The Best American Poetry 2014 by David Lehman Read Free Book Online Page A

eyes to one town,
    two cities, five centuries of praying in the beautiful dust.
    from Barrow Street

KATHLEEN GRABER
----
The River Twice

    The Love of Jesus is a thrift warehouse on the south side of town. Everything
    inside is a dollar. On Mondays & Fridays, everything is fifty cents.
    A stormy afternoon in June & I drift for hours down the aisles: bread machines
    & coffee pots. Shirts
    & shoes. Teetering stacks of mismatched dinnerware.
    I am studying a cup whose crackled glaze is the pale blue-green of beach glass.
    Two lions chase one another around its fragile eternity,
    the way the lover pursues the beloved on the ancient urn, their manes & legs
    washed in a preternatural purple & gold.
    Behind me, a woman tells her son William
    to get up from the floor so that she can measure him against a pair
    of little boys’ jeans. When he doesn’t rise, she tells him she is going to start
    counting. She says she is only going to count to two.
    When I look over,
    he is already on his feet at silent attention, his arms outstretched from his sides.
    I live in an attic apartment above two women who have been unemployed
    as long as I have known them.
    This week the last of their benefits
    has been unexpectedly terminated by the state.
    A drop in the overall number
    of jobless automatically triggers the cessation of extensions , the letter
    that comes in the mail explains.
    Outside, thunder cracks. Later, the streets
    will be full of limbs.
    Heraclitus believed that in the beginning
    creation simply bubbled forth, an inevitable percolating stream— logos ,
    both reason & word—issuing from a source unseen. Sometimes
    I feel a sudden sorrow, as though my own emotions were a room
    I’d forgotten why I entered.
    â€ƒMy mother struck me only once—
    for refusing to put on my coat. I was four years old & she had been scrubbing
    motel rooms all day.
    I’d fallen asleep in the dark on a low shelf
    in the linen closet beside the boxes of little pink soaps.
    Today, that shelf
    is gone & the great white polar caps
    are melting. At Kasungu National Park
    in Malawi, a drought has caused the lions to turn on the rangers
    whose job it is to protect them.
    Our skulls are chipped bowls, broken
    globes, we plunge into the flow.
    Heraclitus, whom the crash of time has left
    in fragments, saw in the cosmos a harmony of tensions.
    Imagine
    the lyre, he wrote, & the bow. The store radio plays satellite gospel.
    A hymn with the chorus Every moment you shall be judged is followed
    by one in which the choir shouts Praise! Stand up and be forgiven.
    from Painted Bride Quarterly

ROSEMARY GRIGGS
----
SCRIPT POEM

    INT. APARTMENT/LIVING ROOM—DAY
    SHE brushes her teeth next to the coffee table. The CAT sighs in the armchair. A CROW unseen cries outside the window.
    CROW (V.O.)
    Caw, caw, caw, caw.
    EXT. MAILBOX—DAY
    The MAILMAN hands her a brown package.
    MAILMAN
    It’s heavy.
    SHE
    I got it.
    The mailman just came back from fighting in Iraq.
    His large blue body hovers in the fog.
    MAILMAN
    Are you going away this weekend?
    SHE
    No.
    Lightning bolts out of his eyes.
    MAILMAN
    It’s a holiday.
    SHE
    I know.
    She looks away.
    Sand pours out of her heart.
    EXT. BUS STOP—DAY
    She eats an apple.
    INT. APARTMENT/BATHROOM—NIGHT
    Pink and white tiles on the floor. She flosses.
    SHE
    â€ƒâ€ƒâ€ƒâ€ƒâ€ƒâ€ƒâ€ƒâ€ƒâ€ƒâ€‚(whispers)
    I didn’t mean to shoot him at the temple.
    Black wings flap and enfold her heart.
    EXT. MAILBOX—NIGHT
    The wind blows.
    from MAKE

ADAM HAMMER
----
As Like

    In times of the most extreme potatoes
    My hair is very thin,
    Almost ink-like.
    Space is like an accordion,
    Accordion-like.
    But also, our fingers become accordions
    And start dancing.
    In times of the most extreme bossa nova
    Your pants are very thin,
    Almost transparent.
    Space is very interesting to think about
    But so are your pants.
    But also, the wind is very cold
    And we freeze, like