Best American Poetry 2017 Read online

  EMILY VAN KLEY

  * * *

  Dear Skull

  beloved braincase, body’s bleeding heart

  helmet law

  dear ribs thick with implied meat, disused central

  railroad, reverse spec house unplumbed

  to propitious frame

  dear double-strung forearm, dear violin bow,

  dear pachyderm-eared pelvis,

  dear barnacle spine—

  tolerate this animate interlude, nervous tic of cell & swoosh,

  elasticity & vein

  & you’ll emerge, democratically beautiful,

  armature to nothing

  you’ll make the case for stasis, grow

  each year more ravishingly still

  yes, the flesh is weak,

  but you are forged of patience,

  ill inclined to cheer or mourn

  the extraneous

  —respiration, cartilage—as it trundles away

  from The Georgia Review

  WENDY VIDELOCK

  * * *

  Deconstruction

  The chickadee is all about truth.

  The finch is a token. The albatross

  is always an omen. The kestrel is mental,

  the lark is luck, the grouse is dance,

  the goose is quest. The need for speed

  is given the peregrine, and the dove’s

  been blessed with the feminine.

  The quail is word and culpability.

  The crane is the dean of poetry.

  The swift is keen agility,

  the waxwing mere civility,

  the sparrow a nod to working class

  nobility. The puffin’s the brother

  of humor and prayer, the starling the student

  of Baudelaire. The mockingbird

  is the sound of redress, the grackle the father

  of excess. The flicker is rhythm,

  the ostrich is earth, the bluebird a simple

  symbol of mirth. The oriole

  is the fresh start. The magpie is prince

  of the dark arts. The swallow is warmth,

  home, protection—the vulture the priest

  of purification, the heron a font

  of self-reflection. The swisher belongs

  to the faery realm. Resourcefulness

  is the cactus wren. The pheasant is sex,

  the chicken is egg, the eagle is free,

  the canary the bringer of ecstasy.

  The martin is peace. The stork is release.

  The swan is the patron of grace and discretion.

  The loon is the watery voice of the moon.

  The owl’s the keeper of secrets, grief,

  and fresh fallen snow, and the crow

  has the bones of the ancestral soul.

  from The Hopkins Review

  LUCY WAINGER

  * * *

  Scheherazade.

  after Richard Siken

  comes wave after wave after wave the derivative & harvest, the myrtle tops of sandstorms & milk glasses, apple, horse & song, list, listen, light leaks from the spaces between the bubbles—call it foam—tender pocket of yes yes yes call it flesh—eat tonight & you’ll still have to eat tomorrow, eat tonight & it still won’t be over—eat tonight: peaches bloom even in the dark, as wet as a girl—hands & feet, horse & song, the same hole bandaged over & over, not a wound but its absence—a sum of histories—the nights colliding like marbles, & if there is an end then it’s too dark to see, if there is an end then it’s too bright to see, hands folding, unfolding, & you, Scheherazade!, milky goddess of recursion, best DJ in the city, you spin records, spin heads, cross legs & cross deserts, & always pause just moments before he

  from Poetry

  CRYSTAL WILLIAMS

  * * *

  Double Helix

  ~for Joseph J. Freeman and Richard P. Williams

  ~after Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series & Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns

  ~I have walked through many lives,

  some of them my own,

  Stanley Kunitz, from “The Layers”

  I.

  At night, my father played piano & sang, his voice our raft on a quiet lake, an island of gentleness & because gentleness is a choice, I know something—, I have told you something essential about my father & the history of black people in America. & because he looked at my mother & me as if we were divine, brilliant, bright children of god & because if gesture & spirit have weight, my father’s equaled two thousand blooming peonies, I have told you something about faith & the history of black people in America.

  Scientists are full of news these days: We are rotting fruit lain to ground. In each breath we inhale thousands of humans collected on the tongues of leaves, in the pink eyes of peonies, on the powdery backs of pollen. Exhaled. With each draw, a millennium of history enters us & we cannot control, can only harness whom or what we host. Our traumas, the bright blue mysticisms & burnt orange murmurs, our joys & muddled currencies are archived in genetic code.

  I am not of my father’s blood but am of my father, which is also the history of black people in America.

  At my 6th birthday party, the parents drank martinis & sangria in white linen & silk as we played on the Slip-n-Slide while the desolate beast next door snarled & snapped through the fence, our jubilation magnifying his rage. He leapt & whipped into an ever-reddening frenzy. & because pain will out, & because hatred will out, & because my father sensed a shift in the air because he deeply believed my mother & me divine & the faithful have second sight, & because some Alabama-born malice had taught him a lesson to do with mercilessness, the way danger wets the wind, my father tore into the house emerging with a finger on a gun’s trigger. He stood sentinel the rest of the day, gun slack on his thigh, squinting at the feverishness at the fence—as we leapt & shrieked & ate cake.

  This is what I was trying to explain to Avi when I sent him that book about the black migration from the American south. I was trying to say: we have cause to care for & track our wounds. To be anything other than enraged or dead is to be a success if black in America. To become a refuge, a safe harbor is to be a miracle if black in America.

  His ailing father listened quietly as Avi read aloud passages about the vicious hand of the south & burnings & bodies & swinging, cold chicken & packed trains, escapees casting towards a northern brink they could not fully understand, away from an ending they did. & because hatred will out & because we cannot control whom or what we host. & because his father is a holocaust survivor, in a moment of lucidity, he asked sadly: “Son, why do you insist on reading me my story?”

  So we, the Jewish son and African daughter, mouths bursting & soured with flowers & fauna, rotting leaves & peonies & men banging at the midnight door, stood as an ecosystem of gas & fire, double helixes & light, the story of-, the choices of-, our fathers knotted between us. & because I wanted to touch his face as my own, & because I felt his skin shudder as my own, understood his father’s stubble as my own & because what are we if not our brothers? & because there has always been binding & burning & escaping & enduring & because I know no better way to understand the history of humans than to tell you the story of my father’s choice to be a raft on a lake, which, no matter what more you might be told, is the true story of black thought, black life, black people in America.

  II.

  At night my father sang & because in each breath we inhale thousands of humans on the powdery backs of pollen I have told you something essential & because he looked at my mother & me as if we were divine & because we are really only rotting fruit lain to ground & because if gesture & spirit have weight my father’s equaled two thousand blooming peonies & at my 6th birthday party the beast next door snarled & snapped through the fence & because our mysticisms & currencies are archived genetic code & because hatred outs & because some malice had taught him mercilessness my father emerged from the house a gun’s trigger & for the rest of the day stood as a safe
harbor glaring feverishness down as we leapt & shrieked & then Avi read passages from the book & because we cannot control whom or what we host & because Avi’s father is a holocaust survivor he asked “Son, why?” we stood as an ecosystem of double helixes Alabama & Holocaust knotted between us & because I wanted to touch his face as my own as if we were divine & because I felt his skin shudder as my own as if we were brilliant bright gods understood his father’s stubble as my own & because what are we? & because there has always been binding & escaping & enduring & because I am not of my father’s blood but am of Avi’s father I know no better way to explain the history of humans than to tell you at night my father played piano & sang his voice our raft on a quiet lake an island of gentleness & gentleness is a choice is a miracle in America.

  from The American Poetry Review

  CHRISTIAN WIMAN

  * * *

  Prelude

  Church or sermon, prayer or poem:

  the failure of religious feeling is a form.

  The failure of religious feeling is a form

  of love that, though it could not survive

  the cataclysmic joy of its inception,

  nevertheless preserves its own sane something,

  a space in which the grievers gather,

  inviolate ice that the believers weather:

  church or sermon, prayer or poem.

  Finer and finer the meaningless distinctions:

  theodicies, idiolects, books, books, books.

  I need a space for unbelief to breathe.

  I need a form for failure, since it is what I have.

  from The Sewanee Review

  MONICA YOUN

  * * *

  Greenacre

  Gold flecked, dark-rimmed, opaque—

     like a toad’s

          stolid unsurprise—

     the lake never blinks

             its hazel eye.

  Man-made, five feet deep,

  the exact square footage of a city block.

     Lakewater murk

           precipitates

     a glinting silt of algae,

             specks of soil,

  minnows wheeling in meticulous formation,

  the occasional water snake, angry, lost.

     Two pale figures in the lake,

                half-

     submerged, viewed

             at an oblique angle.

  At thirteen, I spent summer afternoons

  reading in my treehouse, a simple platform

     without walls,

           like a hunting blind,

     a white painted birdhouse,

               without walls

  so no bird ever visited it.

  Leaf-light dissolving in still water.

     Two pale figures in the lake,

                half-

     seen, chest-deep

           in the mirroring

  lakewater so they seemed all bare

  shoulders, all lake-slick hair.

     Standing face to face—

              not embracing,

     but his upper arm

            entering the water,

  half-concealed, at an angle that must have meant

  he was touching her, beneath the surface.

     Unblinking, the lake

             giving nothing away,

     caring nothing

           for whatever shape

  displaced it, unremembering,

  uncurious. Did his arm bend,

     and, if so,

         to what exact degree?

     At what point

          did his hidden hand

  intersect her half-submerged body?

  The mirrored horizontal of the lake is where

     memory presses itself

             against its limit,

     where hypothesis,

            overeager,

  rushes to fill the void, to extrapolate

  from what is known. Because I knew them both:

     Ann Towson,

           a year ahead of me,

     scrawny, skilled

           at gymnastics, gold

  badges emblazoning the sleeve of her green

  leotard, her chest as flat as mine.

     And John Hollis—

            the most popular boy

     in our class,

          his tan forearms emerged

  gold-dusted from rolled-up shirtsleeves.

  He fronted a band called White Minority,

     which played at weekend parties

                 across the lake.

     We shared a bus stop,

             a subdivision.

  Once he spoke to me, the day I swapped

  my glasses for contact lenses. Something’s different,

     he said, eyes narrowing,

              Yeah, no kidding!

     I snapped back,

           turning away. Later,

  my best friend scolded me for rudeness.

  Every day, boarding the school bus,

     John Hollis

          faced the bus driver

     with a bland smirk—

             What’s up, black bitch?—

  as if shoving her face down into a puddle

  scummed with humiliation, which was always

     dripping from her,

            dripping down on her—

     she hunched her shoulders

               against it, narrow-eyed.

  Every day, some kids smirked,

  some kids hunched down, stolid, unblinking.

     Two pale figures in a lake,

               half-

     witnessed, half-conjectured,

                a gold arm

  like sunlight slanting down through lakewater.

  But now a clinging, sedimentary skin

     outlines every contour:

              what is known.

     No longer faceless shapes

               displacing water,

  the voids they once inhabited can’t be lifted

  dripping from the lake, rinsed clean

     enough for use.

           What drips from them

     coats the lake

          with a spreading greenness—

  an opaque glaze lidding the open eye.

  from New England Review

  C. DALE YOUNG

  * * *

  Precatio simplex

  in memoriam Mavis Clarke (1936–2016)

  Father, Holy Father, Prime Mover, God Almighty—

  I have forgotten what to call you. Standing here

  before the Pacific, I am tempted to call you

  Poseidon, Green Neptune, someone I understand

  more clearly than I have ever understood You.

  The sea’s slow tide, its almost-hidden riptide dragging

  handfuls of foam under the surface, has no answers

  for me. Sitting here on the crest of the sand dunes,


  there is no one by my side. I have come here

  alone because I remember what the nuns

  taught me, that You do not appreciate a show

  of these things. Not success with words, not

  the lottery prize now worth millions, not the

  usual things I am sure others request: I come now

  to ask for something unthinkable for one like me.

  Almost 3,000 miles away, near the brighter coast

  of this godless country, my aunt’s pain is

  outpacing the cancer tearing her abdomen apart.

  No amount of morphine can break it. I do not

  come to ask You for miracles. I know better

  than to ask for miracles. I know the world

  is filled with miracles. No, no, not miracles.

  Take her right now, Father. Here stands the cancer doctor

  asking you to take his aunt because he cannot stomach

  the idea of her in so much pain. Send me a small sign:

  wheeling gulls, a sudden gust of wind, anything. Anything.

  Just this once, Holy Father, don’t let me down.

  from The Collagist

  DEAN YOUNG

  * * *

  Infinitives

  To pick up where Tomaž left off.

  To pick off another oniony layer

  down to the eye. To chomp.

  To walk around all day buttoned wrong.

  Light is coming from rocks, the little froggie

  jumps even though he hasn’t been wound up.

  Here’s where the wolves before us drank.

  Too long, we have cock-blocked

  day from mating with night.

  The world is bluer than I thought.