GUILTY OF DUST


up or down from the infinite C E N T E R
B R I M M I N G at the winking rim of time

the voice in my head said

LOVE IS THE DISTANCE
BETWEEN YOU AND WHAT YOU LOVE

WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE

           *

then I saw the parade of my loves

those PERFORMERS comics actors singers

forgetful of my very self so often I
desired to die to myself to live in them

then my PARENTS my FRIENDS the drained
SPECTRES once filled with my baffled infatuations

love and guilt and fury and
sweetness for whom

nail spirit yearning to the earth

           *

then the voice in my head said

WHETHER YOU LOVE WHAT YOU LOVE

OR LIVE IN DIVIDED CEASELESS
REVOLT AGAINST IT

WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE


(Frank Bidart)

MEMORY

The borrowed cat is frantic for love. Or touch, attention really, what to call it without the shimmery flick of anthropomorphism, that magic wand. When she wails, scrapes the bedroom door, paws my belly, clambers up my chest to cleave her feet at the base of my neck and bash her head against my jawbone, livid, thrumming, a little motor of longing to be the one true cat, and when I succumb and set whatever I’m thinking onto the floor and comb her ears through my fingers, muss the weft of her fur, cup her lukewarmth against me as if I’d discovered her myself, tiny shipwreck, I wonder if she’ll remember later that she appealed for tenderness and got it, asked and was answered, did not seem to need anything else for a moment. Or who knows if she didn’t. But of course memory doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with what you come to want again.

(Robin Myers)


This poem is excerpted from Centro, coming next year from Coffee House Press. 

 
MEMORIA

La gata prestada anda desesperada por amor. O por contacto, en realidad atención, no sé cómo decirlo sin el toque iridiscente del antropomorfismo, esa varita mágica. Cuando maúlla, rasca la puerta de la habitación, me masajea la panza, trepa el pecho hasta clavar las uñas en la clavícula y chocar la cabeza en mi mentón, rabiosa, trepidante, un motorcito de deseo por ser la única gata, la de verdad, y cuando cedo y dejo sobre el piso lo que estuviera haciendo y le peino entre los dedos las orejas, le desordeno la urdimbre del pelaje, y me apretujo su tibieza como si yo la hubiera rescatado, naufragio pequeñito, me pregunto si recordará que reclamó ternura y que la tuvo, que llamó y respondieron, y que por un momento no necesitaba nada más. O eso parecía. Pero claro, no es que la memoria tenga tanto que ver con lo que volvamos a desear.

(Traducción de Daniel Lipara)


Este poema viene de Centro, ya disponible en Argentina por Zindo & Gafuri.

CHORUS

Everyone asks what we’re afraid of
but we aren’t supposed to say.
We could put loneliness on the list.
We could put this list on the list,
its infinity. We could put infinity down.
Who knows why we’re here, it’s a “mystery.”
We’re getting older,
and when no one’s watching
we climb right into it.

(Catherine Barnett)

THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF PLEASURES

thousands of ways to not be dissatisfied, to not embrace the terms
of anxiety. One of them is to consider the length
of a giraffe’s tongue: twenty-one inches.

Another is to go in pursuit of blackberries only a person in a boat
can reach. It’s important to be responsive to tails and ears,
to limbs that allow you, domestic cats, and gazelles

to lope toward Ladybug Espresso or a rat. Away
from a charging hippo. It’s better to light
a sparkler than to whine, right?

It is better to thank your body for its heels, its ability to heal.
That although they are dreadlocked and devoted,
you are not a Bergamasco sheepdog. To avoid

a sort of manic obsession with less-than, stare at the pinking clouds
longer than seems appropriate. Way longer. To gloss your brain,
revel in the long ago-ness of your past, focus mostly

on the gigantic-peach present that really does take up most of the fridge.
When you spot a plate of envy, take a sniff, decide to pass.
Your eyes are infinite. So are the number of beetles

in the tropics. Choose your path like you’re choosing a stallion,
pick carefully through the leaves of spinach, careful
not to harm the baby slugs.

You are that baby slug. You are that minute that sometimes feels like an hour
and sometimes feels like a nanosecond. Gather up all your dusty doubts,
put then in the Ridwell bin.

Know they will be recycled into something useful,
like a park bench. Kneel at least once a day,
preferably at dusk, preferably

in front of someone or something that sustains you,
a bed of bok choy, a cantaloupe,
a trembling elm.

(Martha Silano)

BIRDBLACK

   I. Black-capped Chickadee

i like to be 
a little round. like a question
or an oh!
to completion, 
black, 
like cotton burning 
in the field, but only just.
a pinky-promise with death
is one with living too:
hold me here
by the tiger-toe and let me 
haunt this place chickadee

     II. Common Grackle

i might go
to extremes. i am italicized
and a color that cannot be.
turquoise and purple and brown 
and all the coloreds in between, 
where light troubles itself 
trying to decide. when i open my mouth
what you hear is common
grackle sounds.

   III. Rose-breasted Grosbeak

i am an injury. i can 
love through anything. but will i?
i take the question side-ways. 
i move like the end of a rope swings
when the wind calls it.
when it says my birthname, i call back,
and together, we make it happen

     IV. Brown Thrasher

if you live in the wood long enough,
when you leave it, you take some
with you. what else? i laid
golden brown for a long time in the oven.
i forgot to turn over. i let the dust 
fall as it may (june, december) and collected only the most
beautiful. the melinated be,
that is who

     V. Red-bellied Woodpecker

when the sky rained blood
i stood at attention. 
i looked the horizon in its long
goat eye. i said 
there was a time before the air. 
just after there was ash. i know it
because i stood at attention. i hold it here,
in the narrow of my wing.

     VI. Yellow-rumped Warbler
 
i am accoutrement. i am a bracelet
and a brooch holding hands
that will not go back 
in the drawer. how did we begin
to fly? how does anything?
we moved not as fast as we had hoped
but faster than your hands

     VII. Mallard

i love a green-headed thing,
like a fly.
i love a beast 
that is also an action
i love when what is thrown
is missed.
i love to exist like a hush
upon the water

(Keith S. Wilson)

DOS KRIOS

en los tiempos ke el perro ijo de perro
aharvo la kaveza de john f kenedy
con la tresien bala ke lo mato

jaklin kedo solitika en su dolor
kon todo el lagrimatorio
de un payis ke la arrodeava

era noviembre 22 del 1900 i 63
la anyada ke murio mi padre
mueve dias

le mankava al tiempo
para serrar
sinko meses ke se fue

la anyada en ke mi madre
kedo sola kon dos krios
ombre i mujer

vio en la televizion
komo se fizo un animal
la bivda

media orika empues
dijeron
“the president of the unites states is dead”

el puerpo echava rais
en la istoria
de

mi madre tenia kuarenta i kuatro
treje anyos mas tadre
kito este mundo

en el november 22 1900 i 63
kon un shamar bueno para el mundo
la televizion repetia

a los oyidos de mi manseva madre
ke el mundo se izo komo su korason
eya en su kamareta serrada

poko despues
al ultimo mes del anyo
yevaron al ijo patrick [muerto dos dias
                                              despues de parido]

i a su ija arabella [parida muerta]
a la mezma tomba
ke al padre john fitzerald kennedy

mi madre i dos kreaturas
ombre i mujer
kon jaklin

kedaron bivdas la misma anyada
mi madre kon kuarenta i kuatro kedo vazia
komo la mujer ke sintio

kuando dijeron
en dallas
“the president of the united states is dead”

lo mezmo mi madre kon dos oyidos
sintio unos meses atras kuado el medisien
le dijo en kastelyano “su esposo acaba de…”

sus ijos ombre i mujer
vieron la matansina en blanko i preto
en la televizion

mi madre se tomo la kaveza ansina
i se fuyo lejos kon la puerta serrada
ande mas no la alkansimos ~

(Myriam Moscona)

AT PEGASUS

They are like those crazy women
         who tore Orpheus
                when he refused to sing,

these men grinding
         in the strobe & black lights
                of Pegasus. All shadow & sound.

“I’m just here for the music,”
         I tell the man who asks me
                to the floor. But I have held

a boy on my back before.
         Curtis & I used to leap
               barefoot into the creek; dance

among maggots & piss,
         beer bottles & tadpoles
               slippery as sperm;

we used to pull off our shirts,
         & slap music into our skin.
               He wouldn’t know me now

at the edge of these lovers’ gyre,
         glitter & steam, fire,
                bodies blurred sexless

by the music’s spinning light.
         A young man slips his thumb
                 into the mouth of an old one,

& I am not that far away.
          The whole scene raw & delicate
                 as Curtis’s foot gashed

on a sunken bottle shard.
         They press hip to hip,
                 each breathless as a boy

carrying a friend on his back.
         The foot swelling green
                  as the sewage in that creek.

We never went back.
         But I remember his weight
                 better than I remember

my first kiss.
         These men know something
                 I used to know.

How could I not find them
         beautiful, the way they dive & spill
                into each other,

the way the dance floor
         takes them,
                 wet & holy in its mouth.

(Terrance Hayes)

A QUESTION OF CLIMATE

I learned to be honest
the way I learned to swim
dropped into the inevitable
my father's thumbs in my hairless armpits
about to give way.
I am trying
to surface     carefully 
remembering
the water's shadow-legged musk
cannons of salt      exploding
my nostrils' rage
and for years
my powerful breast stroke
was a declaration of war.

(Audre Lorde)

ALTERNATE FATES

What if right in
the middle of a battle
across the battlefield the wind
blew thousands of
lottery tickets, what then?

(Bill Knott)

LOSER

El día que me llevaron el carro
del parqueo de mi arrendamiento
las luces en el interior
seguían apagadas.

Tuve que pedir un taxi
e ir a buscarlo
como a un niño que no respondió
ninguna pregunta bien.

Iba en el taxi con los ojos cerrados
deseando que no faltaran:

El perfume de ylang ylang;

el libro de Louise Glück
donde hay un poema que empieza:
“nací hace mucho tiempo.
Ya no queda nadie vivo
que me recuerde de bebé”;

y la sombrilla
más pequeña del mundo
de la que solo puedo
beneficiarme yo.

(Legna Rodríguez Iglesias)

COAT CHECK

300 coats.
I’m in my window like a bus driver.
300 on hooks from the ceiling all the way down to my knees
and the strobe flashes, flashes
and the heavy metal wears on me—
shakes, clangs, crashes, stops, starts.
Sometimes I step back, just stand there in the dark
with the coats, be porous, be nobody, rest
for the rush that comes quiet as low tide,
flick of the house lights, comes this stink, this effluvia
of stale smoke, beer, sweat, line forming
along the wall my only worry like a crack in plaster:
What if I lose a coat?
Sometimes the bouncer—knuckle rings,
glossy suit—slips me a drink, sweet Amaretto
I go back, all the rustling business of fall,
the layers and layers, the collars, the cuffs, the orange
old timey tickets Admit One.
Every time, at the fringes, corner of my eye
I catch these glimpses, car headlights rounding the bend
of way back when the garbage was tipped:
in the roadside blaze everywhere raccoons like doctors
unwrapping, inspecting.
Every time: lose a coat, lose the job, lose the room, this family
I live with always complaining I eat too much
for a ballet dancer.
Once a drunk peered in, he shouts
Where is she?
(I’m up the ladder) He grabs my leg, my tights
rip and nobody sees, nobody
sees the prickles of light in which I freeze,
smile through. Oh, strange trick how
everything in me prickles darkness
like a raccoon, perfect arrest—
strange habit indeed: old seizures in white
flashes dissolve in a night
I didn’t know I had in me.

(Gabrielle Frahm-Claffey)

THAT LIFE

I’m going to see how they died
going toward that wreckage
going to see them there
tranquil on the hill of engagement

Dear Wednesday’s narcissus, what time is it
what death is it
what planet in the widow’s hand
five or three?

Her dress was blooming
we were
neglected flowers on her dress

Dear women’s thresholds, how much is a lifetime
what time is a river
how many daggers in the blood
of the whirling storm
five or three?

We let the city play
and rolled our widespread shrouds shut

I’m going to see how they died
going toward that wreckage
going to see their death
hills of the north
wind-rise of the south
I’m going to call them by their names

(Ghassan Zaqtan,
translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah)

FIRST WOUND KEPT OPEN

The thought
of all the grass

blown over to one side
hurts me. That wind

can do that. I must have
gotten to him first 

though he pushed out against
the pouch in me

I now call soulless.
Of everyone I’ve met

on earth I always find
they got here first

and will they teach
me their good

reason for staying?
I would discipline

a comet against
my way of leaving,

push it out of sky after
sky and after

every loss on earth
the baby I was

would come back. That’s
what it means to be lovable,

to give oneself whole
again whole birth

whole fist whole flower
but only what fits

harmlessly whole
in the mouth.

The baby comes and goes,
comes back to weed me

of my body, feeds my
bald birdies

what’s not for me to know.
I had hoped all

my animosity toward men
would lead toward

safety in one who
would wake me before

I hit the wooden world
and rock me there

to say what violence
had not yet come.

(Elizabeth Metzger)

LA VIDA PLENA

A algunos les han quitado las ganas de hablar,
pasan mudos por el amor, aman perros vagabundos
y tienen una piel tan sensible
que nuestros pequeños saludos cotidianos
pueden producirles heridas casi de muerte.
Nosotros, seres amables e inofensivos,
miramos los gatos enfermos, las mujeres con collares
que pasan por la calle
y sentimos un desamor agradable,
casi suficiente.

(Juana Bignozzi)

WHAT WE DON'T KNOW

When I wake in the night, I tell myself it is for no reason. I should do the impossible and go back to sleep, as there is safety under the blanket, even though this is not true elsewhere in the world where, at this moment, missiles are igniting refineries. Here, geese are on the spring flyway in their honking Vs, having sensed the thaw of the marshes, and a yellow haze of leaf-bud has begun in the trees. Spring is coming. The strait of Hormuz is closed, named for a barren, salt-domed island called rainbow island for the swirling colors of its salt, shale, clay and volcanic rock, its seventy mineral shades of ochre, blue, and orange. There is a red soil too, called gelak, used as a spice in curries and in a sauce over tomshi, a bread that means handful of something and because this soil is also a spice, Hormuz is said to be an edible island. In its caves, the salt is thought to absorb suffering, and to inspirit anyone who stands on it in bare feet. There is a Valley of Statues sculpted by winds, and a Rainbow Valley, so-called for its vibrant soils, as seen in photographs of other planets. The Portuguese left a castle in ruin here to guard the strait, while above on the flyway, migrating flamingos, geese, cormorants and cranes are already rowing the wind, and in the darkness of this room flamingos are flying, magenta against the night. Awake or asleep doesn’t matter. In the strait of Hormuz, the world’s ships are waiting.

(Carolyn Forché)

IN COLORADO MY FATHER SCOURED AND STACKED DISHES

in a Tex-Mex restaurant. His co-workers,
unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeño.

If I ask for a goldfish, he spits a glob of phlegm
into a jar of water. The silver letters

on his black belt spell Sangrón. Once, borracho,
at dinner, he said: Jesus wasn’t a snowman.

Arriba Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed
into a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.

Frijolero. Greaser. In Tucson he branded
cattle. He slept in a stable. The horse blankets

oddly fragrant: wood smoke, lilac. He’s an illegal.
I’m an Illegal-American. Once, in a grove

of saguaro, at dusk, I slept next to him. I woke
with his thumb in my mouth. ¿No qué no

tronabas, pistolita? He learned English
by listening to the radio. The first four words

he memorized: In God We Trust. The fifth:
Percolate. Again and again I borrow his clothes.

He calls me Scarecrow. In Oregon he picked apples.
Braeburn. Jonagold. Cameo. Nightly,

to entertain his cuates, around a campfire,
he strummed a guitarra, sang corridos. Arriba

Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed into
a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.

Greaser. Beaner. Once, borracho, at breakfast,
he said: The heart can only be broken

once, like a window. ¡No mames! His favorite
belt buckle: an águila perched on a nopal.

If he laughs out loud, his hands tremble.
Bugs Bunny wants to deport him. César Chávez

wants to deport him. When I walk through
the desert, I wear his shirt. The gaze of the moon

stitches the buttons of his shirt to my skin.
The snake hisses. The snake is torn.

(Eduardo C. Corral)

A STRANGER IS AN ANIMAL WHO DOESN'T SING

      "We read our history clearly
       in the flight and cries of the bird.”

      —Yannis Ritsos (trans. Spring Ulmer)

 

when it is time

to study hatred

again sparrows

gather bicker

in the forsythia

i tend like i tend

the life of the mind

its leafless thicket

a tangle of lines

other voices live in

i think i think

if i transcribe

enough sentences

in the notebook

i will find a form

that has a hate

i can tolerate

my first teacher

of poetry liked

to quote lowell

pity the monsters !

pity the monsters !

which pissed me off

it was the ’90s

my lover was dying

of AIDS too bad

he’s going to hell

my mother said

with all the others

i loathed pity

and monstrosity

as discourses

about politics

exerting power

over who lived

and who died

who was mourned

and who deserved it

by decade’s end

i earned two degrees

in the literature

of compulsory

heterosexuality

and still don’t know

if that was shelter

or injury or both

i still don’t know

what to do with

words that draw

calamity closer

as i write i hear

the house sparrows

i was taught

i had to tell apart

from song sparrows

and the several

finches who flock

without much song

i was also taught

to say hello

without judgment

to each thought

as it steps forward

sheer meaningless

thereness amidst

the mind’s bare

declaratives

hello now go

i write i say

to this midwinter

fact of existing

as long as each

moment presents

what happens

not so that

i awaken to

the excellence

of this life

yvonne rainer

writes but so

that i awaken

to the ways

i have been

taught this life

is excellent

just and right

this is one part

of the difficulty

another part

is the sparrows

i was taught to keep

from breeding

english sparrows

i was taught

to call them

invasive species

who in one season

produce three broods

and outcompete

cavity-nesting

native passerines

who produce fewer

i was also taught

to destroy their nests

and bar the birdhouse

entrance hole

until a bit later

in the season

when bluebirds

start nesting

which is what i did

despite believing

passer domesticus

a blameless form

the world thought

to take and keeps

on thinking

beaks adapted

to distinguish

seed from hull

upper mandible

lower mandible

my minds grinds

against itself

parenthetical

endlessly opening

continuous

shrill monotonous

noisy chirping

reads one guide

pretty shady

for ornithology

though david

allen sibley writes

in a tone i don’t

care for either

of monotonous

nearly identical

chirps in the realm

of emotion

house sparrows

get a lot of hate

and annoy people

for not singing

like john cage

who removed

both melody

and harmony

from his music

and wrote instead

with structure

and method

perhaps as queer

as zen gets

cheerfully severe

he asked listeners

to face attachment

to the pleasures

of received form

and adherence

to convention

by refusing them

reviews reflect

the fact some

resented that

antisocial turn

it was the cold war

the pink scare

the category is

straight people

having feelings

in the free world

the state spread

isolationist

affective textures

through citizens

who listened

against otherness

vigilant the way

they are today

no matter what

severely cheerful

cage enthused

that pure life

expresses itself

through structure

and wrote that

everybody has

a song that is

no song at all

i am not so nice

what can i write

about my past

ethnonationalist

birdhouse phase

when bluebirds

traded sweet

clipped whistles

with their fledgling

i was not proud

i started to feel

i had been taught

to save bluebloods

from what birders

like to call

little brown birds

and i totally did

i sit with this

for a long time

by which i mean

until it snows

for a long time

is a phrase i love

within it i feel

the world

without a self

fall into folds

like the sheets

in a signature

in a book

all pasts collapse

together a past

becoming my own

the way i read

that it is true

house sparrows

were introduced

to the U. S.

in brooklyn

in greenwood

in 1852

but it is not true

that the man

eugene schieffelin

who soon released

more sparrows

near his house

in madison square

wanted to populate

central park

with every bird

in shakespeare’s plays

an anxious nativist

at the american

museum of natural

history made that up

the truth is just this

bird some people liked

or believed useful

maybe they were kids

in other countries

and saw sparrows

make dust wallows

and loved the sight

and brought them here

without knowing

much about them

and found cheerful

what another guide

calls their incessant

tuneless cheeping

for one hundred

seventy three years

the bird has remained

nonnative invasive

a flexible symbol

in a long series

of constructions

government reports

scientific studies

satirical poems

moral editorials

and testy letters

citizens once sent

to newspapers

to complain about

immigrant finches

dissipated

urban-dwellers

rich in vices

wretched foreigners

feathered reprobates

lazy little louts

self-willed and violent

hard characters

full of impudence

and pugnacity

alien vermin

rowdy little gamin

disgusting exotics

fond of fighting

and love-making

stormy and ignoble

domestic tyrants

the little saxons

copulated freely

and scandalized

scientific men

of the period

stopwatches in hand

watched fourteen

successive bouts

of intercourse

at a rate of five

seconds per act

with five-second

intervals between

outrageous data

whose prurience

helped fuel

what historians call

the sparrow wars

that were never

really about birds

but homeland

biosecurity

the little animal

became a stranger

despite how like

men are birds

wrote whittier

thinking maybe

about fighting

or fucking like

scientific men

i was taught

to be skeptical

of equivalence

between nativism

and conservation

but what about

the model bird law

of 1886

promoted by

eugenicist

naturalists

and passed

by ten states

that legislated

the slaughter

of non-natives

or the sparrow

exclusion act

which though

it did not pass

was modeled

on the chinese

exclusion act

and argued

this sparrow is

to native birds

what yellow peril

is to human

immigration

the question

after all is who

is the enemy

and who is not

the current

reigning architect

of genocide

on television says

they are animals

like all previous

reigning architects

of genocide

performing

the consoling

fiction of fixed

identity in

the gender

ideologue

lip synch

elimination

competition

banal evil

invariably

whosoever

a nation-state

calls a stranger

a nation-state

calls an animal

because the state

can kill an animal

without qualm

to live with wrong

genocidal men

constantly talking

isabella hammad

suggests we live

between alignment

and alienation

alike and unlike

never quite at home

in the notebook

finding things out

and changing

with the needs

of sense-making

without linear

evolution

its limitation

is acceptance

of whatever

happens next

unsymbolic

wintry mix

falling here

on the object

realm of shadows

cupped in snow

shifting in wind

ever intimate

with the flock

shaking the bare

sentences where

come spring

yellow will speak

for itself

i look closely

to try to say

a given name

the question

being a short bib

above white belly

or a very streaky

onesie like that one

picking around

in the leaflitter

alone because

song sparrows

only flock in fall

i did not know that

i looked it up

as i close the book

the flock disappears

into the dark

blocky paragraphs

of the holly

i want to write

the way they move

though i was taught

in the mental realm

thoughts are clouds

the mind is water

i was also taught

i could not move

freely in a poem

because i’d learned

to shape its music

through exclusion

you couldn’t write

peanut butter

to save your life

said my first teacher

and he was right

though i did not

want to sing

i wanted to think

the way the world

thinks itself being

one teacher might

enforce tradition

another might

bring a sword

to cut off

all concepts

pretty aggressive

to undo

the habitual

movements

of the mind

and release

with mysterious

precision

an unknowing

worthy of this world

a tawny noise

the sparrow

is not a parable

thinking animal

speaking animal

fond stranger

waiting for spring

neither of us

will be singing

hello is the end

of the poem

hello now go

                           [ January 2025 ]


(Brian Teare)

EX NADA

Salir del vientre
Salir del miedo
Salir del nido

Arrancar
Apretar cueva
A toda raja

Vivir escondida
Sin ser oída

Ni vista
Ni oída

No ser
De la tierra
Si no de la nada.

(Cecilia Vicuña)


EX NOTHING

Leave the womb
Leave the fear
Leave the nest

Hit the road
Hightail it
Head the hell out

Live hidden
Without a sound

Not seen
Nor heard

Be not
From this earth
But from nothing.

(Translated by Rosa Alcalá)

CURIOUS, I GO TO HER WEBSITE

My stomach plunging in dread,
I went to the website of the dead woman
who broke up my marriage in 1968.

I look at this distinctive, appealing face
and imagine clearly the moment
when across from his desk, or out walking

on campus, in step beside him, her
profile suddenly so precious to him,
he fell in love with her. She

has a quiet, orderly manner. She
listens to him as I have not. And
in the nude, half nude, and dressed

self-portraits making up the daily work
of an anguished year in her life—I have
to admit her courage and her artistry. Hers:

a body whose attractions I gulp to admit
were greater than mine. Those waves
of pain that swamped me when I first

read and recognized how his poems of climax
with her may have marked both the lawless
burn and the bitter exaltation of joy

never experienced with me
or with anyone else ever again.
The tears I felt then return to my face now.

Hardly jealousy that I feel—it is
an abandonment and desolation—my deep
and savage erasure. And yet

I feel no hatred for this beautiful woman.
Nor hatred of the dead man
for having left me. I have my sins

toward him with which to contend. I
would like to travel from the planet
swiftly—rise from my chair and fly

right out the window where hanging
and dangling above all the little streets
and their windows I could see

both inside and out of the houses
with their beds and bedrooms,
and all the people fucking in them—

and they would be so tiny to me
so pitiful and in a place
where I could love them all—I who am

still alive while the dead ones
lie in their separate beds of ash. Below me
and with no power to touch or comfort.

(Lorrie Goldensohn)

EVERYTHING THAT RISES

One after another the angel of history
Women: rural, 9, 1536, 1547, 1550, the angel of history
1551—52, 1559; in business, 147; and the angel of history
athletics, 245—46, 565; and education the angel of history
266, 1533, 1536—38; and flowers, 340, the angel of history
385; folkways among, 451, 452; per- the angel of history
I can no longer hear the music the angel of history
Singings, all-day 1039—40 the angel of history
Sit-ins: and civil rights movement the angel of history
Southern Literary Messenger, 909, 933, the angel of history
Big Thicket 335, 350, 377 the angel of history
A cast-iron farm bell the angel of history
The bell rust friable the angel of history
In the fricative air between tolls the angel of history
Make a basket of kudzu twines the angel of history
though these forms are less common the angel of history
shoot-the-chutes. We had been in swimming and we had the angel of history
-hibits African, folk, 15th-century, and contemporary the angel of history
art, among other things. The Cottonlandia Museum in the angel of history
648 History and Manners the angel of history
I heard my mother ring the bell for the angel of history
The king snake in the bush a branch painted the angel of history
A dream of the red-and-black snake the angel of history
Around my throat tightening the angel of history
The hoarse boys shouting in the dark street the angel of history
-Nothings captured political office and established nativist the angel of history
Would the angel of history know when memory the angel of history
Father’s House [1978] is a grim novel exploring future the angel of history
Let Gaines rest the angel of history
in peace the angel of history
the monograph had been adhered to an the angel of history
1838 copper-plate the angel of history
He asked What about sin I’d forgotten the angel of history
South that has all but vanished the angel of history
The fracture in the ledger grave-marker the angel of history
The dog that bit my father digs in it the angel of history
Most artists in the South have embraced the tenets of the angel of history
what is loosely called modernism the angel of history
Hot knobs of the rooms I cannot enter the angel of history
wreckage upon wreckage the angel of history
What calls from the dead in the flat air the angel of history
That I can hear the angel of history
Mass., and a Norman-style Episcopal church in the south the angel of history
Mothballs and tin in the slat-shelf pantry the angel of history
Collapse in her last kiss the angel of history
Technocolonialism the barbs on the wire the angel of history
ily, 1049; image of, 1492 the angel of history
Bottle trees 495—496 the angel of history
Into the hulls of westward-racing ships the angel of history
went bags of letters desperately calling the angel of history
A tithe purloin’d cankers the whole estate the angel of history
The ledger the fissure the sin of the dog the angel of history
May at his perill further go the angel of history
Clay clods the slippery elm leaf spray the angel of history
386; as symbol, 586; and concurrent the angel of history
Myself no better than the angel of history
The blood from my mouth the angel of history
The fourth escaped into the tall August sugarcane the angel of history

(Alicia Wright)