Poems – Page 11 – Poetry Out Loud

I know it will be quiet when you come:
No wind; the water breathing steadily;
A light like ghost of silver on the sea;
And the surf dreamily fingering his drum.
Twilight will drift in large and leave me numb
With nearness to the last tranquility;
And then the slow and languorous tyranny
Of orange moon, pale night, and cricket hum.

And suddenly there will be twist of tide,
A rustling as of thin silk on the sand,
The tremor of a presence at my side,
The tremble of a hand upon my hand:
And pulses sharp with pain, and fires fanned,
And words that stumble into stars and hide.

    New York City, 2001

One night, not long after the disaster,
as our train was passing Astor,
the car door opened with a shudder
and a girl came flying down the aisle,
hair that looked to be all feathers
and a half-moon smile
making open air of our small car.

The crowd ignored her or they muttered
“Hey, excuse me” as they passed her
when the train had paused at Rector.
The specter crowed “Excuse me,” swiftly
turned, and ran back up the corridor,
then stopped for me.
We dove under the river.

She took my head between her fingers,
squeezing till the birds began to stir.
And then from out my eyes and ears
a flock came forth — I couldn’t think or hear
or breathe or see within that feather-world
so silently I thanked her.

Such things were common after the disaster.

Translated by Karen Kovacik

Until recently the universe was expanding
with new suns, nebulas, constellations,
vibrating waves, the breath of galaxies.
Now it’s contracting to satellite
images depicting Earth:
not even the whole planet, just one country,
not even each region, just one city,
a single street, gray pavement. On it are strewn
“dark objects of similar size
to human bodies,” writes the New York Times.
Not buried for weeks,
their grave the satellite’s synthetic eye
and the black holes of our pupils,
surrounded by life.

Copyright Credit: Krystyna Dąbrowska, “Cosmos,” translated by Karen Kovacik, from Poetry (September 2022). Used with the permission of the translator.

     For Carolina Ebeid

We enrolled at barbizon
Knowing full well
We’d never look like
What was promised
Cue carol of the bells
Cue a demo on the casio
And the security of two-way
Escalators setting the speed
Those early mornings
In our mall school
The store’s silver grills
Some mannequins left
Half-clothed
We’d taunt them
With our imagined summers
In london paris rome
We weren’t please and thank you
Walking with books on our heads
No we were going to devastate
Greek shipping heirs
At every port of call

Yet when our bus broke down
And we trudged the shoulder
Of highways
Single file
Dodging cigarette butt and horn
We shook off those mornings
Studied
Their defenseless
Indifference
The blinding surface
The quality of electric
Without being alive
We knew that there
In only hot pants
The ideal form
Plastic
Most would take a bullet for

                                                    While at 16
We were already trash-talking
Our prayers never went beyond
The second floor
Light-years away
From the last word
That distant somewhere
Where a boat loses course
The north star forsaking
Its name to another

    for Phil Young and my father Robert Hedge Coke;
    for Whitman and Hughes

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.

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.

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
broke my long-held footing sure, as any child might do.

As she pushed herself away, forced me to remove myself,
as I cried this country, my song grew roses in each tear’s fall.

My blood-veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries
circled canyons, while she made herself maiden fine.

But here I am, here I am, here I remain high on each and every peak,
carefully rumbling her great underbelly, prepared to pour forth singing—

and sing again I will, as I have always done.
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.

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,
day and night, call her to sing along, call her to mature, to envision—
then, she will quake herself over. My song will make it so.

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.
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.

The northern lights.       I wouldn’t have noticed them
   if the deer hadn’t told me
   a doe         her coat of pearls        her glowing hoofs
                     proud and inquisitive
                     eager for my appraisal
and I went out into the night with electrical steps
   but with my head held also proud
                    to share the animal’s fear
                    and see what I had seen before
   a sky flaring and spectral
                     greenish waves and ribbons
and the snow       under strange light          tossing in the pasture
   like a storming ocean caught
                     by a flaring beacon.
   The deer stands away from me        not far
                     there among bare black apple trees
                     a presence I no longer see.
   We are proud to be afraid
                     proud to share
the silent magnetic storm that destroys the stars
                      and flickers around our heads
   like the saints’ cold spiritual agonies
                      of old.
I remember        but without the sense          other light-storms
   cold memories discursive and philosophical
                     in my mind’s burden
   and the deer remembers nothing.
We move our feet        crunching bitter snow         while the storm
   crashes like god-wars down the east
                      we shake the sparks from our eyes
   we quiver inside our shocked fur
                      we search for each other
   in the apple thicket—
                       a glimpse, an acknowledgment
   it is enough and never enough—
we toss our heads       and say good night
   moving away on bitter bitter snow.

The senseless leaf in the fevered hand
Grows hot, near blood-heat, but never grows
Green. Weeks ago the dove’s last cooing strain
Settled silent in the nest to brood slow
Absence from song. The dropped leaf cools
On the uncut grass, supple still, still green,
Twining still these fingers as they listless pull
The tangle straight until the tangle tightens
And the hand is caught, another fallen leaf.
The poetry of the earth never ceases
Ceasing — one blade of grass denies belief
Until its mere thread bears the grasshopper’s
Whole weight, and the black cricket sings unseen,
Desire living in a hole beneath the tangle’s green.

Dan Beachy-Quick, untitled sonnet in “Romanticisms” from gentlessness. Originally published (as “The Cricket and the Grasshopper”) in Poetry (February 2013). Copyright © 2013, 2015 by Dan Beachy- Quick. Used with the permission of Tupelo Press, tupelopress.org.

By the time I recalled that it is also
terrifying, we had gone too far into
the charmed woods to return. It was then

the beautiful animal appeared in our path:
ribs jutting, moon-fed eyes moving
from me to you and back. If we show

none of the fear, it may tire of waiting
for the triggering flight, it may ask only
to lie between us and sleep, fur warm

on our skin, breath sweet on our necks
as it dreams of slaughter, as we dream
alternately of feeding and taming it

and of being the first to run. The woods
close tight around us, lying nested here
like spoons in a drawer of knives, to see

who wakes first, and from which dream.

We all have the same little bones in our foot
twenty-six with funny names like navicular.
Together they build something strong—
our foot arch a pyramid holding us up.
The bones don’t get casts when they break.
We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for support.
(Other things like sorrow work that way, too—
find healing in the leaning, the closeness.)
Our feet have one quarter of all the bones in our body.
Maybe we should give more honor to feet
and to all those tiny but blessed cogs in the world—
communities, the forgotten architecture of friendship.

      For my grandmother

I am water, only because you are the ocean.

We are here, only
because old leaves have been falling.

A mulching of memories folding
into buried hands.

The cliffs we learn to edge.
The tree trunk hollowed, humming.

I am a tongue, only because
you are the body planting stories with thumb.

Soil crumbs cling to your knees.
Small stacks of empty clay pots dreaming.

I am an air plant suspended, only
because you are the trunk I cling to.

I am the milky fish eye, only
because it’s your favorite.

Even the sound you make
when your lips kiss the opelu
socket is a mo‘olelo.

A slipper is lost in the yard.
A haku lei is chilling in the icebox.

I am a cup for feathers, only
because you want to fill the hours.

I am a turning wrist, only
because you left the hose on.

Heliconias are singing underwater.
Beetles are floating across the yard.