dolphins crossing the horizon

I missed yesterday, but here is a poem for today. 

Three times she bit the Atlantic but only once barked at thunder.

Lonely thunder and now her teeth-marks float to sea.

This is her first trip to how Ocracoke Island smells

and the ocean, I'll count my encounters 

with the wide, ineffable appetite as I go to bed, 

with the factory of liquid fold and unfold, 

there was Kittery in the morning and the tent-eating tide,

the naked bland Greek crotches of Sfakia. 

My dog is realizing she doesn't like salt water, I 

that a spiritual person could see angels in white winged waves, 

just as another might think of beer. Drunken angels abound. 

I had an actual dream last night, not a, to loosen 

the imaginative stops, I need to invite Carl Jung into the poem 

kind of dream, but my father and I and other men 

tried to save a crop that was probably just suburban 

crewcut lawn grass. I didn't know what to do 

and bleated questions until my father said that asking was rude. 

Which is when I tried to kill him, kill the idea 

that to not know but want to, that to ask, 

to form the voice into waves flowing out from mind, was wrong, 

and couldn't kill him because when I tried to lift 

so I could smash him down, he was heavy as Icarus falling 

and I woke to the sense of a shape breathing the darkness

of the room. I drove eleven hours to remember 

only the second dream in my life. A few feet to my right, 

a ghost crab pitches sand from a hole, its eyes 

on stalks above its sideways life. Sanderlings 

skitter wet sand and with their long bills, probe 

for small crustaceans, I dug one out yesterday 

as water trickled home, sunlight ballrooming 

on its shattering surface, the creature was white 

and writhed, the size of what I pick from my navel 

at the end of the day. My first thought was that I needed 

a name, a sound to wrap around the image, to which I'd attach 

other breaths, breaths of how it lives and what it eats, 

and immediately wanted to know nothing 

except how it felt on my skin, the smallest kiss 

to ever cross my fingerprint. Eleven hours 

to close my eyes and have them turn around. 

At this rate, I'll recall one more dream before I die. 

In the distance, black triangles surface and submerge, 

dolphins crossing the horizon like the teeth 

of a saw cutting this ocean from an ocean that has asked 

to sail away.

—Bob Hicock, "Rising dream tide," originally published—I believe—in the Spring 2006 issue of Ploughshares, although I definitely got it from wintercreek.

through their empty names

While in Mexico (which I am this week—and the last time I was in Mexico during poetry month was 2008, which is sort of weird and fascinating), I want to post some Mexican poets. Here's a little Octavio Paz. 

A Roger Caillois

El agua horada la piedra,

el viento dispersa el agua,

la piedra detiene al viento.

Agua, viento, piedra.

El viento esculpe la piedra,

la piedra es copa del agua,

el agua escapa y es viento.

Piedra, viento, agua.

El viento en sus giros canta,

el agua al andar murmura,

la piedra inmóvil se calla.

Viento, agua, piedra.

Uno es otro y es ninguno:

entre sus nombres vacíos

pasan y se desvanecen

agua, piedra, viento.

for Roger Caillois

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind.

Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,

stone's a cup of water,

water escapes and is wind.

Stone, wind, water.

Wind sings in its whirling,

water murmurs going by,

unmoving stone keeps still.

Wind, water, stone.

Each is another and no other:

crossing and vanishing

through their empty names:

water, stone, wind.

—Octavio Paz (1914-1998), "Wind, Water, Stone," translated by Eliot Weinberger, and in this case from The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1987). 

(I really like this poem, but I've definitely seen too many BTS videos at this point, because I keep trying to read the poem in the rhythm of BTS doing rock paper scissors, which isn't...EXACTLY wrong.)

sin fronteras

I'm on vacation! This is not a poem about being on vacation. 

To live in the Borderlands means you

     are neither hispana india negra española

     ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed

     caught in the crossfire between camps

     while carrying all five races on your back

     not knowing which side to turn to, run from;

To live in the Borderlands means knowing 

     that the india in you, betrayed for 500 years,

     is no longer speaking to you,

     that mexicanas call you rajetas, 

     that denying the Anglo inside you

     is as bad as having denied the Indian or Black;

Cuando vives en la frontera

     people walk through you, the wind steals your voice,

     you're a burra, buey, scapegoat,

     forerunner of a new race,

     half and half—both woman and man, neither—

     a new gender;

To live in the Borderlands means to

     put chile in the borscht,

     eat whole wheat tortillas,

     speak Tex-Mex with a Brooklyn accent;

     be stopped by la migra at the border checkpoints;

Living in the Borderlands means you fight hard to

     resist the gold elixir beckoning from the bottle,

     the pull of the gun barrel,

     the rope crushing the hollow of your throat;

In the Borderlands

     you are the battleground

     where enemies are kin to each other;

     you are at home, a stranger,

     the border disputes have been settled

     the volley of shots have shattered the truce

     you are wounded, lost in action

     dead, fighting back;

To live in the Borderlands means

     the mill with the razor white teeth wants to shred off

     your olive-red skin, crush out the kernel, your heart

     pound you pinch you roll you out

     smelling like white bread but dead;

To survive the Borderlands

     you must live sin fronteras

     be a crossroads.

—Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004), "To live in the Borderlands means you," from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), which is an absolutely incredible book that I cannot recommend highly enough. In the book, this poem comes with a glossary: 

gabacha—a Chicano term for a white woman 

rajetas—literally, "split," that is, having betrayed your word 

burra—donkey

buoy—oxen

sin fronteras—without borders

some days it rains

Today—or rather, yesterday, since it's after midnight—was the eighth anniversary of my brother's memorial service. His yahrzeit was a couple of weeks ago, but I always do a kind of celebration on April 5th, so here is a poem about death (and, tangentially, grief) that I really love. 

Death comes to me again, a girl

in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling.

It’s not so terrible she tells me, 

not like you think, all darkness

and silence. There are windchimes

and the smell of lemons, some days

it rains, but more often the air is dry

and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase 

built from hair and bone and listen 

to the voices of the living. I like it, 

she says, shaking the dust from her hair, 

especially when they fight, and when they sing.

—Dorianne Laux, "Death Comes to Me Again, A Girl," from Smoke, 2000. 

This is for Pete, today, who I love and miss.

joy is coming

The wonderful ashpags suggested this poem, and as it turned out, I already had it on my list (ashpags may be a little magic)! At some unknown point this year, I was at the Strand and picked up a little book called Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism, edited by Danielle Barnhart and Iris Mahan (New York: OR Books, 2018); this is one of the poems in the collection. 

If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever

closed your legs to someone you loved opened

them for someone you didn't moved against

a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach

seaweed clinging to your ankles paid

good money for a bad haircut backed away

from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled

into the back seat for lack of a tampon 

if you swam across a river under rain sang

using a dildo for a microphone stayed up

to watch the moon eat the sun entire 

ripped out the stitches in your heart 

because why not if you think nothing &

no one can / listen I love you joy is coming

—Kim Addonizio, "To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall," in this case from Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism, 2018 (although I think the poem may originally have been published in 2016).

in sunlit dustmotes

Here is a villanelle about a ghost:

We never saw the ghost, though he was there— 

we knew from the raindrops tapping on the eaves. 

We never saw him, and we didn’t care. 

Each day, new sunshine tumbled through the air; 

evenings, the moonlight rustled in dark leaves. 

We never saw the ghost, though: he was there, 

if ever, when the wind tousled our hair 

and prickled goosebumps up and down thin sleeves; 

we never saw him. And we didn’t care 

to step outside our room at night, or dare 

click off the nightlight: call it fear of thieves. 

We never saw the ghost, though he was there 

in sunlit dustmotes drifting anywhere, 

in light-and-shadow, such as the moon weaves. 

We never saw him, though, and didn’t care, 

until at last we saw him everywhere. 

We told nobody. Everyone believes 

we never saw the ghost (if he was there), 

we never saw him and we didn’t care.

—Dan Lechay, "Ghost Villanelle," from The Quarry (Ohio University Press, 2003). I LOVE VILLANELLES.

hermeneutics

I initially read this poem because of the title, but then I fell in love a little. 

All winter she's been growing more powerful.

Radiant, says the man at the bar.

Voluptuous, says the docent.

Nervy, says God.

All winter her soul has been juddering.

It feels like drinking gold flakes!

The word sleeps inside the stone.

The wind tongues the underside of the lake.

Inside the rifle scope of time, God

teaches her Grounding Techniques

through his emissary, a Certified Therapist.

Beetles bore their dirty traffic into pine trees.

God says, You cling to deixis

like a life raft. Here, you

say. Now, you say. All winter, you say, like it means

something, days crossed off your compulsive

calendar, wind tied to your wrist like

a pet. This dumb hunger for

fixity! I made your cells

to shed, says God. See them

everywhere, everywhere.

She bites her lip till it bleeds.

Who wouldn't immanentize the eschaton, if they could,

build heaven on earth in the backyard?

She wouldn't, is who.

Day a slit-throated ewe.

She wears a prayer around her neck

in another language, no clue

what it says.

Who will translate the prayer?

Listen: she loved a happy libertine

and thought that was heaven.

To ground herself

she strips berries from the juniper bushes.

Well, says God,

Alexander the Great dyed his hair

saffron. We are all

made fools in this world.

—Kerri Webster, "Hermeneutics," Poetry (October 2016).

so much of any year is flammable

Today is April 1, which on general principle is a day I try to stay off the internet, because people are really terrible about April Fool's Day. However, today is also the first day of National Poetry Month in the U.S., a holiday I have been celebrating for twelve years. This is the thirteenth year! My National Poetry Month posts are getting Bat Mitzvahed this year! 

I'm still taking requests and suggestions, although I've also planned out a lot of the month—poetry month is always a complicated mix of planned and spontaneous, and this year is no different. If you're new to my poetry month posts, I try to post a poem a day for the month of April (with varying degrees of success), and I try not to repeat poems I have posted before, but I never promise not to break my own rules. 

Let's start, this year, with Naomi Shihab Nye: 

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.

—Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), "Burning the Old Year," from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland: Far Corner Books, 1995).

here's what poetry can do

Despite planning out exactly which poems I was going to post on which days for the rest of the month, I have been so busy and tired that I have utterly failed to post them. I think years ending in 8 must be bad for poetry, somehow, because 2008 was my most erratic year before this one. Anyway, here is the poem I meant to post yesterday, which I am feeling strongly today.

Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like. Look,
there's a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he'll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you're busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it's sex you've always wanted.
Well, they lie together
like the party's unbuttoned coats,
slumped on the bed
waiting for drunken arms to move them.
I don't think you want me to go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this
is a poem for the entire family.
Right now, Budweiser
is dripping from a waterfall,
deodorants are hissing into armpits
of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don't know what music this poem
can come up with, but clearly
it's needed. For it's apparent
they will never see each other again
and we need music for this
because there was never music when he or she
left you standing on the corner.
You see, I want this poem to be nicer
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I'll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.
The poem is saying that to you now.
But don't give anything for this poem.
It doesn't expect much. It will never say more
than listening can explain.
Just keep it in your attache case
or in your house. And if you're not asleep
by now, or bored beyond sense,
the poem wants you to laugh. Laugh at
yourself, laugh at this poem, at all poetry.
Come on:

Good. Now here's what poetry can do.

Imagine yourself a caterpillar.
There's an awful shrug and, suddenly,
You're beautiful for as long as you live.

—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939), "Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry." I couldn't find a citation for this poem (I am pretty sure I got it from wintercreek many years ago), but oh well; it's a great poem.

we're on the moon

Last April, there was an article in The New York Times (admittedly a publication that is Dead To Me, except for the Recipes section) about protest poetry in the United States, especially in the wake of the 2016 election. I feel very strongly about poetry as a means of resistance, now and always; one of the things I really like about this poem in particular, though, is how raw and immediate it feels—both because it's about the election, and because it isn't about the election. Anyway, poetry is kind of magic. Let's win the Midterms.

I'm looking at the moon tonight,
the closest it's been to Earth since 1948
and feel relieved we can do little to ruin it.
That can't be true, you say, and for a moment
even the moon's loneliness escapes isolation
and depends on something else. It's attached.
Like us and what we abandon. Us
and the evil we refuse. The same evil
we share history with, the thin membrane
between you or me and the worst of life.
It's already past midnight and another election
is over in the United States of America.
The oceans will not continue into infinity.
Nor will our money. Nor will this suffering.
We have voted and proven again
we do not know one another. I am trying
so hard to understand this country
, I tell youeven as I'm about to fail loving you (I know this)
in the way people need to be loved
which is without deception, which is almost
impossible. Don't you love it though, you say,
and I remember the first time I saw you in a room
without anyone else. Don't you love the moon?
And because it's easy to say it, I do, I make sure
to tell you I do. Despite the news I knew years ago:
no one saves anyone. We’re on the moon.

—Alex Dimitrov (b. 1984), "The Moon After Election Day" from Resistance, Rebellion, Life (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2017), and in this case from The New York Times, "Poems of Resistance: A Primer," April 21, 2017.