The Best American Poetry 2015 (7 page)

I knocked out Sleeping Beauty, fucking cocked

her on the jaw. She fell into the briar.

Pussy. I found her prince. I up and socked

him, too. I called each one of them a liar.

I damned the spindle's hundred years of sleep

because I rarely sleep. I cursed the birds

who took their heads from out beneath their heap

of wings. When lovers look, they need no words.

And when a hound came running after me,

a Redbone with a smile bearing its teeth

so white, I woke up with the majesty

of a princess who's lying underneath

a spell of something better still to come.

My eyes were blurry, my mouth dry and dumb.

from
Tupelo Quarterly

In a black        tank top

my man           can say

just about        anything.

Stuff like,        
let's watch

football
, or        
this shrimp

is overcooked
or
see how many pull-ups I

can do.
In a black tank top, he looks fifteen

years younger, looks like all those silly boys

I knew in school. When he gets home from

playing ball, I want to crawl inside the bed

of his parents' beat-up red pick-up truck &

make out until his almost beard scratches

at me, leaves dappled marks on my cheeks

& throat for friends to stare at for days. In a

black tank top, I can watch him talk about

beams, joists, & trusses for hours cause the

shadows of his arm press against the ribbed

cotton like a boy presses a girl up against a

steely locker, hard before Mrs. Toner's home

room.  I want to shout, 
Damn son! Looking

like that should be illegal
. And,
Break me off

some of that
. Instead I try to be the shy little

thing, smile & blush like the good girls do. In

a black tank top, though, my man always gets

me to offer a hand to pull it off. He trembles:

a  boy  undoing  his  first  real  belt.

from
Rattle

Today my brother brought over a piece of the ark

wrapped in a white plastic grocery bag.

He set the bag on my dining table, unknotted it,

peeled it away, revealing a foot-long fracture of wood.

He took a step back and gestured toward it

with his arms and open palms—

It's the ark
, he said.

You mean Noah's ark?
I asked.

What other ark is there?
he answered.

Read the inscription
, he told me,

it tells what's going to happen at the end.

What end?
I wanted to know.

He laughed,
What do you mean, “what end”?

The end end.

Then he lifted it out. The plastic bag rattled.

His fingers were silkened by pipe blisters.

He held the jagged piece of wood so gently.

I had forgotten my brother could be gentle.

He set it on the table the way people on television

set things when they're afraid those things might blow up

or go off—he set it right next to my empty coffee cup.

It was no ark—

it was the broken end of a picture frame

with a floral design carved into its surface.

He put his head in his hands—

I shouldn't show you this—

God, why did I show her this?

It's ancient—O, God
,

this is so old.

Fine
, I gave in,
Where did you get it?

The girl
, he said.
O, the girl.

What girl?
I asked.

You'll wish you never knew
, he told me.

I watched him drag his wrecked fingers

over the chipped flower-work of the wood—

You should read it. But, O, you can't take it—

no matter how many books you've read.

He was wrong. I could take the ark.

I could even take his marvelously fucked fingers.

The way they almost glittered.

It was the animals—the animals I could not take—

they came up the walkway into my house,

cracked the doorframe with their hooves and hips,

marched past me, into my kitchen, into my brother,

tails snaking across my feet before disappearing

like retracting vacuum cords into the hollows

of my brother's clavicles, tusks scraping the walls,

reaching out for him—wildebeests, pigs,

the oryxes with their black matching horns,

javelinas, jaguars, pumas, raptors. The ocelots

with their mathematical faces. So many kinds of goat.

So many kinds of creature.

I wanted to follow them, to get to the bottom of it,

but my brother stopped me—

This is serious
, he said.

You have to understand.

It can save you.

So I sat down, with my brother wrecked open like that,

and two-by-two the fantastical beasts

parading him. I sat, as the water fell against my ankles,

built itself up around me, filled my coffee cup

before floating it away from the table.

My brother—teeming with shadows—

a hull of bones, lit only by tooth and tusk,

lifting his ark high in the air.

from
Poetry

such a beautiful

day

and I'm not

fornicating

—Adília Lopes

I have goose bumps

from the breeze

coming into the window

which is a kind of fornication

but who am I kidding

a breeze is not even a kiss

especially a breeze

strained through a screen

I would have a better chance

out on the street

where I could perhaps meet

someone who wanted

to fornicate

with me or someone like me

and I could pretend

I suppose

even to be someone else

give a fake name

so the man would never

find me again

it is a little scary to say

to a stranger,
Hey, do you

want to fornicate?

especially if you are a woman

and you want to fornicate

with a man

what kind of a man

would say yes to such a request

maybe a violent one

maybe no decent man at all

since the request is pretty bold

and I suppose I would

look crazy

men are leery of crazy women

and I can't blame them

I could promise a man

that I wouldn't

stalk him or call him ever

that I am just in it

for the fornication

but would he believe me

even I don't really believe me

because what if the fornication

was a success and I woke up

the next morning

another beautiful day

and I wasn't satisfied

with just the memory

of fornication

and wanted another round

or what if it was lousy

outside

and since I'd given a fake name

insisting I didn't want to know his

I had to look for a new fornicator

this time while lugging an umbrella

this time I could look for a woman

with the same sad look I have

when I want to fornicate

and if she agreed

we could step out of the rain

into her apartment

it might not be as scary

as approaching another man

or as big a leap over a puddle

Anne Sexton wrote

Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself . . .

then Adília Lopes wrote

once I was beautiful now I'm myself

then I wrote

fornication is for all the beautiful

and unbeautiful selves

on both beautiful

and unbeautiful days

not that I knew what I meant

it's just that sometimes

it's easy to feel unbeautiful

when you have unmet desires

or embarrassed that you have

such desires at all

I once wrote about a lover

who would pet his cat

more than me

and my friend said

this poem is too vulnerable

I feel as though I should throw a coat

over this poem

she was right of course

and I tore it up

I only remember it today

because in her author's photo

Adília Lopes holds a cat

I am allergic to cats

the lover had to wash his hands

those many years ago

before he could touch me

Kurt Vonnegut wrote

that every character needs

to want something

even if that something

is only a glass of water

I want to fornicate

I get up from my chair

and press my face against

the cool screen

until there is a dirty grid on my cheek

as though I've slept

in fifty tiny beds

from
The Literary Review

for Amiri Baraka

 Old Ark,

how funky it was, all those animals, two of every kind,

and all that waste, the human shit somebody had to clean up.

Somebody, some love you hugged before fear,

the fear of an in-sani-nation, the No Blues, ruined your bowels.