One day my father said, Get in the goddamned car,
and so I did, and he drove us about five miles
out of town, where he parked on an empty shoulder,
shut the Ford’s engine off, and then turned to me
and said, You have a weak personality. I said,
What the hell does that mean? And he said, You know,
when you speak, the way you talk, laughing and using
all that fancy-assed, flowery language, you do not
impress other men, serious men, for whom life
is a serious business. I said, after a long silence,
weighing my fate for what I was about to say,
I don’t give a flying fuck about impressing
other men. I can tell you, though, that I care
about impressing Patricia Lea Gillespie,
if that’s the sort of thing you’re worried about.
You read poetry, he said. Yes, I do. I even
memorize it. His eyes widened. Why would you do
a thing like that? So that I can recite it, I said.
Here’s one that I recited to Patricia Lea
quite late just the other night. And so I began.
His car at that time was a two-tone rusted-out
Ford Falcon with a sluggish, nervous ignition, so
when he quickly reached for the key and turned it,
wrenched it furiously, swinging that small tragedy
of a car back onto Hiway 83, and headed for home,
I began, as I say, not just for the moment
but for all time and for all young men caught
in the rush of passion and sudden confusion
when the heart cannot speak but the man—oh yes,
the man-absolutely must, she’s so beautiful,
the moon in platinum waves rippling down
her raven-black hair, and I rolled down my window
of that piece-of-shit car and I sang it out, far out
beyond the stalks of uncut wheat, beyond the corn
and soybeans, oh ever beyond the soybeans, and even
the beef cattle standing mute behind barbed wire
in a boredom so gigantic, so heavy it should
put God to shame, beyond Bryan’s Corner where I once
saw Kerouac and Ginsberg and William Burroughs
stopping for a cheeseburger and fries on their way
to south Texas and future literary fame and
an almost endless supply of what native Texans
called Marihoona. My poem, I swore, spoken loudly
and very well as my father stomped the floorboard
with every burning word, would never end,
even after we hit the gravel in the driveway
at home and I finally leaped out and took a bow
for Dylan Thomas, and all of Kansas rose up
in the dry fields and applauded the art of poetry,
and Patricia Lea Gillespie later that night
gave herself to a boy who loved to read poetry,
a language so sweetly powerful and burdened
with the mysteries of the human heart that it became
my language:

In my craft or sullen art,
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms…

And I remember the grim, tight mask of his face
inflamed now by the porch light as he lurched
for the front door and I sang to Kansas poems
I so loved that they became a kind of revenge.

B.H. Fairchild

My heart is completely simple, of one
substance like a mole, a dark heap

of pigment mired in a bland
it doesn’t mind. My mouth

is a promise in a driver’s-side mirror
and adjusts with a button that gives

with a pinkie flick. My feet demurely
callused because I will work and work.

I may as well have had just one organ,
so simple am I, one tube, like a sea sponge

with brine washing my osculum,
crumbing up my fibrous pores. There is nothing

scary, amiss, or unrelatable about me,
who am comme il faut. You’d think

I was a plant, you’d think, No problem!,
getting closer. Nothing to see at all, folks,

though no impediment to lingering
should you choose. What the bleached coral

don’t say: how they drank today’s hot chalice
all themselves. No one put me up to sipping

risk and sitting pretty. What the reefs
don’t tell twirls deep in their two-dozen

thousand fevered genes, similar in number
to the human, though sickened by the sunblocks,

the way you like your skin to take the light
without absorbing one thing. The things

you hear down here. Even the lowing whales
replicating every sunken liner’s final strut,

I let them go on, I am after bigger psychic fish,
I stand before Sancta Simplicitas and let her twitch

my veil and burn my books. I love an idol
who permits a dish of meat at each foot,

the dark flesh and the light, the spectrum
of the hunt. I love a good Doppler effect, am game

to the sluicing vowels and half-heard yodels
moving beyond my sessile place. But you who take

redshift to excess, always eluding, evading,
evaporating, why so wary? You, rounding

a corner like a double-glassed bodega when I
would have settled for heartfelt credit.

I have tried labor and I have tried play. I looked
into a tiny compact and saw the big face

and the tiny sponge. I, prey for dregs
of attention, four drags on a light that’s good,

I know, for a dozen. When I take up your day
and suck it down like a bag tight with helium,

daffy and lung-light, I am not sustained.
I am dying from taking. My gullet

capers like a piccolo. If I could have the whole
of you, the denser thing, pie weight

and plumb line, the vital pith, I think it would
enough me for beyond. You’d hardly notice.

I’d give you back, I promise, to yourself.

Laura Kolbe

I wanted to write a poem about delay
The white space between word and music
One night in Ohio a decade ago
Under a thunderstorm’s bad blank verse

As I counted aloud between lightning and clap
A friend tackled me to the ground
To shut me up so he could hear it, the faint
Percussion I could just call thunder

If I wanted to be clear
I’ve tried to write this poem for years
But can’t and won’t, as every line
Falls faster than I can chase it, acid raindrop

Seeping into clover, garbage lyrics
Rising through its stem, poetry almost
As toxic as the city
Spraying my neighborhood down

A pesticide to x the little messengers
So megafauna can continue
Planting real estate
Some sad poet named this chemical Duet

The friend who tackled me got sick
I visited as he received a drip of what I called
Quicksilver in an early draft, but it was just
Poison, I mean chemo, which saved his life

Duet on the apple blossom, duet in the core
Nights drift by to be surveilled
For words, as thunder splits the poem again
Half of it standing up and counting

Half of it tackled into clover
Pollen painted with our syntax
Pulses once then meets a cell
The rain is light years away

Daniel Poppick

The head of the fish thuds
into the kitchen sink

with a splash of lettuced water.
She says, Not this. Don’t

marry the head or anyone
too cunning. She saws the knife

through the tail. The muscle
springs. Not a man

who doesn’t have a brain.
There’s no meat there.

As I walk through fish markets
lined with skinned goats,

their heads on the tables,
the finned bellies glisten under

the dusty sun, jutting
proudly blue and silver.

My mother’s voice asks me
if I understand, if I’ll resist

the smooth talk from the fish’s
mouth, his fanned tail swaying,

gifting a breeze on the back
of my neck. I prod the slick,

elastic skin, pierce him with two
fingers, and eat around the bones.

Su Cho

for my grandma, whose Korean name I still can’t remember

Even a ghost that eats and dies again will have better color.

How hungry we must have been to die in the ocean just to pull at its weeds, dry them, soak the leaves in sesame oil.

Bleed our hands for not even a tongueful of meat from an ungiving shell.

A bird that cries at night cries because it mourns a lover.

A bird that cries in the morning cries because it is hungry.

How do you eat like a king?

Hang the remains of last week’s fish so it sways above the table.

Have a bite of rice. Chew ten times. Look at the fish. Chew ten times. Repeat.

Give thanks for anything you can put in your mouth.

Su Cho

i.

I say blue when morning begins
And indigo when the night sky
Hardens over us, pinned with stars.

I say moon when its shape appears
In the disappearing light. And I say
Hollow when I look into my hand.

So much taken for granted now
That I am chased by shadows
When once I noticed only

What was solid and complete.
I dream of Adam’s voice.
Was that a panting sound or a sigh?

ii.

At first it was head to toe
Until I wanted his breath on mine.
We examined each other,

Like a folded-out map of ourselves,
Fingering, puzzled by
The differences between us.

We tried it this way and that,
I was the impatient one, I have to say.
Strange, we both had a bright idea

At the same time. After that, it seemed
As though we were created to couple
In this sweet new way. It was hard

To do anything else sometimes,
So the trees suffered, burdened
Down with fruit, and the fields,

And some pale animals that emerged
Now and then, and the snakes
Hanging corkscrew from low branches.

iii.

I saw God watching Adam. I saw
The eyes popping out of God’s head
At the sight of him

As he fucked with what we later learned
Was wild abandon. I sympathized
With God’s jealousy, his pain,

But wished he had not
Displayed such obvious self-pity.
You see, he loved Adam.

Once I watched as
They fondled each other’s hair.
From my vantage-point in the tree

I then saw the two of them
Wondering how they might
Do what we had done. I have to say

It was obvious to me.
Odd how they couldn’t work it out.
Nothing bothered Adam, but God

Was not pleased, to put it mildly.
I learned that he would have been
Happy to be with either of us. Or

Even with both. He hated being left out.
That was the thing. I liked it
When he licked my neck.

iv.

But, in the end, I bewildered God
More than all creation. We spoke,
But he was never a good listener,

Preferring the sound
Of his own voice
Even when he whispered.

Since he wanted us so much
The decision he made
That we should leave

And that he would be happier
Alone made no sense.
But try telling him that.

v.

I laughed later
When I found out the etymology
Of the word ‘paradise’. In all reality,

Paradise was nowhere much; we were
Baked by the sun. Days were long
And there was nothing to do at night.

vi.

Mornings here are lovely, on the other hand,
And the world’s words, I never tire of them –
Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit

Would I like to return, you ask,
Just once for a short visit
To re-live old memories?

No, but I would like yesterday to come
Again, wash itself over us,
Fondle us with its shredded beauty.

vii.

In his temper that day, when God told
Us what time would mean, I understood.
I saw the days longing for each other

In a future ready to forget. I alone,
I saw, would register each one,
Like something to be forgiven

And then held up, a bright example,
As we were, when we came into the world,
And lived our disappearing days.

viii.

Adam died two years ago, a night
When the moon was sickle-shaped
And thunder-clouds had cleared.

I was glad of that. I wanted
Adam’s fading eyes to see the sky,
Linger on the thought of what we tasted,

A beyond-place that had no end, that might
Have bored others, but we tolerated it
Because what else did we know?

What else do I know now?
I know that God learned to repeat
The word regret ad infinitum

Until silence fell. Then he changed.
I wish I could comfort him,
As the world wears out.

Colm Tóibín

O holy St Agnes, cure me of metaphor!
Make me say exactly what I mean
Without trickery or recourse
To words that are not clear or clean.

O martyr and saint, let life be dull
And make our verses unadorned
And let next year’s poems be plainly full
Of signs that lessons have been learned.

The flowers grow, as appointed, from the soil
And do not paint the meadow with delight.
They wither or get picked, which serves to spoil
Our notion, so mistaken on first sight,

That they are sprightly, dancing in the breeze,
Then taking applause, their heads all bowed.
I swear, in all mention of flowers, these
Rich, false words will never be allowed.

In return, please open heaven’s gate
So I can see what really is
With no sweet terms to mask my fate
To live in true, unsweetened bliss.

Colm Tóibín

I am in Venice,
Dreaming of what

It was like
When painters,

Knew which way
To turn

When they had need
For commissions

Or when they sought
Salvation.

There is fog
In the morning

To cloud our
Spirits,

And then sunlight.
In Venice,

Faces in paintings
Are alive with need,

Not just
The main players

But the others
Who stood by

Hardly caring
Who preached sermons,

Who lived
Or who died.

They were busy,
These figures

At the edges,
And did not often think

About redemption,
Much less about

Salvation.
Their faces

Then, and ours now,
Look as though

We are meant, in fact,
For commerce,

Working out margins,
Rates of return.

It is harder,
As the man said,

To imagine
The end of capitalism

Than the end
Of the world.

We hunger, however,
For glare and splash,

An opening
Of the spirit,

The urgent end of
Anything at all.

In the meantime,
I am waiting

For a boat
To take me

To the sanctity
Of the Salute.

The engine
Of the vaporetto

Is grinding
Towards a silence

Like the very first one,
To be broken

Only when
the end
Of capitalism

And the end
Of the world

Appear on the water,
Pursued by the panting

Populace,
The first laden

Down with contracts,
Anti-trust laws,

Overdraft statements,
Old software.

The second
Filled up

With painters
In possession of the new

Colours that
Will be used

To render finality
In all its garishness.

They join forces
Under the domed sky

As the Giudecca
And the Grand Canal

Meet close to
Where I stand

And flow into each
Other, drink

From the waters of the
Exemplary lagoon.

Colm Tóibín

We boys were marching up to Rodman Hall for supper when he stopped and I bumped into him

He whirled around and pointed at me and touched his lips with his middle finger and slicked it back over his head

I protested

He said yes you touch my butt

I said accident not see

He said not believe you

Before breakfast next morning he saw me watching Gilligan’s Island

He switched the channel

Hey

He laughed

Next morning he did the same thing

I said oh that better thank you

He frowned and pressed the remote

That interesting awesome

Switch switch switch

Then Gilligan’s Island was back on and I said no no not that

He laughed and left Gilligan’s Island on

One time I was in the shower room and a rocket of water slammed into me

Fire extinguisher

I couldn’t see anything except for a baseball cap

It was his cap

I laughed and said more more feel good come on

His last year I was still learning the art of the white cane

Sometimes I got delayed tapping around for landmarks

One night I was tapping between Noyes Hall and Frechette Hall and a boy offered his arm

I didn’t know who until under a lamp I saw a baseball cap

Inside Frechette Hall I thanked him and he smiled

A few minutes later Gary Karow our houseparent came up to me and told me that the bully was so happy that he had helped me

A week before he graduated he grabbed my bag of books while my nose wa buried in a book

As I searched for it he gave the bag back and said that he did it because I wasn’t paying attention

His last words to me before leaving were you take care man

Some years later he drove down to Texas with a friend to help him pick up a pickup truck

On his way back alone it was twilight and still in Texas when he turned off his headlights

He steered into oncoming traffic

A car swerved in time

Another swerved

Then it was a truck which couldn’t swerve and that baseball cap

John Lee Clark

My best friend, a sweet man,
drove all the way from Mankato
when my wife left me. At the door
he stood as tall as I
and we hugged. Then he said,
“Look good you. How manage?
Can’t imagine. If my wife left
for sure gunmyheadshoot will.”
I gave him a don’t-be-silly shove.
Before he left, I could feel him looking
at me. He said that seeing me alone
made him cherish his wife. He did,
but his wife left him anyway
and—well, he did.

John Lee Clark