The Best American Poetry 2015 by David Lehman Read Free Book Online Page B

trance-like pauses
    and prolonged intermissions, so that by this time night had started.
    Ah the capacious night, the night
    so eager to accommodate strange perceptions. I felt that some important secret
    was about to be entrusted to me, as a torch is passed
    from one hand to another in a relay.
    My sincere apologies, she said.
    I had mistaken you for one of my friends.
    And she gestured toward the statues we sat among,
    heroic men, self-sacrificing saintly women
    holding granite babies to their breasts.
    Not changeable, she said, like human beings.
    I gave up on them, she said.
    But I never lost my taste for circular voyages.
    Correct me if I’m wrong.
    Above our heads, the cherry blossoms had begun
    to loosen in the night sky, or maybe the stars were drifting,
    drifting and falling apart, and where they landed
    new worlds would form.
    Soon afterward I returned to my native city
    and was reunited with my former lover.
    And yet increasingly my mind returned to this incident,
    studying it from all perspectives, each year more intensely convinced,
    despite the absence of evidence, that it contained some secret.
    I concluded finally that whatever message there might have been
    was not contained in speech—so, I realized, my mother used to speak to me,
    her sharply worded silences cautioning me and chastising me—
    and it seemed to me I had not only returned to my lover
    but was now returning to the Contessa’s Garden
    in which the cherry trees were still blooming
    like a pilgrim seeking expiation and forgiveness,
    so I assumed there would be, at some point,
    a door with a glittering knob,
    but when this would happen and where I had no idea.
    from The Threepenny Review

R. S. GWYNN
----
Looney Tunes

    for John Whitworth
    It begins with the division of a solitary cell,
    Carcinogenetic fission leading to a passing-bell,
    Lurking far beneath your vision like a pebble in a well—
    Then it grows.
    Soon enough there comes a scalpel that is keen to save your life,
    Crooning, “All things will be well, pal, if you just survive the knife,
    But to climb the tallest Alp’ll be much easier. Call your wife.”
    Then it grows, grows, grows. Then it grows.
    Say you can’t remember Monday night when Tuesday rolls around.
    Does it mean they’ll find you one day blind and frothing on the ground?
    Is it ominous that Sunday sermons make your temples pound?
    (How it shows!)
    You may take the pledge, abstaining, thinking you can lick it all.
    But it’s hard when, ascertaining how diversions may enthrall,
    You’re still standing there and draining one well past the final call:
    How it shows, shows, shows. (How it shows!)
    You may lose a set of car keys and mislay a name or face.
    Does your mind demand bright marquees where each star must have its place?
    It’s like diving in the dark. It’s less a river than a race.
    And it flows
    Like the coming days of drivel, like the dreaded days of drool
    When the very best you give’ll prove you’re just an antique fool,
    And your thoughts will be so trivial as to lead to ridicule—
    And it flows, flows, flows. And it flows.
    Do you want to be a burden? Can you stand to be a drag?
    Make your mind up, say the word and do not let the moment lag.
    When you go to get your guerdon let them see your battle flag!
    So it goes.
    There’ll be many there who’ll miss you and a few to lend a hand,
    There’ll be boxes full of tissue, lots of awful music, and
    Lissome maidens who won’t kiss you as you seek the promised land.
    So it goes, goes, goes. So it goes.
    from Able Muse

MEREDITH HASEMANN
----
Thumbs

    Tuck a severed thumb into a paper towel
    and place it in a plastic bag on the window sill
    to sprout a new one. Hydroponic tomatoes
    don’t taste as good as the ones on a vine.
    It’s a completely controlled environment
    that has nothing to do with authenticity.
    He made me a promise at our shotgun wedding.
    He would take my thumbs