Selected Poems
These are some poems that may be useful, though I often vary my selections by grade, course and year.
1
Contents
23.
from America, America / Saadi Youssef .......................... 18
24.
They Don't Love You Like I Love You / Natalie Diaz ......... 19
25.
Meeting at an Airport / Taha Muhammead Ali .............. 20
26.
Family Dinner / Priscilla Lee ............................................. 21
1.
Sestina: Like / AE Stallings.................................................. 4
2.
Nature Knows Its Math / Joan Graham.............................. 4
3.
Apella / Dilruba Ahmed ...................................................... 5
4.
Let's Put It To Music / Johnny Cash.................................... 5
27.
I Do / Sjohnna McCray
5.
Dear Basketball / Kobe Bryant ........................................... 6
28.
O Me! O Life! / Walt Whitman ......................................... 22
6.
From “Bestiary” / Sherman Alexie ..................................... 7
29.
Counting / Margarita Engle .............................................. 23
7.
Disclosure /Camisha L. Jones ........................................... 7
30.
23
8.
Remember / Joy Harjo ....................................................... 8
30.
BLK History Month / Nikki Giovanni................................. 24
9.
A New National Anthem / Ada Limon ............................... 8
31.
the way we live now :: / Evie Shockley ............................ 24
10.
The Bait / Eric Chock .......................................................... 9
32.
Praise Song for the Day / Elizabeth Alexander................ 25
11.
Cherry Blossoms / Toi Derricotte ..................................... 10
33.
Hysteria / Dionisio D. Martinez ........................................ 26
12.
In Michael Robins's class minus one / Bob Hicok ............ 10
34.
Last Snow/ Heid E. Erdrich ............................................... 26
13.
The Poem You’ve Been Waiting For / Tarfia Faizullah ..... 11
35.
I Eat Breakfast to Begin the Day / Zubair Ahmed ............ 27
14.
1938 / J. Patrick Lewis ...................................................... 12
36.
Poem Without an End / Yehuda Amichai ........................ 27
15.
Women / Louise Bogan ................................................... 12
37.
Hip Hop Analogies / Tara Betts........................................ 28
16.
You and I / Stanley Moss .................................................. 13
17.
Snowflake / William Baer ................................................. 13
38.
The Everglades / Campbell McGrath
18.
In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr. / June Jordan ...... 14
39.
Slam, Dunk, & Hook / Yusef Komunyakaa ....................... 29
19.
Oklahoma / Hala Alyan .................................................... 14
40.
Try to Praise the Mutilated World / Adam Zagajewski ... 29
20.
Of the Threads that Connect the Stars / Martin Espada . 15
41.
Jakarta, January / Sarah Kay............................................. 30
21.
America, I Sing Back / Allison Adelle Hedge Coke............ 16
42.
One Today / Richard Blanco ............................................. 31
22.
won’t you celebrate with me / Lucille Clifton .................. 17
43.
What For / Garrett Hongo ................................................ 33
2
............................................. 22
....................... 28
............................................ 34
59.
Taking One for the Team / Sara Holbrook ....................... 46
60.
Dinosaurs in the Hood / Danez Smith .............................. 47
61.
I Feel Horrible. She Doesn’t / Richard Brautigan ............. 48
62.
Jaguar / Francisco X. Alarcon ........................................... 48
63.
The One About the Robbers / Zachary Schomburg ......... 49
64.
Deserving / Terisa Siagatonn............................................ 49
44.
Nationhood / Laura Da
45.
Fin de Fête / Charlotte Mew ............................................ 35
46.
Thinking American / Hayan Charara ................................ 35
47.
A Poem for S. / Jessica Greenbaum ................................. 36
48.
Nice Voice / Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner ...................................... 36
49.
Banneker / Rita Dove ....................................................... 37
50.
Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, México / Natalie Scenters-Zapico . 38
51.
Face Blindness / Cynthia Aarieu-King .............................. 39
52.
Wade in the Water / Tracy K. Smith ................................ 40
53.
A Jelly-Fish / Marianne Moore ......................................... 40
68. ‘Tis a Fearful Thing / Chaim Stern
54.
Having a Coke with You / Frank O’Hara ........................... 41
69. Masks / Shel Silverstein 52
55.
Mimesis / Fady Joudah..................................................... 42
70. Mustn’ts / Shel Silverstein
56.
Relic / Jennifer Foerster ................................................... 42
57.
Commercial Break / Jacqueline Woodson ....................... 43
58.
Grave / Justin Chin ........................................................... 44
65. Leisure / W.H. Davies
50
66. God Says Yes to Me / Kaylin Haught
67. Not / Erin hanson
3
50
51
52
51
Plain English as she’s spoke — why isn’t “like”
Their (literally) every other word? I’d like
Us just to admit that’s what real speech is like.
1. Sestina: Like / AE Stallings
With a nod to Jonah Winter
Now we’re all “friends,” there is no love but Like,
A semi-demi goddess, something like
A reality-TV star look-alike,
Named Simile or Me Two. So we like
In order to be liked. It isn’t like
There’s Love or Hate now. Even plain “dislike”
But as you like, my friend. Yes, we’re alike,
How we pronounce, say, lichen, and dislike
Cancer and war. So like this page. Click Like.
2. Nature Knows Its Math / Joan Graham
Is frowned on: there’s no button for it. Like
Is something you can quantify: each “like”
You gather’s almost something money-like,
Token of virtual support. “Please like
This page to stamp out hunger.” And you’d like
To end hunger and climate change alike,
Divide
the year
into seasons,
four,
subtract
the snow then
add
some more
green,
a bud,
a breeze,
a whispering
behind
the trees,
and here
beneath the
rain-scrubbed
sky
orange poppies
multiply.
But it’s unlikely Like does diddly. Like
Just twiddles its unopposing thumbs-ups, likeWise props up scarecrow silences. “I’m like,
So OVER him,” I overhear. “But, like,
He doesn’t get it. Like, you know? He’s like
It’s all OK. Like I don’t even LIKE
Him anymore. Whatever. I’m all like ... ”
Take “like” out of our chat, we’d all alike
Flounder, agape, gesticulating like
A foreign film sans subtitles, fall like
Dumb phones to mooted desuetude. Unlike
With other crutches, um, when we use “like,”
We’re not just buying time on credit: Like
Displaces other words; crowds, cuckoo-like,
Endangered hatchlings from the nest. (Click “like”
If you’re against extinction!) Like is like
Invasive zebra mussels, or it’s like
Those nutria-things, or kudzu, or belike
Redundant fast food franchises, each like
(More like) the next. Those poets who dislike
Inversions, archaisms, who just like
4
3. Apella / Dilruba Ahmed
between cars in parking lots.
The miles of fence-links grow
more & more impassable
This morning, a light
so full, so complete
we might ask why
even as the children try
to follow the voices
calling them now, at first
the god of sun
is also god of plague,
why the god of healing
with tenderness and then
with fierce intensity.
also god of archery.
The children under trees—
unaware their hearts
4. Let's Put It To Music / Johnny Cash
have become targets
red and inflamed
as the eyes of men in thrones—
How do you feel about me
Now that you've learned to know me?
Why don't we both admit
That something is happening.
And we would feel better if
We'd just tell each other
No need to keep it to ourselves.
Let's put it to music
Let's put it to music
Let's sing about it
Laugh about it
Clap our hands
And shout about it
Let the whole world hear it
In a sweet, sweet melody
Let's put it to music, you and me.
find sticks in the grass
to fashion into guns. Some brandish
a branch-saber. They are sniping
the golden light
with squinting faces.
And everywhere
they do not look,
fences and more fences.
There are no arrows
to point the way
as they scythe
through a woods or dart
5
When someone makes you feel as
Alive as you’ve made me feel.
5. Dear Basketball / Kobe Bryant
Dear Basketball,
You gave a six-year-old boy his Laker dream
And I’ll always love you for it.
But I can’t love you obsessively for much longer.
This season is all I have left to give.
My heart can take the pounding
My mind can handle the grind
But my body knows it’s time to say goodbye.
From the moment
I started rolling my dad’s tube socks
And shooting imaginary
Game-winning shots
In the Great Western Forum
I knew one thing was real:
And that’s OK.
I’m ready to let you go.
I want you to know now
So we both can savor every moment we have left together.
The good and the bad.
We have given each other
All that we have.
I fell in love with you.
A love so deep I gave you my all —
From my mind & body
To my spirit & soul.
As a six-year-old boy
Deeply in love with you
I never saw the end of the tunnel.
I only saw myself
Running out of one.
And we both know, no matter what I do next
I’ll always be that kid
With the rolled up socks
Garbage can in the corner
:05 seconds on the clock
Ball in my hands.
5…4…3…2…1
And so I ran.
I ran up and down every court
After every loose ball for you.
You asked for my hustle
I gave you my heart
Because it came with so much more.
Love you always,
Kobe
I played through the sweat and hurt
Not because challenge called me
But because YOU called me.
I did everything for YOU
Because that’s what you do
6
7. Disclosure /Camisha L. Jones
6. From “Bestiary” / Sherman Alexie
I’m sorry, could you repeat that. I’m hard of hearing.
To the cashier
To the receptionist
To the insistent man asking directions on the street
My mother sends me a black-and-white
photograph of her and my father, circa
1968, posing with two Indian men.
I’m sorry, I’m hard of hearing. Could you repeat that?
At the business meeting
In the writing workshop
On the phone to make a doctor’s appointment
“Who are those Indian guys?” I ask her
on the phone.
“I don’t know,” she says.
I’m-sorry-I’m-sorry-I’m-so-sorry-I’m-hard-for-the-hearing
The next obvious question: “Then why
did you send me this photo?” But I don’t
ask it.
Repeat.
Repeat.
One of those strange Indian men is
pointing up toward the sky.
Hello, my name is Sorry
To full rooms of strangers
I’m hard to hear
Above them, a bird shaped like a
question mark.
I vomit apologies everywhere
They fly on bat wings
towards whatever sound beckons
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry
and repeating
and not hearing
Dear (again)
I regret to inform you
I
here
7
am
8. Remember / Joy Harjo
9. A New National Anthem / Ada Limon
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have
their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows
the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National
Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good
song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets
red glare” and then there are the bombs.
(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)
Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw
even the tenacious high school band off key.
But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call
to the field, something to get through before
the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas
we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge
could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps,
the truth is, every song of this country
has an unsung third stanza, something brutal
snaking underneath us as we blindly sing
the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands
hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do
like the flag, how it undulates in the wind
like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,
brought to its knees, clung to by someone who
has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,
when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly
you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can
love it again, until the song in your mouth feels
like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung
by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,
the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left
unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,
that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,
that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving
into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit
in an endless cave, the song that says my bones
are your bones, and your bones are my bones,
and isn’t that enough?
8
with a plea of a prayer,
hoping it would spread its wings this time
and fly across that wet glass sky,
no concern for what inspired
its life, or mine,
only instinct guiding pain
towards the other side.
10. The Bait / Eric Chock
Saturday mornings, before
my weekly chores,
I used to sneak out of the house
and across the street,
grabbing the first grasshopper
walking in the damp California grass
along the stream.
Carefully hiding a silver hook
beneath its green wings,
I'd float it out
across the gentle ripples
towards the end of its life.
Just like that.
I'd give it the hook
and let it ride.
All I ever expected for it
was that big-mouth bass
awaiting its arrival.
I didn't think
that I was giving up one life
to get another,
that even childhood
was full of sacrifice.
I'd just take the bright green thing,
pluck it off its only stalk,
and give it away as if
it were mine to give.
I knew someone out there
would be fooled,
that someone would accept
the precious gift.
So I just sent it along
9
11. Cherry blossoms / Toi Derricotte
Be patient
you have an ancient beauty.
I went down to
mingle my breath
with the breath
of the cherry blossoms.
Be patient,
you have an ancient beauty.
There were photographers:
Mothers arranging their
children against
gnarled old trees;
a couple, hugging,
asks a passerby
to snap them
like that,
so that their love
will always be caught
between two friendships:
ours & the friendship
of the cherry trees.
12. In Michael Robins's class minus one / Bob Hicok
At the desk where the boy sat, he sees the Chicago River.
It raises its hand.
It asks if metaphor should burn.
He says fire is the basis for all forms of the mouth.
He asks, why did you fill the boy with your going?
I didn't know a boy had been added to me, the river says.
Would you have given him back if you knew?
I think so, the river says, I have so many boys in me,
I'm worn out stroking eyes looking up at the day.
Have you written a poem for us? he asks the river,
and the river reads its poem,
and the other students tell the river
it sounds like a poem the boy would have written,
that they smell the boy's cigarettes
in the poem, they feel his teeth
biting the page.
And the river asks, did this boy dream of horses?
because I suddenly dream of horses, I suddenly
dream.
They're in a circle and the river says, I've never understood
round things, why would leaving come back
to itself?
And a girl makes a kiss with her mouth and leans it
against the river, and the kiss flows away
but the river wants it back, the river makes sounds
to go after the kiss.
And they all make sounds for the river to carry to the boy.
And the river promises to never surrender the boy's shape
to the ocean.
Oh Cherry,
why can't my poems
be as beautiful?
A young woman in a fur-trimmed
coat sets a card table
with linens, candles,
a picnic basket & wine.
A father tips
a boy's wheelchair back
so he can gaze
up at a branched
heaven.
All around us
the blossoms
flurry down
whispering,
10
so you don’t have to look at yourself. I saw
13. The Poem You’ve Been Waiting For / Tarfia
Faizullah
that I would drown in a creek carved out
I saw then the white-eyed man
of a field our incarnations forged the first path
leaning in to see if I was ready
through to those mountains. I invited you to stroll
yet to go where he has been waiting
with me there again for the first time, to pause
to take me. I saw then the gnawing
and sprawl in the grass while I read to you
sounds my faith has been making
the poem you hadn’t known you’d been waiting
and I saw too that the shape it sings
to hear. I read until you finally slept
in is the color of cast-iron mountains
and all your jagged syntaxes softened into rest.
I drove so long to find I forgot I had
You’re always driving so far from me towards
been looking for them, for the you
the me I worry, without you, is eternity. I lay there,
I once knew and the you that was born
awake, keeping watch while you snored.
waiting for me to find you. I have been
I waited, as I always seem to, for you
twisting and turning across these lifetimes
to wake up and come back to me.
where forgetting me is what you do
11
14. 1938 / J. Patrick Lewis
15. Women / Louise Bogan
Superman flies onto his first comic book.
Oil bubbles up in Saudi Arabia.
Women have no wilderness in them,
They are provident instead,
Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts
To eat dusty bread.
Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds invades
every panicked radio along the eastern seaboard.
The Spanish Civil War rages on. Filming starts
They do not see cattle cropping red winter grass,
They do not hear
Snow water going down under culverts
Shallow and clear.
on The Wizard of Oz. At New York City's
Carnegie Hall, John Hammond's Spirituals
To Swing concert explodes with African chants,
They wait, when they should turn to journeys,
They stiffen, when they should bend.
They use against themselves that benevolence
To which no man is friend.
the Count Basie Band, boogie-woogie,
New Orleans jazz, hot gospel, stride piano,
harmonica instrumentals, Big Bill Broonzy's
They cannot think of so many crops to a field
Or of clean wood cleft by an axe.
Their love is an eager meaninglessness
Too tense, or too lax.
blues. The audience hears the ghost of Robert
Johnson, four months gone, easing out
of a Victrola phonograph at center stage—
They hear in every whisper that speaks to them
A shout and a cry.
As like as not, when they take life over their door-sills
They should let it go by.
the entire concert suddenly enveloped
by the man who was not there.
12
16. You and I / Stanley Moss
You are Jehovah, and I am a wanderer.
Who should have mercy on a wanderer
if not Jehovah? You create and I decay.
Who should have mercy on the decayed
if not the creator? You are the Judge
and I the guilty Who should have mercy
on the guilty if not the Judge? You are All
and I am a particle. Who should have mercy
on a particle if not the All?
You are the Living One and I am dead.
Who should have mercy on the dead if not
the Living One? You are the Painter and Potter
and I am clay. Who should have mercy on clay
if not the Painter and Potter? You are the Fire
and I am straw Who should have mercy on straw
if not the Fire? You are the Listener
and I am the reader. Who should have mercy
on the reader if not the Listener? You
are the Beginning and I am what follows.
Who should have mercy on what follows
if not the Beginning? You are the End and I am
what follows. Who should have mercy
on what follows if not the End?
17. Snowflake / William Baer
Timing’s everything. The vapor rises
high in the sky, tossing to and fro,
then freezes, suddenly, and crystalizes
into a perfect flake of miraculous snow.
For countless miles, drifting east above
the world, whirling about in a swirling freefor-all, appearing aimless, just like love,
but sensing, seeking out, its destiny.
Falling to where the two young skaters stand,
hand in hand, then flips and dips and whips
itself about to ever-so-gently land,
a miracle, across her unkissed lips:
as he blocks the wind raging from the south,
leaning forward to kiss her lovely mouth.
13
according to some universal
stage direction obvious
like shorewashed shells
18. In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr. / June
Jordan
I
honey people murder mercy U.S.A.
the milkland turn to monsters teach
to kill to violate pull down destroy
the weakly freedom growing fruit
from being born
we share an afternoon of mourning
in between no next predictable
except for wild reversal hearse rehearsal
bleach the blacklong lunging
ritual of fright insanity and more
deplorable abortion
more and
more
America
tomorrow yesterday rip rape
exacerbate despoil disfigure
crazy running threat the
deadly thrall
appall belief dispel
the wildlife burn the breast
the onward tongue
the outward hand
deform the normal rainy
riot sunshine shelter wreck
of darkness derogate
delimit blank
explode deprive
assassinate and batten up
like bullets fatten up
the raving greed
reactivate a springtime
terrorizing
19. Oklahoma / Hala Alyan
For a place I hate, I invoke you often. Stockholm’s: I am
eight years old and the telephone poles are down, the power
plant at the edge of town spitting electricity. Before the
pickup trucks, the strip malls, dirt beaten by Cherokee
feet. Osiyo, tsilugi. Rope swung from mule to tent to man,
tornadoes came, the wind rearranged the face of the land like
a chessboard. This was before the gold rush, the greed of
engines, before white men pressing against brown women,
nailing crosses by the river, before the slow songs of cotton
plantations, the hymns toward God, the murdered dangling
like earrings. Under a redwood, two men signed away the
land and in history class I don’t understand why a boy
whispers sand monkey. The Mexican girls let me sit with
them as long as I braid their hair, my fingers dipping into that
wet black silk. I try to imitate them at home — mírame,
mama — but my mother yells at me, says they didn’t come
here so I could speak some beggar language. Heaven is a
long weekend. Heaven is a tornado siren canceling school.
Heaven is pressed in a pleather booth at the Olive Garden,
sipping Pepsi between my gapped teeth, listening to my
father mispronounce his meal.
death by men by more
than you or I can
STOP
II
They sleep who know a regulated place
or pulse or tide or changing sky
14
20. Of the Threads that Connect the Stars / Martin
Espada
Did you ever see stars? asked my father with a cackle.
He was not
speaking of the heavens, but the white flash in his head
when a fist burst
between his eyes. In Brooklyn, this would cause men
and boys to slap
the table with glee; this might be the only heavenly light
we'd ever see.
I never saw stars. The sky in Brooklyn was a tide of
smoke rolling over us
from the factory across the avenue, the mattresses
burning in the junkyard,
the ruins where squatters would sleep, the riots of 1966
that kept me
locked in my room like a suspect. My father talked truce
on the streets.
My son can see the stars through the tall barrel of a
telescope.
He names the galaxies with the numbers and letters of
astronomy.
I cannot see what he sees in the telescope, no matter
how many eyes I shut.
I understand a smoking mattress better than the
language of galaxies.
My father saw stars. My son sees stars. The earth rolls
beneath
our feet. We lurch ahead, and one day we have walked
this far.
15
carefully rumbling her great underbelly, prepared to
pour forth singing—
21. America, I Sing Back / Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
for Phil Young, my father, Robert Hedge Coke,
Whitman, and Hughes
and sing again I will, as I have always done.
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
Sing back the moment you cherished breath.
Sing you home into yourself and back to reason.
Never silenced unless in the company of strangers,
singing
the stoic face, polite repose, polite, while dancing deep
inside, polite
Mother of her world. Sister of myself.
Oh, before America began to sing, I sung her to sleep,
held her cradleboard, wept her into day.
My song gave her creation, prepared her delivery,
held her severed cord beautifully beaded.
When my song sings aloud again. When I call her back
to cradle.
Call her to peer into waters, to behold herself in dark
and light,
My song helped her stand, held her hand for first steps,
nourished her very being, fed her, placed her three
sisters strong.
My song comforted her as she battled my reason
day and night, call her to sing along, call her to mature,
to envision—
broke my long held footing sure, as any child might do.
Then, she will make herself over. My song will make it
so
Lo, as she pushed herself away, forced me to remove
myself,
as I cried this country, my song grew roses in each tear’s
fall.
When she grows far past her self-considered purpose,
I will sing her back, sing her back. I will sing. Oh, I
will—I do.
My blood veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries
circled canyons, while she made herself maiden fine.
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
Oh, but here I am, here I am, here, I remain high on
each and every peak,
16
22. won’t you celebrate with me / Lucille Clifton
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
17
23. from America, America / Saadi Youssef
God save America,
My home, sweet home!
We are not hostages, America,
and your soldiers are not God's soldiers...
We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the drowned gods,
the gods of bulls,
the gods of fires,
the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and blood in a song...
We are the poor, ours is the god of the poor,
who emerges out of farmers' ribs,
hungry
and bright,
and raises heads up high...
America, we are the dead.
Let your soldiers come.
Whoever kills a man, let him resurrect him.
We are the drowned ones, dear lady.
We are the drowned.
Let the water come.
Damascus, 20/8/1995
18
than the loud light of their projectors
of themselves they flicker—sepia
or blue—all over my body.
24. They Don't Love You Like I Love You / Natalie Diaz
My mother said this to me
long before Beyoncé lifted the lyrics
from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,
All this time,
I thought my mother said, Wait,
as in, Give them a little more time
and what my mother meant by
Don’t stray was that she knew
all about it—the way it feels to need
to know your worth,
when really, she said, Weight,
meaning heft, preparing me
someone to love you, someone
not your kind, someone white,
some one some many who live
for the yoke of myself,
the beast of my country’s burdens,
which is less worse than
because so many of mine
have not, and further, live on top of
those of ours who don’t.
my country’s plow. Yes,
when my mother said,
They don’t love you like I love you,
I’ll say, say, say,
I’ll say, say, say,
What is the United States if not a clot
she meant,
Natalie, that doesn’t mean
you aren’t good.
of clouds? If not spilled milk? Or blood?
If not the place we once were
in the millions? America is Maps—
Maps are ghosts: white and
layered with people and places I see through.
My mother has always known best,
knew that I’d been begging for them,
to lay my face against their white
laps, to be held in something more
19
by the slimmest of chances,
and we meet.
Ah, Lord!
we meet.
And here you are
asking—again,
it’s absolutely preposterous—
I recognized you
but you didn’t recognize me.
“Is it you?!”
But you wouldn’t believe it.
And suddenly
you burst out and asked:
“If you’re really you,
What do you hate
and who do you love?!”
25. Meeting at an Airport / Taha Muhammead Ali
You asked me once,
on our way back
from the midmorning
trip to the spring:
“What do you hate,
and who do you love?”
And I answered,
from behind the eyelashes
of my surprise,
my blood rushing
like the shadow
cast by a cloud of starlings:
“I hate departure . . .
I love the spring
and the path to the spring,
and I worship the middle
hours of morning.”
And you laughed . . .
and the almond tree blossomed
and the thicket grew loud with nightingales.
And I answered—
my blood
fleeing the hall,
rushing in me
like the shadow
cast by a cloud of starlings:
“I hate departure,
and I love the spring,
and the path to the spring,
and I worship the middle
hours of morning.”
. . . A question
now four decades old:
I salute that question’s answer;
and an answer
as old as your departure;
I salute that answer’s question . . .
And you wept,
and flowers bowed their heads,
and doves in the silk of their sorrow stumbled.
And today,
it’s preposterous,
here we are at a friendly airport
20
while I sit
waiting for the boyfriend
white and forbidden
to touch our doorbell.
26. Family Dinner / Priscilla Lee
My mother the hard boned
Chinese woman 23 years
in this country
without bothering to learn
its language
buys lean pork ribs
special order
at the Hop Sang in Chinatown
and cooks dinner
for an extended family
of twenty-five during holidays.
Seated loosely around
the dining table
trying to eat quietly
I am scrubbed down
to skin and bone,
her oldest daughter—
spineless, a headless snake
a woman grandfather says
who should have her tendons
lifted out slowly
by the steel point
of a darning needle
until she writhes.
To my mother
I'm useless
but dangerous,
capable of swallowing
the family whole
into my pelvis
21
28. O Me! O Life! / Walt Whitman
27. I Do / Sjohnna McCray
Driving the highway from Atlanta to Phoenix
means swapping one type of heat for another.
A bead of sweat rolls over my chest,
around my belly and evaporates
so quickly I forget I’m sweating.
Body chemistry changes like the color
of my skin: from yellow to sienna.
My sister says, it’s a dry heat.
At dusk, lightning storms over the mesas.
Violets and grays lie down together.
Mountains are the color of father’s hands,
layers of dark—then light.
People move west to die, retire in a life
of dust, trade the pollen of the south
for a thin coat of grit, the Arizona desert—
promesas, promesas.
We stop on the outskirts of town
and think about being reborn.
When he places his mouth near my mouth
because he’s so obviously thirsty,
when he moves to the well
where my tongue spouts out
because we’re mostly made of water
two-thirds of me is certain:
este infierno vale la pena.
This hell is worth the risk.
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the
foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish
than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the
struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I
see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me
intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these,
O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
22
How am I supposed to enumerate
this kid with the Cuban accent?
His skin is medium, but his eyes
are green.
29. Counting / Margarita Engle
Harry Franck, from the United States of America - Census
Enumerator
I came to Panama planning to dig
the Eighth Wonder of the World,
but I was told that white men
should never be seen working
with shovels, so I took a police job,
and now I've been transferred
to the census.
And what about that Puerto Rican
scientist, who speaks like a New York
professor,
or the girl who says she doesn't know
where she was born or who her parents
are—she could be part native, or part French,
Jamaican, Chinese ...
I roam the jungle, counting laborers
who live in shanties and those who live
on the run, fugitives who are too angry
to keep working for silver in a system
where they know that others
earn gold.
She could even be part American,
from people who passed through here
way back
in gold rush days.
Counting feels just as impossible
as turning solid mountains
into a ditch.
When islanders see me coming,
they're afraid of trouble, even though
I can't arrest them anymore—now
all I need is a record of their names, ages,
homelands, and colors.
30.
The rules of this census confound me.
I'm expected to count white Jamaicans
as dark and every shade of Spaniard
as semi-white, so that Americans
can pretend
there's only one color
in each country.
23
30. BLK History Month / Nikki Giovanni
31. the way we live now :: / Evie Shockley
If Black History Month is not
viable then wind does not
carry the seeds and drop them
on fertile ground
rain does not
dampen the land
and encourage the seeds
to root
sun does not
warm the earth
and kiss the seedlings
and tell them plain:
You’re As Good As Anybody Else
You’ve Got A Place Here, Too
when the cultivators of corpses are busy seeding
plague across vast acres of the land, choking schools
and churches in the motley toxins of grief, breeding
virile shoots of violence so soon verdant even fools
fear to tread in their wake :: when all known tools
of resistance are clutched in the hands of the vile
like a wilting bouquet, cut from their roots, while
the disempowered slice smiles across their own faces
and hide the wet knives in writhing thickets of hair
for future use :: when breathing in the ashen traces
of dreams deferred, the detonator’s ticking a queer
echo that amplifies instead of fading :: when thereyou-are is where-you-were and the sunset groans
into the atlantic, setting blue fire to dark white bones.
24
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
32. Praise Song for the Day / Elizabeth Alexander
Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.
picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.
All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?
Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.
In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.
praise song for walking forward in that light.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.
I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
25
keeping all the wrong emotions in check.
33. Hysteria / Dionisio D. Martinez
When I read I bite my lower lip, a habit
the plastic surgeon would probably call
cosmetic heresy because it accelerates the aging
For Ana Menendez
It only takes one night with the wind on its knees
to imagine Carl Sandburg unfolding
a map of Chicago, puzzled, then walking the wrong way.
process. I think of Carl Sandburg and the White Sox;
I think of wind in Tiananmen Square, how a country
deprived of laughter ages invisibly; I think
The lines on his face are hard to read. I alternate
between the tv, where a plastic surgeon is claiming
that every facial expression causes wrinkles, and
of the Great Walls of North America, each of them
a grip on some outfield like a rookie’s hands
around a bat when the wind is against him; I bite
the newspaper. I picture the surgeon reading the lines
on Sandburg’s face, lines that would’ve made more sense
if the poet had been, say, a tree growing
my lower lip again; I want to learn
to think in American, to believe that a headline
is a fact and all stories are suspect.
in a wind orchard. Maybe he simply smiled too much.
I’m reading about the All-Star game, thinking
that maybe Sandburg saw the White Sox of 1919.
34. Last Snow/ Heid E. Erdrich
I love American newspapers, the way each section
is folded independently and believes it owns
the world. There’s this brief item in the inter-
Dumped wet and momentary on a dull ground
that’s been clear but clearly sleeping, for days.
Last snow melts as it falls, piles up slush, runs in first light
making a music in the streets we wish we could keep.
Last snow. That’s what we’ll think for weeks to come.
Close sun sets up a glare that smarts like a good cry.
We could head north and north and never let this season go.
Stubborn beast, the body reads the past in the change of light,
knows the blow of grief in the time of trees’ tight-fisted leaves.
Stubborn calendar of bone. Last snow. Now it must always be
so.
national pages: the Chinese government has posted
signs in Tiananmen Square, forbidding laughter.
I’m sure the plastic surgeon would approve, he’d say
the Chinese will look young much longer, their faces
unnaturally smooth, but what I see (although
no photograph accompanies the story) is laughter
bursting inside them. I go back to the sports section
and a closeup of a rookie in mid-swing, his face
26
35. I Eat Breakfast to Begin the Day / Zubair Ahmed
36. Poem Without an End / Yehuda Amichai
I create time
I cannot create time
I’m frozen in place
I cannot be frozen
I’m moving but don’t notice
I notice me moving, I pay attention
To the small yet immense yet
Small movements that guide
My limbs, my hair growth, my joint oils
I don’t think about it
I don’t feel it either
I don’t have emotions right now
I see films of divine quality
I don’t see any films
This black
This not black
To me I am
I am not to me not
I walk with this hollowness
I walk with this blooming
I’m moving outward forever
Onward eternally inward
I create all objects like shampoos
And cats, I create nothing
Like space and antimatter
I resign to the clocks that keep time
I surrender to the clocks that don’t keep time
I’m sure about it, the color white
I’m not sure about it, what is word?
Oh, the loops and unloops
Destiny unfolds in my knees
I eat breakfast to begin the day
Inside the brand-new museum
there’s an old synagogue.
Inside the synagogue
is me.
Inside me
my heart.
Inside my heart
a museum.
Inside the museum
a synagogue,
inside it
me,
inside me
my heart,
inside my heart
a museum
27
37. Hip Hop Analogies / Tara Betts
If you be boy,
then I be girl
who wants to
sync samples
into classic.
After Miguel and Erykah Badu
If you be the needle
I be the LP.
If you be the buffed wall,
I be the Krylon.
If you be the backspin,
I be the break.
If you be the head nod,
I be the bass line.
If you be a Phillie,
I be the razor.
If you be microphone,
then I be palm.
If you be cipher,
then I be beatbox.
If you be hands thrown up,
then I be yes, yes, y’all.
If you be throwback,
then I be remix.
If you be footwork,
then I be uprock.
If you be turntable,
then I be crossfader.
If you be downtown C train,
then I be southbound Red Line.
If you be shell toes,
then I be hoodie.
If you be freestyle,
then I be piece book.
If you be Sharpie,
then I be tag.
38. The Everglades / Campbell McGrath
Green and blue and white, it is a flag
for Florida stitched by hungry ibises.
It is a paradise of flocks, a cornucopia
of wind and grass and dark, slow waters.
Turtles bask in the last tatters of afternoon,
frogs perfect their symphony at dusk—
in its solitude we remember ourselves,
dimly, as creatures of mud and starlight.
Clouds and savannahs and horizons,
its emptiness is an antidote, its ink
illuminates the manuscript of the heart.
It is not ours though it is ours
to destroy or preserve, this the kingdom
of otter, kingfisher, alligator, heron.
If the sacred is a river within us, let it flow
like this, serene and magnificent, forever.
28
& glide like a sparrow hawk.
Lay ups. Fast breaks.
We had moves we didn't know
We had. Our bodies spun
On swivels of bone & faith,
Through a lyric slipknot
Of joy, & we knew we were
Beautiful & dangerous.
39. Slam, Dunk, & Hook / Yusef Komunyakaa
Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury's
Insignia on our sneakers,
We outmaneuvered the footwork
Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot
Swish of strings like silk
Ten feet out. In the roundhouse
Labyrinth our bodies
Created, we could almost
Last forever, poised in midair
Like storybook sea monsters.
A high note hung there
A long second. Off
The rim. We'd corkscrew
Up & dunk balls that exploded
The skullcap of hope & good
Intention. Lanky, all hands
& feet...sprung rhythm.
We were metaphysical when girls
Cheered on the sidelines.
Tangled up in a falling,
Muscles were a bright motor
Double-flashing to the metal hoop
Nailed to our oak.
When Sonny Boy's mama died
He played nonstop all day, so hard
Our backboard splintered.
Glistening with sweat,
We rolled the ball off
Our fingertips. Trouble
Was there slapping a blackjack
Against an open palm.
Dribble, drive to the inside,
40. Try to Praise the Mutilated World / Adam Zagajewski
TRANSLATED BY CLARE CAVANAGH
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees going nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
29
girl in a classroom on the lucky side of town who did not
know what had happened yet & electrical fire is a smell I
41. Jakarta, January / Sarah Kay
did not know I did not like until my neighborhood
After Hanif Abdurraqib & Frank O’Hara
smelled that way for weeks & blue skies is a sight I have
It is the last class of the day & I am teaching a classroom
never trusted again & poetry is what I reached for in the
of sixth graders about poetry & across town a man has
days when the ash would not stop falling & there is a
walked into a Starbucks & blown himself up while some
sixth grade girl in this classroom whose father is in that
other men throw grenades in the street & shoot into the
Starbucks & she does not know what has happened yet &
crowd of civilians & I am 27 years old which means I am
what is a girl if not a pulsing thing learning what the
the only person in this room who was alive when this
world will take from her & what if I am still a girl sitting
happened in New York City & I was in eighth grade &
in my classroom on the lucky side of town making a
sitting in my classroom for the first class of the day & I
careless joke looking at the teacher for some kind of
made a joke about how mad everyone was going to be at
answer & what if I am also the teacher without any
the pilot who messed up & later added, how stupid do
answers looking back at myself & what is an adult if not
you have to be for it to happen twice? & the sixth graders
a terrified thing desperate to protect something you
are practicing listing sensory details & somebody calls
cannot save? & how lucky do you have to be for it to miss
out blue skies as a sight they love & nobody in this
you twice? & tomorrow a sixth grade girl will come to
classroom knows what has happened yet & they do not
class while her father has the shrapnel pulled from his
know that the school is in lockdown which is a word we
body & maybe she will reach for poetry & the sky outside
did not have when I was in sixth grade & the whole class
the classroom is so terribly blue & the students are quiet
is laughing because a boy has called out dog poop as a
& looking at me & waiting for a grown-up or a poem or
smell he does not like & what is a boy if not a glowing
an answer or a bell to ring & the bell rings & they float up
thing learning what he can get away with & I was once a
from their seats like tiny ghosts & are gone
30
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t
explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting
windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we
open
for each other all day, saying: hello / shalom,
buon giorno / howdy / namaste / or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every
language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my
lips.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado
42. One Today / Richard Blanco
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the
Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a
story
told by our silent gestures moving behind
windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s
mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our
day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic
lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed
like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or
paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside
us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save
lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my
mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the
day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms
imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
31
worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more
report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the
weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—
home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one
moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together
32
He’d hand me a scarred lunchpail,
let me unlace the hightop G.I. boots,
call him the new name I’d invented
that day in school, write it for him
on his newspaper. He’d rub my face
with hands that felt like gravel roads,
tell me to move, go play, an then he’d
walk to the laundry sink to scrub,
rinse the dirt of his long day
from a face brown and grained as koa wood.
43. What For / Garrett Hongo
At six I lived for spells:
how a few Hawaiian words could call
up the rain, could hymn like the sea
in the long swirl of chambers
curling in the nautilus of a shell,
how Amida’s ballads of the Buddhaland
in the drone of the priest’s liturgy
could conjure money from the poor
and give them nothing but mantras,
the strange syllables that healed desire.
I wanted to take away the pain
in his legs, the swelling in his joints,
give him back his hearing,
clear and rare as crystal chimes,
the fins of glass that wrinkled
and sparked the air with their sound.
I lived for stories about the war
my grandfather told over hana cards,
slapping them down on the mats
with a sharp Japanese kiai.
I lived for songs my grandmother sang
stirring curry into a thick stew,
weaving a calligraphy of Kannon’s love
into grass mats and straw sandals.
I wanted to heal the sores that work
and war had sent to him,
let him play catch in the backyard
with me, tossing a tennis ball
past papaya trees without the shoulders
of pain shrugging back his arms.
I lived for the red volcano dirt
staining my toes, the salt residue
of surf and sea wind in my hair,
the arc of a flat stone skipping
in the hollow trough of a wave.
I wanted to become a doctor of pure magic,
to string a necklace of sweet words
fragrant as pine needles and plumeria,
fragrant as the bread my mother baked,
place it like a lei of cowrie shells
and pikake flowers around my father’s neck,
and chant him a blessing, a sutra.
I lived in a child’s world, waited
for my father to drag himself home,
dusted with blasts of sand, powdered
and the strange ash of raw cement,
his deafness made worse by the clang
of pneumatic drills, sore in his bones
from the buckings of a jackhammer.
33
44. Nationhood / Laura Da
I am a citizen of two nations: Shawnee and American. I
have one son who is a citizen of three. Before he was
born, I learned that, like all infants, he would need to
experience a change of heart at birth in order to survive.
When a baby successfully breathes in through the lungs,
the heart changes from parallel flow to serial flow and
the shunt between the right and left atriums closes. Our
new bodies obliterate old frontiers.
North America is mistakenly called nascent. The
Shawnee nation is mistakenly called moribund.
America established a mathematical beginning point in
1785 in what was then called the Northwest Territory.
Before that, it was known in many languages as the
eastern range of the Shawnee, Miami, and Huron
homelands. I do not have the Shawnee words to
describe this place; the notation that is available to me
is 40º38’32.61” N 80º31’9.76” W.
34
or a gin bottle if you can’t sleep,
and if you stopped drinking,
a pack of cigarettes. After that,
you’re on your own, you pack up
and leave. You still call
the city beside the strait home.
Make no mistake, it’s miserable.
After all, you bought a one-way
Greyhound ticket, cursed each
and every pothole on the road out.
But that’s where you stood
before a mirror in the dark,
where you were too tired
to complain. You never go back.
Things could be worse. Maybe.
Detroit is a shithole, it’s where
you were pulled from the womb
into the streets. Listen,
when I say Detroit, I mean any place.
By thinking American, I mean made.
45. Fin de Fête / Charlotte Mew
Sweetheart, for such a day
One mustn’t grudge the score;
Here, then, it’s all to pay,
It’s Good-night at the door.
Good-night and good dreams to you,—
Do you remember the picture-book thieves
Who left two children sleeping in a wood the long night
through,
And how the birds came down and covered them with
leaves?
So you and I should have slept,—But now,
Oh, what a lonely head!
With just the shadow of a waving bough
In the moonlight over your bed.
46. Thinking American / Hayan Charara
—For Dioniso D. Martínez
Take Detroit, where boys
are manufactured into men, where
you learn to think in American.
You speak to no one unless someone
speaks to you. Everyone is suspect:
baldheaded carriers from the post office;
old Polish ladies who swear
to Jesus, Joseph, and Mary;
your brother, especially your brother,
waiting in a long line for work.
There’s always a flip side.
No matter what happens,
tomorrow is a day away,
35
47. A Poem for S. / Jessica Greenbaum
48. Nice Voice / Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
When my daughter whines I tell her to say what you
want in a nice voice.
My nice voice is reserved for meetings with a view, my
palm outstretched saying here. Are our problems.
Legacies rolling out like multicolored marbles. Don’t
focus so much on the ‘doom and gloom’ they keep
saying. We don’t want to depress. Everyone. This is only
our survival. We rely heavily on foreign aid I am
instructed to say. I am instructed to point out the need
for funds to build islands, move families from weto after
weto, my mouth a shovel to spade the concrete with but
I am just pointing out neediness. So needy. These small.
Underdeveloped countries. I feel myself shrinking in
the back of the taxi when a diplomat compliments me.
How brave for admitting it so openly. The allure of
global negotiations dulls. Like the back of a worn spoon.
I lose myself easily in a kemem. Kemem defined as
feast. As celebration. A baby’s breath endures their first
year so we pack hundreds of close bodies under tents,
lined up for plates I pass to my cousin, assembly line
style. Our gloved hands pluck out barbeque chicken,
fried fish, scoop potato salad, dew-like droplets of bōb
and mā. Someone yells for another container of jajimi.
The speaker warbles a keyboarded song. A child
inevitably cries. Mine dances in the middle of the party.
A pair elbow each other to rip hanging beach balls from
their strings. The MC shouts Boke ajiri ne nejim jen
maan. The children are obstructing our view. Someone
wheels a grandma onto the dance floor. The dances
begin here
is a nice
celebration
of survival.
Because you used to leaf through the dictionary,
Casually, as someone might in a barber shop, and
Devotedly, as someone might in a sanctuary,
Each letter would still have your attention if not
For the responsibilities life has tightly fit, like
Gears around the cog of you, like so many petals
Hinged on a daisy. That’s why I’ll just use your
Initial. Do you know that in one treasured story, a
Jewish ancestor, horseback in the woods at Yom
Kippur, and stranded without a prayer book,
Looked into the darkness and realized he had
Merely to name the alphabet to ask forgiveness—
No congregation of figures needed, he could speak
One letter at a time because all of creation
Proceeded from those. He fed his horse, and then
Quietly, because it was from his heart, he
Recited them slowly, from aleph to tav. Within those
Sounds, all others were born, all manner of
Trials, actions, emotions, everything needed to
Understand who he was, had been, how flaws
Venerate the human being, how aspirations return
Without spite. Now for you, may your wife’s
X-ray return with good news, may we raise our
Zarfs to both your names in the Great Book of Life.
36
while he slept. The clock
he whittled as a boy
still ran. Neighbors
woke him up
with warm bread and quilts.
At nightfall he took out
49. Banneker / Rita Dove
What did he do except lie
under a pear tree, wrapped in
a great cloak, and meditate
on the heavenly bodies?
Venerable, the good people of Baltimore
whispered, shocked and more than
a little afraid. After all it was said
he took to strong drink.
Why else would he stay out
under the stars all night
and why hadn’t he married?
his rifle—a white-maned
figure stalking the darkened
breast of the Union—and
shot at the stars, and by chance
one went out. Had he killed?
I assure thee, my dear Sir!
Lowering his eyes to fields
sweet with the rot of spring, he could see
a government’s domed city
rising from the morass and spreading
in a spiral of lights....
But who would want him! Neither
Ethiopian nor English, neither
lucky nor crazy, a capacious bird
humming as he penned in his mind
another enflamed letter
to President Jefferson—he imagined
the reply, polite and rhetorical.
Those who had been to Philadelphia
reported the statue
of Benjamin Franklin
before the library
his very size and likeness.
A wife? No, thank you.
At dawn he milked
the cows, then went inside
and put on a pot to stew
37
50. Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, México / Natalie ScentersZapico
5
When you wade across the river you only have to worry
about swimming if a current pulls you under, not the red
glare of night-vision goggles, floodlights & guns.
1
Part of the simulation is not knowing
your coyote's real name. Part of the simulation
is knowing your group could leave you
behind. Part of the simulation is knowing
that if you are left behind, a pickup truck
will take you back to your hotel.
6
In the simulation, only two people make it
to the other side without getting stopped by actors
portraying la migra or narcos. All are brought back
for cups of atole. It's three in the morning, a girl laughs.
2
Through caves, through brush, through needles
we form a line by holding on
to a stranger's backpack. In the dark live
rounds are fired. I duck, people laugh.
7
I walk back to my room, turn on the light
& the flying ants won't stop swarming. It is so dark
& have so much water left in my jug.
My teeth full of grit from the atole.
3
The desert here is no desert at all & I think of how
I could cut a thick barrel cactus open
& eat it. In Chihuahua I've never seen
thick barrel cactus, only the thin long threads
of ocotillo that don't carry much water.
4
The chairos pay 250 pesos to walk
all night in the desert in the middle of México
to simulate a border crossing. They bring jugs
filled with water & pose for selfies.
38
51. Face Blindness / Cynthia Aarieu-King
I mention my Han melancholy and you murmur, No, Grandpa
told Uncle DiDi we’re Mongolian, I thought you knew?
They look at the photo and agree that’s dad in the class photo of
Ip Man, Wing Chun master.
I look at the face and cannot say it looks like him to me.
You who had permission to deck any lump on the bus, who got
asked later, Are you okay?
My brother asked his forensics detective coworker to look at the
face.
I walk down the street feeling overly safe, I dgaf and want to
magic you my extra.
Mom thinks it’s him too, he says proudly.
But my face fails me with a weak best, what friends know as
“powered- down mode.”
My mother often watches game shows and says look it looks
like (insert neighbor) and I look up to see some not-evenballpark bone structure.
What in the world is she thinking is what I sometimes ask
myself, says a colleague about this face.
What was my father’s face like when he left his country?
What I partly see, what partly disappears in the mirror.
What was his face like when, alone, he made the pork and peas,
washed socks.
This wretched neighborhood, when I say hi to white people on
the street they don’t say hi back. Chinese either.
Who has mastered this face, no sweeping lashes, just one naked
thought after another.
The young people I think I smile at in a dark crowd who walk
away as if my face said, You’re standing in my way move
along.
I’d dress as Robert Smith or The Crow in high school and
friends would say, But you look normal that way.
39
52. Wade in the Water / Tracy K. Smith
To climb. O Woods—O Dogs—
O Tree—O Gun—O Girl, run—
O Miraculous Many Gone—
O Lord—O Lord—O Lord—
Is this love the trouble you promised?
for the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters
One of the women greeted me.
I love you, she said. She didn't
Know me, but I believed her,
And a terrible new ache
Rolled over in my chest,
Like in a room where the drapes
Have been swept back. I love you,
I love you, as she continued
Down the hall past other strangers,
Each feeling pierced suddenly
By pillars of heavy light.
I love you, throughout
The performance, in every
Handclap, every stomp.
I love you in the rusted iron
Chains someone was made
To drag until love let them be
Unclasped and left empty
In the center of the ring.
I love you in the water
Where they pretended to wade,
Singing that old blood-deep song
That dragged us to those banks
And cast us in. I love you,
The angles of it scraping at
Each throat, shouldering past
The swirling dust motes
In those beams of light
That whatever we now knew
We could let ourselves feel, knew
53. A Jelly-Fish / Marianne Moore
Visible, invisible,
A fluctuating charm,
An amber-colored amethyst
Inhabits it; your arm
Approaches, and
It opens and
It closes;
You have meant
To catch it,
And it shrivels;
You abandon
Your intent—
It opens, and it
Closes and you
Reach for it—
The blue
Surrounding it
Grows cloudy, and
It floats away
From you.
40
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less
takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a
Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or
Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the
Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the
tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick
the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some
marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m
telling you about it
54. Having a Coke with You / Frank O’Hara
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún,
Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia
in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better
happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your
love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around
the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before
people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be
anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when
right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting
back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its
spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all,
just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did
them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the
portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and
anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can
go together for the first time
41
55. Mimesis / Fady Joudah
56. Relic / Jennifer Foerster
An atlas
on the underside of my dream.
My half-shut eyelid—
a black wing.
I dipped sharp quills
in the night’s mouth—
moths swarmed
from my throat.
I pulled a feather blanket
over my skeleton
and woke—
a map of America
flapping in the dark.
Once I dreamt
of inheriting this—
my mother
who still follows crows
through the field,
my sister’s small hand
tucked inside hers,
me on her breast
in a burial quilt.
My daughter
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
42
57. Commercial Break / Jacqueline Woodson
Last night this commercial came on TV. It was this white
lady making a nice dinner for her husband. She made him
some baked chicken with potatoes and gravy and some kind
of greens—not collards, but they still looked real good.
Everything looked so delicious, I just wanted to reach into
that television and snatch a plate for myself.
He gave her a kiss and then a voice came on saying He'll love
you for it and then the commercial went off.
I sat on Miss Edna's scratchy couch wondering if that man
and woman really ate that food or just threw it all away.
Now Ms. Marcus wants to know why I wrote that the lady is
white and I say because it's true. And Ms. Marcus
says Lonnie, what does race have to do with it, forgetting that
she asked us to use lots of details when we wrote. Forgetting
that whole long talk she gave yesterday about the importance
of description! I don't say anything back to her, just look
down at my arm. It's dark brown and there's a scab by my
wrist that I don't pick at if I remember not to. I look at my
knuckles. They're real dark too.
Outside it's starting to rain and the way the rain comes
down—tap, tapping against the window—gets me to
thinking. Ms. Marcus don't understand some things even
though she's my favorite teacher in the world. Things like my
brown, brown arm. And the white lady and man with all that
good food to throw away. How if you turn on your TV, that's
what you see—people with lots and lots of stuff not having to
sit on scratchy couches in Miss Edna's house. And the true
fact is alotta those people are white. Maybe it's that if you're
white you can't see all the whiteness around you.
43
of sweat and talc, who were in constant
wide-blue-eyed bewilderment as to why
they were profusely perspiring in the tropics,
instead of living out some winter wonderland Bobsey Twins
fantasy, who were oblivious
to their parents’ desperate efforts
to save the dusky masses, ignorant enough
to believe in the secret lives of stuffed animals.
I could not eat animal crackers
because I did not want to hurt the poor things;
but, braised the right way, I could eat
any part of a pig, starting with the head,
working on the soft flesh around the eyes,
savoring its raspy tongue with a dipping
sauce of ginger, chilies and lime.
58. Grave / Justin Chin
In the harsh glare of an easily
reprehensible life. The channel changer is lost
in the crack of an infinite sofa.
Everything falls apart, everything breaks
down, torn into a million
fragments, Jericho everyday.
I want to be the blameless
victim in this canceled puppet show,
the marionette every mother loves, the one
souvenirs are modeled from.
(In that lifetime, Elton John will write mushy
ballads just
for me. Michael Jackson will want to be my best
friend. He’d
take me to the Neverland Ranch, and by the llama
feeding trough,
he’d say something like, “You’re a great guy, don’t
give up,
stay positive!” And I’d say, “Michael, you fucking
idiot, I am
positive!” And he’d say, “Oh, you’re so funny!
Would you like
to touch Bubbles?”
And I would.)
Oh blameless innocent victim.
What measures a lifetime?
I used to have this theory about how
much life a human body could hold.
It all had to do with the number
of heartbeats. Each human is assigned a number
determined by an unknown power cascading
over the dark waters of the unformed Earth.
For some, it was a magnificently high number,
seen only in Richie Rich comics, and for others,
it was frightfully low, like twenty-six.
No bargaining, no coupons,
no White Flower Day sale, no specials. Once
you hit your number, you croak.
I imagined the angels in heaven
In the crux of my hollow innocent youth,
I believed that my teddy bears had feelings.
To cure me of this, my guardians made me give
them to the church missionaries’ children.
Scrubbed-clean rosy-cheeked blonde kids who smelled
44
and the demons in hell gathering to watch
the counters turn, like how I enjoyed watching
the speedometer line up to a row of similar
numbers, and especially when the row of
nines turned into
the row of zeros.
You know what they say,
God never closes a door before making sure
that the windows are barricaded
and the fire escape is inaccessible.
I used to know how to stop the revolution of planets.
Oh blameless innocent victim.
What measures eternity?
I used to know how to save the world.
An eternal damnation. An everlasting love.
Now, I don’t know anything anymore.
I could not imagine the night sky
stretched out forever, so I decided that it came
to an end at some point, by a velvet rope it ended
and beyond that rope were row after row of cushioned seats,
a majestic cosmic theater,
playing every movie I can remember.
I want to be able to evoke
those blameless and innocent days, to revel
in their ignorance and goodness
as if they have the power
to protect and to heal,
and to strengthen,
and to bring me to safety
long after all other resources
were exhausted.
But I emerge anew in the wreckage,
blinking in the sunlight,
the residue of salt water in my belly.
45
59. Taking One for the Team / Sara Holbrook
We practiced together,
sweat and stained.
We pummeled each other
and laughed off pain.
Teams may disagree,
may tease,
may blame.
Teams may bicker and whine,
but get down for the game.
You had my back.
We fought the fight.
And though our score
was less last night,
we're walking tall.
Our team came through
and stuck together like Crazy Glue.
I'm proud to say
I lost with you.
46
screamy dinosaurs. I want Cicely Tyson to make a speech,
maybe two.
I want Viola Davis to save the city in the last scene with a black
fist afro pick
through the last dinosaur’s long, cold-blood neck. But this can’t
be
a black movie. This can’t be a black movie. This movie can’t be
dismissed
60. Dinosaurs in the Hood / Danez Smith
Let’s make a movie called Dinosaurs in the Hood.
Jurassic Park meets Friday meets The Pursuit of Happyness.
There should be a scene where a little black boy is playing
with a toy dinosaur on the bus, then looks out the window
& sees the T. Rex, because there has to be a T. Rex.
Don’t let Tarantino direct this. In his version, the boy plays
with a gun, the metaphor: black boys toy with their own lives,
the foreshadow to his end, the spitting image of his father.
F--- that, the kid has a plastic Brontosaurus or Triceratops
& this is his proof of magic or God or Santa. I want a scene
because of its cast or its audience. This movie can’t be a
metaphor
for black people & extinction. This movie can’t be about race.
This movie can’t be about black pain or cause black people
pain.
This movie can’t be about a long history of having a long
history with hurt.
This movie can’t be about race. Nobody can say nigga in this
movie
where a cop car gets pooped on by a pterodactyl, a scene
where the corner store turns into a battle ground. Don’t let
the Wayans brothers in this movie. I don’t want any racist shit
about Asian people or overused Latino stereotypes.
This movie is about a neighborhood of royal folks —
who can’t say it to my face in public. No chicken jokes in this
movie.
No bullets in the heroes. & no one kills the black boy. & no one
kills
the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. Besides, the only
reason
I want to make this is for that first scene anyway: the little black
boy
on the bus with a toy dinosaur, his eyes wide & endless
children of slaves & immigrants & addicts & exiles — saving
their town
from real-ass dinosaurs. I don’t want some cheesy yet
progressive
Hmong sexy hot dude hero with a funny yet strong
commanding
black girl buddy-cop film. This is not a vehicle for Will Smith
& Sofia Vergara. I want grandmas on the front porch taking out
raptors
his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there.
with guns they hid in walls & under mattresses. I want those
little spitty,
47
61. I Feel Horrible. She Doesn’t / Richard Brautigan
that by observing
the constellations
of the night sky
I feel horrible. She doesn’t
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that’s just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.
they're gazing
at the star spots
on my fur
that I am and
always will be
the wild
62. Jaguar / Francisco X. Alarcon
some say
I'm now almost
extinct in this park
untamed
living spirit
of this jungle
but the people
who say this
don't know
that by smelling
the orchids
in the trees
they're sensing
the fragrance
of my chops
that by hearing
the rumbling
of the waterfalls
they're listening
to my ancestors'
great roar
48
63. The One About the Robbers / Zachary Schomburg
I ask him about Rihanna,
and he tells me his friend was pressured
into doing it. She makes a new tattoo appointment
once she returns to America, to cover up
the indigenous ink she received here
and I’m reminded of my own unworthiness
You tell me a joke about two robbers who hide from the police.
One robber hides as a sack of cats and the other robber hides
as a sack of potatoes. That is the punch line somehow, the sack
of potatoes, but all I can think about is how my dad used to
throw me over his shoulder when I was very small and call me
his sack of potatoes. I've got a sack of potatoes he would yell,
spinning around in a circle, the arm not holding me reaching
out for a sale. Does anyone want to buy my sack of
potatoes? No one ever wanted to buy me. We were always the
only two people in the room.
that I sometimes throw in the backseat
of my pride. She didn’t deserve that tatau.
I get that.
I plan to get my malu one day, but I just don’t feel
like I deserve it yet, I tell him
as his body is still pressed against mine,
his precision below my chin, steady and solemn.
I find it interesting, he says, when people say
they don’t feel like they ‘deserve’ their malu.
To me, your malu feels like your birthright no?
I swallow without speaking.
My breath held captive
in his indigenous hands.
Between each buzz of the gun’s mouth
on my indigenous skin.
64. Deserving / Terisa Siagatonn
He runs the gun down my sternum
wrists pressed against my breasts
the ink sharp from the lip of the gun’s hum.
Exhale only when he loosens. Carrie captures
all of this on film. Photos failing to
snap my ancestors guiding his hand
down my chest.
49
65. Leisure / W. H. Davies
66. God Says Yes to Me / Kaylin Haught
WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
50
67. ‘Tis a Fearful Thing/ Chaim Stern
‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
To Love What Death Can Touch
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.
68. Not/ Erin Hanson
You are not your age, nor the size of clothes you wear,
You are not a weight, or the color of your hair.
You are not your name, or the dimples in your cheeks.
You are all the books you read, and all the words you speak.
You are your croaky morning voice, and the smiles you try to hide.
You’re the sweetness in your laughter, and every tear you’ve cried.
You’re the songs you sing so loudly
when you know you’re all alone.
You’re the places that you’ve been to, and the one that you call home.
You’re the things that you believe in, and the people whom you love.
You’re the photos in your bedroom, and the future you dream of.
You’re made of so much beauty, but it seems that you forgot
When you decided that you were defined by all the things you’re not.
51
69. Masks/Shel Silverstein
70. Mustn’ts/Shel Silverstein
52