The Best American Poetry 2015 (12 page)

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 them—

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 left—

A door in a rock through which you could see

—

another rock,

laved by the weedy tide.

Like filming breathing—thirty seconds

of tidal drag, fingering

the smaller stones

down the black beach—what color

was that, aquamarine?

Starfish spread

their salmon-colored hands.

—

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 heaved—

They were the most boring movies ever made.

I wanted

to mount them together and press play.

—

Thirty seconds of waves colliding.

Kelp

with its open attitudes, seals

riding the swells, curved in a row

just under the water—

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