The Best American Poetry 2019 Read online

  An entire alphabet can be stuttered in a few gunshots.

  So often it’s the boyfriend spiraling down the chamber:

  his words lodged in the barrel behind the bullet fast and frenzied.

  We all wonder why the trash at the dump

  never stops burning, why the blind look to the wind.

  The rain stumbles outside the window:

  the tombé before the heavy pas de bourrée of storm.

  Basilica di San Marco in Venice speaks

  two languages: Greek and Latin, and I am jealous

  of those with two tongues like the white pine

  whose trunk cracks and whose needles whistle

  to the bilingual nuthatch.

  The sun torches the tips of the trees

  on a descent from a world where no woman is safe.

  Even the man who loved her wanted her dead.

  The burning bush is an invasive species,

  yet cardinals and chickadees flock to its red seeds

  and flamed leaves in the fall. I should cut it to a stump

  and rot its roots, but instead I admire its show of color,

  watching the damage as it spreads.

  from New England Review

  MAJOR JACKSON

  * * *

  In Memory of Derek Alton Walcott

  1

  Island traffic slows to a halt

  as screeching gulls reluctant

  to lift heavenward

  congregate like mourners in salt-

  crusted kelp, as the repellent

  news spreads to colder shores:

  Sir Derek is no more.

  Bandwidths, clogged by streaming

  tributes, carry the pitch

  of his voice, less so his lines, moored

  as they are to a fisherman’s who strains

  in the Atlantic

  then hearing, too, drops his rod, the reel

  unspooling like memory till

  his gaped mouth matches

  the same look in his wicker creel,

  that frozen shock, eyes marble

  a different catch.

  Pomme-Arac trees, sea grapes,

  and laurels sway, wrecked having lost

  one who heard their leaves’

  rustic dialect as law, grasped

  their bows as edicts from the first

  garden that sowed faith—

  and believe he did, astonished

  at the bounty of light, like Adam,

  over Castries, Cas-

  en-Bas, Port of Spain, the solace

  of drifting clouds, rains like hymns

  then edens of grass,

  ornate winds on high verandas

  carrying spirits who survived

  that vile sea crossing,

  who floated up in his stanzas,

  the same souls Achille saw alive,

  the ocean their coffin—

  faith, too, in sunsets, horizons

  whose auric silhouettes divide

  and spawn reflection,

  which was his pen’s work, devotion

  twinned with delight, divining

  like a church sexton.

  Poetry is empty without

  discipline, without piety,

  he cautions somewhere,

  even his lesser rhymes amount

  to more than wrought praise but amplify

  his poems as high prayer.

  So as to earn their wings above,

  pelicans move into tactical

  formation then fly

  low like jet fighters in honor of

  him, nature’s mouth, their aerial

  salute and goodbye.

  2

  Derek, each journey we make,

  whether Homeric or not,

  follows the literal wake

  of some other craft’s launch,

  meaning to sense the slightest

  motions in unmoving waters

  is half the apprentice’s

  training before he oars

  out, careful to coast, break-

  ing English’s calm surface.

  What you admired in Eakins

  in conversation at some café

  (New Orleans? Philly?) was

  how his rower seemed to listen

  to ripples on the Schuylkill as

  much as to his breath, both silent

  on his speaking canvas.

  Gratitude made you intolerant

  of the rudeness of the avant-

  garde or any pronouncements

  of the “new,” for breathing is

  legacy and one’s rhythm,

  though the blood’s authentic

  transcription, hems us

  to ancestors like a pulse. This,

  I fathom, is what you meant

  when exalting the merits

  of a fellow poet: that man

  is at the center of language,

  at the center of the song.

  Yet a reader belongs to another age

  and, likely to list our wrongs

  more than the strict triumphs

  of our verse, often retreats

  like a vanished surf, spume

  frothing on a barren beach.

  The allure of an artist’s works

  these days is measured

  by his ethics, thus our books,

  scrubbed clean, rarely mention

  the shadowless dark that settles

  like an empire over a page. Your nib,

  like the eye of a moon, flashed into sight

  the source of Adam’s barbaric cry.

  3

  Departed from paradise,

  each Nobody a sacrifice,

  debating whose lives matter

  whereon a golden platter

  our eyes roll dilated by hate

  from Ferguson to Kuwait.

  You, maître, gave in laughter

  but also for the hereafter

  an almost unbearable

  truth: we are the terrible

  history of warring births

  destined for darkest earth.

  So as cables of optic lights

  bounce under oceans our white

  pain, codified as they are

  and fiber-layered in Kevlar,

  we hear ourselves in you,

  where “race” exiles us to

  stand lost as single nations

  awaiting your revelations.

  A shirtless boy, brown as bark,

  gallops alongshore, bareback

  and free on a horse until he fades,

  a shimmering, all that remains.

  from The Paris Review and Poetry Daily

  ILYA KAMINSKY

  * * *

  from “Last Will and Testament”

  1.

  Because cemeteries are too pricy

  I would like to be deposited on a public bench

  and not in the earth

  but in the middle of September

  at the end of wonder:

  wrap me in newspapers, darlings,

  and run!

  I want to live my death

  on a public bench

  next to a barbershop—

  die, when it is time to cut my hair so I can save four dollars!

  I was always happy in barbershops.

  Now happiness,

  come blow your nose in my hands—

  I want to die on a public bench—

  those who watch me in

  the street

  say

  something in him wants to be entered and picked clean.

  Be careless, life!

  Wrap me in newspaper on a park bench

  so some enterprising schoolchild

  can filch from my eyes

  two dimes

  and replace them with two US postal stamps.

  3.

  From a park bench I watch my pregnant wife chase pigeons on the piazza

  Katie!

  You have got nerve!
r />   In my final 17 hours:

  I have so much love, too much love, I cannot control myself!

  Plan A:

  I shoot myself. And the earth is mine.

  but the earth has never been mine!

  Those who say the planet is theirs should pay higher taxes!

  Katie and I are kissing at 3 oclock and at 4 oclock and at 5 oclock

  our kisses interrupted only

  by the ritual blowing of my nose

  Plan B:

  —I want a pillow-fight

  with a woman lit by freckles! I want to live in a large apartment of her mouth.

  A serious girl

  who when in the middle of the night I wake her with kisses

  laughs.

  You must control yourself, sir.

  Professor, you must control yourself!

  8.

  I, a person exhausted by his own happiness—

  I have so much love this morning, I

  cannot control myself

  In these last eight minutes

  from a park bench

  I want to step again and again on cement of life

  I, in this my 41st year of trespass on earth,

  watch death:

  in a body

  that stands on a platform

  watches death, like a lone cross-country train, transport a spark.

  9.

  Snow has eaten 1/4 of me

  yet I believe

  against all evidence

  these snowflakes

  are my letters of recommendation

  here is a man worth falling on.

  from The Paris Review

  RUTH ELLEN KOCHER

  * * *

  We May No Longer Consider the End

  The time of birds died sometime between

  When Robert Kennedy, Jr., disappeared and the Berlin

  Wall came down. Hope was pro forma then.

  We’d begun to talk about shelf-life. Parents

  Thought they’d gotten somewhere. I can’t tell you

  What to make of this now without also saying that when

  I was 19 and read in a poem that the pure products of America go crazy

  I felt betrayed. My father told me not to whistle because I

  Was a girl. He gave me my first knife and said to keep it in my right

  Hand and to keep my right hand in my right pocket when I walked at night.

  He showed me the proper kind of fist and the sweet spot on the jaw

  To leverage my shorter height and upper-cut someone down.

  There were probably birds on the long walk home but I don’t

  Remember them because pastoral is not meant for someone

  With a fist in each pocket waiting for a reason.

  from Poem-a-Day

  DEBORAH LANDAU

  * * *

  Soft Targets

  It was good getting drunk in the undulant city.

  Whiskey lopping off the day’s fear.

  Dawn came with an element of Xanax.

  Dusk came and I dumbed myself down.

  Where there were brides, grooms—

  these bored boysoldiers with iPhones and guns.

  I’m a soft target, you’re a soft target,

  and the city has a hundred hundred thousand softs.

  The pervious skin, the softness of the face,

  the wrist inners, the hips, the lips, the tongue,

  the global body,

  its infinite permutable softnesses.

  Soft targets, soft readers, drinkers,

  pedestrians in rain—

  In the failing light we walked out

  and now we share a room with it

  (would you like to read to me in the soft,

  would you like to enter me in the soft,

  would you like a lunch of me in the soft,

  in its long delirium?).

  The good news is we have each other.

  The bad news is: Kalashnikov assault rifles,

  submachine guns, pistols, ammunition,

  four boxes packed with thousands of small steel balls.

  O you who want to slaughter us,

  we’ll be dead soon enough what’s the rush.

  And this our only world.

  As you can see it has a problem.

  As you can see the citizens are hanging heavy.

  The citizens’ minds are out.

  Eros, Eros, in Paris we stayed all night

  in a seraphic cocktail haze

  despite the blacked-out theater,

  the shuttered panes.

  Tonight we’re the most tender of soft targets,

  pulpy with alcohol and all a-sloth.

  Monsieur can we get a few more?

  There are unmistakable signs of trouble,

  but we have days and days still.

  Let’s be giddy, maybe. Time lights a little fire.

  We are animal hungry down to our intricate bones.

  O beautiful habits of living, let me dwell on you awhile.

  from The American Poetry Review

  QURAYSH ALI LANSANA

  * * *

  Higher Calling

  how you, heathen passenger, gonna help the nun

  sitting across the aisle on a LA bound flight

  dressed in drab habit, bone scapular & bright belief

  ovahstand she needs to get off the damn cell phone?

  her tongue central american cataclysm & barrio Jah.

  who am i to tell a mercy angel the rule she must close

  her flip phone? my sisters held sister bertrille close

  in the early seventies. sally field as flying nun

  could do no wrong. when she took to sky, Almighty Jah

  lifting palms to bring her near, frock as kite, flight

  rebuking surf board. the vestal in 13D cups phone

  with large hands, hands large enough for holy, belief

  like my auntie, mama’s third sister, who shares belief

  and the flying nun’s last name. pastor bonnell is closer

  to the Prophet. her whisper fragile on the telephone

  when we talk of mama. both labored for stiff anglican nuns

  over thirty years at the hospital their nine children took flight

  in a small town uncertain if black people could know Jah.

  uncles, cousins and friends offer daily petitions to Jah

  to climb inside aunties breaths, feed her good news and belief.

  she is the last matriarch and we are selfish. please don’t fly

  from us, we pray. we want to shelter her, wrap her close

  in cotton and light. weekday mornings they come, the nuns

  who wash her body, chanting glory. on weekends they phone

  hallelujahs. if i ask, will this saint three feet away send phone

  mercies to my auntie? will frail pastor bonnell decipher Jah

  in spanish? she’s sending texts at 45,000 feet now, this rogue nun

  who exorcises airplane procedure. the flight attendant believes

  otherwise. his syrupy sweet requests fall mute as he bends close

  yet again. his tongue is not sanctified. this anointed saint flies

  heavenward hourly. only twice daily for the exasperated flight

  attendant. who is the service provider for sister’s cell phone

  hotline to Jesus? five hours on southwest, embrace of sun close

  and blinding. city of the angels not far. before every take-off i ask Jah

  for traveling mercies, beg for a protective hedge in queasy belief

  give thanks for safe journey. extra blessings to sit next to a nun.

  from Gulf Coast

  LI-YOUNG LEE

  * * *

  The Undressing

  Listen,

  she says.

  I’m listening, I answer

  and kiss her chin.

  Obviously, you’re not, she says.

  I kiss her nose and both of her eyes.


  I can do more than one thing at a time,

  I tell her. Trust me.

  I kiss her cheeks.

  You’ve heard of planting lotuses in a fire, she says.

  You’ve heard of sifting gold from sand.

  You know

  perfumed flesh, in anklets, and spirit, unadorned,

  take turns at lead and follow,

  one in action and repose.

  I kiss her neck and behind her ear.

  But there are things you need reminded of, she says.

  So remind me, Love, I say.

  There are stories we tell ourselves, she says.

  There are stories we tell others.

  Then there’s the sum

  of our hours

  death will render legible.

  I unfasten the top button of her blouse

  and nibble her throat with more kisses.

  Go on, I say, I’m listening.

  You better be, she says,

  You’ll be tested.

  I undo her second,

  her third, fourth, and last buttons quickly,

  and then lean in

  to kiss her collarbone.

  She says, The world

  is a story that keeps beginning.

  In it, you have lived severally disguised:

  bright ash, dark ash, mirror, moon;

  a child waking in the night to hear the thunder;

  a traveler stopping to ask the way home.

  And there’s still

  the butterfly’s night sea-journey to consider.

  She says,

  There are dreams we dream alone.

  There are dreams we dream with others.

  Then there’s the lilac’s secret

  life of fire, of God

  accomplished in the realm

  of change and desire.

  Pushing my hand away from her breast,

  she keeps talking.

  Alone, you dream in several colors: Blue,

  wishing, and following the river.

  In company, you dream in several others:

  The time you don’t have.

  The time left over.

  And the time it takes.

  Your lamp has a triple wick:

  remembering, questioning, and sheltering