Excerpts
Reviewing the Troops in the Ruins
Usually no one famous shows upin my dreams, but this time President Bushappears, his blue eyes surprising.We are walking through a stone archinto a rally where he isunwelcome. Ugly murmurs.‘‘They don’t get it,’’ he turns to me,‘‘all the hard work we do.’’ To cheer him up I tell a jokeabout my dog dragging inparts of …
I took the gun from my mother’s hand
and pointed it toward the woods like she told me toI pointed it straight and never knewwhat kind of gun it wasI aimed at the tree she told me to pretendwas a stranger at the doorwas a man who wanted to take me into the woodsan ex who wanted me to take back my rejection …
Zephyr
Each morning trumpeted into being with a chorus of baby squawks.Daffodils pushed through the barely revealed spring mud. Crusted snowclung to the curbs. In his crib, my infant son sucked his fistuntil he gagged. The polka dot mesh crib bumper that we painstakinglyselected surrounded him. In the afternoons, I pushed the stroller aroundthe block and …
An Exercise in Self-deprecation
You are staying at your poet friends’ placewhile they take their two daughters to Disneylandwhen you wake to the bumpingof moth against lampshade. Because you arealone at the bottom of a dirt road in a forest north of the city,you pad on the balls of your feet to the far end of the room,where the …
[My country will have no statue]
My country will have no statueof barefoot man-of-storm.I’ve shattered my tongue against memorywhen night cheated against deathin the game of boats and ports.Here lies man-without-life.Break the chains, smash the marbleand let all hands moor him to brassto preside over the rise of tides:my country will have no man-with-eyesdried-by-the-sea. translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson
On Power
I’d do anything for you, but you say: No, let me.I wear the pants, but you call the shots.I’m holding aces, but you’ve got tricks up your sleeve.I’m always big spoon, but you’re always on top. I wear the pants, but you look fucking hotin a skirt. I’ve read Rilke, but you’ve read Proust.I’m always …
Damming the Nile: A Poet’s Ecology
The Nile has always been the beginning and the end of all things.Baher Kamal What happens to a person when displaced from their place of origin? At the core of diasporic understanding is the separation of people from their land. Culture and its material symbols can sometimes be emulated, carried, and reinvented from place to …
13 Superstitions
Always return a kiss under the mistletoe. Kiss the boy who is with you now but always looking for someone better. Kiss him even when you know he has been kissing someone else, late nights in her father’s race car stacked on bricks in the yard. Kiss him later, for nostalgia’s sake, after he has …
Review of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout
Few novelists write characters as improbably multitudinous as Paul Beatty. In The White Boy Shuffe, Gunnar Kaufman is a poet, basketball player, and messiah. In Tuff, Tuffy Foshay is a drug-slinger, competitive eater, sumo-wrestling enthusiast, and candidate for city council. In Slumberland, Ferguson ‘‘DJ Darky’’ Sowell is a sax player, jukebox sommelier, porn film composer, …