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09-2011-Ipadedition.Pdf founded in 1912 by harriet monroe September 2011 FOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE volume cxcviii t number 5 CONTENTS September 2011 POEMS mary ruefle 415 White Buttons Women in Labor Shalimar kevin young 422 Pietà sharon olds 423 The Flurry peter gizzi 424 Apocrypha reginald dwayne betts 426 “For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers” scott cairns 427 Draw Near robert wrigley 428 Soundings Anatomy of Melancholy robin robertson 432 Under Beinn Ruadhainn brenda shaughnessy 434 Head Handed Card 19: The Sun Visitor dan howell 438 Piano UNC O LLE C TED HEC HT david yezzi 441 Introduction anthony hecht 445 The Plate A Friend Killed in the War Mathematics Considered as a Vice An O≠ering for Patricia The Fountain Dilemma C OMMENT fanny howe 463 Outremer peter campion 471 Self-Starter beverley bie brahic 478 Cluttered and Clean letters to the editor 486 contributors 493 Editor christian wiman Senior Editor don share Associate Editor fred sasaki Managing Editor valerie jean johnson Editorial Assistant lindsay garbutt Reader christina pugh Art Direction winterhouse studio cover art by brian cronin Untitled, 2010 POETRYMAGAZINE.ORG a publication of the POETRY FOUNDATION printed by cadmus professional communications, us Poetry t September 2011 t Volume 198 t 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 60654-5457. 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 © 2011 by the Poetry Foundation. Double issues cover two months but bear only one number. Volumes that include double issues comprise numbers 1 through 5. Indexed in “Access,” “Humanities International Complete,” “Book Review Index,” “The Index of American Periodical Verse,” “Poem Finder,” and “Popular Periodical Index.” Manuscripts cannot be returned and will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope, or by international reply coupons and a self-addressed envelope from writers living abroad. Copying done for other than personal or internal reference use without the expressed permission of the Poetry Foundation is prohibited. Requests for special permission or bulk orders should be addressed to the Poetry Foundation. 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. Distributed to bookstores by Ingram Periodicals, Source Interlink, Ubiquity Distributors, and Central Books in the uk. POEMS mary ruefle White Buttons Having been blown away by a book I am in the gutter at the end of the street in little pieces like the alphabet (mother do not worry letters are not flesh though there’s meaning in them but not when they are mean my letters to you were mean I found them after you died and read them and tore them up and fed them to the wind thank you for intruding I love you now leave) Also at the end of the street there is a magnolia tree the white kind that tatters after it blooms so the tree winds up in the street Our naked shivering bodies must be at some distance missing us come back come back they cry come home put down that book whenever you read you drift away on a raft you like your parrot more than you like me and stu≠ like that (dear father MARY RUEFLE 415 you always were a bore but I loved you more than interesting things and in your honor I’ve felt the same about myself and everyone I’ve ever met) I like to read in tree houses whenever I can which is seldom and sometimes never The book that blew me away held all the problems of the world and those of being alive under my nose but I felt far away from them at the same time reading is like that (I am sorry I did not go to your funeral but like you said on the phone an insect cannot crawl to China) Here at the end of the street the insects go on living under the dome of the pacific sky If Mary and Joseph had walked the sixty miles to Bethlehem vertically they would have found themselves floating in the outer pitch of space it would have been cold no inns 416 POETRY a long night in the dark endless and when they began to cry the whole world would think something had just been born I like to read into things as I am continually borne forward in time by the winds like the snow (dear sister you were perfect in every way like a baby please tell brother the only reason we never spoke was out of our great love for each other which made a big wind that blew us apart) I think I am coming back I feel shoulders where a parrot could land though a tree would be as good a place as any You cannot teach a tree to talk Trees can say it is spring but not though bright sunlight can also be very sad have you noticed? MARY RUEFLE 417 Women in Labor Women who lie alone at midnight because there is no one else to lie to Women who lie alone at midnight at noon in the laundromat destroying their own socks Women who lie alone at midnight: Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates Women who lie alone at midnight as the first furl of starlight pearls the moon with nacre Women who lie alone at midnight sending a postcard bearing the face of a bawling infant who cries “I am for the new” Women who lie alone at midnight reciting the names of shoes Women who lie alone at midnight spurting unjustified tears, the kind that run sideways never reaching the mouth, the kind you cannot swallow Women who lie alone at midnight singing breast away the burden of my tender and afterwards burp 418 POETRY Women who lie alone at midnight obeying the laws of physics Women who let their dreams curl at the end Women in a monastery of flamingos Women who die alone at midnight contributing to the end, to lost time, to the rain and flies, seeing the bird they saw trapped in the airport surviving by the water fountain What’s more, try it sometime It works MARY RUEFLE 419 Shalimar God put his finger on my sacrum and he lifted me, he set me in the center of the universe, the curious desire of my chronically lonely life. It was cold and dark and lonely and I was scared. There were no accessories. I burst into tears over nothing. What would J immy Schuyler do? wwjsd? And as quietly as the sound of Kleenex being pulled from a box, I sneezed. And morning, that goddess, as if she were slightly deaf, barely lifted her head o≠ the horizon before laying back down. And a rose opened her portals and the scent ran up an elephant’s trunk, or tried to. Such a long way for everything to travel! From here I look like a front moving in An icy purple light a poet would say belonged to a perfume stopper belonging to his mother. 420 POETRY When it was her nipple. You know, neither in the past or in the future. MARY RUEFLE 421 kevin young Pietà I hunted heaven for him. No dice. Too uppity, it was. Not enough music, or dark dirt. I begged the earth empty of him. Death believes in us whether we believe or not. For a long while I watch the sound of a boy bouncing a ball down the block take its time to reach me. Father, find me when you want. I’ll wait. 422 POETRY sharon olds The Flurry When we talk about when to tell the kids, we are so together, so concentrated. I mutter, “I feel like a killer.” “I’m the killer” — taking my wrist — he says, holding it. He is sitting on the couch, the old indigo chintz around him, rich as a night sea with jellies, I am sitting on the floor. I look up at him, as if within some chamber of matedness, some dust I carry around me. Tonight, to breathe its Magellanic field is less painful, maybe because he is drinking a wine grown where I was born — fog, eucalyptus, sempervirens — and I’m sharing the glass with him. “Don’t catch my cold,” he says, “ — oh that’s right, you want to catch my cold.” I should not have told him that, I tell him I will try to fall out of love with him, but I feel I will love him all my life. He says he loves me as the mother of our children, and new troupes of tears mount to the acrobat platforms of my ducts and do their burning leaps. Some of them jump straight sideways, and, for a moment, I imagine a flurry of tears like a whirra of knives thrown at a figure, to outline it — a heart’s spurt of rage. It glitters, in my vision, I nod to it, it is my hope.
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