The Best American Poetry 2015 (4 page)

Defending Walt Whitman

Basketball is like this for young Indian boys, all arms and legs

and serious stomach muscles. Every body is brown!

These are the twentieth-century warriors who will never kill,

although a few sat quietly in the deserts of Kuwait,

waiting for orders to do something, to do something.

God, there is nothing as beautiful as a jumpshot

on a reservation summer basketball court

where the ball is moist with sweat,

and makes a sound when it swishes through the net

that causes Walt Whitman to weep because it is so perfect.

There are veterans of foreign wars here

although their bodies are still dominated

by collarbones and knees, although their bodies still respond

in the ways that bodies are supposed to respond when we are young.

Every body is brown! Look there, that boy can run

up and down this court forever. He can leap for a rebound

with his back arched like a salmon, all meat and bone

synchronized, magnetic, as if the court were a river,

as if the rim were a dam, as if the air were a ladder

leading the Indian boy toward home.

Some of the Indian boys still wear their military haircuts

while a few have let their hair grow back.

It will never be the same as it was before!

One Indian boy has never cut his hair, not once, and he braids it

into wild patterns that do not measure anything.

He is just a boy with too much time on his hands.

Look at him. He wants to play this game in bare feet.

God, the sun is so bright! There is no place like this.

Walt Whitman stretches his calf muscles

on the sidelines. He has the next game.

His huge beard is ridiculous on the reservation.

Some body throws a crazy pass and Walt Whitman catches it

with quick hands. He brings the ball close to his nose

and breathes in all of its smells: leather, brown skin, sweat,

black hair, burning oil, twisted ankle, long drink of warm water,

gunpowder, pine tree. Walt Whitman squeezes the ball tightly.

He wants to run. He hardly has the patience to wait for his turn.

“What's the score?” he asks. He asks, “What's the score?”

Basketball is like this for Walt Whitman. He watches these Indian boys

as if they were the last bodies on earth. Every body is brown!

Walt Whitman shakes because he believes in God.

Walt Whitman dreams of the Indian boy who will defend him,

trapping him in the corner, all flailing arms and legs

and legendary stomach muscles. Walt Whitman shakes

because he believes in God. Walt Whitman dreams

of the first jumpshot he will take, the ball arcing clumsily

from his fingers, striking the rim so hard that it sparks.

Walt Whitman shakes because he believes in God.

Walt Whitman closes his eyes. He is a small man and his beard

is ludicrous on the reservation, absolutely insane.

His beard makes the Indian boys righteously laugh. His beard

frightens the smallest Indian boys. His beard tickles the skin

of the Indian boys who dribble past him. His beard, his beard!

God, there is beauty in every body. Walt Whitman stands

at center court while the Indian boys run from basket to basket.

Walt Whitman cannot tell the difference between

offense and defense. He does not care if he touches the ball.

Half of the Indian boys wear t-shirts damp with sweat

and the other half are bareback, skin slick and shiny.

There is no place like this. Walt Whitman smiles.

Walt Whitman shakes. This game belongs to him.

The new news is I love you my nudist

the new news is I love you my buddhist

my naked body and budding pleasure

in the weather of your presence

Not whether your presence but how

Oh love a new nodule of neurosis

a posy of new roses proposing

a new era for us
nobis pacem

Oh my bodhisattva of new roses

you've saved me from my no-love neurosis

You've saved my old body from the fatwa

Let's lie down in a bed of roses

a pocketful that rings round the rosy

If this is the end of the world my love

let's fall down in bed and die

Let's give a new nod to nothing

Let's give a rosebud to nothing at all

How I love the new roses of nothing

Oh my bodhisattva of nothing

boding I hope no news but this

For our bodies and souls I hope nothing

but the weather of us in our peace

from Poem-a-Day

His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.

—Song of Songs 5:15

If you can see them, the snow-covered

cedars, crowning the hills, come

to the cabin between the two tallest,

their branches hooked

with the tantrums of crows.

~~

Will you find me without the pink and blue hydrangeas?

Will you find me without the spikes of St. Augustine grass?

Will you find me with the bloodied snow—where some frail thing was

raptured?

~~

If you find a stag and kill it,

throw its hind legs over your shoulder

and drag it to my cabin

between the tallest cedars.

Its blood on the snow is my voice pursuing you.

~~

I sleep on a cedar bed

with red fur blankets,

the wood of the gates of paradise,

wood which hid the naked couple.

Wood of shame. Wood of passage.

If you come, I'll press my hand

to your chest. A key

to the fittings of a lock.

~~

You knock at the door.

Break several cedar branches

and dust off the snow.

Bring in seven for the bedroom,

seven for the fireplace,

then rest your head on my chest—

even bare

branches can make a kind of summer.

from
Burrow Press Review

She crept into my room, took me outside into the mosquito night thick with the gutted hums of fishermen's wives, piercing the flesh of a sleepwalking sky.

She taught me that cobwebs are hammocks for spirits, a stop along the way to rest their weary skins, a knot on the thread of their pilgrimage to a place they had almost touched once.

In those days, a village could grow legs. Wedge itself deep into the throat of mountains where horses couldn't smell it, where footsteps couldn't sear its memory onto peeling roads.

from
Muzzle

—
lines from Craigslist personal ads

Hi. I react really badly to Pine-Sol. My eyelids swell up and my eyes

turn bright red. I am a REAL woman. It is January 1, 2014.

Educated men move to the top of the list.

We were both getting gas Wednesday evening. Fish counter, Giant Eagle:

My husband knows how attractive I find you.

You caught me singing loudly. Your name means “wind.”

This Christmas season marks my eighth year of being single.

Please have a car (truck preferably) and a job.

I collect candles and have two grown children who are on their own now

thank God. I already bought your birthday present—

It's a tie. With swordfish on it. There are certain things

my nose can't handle and smoking is one of them.

I signed up to volunteer at a local park for a Merry not Scary

trick or treat trail—it would be nice to have a companion.

Must be willing to be seen in public with a size 16 woman.

I'm a little bigger, but not sloppy-fat. Six one four five nine eight

two three one nine. I can swing a hammer and am a pro

at putting on makeup. Sexiness to me is you

plus a photographic memory. Do you have questions

you've always wanted to ask a woman? You left your receipt

and that's how I figured out your name. I was behind you

at the Lane Avenue Starbucks drive thru and you paid

for my grande nonfat no whip Mocha Frapp.

Your silver hair was gorgeous. Wow. The first time

we made love our souls connected and intertwined

and seemed to remember they were destined for one another.