10 poems // November 10
whatever enough is, it hasn't arrived
1 //
Redshift // by Tadeusz Dąbrowski
The universe keeps expanding and we’re further and further
apart, it costs more and more for us to travel
by means of urban transport and to talk
on the phone. Our bodies keep expanding in their
needs, monotonous as the motion of planets and blood.
Sometimes, when I don’t see you for ages, it feels like
it’s me that’s the universe, and you are everything
it has not yet reached.
2 //
from Vigil // by Jenny Johnson
I am a woman who sometimes forgets that she is a woman.
So I always slip my shoes off and knock, at least three times
before crossing a threshold, before presuming I’m welcome here.
Out the window of a speeding car, a man yells, Dyke. And
a silence bristles between us,
Hot ash about to blow across a paper city.
If you love someone, you must be the guardian of their solitude
Not that she ever needed me to guide her. Her biceps are firm
when she folds me over in the dark.
3 //
from Song // by Charif Shanahan
What about the lives
I might have lived?
As who? And who
will be accountable
for this regret I see
no way to avoid? A core,
or a husk, I need to learn
not how to speak, but from where.
Do you understand? I say
name, but I mean a conduit
from me to me, I mean a net,
I mean an awning of stars.
4 //
from Mythistorema // by Giorgos Seferis
I am sorry for having let a broad river pass through my
fingers
without drinking a single drop.
Now I’m sinking into the stone.
A small pine-tree in the red soil
is all the company I have.
Whatever I loved vanished with the houses
that were new last summer
and collapsed in the autumn wind.
5 //
Part of Me Wanting Everything To Live // by Linda Gregg
This New England kind of love reminds me
of the potted chrysanthemum my husband
gave me. I cared for it faithfully,
turning the pot a quarter turn each day
as it sat by the window. Until the blossoms
hung with broken necks on the dry stems.
Cut off the dead parts and watched
green leaves begin, new buds open.
Thinking the chrysanthemum would not die
unless I forced it to. The new flowers
were smaller and smaller, resembling
little eyes awake and alone in the dark.
I was offended by the lessening,
by the heap renewal. By a going on
that gradually left the important behind.
But now it’s different. I want the large
and near, and endings more final. If it must
be winter, let it be absolutely winter.
6 //
More // by Alex Dimitrov
How again after months there is awe.
The most personal moment of the day
appears unannounced. People wear leather.
People refuse to die. There are strangers
who look like they could know your name.
And the smell of a bar on a cold night,
or the sound of traffic as it follows you home.
Sirens. Parties. How balconies hold us.
Whatever enough is, it hasn’t arrived.
And on some dead afternoon
when you’ll likely forget this,
as you browse through the vintage
again and again—there it is,
what everyone’s given up
just to stay here. Jeweled hairpins,
scratched records, their fast youth.
Everything they’ve given up
to stay here and find more.
7 //
Before We Go, I Want To Publicly Acknowledge // by Matthew Olzmann
that I love every person in this room. I mean it.
We’ve traveled from all over to be here, and I love
each of you, all of you, every last one of you, except
Harold, but the rest of you I love fervently
and without limitation. It’s important that you believe
this is a boundless love, rhapsodic, without timidity
or hesitation, because everyone is deserving
of compassion, absolutely everyone, just
not Harold, but for the rest of you, this affection
is perfect, unconditional and free. Not “unconditional”
with air quotes around it, not unconditional
like a gatekeeper in the garden saying, Look
at the fruit but do not shovel it into thy weird little face,
saying, Love me and none other, saying, The first born,
the locust, the welt of grief I’ve pressed upon your back;
it is a truly unstoppable wave of tenderness
that doesn’t traffic in punishment or retribution.
8 //
from Reasons to Survive November // by Tony Hoagland
I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
in a room by myself
with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
like a disconnected phone.
But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,
and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over
and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.
9 //
A Game of Hot Potato Starring My Heart as the Potato // by Amy Saul-Zerby
Sometimes all I want is to be a person
who takes comfort in hot baths
sometimes all I want is to be a person
who takes comfort in anything
sometimes all I want is to be a person
who takes
I am so tired of having myself
handed back to me
as if I want it.
10 //
The Straightforward Mermaid // by Matthea Harvey
The straightforward mermaid starts every sentence with “Look . . . ” This comes from being raised in a sea full of hooks. She wants to get points 1, 2, and 3 across, doesn’t want to disappear like a river into the ocean. When she’s feeling despairing, she goes to eddies at the mouth of the river and tries to comb the water apart with her fingers. The straightforward mermaid has already said to five sailors, “Look, I don’t think this is going to work,” before sinking like a sullen stone. She’s supposed to teach Rock Impersonation to the younger mermaids, but every beach field trip devolves into them trying to find shells to match their tail scales. They really love braiding. “Look,” says the straightforward mermaid. “Your high ponytails make you look like fountains, not rocks.” Sometimes she feels like a third gender—preferring primary colors to pastels, the radio to singing. At least she’s all mermaid: never gets tired of swimming, hates the thought of socks.