The Best American Poetry 2012 (23 page)
Read The Best American Poetry 2012 Online
Authors: David Lehman
Artless
is my heart. A stranger
berry there never was,
tartless.
Gone sour in the sun,
in the sunroom or moonroof,
roofless.
No poetry. Plain. No
fresh, special recipe
to bless.
All I've ever made
with these hands
and life, less
substance, more rind.
Mostly rim and trim,
meatless
but making much smoke
in the old smokehouse,
no less.
Fatted from the day,
overripe and even
toxic at eve. Nonetheless,
in the end, if you must
know, if I must bend,
waistless,
to that excruciation.
No marvel, no harvest
left me speechless,
yet I find myself
somehow with heart,
aloneless.
With heart,
fighting fire with fire,
flightless.
That loud hub of us,
meat stub of us, beating us
senseless.
Spectacular in its way,
its way of not seeing,
congealing dayless
but in everydayness.
In that hopeful haunting,
(a lesser
way of saying
in darkness) there is
silencelessness
for the pressing question.
Heart, what art you?
War, star, part? Or less:
playing
a part, staying apart
from the one who loves,
loveless.
from
The New Yorker
Our Posthumous Lives
for Mac
The first words you ever said
To me? “I like lower case Edgar
Less than upper case Edgar.” Last night
I gave your book to a stranger.
I do that sometimes. I carry
A copy on the trolley or bus,
And choose some likely suspect
And pass it to them as I exit.
Don't tsk, it's not against the lawâ
Yet; plus, it's only between the jaws
That you exist, dead boy. I love
Your poems and wish you weren't
Weren't. Now, you're a little air
Lesson, this strange glitch attractor.
Toward the end you forgot a lot.
Apparently, if you overdo
Heroin, later, you can't smell
Madeleines. Something to do
With the sugar, Sugar? When I rub
Our lucky Krugerrand I recall
Sticking it through the hole between
Your front teeth. I miss beauty.
By the by, who was Edgar?
from
The Literary Review
Everything That Ever Was
Like a wide wake, rippling
Infinitely into the distance, everything
That ever was still is, somewhere,
Floating near the surface, nursing
Its hunger for you and me
And the now we've named
And made a place of.
Like groundswell sometimes
It surges up, claiming a little piece
Of what we stand on.
Like the wind the rains ride in on,
It sweeps across the leaves,
Pushing in past the windows
We didn't slam quickly enough.
Dark water it will take days to drain.
It surprised us last night in my sleep.
Brought food, a gift. Stood squarely
There between us, while your eyes
Danced toward mine, and my hands
Sat working a thread in my lap.
Up close, it was so thin. And when finally
You reached for me, it backed away.
Bereft, but not vanquished. After it left,
All I wanted was your broad back
To steady my limbs. Today,
Whatever it was seems slight, a trail
Of cloud rising up and off like smoke.
And the trees that watch as I write
Sway in the breeze, as if all that stirs
Under the soil is a little tickle of knowledge
The great blind roots will tease through
And push eventually past.
from
Zoland Poetry
The Drag Queen Dies in New Castle
Returning home
at twenty-nine, you made
a bed your throne, your
brothers carrying you
from room to room,
each one in turn holding
the glass to your lips,
though you were the oldest
of the brood. Buried
by the barn, you vanished,
but the church women
bought your wigs
for the Christmas pageant
that year, your blouses sewn
into a quilt under which
two newlyweds lay,
skin to skin as if they
carried some sense
of your undressing. Skirts
swayed where sheep grazed
the plow and the farmer
reached between legs
to pull out the calf,
fluid gushing to his feet.
On lines across town,
dresses flapped empty
over mulch while you
kept putting on your show,
bones undressing like
it's never over, throwing
off your last great shift
where a fox snake sank
its teeth into a corn
toad's back, the whole
field flush with clover.
from
The Gettysburg Review
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter