publisher’s note
Rendering poetry in a digital format presents several challenges, just as its many forms continue to challenge the conventions of print. In print, however, a poem takes place within the static confines of a page, hewing as close as possible to the poet’s intent, whether it’s Walt Whitman’s lines stretching to the margin like Route 66, or Robert Creeley’s lines descending the page like a string tie. The printed poem has a physical shape, one defined by the negative space that surrounds it—a space that is crafted by the broken lines of the poem. The line, as vital a formal and critical component of the form of a poem as metaphor, creates rhythm, timing, proportion, drama, meaning, tension, and so on.
Reading poetry on a small device will not always deliver line breaks as the poet intended—with the pressure the horizontal line brings to a poem, rather than the completion of the grammatical unit. The line, intended as a formal and critical component of the form of the poem, has been corrupted by breaking it where it was not meant to break, interrupting a number of important elements of the poetic structure—rhythm, timing, proportion, drama, meaning, and so on. It’s a little like a tightrope walker running out of rope before reaching the other side.
There are limits to what can be done with long lines on digital screens. At some point, a line must break. If it has to break more than once or twice, it is no longer a poetic line, with the integrity that lineation demands. On smaller devices with enlarged type, a line break may not appear where its author intended, interrupting the unit of the line and its importance in the poem’s structure.
We attempt to accommodate long lines with a hanging indent—similar in fashion to the way Whitman’s lines were treated in books whose margins could not honor his discursive length. On your screen, a long line will break according to the space available, with the remainder of the line wrapping at an indent. This allows readers to retain control over the appearance of text on any device, while also indicating where the author intended the line to break.
This may not be a perfect solution, as some readers initially may be confused. We have to accept, however, that we are creating poetry e-books in a world that is imperfect for them—and we understand that to some degree the line may be compromised. Despite this, we’ve attempted to protect the integrity of the line, thus allowing readers of poetry to travel fully stocked with the poetry that needs to be with them.
—Dan Halpern, Publisher
dedication
for my parents
for John
for you
for always.
contents
cover
title page
publisher’s note
dedication
medical history
a violence
candelabra with heads
hysterical strength
legendary
it’s not fitness, it’s a lifestyle
happy birthday to me
the first person who will live to be one hundred
and fifty years old has already been born
in igboland
♦
legendary
heretofore unuttered
and
cento for the night i said, “i love you”
virginia is for lovers
clue
c ue
unfurnished
♦
imagine sisyphus happy
underperforming sonnet overperforming
legendary
an apology for trashing magazines in which you appear
even the gods
in defense of “candelabra with heads”
instead of executions, think death erections
unframed
object permanence
notes
acknowledgments
about the author
copyright
about the publisher
medical history
I’ve been pregnant. I’ve had sex with a man
who’s had sex with men. I can’t sleep.
My mother has, my mother’s mother had,
asthma. My father had a stroke. My father’s
mother has high blood pressure.
Both grandfathers died from diabetes.
I drink. I don’t smoke. Xanax for flying.
Propranolol for anxiety. My eyes are bad.
I’m spooked by wind. Cousin Lilly died
from an aneurysm. Aunt Hilda, a heart attack.
Uncle Ken, wise as he was, was hit
by a car as if to disprove whatever theory
toward which I write. And, I understand,
the stars in the sky are already dead.
a violence
You hear the high-pitched yowls of strays
fighting for scraps tossed from a kitchen window.
They sound like children you might have had.
Had you wanted children. Had you a maternal bone,
you would wrench it from your belly and fling it
from your fire escape. As if it were the stubborn
shard now lodged in your wrist. No, you would hide it.
Yes, you would hide it inside a barren nesting doll
you’ve had since you were a child. Its smile
reminds you of your father, who does not smile.
Nor does he believe you are his. “You look just like
your mother,” he says, “who looks just like a fire
of suspicious origin.” A body, I’ve read, can sustain
its own sick burning, its own hell, for hours.
It’s the mind. It’s the mind that cannot.
candelabra with heads
Had I not brought with me my mind
as it has been made, this thing,
this brood of mannequins, cocooned
might be eight infants swaddled and sleeping.
Might be eight fleshy fingers on one hand.
Might be a family tree with eight pictured
frames. Such treaties occur in the brain.
Can you see them hanging? Their shadow
is a crowd stripping the tree of souvenirs.
Skin shrinks and splits. The bodies weep
fat the color of yolk. Can you smell them
burning? Their perfume climbing
as wisteria would a trellis.
as wisteria would a trellis.
burning? Their perfume climbing
fat the color of yolk. Can you smell them
Skin shrinks and splits. The bodies weep
is a crowd stripping the tree of souvenirs.
Can you see them hanging? Their shadow
frames. Such treaties occur in the brain.
Might be a family tree with eight pictured
Might be eight fleshy fingers on one hand.
might be eight infants swaddled and sleeping.
and mounted on a wooden scaffold,
this brood of mannequins, cocooned
as it has been made, this thing,
Had I not brought with me my mind
Who can see this and not see lynchings?
hysterical strength
When I hear news of a hitchhiker
struck by lightning yet living,
or a child lifting a two-ton sedan
to free his father pinned underneath,
or a camper fighting off a grizzly
with her bare hands until someone,
a hunter perhaps, can shoot it dead,
my thoughts turn to black people—
the hysterical strength we must
possess to survive our very existence,
which I fear many believe is, and
treat as, itself a freak occurrence.
legendary
I’d like to be a spoiled rich white girl.
VENUS XTRAVAGANZA
I want to be married in church. In white.
Nothing borrowed or blue. I want a white
house in Peekskill, far from the city—white
picket fence fencing in my lily-white
lilies. O, were I whiter than white.
A couple kids: one girl, one boy. Both white.
Birthright. All the amenities of white:
golf courses, guesthouses, garage with white
washer/dryer set. Whatever else white
affords, I want. In multiples of white.
Two of nothing is something, if they’re white.
Never mind another neutral. Off-white
won’t do. What I’d like is to be white
as the unsparing light at tunnel’s end.
it’s not fitness, it’s a lifestyle
I’m waiting for a white woman
in this overpriced Equinox
to mistake me for someone other
than a paying member. I can see it now—
as I leave the steam room
(naked but for my wedding ring?)
she’ll ask whether I’ve finished
cleaning it. Every time
I’m at an airport I see a bird
flying around inside, so fast I can’t
make out its wings. I ask myself
what is it doing here? I’ve come
to answer: what is any of us?
happy birthday to me
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Oh, yes. I don’t mean
to be a bother, to burden
you with questions. But
did you know I wouldn’t
last? That I would lose?
Had you asked, I could’ve
told you I’m not doing
especially well at being alive.
the first person who will live
to be one hundred and fifty years
old has already been born
[FOR PETRA]
Scientists say the average human
life gets three months longer every year.
By this math, death will be optional. Like a tie
or dessert or suffering. My mother asks
whether I’d want to live forever.
“I’d get bored,” I tell her. “But,” she says,
“there’s so much to do,” meaning
she believes there’s much she hasn’t done.
Thirty years ago she was the age I am now
but, unlike me, too industrious to think about
birds disappeared by rain. If only we had more
time or enough money to be kept on ice
until such a time science could bring us back.
Of late my mother has begun to think life
short-lived. I’m too young to convince her
otherwise. The one and only occasion
I was in the same room as the Mona Lisa,
it was encased in glass behind what I imagine
were velvet ropes. There’s far less between
ourselves and oblivion—skin that often defeats
its very purpose. Or maybe its purpose
isn’t protection at all, but rather to provide
a place, similar to a doctor’s waiting room,
in which to sit until our names are called.
Hold your questions until the end.
Mother, measure my wide-open arms—
we still have this much time to kill.
in igboland
After plagues of red locusts
are unleashed by a jealous god
hell-bent on making a scene,
her way of saying hello or how dare you,
townspeople build her a mansion
of dirt, embedded with bone china,
decorated wall-to-wall with statues
made from clay farmed from anthills—
statues of tailors on their knees
hemming the pant legs of gods;
statues of diviners reading
sun-dried entrails cast onto cloths
made of cowhide; statues of babies
breaching, their mothers’ legs spread
wide toward the sky, as if in praise.
Sacrifices of goats and roosters
signal headway behind the fence
that hides the construction. A day is set.
Next spirit workers disrobe and race
to the fence, which they level, heap
into piles and set ablaze, so the offering
is first seen by firelight, not unlike
a beloved’s face over candlelight.
The West in me wants the mansion
to last. The African knows it cannot.
Every thing aspires to one
degradation or another. I want
to learn how to make something
holy, then walk away.
♦
legendary
You want me to say who I am and all of that?
PEPPER LABEIJA
What girl gives up an opportunity
to talk about herself? Not I. Not today.
I won’t bore you with my biography—
just a few highlights from my résumé.
I don’t aspire; I’m whom one aspires to.
The most frequently asked question isn’t
WWJD? It’s what would Pepper LaBeija do?
Really the question should be what hasn’t
she done? I’ve been walking now two decades
and got more grand prizes than all the rest.
I hate to brag, but I’m a one-man parade,
Jehovah in drag, the church in a dress.
Outside these walls I may be irrelevant,
but here I’m the Old and the New Testament.
heretofore unuttered
As if god, despite his compulsions, were decent
and hadn’t the tendency to throw off
all appearance of decorum, here I am
admiring this single violet orchid.
How lucky am I to go unnoticed
or so I imagine, when, at this writing,
there is a red-tailed hawk, somewhere,
tracking the soft shrills of newborn songbirds—?
and
Withstand pandemonium
and scandalous
nightstands
commanding candlelight
and
quicksand
and zinfandel
clandestine landmines
candy handfuls
and contraband
and
handmade
commandments
and merchandise
secondhand husbands
philandering
and
landless
and vandal
bandwagons slandered
and branded
handwritten reprimands
and
meander
on an island
landscaped with chandeliers
abandon handcuffs
standstills
and
backhands
notwithstanding
thousands of oleanders
and dandelions
handpicked
and
sandal
wood
and mandrake
and random demands
the bystander
wanders
in
wonderland.
cento for the night i said, “i love you”
Today, gentle reader,
is as good a place to start.
But you knew that, didn’t you? Then let us
give ourselves over to the noise
of a great scheme that included everything.
That indicts everything.
Let us roam the night together
in an attempt to catch the stars that drop.
White clouds against sky
come humming toward me.
One closely resembling the beginning
of a miracle. There’s
the moonlight on a curved path
lighting the purple flowers of fragrant June.
I dreamed him and there he was
silent as destiny,
lit by a momentary match.
Men are so clueless sometimes,
like startled fish
living just to live.
We are dying quickly
but behave as good guests should:
patiently allowing the night
to have the last word.
And I just don’t know,
you know? I never had a whole lot to say
while talking to strange men.
What allows some strangers to go past strangeness? Exchanging
yearning for permanence. And who wouldn’t