Archives of Tuesday Poem

glugs of amber winelight lay like legs

splayed/splashed/slayed on the glasswood floor
what one might think of as a heavy

smoke-colored cover of clouds is no, is

actually smoke
honey candies on the fresh white pillow case:

the pillow itself the pillow of a woman long dead
 
smelling of that woman’s bed i
lay my deathhead down
Kary Wayson is the Seattle Review of Books Poet in Residence for October.

Previously: My Subjects, My Own Hikmet Poem, and Farthermore.

The child is no one. Her needs are

met. She’s bringing flowers to an idea.
Of bees, there’s a hive the child tends —

fresh picked flowers on a made mound of dirt

packed in the shade of a dark green fire escape.
As she picks (and puts) I think of a singing —

the voice itself a handrail up

to an altar in the middle of a church which once

with Olena I entered

how many summers ago,

where we crossed the hold between kinds
of light and sat ourselves

like Protestants in an oiled wooden row.

We could have been
in Rome, our pair the only audience

in Santa Maria del Popolo, facing the facing 

Caravaggios. I wish — but the child is no one. Her needs are 

none that I know.
Kary Wayson is the Seattle Review of Books Poet in Residence for October.

Previously: My Subjects, and My Own Hikmet Poem.

— it’s 1962 March 28th
it’s 2017 September 19th.
 
I’m sitting at the window on the 3rd floor of fog.
 
Day is rising.
 
I never knew I liked
 
morning lifting like a conductor’s baton.
I didn’t know I loved my body.
 
Can someone who hates their body love it.
 
I’ve always schemed against my body.
 
It’s just like all my other lovers. 
I’ve loved long roads all my life — the flat
 
macadam itself listening under the mist of lamps, no traffic at the
 
hour. I know that road is both obscured and obvious.
 
I know its lights aren’t enough to see —
I love to close my eyes and look at your eyes
 
and see if your eyes are still closed.
Kary Wayson is the Seattle Review of Books Poet in Residence for October.

Previously: My Subjects.

There are three
 
people float
 
ing in a
 
lake. One does
 
not know how
 
to swim and
 
neither do
 
the others
 
saying I
 
don’t know how

to swim I
 
don’t either.

But there. They
 
are. They’re float
 
ing straight up
 
and down so
 
the top third
 
of each face
 
bobs just a
 
bove the wa
 
ter. These are
 
a few of
 
my favor
 
ite subjects.
Kary Wayson is the Seattle Review of Books Poet in Residence for October.

(with apologies to Philip Larkin)

Contemporary romance peaked

In nineteen-fifty-eight

(Which of course was rather late)

When mousy Midtown office girls

Sought out rich men to date.
Now, since then there’s only been

A sort of echoing

Of Heyer’s style of thing;

A virgin beauty’s quest to find

A duke for marrying.
For all at once, the smut appeared:

Everyone fucked the same

And every book became

A drenched and dizzy bacchanal

Quite free from tact or shame.
So books were never better than

In nineteen-fifty-eight;

And now is far too late

For those mousy Midtown office girls

And the wealthy men they date.
Yesterday, Olivia Waite published a response to the hackneyed Robert Gottlieb article in the New York Times. She also submitted this poem, which we couldn't resist. This one's for our romance readers. 

He died on August 15, 1964,

during that hot hot summer.

Mother sent his clothes

down to Mississippi

for the Freedom Riders

or anybody else who needed them.

I wish she would have left just one item out for me,

something with his smell still on it.

One of his shirts, maybe, with the stained collar

or the worn down brown Oxfords

that he always polished.

I would have loved to have the fedora he wore all winter

or a pair of white socks

that he filled with Dr. Scholl's foot powder.

She could have left me anything: a handkerchief,

his bathing suit, an undershirt,

or those thin black leather shoe laces

he always broke.

I would have liked the shaving brush I bought him

or the striped tie he spilled soup on.

Certainly his false teeth, the cup he put them in

and the tall glass he sipped hot tea from.

I would have liked his Russian-English dictionary.

or his bifocals and his damn racing forms.

She could have left me anything,

even the belt he hit my brother with.

    Esther Altshul Helfgott is our Poet in Residence for September. Previously: Uncle Ben: What the Number Said, A Poem is a Space, and Driving Home from Mother's House_.

 

    This poem appeared previously in Maggid: A Journal of Jewish Literature, vol. 2 (2005).

As I drive through the bower

of old oak trees

scanning 68th and 20th avenues northeast 

I am scared by the moon.

It is so low in the sky this night

I think it will smack me in the face.

I try to turn the wipers on,

but strands of hair white as paste

cover the window like thick rain.

A woman's mouth stretches open

in a silent scream. Bent fingers claw

until they reach my chest.

Some nights I lose my way home.

    Esther Altshul Helfgott is our Poet in Residence for September. Previously: Uncle Ben: What the Number Said, and A Poem is a Space.



    Originally published in The Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Review Vol. 4, no.3, 1993; re-printed in  Switched-on-Gutenberg: A Global Poetry Journal, Vol. 1, No.2, (March 1996); KotaPress Poetry Journal, Vol.1, Issue 2, Winter 1999; PoetsWest Literary Journal, vol. II, No. 1, Spring 1999; Identity Theory, Fall 2001.

and an unspace

It is all and half of all —

a third of half

and a tenth of that

A poem floats — spaceless

yet touches a finger,

an eye, lips and a hand.

A poem’s content

and form are sublime

yet, narrow and broad

A poem is speechless with sound

Such is ambiguity — it lives in every act

Therefore, the poem is an act — an event — 

An event is an act — is a poem

— and more —

    Esther Altshul Helfgott is our Poet in Residence for September. Previously: Uncle Ben: What the Number Said.

I’m five years old.
 
We’ve just been buzzed into Aunt Miriam’s house.

Uncle Ben’s office is to the right, off the hall.

Before walking upstairs to the second floor,

I look to the right and see dark.

Mother holds my hand while I peak in:
 
Equipment. The kind the Nazis used?

No, for taking x-rays.
Overheard: Once, he gave me medicine

to abort my baby but it didn’t work

and the baby was born with an extra thumb.
I’m thirteen years old now.

Uncle Ben’s been dead eight years.

Daddy says the only good German is a dead German.

That was 1946 and Uncle Ben can’t practice medicine

at Johns Hopkins hospital. No Jews allowed.

Is that why he doesn’t smile?
I don’t know how to like him.

He doesn’t look at me.

He has a Doberman Pinscher named Prince.

When women come to the house,

Prince looks under their dresses.
 
Men laugh. Women are embarrassed.
In the basement of Aunt Miriam’s house,

a ping pong table and knotty pine walls.

Once when I was nine

a cousin played ping pong with me.

He was sixteen. Now I’m sixteen

and I read about a man the Nazis put in a freezer.

to see how much cold a human being can withstand.

When the man’s testicles turned blue, he collapsed

and guards dragged him out. A doctor records

how much time it took for the man to die,

but I don’t remember what the number said.

    Esther Altshul Helfgott is our Poet in Residence for September.

keep me safe

keep me safe from those who want to cut

keep me safe from those who want to cut me

keep me safe from those who want to cut me open

keep me safe from those who want to cut me open me and crawl inside
keep me safe from me

keep me safe from my own

keep me safe from my own hand

keep me safe from my own hand if it is me holding the knife

keep me safe from my own hand it it is me holding the knife
Daemond Arrindell is our Poet in Residence for August. Previously: Disbelief, Costume, Family Tree, and On the Subject of Transformation.

Last night I became a flock of birds on the eve of their descent.
Last night I was a murder of crows.

To be a murder of crows is to not know

              if you are magic              or dreaming,
                            a flask of ring tones              or a canvas of teachers

                            a worship of poets                or a cashbox of planets.
I did not know body or the hungering scratch for permission.

I was at once a marriage of galaxies, a shining glory of mistakes,
                                                        a lumbering storm of shoelaces,

                                                        and a cinema of head turns.
I walked like a torso of regrets heaving a crease of love letters,
               written in blue, flowing downstream.
I chose to live as a river of ripped journal pages,

                            a sprain of tears, spilling

                                          into a spectacle of wringing hands.
In the pitch, I became

a dictionary of guitars, strings taut and out of tune

I had forgotten what a migration of fingertips

                                          feels like on the landscape of the skin,

I had forgotten I am not the strings

                                          but the articulation of sound when they are played,

how forcefully we pour out of our bodies              to be formless,

                                                        how even in a foreign wrapping,

                                                                      our bodies break

                                                                                    free of the stilled silence.
Daemond Arrindell is our Poet in Residence for August. Previously: Disbelief, Costume, and Family Tree

After Natasha Marin’s Red Lineage
my name stumbles ups the stairs

climbing towards grace, an ascending arc of red and gold
my mother's name mends shards back to glass

melts them down with the heat of a thousand hearts,

an aged and forgiving red
my father's name lives in a spoonful of shadows

hungering for a cloud that will rain red
follow the seedlings and you will see

my name become a little kite dancing in the wind,

stand still under the cicadas’ summer song

and see my mother's name strut

to a living and slowly dying beat of red

breathe in the fire’s flicker and my father’s name

tending to the embers collapsing red.
I come from a people known for speaking without saying,

for spitting the shine on their boots & stomping blackness

into the heavens.
Daemond Arrindell is our Poet in Residence for August. Previously: Disbelief, and Costume

I guess it’s easy to want to be                                black,

when everything is the new black,
shiny as LP spinning at 33 rpm

                in the hipster owned record store

                                on the formerly black block

                                                in the formerly black neighborhood
but do you know what comes back
 
around for        black? that needle scratch 

leaves grooves

                                deep                as the river
don’t nobody want the old                black —

people want the Jimi Hendrix black,

the psychedelic star spangled banner by your own rules black
the sparkled glove, moonwalking, grammy winning black,

not the dark skin, big nose self hating                black
not the Jim Crow                black, segregation                black,

poll tax payin, separate but equal                black,
the happy smile shuffling tap dance black,

not the minstrel show, burnt cork black-face                black, 

not the yessir boss                black,
not the whistle at a white girl

and end up cautionary tale                black
when black folks all around you fought 

to gain a piece of the real estate

that’s been redlined

and sold off

and sold off

and sold off                for centuries
when the folks that lay claim

to its legacy got that shit on layaway, 

but don’t ever get to put more than a bit

                of change down each month

                                and interest rates ain’t no joke 

                                                cuz don’t nothing change
then I guess being                black

is like putting on a pair of snow pants 

to brace against the cold when 

you’re already fully dressed
and you just love your accessories,

                been sliding on                kimonos and                dashikis

                                and                headdresses and                dreadlocks

                                                for Halloween and theme parties
like characters 

you can switch                in                and                out                of

like accents,
like a downpour

of a storm
except you get to decide 

when it’s time to come in

and take shelter out of the rain
Daemond Arrindell is our Poet in Residence for August. Previously: Disbelief

Said the prayer to the dream

I don't believe you want to hear me
Said the dream to paper

I don't believe you want to hold me
Said the paper to the wind

I don't believe you want to help me
Said the wind to the man

I don't believe you see me
The man felt the wind whisper in his ear and swatted the dream 

that sounded like a prayer that was held by the paper
In one breath, the wind became an answer

no one ever asked the question to
In one dream, the wind forgot its voice, in another dream the paper

was torn before it learned how to say its own name
In the first dream, the prayer learned what walking through

blackness feels like — it is the opposite of abandonment
In the last dream, all the names are written on the paper

in the form of a prayer that sounds

like the wind and feels like the breath

of a flower across your cheek
Daemond Arrindell is our Poet in Residence for August

like a heavy freight train

    is headed towards you,

but you are running, tripping
over its tracks. You hope luck

    is the taxi ready to pick you up,

but luck’s the subway, luck’s
the bus with the accordion

    middle. You wait

for luck, thought you bought
a ticket, thought the cab

    would stop. At the airport

you hold a sign, Welcome
Luck! But everyone passes,

    luck passes, doesn’t stop,

and you are left
with your sign and a moment

    of hope when you think

you’ve found luck
in your pocket, but luck is down

    the street in the Horseshoe

Tavern, so you peek inside
and see it — luck, in its shy suit

    drinking a beer

with your best friend,
and they are taking selfies

    with their smartphones,

and you holding
your paper map,

    hoping luck would travel

long distances to find you.
Kelli Russell Agodon is our Poet in Residence for July. Previously: Downpour, Present Tense, and Poem Where We Apologize For Being Human.

There is a part of me that doesn’t understand longing.

And yet, with my hands full of daisies, forget-me-nots,
I walk into a field of wildflowers and ask for more.

This is how I feel when you touch my shoulder.
There are nights of only so much moonshine

and I want to bathe in more than my share.
Saltwater, you’ve said. The oceans calms. Sometimes

I lose myself and want to go under. Part mermaid.
Part riptide. There was a time when every beach

was a room I would undress in. Now, I forget to live
that openly. Now, I hold back what I want to say.

There’s a belief we each have to live flawlessly.
I rip off the roots of flowers and place them in a vase.

Forget the fields where you could kiss me hard
and instead, call the florist, close the door.

Because we can’t say what we want, we write
a confessional poem where every sentence is true,

except one. Tell me again how often you think about me.
Tell me again how the drowning man finds himself

dreaming how one day walk he’ll walk on land.
Kelli Russell Agodon is our Poet in Residence for July. Previously: Downpour, and Present Tense.

My friend on the couch trembles.

She’s crying because someone in her family
has died/is dying/is dead. She has stopped

speaking in future tense and only says, Now.
The clock speaks in abstract sentences

and she says, We need more wine.
A corner of her life is being rebuilt

by a construction company she hasn’t approved.
A corner and her driveway is being paved.

With gravestones. When she cries, I pour her
a glass of minor relief, another glass

of lessen, and still one more of forgetting, a refill
of liquid assistance. There are too many days

to wait, she says. And there are days
when the world’s veil is so thin, she feels God

in the wind between the buildings.
She is almost mourning, but

knows how close we all are
to being remembered. She is haunted

by leaving, by the ones who already left,
all those doorways swinging open.

A breezeway to loss is where we are headed
no matter how hard we drag our feet.

She says she hates that she can’t stop wishing
for all of it to end, though sometimes in the blues

of the curtain, she still sees hope in hospice.
Kelli Russell Agodon is our Poet in Residence for July. Previously: Downpour.

Because there’s a sparrow outside that appears to be dying.
 
Because I carry it with me, not the bird, but the emotion.

Because its feathers are wet, almost drenched.

Because not knowing what to do is my own purgatory.
 
Because nothing in the house is sugarcoated.

Because if you position yourself at the window you will see things
 
       you don’t want to see.

Because there is a forest of coyotes and we keep finding the bones of fawns.
 
Because sorrow has embroidered itself beneath my ribs and I can’t unstitch it.

Because even when I’m wrapped in a blanket, I’m not warm.

Because we all keep dying.

Because it’s really not a bird, but our country.

Because the rain won’t stop, the rain won’t stop, the rain won’t stop.
Kelli Russell Agodon is our Poet in Residence for July.

When I was a girl

I wanted to live

inside of one. 
A wooden, small

place to hold me.

I was in love 
with its bird

face. I imagined us

married. The dream 
of domesticity. Keeping

house à la bric-a-brac

or conversation piece.  
But time has told

what makes them tick.
 
More machinations 
than magic. Dark

pastoral scenes

and a stiffness  
crowns the eaves.

Clockmakers all carve
 
the same male game  
in their overhang.

Reared buckhorns

and alpha beasts — 
They rule the ornate

roost. And it’s a heavy

pull on me. Those two  
coniferous strung

weights dangling

their gonadal hang.
Tammy Robacker is our Poet in Residence for June. Previously: Hymen, Summer of Boys, and Reading Rousseau at the Seattle Women’s Clinic.

Previously published The Fem Literary Magazine, 2016; and Villain Songs (ELJ Editions 2017).

Henri had ‘no other teacher

but nature.’ I recalled that factoid

from an art history class while peaking 
thick with narcotics in the clinic bed

then they scotch-taped me to the ceiling

in his poster-sized jungle print. 
The safe place for banished PYTs

ripe with uglifruit, there I learned
 
a woman leaves The Virgin Forest 
much the same way she came in.

I laid across the forest’s plush green

canvas. My own foliage, shorn
the night before. Smooth palm leaves

split open in jungle book narrative

where the shadow doctor conflicted
beneath uterine sun —

part man part beast.

Then the thunder. 
And it was broken asunder.

And then it was over.

Blood orange fruition 
of the smallest, wild hope

crawled out of me for five days

in broken shells and poked yolk.
Tammy Robacker is our Poet in Residence for June. Previously: Hymen and Summer of Boys.

Previously published in Rust + Moth, Winter 2015; and Villain Songs (ELJ Edition 2017).