The Best American Poetry 2013 Page 11

  He talked to himself in the middle of the room, the way he would talk to anyone who used hyperbole. He said: I tried suicide but it didn’t work. When he stuck out his hand I shook it.

  I walked with him down 8th and we parted at 21st. I thought of all the times I’d dozed in my car near the river, how cops would come to my window and tap, telling me it wasn’t safe for a woman alone in the middle of the day in a car near the river in a world like this one. I’m sober, I’d say, pointlessly.

  Now there’s snow in Chelsea and my soul leaps in something I’ve heard described as bliss. You’re never far, I realize, and here is the secret: If you’d lived you’d be asleep now beside me, bent around me like an aura, keeping me safer than I ever thought I had the right to be.

  from Columbia Poetry Review

  TIM SEIBLES

  Sotto Voce: Othello, Unplugged

  Iago, it was not Desdemona but myself

  I loved too much. So many battles found me

  unharmed, but the want of beauty struck

  like a kind of death. My rank only served

  to wound my head with bigger dreams.

  Didn’t I deserve better than the tricks

  every season brings? All my years

  had stumbled into shadow: my own

  dark face, harder and harder to find

  in this cold kingdom. You knew my soul

  ached for a woman who could conduct

  my blood—that I might be in love alive

  with the sharp sublime flinting

  her eyes. All mine! My heart nearly

  doubled until you made me doubt—

  not so much Desdemona as my own

  worthiness: if what I was couldn’t make love

  faithful I thought better to be done with

  her than to know myself a smaller man.

  from Alaska Quarterly Review

  VIJAY SESHADRI

  Trailing Clouds of Glory

  Even though I’m an immigrant,

  the angel with the flaming sword seems fine with me.

  He unhooks the velvet rope. He ushers me into the club.

  Some activity in the mosh pit, a banquet here, a panhandler there,

  a gray curtain drawn down over the infinitely curving lunette,

  Jupiter in its crescent phase, huge,

  a vista of a waterfall, with a rainbow in the spray,

  a few desultory orgies, a billboard

  of the snub-nosed electric car of the future—

  the inside is exactly the same as the outside,

  down to the m.c. in the yellow spats.

  So why the angel with the flaming sword

  bringing in the sheep and waving away the goats,

  and the men with the binoculars,

  elbows resting on the roll bars of jeeps,

  peering into the desert? There is a border,

  but it is not fixed, it wavers, it shimmies, it rises

  and plunges into the unimaginable seventh dimension

  before erupting in a field of Dakota corn. On the F train

  to Manhattan yesterday, I sat across

  from a family threesome Guatemalan by the look of them—

  delicate and archaic and Mayan—

  and obviously undocumented to the bone.

  They didn’t seem anxious. The mother was

  laughing and squabbling with the daughter

  over a knockoff smart phone on which they were playing a

  video game together. The boy, maybe three,

  disdained their ruckus. I recognized the scowl on his face,

  the retrospective, maskless rage of inception.

  He looked just like my son when my son came out of his mother

  after thirty hours of labor—the head squashed,

  the lips swollen, the skin empurpled and hideous

  with blood and afterbirth. Out of the inflamed tunnel

  and into the cold room of harsh sounds.

  He looked right at me with his bleared eyes.

  He had a voice like Richard Burton’s.

  He had an impressive command of the major English texts.

  I will do such things, what they are yet I know not,

  but they shall be the terrors of the earth, he said.

  The child, he said, is father of the man.

  from FIELD

  PETER JAY SHIPPY

  Western Civilization

  Lucas took one of those trips

  That Americans of a certain rage

  Must take—to find themselves. In Utah

  Lucas found himself marooned

  In the wilderness, 50 miles

  From society, covered in flop sweat

  And Cheetos dust, perched on the roof

  Of his teenaged Pinto as it neighed

  A swan song. His cowed cell phone crowed:

  Out of range, where seldom is heard

  A word. Should he hike back to Moab?

  Should he wait for his satellite

  To synch or should he scream like Job

  And curse the day he was born?

  To keep awake he stared at the sun

  And sneezed. After a week, he came to

  Believe that snakelets were zagzigging

  From his brain to his heart so that

  He felt what he thought. That was enough

  To move Lucas from hood to the earth.

  He mimed building a fire and cooking

  A can of beans. At dusk, Li Po

  Came down from the foothills, looking

  For Keith Moon. Lucas offered regrets

  And faux joe. They discussed The Who.

  “ ‘Substitute’ is their best song,” Lucas said.

  The poet disagreed: “ ‘Magic Bus’—

  The version on Live at Leeds.”

  From the arroyo Steve-the-saguaro

  Plucked his mesquite ukulele

  As he sang, “Thank My Lucky Stars

  I’m a Black Hole.” Lucas joined on

  The chorus and Li Po shadow waltzed.

  Later, over spirits, Li Po cupped

  His ear and whispered, “Do you hear

  The hoo-hah of hoof beats? The great herd

  Is here to lead Old Paint to that

  Better place ‘where the graceful whooper

  Goes gliding along like a handmaid

  In a blissful dream.’ Lo siento.”

  Then Lucas submitted to gravity.

  When the highway patrol found him

  He looked like a dried peach. They emptied

  Their canteens over his face until

  His skin sprung back, like a Colt pistol,

  To the lifelike. On the bus ride home

  Lucas slapped himself silly, chanting:

  I want it, I want it, I want it . . .

  from The Common

  MITCH SISSKIND

  Joe Adamczyk

  He was Joe Adamczyk and

  Eve Grabuskawa was her name.

  They owned a tavern called

  Adamczyk & Eve’s and they

  Called their sex life Grandma Fogarty.

  Nights as closing time approached

  Joe would say, “Eve, do you think

  Grandma Fogarty could drop by?”

  And Eve would often answer,

  “I would not be a bit surprised.”

  Years passed in just this way.

  Blatz, Schlitz, Pabst Blue Ribbon,

  Heileman’s Old Style Lager,

  Old Milwaukee—ten thousand

  Beer glasses filled and emptied.

  When pizza pies, as they were then known,

  Achieved popularity Joe and Eve offered

  The pies to customers and called them

  Polish pizzas for a laugh. Beer sales

  Skyrocketed as pizza pies appeared.

  Also available were White Owl cigars,

  And Cubs’ home runs were called

  White Owl Wallops by Jack Brickhouse

  On the TV set above
the bar.

  But the Cubs lost during the 1950s.

  In those days some wrong ideas were held.

  Around the time Kennedy was elected and

  Eve Grabuskawa began her menopause,

  Grandma Fogarty was told to take her leave.

  Grandma Fogarty was sent on her way.

  No more did Grandma Fogarty come calling

  At all hours of the night like a will-o’-the-wisp

  Fluttering, flickering, and then fully ablaze.

  As Eve and Joe’s union passed twenty years,

  Grandma Fogarty was nowhere to be found.

  But is this not a familiar story as married

  Couples age and passion’s flame sinks?

  Let us turn to the much more novel story

  Of how Joe Adamczyk, the Chicago bartender,

  Transformed himself into a man of ideas.

  No stale autodidact would he become,

  But a thinker comfortable and at home

  In a variety of disciplines, reading widely

  In libraries, copying pages, memorizing

  Long passages, and making diagrams.

  He would hardly sleep. He ate little and,

  As was true of Edmund Burke,

  Anyone trapped under a tree with him

  In a sudden rain would quickly see

  That Joe Adamczyk was a first-rate mind.

  With time his interests would encompass

  Gottlob Frege and Whitehead and also

  Alonzo Church and Church’s dissertation

  Awarded at Princeton in 1927 entitled

  Alternatives to Zermelo’s Assumption.

  His transformation began inauspiciously,

  Meandering for years like a stream.

  Paint-by-numbers was his first awakening:

  Sunsets, views of old windmills,

  Solitary reapers, the heads of noble steeds.

  In faux-impressionist style these emerged

  From the confusing higgledy-piggledy

  Of lines and numbers on canvas glued

  To cardboard. Joe could execute a large

  Paint-by-numbers landscape in one day.

  Somehow from his paintings a hunger

  For narrative gradually developed.

  He imagined stories of people who

  Lived in his paint-by-numbers cabins

  With smoke curling from the chimneys.

  Fascinated by the concept of man

  As a story-telling animal, he began

  Serious reading for the first time in his life.

  He read The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

  And Marjorie Morningstar, also by Wouk.

  He followed Wouk with the historical novels

  Of Irving Stone: Lust for Life, Men to Match

  My Mountains, and The Agony and the Ecstasy.

  He read the bestselling Magnificent Obsession

  And The Big Fisherman, both by Lloyd C. Douglas.

  He amused himself by considering life

  As a stage play. Was it tragedy or farce?

  He pondered the nature of storytelling,

  Then took the short leap, intellectually,

  To viewing the world itself as a narrative.

  Turning his attention to nonfiction,

  In Volume Two of Will and Ariel Durant’s

  The Story of Civilization he discovered

  The concept of telos in a discussion of

  Greek philosophy and the work of Aristotle.

  He gnawed the concept of telos like a dog

  With a bone. He toyed with the caprice

  That even mathematics might be teleological:

  An unwinding tale with a start, a middle,

  And perhaps an end returning to the beginning.

  He grew careless of his tavern and

  Heedless of Eve Grabuskawa, still his wife.

  He felt drawn to the used bookstores

  And hole-in-the-wall coffeehouses

  Near the University of Chicago.

  The day came when without a word

  Joe left Eve Grabuskawa and rented

  A room on South Harper Avenue.

  He immersed himself in the collegiate

  Ambience of the University of Chicago.

  In a coffeehouse called the Pegasus

  He saw a reproduction—displayed

  With ironic intent—of the portrait

  Entitled Arrangement in Grey and Black,

  Also known as Whistler’s Mother.

  He was shocked, was set back on his heels

  By the subject’s strong resemblance

  To Eve Grabuskawa. Had all those years

  Of marriage to Eve Grabuskawa been

  A dour arrangement in gray and black?

  It was the last time he ever thought

  Of Eve Grabuskawa, who evanesced

  Like the Cheshire Cat, and even his

  Attraction to women in general

  Deliquesced like Frosty the Snowman.

  Yet the Pegasus was known for pulchritude.

  It was the era of girls in black turtlenecks

  With love for jazz and folk music—

  Educated young women who watched

  Italian films at the all-night Clark Theater.

  There in the Pegasus one of those women

  Approached Joe, she stole up behind him,

  And in a voice rich with a kind of sarcastic

  Academese she asked, “Have you read

  Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead?”

  Joe’s look of baffled incomprehension

  Must have moved or amused her,

  For she pressed a dog-eared paperback

  Into his hand: the 1956 Mentor Classics

  Edition of Whitehead’s Dialogues.

  “Here, take my extra copy,” she said,

  Slinking out of the Pegasus as Joe

  Glanced at the book’s cover illustration

  Of Whitehead reading aloud from a

  Volume held in his liver-spotted hands.

  What a revelation Dialogues of

  Alfred North Whitehead proved to be!

  That very night, like a magic carpet,

  The book whisked Joe from his bare room

  To Whitehead’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  There, close by Harvard Yard, a journalist

  Named Lucien Price drew the eminent

  Mathematician into conversation ranging

  Across history, theology, philosophy,

  Politics, education, and of course mathematics.

  A truly fascinating man was Whitehead,

  In Joe’s opinion, and a man full of surprises.

  He believed, for example, that mathematics

  Beyond quadratic equations should remain

  The province of specialists—and Joe agreed.

  As a teenager Joe was tortured by algebra

  At Archbishop Weber High School but

  He never needed algebra to run the tavern.

  His crank-operated adding machine lasted

  Many years and did not even use electricity.

  In fact—and here he imagined himself

  Speaking to Alfred North Whitehead—

  Joe would extend Whitehead’s thinking

  And require no math instruction at all

  Past basic fractions and decimals.

  All through the night he read, pondering,

  Considering and reconsidering, accepting

  Many of Whitehead’s ideas, questioning

  Others, rejecting nothing out of hand though

  Some passages caused him to stamp his foot.

  Finally, as dawn broke over the university,

  Joe sighed and shut the Mentor paperback.

  He then noticed a name—Karen Schmolke—

  Lightly inscribed by some dying ballpoint

  On the front cover of the Dialogues.

  Schmolke, Schmolke. . . . Joe stroked his chin.

  Not an uncommon name on the Nort
hwest Side

  And here on the South Side more Schmolkes

  Might be found. Should he return the book?

  “Schmolke” would be in the phone directory.

  But no, by God. He would keep the book.

  It was a gift. It was now his prized possession.

  Phrases like, “In the nimbus of religious awe,”

  Which Whitehead used so gracefully,

  Made one forget he was a mathematician.

  Joe’s studies went on. Months passed and

  He spoke to no one. He ate tuna fish.

  He ordered pizza pies. Physically

  He diminished. Like a breeze in the trees

  His sixtieth birthday came and went.

  Yet he felt strong and growing stronger.

  The Dialogues whetted his appetite

  For more Whitehead. With difficulty,

  Sometimes pounding his head on the wall,

  He read Treatise on Universal Algebra.

  “The process of forming a synthesis between

  A and B, and then to consider A and B united,

  As a third thing, may be symbolized as AB.”

  As Joe’s familiarity with Whitehead grew,

  The significance of this proposition awed him.

  How striking that even in the Treatise,

  His earliest work, Whitehead referred to AB

  As symbolic of process rather than product.

  Yet the Treatise came thirty years before

  Whitehead’s greatest book, Process and Reality.

  On and on he read. The vigor with which he

  Once devoured Sidney Sheldon’s Rage of Angels

  Now energized his attack on Gottlob Frege’s

  Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, which he read

  Using Langensheidt’s German–English dictionary.

  For Joe, October of 1962 was noteworthy

  Not for the so-called Cuban missile crisis

  But for his completion of Ernest Nagel’s

  Problems in the Logic of Explanation.

  He found Nagel’s easy style very appealing.

  No sooner had he finished Nagel

  Than a still greater dreadnought hove

  Into view. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

  By Thomas Samuel Kuhn made Nagel

  Look like a Sunday school picnic.

  One midnight—or was it noon? for night

  And day were now indistinguishable—

  Joe in his reading came upon a name

  That, like no other, would inspire and

  Instruct him for many months to come.

  The name was Alonzo Church. Who was

  Church? Well-known, but not well-known.