The Best American Poetry 2012 (8 page)

Moon moving in the upper window,

shadow of the pen in my hand on the page—

I keep wishing that the news of my death

will be delivered by a little wooden truck

or a child's drawing of a truck

featuring the long rectangular box of the trailer,

with some lettering on the side,

then the protruding cab, the ovoid wheels,

maybe the inscrutable profile of a driver,

and of course puffs of white smoke

issuing from the tail pipe, drawn like flowers

and similar in their expression to the clouds in the sky only smaller.

from
Subtropics

PETER COOLEY

More Than Twice, More Than I Can Count

Down here, with my long wait for wings to grow

I'm slow accepting the stars' chart for me,

the blind track written in my sky at birth.

I have my glimpses, terrible and deep,

moments when I can see a kind of plan,

and more than twice tracing the lineaments

in one of the live oaks in City Park

New Orleans legend says were born with Christ,

or in the face of a beautiful child

or yes—why not say it—a flowering light

hibiscus blossoms open and then close

in sunlight's entrance, exit through the cloud—

say it: I've seen, head-on the face of God

cracked, fractured, splintered, never what I want

but mine, nevertheless and, yes, these wings'

sutures, at more than half a century

with me almost immeasurable in light,

itch and lift me here where blue ground meets sky.

For a few seconds I am only blue.

I have my little time in Paradise.

from
Harvard Review

EDUARDO C. CORRAL

To the Angelbeast

for Arthur Russell

All that glitters isn't music.

Once, hidden in tall grass,

I tossed fistfuls of dirt into the air:

doe after doe of leaping.

You said it was nothing

but a trick of the light. Gold

curves. Gold scarves.

Am I not your animal?

You'd wait in the orchard for hours

to watch a deer

break from the shadows.

You said it was like lifting a cello

out of its black case.

from
Poetry

ERICA DAWSON

Back Matter

Semantics 2.0,

Daughter, still, of absurdities,

I like “street-talker” now. Yes, please.

Breathless with ghetto woe

(“. . . and his mama cried”) I'd call

Me too American, too black,

Too Negro dialect. My back

Is to your front. I'm all

Set with my Nikes on.

*

Back: as in “go,” sound on the tongue

Articulated, clean, clearly hung

In the aft of the mouth.

*

Back: dawn

As near is to December.
I

Walk in the flakes as doctors try

To drink their coffee, yawn

In mittened hands while they

Cross MLK and I decide

To take the hill, walk farther, ride

It out this Saturday,

Cold, cocked, nothing.

And Back:

Pertaining to support; to cause

To move backward; hems, haws,

But strength, effort; no lack-

Luster labor.

*

I put

My back into it, start to sweat

And feel the Sempiternam, wet,

There in the skin afoot,

All itchy, from the needle

(Wednesday's fresh ink). I turn and head

For red EMERGENCY—

hot bed,

A microcosm, beetle

Of Cincinnati streets

Where pigs have got a man spread-eagle,

Cuffed to a gurney with the legal

Miranda said, the beats

Of EKGs, the blood

Of GS to the chest,

STAT angiectomy,

last rites,

Urban Gethsemane, left bites

Of Jell-O.

*

Back: to rest;

Arrears or overdue;

Belonging to the past like
back

In the day.

*

The once-crazy could crack—

*

The defending player who,

Behind the other players, makes

First contact—

*

Streets are talking, rakes

Catcalling, and the new

Sky's crisp as all the streams

Of frozen runoff.

There's no help

For me, just voices: barest yelp,

Incessant chatter, screams;

It's my emergency,

My good-luck charm, my fetish carved

In brain waves; and, I'm fucking starved

For more synecdoche—

More forms: the water-trickle

When it melts in spring, the med(evac!),

A glass door sliding off its track—

A million worlds to tickle

My fancy.

“Ma'am, you next?”

I leave the hospital and walk

For milk, though I need none. I stalk

A flying flier, text

Muddied by snow and now

Unreadable.

*

Back is the how

You know where you have been; the Tao;

“What up”; instead of “ciao,”

“Peace”; “One”; a vision too

Damn visible in memory.

*

Only I have to listen. See?

I'm still the jigaboo.

Don't see me as I butt

In highs and lows and every nome

And phoneme while on my way home

To lay back in the cut.

from
Barrow Street

STEPHEN DUNN

The Imagined