Goatsong

by Leila Chatti

I will survive the wrong

I've done. All the love

that didn't serve me.

My youth used up

worshiping mercurial

myopics. I've cried a lot

very briefly. This sorrow has helped

make my career. Yes,

I'm a difficult person

to endure, I hardly manage.

Oh hum, the rest of my life

keeps coming. It feels just

like I knew it would.

Sad

by Jeremy Radin

It is sad to tip the kettle over the cup & discover there is no more tea in the kettle. It is sad when the diner is closed. It is sad when the hawk seizes the rat & sad when the hawk misses. It is sad when the child encounters too early. It is sad when a mother apologizes. It is sad when the aphids have chewed holes in the lacinato kale. It is sad when there is a shopping list taped to the refrigerator. It is sad in the morning, Bach or no Bach. It is sad in winter & depending on the city sadder in the summer. It is sad to finish a book & sad to not finish. It is sad to make love imperfectly. It is sad when the body is ready but not the mind. It is sad when [ ] has left the group chat. It is sad when the wrong thing dies. It is sad when it is three in the morning & the wind is howling & the moon is like a burning umbrella oh

god who will put up with me

I Remember the Carrots

by Ada Limón

I haven't given up on trying to live a good life,

a really good one even, sitting in the kitchen

in Kentucky, imagining how agreeable I'll be—

the advance of fulfillment, and of desire—

all these needs met, then unmet again.

When I was a kid, I was excited about carrots,

their spidery neon tops in the garden's plot.

And so I ripped them all out. I broke the new roots

and carried them, like a prize, to my father

who scolded me, rightly, for killing his whole crop.

I loved them: my own bright dead things.

I'm thirty-five and remember all that I've done wrong.

Yesterday I was nice, but in truth I resented

the contentment of the field. Why must we practice

this surrender? What I mean is: there are days

I still want to kill the carrots because I can.

After Twelve Days of Rain

by Dorianne Laux

I couldn't name it, the sweet

sadness welling up in me for weeks.

So I cleaned, found myself standing

in a room with a rag in my hand,

the birds calling time-to-go, time-to-go.

And like an old woman near the end

of her life I could hear it, the voice

of a man I never loved who pressed

my breasts to his hips and whispered

"My little doves, my white, white lillies"

I could almost cry when I remember it.

I don't remember when I began

to call everyone "sweetie,"

as if they were my daughters,

my darlings, my little birds.

I have always loved too much,

or not enough. Last night

I read a poem about God and almost

believed it—God sipping coffee,

smoking cherry tobacco. I've arrived

at a time in my life when I could believe

almost anything.

Today, pumping gas into my old car, I stood

hatless in the rain and the whole world

went silent—cars on the wet street

sliding past without a sound, the attendant's

mouth opening and closing on air

as he walked from pump to pump, his footsteps

erased in the rain—nothing

but the tiny numbers in their square windows

rolling by my shoulder, the unstoppable seconds

gliding by as I stood at the Chevron,

balancing evenly on my two feet, a gas nozzle

gripped in my hand, my hair gathering rain.

And I saw it didn't matter

who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone.

The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty

of the Iranian attendant, the thickening

clouds—nothing was mine. And I understood

finally, after a semester of philosophy,

a thousand books of poetry, after death

and childbirth and the startled cries of men

who called out my name as they entered me,

I finally believed I was alone, felt it

in my actual, visceral heart, heard it echo

like a thin bell. And the sounds

came back, the slish of tires

and footsteps, all the delicate cargo

they carried saying thank you

and yes. So I paid and climbed into my car

as if nothing had happened—

as if everything mattered — What else could I do?

I drove to the grocery store

and bought wheat bread and milk,

a candy bar wrapped in gold foil,

smiled at the teenaged cashier

with the pimpled face and the plastic

name plate pinned above her small breast,

and knew her secret, her sweet fear—

Little bird. Little darling. She handed me

my change, my brown bag, a torn receipt,

pushed the cash drawer in with her hip

and smiled back.

To Hold

by Li-Young Lee

So we're dust. In the meantime, my wife and I

make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,

we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight,

measuring by eye as it falls into alignment

between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I'm lucky,

she'll remember a recent dream and tell me.

One day we'll lie down and not get up.

One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

Until then, we'll go on learning to recognize

what we love, and what it takes

to tend what isn't for our having.

So often, fear has led me

to abandon what I know I must relinquish

in time. But for the moment,

I'll listen to her dream,

and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling

more and more detail into the light

of a joint and fragile keeping.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

by Kaveh Akbar

I can't even remember my own name, I who remember

so much—football scores, magic tricks, deep love

so close to God it was practically religious.

When you fall asleep in that sort of love

you wake up with bruises on your neck. I don't

have drunks, sirs, I have adventures. Every day

my body follows me around

asking for things. I try to think louder, try

to be brilliant, wildly brilliant (and naked

though I can never be naked enough). We all want

the same thing (to walk in sincere wonder,

like the first man to hear a parrot speak) but we live

on an enormous flatness floating between

two oceans. Sometimes you just have to leave

whatever's real to you, you have to clomp

through fields and kick the caps off

all the toadstools. Sometimes

you have to march all the way to Galilee

or the literal foot of God himself before you realize

you've already passed the place where

you were supposed to die. I can no longer remember

the being afraid, only that it came to an end.

French Novel

by Richie Hofmann

You were my second lover.

You had dark eyes and hair,

like a painting of a man.

We lay on our stomachs reading books in your bed.

I e-mailed my professor. I will be absent

from French Novel due to sickness. You put on

some piano music. Even though

it was winter, we had to keep

the window open day and night, the room was so hot, the air so dry

it made our noses bleed.

With boots we trekked through slush for a bottle of red wine

we weren't allowed to buy, our shirts unbuttoned

under our winter coats.

The French language distinguishes

between the second

of two and the second

of many. Of course

we'd have other lovers. Snow fell in our hair.

You were my second lover.

Another way of saying this:

you were the other,

not another.