There you are, exhausted from a night of crying, curled up on the couch,
the floor, at the foot of the bed, anywhere you fall you fall down crying,
half amazed at what the body is capable of, not believing you can cry
anymore. And there they are, his socks, his shirt, your underwear
and your winter gloves, all in a loose pile next to the bathroom door,
and you fall down again. Someday, years from now, things will be
different, the house clean for once, everything in its place, windows
shining, sun coming in easily now, sliding across the high shine of wax
on the wood floor. You’ll be peeling an orange or watching a bird
spring from the edge of the rooftop next door, noticing how,
for an instant, its body is stopped on the air, only a moment before
gathering the will to fly into the ruff at its wings and then doing it:
flying. You’ll be reading, and for a moment there will be a word
you don’t understand, a simple word like now or what or is
and you’ll ponder over it like a child discovering language.
Is you’ll say over and over until it begins to make sense, and that’s
when you’ll say it, for the first time, out loud: He’s dead. He’s not
coming back. And it will be the first time you believe it.

Dorianne Laux

Love, Love, Love, where are we now?
Where did we begin?
I think

one of us wanted to name this,
wanted to call it something!
Shadows on the Garden Wall.
A Man Rowing Alone Out to Sea.
A Song in Search of a Singer.

I think that was me, I wanted to call it something.
And you? You were happy
with a room, two rooms, and a door to divide them.
And daylight on either side of the door.
Borrowed music from an upstairs room.
And bells.  Bells from down the street.
Bells to urge our salty hearts.

But I wanted to call it something.
I needed to know what we meant
when we said we, when we said
us, when we said this.

So call it Seven Happy Endings.
That would have been enough.

You see, I woke up one night
and realized I was falling.
I turned on the lamp and the lamp was falling.
And the hand that turned on the lamp was falling.
And the light was falling, and everything the light touched
falling.  And you were falling
asleep beside me.
And that was the first happy ending.

And the last one?
It went something like this:

A child sat down, opened a book,
and began to read.  And what he read out loud
came to pass.  And what he kept to himself
stayed on the other side of the mountains.

But I promised seven happy endings.
I who know nothing about endings.
I who am always at the beginning of everything.
Even as our being together
always feels like beginning.
Not just the beginning of our knowing each other,
but the beginning of reality itself.

See how you and I
make this room so quiet with our presence.

With every word we say
the room grows quieter.

With every word we keep ourselves
from speaking, even quieter.

And now I don’t know where we are.
Still needing to call it something:

A clock the bees unearth,
gathering the over-spilled minutes.

Li-Young Lee

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I’m drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk
into the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I’m nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are let off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me
just how fucking good I look

Kim Addonizio

I dreamt last night I heard someone speak your name,
two women were talking about you and I went to them
and asked about you and they gave me your number.
So I called you and we talked and you said
you were fine, and I doubted it was really you,
because how could you ever be fine? What have
twenty years done to you? Where are you now?
You had the smoothest skin, a face like a beautiful
wax figure as you moved from one messed-up man
to another. There was one who used to shoot up
Jack Daniel’s, and when I told him that was stupid,
he said, That’s right, I’m stupid, I’m really stupid,
somebody should kill me! Until I said it actually
wasn’t so stupid just to calm him. But all those men
who hit you and abused you and how you explained
they must have been right or else they wouldn’t
have done it. I was too tame, didn’t stick myself
with pins or know the names for all the drugs,
and had a vague idea of what I wanted to do
next week, next year. You would listen with one
black eye swollen half shut, then go back to the guy
who had done it so he could blacken the other.

I remember you told me how your mother had said
it was your duty to lover her, and you shouted, No,
and kept shouting no. And when she died you felt glad,
but years later I took you to one funeral director
after another so you could find her ashes.
You said you wanted to talk to her, a beautiful
woman telling her troubles to a cardboard box.
Then you would sprinkle her ashes into the canal
and feel something, you weren’t sure what, maybe
just done with something, the sense that something
was over. But either we couldn’t find the right
funeral director or the ashes were already gone,
and that night you went back to the man who beat you,
and shortly after that you slipped out of my life—
a few cards, a few phone calls, then nothing.
Right now you are either out there or you’re not—
smoking a cigarette, touching a sore place, looking
from a window and letting all the old faces
drift across your mind. It is hard to think of you
dowdy and forty, the problems dealt with, a life
of some sort on track, hard to think of you making it
past twenty-five. At least in books we know the end,
know the characters died or got married, had great
success or failure. But you are out there someplace,
and your friend who shot up the Jack Daniel’s,
and the guy I took the knife away from,
and the other who wanted to be a writer,
and the girl who quit school to have a baby,
and another girl who smashed the doors of my truck
on an acid trip. They are all out there, just
putting one foot in front of another, just like
the torturers are out there, and the men who worked
on firing squads, and then men who like to hit things
just to hurt them. And you are out there too,
picking your way between the paper, the tin cans,
the broken glass. You had the most wonderful smile.
On whom does it shine now, who does it welcome?
People on hard streets dragged to inevitable ends.

Stephen Dobyns

Look at me. I’m standing on a deck
in the middle of Oregon. There are
friends inside the house. It’s not my

house, you don’t know them.
They’re drinking and singing
and playing guitars. You love

this song, remember, “Ophelia”,
Boards on the windows, mail
by the door. I’m whispering

so they won’t think I’m crazy.
They don’t know me that well.
Where are you now? I feel stupid.

I’m talking to trees, to leaves
swarming on the black air, stars
blinking in and out of heart-

shaped shadows, to the moon, half-
lit and barren, stuck like an axe
between the branches. What are you

now? Air? Mist? Dust? Light?
What? Give me something. I have
to know where to send my voice.

A direction. An object. My love, it needs
a place to rest. Say anything. I’m listening.
I’m ready to believe. Even lies, I don’t care.

Say burning bush. Say stone. They’ve
stopped singing now and I really should go.
So tell me, quickly. It’s April. I’m

on Spring Street. That’s my gray car
in the driveway. They’re laughing
and dancing. Someone’s bound

to show up soon. I’m waving.
Give me a sign if you can see me.
I’m the only one here on my knees.

Dorianne Laux

what we do in the dark has no hands. no
crossover effect, no good-bye kiss after the alarm.
what we carry in, we carry out, end of story. this
doesn’t even want to be love. except in minutes
when your face has the shape of my palm and I think
lungful. let want out with the cat. returns
and returns, something dutiful. persistent.
hold your breath, let it build, let go. this is practice.
I’m losing weight, a bad sign, I’m happy. serious,
you say. contained, I think. the cat comes back
with a dead bird to the doorstep, an offering. bloodless
this should be easy. a two-step to cowboys. you’re beautiful
but that’s not the point.

x

I know my way back perfectly well. like the back
of my hand, as it were. but look, the labyrinth walls
are high hedge and green. this also could be joy.

xx

I literally don’t know your middle name. does that
matter? what systems we arrange for intimacy, small
disclosures like miniature bridges, your mouth. not
what I’d anticipated. softer. to begin with,
I should tell the truth more. I could miss you,
and that’s a liability.

xxx

I am not often off-kilter. but you’re so silent, even
naked, and almost absent. I hush too, why
are we here. go. want to throw things, you, the clock,
break windows until something bleeds and you finally
scream. I tell you too much; we are not
those people. or nothing—maybe I say
utilitarian fuck. how would that be. I want you
to want to fall in love with me and that’s
unhealthy. wrong. leave your shoes by the door
and pretend it’s about the movie. it’s love
in the movies it’s casablanca and toy story
and water no ice come here. pockets need
to be untucked, drawers thrown open,
nobody’s safe. there, I’ve said it:
someone I was could have loved you.

Marty McConnell

Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dream-
ing so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it?
A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled
back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beau-
tiful day. How ‘bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little
ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

James Tate

A woman travels to Brazil for plastic
surgery and a face-lift. She is sixty
and has the usual desire to stay pretty.
Once she is healed, she takes her new face
out on the streets of Rio. A young man
with a gun wants her money. Bang, she’s dead.
The body is shipped back to New York,
but in the morgue there is a mix-up. The son
is sent for. He is told that his mother
is one of these ten different women.
Each has been shot. Such is modern life.
He studies them all but can’t find her.
With her new face, she has become a stranger.
Maybe it’s this one, maybe it’s that one.
He looks at their breasts. Which ones nursed him?
He presses their hands to his cheek.
Which ones consoled him? He even tires
climbing into their laps to see which
feels most familiar but the coroner stops him.
Well, says the coroner, which is your mother?
They all are, says the young man, let me
take them as a package. The coroner hesitates,
then agrees. Actually, it solved a lot of problems.
The young man has the then women shipped home,
then cremates them all together. You’ve seen
how some people have a little urn on the mantel?
This man has a huge silver garbage can.
In the spring, he drags the garbage can
out to he garden and begins working the teeth,
the ash, the bits of bone into the soil.
Then he plants tomatoes. His mother loved tomatoes.
They grow straight from seed, so fast and big
that the young man is amazed. He takes the first
ten into the kitchen. In their roundness,
he sees his mother’s breasts. In their smoothness,
he finds the consoling touch of her hands.
Mother, mother, he cries, and he flings himself
on the tomatoes. Forget the knife, the fork,
the pinch of salt. Try to imagine the filial
starvation, think of his ravenous kisses.

Jack Elliott Myers

Waving hello versus waving goodbye
is an interpretative act. We could make it
directional: from left to right is hello,
right to left, goodbye. The buoy

clanged all night so my sleep
would know where to go. I could pray.
Tambourine myself to death.
Electroshock the worms. Wrap the maple
in tinfoil and decry the lightning
that splits it as misguided and deceived.
Nothing I do will bring you back. So this

is freedom: being ineffectual. Here
is where spiders set up shop
during the night, here is where a crow
decided to perch. Then it gets up
and perches over there, beside
where another crow perched last week.
It would be peaceful to be a sail

except during the storm.
During the storm, I would like to be
the storm. If you’re the storm,
there’s nothing frightening
about the storm except when it stops,
then you’re dead and the maps
are drowned. Within my heart

is another heart, within that heart,
a man at war writes home:

this is like digging a hole in the rain.

Bob Hicok

if you touch it, it will melt
if it melts, it will leave a stain
if it leaves a stain, you will always remember it
if you always remember it, it will block the road
if it blocks the road, you will have to climb over it
if you have to climb over it, you will become superstitious
if you become superstitious, you will cover the mirror
if you cover the mirror, you will forget to get dressed
if you forget to get dressed, you will walk around naked in public
if you walk around naked in public, you will get aroused
if you get aroused, you will touch it

Jeffrey McDaniel

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I’m the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

Kim Addonizio

You could say I grew up in a rough neighborhood: We owned boxing gloves. The red ones I loved, which represented fire and strength. I loved how they looked on me. It was rough because my uncle who lived next door was a blackbelter, and we were born with fists. My brother would wear black gloves and my uncle would be the referee of the two of us. When the fighting went on, we would hide love the best way we could. Everyday it was morning. The chickens my other uncle owned — he also lived next door — would flit and putter in their cage as they watched us step into and out of each other. The chickens had feathers so white you’d think heaven was caged with chicken wire. But they were delicious when cooked. Especially with butter, and with much care.

The world is incomplete.

I doubt goodness. For instance, I lost my virginity to a prostitute. My nature is to increase sin, to relegate/buy it with money. I am not capable of committing evil by myself: I need an agent. She was pretending to enjoy it, and I was pretending to enjoy it. We both lied about our age. She had hair down to her hips. I was once, you know, a child.

I will make a list of things I know:
1) A leaf is green.
2) A leaf is black at night.

According to its dual nature, light can also act as a particle. Seeing an object (a chair, table, or person) requires that we move it with the solid particles of light that make sight possible, much the same way that one billiard ball will push another. In other words, we move all objects to some unknown future so we can see their past. (I know this. I was a scientist in my past life.)

Conclusion: Nobody knows what’s happening now. The present is a rumor, a story spread by eye.

Said Werner Heisenberg of the subatomic particle: “The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.” To illustrate in bigger terms: if you know a white chicken is trapped in your bathroom exactly at the center of your bathtub, then you cannot know exactly how fast or in what direction the chicken is dodging your ax. The second case: if you know a certain girl is drawing away from you radially at a speed of 5 inches per day, then the universe won’t allow you to know exactly how far away she already is, or how to find her. (I know this. I was a scientist
in my past life.)

Conclusion: Separation can’t be predicted. We cannot know, even by force. We cannot keep.

The history of my body: this little nose I got from my mother, this daffy hair from my father, and my blue eyes I inherited from the sea. The earth bequeathed me brown skin. Look at my feet: tree roots. And my arms: branches. Twenty years ago there was only air where I am. Fifty years from now, air again.

My family is crazy about white dogs. Our first one got ill and died. The second (named Petite) died giving birth. The third (Bingo) ran away. What I really mean: my family is crazy. Mother said Petite couldn’t give birth because her babies were too big for her. I think it was because we didn’t call a veterinarian. In any case, it was sad. We ate ice cream afterwards. It was delicious. Then it was okay again.

You see, years before he ran away, Bingo was a puppy. Then he got older, and as was our nature, we tried to avoid his ugliness by ignoring him. There was less petting going on, less tail-wagging. And we locked him up in our backyard for three years

When he ran away, the dogs from all over barked at hm because they didn’t know he existed until then. He was always there and nobody knew except us. Everywhere he was lost.

We scoured the streets calling his name. We asked strangers. It was a time when words lost their connections to their referents. I remember sitting at our door-sill, waiting for any shuffle of feet, any bark.

I believe, sometimes, that I am a good man.

I remember
looking at trees.

I remember
Not looking at trees.

In this world there are two types of things that make people happy: the first type pleasures the self directly (e.g., food, sex), while the second pleasures the self only after directing pleasure to others (e.g., clothes, shoes). The first gives solitary joy, the second social. There are exceptions — items that belong to both lists (e.g., beauty) or to none. This is only my observation.

To illustrate beauty: the size of my sex, at rest, is x inches. In the presence of a beautiful woman, longer (beauty elongates matter to fullness). The woman, in turn, now conscious of her erotic effect, will surprise herself with a sudden flush of happiness in the form of two hard
nipples, pink like sunrise.

Another observation: a recluse is selfish with his joy, without care for clothes or shoes.

Another observation: dust collects itself out of nowhere.

The history of my spirit: I don’t have a spirit, and borrow only from the air.

The earth accommodates 6,398,649,394 human beings on 148,380,000 square kilometers of land. If these people were spread equally, there’d be a distance of 152.279 meters between each of them, give or take some. This is the average amount of solitude the world allows by distance. When a person dies, everyone in the world is allowed more remove from everyone else. Thus, the resultant sadness. When a person is born, everybody is closer to everybody else.

“I am waiting only for death,” said my grandmother one late afternoon in June.

I said to myself: “So this is the world.”

Some people are born diabetic: my grandmother hid chocolates in her purse and ate them when nobody was looking. The church, in the person of the priest, visited her every week. And the TV was always on. Once she thought aliens were invading the earth. It was a movie. She was really scared.

I said to myself: “So this is the world.”

I will make a list of things I don’t know:
1) God’s first name
2) The color of a leaf

In 1982 my mother was rivetingly beautiful. She had hair down to her hips. And red lips, too — a cunning innocence. But in the 1970s her pictures were black-and-whites only, and the sky was the color of a lie. I have asked myself many times: How many colors did she need to believe in the world? How many to reproduce beauty? How many so it can last?

Said Gandhi: “If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”

I will be honest: I am a very funny person sometimes.

In my uncle’s backyard where his chickens roamed free, I would search around for eggs. I loved newly laid eggs, especially the little brown ones with white spots. And if I was lucky — they are still warm.

Once I find one I would wrap my fingers around it and close my eyes. It was like holding life in your own — hands-your own life. Then I would put the egg back where I found it, and it was over.

I will be honest: I love the world and I am curiously happy. Nobody knows this because nobody knows. I would tell you about the time I grew my hair past the norm but I don’t remember much about it because it never happened. This is another story. The world is incomplete and in a game of poker I lost all of my body-hair to a monkey. I will be honest: the sun is a flashlight and some divine idiot is checking on us once in a while in this eternal blackout. Watch out for me, my brothers! Before the next war I will be smug in my coffin wearing formal attire. I have been known, you know, to dress up extravagantly for such grand occasions.

Arkaye Kierulf

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that’s late,
it is my song that’s flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it’s done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

Stanley J. Kunitz