burning in the open field

It is not uncommon for me to sit on a poem for years and years before posting it, because I collect poems and only have 30(ish) spots per year. I've had this one in the file for long enough that I have it saved in multiple places, but it never does get less evocative or relevant; it's also fascinating to me how different it is from both his earlier and later poetry, while also using language in such a recognizable way. Is Richard Siken in favor with the internet again? I honestly don't care, but I've always liked his poetry, including back when he was a tumblr fandom darling. This is not really a tumblr fandom poem, but it sticks with me.

To have a thought, there must be an object—
the field is empty, sloshed with gold, a hayfield thick
with sunshine. There must be an object so land
a man there, solid on his feet, on solid ground, in
a field fully flooded, enough light to see him clearly,

the light on his skin and bouncing off his skin.
He's easy to desire since there's not much to him,
vague and smeary in his ochers, in his umbers,
burning in the open field. Forget about his insides,
his plumbing and his furnaces, put a thing in his hand

and be done with it. No one wants to know what's
in his head. It should be enough. To make something
beautiful should be enough. It isn't. It should be.
The smear of his head—I paint it out, I paint it in
again. I ask it what it wants. I want to be a cornerstone,

says the head. Let's kill something. Land a man in a
landscape and he'll try to conquer it. Make him
handsome and you're a fascist, make him ugly and
you're saying nothing new. The conqueror suits up
and takes the field, his horse already painted in

beneath him. What do you do with a man like that?
While you are deciding, more men ride in. The hand
sings weapon. The mind says tool. The body swerves
in the service of the mind, which is evidence of
the mind but not actual proof. More conquerors.

They swarm the field and their painted flags unfurl.
Crown yourself with leaves and stake your claim
before something smears up the paint. I turned away
from darkness to see daylight, to see what would
happen. What happened? What does a man want?

Power. The men spread, the thought extends. I paint
them out, I paint them in again. A blur of forces.
Why take more than we need? Because we can.
Deep footprint, it leaves a hole. You'd break your
heart to make it bigger, so why not crack your skull

when the mind swells. A thought bigger than your
own head. Try it. Seriously. Cover more ground.
I thought of myself as a city and I licked my lips.
I thought of myself as a nation and I wrung my hands,
I put a thing in your hand. Will you defend yourself?

From me, I mean. Let’s kill something. The mind
moves forward, the paint layers up: glop glop and
shellac. I shovel the color into our faces, I shovel our
faces into our faces. They look like me. I move them
around. I prefer to blame others, it's easier. King me.

—Richard Siken, "Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors," from War of the Foxes (2015), although I believe it was originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 28, 2014.

ache for your life

I promised y'all some bangers.

I've been taught that bloodstones can cure a snakebite,
can stop the bleeding—most people forgot this
when the war ended. The war ended
depending on which war you mean: those we started,
before those, millennia ago and onward,
those which started me, which I lost and won—
these ever-blooming wounds.
I was built by wage. So I wage love and worse—
always another campaign to march across
a desert night for the cannon flash of your pale skin
settling in a silver lagoon of smoke at your breast.
I dismount my dark horse, bend to you there, deliver you
the hard pull of all my thirsts—
I learned Drink in a country of drought.
We pleasure to hurt, leave marks
the size of stones—each a cabochon polished
by our mouths. I, your lapidary, your lapidary wheel
turning—green mottled red—
the jaspers of our desires.
There are wildflowers in my desert
which take up to twenty years to bloom.
The seeds sleep like geodes beneath hot feldspar sand
until a flash flood bolts the arroyo, lifting them
in its copper current, opens them with memory—
they remember what their god whispered
into their ribs: Wake up and ache for your life.
Where your hands have been are diamonds
on my shoulders, down my back, thighs—
I am your culebra.
I am in the dirt for you.
Your hips are quartz-light and dangerous,
two rose-horned rams ascending a soft desert wash
before the November sky untethers a hundred-year flood—
the desert returned suddenly to its ancient sea.
Arise the wild heliotrope, scorpion weed,
blue phacelia which hold purple the way a throat can hold
the shape of any great hand—
Great hands is what she called mine.
The rain will eventually come, or not.
Until then, we touch our bodies like wounds—
the war never ended and somehow begins again.

—Natalie Diaz, "Postcolonial Love Poem," from Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press, 2020). I believe this poem was originally published (in a slightly earlier form) in The New Republic on February 19, 2016, and I've had it on my list for a while, possibly even since before the collection won a Pulitzer. Like I said, it's a banger.

a kiss or a bullet

So, obviously, I haven't posted a poem in a week. I did have some of the last week already planned out on my spreadsheet, but I haven't had the wherewithal to do the posting itself—this trip has been really wonderful in a lot of ways (leaving aside the couple of days last week when I was super sick), but it's also been absolutely packed, and when I haven't been actively doing something, I have mostly been lying on my hotel bed trying to recoup my energy. We fly home tomorrow, and I might spend the last few days of the month doubling up on poems, but I may also come in a little short, this year. It happens! Sometimes life is a lot!

With all that being said, here is a poem for yesterday, April 22 (which is when I started writing this post). Later today, if I can get the internet to work a little better than it's working right now, I might post a poem in honor of Shakespeare's birth/day day; but for now, this one. Warnings for references to gun violence.

Say Stop.

Keep your lips pressed together
after you say the p:

(soon they'll try
and pry

your breath out—)

―

Whisper it
three times in a row:

Stop Stop Stop

In a hospital bed
like a curled up fish, someone's

gulping at air—

How should you apply
your breath?

—

List all of the people
you would like
to stop.

Who offers love,
who terror—

Write Stop.
Put a period at the end.

Decide if it's a kiss
or a bullet.

—Dana Levin, "Instructions for Stopping," 2017. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 6, 2017, and in Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence in the U.S. (Beacon, 2017). In the notes on the poem, Levin says, "To write this poem, I sat in a room, saying 'stop' over and over in order to hear how it sounded, to feel how it felt in my mouth. Then I wrote it down. Then I added a period, which posed the deciding question."