July /August 2013

founded in 1912 by harriet monroe July / August 2013 FOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE volume ccii • number 4 CONTENTS July / August 2013 POEMS fanny howe 299 Yellow Goblins christina davis 300 From “Mankindness” phillis levin 304 Lenten Song seán hewitt 306 Ancestry michael ryan 307 I Self-Help A Thank-You Note james galvin 310 Roadside Ditch Natura Morta On First Seeing a U.S. Forest Service Aerial Photo of Where I Live james longenbach 312 Allegory sandra beasley 316 The Exhibition Was Very Beautiful Flour Is Firm robert thomas 318 The Gift Catchy Tunes bruce bond 322 The Delta wilmer mills 324 Double Vision Diluvian Dream david mason 326 Another Thing scott cairns 327 A Word Dawn at Saint Anna’s Skete Idiot Psalm 12 gowann 330 An Old One Walks emily warn 331 The King and Seer sadiqa de meijer 332 Pastorals in the Atrium Lake Ontario Park Jewel of India steve gehrke 336 The Ships of Theseus philip schultz 338 Greed Age Appropriate anonymous 342 From “Old English Rune Poem” Translated by Miller Oberman david orr 346 Busker with Harp The Big Bad kay ryan 348 Salvations REMEMBERING POETS marjorie perloff 351 Allen Ginsberg donald hall 354 Richard Wilbur joshua mehigan 357 James Dickey clare cavanagh 362 Wislawa Szymborska bianca stone 365 Ruth Stone THE VIEW from HERE laura manuelidis 371 The XYZ of Hearing: The Squid’s Ink roger ebert 373 All My Heart for Speech amy frykholm 376 Earthward hillary chute 379 Secret Labor hank willis thomas 382 Better Speak COMMENT michael robbins 387 Ripostes letters to the editor 398 contributors 399 Editor christian wiman Senior Editor don share Associate Editor fred sasaki Managing Editor valerie jean johnson Editorial Assistant lindsay garbutt Consulting Editor christina pugh Art Direction alex knowlton cover art by marcellus hall “Balcony ( from Kaleidoscope City),” 2009 POETRYMAGAZINE.ORG a publication of the POETRY FOUNDATION printed by cadmus professional communications, us Poetry • July / August 2013 • Volume 202 • Number 4 Poetry (issn: 0032-2032) is published monthly, except bimonthly July / August, by the Poetry Foundation. 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POEMS fanny howe Yellow Goblins Yellow goblins and a god I can swallow: Eyes in the evergreens under ice. Interior monologue and some voice. Weary fears, the usual trials and a place to surmise blessedness. fanny HOWE 299 christina davis From “Mankindness” 1 Because he, because she, in so far as she (in so far as he) exists is on the way to battle. Not what is your name, but what the battle? 300 POETRY 2 “Each one of us has come here and changed” — is the battle. Born a loved one, borne a loved one. CHRISTINA daVIS 301 3 My father fought in this war, thus I can speak of it. My mother fought in this, thus I can speak. My friends, my lovers have fought, have worn (like the tree) their several directions at once. And I, in so far as I can say “I” have fought to be related to these — we strive and strain but also try to ripen the entity of the Other. 302 POETRY 4 We kiss on lips, where the tenses attach. We enter the conundrum of another’s becoming. We look for someone who can raise us up again to feet, or near to standing. We tend in our terrors to forget (we do not store them) felicities. I try each day to stay near beings, mornings when I am most mild. And may I nothing harm, in case it is them. CHRISTINA daVIS 303 phillis levin Lenten Song That the dead are real to us Cannot be denied, That the living are more real When they are dead Terrifies, that the dead can rise As the living do is possible Is possible to surmise, But all the stars cannot come near All we meet in an eye. Flee from me, fear, as soot Flies in a breeze, do not burn Or settle in my sight, I’ve tasted you long enough, Let me savor Something otherwise. Who wakes beside me now Suits my soul, so I turn to words Only to say he changes Into his robe, rustles a page, He raises the lid of the piano To release what’s born in its cage. If words come back To say they compromise Or swear again they have died, There’s no news in that, I reply, But a music without notes These notes comprise, still 304 POETRY As spring beneath us lies, Already something otherwise. PHILLIS LEVIN 305 seán hewitt Ancestry The damp had got its grip years ago but gone unnoticed. The heads of the joists feathered slowly in the cavity wall and the room’s wet belly had begun to bow. Once we’d ripped the boards up, it all came out: the smell, at first, then the crumbling wood gone to seed, all its muscles wasted. You pottered back and to with tea, soda bread, eighty years shaking on a plastic tray. One by one we looked up, nodded, then slipped under the floor. We moved down there like fish in moonlight, or divers round an old ship. 306 POETRY michael ryan I When did I learn the word “I”? What a mistake. For some, it may be a placeholder, for me it’s a contagion. For some, it’s a thin line, a bare wisp, just enough to be somewhere among the gorgeous troublesome you’s. For me, it’s a thorn, a spike, its slimness a deceit, camouflaged like a stick insect: touch it and it becomes what it is: ravenous slit, vertical cut, little boy standing upright in his white communion suit and black secret. MICHAEL ryan 307 Self-Help What kind of delusion are you under? The life he hid just knocked you flat. You see the lightning but not the thunder. What God hath joined let no man put asunder. Did God know you’d marry a rat? What kind of delusion are you under? His online persona simply stunned her as it did you when you started to chat. You see the lightning but not the thunder. To the victors go the plunder: you should crown them with a baseball bat. What kind of delusion are you under? The kind that causes blunder after blunder. Is there any other kind than that? You see the lightning but not the thunder, and for one second the world’s a wonder. Just keep it thrilling under your hat. What kind of delusion are you under? You see the lightning but not the thunder. 308 POETRY A Thank-You Note For John Skoyles My daughter made drawings with the pens you sent, line drawings that suggest the things they represent, different from any drawings she — at ten — had done, closer to real art, implying what the mind fills in. For her mother she made a flower fragile on its stem; for me, a lion, calm, contained, but not a handsome one. She drew a lion for me once before, on a get-well card, and wrote I must be brave even when it’s hard. Such love is healing — as you know, my friend, especially when it comes unbidden from our children despite the flaws they see so vividly in us. Who can love you as your child does? Your son so ill, the brutal chemo, his looming loss owning you now — yet you would be this generous to think of my child. With the pens you sent she has made I hope a healing instrument. MICHAEL ryan 309 james galvin Roadside Ditch Natura Morta No one can draw fast enough To capture the cut Iris before its form falls From its former self. But when we passed a patch In the ditch, She told me to stop and she stepped Down, opening her clasp Knife. She spared one iris With an impressionistic Cocoon on its stem And cut the flower beside it. Once home She rendered in a careful hurry. She drew into the night as the iris died.

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