“Old Verses Come to Mind”
Look, I’m taken by the story of a rose
erased by snow (a living sign
your cigarette’s burning tip).
Look, the umbrellas on the Spanish Steps
climb out of sight in the dark.
If our steps sink deep
we’ll find peace in the kingdom
where no one’s waiting for us.
–Leonardo Sinisgalli (trans. by Ruth Ferrarelli)
found in I Saw the Muses
“To the One Who is Reading Me”
You are invulnerable. Didn’t they deliver
(those forces that control your destiny)
the certainty of dust? Couldn’t it be
your irreversible time is that river
in whose bright mirror Heraclitus read
his brevity? A marble slab is saved
for you, one you won’t read, already graved
with city, epitaph, dates of the dead.
And other men are also dreams of time,
not hardened bronze, purified gold. They’re dust
like you; the universe is Proteus.
Shadow, you’ll travel to what waits ahead,
the fatal shadow waiting at the rim.
Know this: in some way you’re already dead
–Jorge Luis Borges
(translated by Tony Barnstone)
“Music Box”
Music of Japan. Parsimoniously
from the water clock the drops unfold
in lazy honey or ethereal gold
that over time reiterates a weave
eternal, fragile, enigmatic, bright.
I fear that every one will be the last.
They are a yesterday come from the past.
But from what shrine, from what mountain’s slight
garden, what vigils by an unknown sea,
and from what modest melancholy, from
what lost and rediscovered afternoon
do they arrive at their far future: me?
Who knows? No matter. When I hear it play
I am. I want to be. I bleed away.
–Jorge Luis Borges
(translated by Tony Barnstone)
“I looked at the sky and the earth and straight ahead
and since then I’ve been writing a long letter to the dead
on a typewriter that doesn’t have a ribbon, only a horizon line
so the words beat in vain and nothing stays.”
–Tomas Tranströmer
from “Baltics”
“Bunk Richardson”
Lynching photograph: February 11, 1906: Gadsden, Alabama
The rope grips the iron
where the iron bites into its hold.
A noose of rust, dried blood.
The dew has frozen in its twines,
thicker near the river,
from which it’s climbed
weaker and weaker, all night long.
–Jake Adam York
found in Blackbird, Fall 2004
“Legba Says”
Father, Mother, me,
says One word hers, one his,
all hours in me. Legba says
Quiet you can hear them
talking, conversation braiding
like swampland streams.
Says Listen says Listen you can
hear them arguing me,
a friction that helps him whisper.
Legba says his mother sounds
(listen close) a tug-of-war,
grandmama, grandpapa pulling word
on word, each a strained strand
of rope, the braid pulling at
itself. Says father’s two-voice chorus
baritones, sopranos out too wide
to ever pass by. Says Listen
when he talks we can hear
his parents dancing, two chords
twining in a larynx, a spiral
twisting waltz of how-you-say?
Look, look down my mouth.
One day Says will walk down
the red clay run of my tongue
into darker midnight where it
crosses winds, Mama, Papa
tune the flesh, my own orishes.
One day Says will walk
the red clay run of my tongue
into upper wind, a man whose twin
depends from his soles all day long,
whose winds say Listen
then braid themselves
into everything.
–Jake Adam York
found in Octopus #1
“Two Children Threatened by a Nightingale”
Attentive as one is to a whisper, the children wade through standing water, uncertain of its depth or source. They find and salvage a sogged train schedule. For their short lives the depot has been boarded shut. One has a flair for death and can fashion a noose from corn silk. One keeps an archive of diaries. One is the movie extra a camera seeks out, lingers on. One reads the subtitles aloud before the characters speak. One imagines sleep to be a furnished room. One imagines rain on the rolled hay, the must of empty stables, the tin-edge of blood on the tongue. By schema and classifications, they are a sister and a brother. Waylaid between this puddle and the next, one creates a theory of the spectral. One fingers through a cache of candies. One is plump and ready for the oven. One could not even flavor a stock pot. One is the overlooked subject. One is a language of mishearings. They cling to the hitherto unknown. When they dissect the bird they find nothing of the song.
—Eric Pankey
found in Bat City Review
“Sober Then Drunk Again”
On the lightning-struck pin oak,
On the swayed spine of the Blue Ridge,
a little gold leaf.
Once I drank with a vengeance.
Now I drink in surrender.
The thaw cannot keep me from wintering in.
I prepare for death when I should prepare
For tomorrow and the day after
and the day after that.
A clinker of grief where once hung my heart.
Memory—moon-drawn, tidal.
The moon’s celadon glaze dulls in the morning’s cold kiln.
–Eric Pankey
from The Cincinnati Review
“Terminal Nostalgia”
The music of my youth was much better
Than the music of yours. So was the weather.
Before Columbus came, eagle feathers
Detached themselves for us. So did the weather.
During war, the country fought together
Against all evil. So did the weather.
The cattle were happy to be leather
And mades shoes that fit. So did the weather.
Before Columbus came, eagle feathers
Were larger than eagles. So was the weather.
Every ball game was a double-header.
Mickey Mantle was sober. So was the weather.
Before Adam and Eve, an Irish Setter
Played fetch with God. So did the weather.
Before Columbus came, eagle feathers
Married Indians. So did the weather.
Indians were neither loaners nor debtors.
Salmon was our money. So was the weather.
Back then people wrote gorgeous letters
And read more poetry. So did the weather.
On all issues there was only one dissenter,
But we loved him, too. So did the weather.
We all apprenticed to wise old mentors
And meditated for days. So did the weather.
We were guitar-players and inventors
Of minor chords and antibiotics. So was the weather.
Every person lived near the city center
And had the same income. So did the weather.
Befre Columbus, eagle feathers
Lived in the moment. So did the weather.
–Sherman Alexie
“The Rose Has Teeth”
I was trying to play the twelve-bar blues with two bars.
I was trying to fill the room with a shocked and awkward color.
I was trying to limber your shuffle, the muscle wired to muscle.
I wanted to be a lucid hammer. I was trying to play
like the first mechanic asked to repair the first automobile.
Once, Piano, every man-made song could fit in your mouth.
But I was trying to play Burial’s “Ghost Hardware.”
I was trying to play “Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan”
without the artificial bells and smoke. I was trying to play
the sound of applause by trying to play the sound of rain.
I was trying to mimic the stain on a bed, the sound
of a woman’s soft, contracting bellow, the answer to who I am.
Before I trust the god who makes me rot, I trust you, Piano.
Something deathless fills your wood. Because I wanted to be
invisible, I was trying to play like a woman blacker
than an unpaid light bill, like a white boy lost in the snow.
I wanted to be a ghost because the skull is just a few holes
covered in meat. The skin has no teeth. I was trying to play
the sound of a shattered window. I was trying to play what I overheard;
the old questions, the hunger, the rattle of spines. The body
that only loves what it can touch always turns to dust.
What would a mother feel if her child sang “Sometimes I Feel
Like a Motherless Child” too beautifully? A hole has no teeth.
A bird has no teeth. But you got teeth, Piano. You make me high.
You make me dance as only a sail can dance its ragged assailable
dance. You make me believe there is good in me.
I was trying to play “California Dreaming” with Jose Feliciano’s
warble. I was trying to play it the way George Benson played it
on the guitar his daddy made him at the end of the war. My lady,
she dreams of Chicago. I was trying to play “Mouhamadou Bamba”
like a band of Africans named after a tree. A tree has no teeth.
A horn has no teeth. Don’t chew, Piano. Don’t chew, sing to me
you fine-ass lounging harp. You fancy engine doing other people’s
work. I was trying to play the sound of an empty house
because that’s how I get by when the darkness in my body
starts to bleed. I was trying to play “Autumn Leaves”
because that’s what my lady’s falling dress sounds like to me.
Before you, Piano, I was just a rap of knuckles on the sill. I am filled
with the sound of her breathing and only you can bring it out of me.
—Terrance Hayes
found in Tin House
