BOY IN A FIELD by Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick
Boy in a field understand The lame
Hearted go to him mouth filled
Broken He brings the horses
Of his grandfather His hands wheat
Heavy I have seen him Monster himself
With river-sickness and a girl His mother
Maybe as a girl It is hard to say
Her story Tell it He is afraid The lame
Hurt too Hearts in the coal filled even
The horses’ lungs He will bring them
I have seen him afraid of himself
His river-sickness Bring him
Horses Tell her story The girl broke
His wheat-heart It is hard to say Why
He is afraid Maybe a girl hurt too
Go mouth filled Black lung-wings
He will bring the lame I have seen
Him monster himself I understand
Why Tell him I love Bring him
Listen to Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick’s reading of “Boy in a Field” below…
Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick took this photograph and chose to pair
it with her poem because it embodies “a sense of abandonment and
at the same time, anticipation for things not-yet-lost.”
TOWN OF THE BELOVED by Allison Seay
We rested on a blanket by the water
where I combed the sand and spoke your name gently
You slept but I was not tired and never have I studied
the fullness of a back not even of the dying
propped on their sides as I did yours then
I tried to mimic your breathing though I did not close my eyes
at least not for long instead I kept a kind of vigil
swatting for you what seemed a thousand nameless insects
See it was afternoon the ocean warm to boredom
boat oil and pelicans and I thumbed through a book
while I waited for you to stir to apologize but for what
for disappearing for leaving me to distinguish alone
my desires to want you or want to become you
Wake up please wake so that I might tell how it is
I can for you sit all day in a field of sand
Listen to Allison Seay’s reading of “Town of the Beloved” below…
GOSSIP TOWN by Allison Seay
When Esther is pouting and knows I am bored with her
she asks if I am having one of my Days,
and I say What? meaning no, meaning yes
I am, and she says again and louder, “Are you having
one of your Days” and the word Days is like a string
of beads she pulls from her mouth,
a long accusatory sound (like feign or blame).
We gossip to kill time though she thinks it is only
any good in a town where people hate (as in hate) other people.
For instance, Hazel Hamilton was dead in her house three days
before anyone went to see her, mostly meaning well.
If I had tried, I could have spied her in the wingback
through a slit in the curtain. Sometimes when I have a Day
(as in Hazel) I spend the afternoon in the yard
and imagine her nest of white hair
peeking over the other side of a mouth-high fence,
ivy draping either side to keep in or keep out
whatever needs keeping. Esther reminds me
about being unkind
lest I die alone and unfound in a chair by a window.
It is such an example, she says, and I say of what
and she is in her pouting way on the paint-flecked glider
saying oh
I think you know
as though it is a secret between us
(what secret there are no secrets).
Listen to Allison Seay’s reading of “Gossip Town” below…
CHIMERA by Vievee Francis
I have no charms. Admittedly.
No gold comb can move through
This mane. My skin is not translucent.
It is not soft. Mine is a tail to fear. I know.
But from this goat’s body,
Up from my wood-smoke lungs, from
The milk of me, comes a song, a melody
To open your wounds, then lick them clean.
EPICUREAN by Vievee Francis
A hungry mouth, an empty mouth, insistent mouth,
mouth that would be filled by the seaweed of me,
that would crack the shell with a rock and take
its portion. The mouth gages its slide, gapes—
grotto mouth. Mouth where I might go to pray,
to fall upon my knees before. A mouth full of yes,
singer of heights and sorrows, Swannanoa of
a mouth. French Broad, Pigeon, a mouth so wet,
sweet as a North Carolina river. A mouth that keeps
its secrets like a mountain still. Moonshine mouth,
mouth of fiddles and laments. Yes, a mouth that knows
itself. Generous. No virgin’s pout, nor a greedy boy’s
insistence. Give me one that has been already schooled.
Not excess, but experience.
Epicurus did not advocate for wine,
but for salt of the skin,
and water to quench it. Paradox but not duplicity.
In my awe I would have this honest mouth, dive into the bliss
of it. Speechless mouth that makes its desires plain—
Who wouldn’t want to
draw from this cup the well? Give me a mouth
I might place my own chapped lips to in the heat
of summer. A mouth to sate, to surrender.
GRINGO by Brandon Courtney
Wetback. Fence-jumper. My father’s heart fists
with its yearly dying as he recalls his hired hand—
a Hispanic—burying
our tractor to its axle in a soup of snowmelt
to men who, every morning,
sit half-mooned around the greasy spoon’s table,
lifting Styrofoam cups to sunburnt lips:
hardscrabble farmers—chassis grease
gloving their hands, prove rumors
of neighbors’ gone
belly-up, face down, neighbors fenced-in
by stars. And I’m ten years old, impossibly here,
spit and image of men I’m warned to call sir,
men who’ve bottle-fed
my younger sister as tenderly as their own
daughters and they’re cursing, cursing.
It’s goddamn the weather, goddamn the busted baler,
goddamn the combine’s clutch chewed to shit
then one of the men says I would have shot
the little beaner right where he stood.
Everyone laughs.
I laugh too, although I don’t
know what spick means, beaner,
only that my father is coughing, which means
one more year, two if he’s golden,
which is nothing
to cemetery soil, the patience of the open grave.
The others stay, careless in conversation,
as if their voices were enough
to keep their small, Sunday god
from deafness. Years later, I’d land summer work
at Iowa Beef Packers pressure washing
gore from stalls, as undocumented men worked
blades, quick as flies, on the bloodletting line.
When I ask Eduardo how, lace-deep in rarefied blood,
he could open the soft machines
of bulls with a razor knife, cut away flesh
easy as a winter jacket, he presses his thumb
and index finger together like locust wings
and rubs, which means money,
which means everything.
Not surprising when Eduardo
says his younger sister, unable to speak a lick
of English, would show me her naked chest
for twenty dollars after work,
says she’d already lifted her skirt
for half the slaughterhouse
gringos. She, dressed like a Salvation
Army mannequin, led me behind the dumpsters,
unsnapped a dozen iridescent buttons,
and it was done—that fast.
Afterwards only the graceless,
shopworn cups eclipsed her breasts
that, just moments before, I’d admired
as slow fire, as her necessity’s waning gift.
She’ll never know how I once opened a book
of poems over my father’s headstone
in the blue hour and began to read the words
which sounded more like a prayer
than any prayer, as soil’s sickening
labor turned his body
deftly as erratic stone, his blood greening
blades of cemetery fescue.
Brandon Courtney’s work is paired with Emma Powell‘s photographs, “Spanish Moss” (above) and “Volunteer Corn” (below). The poet explains that he wanted “Gringo” to appear with these photographs because they embody “the surrealist, quietly violent nature of a rural setting.”
JANUARY by Sara Uribe, translated by Toshiya Kamei
ENERO
en las calles hay testigos que juran haberme visto caminar por ciertos sitios dicen que vivo ahí del otro lado de la palabra que tengo un jardín donde en lugar de flores todas las noches siembro olvido pero no los conozco y no sé si mienten o si la memoria es un rostro un ojo de murmullos que nos sigue y nos acecha cuando los días son más oscuros y la vida apenas comienza
On the above left, listen to the original version of “January”…
Sara Uribe was born in 1978 in Querétaro, Mexico. She is the author of Lo que no imaginas (2004), Palabras más palabras menos (2006), and Nunca quise detener el tiempo (2007). English translations of her poems have appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Harpur Palate, and So to Speak, among others.
JANUARY
on the streets there are witnesses who swear they have seen me walk around certain places they say I live beyond the other side of the word that I have a garden where instead of flowers every night I sow oblivion but I don’t know them and don’t know if they lie or if memory is a face an eye of murmurs that follows us and lies in wait when days are darker and life barely begins
- Published in Issue 2, Poetry, Translation
EDGE by Sara Uribe, translated by Toshiya Kamei
FILO
en el filo del tiempo pronuncio tu nombre una y otra vez como una suerte de conjuro pero todos saben que una palabra pierde sentido si la repites muchas veces que una palabra es demasiado frágil como para no romperse como para no rasgarse con el filo inverso del silencio así que mi voz se desvanece entre los hilos invisibles del sentido y sólo queda en el acero solitario del lenguaje una sombra una traza que se dispersa
On the above left, listen to the original version of “Edge”
Sara Uribe was born in 1978 in Querétaro, Mexico. She is the author of Lo que no imaginas (2004), Palabras más palabras menos (2006), and Nunca quise detener el tiempo (2007). English translations of her poems have appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Harpur Palate, and So to Speak, among others.
EDGE
on the edge of time I chant your name over and over again like a spell but everyone knows a word loses meaning if you repeat it many times a word is too fragile not without breaking not without tearing with the opposite blade of silence so my voice disappears among invisible edges of meaning and what only remains on the solitary steel of language is a shadow a trace that scatters
- Published in Issue 2, Poetry, Translation
ON THE SEPARATION OF ADAM AND EVE by Timothy Liu
It’s unknown when they were first
parted, only that they were painted
on panels by Goltzius circa
1611. Deprived of his companion
in paradise, Adam showed up in 2003
at a French auction and was sold
to a New York dealer, a branch
of hawthorn in our forefather’s hand
clutched to his chest, the bottom edge
of the painting cropped just above
where his nipples would’ve shown—
his life-size figure mirroring back
who we are, sprigs of hawthorn
crowning his curls, all sold in turn
to the Wadsworth Atheneum the following
year. Exactly when Eve showed up
in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Strasbourg
is beside the point. What counts is when
you turn the panels over, the markings
match. Never mind that they were made
for one another, his head turning
to his own left, hers to the right,
offering up an apple to his mouth
if only she could move it from one frame
to the next. Nor will his hand ever touch
her breasts, nipples angled up, her tresses
flowing free. The curator of the Wadsworth
claims it’s been centuries since this pair
was last seen together, other paintings
in their vast collection still searching
for their mates, often victims of scheduling
or financial restraints. Best hurry up
while there’s time—our reunited couple
on view from Feb. 14 to the end of May.
Listen to Timothy Liu’s reading of “On The Separation of Adam and Eve” below…
Timothy Liu’s poem refers to Dutch master Hendrick Goltzius’ panels Adam and Eve, painted in the early 17th century. The paintings were briefly reunited for an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts of Strasbourg in the spring of 2010, after over a century apart. Image courtesy of The Wadsworth Museum.
FIRST MEMORYby Timothy Liu
My mother in a stupor,
stumbling down
the hallway in panties
soaked in blood—
my hand leading her
back to bed.
ANONYMOUS by Timothy Liu
MAKE ME JUMP INTO THE AIR by Cat Richardson
After David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream”
Listen you’re a moonage marvel,
a Bowie from the Bayou with a snake
in your pant cuff. You carry an electric
swamp around you like a cloak
of wet stars.
Skinny legs, I’ve seen you leap
over cars without a running start.
I’ve seen you become a diving bird.
You dipped into the water and came
up with a flayed goat’s head in your
claws. Picked the flesh off, you did.
Start a fire. I’ll send smoke up
to the smallest gods.
That might not sit right with you,
friend, you’re a complicated
little splinter, but get low with me:
I’m an alligator I’d make fine
leather goods. You’re a space invader
so set me loose in the pulsar’s pool.
Keep your toes sunk in the bog
bottom. It’s the only way
to lose this freak parade—we’ve
got a long way to go before the ground
reaches the sky, and you’re all
I’ve got in this radiant swamp.
Listen to Cat Richardson’s discussion of “Make Me Jump Into the Air” below…