10 poems // August 10

10 days late / come or go but don’t just stand there in the doorway

1 //

If You Find That Living Is a Little Bit Sad by Wendy Xu

Someone's face framed by computer screen
is not the same as someone
in a room. Make choices, then watch
stuff happen. Say yes I agree to take up the dark
pail of my life before this one and empty
its guts into the river. The river thanks me
and shines harder. Overhead these indomitable
stars. This row of stern white houses
where I thought my friend lived, where
even now young people still gather
around a fire. The fire feels like being removed
from my own face. My own face turns toward
the shimmering water where it burns but
does not burn away.

2//

Ars Poetica by Camonghne Felix

Because I know
Now: how it feels
To sip that small space
Between becoming
And being found.

3//

In my next life let me be a tomato by Natasha Rao

lusting and unafraid. In this bipedal incarnation
I have always been scared of my own ripening,
mother standing outside the fitting room door.
I only become bright after Bloody Mary’s, only whole
in New Jersey summers where beefsteaks, like baubles,
sag in the yard, where we pass down heirlooms
in thin paper envelopes and I tend barefoot to a garden
that snakes with desire, unashamed to coil and spread.
Cherry Falls, Brandywine, Sweet Aperitif, I kneel
with a spool, staking and tying, checking each morning
after last night’s thunderstorm only to find more
sprawl, the tomatoes have no fear of wind and water,
they gain power from the lightning, while I, in this version
of life, retreat in bed to wither. In this life, rabbits
are afraid of my clumsy gait. In the next, let them come
willingly to nibble my lowest limbs, my outstretched
arm always offering something sweet. I want to return
from reincarnation’s spin covered in dirt and
buds. I want to be unabased, audacious, to gobble
space, to blush deeper each day in the sun, knowing
I’ll end up in an eager mouth. An overly ripe tomato
will begin sprouting, so excited it is for more life,
so intent to be part of this world, trellising wildly.
For every time in this life I have thought of dying, let me
yield that much fruit in my next, skeleton drooping
under the weight of my own vivacity as I spread to take
more of this air, this fencepost, this forgiving light.

4//

Silence by Andrea Cohen

Not an absence
of blackbirds

singing, but
an abundance

of blackbirds
listening.

5//

I Do Not Fear Death, Yet Go On Living by Mandy Kahn

I do not fear death, yet go on living.
I know choirs wait for me to finish,
wait to paint this clear air with their singing,
wait in gauzy figures, just past seeing.
I know what will greet me is more vibrant
than a field of poppies in the morning
widening their petals for the daylight.
I know what is waiting, past my seeing.
Know its luster. Still, I go on living,
chopping, boiling, eating, scrubbing, sweeping,
writing sonnets seen by just my ceiling,
stacking up old bills—paying, not paying,
then a bath, a walk, and it is evening.
Choirs wait to stir the air with feeling.
Angels wait to steer me towards a drawbridge
made of lighted crystal. I keep living.

6 //

Seeing You For the Last Time by Liza Kotlar

you'd cut your hair
you opened the door
you stood there
looking like
some sort of
boy; one eye
open wider
than the other
& the birds pass
through me
the names
of the birds
pass through

7 //

Dante in Sardinia by Aria Aber

The classics lie to you: there is no romance
to death. I wake up, brush my teeth, and find out
that my friend has hung himself in a public park.
More brandy, please!, the living around me shout, then put
their sunglasses on. He adored this island, the red house
where the pool was covered in wasps and we drank wine
for lunch. We played chess with half our bodies in water
until we got headaches from the sun. He let me win
and only laughed when I recited Dante to him:
Nature follows––as she takes her course–––
the Divine Intellect and the Divine Art...
Nature is not like art, he said, because it's functional
before it is beautiful. The black, Volcanic hills
could not sway him. Neither could the gecko
falling asleep on his feet every afternoon. He is ash
in a small jar now, or that is what science says.
Here, the river has dried out, the tomato vines
fouled. Every day the world inches closer
to ruin and still I am astonished that bones and flesh
contain the spirit, and that it can burn.
Volcanic sediment and crushed seashells
have turned the sand a tangy red, lifetimes of everything
contaminating each other. And then emptying the jar
into the clear, green water. Darling, I say to the sea,
a feeling of inadequacy rushing through me––
above us are Dante's inscrutable stars, mocking me
for my terribly human need for connection. And below
is the coast, where the waves are just waves, taking one thing
and returning another: bottle caps, warm seagrass.

8 //

from Heat by Denis Johnson

August,
              you're just an erotic hallucination,
just so much feverishly produced kazoo music,
are you serious?—this large oven impersonating night,
this exhaustion mutilated to resemble passion,
the bogus moon of tenderness and magic
you hold out to each prisoner like a cup of light?

9//

Flowers by Cynthia Zarin

This morning I was walking upstairs
from the kitchen, carrying your
beautiful flowers, the flowers you
brought me last night, calla lilies
and something else, I am not
sure what to call them, white flowers,
of course you had no way of knowing
it has been years since I bought
white flowers—but now you have
and here they are again. I was carrying
your flowers and a coffee cup
and a soft yellow handbag and a book
of poems by a Chinese poet, in
which I had just read the words “come
or go but don’t just stand there
in the doorway,” as usual I was
carrying too many things, you
would have laughed if you saw me.
It seemed especially important
not to spill the coffee as I usually
do, as I turned up the stairs,
inside the whorl of the house as if
I were walking up inside the lilies.
I do not know how to hold all
the beauty and sorrow of my life.

10 //

Bankruptcy by Raymond Carver

Twenty-eight, hairy belly hanging out
of my undershirt (exempt)
I lie here on my side
on the couch (exempt)
and listen to the strange sound
of my wife's pleasant voice (also exempt).

We are new arrivals
to these small pleasures.
Forgive me (I pray the Court)
that we have been improvident.
Today, my heart, like the front door,
stands open for the first time in months.