10 poems // July 10

I'm / no one's horse

1 //

from Evening by Jeremy Radin

Where would I like to be in five
years, someone asks—& what
can I tell them? Surrendering
with grace to the evening, with
as much grace as I can muster
to the circumstance of darkness,
which is only something else
that does not stay.

2//

from Boyfriend Mountain by Tyler Brewington

Other people are so easy to fail at
The valve breaks & then it’s just you
Emoting relentlessly
Animal noises in your guts
Either you mind the blackberries
staining the porcelain sink
or you are back there in the field with me
rubbing your fingers into the stings
My God, what a world we have come into
You can chase the wrong thing
as long as you want

3//

THE NECESSITY OF APPEARING IN YOUR OWN FACE by Richard Brautigan

There are days when that is the last place
in the world that you want to be but you
have to be there, like a movie, because it
features you

4//

Under Taurus by Louise Glück

We were on the pier, you desiring
that I see the Pleiades. I could see
everything but what you wished.

Now I will follow. There is not a single cloud; the stars
appear, even the invisible sister. Show me where to look,
as though they will stay where they are.

Instruct me in the dark.

5//

Short Poem of Gratitude For the Anomaly Intersections Around NYC Whose Often Overlooked Crosswalk Signs Are Permanently Fixed on the Walk Icon and Never Ever Show the Don't Walk Icon by Basie Allen

You always are
The poem I am trying to write
Your encouragement
Goes a long way
Thank you

6 //

History of Pleasure by Richie Hoffmann

I walked by myself to the market
past ruins with broken
bodies of stone, where even
a fragment of a man could undo me.
I bought herbs wrapped in paper.
Light shone through the glass of our apartment.
You had been showering,
the smell of mint invaded the room, your hair was wet.

7 //

Really Raining by Natalie Shapero

Every time I’ve seen the moon, I’ve thought it was the Earth and I’m
somewhere else gazing at it, gauging whether I’ll make it 
back someday. Every time I’ve seen the sun, I’ve thought it was the Earth-moon 
burning and said goodbye. I’ve always made a point, every time 
I’ve seen rain, of announcing IT’S REALLY RAINING, even if it’s just 
a spattering here, a spattering there. WOW, IT’S COMING DOWN. Who am I, 
I’ve said, to say what it’s like in the spray for somebody else, 
and by SOMEBODY ELSE I mean of course that bug, smacked over 
by an eighth-inch of water, splayed and aeriform. When you’re slight 
enough to be ended by a single drop, a single drop’s a storm.

8 //

Since When Shall Speak Of It No More by Carl Phillips

––Clouds like the manes of stallions, the mane alive still
on the stallion’s ghost-body. As if the body had died, I mean,
and the mane forgotten to. Or been weirdly stranded. I’m
no one’s horse. I’m not what waves like a bit of ocean down
and to either side of its brindled neck. I’m not a thing I know.

9//

I Remember the Carrots by Ada Limón

I haven’t given up on trying to live a good life,
a really good one even, sitting in the kitchen
in Kentucky, imagining how agreeable I’ll be—
the advance of fulfillment, and of desire—
all these needs met, then unmet again.
When I was a kid, I was excited about carrots,
their spidery neon tops in the garden’s plot.
And so I ripped them all out. I broke the new roots
and carried them, like a prize, to my father
who scolded me, rightly, for killing his whole crop.
I loved them: my own bright dead things.
I’m thirty-five and remember all that I’ve done wrong.
Yesterday I was nice, but in truth I resented
the contentment of the field. Why must we practice
this surrender? What I mean is: there are days
I still want to kill the carrots because I can.

10 //

from Slow Dance by Matthew Dickman

I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.