Letting go
In order to hold on
I gradually understand
How poems are made.

There is a place the fear must go.
There is a place the choice must go.
There is a place the loss must go.
The leftover love.
The love that spills out
Of the too full cup
And runs and hides
Its too full self
In shame.

I gradually comprehend
How poems are made.
To the upbeat flight of memories.
The flagged beats of the running
Heart.

I understand how poems are made.
They are the tears
That season the smile.
The stiff-neck laughter
That crowds the throat.
The leftover love.
I know how poems are made.

There is a place the loss must go.
There is a place the gain must go.
The leftover love.

Alice Walker

Preparations begin now, in the middle of my life—
death was born with me, didn’t expect to change languages,
might not know when it is called. Sometimes English sits on the surface of the skin.

We are water, we are rivers of descent;
gravity is inevitable yet grievable.
Mourn as you like, death is another migration.

Bring the body home and gently lay it down on its back,
bind tightly the hands and feet of the corpse,
do this to keep it from running away like a lonely child-

carry the coat it wore (when it was a person) to the roof-
a flag of surrender, a signal flag to the spirit world, new arrival;
call out the name of the dead three times.

Perfume the bath water-the death of a thousand flowers-
comb the hair and catch what falls,
what was grown from the body must accompany the body.

Manicure the fingernails and toenails,
carefully reserve the nail trimmings,
the hair and nails are to be collected into five pouches for the coffin.

Obtain a spoon made from a willow tree, it is a lightweight hardwood,
not heavy in the mouth-
feed the corpse three spoonfuls of uncooked rice: one thousand, two thousand, three thousand bushels.

Slide metal coins into the mouth-the spirit journey can be costly, the way long-
cloak the body in the death dress of hemp or silk,

envelop the body with a quilted cloth, and bind the body with ropes seven times.

Transport the body on a decorated bier out of the house-for this you need the living-

observe it float heavily toward the gate. Not unlike a boat
the bier is decorated with fierce dragons and phoenixes; colorful dolls guard the dead.

On the way out of the household premises, lower the bier three times-
the dead’s final departure from home is marked with this ritual bowing.

At the grave, the shaman will exorcise evil spirits from the site. Pay the shaman.

Submerge the coffin in the open ground, it has already been emptied, given its duty,
yes, like another mouth, or a box for a smaller box-one by one,
the ground is a wound that heals, that embraces its lost materials.

Sun Yung Shin

Just so you remember who you dealin’ with
The purest snow, we sellin’ white privilege
Designer drugs will turn niggas limitless
Designer clothes, these hoes losing innocence
The book of blow, just know I’m the Genesis.

Open the box, it’s like ten Christmases
My folks in the box is serving life sentences
I live in a world that never leaves witnesses
Just so you remember who you dealin’ with.

Pusha T (excerpts from “Just So You Remember”)

O Love this happened or it did not.
In a room with green walls

my son was born. The cord was torn
too soon, so they cut off

his head to save his heart. He lived
for a long time.

For a long time there was no breath or cry.
When finally he spoke,

he spoke the wide, whorled leaves of corn.
He spoke the crickets

in clusters beneath the sheaves, he sang
the soil in. He sang the wind

in the dune and hush of ebb tide. Some say
he died. Some say he died.

Rebecca Foust

I could hear something from the kitchen
where I stood paring apples for the pie
planned to mark the moment
of my 10-year-old’s playdate, his first
since the move and our first time
with a troop of boys over to trample
the flowerbeds, tear down the old treehouse
and, whooping and laughing,
strip the citrus trees bare. Boys will be boys,
I thought, so so so seduced by the plural-
my son for this day not alone,
but this sound was different.
Not the glorious cacophony
of boys-being-boys, but just one boy-my boy-
lying face down in the dirt
while a hail of green oranges rained down.

I helped him up, wiped his face,
and broke up the circle of boys,
boys with eyes cast down and sometimes
sickled sideways to wink or grin in a way
they thought I couldn’t see. I had a choice
then: make a scene and send them home?
Or, somehow allow them to stay?

There was the pie, and the desolate day ahead,
the desolate tomorrow, and the chain
of desolate yesterdays slung slack behind.

There was my son for whom,
it being his first playdate since the move,
this was a normal playdate, and who,
when I asked, said, You can’t
send them home-they’re my friends!
There was the ER Doc who’d told me
to go home where no one would have to try
to save him, and his nurse, whose glass voice
asked me twice, have you ever prayed?
I needed them on board, and later, the teachers
who wanted to transfer or expel him.
His Sunday-night stomachaches, and the time
I saw him at recess in the bushes, hiding
his eyes so he would not be seen.

So there was all that, and the here-and-now
of a child unable to fathom malice or guile
and able to forgive anyone of anything.
There was also the pie. And, God forgive me,
I let those boys stay.
I practically begged them to stay.

Rebecca Foust

I made soup tonight, with cabbage, chard
and thyme picked outside our back door.
For this moment the room is warm and light,
and I can presume you safe somewhere.
I know the night lives inside you. I know
we made mistakes, dividing you, and hiding
you from inside. I know a trans girl
was knifed last week, another set aflame,
and that these things happen all the time.
I know I lack the words, or all the words
I say are wrong. I know I’ll call, and you
won’t answer, and still I’ll call. I want to tell you
you are loved with all I have, recklessly,
and with abandon, loved the way the cabbage
in my garden near-inverts itself, splayed
to catch each last ray of sun. And how
the feeling furling-in only makes the heart
more dense and green. Tonight it seems like
something one could bear.

Guess what, Dad and I finally figured out Pandora,
and after all those years of silence, our old music
fills the air. It fills the air, and somehow, here,
at this instant and for this instant only
—perhaps three bars—what I recall equals all I feel,
and I remember all the words.

Rebecca Foust

“Barn’s burnt down-now I can see the moon.” –Mizuta Masahide

It’s 52 o’clock & the Project of You
has begun anew: quit drinking
again, start jogging. Floss. Get a clue
about what-it-all-means, what you
mean to do. Wake before noon
now & then. Mend the broken yolk
of your mind; bail its sunk boat.
Meditate. And for God’s sake, eat
more fruit. See the dentist & proctologist;
have some fun. Commit at least one
unoriginal sin (with a condom, please,
& without a gun). Go to the barn, burn
it down, burn the day. Then you can
see the moon, without yourself in the way.

Rebecca Foust

I was thirteen, and there was a boy’s
mouth where my legs met. My heart beat

like a bird caught in a bag, let’s say
for her plumage. I could smell his want,

thirteen and there was a boy, and I became
something salt and sweet

where my legs met. My heart like a bird
swelled and split

the clear air with its song. I was the must,
the first press wine,

thirteen, and only this boy and the needles
under the pines,

that cedar bed, fragrant and ancient as dust
and where my legs met-thirst-

a boy, my heart like a bright, caught bird.

Rebecca Foust

Sắp đến ngày giỗ mẹ rồi
Con trai nhớ mẹ bồi hồi mẹ ơi
Nhớ hình dáng mẹ một đời
Lưng khom bóng xế chơi vơi bãi bờ

Nhớ thời lúc thuở bé thơ
Ầu ơ mẹ hát giấc mơ canh dài
Nhớ khi trái gió trở trời
Đêm năm canh mẹ thức thời năm canh

Khi con đã lớn trưởng thành
Tình thương của mẹ càng thêm rộng dài
Lo về cuộc sống tương lai
Lo luôn hạnh phúc trọn đời cho con

Nay giờ mẹ mãi chẳng còn
Con thương nhớ mẹ héo mòn mẹ ơi
Công lao của mẹ biển trời
Sông sâu núi thẳm chẳng vơi nổi còn

Ước gì giờ mẹ bên con
Để con đáp trả đền ơn hỡi người
Nhưng nào ước được mẹ ơi
Mẹ đi… đi mãi… xa rồi mãi xa…

Phú Quang

It’s not my hands that are shaking—it’s my mind.
Cut off my head!
That’s where the pain lies.

Mishima believed sincerity was found in the entrails.
This must be a mistranslation.
I think he meant reality.

Hope is the dark part of morning,
The trees and not the sky behind.
A glimmer without a color.

Most people want justice
But in absence of justice
They will take vengeance.

As if dying was peak existence.
We called it sweet
In the cherry season of history.

Elisa Gabbert