July /August 2014
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founded in 1912 by harriet monroe July / August 2014 FOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE volume cciv • number 4 CONTENTS July / August 2014 POEMS dean young 287 Romanticism 101 Belief in Magic philip fried 290 Squaring the Circle d.a. powell 292 Tonight’s Quarry. traci brimhall 293 Better to Marry Than to Burn devin johnston 294 Telephone Scavenger Orpingtons rosanna warren 298 A Way Graffiti amanda calderon 300 Werewolf on the Moon For Tourists & Armies Nationalist Opera thomas sayers ellis 307 Vernacular Owl rickey laurentiis 314 Writing an Elegy Study in Black Black Gentleman I Saw I Dreamt Two Men timothy donnelly 320 Hymn to Life alice fulton 332 Triptych for Topological Heart THE day LOU REED SET ME FREE tony fitzpatrick 337 Walk on the Wild Side Looking for Soul Food Lady Eyebrows Kid Apollo Kid Hustle Candy Came, from Out on the Island Outro LOCAL COLORS elaine equi 347 Friendly Stripes Still Life #1 Monolith Wolves of the Sacred Heart It Says What We All Think Cats, Now and Forever Sixth Ave. Green with Blue Corner COMMENT dorothea lasky 357 What Is Color in Poetry, or Is It the Wild Wind in the Space of the Word william logan 378 Two Gents contributors 387 Editor don share Art Director fred sasaki Managing Editor valerie jean johnson Assistant Editor lindsay garbutt Editorial Assistant holly amos Consulting Editor christina pugh Design alexander knowlton cover art by tony fitzpatrick “The Atomic Oriole,” 2014 POETRYMAGAZINE.ORG a publication of the POETRY FOUNDATION printed by cadmus professional communications, us Poetry • July / August 2014 • Volume 204 • 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 421141, Palm Coast, FL 32142-1141 or call 800.327.6976. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL, and additional mailing offices. postmaster: Send address changes to Poetry, po Box 421141, Palm Coast, FL 32142-1141. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2014 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, Ubiquity Distributors, and Central Books in the uk. POEMS dean young Romanticism 101 Then I realized I hadn’t secured the boat. Then I realized my friend had lied to me. Then I realized my dog was gone no matter how much I called in the rain. All was change. Then I realized I was surrounded by aliens disguised as orthodontists having a convention at the hotel breakfast bar. Then I could see into the life of things, that systems seek only to reproduce the conditions of their own reproduction. If I had to pick between shadows and essences, I’d pick shadows. They’re better dancers. They always sing their telegrams. Their old gods do not die. Then I realized the very futility was salvation in this greeny entanglement of breaths. Yeah, as if. Then I realized even when you catch the mechanism, the trick still works. Then I came to in Texas and realized rockabilly would never go away. Then I realized I’d been drugged. We were all chasing nothing which left no choice but to intensify the chase. I came to handcuffed and gagged. I came to intubated and packed in some kind of foam. This too is how ash moves through water. And all this time the side doors unlocked. Then I realized repetition could be an ending. Then I realized repetition could be an ending. DEAN young 287 Belief in Magic How could I not? Have seen a man walk up to a piano and both survive. Have turned the exterminator away. Seen lipstick on a wine glass not shatter the wine. Seen rainbows in puddles. Been recognized by stray dogs. I believe reality is approximately 65% if. All rivers are full of sky. Waterfalls are in the mind. We all come from slime. Even alpacas. I believe we’re surrounded by crystals. Not just Alexander Vvedensky. Maybe dysentery, maybe a guard’s bullet did him in. Nonetheless. Nevertheless I believe there are many kingdoms left. The Declaration of Independence was written with a feather. A single gem has throbbed in my chest my whole life even though even though this is my second heart. Because the first failed, such was its opportunity. Was cut out in pieces and incinerated. I asked. And so was denied the chance to regard my own heart in a jar. Strange tangled imp. Wee sleekit in red brambles. You know what it feels like to hold a burning piece of paper, maybe even trying to read it as the flames get close to your fingers until all you’re holding is a curl of ash by its white ear tip 288 POETRY yet the words still hover in the air? That’s how I feel now. DEAN young 289 philip fried Squaring the Circle It’s a little-known fact that God’s headgear — A magician’s collapsible silk top hat, When viewed from Earth, from the bottom up — Is, sub specie aeternitatis, A pluperfect halo, both circle and square, And a premonition of this truth Spurred on an ancient philosopher, Anaxagoras, to make numerous vain Attempts to approximate the circle Of his concerns with the square of the cell He was jailed in for impiety. Doomed calculations which God acknowledged By doffing then pancaking his topper. He was still bareheaded millennia later, When he learned of von Lindemann’s proof that pi Is not the root of a polynomial With rational coefficients, hence Squaring the circle’s impossible. God un-collapsed, re-donned his hat! But — it was 1882, Progress was a juggernaut And the public had no patience for “proof.” From below, God’s gesture looked like a signal For all hat- and cap-wearing men, Proper in their headgear, for nations, Well-stocked with helmets for delicate brainwork, To take up “the compass and straightedge” And prepare for a singular all-out attack 290 POETRY On this seductive conundrum, so men Enlisted en masse in Geometry’s army, Tossing up and away all hats Of cloth, opaque haloes, hurray! PHILIP FRIED 291 d.a. powell Tonight’s Quarry. We hadn’t got color up till then. And if I had a nickel, why, that was for milk. Milk money: the money a body gained. Was just me on that hillside and the kite, red & white waked up into the wind. Hardly anybody knew me then. Oh, Lord how quickly the things of this world came and went. Practically the first thing I notice when I get back. Wind, and I am lifted. Wind and I am hauled ahead by string and air. The bows sinuate the air, I hear them tatter. A certain kindness to that hill, its slope gone gaily green against the eve and oh, the tail dipped; the string slipped. Uppity huff and drag of hawk air plundering eggs in the sparrow’s nest. You left this fragment, this bit of shell behind. 292 POETRY traci brimhall Better to Marry Than to Burn Home, then, where the past was. Then, where cold pastorals repeated their entreaties, where a portrait of Christ hung in every bedroom. Then was a different country in a different climate in a time when souls were won and lost in prairie tents. It was. It was. Then it was a dream. I had no will there. Then the new continent and the new wife and the new language for no, for unsaved, for communion on credit. Then the daughter who should’ve been mine, and the hour a shadow outgrew its body. She was all of my failures, my sermon on the tender comforts of hatred in the shape of a girl. Then the knowledge of God like an apple in the mouth. I faced my temptation. I touched its breasts with as much restraint as my need allowed, and I woke with its left hand traced again and again on my chest like a cave wall disfigured by right-handed gods who tried to escape the stone. It was holy. It was fading. My ring, then, on my finger like an ambush, as alive as fire. Then the trees offered me a city in the shape of a word followed by a word followed by a blue madonna swinging from the branches. A choir filed out of the jungle singing hallelujah like a victory march and it was. TRACI BRIMHALL 293 devin johnston Telephone A mockingbird perched on the hood of a pay phone half-buried in a hedge of wild rose and heard it ring The clapper ball trilled between brass gongs for two seconds then wind and then again With head cocked the bird took note absorbed the ringing deep in its throat and frothed an ebullient song The leitmotif of bright alarm recurred in a run from hawk to meadowlark from May to early June The ringing spread from syrinx to syrinx from Kiowa to Comanche to Clark till someone finally picked up 294 POETRY and heard a voice on the other end say Konza or Consez or Kansa which the French trappers heard as Kaw which is only the sound of a word for wind then only the sound of wind DEVIN Johnston 295 Scavenger A rail, buff-banded rail, weaves among the legs of picnickers who loll at ease on the buttress roots of fig trees.