July /August 2015
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founded in 1912 by harriet monroe July / August 2015 FOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE volume ccvi • number 4 CONTENTS July / August 2015 POEMS amy newman 311 Howl paul batchelor 319 The Discoverer’s Man anthony madrid 329 Lear’s Shadow Limericks Illustrations by Mark Fletcher derek beaulieu 339 KERN 1 KERN 2 PETHETIC LITTLE THING tavi gevinson 343 Introduction emily carney 347 The Feeding bag lady, boxed Illustration by Esme Blegvad naomi morris 351 Fuck Stuck Illustration by Rachel Louise Hodgson tyler ford 352 Too Much kendra yee 353 Doubt Hugs Me britney franco 355 Inward Illustration by Minna Gilligan jenny zhang 356 How It Feels tova benjamin 369 Kaparos Illustration by Kendra Yee kirby knowlton 372 stop bath catchlight viewfinder Illustration by Allegra Lockstadt alex-quan pham 377 When I Spoke Illustration by Ana Hinojosa nova 382 emotions /feelings marla miniano 385 Sea Salt Illustration by Caitlin Hazell lily cao 387 Memento Illustration by Leanna Wright RUTH LILLY POETRY PRIZE PORTFOLIO 391 No Doctrines alice notley 395 The Anthology This Fire The Elements Are Loyal Stalker My Sea Iconography License From My Forehead To a New Sex THE VIEW FROM HERE anders nilsen 409 Poetry Is Useless ai weiwei 412 On Poetry sally timms 414 Poetry Out Loud rhymefest 417 My Life Is a Poem momus 420 Written in Rock Candy COMMENT john wilkinson 427 Drift and Pop: On Writing about W.S. Graham contributors 434 Editor don share Art Director fred sasaki Managing Editor sarah dodson Assistant Editor lindsay garbutt Editorial Assistant holly amos Consulting Editor christina pugh Design alexander knowlton cover art by julie murphy “Undiscovered Creature Choreography #11,” 2015 POETRYMAGAZINE.ORG a publication of the POETRY FOUNDATION printed by cadmus professional communications, us Poetry • July / August 2015 • Volume 206 • Number 4 Poetry (issn: 0032-2032) is published monthly, except bimonthly July / August, by the Poetry Foundation. Address editorial correspondence to 61 W. Superior St., Chicago, IL 60654. Individual subscription rates: $35.00 per year domestic; $47.00 per year foreign. Library / institutional subscription rates: $38.00 per year domestic; $50.00 per year foreign. Single copies $3.75, plus $1.75 postage, for current issue; $4.25, plus $1.75 postage, for back issues. Address new subscriptions, renewals, and related correspondence to Poetry, PO Box 421141, Palm Coast, FL 32142-1141 or call 800.327.6976. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL, and additional mailing o∞ces. postmaster: Send address changes to Poetry, PO Box 421141, Palm Coast, FL 32142-1141. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2015 by the Poetry Foundation. Double issues cover two months but bear only one number. Volumes that include double issues comprise numbers 1 through 5. Please visit poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/submissions for submission guidelines and to access the magazine’s online submission system. Available in braille from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Available on microfilm and microfiche through National Archive Publishing Company, Ann Arbor, MI. Digital archive available at JSTOR.org. Distributed to bookstores by Ingram Periodicals, Media Solutions, Ubiquity Distributors, and Central Books in the UK. POEMS amy newman Howl For Toni Keller I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by wedding planners, dieting, in shapewear, dragging themselves in cute outfits through the freezer section for the semifreddo bender, blessed innovative cloister girl pin-ups burning to know the rabbi of electricity in poverty, obedience, in the dream stick of opium and the green Wi-Fi fuse, who marveling and cramping and wired and allergic lock themselves out of their apartments in the trenchant imperfect delight of early day, who bared their minds to bar friends by the train in twilight and saw tiny figures like fireflies splendoring apartments Botoxed flat like canvas, who passed through universities with sensual indulgence addicts devoted to the indefinite space of maps and science labs while the committees shifted paperwork, who left the university from a numbing homesickness for the rez and the old alcoholic lover family father temper crack methamphet- amine birdsong, who galvanized in excitable need and microdermabrasioned took the lonely exit ramp on the nature, constitution, and forces of matter, who failed their enzyme multiplied immunoassay technique not once but more than once because some guy came into her room talking about publishing, hash and vintage cardigans, drunk to the abdominals looking for speed crank coke & codeine, who took Molly and mint and Motrin and methaqualone naked in the unhappy light of Saved by the Bell on the hotel flat screen, with spring of 1924 beautiful imaginary wheat stalk wanderlust nylons travelhope, not allowed to explore alleys or ride the rails or hitchhike either because of the magnetic pink and with all the years of training spread out boundless the rules and safety tiresome before them, Paradise papery Wisconsin-Madison visionary blue green cross- hatched for elevation maps baked wild open unspoiled lands of AMY NEWMAN 311 Lake Kivu & Congo, ardent delirious combustible desire to go astray rove stir evolve princesslike, who busted out against parents’ wishes clattered cross-county in a Model T with another girl to see the iron pyrite fool’s gold The West and the finally wide open-legged Pacific zones, who wrote letters anyway to old boyfriends before setting out on the breathless orange high desert confusion with gold carrying canvas buckets for the extra water for the car, who talked all night in the tourist camps and were up with the sun and snappish with hunger, the navigators in terror of the steep mountain road refreshing the radiator with water inhaling the rust steam fragrance of open road red oxygen metal and a lunar happiness, whistlingsinging bowwowing mooing at the glamorous elations of altitude and the hayburner no handcuff no hush money open whangdoodle fiery western sky deposits of gold and silver lost stories gun-toting candlemaking dance hall prostitute stowaway freedoms not to mention ball bang bareback gamahuche cowboy, who listened while the mechanic romanced over velocity and atone- ment die-stampings on sheet steel and drop forgings while the diner waitress ground out pies and pies and pies, wandering nylons suffering while the word of engagements and new babies began its bone descent by mother’s phrasing and martini lunch date with the old school of the hot comb and the inner ear, who broke up with boyfriends and walked tap heels on streets for dentist’s appointment a doctor’s appointment an interview a newspaper grocery dinner tomato, who found the sublet which for what she was making she could afford but the roommate had trouble with rent alarm clock rooster cock boyfriend, who saw her clothing was available in size 00 so it was time to disap- pear entirely, who took a job selling print invitations to promoters where the desk was dusty with coke Aunt Mary Aunt Nora Aunt Hazel and also dust, 312 POETRY who took the cab to the Upper West Side to deliver the express mail package of rocks and rocks of powder for the boss in his high- ceilinged mirrored walls, comatose blonde sylph and suits of bright licorice acrylic fibers, who watched the mistress arrayed in pelts panther drunk and ringed with minerals achieving her highest human form, who leaving in the elevator sad at her scuffed boots of the underclass felt the mirror reflection of her mother repeating little lamb who made thee dost thou know, who considered the elevator’s speculum dilating her cataract radio- scope telescope manifestation, who listened to the TODAY show while she Kindled exasperated on an exercise bike in the new pink Manhattan Island 22.7 square miles of dawn, who carried her infant in a baby sling she designed herself out of thrift store fabrics, who wept because caesarean was a term for last resort, having felt cheated by the dictionary of the pain of real meaning and deliver- ance of child into atmosphere, who anyway flamed ardent and breathless in illuminated swinging as she sang lulling smooth neurons already waddling inside the babygirl’s palimpsest brain, who watched the girl with highlights blow her boyfriend and then blew her boyfriend and then copulated analytically with a strang- er waiter painter truck driver in a sorcery of forgetfulness, who philosophized in the meadow flowers on her back to the sound of black flies stirring the leaves and let herself be touched by the rude one so she could see the show without paying and lost that beautiful little gold earring she’d never see the likes of it again, who contemplated such disappointments again for the tenth time the twentieth thirtieth time the earrings whooshing the Cleopatra shouldered sighs the exchange while everywhere boys are having sex and playing basketball afterward and laughing, who is up nights and days peeing restlessly endlessly with noth- ing but cranberry cranberry cranberry eucharist for the body’s AMY NEWMAN 313 unyielding sciences and the UTI of the Punishing Boy God who decided who wins, who felt the embryo always crunching futures with crushing weight of the fixed decree by which the laws of the universe are pre- scribed the bitch of necessity the bitch of chance and the DNA overlord, who drove her two babies wild into the lake to what she imagined was whiteness, who from curiosity and an old curse tried the spinning wheel in the coldest room of the castle and spilled drops of blood on