The Best American Poetry 2014 (15 page)

 was that thought would

 have

 none of it. So much of

what they said they thought

 thought refuted, Mr. P's

 ac-

complice, they complained . . .

 No sooner that than the

skid they thought endless

 ended. No sooner that

 as

though complaint made it

 so . . . An increased im-

munity came over them, what-

 said cover, thought's

qualm

 and rebuff, cover's what-

said complaint . . . Cover's

 whatsaid compliance it was,

  what-

 ever worked worked out ad

hoc . . . The tale's torn cloth

 what all there was of it,

the tale the tale's rending,

 not

 enough. They awoke some

 other morning on some

other side of morning, happy

  to

 awake but happy-sad to be

awake, unsure they were awake,

 surprised . . . They were get-

ting to be chagrined again. No

   one

 could say what they made

of it, road gone from as it

 was, awoke from what . . .

Sprawled in what was known

  as

 aftermath, light's disguised

 arrival, light's abject ad-

dress . . . Light looking into

  which

they could only squint, go

 off the road where the

 highway bent . . . That was

  the

 way the story

went

from
Poet Lore

I don't know

if I wore glasses

when I met you

but I know

the last time

I saw you you

drank a drink

I bought you

with another

woman who

was far uglier

than I have

ever been. I have brown eyes, did I ever tell you?

Your eyes are too too blue, tell-all awful, and too

too pretty; you make all the girls swoon, and then

lament how harpies pound on your door, plucking

the very shingles off your roof, conducting through

their unanimous will a plot to kill your hive's queen,

fix a hose from the car's tailpipe to pump barnyard

dread straight into your ken, therefore you demand

I ought never wish to lie in your bed. I have black eyes,

did I tell you? But your eyes are damp blue, fingers in

winter blue, worrying about a prom date blue, never

washed a dish blue. Have I mentioned my eyes are

dead brown, dirt brown, stone brown, done with you

brown, screaming out in the streets I'm so drunk brown,

I'm just ignoring the noise rising up from streets asleep

brown? As in, as brown as dead leaves because my love's

eyes were dead brown and when he shouted down at

that drunk on the street that New Year's Eve from

my third floor window that drunk man called him

Whiskey Whore Boy. And his eyes were not wish-

wash blue, his eyes were mostly moss and trees,

not mojitos in a barroom, no, his eyes all gin-lit in

a hotel room on our last night were ice-cold, even

in his farewell he was bold, his eyes anyone might

have called plain, but they could at least cry. I am

sick to death of your blue eyes, fabric eyes, flower

eyes. I have brown eyes, plain and saying eyes behind

thick frames, glassy eyes handing themselves over

to you in buckets eyes, dig your hands into my black

soil eyes, my ugly eyes reaching into your eyes for

my twin eyes, look back at me eyes while your eyes

crawl the walls, cloud-blue, wandering off as milky

bosomed maids will look away from the eyes that

seek the crevices deep between their heavy breasts

that sway beneath the cows they bend to milk eyes.

Won't you have another drink from my silty yonder

eyes? I may look

plain but I've got

roses in my blood,

can bloom right

out the soil of these

here brackish eyes,

wander a limb across

the chest of your

country, unlock

the footlocker of your

desire with the tip

of my vine eyes.

from
Willow Springs

In a waiting room at the Kresge Eye Center

my fingers trace the outline of folded money

and I know the two hundred fifty dollars there

is made up of two hundred forty-five I can't afford to spend

but will spend on a calm voice that can explain

how I can be repaired. Instead, the words
legally blind

and
nothing can be done
mean I'll spend

the rest of the week closing an eye to the world,

watching how easily this becomes that.

The lampposts lining the walk home

are the thinnest spears I've ever seen, a row of trash cans

becomes discarded war drums, and teeth

in the mouth of an oncoming truck

want to tear through me. Some of me

always wants to be swallowed.

••

The last thing my doctor said before I lost

my insurance was to see a vision specialist

about the way light struggles and bends

through my deformed cornea.

Before the exam I never closed my right eye

and watched the world become a melting watercolor

with the left. Before a doctor shot light

into the twitching thing, before I realized

how little light I could handle, I never

thought much of the boy who clawed up at me

from beneath my punches, how a fingernail scraped

the eye, or how it closed shut

like a door to a room I could never leave.

••

I could see the reflective mesh of his shoes,

the liquor bottle tossed in an arc

even before it shattered at my feet, and I am embarrassed

at how sharp my eyes were, how deft my body,

my limbs closing the distance—how easily

I owned his face, its fear, and fought back tears—

all of it mine. I don't want to remember the eyes

that glanced over shoulder just before

I dragged him like a gazelle into the grass

that was a stretch of gravel and glass

outside a liquor store. How easily this becomes that.

••

On a suspension bridge I close my bad eye

and it's like aiming through a gunsight;

even the good eye is only as good as whatever glass

an optometrist can shape. I watch sundown

become a mouth. Broad and black-throated,

it devours the skyline and every reflection.

Horns sprout from the head of my silhouette

rippling
dark, dark, dark
against the haze of water

and I try to squint that monster

into the shape of a man.

from
Ploughshares

You could still become a queen.

When, a slip of a girl,

you directed trees

to lower their limbs,

neither fire ants nor sap

could stop your climb,

nor rain that lightly fell,

misting leaves.

Inside a story's spell,

you find your way back,

where a stone on a path waits

for you to stumble.

Like the kaleidoscope's contents,

time is jumbled, opening at will.

Now: a too-bright sun and you,

teetering on a wall,

parasol clutched tight as you tumble.

This parasol is, for a moment,

everything you've lost

and all that can console.

from
The Southern Review

the frog ready for inspection, skin flaps

opened and pinned back, organs

arrayed for the taking—this is how

I approach you. and you. here, my spleen

for the squeezing. my intestine

to be strung out, perhaps wrapped

around the neck like a lariat. not

for the squeamish, my heart thudding

to be plucked out with a delicate thumb

and forefinger, dinner for the willing,

and beautiful, and broken. I am not smart

about love, is what I'm saying. not even

smart about whose face I will take

in my hands and press against my face

until we are a single organism. the mouth

is not an organ but I give it to you

anyway, I give it all away is what

I'm saying. I'm easy to adore. my torso

a life raft strung with Christmas lights

and full of all your favorite things, beer

and expensive cheese and songs

about leaving. I'm so beautiful

splayed out on this tray full of tar

and entrails. I'm so useful

I could be a meal for an army

of traumatized surgeons, I'm full-time

at this job of bleeding, my esophagus

a stripper pole or cocaine straw.

when I say
eat me
I mean

suck the bones clean, leave nothing

for the waiting, nothing for the vultures

or the travelers to come.

from
The Carolina Quarterly