February 2014
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founded in 1912 by harriet monroe February 2014 FOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE volume cciii • number 5 CONTENTS February 2014 POEMS larry levis 405 Make a Law So That the Spine Remembers Wings Twelve Thirty One Nineteen Ninety Nine Ocean Park #17, 1968: Homage to Diebenkorn a.e. stallings 410 Whethering The Companions of Odysseus in Hades franz wright 412 Boardinghouse with No Visible Address Akechi’s Wife The Break troy jollimore 418 Homer julia shipley 420 The Archaeologists nance van winckel 422 Been About jamaal may 423 There Are Birds Here Per Fumum k. silem mohammad 426 From “The Sonnagrams” ocean vuong 428 DetoNation Aubade with Burning City laura kasischke 432 Recall the Carousel portfoLIO matthea harvey 435 Telettrofono COMMENT mark ford 473 Joan Murray and the Bats of Wisdom contributors 489 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 rebecca shore “Untitled #08,” 2013 POETRYMAGAZINE.ORG a publication of the POETRY FOUNDATION printed by cadmus professional communications, us Poetry • February 2014 • Volume 203 • Number 5 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 o∞ces. 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, Source Interlink, Ubiquity Distributors, and Central Books in the uk. POEMS larry levis Make a Law So That the Spine Remembers Wings So that the truant boy may go steady with the State, So that in his spine a memory of wings Will make his shoulders tense & bend Like a thing already flown When the bracelets of another school of love Are fastened to his wrists, Make a law that doesn’t have to wait Long until someone comes along to break it. So that in jail he will have the time to read How the king was beheaded & the hawk that rode The king’s wrist died of a common cold, And learn that chivalry persists, And what first felt like an insult to the flesh Was the blank ‘o’ of love. Put the fun back into punishment. Make a law that loves the one who breaks it. So that no empty court will make a judge recall Ice fishing on some overcast bay, Shivering in the cold beside his father, it ought To be an interesting law, The kind of thing that no one can obey, A law that whispers “Break me.” Let the crows roost & caw. A good judge is an example to us all. So that the patrolman can still whistle “The Yellow Rose of Texas” through his teeth And even show some faint gesture of respect While he cuffs the suspect, Not ungently, & says things like ok, That’s it, relax, It’ll go better for you if you don’t resist, Lean back just a little, against me. Larry LEVIS 405 Twelve Thirty One Nineteen Ninety Nine First Architect of the jungle & Author of pastel slums, Patron Saint of rust, You have become too famous to be read. I let the book fall behind me until it becomes A book again. Cloth, thread, & the infinite wood. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. In the future, everyone, simply everyone, Will be hung in effigy. The crepe paper in the high school gym will be Black & pink & feathery, Rainbow trout & a dog’s tongue. In effigy. This, For example, was written in memory of ... But of whom? Brecht gasping for air in the street? Truman dancing alone with his daughter? Goodbye, little century. Goodbye, riderless black horse that trots From one side of the street to the other, Trying to find its way Out of the parade. Forgive me for saluting you With a hand still cold, sweating, And resembling, as I hold it up & a heavy sleep Fills it, the body of someone Curled in sleep as the procession passes. Excuse me, but at the end of our complete belief, Which is what you required of us, don’t we deserve 406 POETRY A good belly laugh? Don’t we deserve A shout in the street? And this confetti on which our history is being written, Smaller & smaller, less clear every moment, And subject to endless revision? Under the circumstances, & because It can imagine no other life, doesn’t the hand, Held up there for hours, Deserve it? No? No hunh? No. Larry LEVIS 407 Ocean Park #17, 1968: Homage to Diebenkorn What I remember is a carhop on Pico hurrying Toward a blue Chevy, A crucifix dangling from its rearview mirror That jiggled as the driver brushed A revolver against it, in passing, before tucking it Behind his back & beginning to joke with her. What I remember Is the smooth arc the gun made & the way Jesus shimmied to the rhythm. • Someday I’ll go back to the place depicted By the painting, boarded over by the layers of paint And abandoned, And beneath the pastel yellows I’ll find The Bayside Motel & the little room With the thin, rumpled coverlet, And sit down, drinking nothing but the night air By the window, & wait for her to finish Dressing, one earring, then another, And wait until the objects in the room take back Their shapes in the dawn, And wait until 408 POETRY Each rumpled crease in the sheets & pillowcase Is as clear as a gift again, & wait — At a certain moment, that room, then all the rooms Of the empty Bayside, Will turn completely into light. • I place a cup on the sill & listen for the faint Tock of china on wood, & ... That moment of light is already this one — Sweet, fickle, oblivious, & gone: My hand hurrying across the page to get there On time, that place Of undoing — • Where the shriek of the carhop’s laugh, And the complete faith of the martyr, as he spins & shimmies in the light, And the inextricable candor of doubt by which Diebenkorn, One afternoon, made his presence known In the yellow pastels, then wiped his knuckles with a rag — Are one — are the salt, the nowhere & the cold — The entwined limbs of lovers & the cold wave’s sprawl. Larry LEVIS 409 a.e. stallings Whethering The rain is haunted; I had forgotten. My children are two hours abed And yet I rise Hearing behind the typing of the rain, Its abacus and digits, A voice calling me again, Softer, clearer. The kids lie buried under duvets, sound Asleep. It isn’t them I hear, it’s Something formless that fidgets Beyond the window’s benighted mirror, Where a negative develops, where reflection Holds up a glass of spirits. White noise Precipitates. Rain is a kind of recollection. Much has been shed, Hissing indignantly into the ground. It is the listening Belates, Haunted by these fingertaps and sighs Behind the beaded-curtain glistening, As though by choices that we didn’t make and never wanted, As though by the dead and misbegotten. 410 POETRY The Companions of Odysseus in Hades After Seferis Since we still had a little Of the rusk left, what fools To eat, against the rules, The Sun’s slow-moving cattle, Each ox huge as a tank — A wall you’d have to siege For forty years to reach A star, a hero’s rank. We starved on the back of the earth, But when we’d stuffed ourselves, We tumbled to these delves, Numbskulls, fed up with dearth. A.E. staLLINGS 411 franz wright Boardinghouse with No Visible Address So, I thought, as the door was unlocked and the landlord disappeared (no, he actually disappeared) and I got to examine the room unobserved. There it stood in its gray corner: the narrow bed, sheets the color of old aspirin. Maybe all this had occurred somewhere inside me already, or was just about to. Is there a choice? Is there even a difference? Familiar, familiar but not yet remembered ... The small narrow bed. I had often wondered where I would find it, and what it would look like. Don’t you? It was so awful I couldn’t speak. Then maybe you ought to lie down for a minute, I heard myself thinking. I mean if you are having that much trouble functioning. And when was the last time with genuine sorrow and longing to change you got on your knees? I could get some work done 412 POETRY here, I shrugged; I had done it before. I would work without cease. Oh, I would stay awake if only from horror at the thought of waking up here.