founded in 1912 by harriet monroe November 2015 FOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE volume ccvii • number 2 CONTENTS November 2015 POEMS zack strait 111 Blaze kathleen ossip 114 Old Strange Book ed roberson 118 May I Ask Rosetta Stone Serious Study of Love Song ( from the British Museum) Aunt Haint a.e. stallings 124 The Barnacle john beer 125 By and By emilia phillips 128 Dream of the Phone Booth charles harper webb 129 Swept Away carol frost 132 Alias City javier zamora 133 The Pier of La Herradura How I Learned to Walk Looking at a Coyote shane mccrae 136 Still When I Picture It the Face of God Is a White Man’s Face kazim ali 137 The Earthquake Days drew gardner 140 Sheep to Sweater eisder mosquera 142 The Angelfish Greet Odysseus patrick rosal 143 An Instance of an Island paula cunningham 146 At St. Malachy’s Church sina queyras 147 The Couriers Cut marianne boruch 150 Water at Night vona groarke 152 On Seeing Charlotte Brontë’s Underwear with my Daughter in Haworth les murray 154 Self and Dream Self kate farrell 156 Metaphysics brenda shaughnessy 157 McQueen Is Dead. Long Live McQueen. alan ramón clinton 164 Optical Unconscious (1) Optical Unconscious (2) hai-dang phan 166 My Father’s “Norton Introduction to Literature,” Third Edition (1981) camonghne felix 168 The Therapist Asks 3 lisa grove 169 In the Mouth of a Terrible, Toothless God A Lullaby, for the Fir Tree Growing in My Left Lung meghan o’rourke 172 The Night Where You No Longer Live marcus wicker 174 Taking Aim at a Macy’s Changing Room Mirror, I Blame Television THE LIVES OF FRANK LIMA garrett caples 177 Introduction frank lima 184 Epicedium to Potter’s Field Incidents of Travel in Poetry Byron Juarez Heckyll & Jeckyll Felonies and Arias of the Heart Bright Blue Self-Portrait COMMENT david wheatley 197 So Much Better Than Most Things Written on Purpose contributors 209 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 laura park “aperture,” 2015 POETRYMAGAZINE.ORG a publication of the POETRY FOUNDATION printed by cadmus professional communications, us Poetry • November 2015 • Volume 207 • Number 2 Poetry (issn: 0032-2032) is published monthly, except bimonthly July / August, by the Poetry Foundation. 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POEMS zack strait Blaze we were riding out to an abandoned farmhouse on his pearl black Triumph deaf to the sound of bleating sheep that was when he told me it was the same model James Dean had swapped for three days after they’d finished filming East of Eden I tried to tell him that was cool but he didn’t act like he’d heard me so I hugged him tight and set my head on his shoulder and watched how the yellow moon was shifting behind the pines like the face of a jailbird he’d told me before that his wife knew he didn’t swing her way but she was keeping quiet about it for their kid’s sake we rumbled into the dry grass and started cutting through the cornstalks into a big clearing where he kicked the bike stand and told me to get off ZACK STRAIT 111 he tossed his chrome aviators and then we started our hike to the farmhouse which was sagging in the field opposite of us we were quiet on the way like a couple of thieves about to rob someone blind I stood back as he tore a warped door off the barn and flung it into the gravel inside the air was dusty and thick and the moon was still with us cocked behind a streaked window like we’d traded places and now we were the jailbirds serving a lifetime sentence without parole John pulled off his steel-toe boots and told me to wait for him up in the hayloft I left my loafers there and climbed a wood ladder until I was looking into the eyes of a great horned owl he kept shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what was about to happen I was going to be John’s first 112 POETRY but while I was gathering the wet straw I smelled smoke and slid back down the ladder that was when I saw the fire licking the crossbeams and ran outside John was passing through the wheat like a final judgment his figure was muscled with flame and I kept silent as he reached for a head of grain and burned it to the ground ZACK STRAIT 113 kathleen ossip Old Strange Book In the story of my life there is a field filled with chicory, daisies, and mayflowers. It’s the field behind my childhood house. In summer, I used to spend hours lying in it looking at clouds before my mother brought us to the town pool where I spent some more hours swimming. In the other seasons I went to school. In the school there was a library. In the story of my life there is a book. The book was bound in rough green cloth. Its glossy pages smelled oddly like puke. The book told the story of two children, Johnnie and Jill, I think. They got lost in a deep forest, drawn in thick dark ink. They were brother-and-sister orphans. They met fantastical creatures. One was the goddess of spring, or was that in Botticelli’s picture that I saw in the same library in a book of art history for kids, old European art of course. The other kinds they did not want us to know about. The picture was magic and so was Johnnie and Jill though not a children’s classic. 114 POETRY I don’t really remember the title. In the book the goddess of spring rescues the children in trouble and then — I can’t remember a thing. I’m sure there was a villain in the book, probably a woman, who practiced dark arts on a dark hill, so evil she wasn’t human. In the story of my life there is a hill that tamely rises above the field. We sledded there in winter. In spring our bikes wheeled down the hill dangerously. I walked on the hill this summer tamely, carefully, slowly, alongside my mother. It isn’t hard to say what had brought us there. We were old and middle-aged in the knife-like summer air. Slowly and tamely we walked and I remembered the book. It was called — Julie and John? I wanted another look. So what was the title? And was it an allegory? A Catholic one? (It was a Catholic school.) That would ruin the story. KATHLEEN OSSIP 115 A story is only good if it’s made up but convinces you it’s true. Even better if one of the characters is someone who could be you. How else do you know who you are? I once asked an old strange friend: You only know you’re the person who’s with the people you love, in the end. From the hill I saw the house. I imagined myself on the stair clutching the wrought-iron rail, a beanie on my bright hair. On the hill I thought of the book. That old strange book would save me. But Google was not my friend or maybe I was crazy. Years had passed since I read the book. My hair was darker, my body had opened to make a person, my cheekbones were starker. Still I kept hold of the book like a talisman or a bluff. Any book I’d seen that was like it was not like it enough. Research didn’t help and memory is no good. Longing was all I could do and making up as much as I could. 116 POETRY Many books have I read, many people loved. They mattered and mattered and mattered. I tried but never found the book. The field is where I’ll be scattered. KATHLEEN OSSIP 117 ed roberson May I Ask May I ask you who your grandmother died Her blackness you pretended we’d assume a servant’s in the photograph May I ask did she die herself? I know you all light under an umbrella don’t tan and she could be seen as she had been made too dark for what the son do.