THE NATIONAL POETRY SERIES
The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through five participating publishers. Publication is funded by the Lannan Foundation; Stephen Graham; Joyce & Seward Johnson Foundation; Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds; The Poetry Foundation; and Olafur Olafsson.
2013 COMPETITION WINNERS
Ampersand Revisited, by Simeon Berry of Somerville, MA
Chosen by Ariana Reines,
to be published by Fence Books
Bone Map, by Sara Eliza Johnson of Salt Lake City, UT
Chosen by Martha Collins,
to be published by Milkweed Editions
Its Day Being Gone, by Rose McLarney of Tulsa, OK
Chosen by Robert Wrigley,
to be published by Penguin Books
What Ridiculous Things We Could Ask of Each Other,
by Jeffrey Schultz of Los Angeles, CA
Chosen by Kevin Young,
to be published by University of Georgia Press
Trespass, by Thomas Dooley of New York, NY
Chosen by Charlie Smith,
to be published by HarperCollins Publishers
DEDICATION
For my mother and my father
CONTENTS
Dedication
Cherry Tree
PART ONE
Ingalls Avenue
Eastern Red Cedars
Cedar Closet, 1955
My Father as a Boy
Late Bloomer
Hunger
Ordinary Time
Maybe in an Atlas
First Love
I Saw You Once
A Body Glows Bronze
Late Bloomer
Brunch
Snapshot
Screenshot
Transference
In That Light
Sperm Donor
Away
Guest Room
PART TWO
Separation
I I want to say something
II What hurts
III The sun on the avenue
IV I want to solder
V I try to forget you every day
VI I see you as a boy
VII You say you need
VIII Chestnuts harden in spiky
IX It’s been five weeks
X Fridays are the hardest.
XI If I forget, remind me
XII Our first time back together
XIII here take a universe
XIV On the radio, bombast
XV this morning water broke
PART THREE
Father
Phone Call
Aunt Peggy
Picnic, 1988
Warinanco Park
Selling the House: Ingalls Avenue
At Windward and Shore Roads
Winter Burial
Elegy
Dying Family
I At the church door
II Did you see
III My father’s niece crosses to me
Never
Memory
Mary and Bobby
St. Gertrude’s
Freshman Theology
Trespass
Near
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHERRY TREE
My father
mows tight squares
around her, she
rains pink on him
a rock
cracks inside the blades
she beats down
flurries
I’ve grown
too lush
don’t leave me
with him
PART ONE
INGALLS AVENUE
the house lit of blue television of snow
the house where my father got tall
house of sturdy pipes house a home
for his sisters house of winter
boots and calico and wooden
spoons house of my grandfather
his girls grandkids house of quiet
sheer things of vinyl shingles
the padding around the house
the house of bins of old clothes and moon
light open windows of gulping
curtains the house of dusty aster
the house of women once girls a house
of kisses this is a house of rooms
a house of small closets and
smaller closets a closet for lemon
candy tucked back a closet
of cedar panels of tongue
and groove of bulbs a closet for small
things for tall things a closet for slumped
tall things and small things this
is a closet for tall and small things
EASTERN RED CEDARS
I walk by your fragrant bodies
thinned by winter, your young ones
are burlapped in nurseries, some are planked,
chipped-up
seamed for chests & trunks:
inside a cedar closet, my father at sixteen
one bulb setting
your rose panels aflame, his lit face
the white heart, his narrow body, wick,
his niece, four years old
his head knocks the light his hand
steadies the wild
string
the light
eclipsed, then bright
CEDAR CLOSET, 1955
He is sixteen and takes her
inside, jars
the unquiet hinge
she waits
forty years to name
him, Aunt Peggy says
you might as well be dead.
And now
it’s spring. My father’s hair
thins, dull moth-gray, the last
clouds sink like sacks, the trees
are wet, sweat
on a body, damp wool.
MY FATHER AS A BOY
his arm is the smallest to snake
the toilet’s trapway, at night
a body can vanish
in the dark house, under covers I see
his smallness, a sharp elbow, remember
my smallness as he gathered my body in bed
he wakes to his sister
and father at the foot of the bed
his father kissing her neck
hands running up her night blouse
fingertips treading to a clasp
sliding a hook from its eye
LATE BLOOMER
at sixteen
my father stood
at the full-length
mirror naked and
touched
his chest
his hairless
legs touched
between them
he told me once
he thought his body
was small
and quiet
like a girl’s
HUNGER
We sat scissor-legged on the carpet
popped open the suitcase, a storm of tulle
she pulled Barbie
from the waves
caftan made from a pocket square
she showed me to drag
blond hair through
dryer sheets to tame the wisps
she stopped my hand
stuck on the brush stuck in knots
here the spray for tangles
I crossed the hallway
to her brother’s room
he took off
my corduroy shorts, took off
his wildlife tee
against a polar sky
the airbrushed wolves
ORDINARY TIME
In the sacristy my father
rinsed cruets smothered wicks
the monsignor pulled off
a chasuble of emerald silk
moved his hands
down my father
the choir shook
handbells from the loft
what my father did
when he moved
to her body when he lifted
her green dress
MAYBE IN AN ATLAS
Maybe another New Jersey
somewhere. Linden wood
as cash cow. And a way out. If my father grew
taller that year, sudden. Reached
the high altar wicks, a Moses
in Egypt. Bigger than the priests. What if deus
ex machina. Or a catcher.
No rye. Rye watered
down. Rocks to mean rocks. Not
glacial. Not a cold hand
anywhere. A siren sounds
on skin. Maybe a pie
in the window. Adults made big gestures
with giant hands. He wasn’t soft.
Boney, but not folded
like egg whites, hankies.
In his yearbook: “Aspiration: farmer.”
Tall as corn, as noon sun. Only if he grew
taller, sudden, he wouldn’t be
proof. She was proof. Girls
were softer. Maybe his hand
looked giant. And she lay down
softly. Like he was made to, maybe.
FIRST LOVE
At the bar last night
I couldn’t believe it was you
standing by the men in leather collars
your layman’s jeans and work boots
the same tough suede I remember
below your vestment’s hem
at altar boy camp, tea lights
in our cabin, I always hoped
you would choose me
to start the flames.
Now you travel the decade
of my spine, your mouth sudden
on each bone, I turn you over
my lips drag heat
from the thin chaplet of hair
shrining your navel, I hold you
like a chaperone at a theme park
when you held me as we looped
through air and at Mass
when you placed in my hand
a body I could eat.
I SAW YOU ONCE
on a Brooklyn corner, fronds
of palm, your sachet
of lemon halves, you ask
if I’m Jewish, how we
look like brothers—
jet hair, same skin
a tincture of chickpeas,
our noses not Roman
nor button, I want to appeal:
let me celebrate with you. Listen, my voice
can match the glottal timbre
of your prayers, let me unfurl the black
curls by your ears like scrolls, read
your thoughts, your oils fragrant
on my fingertips.
A BODY GLOWS BRONZE
the Belgian soldier
his uniform slung
over a chair back
creases preserved
a man with war
in him yet
retreats under
a studio lamp
his dense sinew
muscled how
a body glows
bronze under your rub
the artist’s knife
his clay-tipped fingers
the soldier’s blazer
in the corner
late sun sets
fire to brass buttons
LATE BLOOMER
Spindle-heart at fourteen,
and eighty-five pounds. But you had
a dusting of hair above your lip, dark stains
under your arms after relays.
White-primed, gessoed canvas, I felt untouched,
untouchable, gilt icon in plexi, I wanted
your size, a potency,
yeast that balloons.
Still I was
unleavened and wafer-thin.
BRUNCH
Cold tea bag pressed
in a napkin, my father
picks at toast.
Bobby, his sister says
there are some accusations
against you,
your niece, well,
she goes
to a therapist,
he tells her to
shit on
your photo.
My mother runs
to the kitchen and vomits
in the sink.
He leans
over cold
eggs, what’s left on the plate
my mother comes back
a damp cloth
to her mouth
she moves
clutching
the tall chair backs
breathes in to slide
behind his chair, it’s quiet
on Mildred Avenue, brakes
scream down Ingalls
my mother clears her plate
reaches for his.
SNAPSHOT
Her therapist said find one put it
on the bathroom floor so she searched albums
for his face the picnic photos
at the grill his head smoke-capped limp hands
fanning charcoal then her wedding proofs
all the uncles in suits and one close-up
my father bow-tied tipped black
seesaw at his throat open smile
his tongue a small peak he’s calling to someone
outside the frame his right hand bent
in mid gesture his fingernails a bit long
and in focus the tips the whitest
SCREENSHOT
of you moved
to pleasure, freeze
on white pixels
my hand rolls down
a slow storm
I move with your
thunder, we are twinned
rhythms, the joy
you shake from me
TRANSFERENCE
I was working
in the theater’s toolroom
when my father called
Mom told me
about your new
friend and I thought
you can’t even
say it and I squeezed
a pair of pliers in my hand
as the paint sink kicked back gunk
and hung up the phone
hung up the pliers
aligning their jaws.
In the wings it was dark
I instructed the actor
playing a waiter
how to wring
the grinder, crack
whole corns
to coarse pepper.
IN THAT LIGHT
he was all angles
L of jaw, shoulders a ledge
of granite, I thought
he seemed biblical
the perfection of the tribes
settling into his thunder
thick honeyed wrists
and I was yielding,
of linen.
Darwin would study his dense
bicuspids, long feet hitting
the earth, his cock
slapping thighs, he needs
me to praise him
he needs men
to tell him, or show him
or show on him when
that weekend in July
on the sandy cape that hooks a bay
the salt a skin on him, moonlight
violent with silver on him
the other man’s
bright tongue
how strangers can validate
how that man knelt to him
and he comes home to me
SPERM DONOR
And then
a hatch
threw open
a fl
ush of blood, pink-
cheeked,
you broadcast:
They want my sperm!
You imagine your stuff
flying through tangle
bursting to a field
a privet of XYs—
flourish little ones!
They will spin
and set in that lesbian womb, form
bones, push white elbow and
purple cord into a dark
pixilated frame,
fine
set in them your link
that quiet boat
you send into me
that never finds dock
AWAY
I pile books on the bed
in your place, calculate
the weight of you, I crowd
the pillows like
bodies, all night I’m wasteful
with lamplight
GUEST ROOM
A bed too short,
our feet slide out
and cup the brass
footboard, cool
in our concaves, what
my father would do
to find us: curled
fiddleheads, one
cochlea intricate
as fist, oil slicked
metallic on pond
our bodies’
edges imbricate, in
the morning we
divide and in a year
we separate.
PART TWO
SEPARATION
I
I want to say something
about sabotage. How you
designed it.
I am scooping dry food
to a deaf cat, no longer
in our kitchen, the old marble
mantle I left
vacant,