You, If No One Else

 by Tino Villanueva

        Listen, you

who transformed your anguish

into healthy awareness,

put your voice

where your memory is.

You who swallowed

the afternoon dust,

defend everything you understand

with words.

You, if no one else,

will condemn with your tongue

the erosion each disappointment brings.

You, who saw the images

of disgust growing,

will understand how time

devours the destitute;

you, who gave yourself

your own commandments,

know better than anyone

why you turned your back

on your town's toughest limits.

Don't hush,

don't throw away

the most persistent truth,

as our hard-headed brethren

sometimes do.

Remember well

what your life was like: cloudiness,

and slick mud

after a drizzle;

flimsy windows the wind

kept rattling

in winter, and that

unheated slab dwelling

where coldness crawled

up in your clothes.

Tell how you were able to come

to this point, to unbar

History's doors

to see your early years,

your people, the others.

Name the way

rebellion's calm spirit has served you,

and how you came

to unlearn the lessons

of that teacher,

your land's omnipotent defiler.

The Pyromaniac And The Gas Station Girl

by Brent Cunningham


I met her on my way to burn the mall
and loved her instantly and with enthusiasm.
All night, I circled her booth, candles
blazing on the dashboard, cold brain soup
sloshing through my head. At dawn
I sailed in with both windows down,
the sun like a blind junkie, the tank
like a grotto. Fill me up, darling. I’m empty.
And, yes, it was that kind of love. Meat
and potatoes love. One afternoon, burning
the golf course, the thin bones in my forehead
opened, a slug of light, a hole
the size of a wedding band, the river
like black urine. I needed a clean
shirt, maybe some wingtips and a steady
job, but in a few months, BANGO,
we rented a flat by the fireworks factory
and started making babies. Now and then
I got the itch, burned down a Fotomat
or a Taco Bell, but mostly it was cake
and dumplings, me and my sweetie
strolling through the dinosaur museum,
orange blossoms for breakfast, jaybirds
for lunch. It's a funny thing
how you settle down, start hiding matches
and poison from the kids, spend your weekends
installing shower nozzles, but it happens.
And pretty soon you start thinking
like you're happy, like you never need
to burn another deli, like all those fires
were only lanterns on the path to this life,
this oak door, this stretch of lawn
where your daughters swing their mallets
and chase painted balls. One day, you are fifty
and your wife dresses in her old uniform
and brings you cocktails and shouts happy
birthday. But you wonder. You fork
cake down your throat and wonder
if you can still rub two sticks together,
if you’ve still got the old magic,
the old razzle dazzle. And that night,
for the first time in decades,
you dream that all of Texas is on fire.

A Red Tricycle in the Belly of the Pool

BY KARYNA MCGLYNN

the live oak over the nursery got a disease

they could only save one limb

it wasn’t surprising; it wasn’t that kind of nursery

 

a girl rode her red tricycle around the bottom of the pool

the pool had no water; it hadn’t rained

 

the girl kept smelling her hand

it smelled like honeywheat, or the inside of a girl’s panties

 

someone said, race you

she nodded okay and pedaled like hell

after three laps no one had passed her

 

she looked over her shoulder, lost her balance

ripped her hands & knees on the blue concrete

 

the one limb on the live oak curved like a question

would she need stitches again

 

there was already ink under her skin & iodine on her tongue

or was it the other way around

 

she could see black thread bunching

sewing centipedes under her skin

 

her throat burned and she couldn’t move her legs

it wasn’t a tricycle

it was something she couldn’t get her foot out from under

 

she hated to stop or lose her shoe and, I’m sorry

the pool was full of water

To A Young Poet

BY MAHMOUD DARWISH

TRANSLATED BY FADY JOUDAH

Don’t believe our outlines, forget them

and begin from your own words.

As if you are the first to write poetry

or the last poet.

If you read our work, let it not be an extension of our airs,

but to correct our errs

in the book of agony.

Don’t ask anyone: Who am I?

You know who your mother is.

As for your father, be your own.

Truth is white, write over it

with a crow’s ink.

Truth is black, write over it

with a mirage’s light.

If you want to duel with a falcon

soar with the falcon.

If you fall in love with a woman,

be the one, not she,

who desires his end.

Life is less alive than we think but we don’t think

of the matter too much lest we hurt emotions’ health.

If you ponder a rose for too long

you won’t budge in a storm.

You are like me, but my abyss is clear.

And you have roads whose secrets never end.

They descend and ascend, descend and ascend.

You might call the end of youth

the maturity of talent

or wisdom. No doubt, it is wisdom,

the wisdom of a cool non-lyric.

One thousand birds in the hand

don’t equal one bird that wears a tree.

A poem in a difficult time

is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.

Example is not easy to attain

so be yourself and other than yourself

behind the borders of echo.

Ardor has an expiration date with extended range.

So fill up with fervor for your heart’s sake,

follow it before you reach your path.

Don’t tell the beloved, you are I

and I am you, say

the opposite of that: we are two guests

of an excess, fugitive cloud.

Deviate, with all your might, deviate from the rule.

Don’t place two stars in one utterance

and place the marginal next to the essential

to complete the rising rapture.

Don’t believe the accuracy of our instructions.

Believe only the caravan’s trace.

A moral is as a bullet in its poet’s heart

a deadly wisdom.

Be strong as a bull when you’re angry

weak as an almond blossom

when you love, and nothing, nothing

when you serenade yourself in a closed room.

The road is long like an ancient poet’s night:

plains and hills, rivers and valleys.

Walk according to your dream’s measure: either a lily

follows you or the gallows.

Your tasks are not what worry me about you.

I worry about you from those who dance

over their children’s graves,

and from the hidden cameras

in the singers’ navels.

You won’t disappoint me,

if you distance yourself from others, and from me.

What doesn’t resemble me is more beautiful.

From now on, your only guardian is a neglected future.

Don’t think, when you melt in sorrow

like candle tears, of who will see you

or follow your intuition’s light.

Think of yourself: is this all of myself?

The poem is always incomplete, the butterflies make it whole.

No advice in love. It’s experience.

No advice in poetry. It’s talent.

And last but not least, Salaam.

(2 Little Whos)

By E. E. Cummings

2 little whos
(he and she)
under are this
wonderful tree

smiling stand
(all realms of where
and when beyond)
now and here

(far from a grown
-up i&you-
ful world of known)
who and who

(2 little ams
and over them this
aflame with dreams
incredible is)

Progressive Health

BY CARL DENNIS

We here at Progressive Health would like to thank you   

For being one of the generous few who've promised   

To bequeath your vital organs to whoever needs them.   

Now we'd like to give you the opportunity   

To step out far in front of the other donors   

By acting a little sooner than you expected,   

Tomorrow, to be precise, the day you're scheduled   

To come in for your yearly physical. Six patients   

Are waiting this very minute in intensive care   

Who will likely die before another liver   

And spleen and pairs of lungs and kidneys   

Match theirs as closely as yours do. Twenty years,   

Maybe more, are left you, granted, but the gain   

Of these patients might total more than a century.   

To you, of course, one year of your life means more   

Than six of theirs, but to no one else,   

No one as concerned with the general welfare   

As you've claimed to be. As for your poems— 

The few you may have it in you to finish— 

Even if we don't judge them by those you've written,   

Even if we assume you finally stage a breakthrough,   

It's doubtful they'll raise one Lazarus from a grave   

Metaphoric or literal. But your body is guaranteed   

To work six wonders. As for the gaps you'll leave   

As an aging bachelor in the life of friends,   

They'll close far sooner than the open wounds   

Soon to be left in the hearts of husbands and wives,   

Parents and children, by the death of the six   

Who now are failing. Just imagine how grateful   

They'll all be when they hear of your grand gesture.   

Summer and winter they'll visit your grave, in shifts,   

For as long as they live, and stoop to tend it,   

And leave it adorned with flowers or holly wreaths,   

While your friends, who are just as forgetful   

As you are, just as liable to be distracted,   

Will do no more than a makeshift job of upkeep.   

If the people you'll see tomorrow pacing the halls   

Of our crowded facility don't move you enough,   

They'll make you at least uneasy. No happy future   

Is likely in store for a man like you whose conscience   

Will ask him to certify every hour from now on   

Six times as full as it was before, your work   

Six times as strenuous, your walks in the woods   

Six times as restorative as anyone else's.   

Why be a drudge, staggering to the end of your life   

Under this crushing burden when, with a single word,   

You could be a god, one of the few gods   

Who, when called on, really listens?

First Poem For You

BY KIM ADDONIZIO

I like to touch your tattoos in complete

darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of

where they are, know by heart the neat

lines of lightning pulsing just above

your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue

swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent

twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you

to me, taking you until we’re spent

and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss

the pictures in your skin. They’ll last until

you’re seared to ashes; whatever persists

or turns to pain between us, they will still

be there. Such permanence is terrifying.

So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.