or slept with a ball under my arm, Mom said

Girls don’t hoop, they wear hoops. And around here,

vecinas chirped: it’s always “¿Y tú novio?” season. But beauty

is a finger roll. A backdoor cut on the blacktop. A fadeaway

jump shot, two seconds left on the clock. So what mattered was Danny

talkin’ smack, even though his teeth were out of order. This isn’t the only history,

but is the history of everything: the neighborhood boys

who shot crooked, never learned my name, so I played them

Twenty-one, turned their ankles to jello,

made their backs kiss the floor, until they donned me

Lady Jordan, and who wouldn’t take that. Though I’ve never been

ladylike, I wore that rusted metal rim like a ring,

and slipped my bones through the net like a perfect white dress—

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain --- and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Love leaves leftovers

It’s been three years and I still have the French

keyboard enabled on my phone. Occasionally,

when I comment on poems on the internet,

It autocorrects love to liberté. (Which is fitting,

I suppose.) It’s been three years and I still sleep

facing the window because it’s good

to feel the sun when you wake. Everytime I see a squirrel

I think of how you, completely amazed

by their existence, tried to feed them peanuts

off your balcony railing. And how they came

to you and gently nuzzled your hands. I’ve never [ ]-talked

squirrels since. Love leaves leftovers, I’ve learned.

It’s never a clean escape. Oh but what a way

to say goodbye: here, I’ve loved you,

save some for later.

Another Story

You didn’t like the last story in your life’s book,

so you wrote yourself another one.

In this story,

you do not wear your body as an apology.

Instead you wear it like a quiet revolution,

you carry the future in the back pocket of your jeans,

say girl, say glory

each step forward is an amen

Ode to People Who Hate Me

I hate being hated even though I

provoke it, not by committing major wrongs

like murder, more like a regular

pattern of being selfish or forgetful,

which is another word for selfish.

If you hate me, trust me I know—

in fact, I have a ledger of people, like you,

who hate me, and I rifle through it every

morning obsessing over the names more

than they think about mine—a passing

thought, a microsecond of dislike or worse,

indifference like the Godzilla rays of fire

I feel buzz out of your eyes when

you scroll past my pictures on Instagram.

I should focus on the people who love me,

every therapist I ever had has told me so,

but I don’t need them to love me more,

so that’s pointless. If we hate each other,

I assure you my hate has a trace of love

with a dash of hope. It’s the throbbing

contradiction of hate’s dark thrall.

excerpt from “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)”

I was born in the congo

I walked to the fertile crescent and built

the sphinx

I designed a pyramid so tough that a star

that only glows every one hundred years falls

into the center giving divine perfect light

I am bad

I sat on the throne

drinking nectar with allah

I got hot and sent an ice age to europe

to cool my thirst

My oldest daughter is nefertiti

the tears from my birth pains

created the nile

I am a beautiful woman

I gazed on the forest and burned

out the sahara desert

with a packet of goat's meat

and a change of clothes

I crossed it in two hours

I am a gazelle so swift

so swift you can't catch me

For a birthday present when he was three

I gave my son hannibal an elephant

He gave me rome for mother's day

My strength flows ever on

My son noah built new/ark and

I stood proudly at the helm

as we sailed on a soft summer day

I turned myself into myself and was

jesus

men intone my loving name

All praises All praises

I am the one who would save

I am so hip even my errors are correct

I sailed west to reach east and had to round off

the earth as I went

The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid

across three continents

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal

I cannot be comprehended

except by my permission

I mean . . . I . . . can fly

like a bird in the sky . . .

Dropping Keys

Translated by Dan Ladinsky

The small man

Builds cages for everyone

He

Knows.

While the sage,

Who has to duck his head

When the moon is low,

Keeps dropping keys all night long

For the

Beautiful

Rowdy

Prisoners.

Reckless Sonnet No. 8

My father, as a boy in Milwaukee, thought

the cicada's cry was the whir from a live wire--

not from muscles on the sides of an insect

vibrating against an outer membrane. Strange though

that, because they have no ears, no one knows why

the males cry so doggedly into the gray air.

Not strange that the young live underground sucking sap from tree roots

for seventeen years. A long, charmed childhood

not unlike one in a Great Lake town where at dusk

you'd pack up swimsuit, shake sand off your towel

and head back to the lights in the two-family houses

lining the streets. Where the family sat around the radio.

And the parents argued over their son and daughter

until each left for good. To cry in the air.

Self-Portrait as a Combination Taco Bell / Pizza Hut / KFC

the unholy trinity of suburban late-night salvation
barring seemingly endless options of worship

bean burrito breadsticks and mashed potatoes
or a soft taco pan pizza and a buttered biscuit

an unimaginable combination of food flavors
for people not ready to go home to their parents

and yet none of the options feel quite right
so maybe I should call it Self-Portrait as idling

in a drive-thru with your friends crammed
across the sunken bench seats avoiding

the glow of the check engine light with black tape
pressed with a precision unseen anywhere else

in their lives as a fractured voice says don’t worry
take your time and order whenever you’re ready

from behind a menu backlit like the window
inside of a confessional booth as the hands

of the driver open up like a collection basket
for the wadded-up bills and loose change

that slowly stack up as the years go by
and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be

in this analogy but I know about masking
warning signs and hearing out of tune

voices scream WE’RE THE KIDS WHO FEEL
LIKE DEAD ENDS so instead I’ll call it Self-

Portrait as From Under the Cork Tree
or maybe even Self-Portrait as whatever

album people listen to when they love
their friends and still want to feel connected

to the grass walls of a teenage wasteland
that they can’t help but run away from

You Can’t Put Muhammad Ali in a Poem

If you did—

it would

knock you down (remember Liston) &

if

you were

still stand

ing you would

have to

bust out (remember the March on Washington)

of your shakin' vaulted

poor thinkin' self (oh yes!)

& change (that's right!)

this big 'ol world (say it!)

& if you did— You (yes, you)

would have to battle w/words & rhymes & body & time—for

your New Idea—(did you hear that ) you would

have to

endure (i hear you ) & propose (what?)

a new name for all

( a new name?)

it could be Peace

it could be Unity (sounds easy)

but this poem cannot

provide this

or contain this

Word —(Watch out!)

here it comes! &

(it's gonna to sting like a bee)

excerpt from “Final Hour”

I'm about to change the focus from the richest to the brokest

I wrote this opus to reverse the hypnosis

Whoever's closest to the line's gonna win it

You gon' fall trying to ball

While my team win the pennant

I'm about to begin it

For a minute then run for senate

Make a slumlord be the tenant, give his money to kids to spend it

And then amend it, every law that ever prevented

Our survival since our arrival

Documented in The Bible like Moses and Aaron

Things gon' change, it's apparent

And all the transparent gon' be seen through

Let God redeem you

Keep your deen true

You can get the green too

Watch out who you cling to, observe how a queen do

And I remain calm reading the 73 Psalm

'Cause with all that's going on I got the world in my palm

You could get the money, you could get the power

But keep your eyes on the final hour

You can get the money, you can get the power

But keep your eyes on the final hour

Postscript

What we did to the earth, we did to our daughters

one after the other.

What we did to the trees, we did to our elders

stacked in their wheelchairs by the lunchroom door.

What we did to our daughters, we did to our sons

calling out for their mothers.

What we did to the trees, what we did to the earth,

we did to our sons, to our daughters.

What we did to the cow, to the pig, to the lamb,

we did to the earth, butchered and milked it.

Few of us knew what the bird calls meant

or what the fires were saying.

We took of earth and took and took, and the earth

seemed not to mind

until one of our daughters shouted: it was right

in front of you, right in front of your eyes

and you didn’t see.

The air turned red. The ocean grew teeth.

Named

I’ve identified more dead birds than living.

An old friend used to quiz me on flora and fauna,

pointing and asking what’s that? but now won’t

even say my undeadname. A tree, I’d answer,

knowing the mutability of even that. Even that.

Tired

I am so tired of waiting,

Aren't you,

For the world to become good

And beautiful and kind?

Let us take a knife

And cut the world in two -

And see what worms are eating

At the rind.

Lavender Balloon

I have a Lavender balloon

I’m going to blow it up

Quite soon

It’s going to take me

to the Moon

I’m simply waiting for

A tune

Together we’ll Fly Away

We’re going to Float right

through the day

We’re going to Drift right

through the Night

Together we’ll be

Out of sight

Me and My Lavender balloon

And Everything Nice

After Wanda Coleman

Before we warred

there was sweet.

We would sneak the stuff—

our saccharine secret—

somehow sure it made us sinners.

It started at four (or sometime before):

Slurping of Log Cabin syrup

right down from its cap,

brother & I howling. Passed it back and

forth on Saturday mornings. We’d

rocket across grasshopper’s green yard

until fuel burnt up & needed

re-stocking. We sweetened unnatural

places. Brown rice n chicken,

Kraft mac n cheese,

or guzzled it straight, no chaser,

let grains dissolve in

gluttonous caverns.

Stirred six cups into Kool-Aid pitchers.

Before-during-after we learned

of bitterness, of absence,

we slammed sugar unsupervised.

Knew nothing of what

too much could do to our

insatiable bodies. Knew nothing

of restraint. Knew nothing of life’s

undoing. But we knew enough

to keep this secret sacred &

beneath the kitchen table.

about my father

—he became a teetotaler out of his socialist convictions; during

the war he began to drink again

—he was casual; he kept his tie in his pocket till the last minute

before oral exams

—he left me on the street to be picked up by the nuns from the

orphanage; he watched me from a distant doorway

—once he refused to hit me; he told my mother his hand was

too large

—he wrote to his aunt that he hoped the baby would be a boy

—when he was a student, jews were not permitted to sit in the

front rows of lecture halls; he made it a point to

stand through the lectures; ultimately, jews were

allowed to sit

—he was a discus thrower

—according to some, he got along with everyone: jews, goyim,

children

—he was caught a couple of times by the germans; they thought

he was a polish smuggler

—once he was put on a train for treblinka; he jumped, was shot at

and wounded, but got back to warsaw alive

—he believed in resistance

excerpt from "Freedom"

Ten Hail Marys, I meditate for practice

Channel nine news tell me I'm movin' backwards

Eight blocks left, death is around the corner

Seven misleadin' statements 'bout my persona

Six headlights wavin' in my direction

Five-o askin' me what's in my possession

Yeah I keep runnin', jump in the aqueducts

Fire hydrants and hazardous

Smoke alarms on the back of us

But mama don't cry for me, ride for me

Try for me, live for me

Breathe for me, sing for me

Honestly guidin' me

I could be more than I gotta be

Stole from me, lied to me, nation hypocrisy

Code on me, drive on me

Wicked, my spirit inspired me

Like yeah, open correctional gates in higher desert

Yeah, open our mind as we cast away oppression

Yeah, open the streets and watch our beliefs

And when they carve my name inside the concrete

I pray it forever reads

Freedom

I can't move

Freedom, cut me loose

Singin', freedom! Freedom! Where are you?

'Cause I need freedom, too

excerpt from "Freedom"

Ten Hail Marys, I meditate for practice

Channel nine news tell me I'm movin' backwards

Eight blocks left, death is around the corner

Seven misleadin' statements 'bout my persona

Six headlights wavin' in my direction

Five-o askin' me what's in my possession

Yeah I keep runnin', jump in the aqueducts

Fire hydrants and hazardous

Smoke alarms on the back of us

But mama don't cry for me, ride for me

Try for me, live for me

Breathe for me, sing for me

Honestly guidin' me

I could be more than I gotta be

Stole from me, lied to me, nation hypocrisy

Code on me, drive on me

Wicked, my spirit inspired me

Like yeah, open correctional gates in higher desert

Yeah, open our mind as we cast away oppression

Yeah, open the streets and watch our beliefs

And when they carve my name inside the concrete

I pray it forever reads

Freedom

I can't move

Freedom, cut me loose

Singin', freedom! Freedom! Where are you?

'Cause I need freedom, too

Dust

Someone spoke to me last night,

told me the truth. Just a few words,

but I recognized it.

I knew I should make myself get up,

write it down, but it was late,

and I was exhausted from working

all day in the garden, moving rocks.

Now, I remember only the flavor —

not like food, sweet or sharp.

More like a fine powder, like dust.

And I wasn’t elated or frightened,

but simply rapt, aware.

That’s how it is sometimes —

God comes to your window,

all bright light and black wings,

and you’re just too tired to open it.

Form

In pattern affirm

expansion of thought.

In vagueness draw taut.

In craft avoid charm.

When jaded, transform.

When cast small, exploit

what is small. When brought

to extremes conform

if what is conformed

takes widening weight.

When rigid be wrought.

When assumed, disarm.

When fervor is sought

yield frenzy of storm.

A Good Story

Some days—dishes piled in the sink, books littering the coffee table—

are harder than others. Today, my head is packed with cockroaches,

dizziness and everywhere it hurts. Venom in the jaw, behind the eyes,

between the blades. Still, the dog is snoring on my right, the cat, on my left.

Outside, all those redbuds are just getting good. I tell a friend, The body

is so body. And she nods. I used to like the darkest stories, the bleak

snippets someone would toss out about just how bad it could get.

My stepfather told me a story about when he lived on the streets as a kid,

how he’d, some nights, sleep under the grill at a fast food restaurant until

both he and his buddy got fired. I used to like that story for some reason,

something in me that believed in overcoming. But right now all I want

is a story about human kindness, the way once when I couldn’t stop

crying because I was fifteen and heartbroken, he came in and made

me eat a small pizza he’d cut up into tiny bites until the tears stopped.

Maybe I was just hungry, I said. And he nodded, holding out the last piece.

excerpt from “Tiananmen Square, 1989”

there are stars in their caps, soldiers

crouched as if the revolution

only walks at knee level. before them, a sea

of students: one adjusting his glasses, his face

turned towards some invisible turmoil,

this refusal that could bring everything

tomorrow or simply life. or simply

bullets slicing the Square, shouts

& fears running & running into bodies

that ripple

onto concrete

like children

napping under Beijing sun,

eyelids still as peace— still

as red pooling, as ink

resisting its meaning— resisting

the fist of a government crushing ambitions

into pennies

Sunday

And when they sat down in the morning

to bowls of cold cereal, each in turn

would notice the blades of a ceiling fan

spinning at the bottom of their spoons,

small enough to swallow, yet no one

ever mentioned it, neither looking up

nor into each other's eyes for fear

of feeding the hunger that held them there.

The Garden of Eden. My ancestors’ graves. A watermelon field in Central Texas where my father once slept. Miles of rivers. The waiting room of a hospital in which a doctor, thin-looking in his coat, shared mixed results. A den of worms beneath the frozen grass. Jesus’s tomb. The stretches of highway on the long drive home after burial. The figurative abyss. The literal heavens. The cheap motel room in which I thought about praying despite my disbelief. What I thought was a voice was simply a recording playing from another room. The cluttered attic. Most of the past. The very distant future, where man is just another stratum in the ground. The tell of Megiddo. The flooded house and the scorched one. My favorite cemetery, where I can touch the white noise distorting memory. What is static if not the sound of the universe’s grief? Anywhere static reigns.

Audre Lorde

The Bees

Spanish translation by Torres Ruiz

In the street outside a school

what children learn

possesses them.

Three little boys yell

stoning a swarm of bees caught

between the lunchroom window and a grate

Their furious rocks graze metal.

The bees are cold and slow

to self-defense. One boy is stung

into quicker destruction.

School guards come

long wooden sticks in hand

advancing on the hive

they beat the almost finished

rooms of wax apart fresh honey

drips down their broomsticks

little boy-feet becoming experts

trample the rain-stunned bees

into the pavement.

Curious and apart the girls

look on in fascination learning

secret lessons one steps

across the feebly buzzing ruins

to peer up at the empty grated nook

"We could have studied honey-making!"

tries to understand

her own destruction.

Liv Mammone

Fear

If the pain doesn’t come back,

what will I write about? Will the poems

have tendon and teeth? I didn’t get

right the sonnet of all its colors.

I did not find the exact dagger of phrase

about the long loss of my life.

Hope is all I do and am.

I don’t think I’m poet enough

to make you taste this mango;

or see that sutured sunset unless

from a hospital bed.

I was good for carving.

There will be kisses, music, street names.

Loved ones will go where the gone do.

What if I don’t want to (write it: can’t)

write about these things.

What if I would rather feel

than create feeling?

What then? Go ahead.

W.S. Merwin

Yesterday

My friend says I was not a good son

you understand

I say yes I understand

he says I did not go

to see my parents very often you know

and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says

maybe I would go there once

a month or maybe even less

I say oh yes

he says the last time I went to see my father

I say the last time I saw my father

he says the last time I saw my father

he was asking me about my life

how I was making out and he

went into the next room

to get something to give me

oh I say

feeling again the cold

of my father's hand the last time

he says and my father turned

in the doorway and saw me

look at my wristwatch and he

said you know I would like you to stay

and talk with me

oh yes I say

but if you are busy he said

I don't want you to feel that you

have to

just because I'm here

I say nothing

he says my father

said maybe

you have important work you are doing

or maybe you should be seeing

somebody I don't want to keep you

I look out the window

my friend is older than I am

he says and I told my father it was so

and I got up and left him then

you know

though there was nowhere I had to go

and nothing I had to do

Bert Meyers

Daybreak

Birds drip from the trees.

The moon's a little goat

over there on the hill;

dawn, as blue as her milk,

fills the sky's tin pail.

The air's so cold a gas station

glitters in an ice-cube.

The freeway hums like a pipe

when the water's on.

Streetlights turn off their dew.

The sun climbs down from a roof,

stops by a house and strikes

its long match on a wall,

takes out a ring of brass keys

and opens every door.

Dunya Mikhail

I Was In A Hurry

Yesterday I lost a country.

I was in a hurry,

and didn't notice when it fell from me

like a broken branch from a forgetful tree.

Please, if anyone passes by

and stumbles across it,

perhaps in a suitcase

open to the sky,

or engraved on a rock

like a gaping wound,

or wrapped

in the blankets of emigrants,

or canceled

like a losing lottery ticket,

or helplessly forgotten

in Purgatory,

or rushing forward without a goal

like the questions of children,

or rising with the smoke of war,

or rolling in a helmet on the sand,

or stolen in Ali Baba's jar,

or disguised in the uniform of a policeman

who stirred up the prisoners

and fled,

or squatting in the mind of a woman

who tries to smile,

or scattered

like the dreams

of new immigrants in America.

If anyone stumbles across it,

return it to me, please.

Please return it, sir.

Please return it, madam.

It is my country. . .

I was in a hurry

when I lost it yesterday.

Deborah A. Miranda

Love in the Margins

Come on, shapeshifter—

I can’t dance either.

But I want to hold

your shadowy body,

hum crooked tunes

into your abalone ear.

Out here on the edge,

desperadas don’t always

make good lovers.

Sometimes our scars

match too well; touch

is barbed wire and border.

I’ll try not to hide behind

my bruises if you’ll

give me the hard gray line

of your shoulder.

Can’t you hear

the cricket’s ebbing

daysong? Let me

tuck that tidal melody

into the wine-colored

strands of your hair,

braid your name

with horizon’s indigo

kiss. Glorious outlaws,

we’ve got nothing to lose

but this edge.

Arianna Monet

introspection in shea butter

I am melting / a scoop of shea butter / in the palm of my hand / and reading the

label while I wait. / I have always laughed / in the face of the word //

“dime-sized”// And I think that maybe / having 4C hair was my

earliest lesson / in self-determination. / In ignoring other people’s /

judgments / of how much I am // supposed // to need. / Maybe this is

how / I taught myself / to claim / a little extra / and then a handful

more than that. / Maybe this / is how I learned / to grant myself /

abundance. / Maybe / the melting is an exercise / on the value of my

own / warmth. / I rub the oil into / an opinionated thicket / of curls. /

Anoint myself queen / of my own understanding. / I wipe my hands

clean of the extra / butter / by massaging it into the cinnamon / of my

chest and shoulders / and leave the mirror,

g l o w i n g.

James Fujinami Moore

Diagnostic Quiz for Human Ghost

Over the past two weeks, please list the items you have lost.

At the present moment, do you know the location & number of your teeth?

(in grams) Please estimate the weight of each of the following: Left lung, half-liver,

three fingers on your right hand.

(in miles) Please estimate the distance from the back of your skull to the skin of your

eye.

Over the past two weeks, please estimate the number of times you’ve attempted to

start a conversation and failed (including, but not limited to: grocery stores, living

rooms, when you are alone.)

(in incandescence) How much light passes through you? Is it enough to write a letter?

Pick a letter. Pick a new name.

Can you hear the woman singing?

What was your death’s taxonomy? Where is its kingdom & domain?

How important do you feel to others?

Are you sitting atop the creaking hinges of something only you can see?

Are you certain there is no part of your body that is missing.

Are you certain there is nothing missing at all.

Pat Mora

Fences

Mouths full of laughter,

the turistas come to the tall hotel

with suitcases full of dollars.

Every morning my brother makes

the cool beach new for them.

With a wooden board he smooths

away all footprints.

I peek through the cactus fence

and watch the women rub oil

sweeter than honey into their arms and legs

while their children jump waves`

or sip drinks from long straws,

coconut white, mango yellow.

Once my little sister

ran barefoot across the hot sand

for a taste.

My mother roared like the ocean,

“No. No. It’s their beach.

It’s their beach.”

Elisabeth Murawski

Kinds of Silence

After heavy snow.
After the last breath.

Before lightning strikes.
Before the first breath.

In a spider’s web.
In a musical rest.

Of a sleeping dog.
Of a stone general’s breast.

With an old friend.
With a favorite brother.

From the mouth of God.
From a cold mother.

On closing a book.
On fearing what’s to come.

Under a witch’s spell.
Under a dictator’s thumb.

By a frozen river.
By a stone that’s leaning.

At the end of a war.
At another war’s beginning.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Letter to the Northern Lights

The light here on earth keeps us plenty busy: a fire
in central Pennsylvania still burns bright since 1962.

Whole squads of tiny squid blaze up the coast of Japan
before sunrise. Of course you didn’t show when we went

searching for you, but we found other lights: firefly,
strawberry moon, a tiny catch of it in each other’s teeth.

Someone who saw you said they laid down
in the middle of the road and took you all in,

and I’m guessing you’re used to that—people falling
over themselves to catch a glimpse of you

and your weird mint-glow shushing itself over the lake.
Aurora, I’d rather stay indoors with him—even if it meant

a rickety hotel and its wood paneling, golf carpeting
in the bathrooms, and grainy soapcakes. Instead

of waiting until just the right hour of the shortest
blue-night of the year when you finally felt moved

enough to collide your gas particles with sun particles—
I’d rather share sunrise with him and loon call

over the lake with him, the slap of shoreline threaded
through screen windows with him. My heart

slams in my chest, against my shirt—it’s a kind
of kindling you’d never be able to light on your own.

Leena Norms

Meet Commute

My heroes are dead,

my enemies are in power,

and still I must brave the shower,

brave the pavement,

brave the bus,

brave the slipping, sour us,

dig among the putrid bins,

dust off hope

and still give it keys,

still let it live here,

let it breathe.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,

which knew it would inherit the earth

before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds

watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom

is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,

more famous than the dress shoe,

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men

who smile while crossing streets,

sticky children in grocery lines,

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,

but because it never forgot what it could do.

José Olivarez

now i’m bologna

my parents were born from a car. they climbed out

& kissed the car on its cheek. my grandmother.

to be a first generation person. 23 and Me reports

i am descendant of pistons & drive trains. 33%

irrigation tools. you are what you do. my first job

was in a lunch meat factory. now i’m bologna.

it’s not so bad being a person. the front seat of a car

is more comfortable than the trunk. when they were babies

my parents dreamt of being Lamborghinis. not

people. you are what your children grow up to do.

if i put my parents' names on papers, what happens?

the answer is no comment. the answer is quién sabe.

the answer is yo no sé, pero no es abogado.

people are overrated. give me avocados.

Mary Oliver

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

January Gill O'Neil

The Rookie

America under the lights
at Harry Ball Field. A fog rolls in
as the flag crinkles and drapes

around a metal pole.
My son reaches into the sky
to pull down a game-ender,

a bomb caught in his leather mitt.
He gives the ball a flat squeeze
then tosses it in from the outfield,

tugs his cap over a tussle of hair
before joining the team—
all high-fives and handshakes

as the Major boys line up
at home plate. They are learning
how to be good sports,

their dugout cheers interrupted only
by sunflower seed shells spat
along the first base line.

The coach prattles on
about the importance of stealing
bases and productive outs

while a teammate cracks a joke
about my son’s ‘fro, then says,
But you’re not really black…

to which there’s laughter,
to which he smiles but says nothing,
which says something about

what goes unsaid, what starts
with a harmless joke, routine
as a can of corn.

But this is little league.
This is where he learns
how to field a position,

how to play a bloop in the gap—
that impossible space where
he’ll always play defense.

Arthur O’Shaughnessy

excerpt from "Ode"

We are the music makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams; —

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties

We build up the world's great cities,

And out of a fabulous story

We fashion an empire's glory:

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song's measure

Can trample a kingdom down.

A breath of our inspiration

Is the life of each generation;

A wondrous thing of our dreaming

Unearthly, impossible seeming —

The soldier, the king, and the peasant

Are working together in one,

Till our dream shall become their present,

And their work in the world be done.

Elise Partridge

For a Father

Remember after work you grabbed our skateboard,

crouched like a surfer, wingtips over the edge;

wheels clacketing down the pocked macadam,

you veered almost straight into the neighbor's hedge?

We ran after you laughing, shouting, Wait!

Or that August night you swept us to the fair?

The tallest person boarding the Ferris wheel,

you rocked our car right when we hit the apex

above the winking midway, to make us squeal.

Next we raced you to the games, shouting, Wait!

At your funeral, relatives and neighbors,

shaking our hands, said, "So young to have died!"

But we've dreamt you're just skating streets away,

striding the fairgrounds toward a wilder ride.

And we're still straggling behind, shouting, Wait—!

Craig Santos Perez

ars pasifika

when the tide

of silence

rises

say “ocean”

then with the paddle

of your tongue

rearrange

the letters to form

“canoe”

Raquel Salas Rivera

if time is queer/and memory is trans/and my hands hurt in the cold/then

there are ways to hold pain like night follows day

not knowing how tomorrow went down.

it hurts like never when the always is now,

the now that time won't allow.

there is no manner of tomorrow, nor shape of today

only like always having to leave

from and toward the future's could-be,

in order to never more see

the sí;

and if forever proves me wrong,

it'll hurt with the hurt of before the before.

it'll have to take me along:

all the never-enough of why and therefore.

life has given me much to believe,

but more is the doubt that undid what i know,

for, like night follows day, the pleasure is sure,

of forever beginning once more.

David Roderick

Self-Portrait as David Lynch

I wear a flower in my lapel.

I like the sweetness of its lie in my nose.

A carnation, the fool’s flower,

its heart a wilting empire.

In late-night editing sessions,

I imagine I’m planting flowers

in the sockets of eyes. Whatever helps

me reach our rigor mortis,

bound behind the wheel,

a little Bowie on the radio, maybe,

at six frames per second,

headlights plowing the dark’s divided road.

Cities grow to calcified castles.

Fish groom the coral brains

anchored in a tank’s purple volume.

I love the scratch of celluloid

and a low-register noise,

the hair of heat burning in a lit bulb.

Sometimes I swap my carnation

for an orchid or rose.

On-screen, there’s every hint

a man-child built the night.

I read it once, by flashlight, as a kid—

that Sleep and Death are brothers,

and they send our dreams through two gates,

one made of horn, for the true dreams,

and one made of tusk, for the false.

Anne Sexton

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,

haunting the black air, braver at night;

dreaming evil, I have done my hitch

over the plain houses, light by light:

lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.

I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,

closets, silks, innumerable goods;

fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:

whining, rearranging the disaligned.

A woman like that is misunderstood.

I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,

waved my nude arms at villages going by,

learning the last bright routes, survivor

where your flames still bite my thigh

and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.

A woman like that is not ashamed to die.

I have been her kind.

you do

for no reason at all?

Tom Snarsky

Song

You love me like an eave

Feeding rain to the gutter

I love you like a gutter

Fielding rain from the eave

Gary Soto

excerpt from “Ode to Los Raspados”

Papá says

They were

A shiny dime

When he was

Little, but for me,

His daughter

With hair that swings

Like jump ropes,

They’re free:

Papa drives a truck

Of helados and

Snow cones, the

Music of arrival

Playing block

After block.

It’s summer now.

The sun is bright

As a hot dime.

You need five

Shiny ones

For a snow cone:

Strawberry and root beer,

Grape that stains

The mouth with laughter,

Orange that’s a tennis ball

Of snow

You could stab

With a red-striped straw.

I know the kids,

Gina and Ofélia

Juan and Ananda,

Shorty and Sleepy,

All running

With dimes pressed

To their palms,

Salted from play

Or mowing the lawn.

When they walk away,

The dime of sun

Pays them back

With laughter

And the juice runs

To their elbows,

Sticky summer rain

That sweetens the street.

Donna Spruijt-Metz

Hoof

Is it that I have had a richness

of choices, have I gazelled

sideways from one riverstone to the next?

Or has this been a series

of false starts—

the hoof withdrawn

at the slightest snow?

January’s Wolf Moon calls her pups

into the night—marks

their necessary kill. We all

need to eat

even in snow—hoof paused

over the water—my heart says

trust—my tracks say

doubt

Preeti Vangani

One Cup of Chai

If I had known that the cup of chai

my mother asked me, a drifter

in the kitchen, to make her

that afternoon, which I

having blended water and milk

in such strange ratios

that when reduced and strained

the tea came up

to barely one trisection of my pinkie

(that cup was the driest well I saw,

the lowest tide) so to cover my blunder

I poured raw tap water to flood her cup

and fled her room before she could

collect her body, bring lip to saucer,

had I known that the pale, putrid mess

I presented, was after all, the only and

last cup of tea I’d ever make her

would I have suddenly been

granted the culinary wisdom to brew

instead the pot with sprigs of lemongrass,

a pod of cardamom, perhaps even

a prestigious thread of saffron

that I’d sneak from the silver hexagonal box

she kept hidden behind the airtight jars

of pricey nuts, and bring her

a creamy drink of complex caffeine, even

make some magnanimous promise

of offering her tea on tap till she lived

but knowing me, I know I’d have just

continued being the spectacular failure I was

that day, [ ]-talking my every inability

out of her sight, embarrassed by failure,

afraid of consequence and knowing her,

she would have creased her nose

at first, then continued to descend

on the plate with the hopeful pull

of her slurp, stubborn as she was,

not willing to peg one finite judgement

of adulation or derision—

on the cup she was served

Ocean Vuong

excerpt from “Theology”

Do you remember when I tried to be good.

It was a bad time.

So much was burning without a source.

I’m sorry I was so young.

I didn’t mean it.

It’s just this thing is heavy.

How could anyone hold all of it & not melt.

I thought gravity was a law, which meant it could be broken.

But it’s more like a language. Once you’re in it

you never get out. A fool, I climbed out the window

just to look at the stars.

It was too dark & the crickets sounded like people I know

saying something I don’t.

I think I had brothers.

Think I heard them crying once, then laughing, until the laughing

was just in my head.

William Carlos Williams

The Fool’s Song

I tried to put a bird in a cage.

O fool that I am!

For the bird was Truth.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

Truth in a cage!

And when I had the bird in the cage,

O fool that I am!

Why, it broke my pretty cage.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

Truth in a cage!

And when the bird was flown from the cage,

O fool that I am!

Why, I had nor bird nor cage.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

Truth in a cage!

Heigh-ho! Truth in a cage.

Wendy Xu

excerpt from “You Are Not Dead”

The only thing

I ever made

which is worth

anything at all

is a promise

to my friends

to keep

moving.

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Refaat Alareer

If I Must Die

Maya Angelou

Alone

Fatimah Asghar

I Don’t Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We’ve Done to the Earth

Margaret Atwood

[you fit into me]

Zeina Azzam

Nine Spice Mix

Joshua Bennett

Trash

Elizabeth Bishop

One Art

John Brehm

Second Helpings

Gwendolyn Brooks

a song in the front yard

Gwendolyn Brooks

Paul Robeson

Jericho Brown

Labor

Charles Bukowski

The Laughing Heart

Victoria Adukwei Bulley

There You Are

DeeSoul Carson

excerpt from “Black History Month (As Told By My Spam Folder)”

Dorothy Chan

Somehow

Franny Choi

Celebrate Good Times

Lucille Clifton

breaklight

Lucille Clifton

whose side are you on?

Roque Dalton

Like You

Cornelius Eady

I'm a Fool to Love You

Martín Espada

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper

Sarah Lee Brown Fleming

Come Let Us Be Friends

Denice Frohman

Lady Jordan

Robert Frost

Acquainted with the Night

Maria Giesbrecht

Love leaves leftovers

Nikita Gill

Another Story

Carmen Giménez

Ode to People Who Hate Me

Nikki Giovanni

excerpt from “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)”

Hafez

Dropping Keys

Kimiko Hahn

Reckless Sonnet No. 8

Aaron Tyler Hand

Self-Portrait as a Combination Taco Bell / Pizza Hut / KFC

Juan Felipe Herrera

You Can’t Put Muhammad Ali in a Poem

Lauryn Hill

excerpt from “Final Hour”

Marie Howe

Postscript

SG Huerta