Read The Best American Poetry 2015 Online
Authors: David Lehman
or help haunting the house? watch! here we are:
an expanding family of ghosts. we aren't here but yes ok yeah yes.
did it help?
and even now know yes they were born on
TV
but before
it was horrible
wasn't it must have been. please tell me
about the miscarriage for I don't know how not to be telling
and the dog growls still and still and still
from
The Iowa Review
The old man eating walnuts knows the trick:
You do it wrong for many years,
applying pressure to the seams
to split the shell along its hemispheres.
It seems so clear and easy. There's the line.
You follow the instructions, then
your snack ends up quite pulverized.
You sweep your lap and mutter, try again.
Eventually you learn to disbelieve
the testimony of your eyes.
You turn the thing and make a choice
about what you'd prefer to sacrifice.
You soon discover that the brains inside
are on right angles, so the shell
must be cracked open on its arc,
which isn't neat. The shattered pieces tell
a story, but the perfect, unmarred meat's
the truth: two lobes, conjoined, intact.
One of two things is bound to break:
One the fiction, one the soul, the fact.
from
Unsplendid
In St. Petersburg, Sasha points and says, “They're restorating
this zoo building because someone is giving the zoo an elephant
and the building is not enough big, so they are restorating it,”
so I say, “Where's, um, the elephant?” and Sasha says,
“The elephant is waiting somewhere! How should I know!”
When I was six, my dog was Spot, a brindled terrier
with the heart of a lion, though mortal, in the end, like all
of us, and when he died, I said to Father Crifasi, “Is Spot
in heaven?” and he laughed and asked me if I were really
that stupid, insinuating that he, a holy father of the church,
had the inside track on heavenly entry, knew where
the back stairs were, had mastered the secret handshake.
Later we saw a guy with a bear, and I said, “Look, a bear!”
and Sasha said, “Ah, the poor bear! Yes, you can have your
picture with this one, if you like,” but by then I didn't want to.
Who is in heaven? God, of course, Jesus and his mother,
and the more popular saints: Peter, Michael, the various
Johns, Josephs, and Catherines. But what about the others?
If Barsanuphius, Fridewside, and Jutta of Kulmsee,
why not Spot or the elephant or the bear when it dies?
Even a pig or a mouse has a sense of itself, said Leonard
Wolff, who applied this idea to politics, saying no single
creature is important on a global scale, though a politics
that recognizes individual selves is the only one that offers
a hope for the future. Pets are silly, but the only world
worth living in is one that doesn't think so. As to the world
beyond this one, as Sam Cooke says, I'm tired of living
but afraid to die because I don't know what's coming next.
I do know that Spot was always glad to see me, turning
himself inside out with joy when I came home from school,
whereas Father Crifasi took no delight at the sight of me
or anyone, the little pleasure that sometimes hovered
about his lips falling out of his face like the spark from
his cigarette when the door to the classroom opened
and we boys filed in as slowly as we could. Those
years are covered as by a mist now, the heads of my parents
and friends breaking through like statues in a square
in a foreign city as the sun comes over my shoulder
and the night creeps down cobblestoned streets toward
a future I can't see, though across the river, it's still dark,
but already you can hear the animals stirring:
the first birds, then an elephant, a bear, a little dog.
from
The Cincinnati Review
O Eternal Worrier, you strive to lick
your prints from every surface. O Six-Legged God,
O Tiny Resurrectionist, if I begged
you to stop, would you stop, would you nod
your clockwork head, would you promise to rot
in the corner after I've squashed you, silent
and uneager to raise your children from the dead.
Perhaps you aren't to blame, O Careless Parent.
You spread your seed only where it takes,
and I left the dishes uncleansed, the fruit
clogging the trash with its seductive scent.
Dogged Companion, you wear your dark suit
with pride, eager to mourn whatever dies.
I'm not your friend! You're not mine! What lies
we tell. I love the living, and you, the dead.
And here we are again, breaking bread.
from
Subtropics
Tickle a backside, friend, jiggle the wrist,
hither then sterling, then amethyst, onyx.
Eager spills eel-skin, python, seal-leather,
platinum and plate, all cabbage, all cheddar.
I say of the cutpurses: Straighten, and sing. Let us
carol each quick sticky digit, all ten,
for my
kith can fleece your kin, and then some,
proudly and soundly, down sheer to the skin.
Only we dippers could psalm such a trilling,
cash-clips and coppers, all harmony belling.
Keen-fingered lifters, join in with themâ
each bracelet, each necklace, each pearl-circled pin,
topaz and lapis, square perfect carats
swearing their ritzier whisper and pinch,
over and over the nimble thumb-catch.
Noble this music, good, noble, and able.
Grandeur for soul, chums, glad glory for table.
from
32 Poems
Thirty seconds of yellow lichen.
Thirty seconds of coil and surge,
fern and froth, thirty seconds
of salt, rock, fog, spray.
Clouds
moving slowly to the leftâ
A door in a rock through which you could see
â
another rock,
laved by the weedy tide.
Like filming breathingâthirty seconds
of tidal drag, fingering
the smaller stones
down the black beachâwhat color
was that, aquamarine?
Starfish spread
their salmon-colored hands.
â
I stood and I shot them.
I stood and I watched them
right after I shot them: thirty seconds of smashed sea
while the real sea
thrashed and heavedâ
They were the most boring movies ever made.
I wanted
to mount them together and press play.
â
Thirty seconds of waves colliding.
Kelp
with its open attitudes, seals
riding the swells, curved in a row
just under the waterâ
the sea,
over and over.
Before it's over.
from Poem-a-Day
Never has an empty hand been made
into more of a fist, and Waterfall Without
it swings so hard it swings out
of existence. How will anyone get married
now, with no wall of water behind them?
How will Over Niagara Falls in a Barrel
marry Across Niagara Falls on a Tightrope?
Over the Falls would have worn a veil,
Across the Falls would have tied a tie,
hand in hand they would have poured
down the aisle to the sound of rustling
silks. Later they would narrow