Listen to what the air
is saying tonight
my friend, you’ve
been ashore a long
while, the time
for your sail
to fill is here.
We’re standing on
the verge with you,
take our arms
we’ll lift you into
this boat
you’ve been building
your whole life:
the beam-ends are
lined with your labor,
the arc of visibility
is clear,
everything that ever
was awaits you at sea.
Tell it to us when
we arrive
in due time, in ships
you taught us to sail.
John Freeman
Afterwards, my thighs and ass felt strong and wild like the dappled horse buttocks inside a Leonora Carrington painting.
Brenda Coultas
Seventeen suns rising in seventeen bedroom windows. Thirty-four eyes blooming open with the light of one more morning. Seventeen reflections in the bathroom mirror. Seventeen backpacks or briefcases stuffed with textbooks or lesson plans. Seventeen good mornings at kitchen breakfasts and seventeen goodbyes at front doors. Seventeen drives through palm-lined streets and miles of crammed highways to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School at 5901 Pine Island Road. The first bell ringing in one last school day on February fourteenth, 2018. Seventeen echoes of footsteps down hallways for five class periods: algebra, poetry, biology, art, history. Seventeen hands writing on whiteboards or taking notes at their desks until the first gunshot at 2:21pm. One AR-15 rifle in the hands of a nineteen year old mind turning hate for himself into hate for others, into one hundred fifty bullets fired in six minutes through building number twelve. Seventeen dead carried down hallways they walked, past cases of trophies they won, flyers for clubs they belonged to, lockers they won’t open again. Seventeen Valentine’s Day dates broken and cards unopened. Seventeen bodies to identify, dozens of photo albums to page through and remember their lives. Seventeen caskets and burial garments to choose for them. Seventeen funerals to attend in twelve days. Seventeen graves dug and headstones placed-all marked with the same date of death. Seventeen names: Alyssa. Helena. Scott. Martin-seventeen ab- sentees forever-Nicholas. Aaron. Jamie. Luke-seventeen closets to clear out-Christopher. Cara. Gina. Joaquin-seventeen empty beds-Alaina. Meadow. Alex. Carmen. Peter-seventeen reasons to rebel with the hope these will be the last seventeen to be taken by one of three-hundred-ninety-three-million guns in America.
Richard Blanco
Germaine, your poem this week is quite striking-so heartfelt and full of captivating imagery, right from the start.
I miss the sun replaced by fluorescent lights
flickering in my cell. I miss the sky, a kinder
blue than the sapphire police lights still
spinning in my memory. I miss the moon,
a gentler shine than the guards’ badges
as steely as their blue eyes piercing me.
You continue with even more powerful images that describe your isolation.
I’m smoke trapped in a jar, a star behind
a wall of clouds. I’m a garden of shadows.
Impressive. Your love for poetry during your college days really shows through. But I’m especially taken by the lines that confess your true “want.”
More than the sun, the sky, or the moon,
I want my son. I’ve become nothing but
want, but my want and I are locked up.
A powerful turn where you truly open up to the emotional core of the poem and begin speaking to your son directly.
Son: see my hand still tying the red shoelaces
on your silver Nikes. Taste the Rocky Road
ice cream dripping from our chins. Watch
us watching Batman on our lumpy couch.
Remember when I was your hero? Hear
us still singing our favorite hip-hop songs-
lyrics of lives we knew by heart. Remember
the plastic handcuffs you played with, not
the metal handcuffs that took me away.
Those vivid and tenderly rendered details really bring your son to life. They let me miss and mourn him as you do when you reveal that he died while you were jailed. You close the poem perfectly by grounding it in imagery that lets us feel your sorrow and emptiness.
Words are my only escape now. In this poem,
I turn iron bars into shadows I walk through
to see your eyes shine, hold your lifeless face
in my palms, kiss your cold forehead goodbye.
In this poem, I curse God and myself-wail
my amens, join the sobbing choir at church.
In this poem I turn back time, stop the bullet,
draw blood back into your body. In this poem,
I save you and you save me from myself.
Richard Blanco
Maybe you don’t remember, or don’t want to, or
maybe, like me, you’ve never been able to forget:
May 1979, fifth-grade recess, I grabbed your collar,
shoved you up against the wall behind the chapel,
called you a sissy-ass americano to your face, then
punched you-hard as I could. Maybe you still live,
as I do, with the awful crack of my knuckles’ slam o
n your jaw, and the grim memory of your lip split.
Why didn’t you punch me back? That would’ve hurt
less than the jab of your blue eyes dulled with pain-
how you let your body wilt, lean into me, and we
walked arm in arm to the boys’ room, washed off
the blood and dirt. Is that how you remember it?
What you can’t remember is what I thought when
our gazes locked in the mirror and I wanted to say:
I’m sorry, maybe I love you. Perhaps even kiss you.
Did you feel it, too? At that instant did we both
somehow understand what I’m only now capable
of putting into these words: that I didn’t hate you,
but envied you-the americano sissy I wanted to be
with sheer skin, dainty freckles, the bold consonants
of your English name, your perfectly starched shirts,
pleated pants, that showy Happy Days lunchbox,
your A-plus spelling quizzes that I barely passed.
Why didn’t you snitch on me? I don’t remember now
who told Sister Magdalene, but I’ll never forget how
she wrung my ears until I cried for you, dragged me
to the back of the room, made me stand for the rest
of that day, praying the rosary to think hard about
my sins. And I did, I have for thirty-two years, Derek.
Whether you don’t remember, don’t want to, or never
forgot: forgive me, though I may never forgive myself.
Richard Blanco
Forced to leave home, but home
never leaves us. Wherever exile
takes us, we remain this body made
from the red earth of our island-
our ribs taken from its montes–
its breeze our breaths. We stand
with its palmeras. Our eyes hold
its blue-green sea. Waterfalls
echo in our ears. On our wrists,
jasmine. Our palms open, close
like its hibiscus to love, be loved.
We thrive wherever we remain
true to our lucha-the hustle
of our feet walking to work
as we must, our oily hands
fixing all the broken beauty
we must fix, our soiled hands
growing what we must grow,
or cutting what must be cut,
our backs carrying the weight
of our island’s sands, our pulse
its waves, our sweat the gossamer
dew and dust of its sunrises,
our voice the song of its sinsontes
and its son nested in our souls.
Wherever the world spins us,
home remains the island that
remains in us. Its sun still sets
in our eyes, its clouds stay still
above us, our hands still hold
its tepid rain. We’re still caught
under its net of stars, still listen to
its moon crooning above its dirt
roads. We’re its rivers, the hem
of its coast and lace of its sierras,
its valley windsongs, its vast seas
of green sugarcane fields. We’re
our island’s sweetness as bitter
as the taste of having to leave it.
Richard Blanco
There’s not much I can say.
We’re all going to die.
That didn’t come out right.
“I’m doomed,” is so melodramatic.
“I’m so doomed” is cutesy.
“I’m in trouble”
sounds like a confession
on an old-time cop show.
“We’re in trouble now,” sounds like
we’re about to be sent
to the vice-principal—
that loser!
He’d never understand.
Rae Armantrout
Do you ever get bored while urinating?
Are your dreams full of impassioned speeches which later appear nonsensical?
Do you recognize the speakers?
Do you feel they are making a fool of you?
What is the true meaning of the word fool?
Is a wind blowing from heaven?
Do you believe your dreams are previews of the afterlife or world to come?
When you hear someone express a thought which you have also entertained, does this make you feel a) reassured, b) bored or c) threatened?
Do you enjoy reflections? If so, did your mother mimic your facial expressions when you were an infant?
Do floor lamps reflected in windowpanes
resemble distant settlements?
Have you been pre-approved?
Rae Armantrout
If I open my chest
Tear the flesh
Break the bone
Untangle the blood vessels
Dismantle the rib cage
And pull out the beat from the heart
I am positive
That I will find your name buried under the deep tissue of my heart
I have no clue why the feelings hold on to something so dead My pride has been wrangling
My rib cage
To get to the heart to shake it
To wake it the fuck up
I don’t know if this will be the last poem I write about you
But it will feel good when I look at it
And laugh
To know that the feelings that I once had
Are nothing but words on a sheet of paper
Tarriona “Tank” Ball
September 3rd
Today, I killed someone
I took the high school girl I used to be
To the back of the playground
And I hung her with the chains from the swings
That your emotions and I used to dangle on
Everyone will say that I killed her, but I think I saved her life…
Tarriona “Tank” Ball