Smoke rose from the pleasure hotel. Smoke rose in the face of the pleasure hotel—in the moonless face of
a rose, smoke rose like pleasure burning. In the burning hotel pleasure rose like smoke, though moonless
we pleasured, we rose, we burning, the hotel moonless though we rose—yet less than burning—we rose
burning full of pleasure in the moonless hotel. We pleasured, moonless, we burning-faced moonless, we
face-to-face in the moonless pleasure hotel of smoke, yes, we rose and rose in the face of burning, and like
any burning, like any pleasure, any face in the hotel, in the moonless night—we rose.
Publishing the best poetry and fiction from emerging and established voices since 1966
The Amon Liner Poetry Award AN IMPERFECT FIGURE
is making biscuits in the morning just
for myself worth it
kneading in the butter
filling the kitchen with godly golden
crumble smell
breaking open like a confession
steam gasping into the air
apron covered in floury
handprints not caring
that it’s hot in the kitchen I will
say of course and more
and then opening the jam
last summer’s Michigan blueberry
the near-black nectar smothering
licking my fingers
I can live with the softness
padding my ribs for this the crumbs
all over the sticky counter
like waking up in the bed of the one I love
a trail of my clothes set loose
across the floor
unconcerned if it’s messy
the answer is yes and please
STANDARD COURSE OF STUDY
There is no history of accord,
only one of cruelty—
if the goat calms the stallion,
then debtors will clip the wires
or thrash the thick cypress fence
to steal the goat—
if the stallion loses by a leg,
the debtors will be jailed—
if the prisoners riot,
the guards will quell violence
with riot gas and side-handle batons—
Still, imagine how droll
the high school textbooks rewritten
to chronicle an affable people—
They shook hands and massaged each other’s shoulders,
they dressed in corduroy pantaloons
to serenade each other from balconies—
Imagine the cruelties we might have to imagine
to keep ourselves engaged—
snakebites, beds of nails,
mild electric shocks—
AERIAL VIEW: JACKSON STATE COLLEGE
On May 15, 1970, the Jackson State killings occurred on the campus of Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) in Jackson, Mississippi. On May 14, 1970, a group of student protesters against the Vietnam War were confronted by city and state police. Shortly after midnight, the police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve. The event happened only eleven days after National Guardsmen killed four students in similar protests at Kent State University in Ohio. The Kent State incident captured national attention; the Jackson State killings did not.
*
A bullet comes through the air. It’s not fair
simply to fear them as projectiles;
often they are warnings. That is
to say, they sound out through time,
running up ahead to let us know
the terrain before us does not welcome
our kind, almost singing a single note
of advice: run.
I.
Above us, squinting through the scope,
above us frowning, sharpening the focus,
pain and quirk and need, what else does he call for,
he who wields the secret to death?
What else scares us . . . what else do we scare?
What else rustles the leaves, nervous,
trying to remain calm?
Courage and warmth, what else
ended today as the clouds opened,
spreading the clarity of light?
I remember how the sky winced, gray and opaque,
and then, wide-eyed, what else did the day do?
Did dandelions lift from their stalks?
What else got the hell out of the way?
What else got caught in the crossfire,
in the wake of the whistling? I can’t see
you for the fuselage of the city,
littering the air, strewn across pavement.
I still long
for the mundane moment
before the seed, the seed that does not grow,
got planted in my chest.
What else sowed but did not reap?
Was I the harvest? Was I not meant to yield?
II.
Spring came and the sun came and both left
a hole where warmth once fell like a salve
for the chill and the sting of the chill.
Nightfall. Now, nothing behaves like spring.
Earlier, clouds burned off the sky
but no one celebrates a clear day
filled with violence. No platitudes
get exchanged after a killing,
sometimes after a death but never after a killing.
Who cares about the weather?
Who cares who won the game?
I see my body but I cannot feel
as others touch my body. Did I
ever feel my body respond
to the response of another’s body?
What’s the point of asking this question?
Under the night air, coolness prevails.
A cool, spring night, someone will say
walking their dog before going to bed.
Will they know how violent the day was
before dark? We think of violence happening
at night. Once more, a day stretches
possibility to the limit. Someone wakes
to the possibility, asserting, as their feet
touch the cold floor at the side of their bed,
a new day. A future of which they cannot
conceive. A death they won’t believe
unless it actually finds them.
III.
Some bodies had fallen out of fear
like animals freezing still when facing
a predator. Some bodies got shot
but not shot dead. Their lives
continue but with wounds we’ll never see;
these wounds won’t heal.
Some flew like prey across the veldt
of the campus quad, flew on their legs,
flew without grace, like prey will do,
pissing and shitting themselves,
surviving. Some have names we will forget.
They won’t mind; they took off running
to be forgotten. Me? I was once promising.
I stood there, looking into the sun. Above me,
the roof tops, the clock tower, the glint
of the gun. Stand still and watch
as people come back into the scene;
that’s what I’ll do, I said.
People, still, will not remember my name,
maybe they’ll mention me tonight
as they lie down in the dark
after they turn off the news, but once the screen
on the set powers off, I’ll lie as dead
as the distance one crosses through the night
believing there will be a sunrise.
CONFIRMATION BIAS
In the bleach-blue light of
morning, the reason to
stay in bed. In the glass
dropped by the diffident
hand opening of its own
accord, a one-word horoscope
of nope. In the Muzak
playing while you wait
in the yawning
line to order your dark
roast with cream,
in that sibylline satellite
radio, nostalgia’s anti-
gravity—the Buzz
Aldrin of your heart
planting flags that don’t
wave. In the dream,
a prophecy of more
dreams. In the crows,
take-take-take. In the way
one word breaks
into another like a wave,
something you didn’t want
to say, though you’ve thought
it before. In the TV’s blue,
in the sun, the fluorescents
at work: you, you. Light’s
always lifting dark’s
rock to find you wriggling
there, a worm under
the eye, as if that’s what you were
looking for. As if it was
the last thing you
wanted to find.
A STORY ABOUT THE BODY
Anger can erupt like a lawn mower pieced together
Suddenly exploding
Yellow jackets
But it’s a mistake to thank fate
For the extra skin of denim
Draped around your tender ankles
If you’re unwilling to indict it
For your failure to engineer a kill switch
Or to wear a shirt
Those stingers can’t penetrate.
It’s not to blame when
The cloud of dust and dry grass
Churning through the blades
Above the evacuated rabbit hole
Transforms into a golden cloud
Of switchblades.
The sun doesn’t drop any slower
For anyone
But you
As you circle the yard
Savoring
What might be your final
Pain.
And isn’t anger like this—festering
Inside you all week until
It squeezes out through your skin
Leaving welts as it electrifies the air
Into a swarm so territorial
That you can’t—though you try to—
Outrun it?
from QUANTUM LYRICS
TRUTH
Albert Einstein to Mileva Maric
Your eyes hold enough lies
Day-to-day walking through the market,
A woman walking freely without
The sleight of hand of my skin, this peccadillo.
What rests inside me will rise
Out my mouth to kiss you, to kiss
My confession into you each day, Mileva.
Will the truth offer you some freedom
Or will I simply invite you to sit in my prison?
Wouldn’t life play better if you visited me
In this cell, conjugal visits in which we pretend
We’re free? I’ll ask for you to come to me,
And I’ll tell you to leave me, eternally
Coming and going like the rain. I told you
Only that I’m a man, only through how I hold you,
How I look in your eyes, like stars announce
They’re stars by the dance and death of their light.
But you look sad as if you know now
What you must not know.
BLACK LIGHT
Our bodies cast a shadow of one
Body under a black-bulb pulse
In your mother’s basement. Light, even
When it’s black, moves faster than
Youth or old age; it’s the constant in
Our lives. But I remember when
I thought your house—always ready for
A party, even during the week—
Was the fastest element in my life.
Toenails, lint, teeth,
Eyes—everything was holy
Under the glow. I suspect
Even my bones were ultraviolet
When we danced, which was always more
Of a grind than a dance.
Whether the song sung came
From Rick James or Barry White,
We called what we did in the coatroom
Dancing, too: My hands, infrared
Under your dress, but innocent: We
Were only kids, after all,
I was 16 and you were a woman of 18.
Already, we knew how to answer each other
Without asking questions, how to satisfy by seeing
What nearly satisfied looked like
In each other’s faces. This all before
I ran out to sneak back into my mother’s
House in the middle of the night.
But, now, it’s eight years later,
You’re walking, it seems, so I offer
You a ride. And you look in and smile.
And when I see you I wonder
What would have happened
If we had stayed in touch. I have to get back
To work the next morning in DC,
A five-hour drive; it’s near dark
And I want to get on the road before night
Falls completely, but I stop anyway.
It’s been too many years.
And I mistake your gesture.
And then I realize you
Don’t really recognize me,
Until you back away and turn
On your heels.
Then a man with a Jheri curl
And a suit that looks like it’s woven
From fluorescent thread
Walks up and looks at me
Like I wasn’t born in this town,
And for the first time in my life,
I question it myself. He walks up as slow
And sure as any old player should on Sunday night.
While walking away, you two exchange
Words. You don’t look back. But
We see each other in our heads—aglow,
Half-naked—under our black-bulb pulse
In your mother’s basement. Given a diadem
By the lucid night and the streetlamp’s
Torch, the man wearing the fluorescent
Suit casts a broad shadow
Like a spotlight into which you step.
Maybe he’s the reason we’re here tonight
Beneath these dim stars, casting
A light true enough . . . finally,
For us, after all these years, to see each other.
FEAR OF WONDER
I want to be the people
in the architect’s model
faceless shapely always
striding beside the shiny
walls girders windows halls
the architect wants us to notice
but he can’t show empty
because then we won’t
see ourselves within it
just as we don’t acknowledge
the cliff edge until sneakers
stub against stone we fight
our own tumble to oblivion
& awe draws the precipice for us
mighty & the earth a dark
planet with fire at its heart
I was talking to a friend
about this & we both confessed
we’d driven the long tree-lined
road & wondered about
twisting the wheel & our fear
was not of the twist but of
the wonder the capacity to be
any self suicidal murdering
adulterous the man who
committed the woman who
severed the child who touched
the live—so why wonder at all?
We can’t help it we see
a window & have to imagine
our reflection across it
twenty-three windblown
right after a laugh & what if
death is just like that
before you know it fully
an empty glass waiting
& you a silent movie
of something pouring out
The Greensboro Review Literary Award Poem NOT THAT HAPPINESS
Not bluebirds nesting in a wooden box
nailed to your picket fence.
No geraniums in the planter, but yarrow
where the trees begin, hawkweed
in a clearing near the black locust
and loosestrife—how you are helpless
against its beauty—everywhere
along the creek. No friends anymore
who ask about dinner, but a boy who woke
last week, singing counterpoint
to the wrens. To read, We are without
consolation or excuse, and remember
a sack of peaches from a roadside stand;
hunger the day you stopped for them.
Maxine Sullivan singing “Blue Skies.”
In winter, lullabies sung for the dead.
The shoulder roast simmering in red wine
with potatoes and sweet onions
on a day when the rain begins; your heart
sliding toward the sinkhole of November.
Who is not captive to some small happiness?
To love a field you can never own—the pink mist
of knapweed, the blue of chicory.
Or the heron that settles in the neighbor’s pond
and croaks through the last of your dreams.
You startle awake, patting your head, glad
that you are not a minnow, darting
among the muddy reeds. How it comes around,
this happiness, like a landlord sniffing out the rent.
Not what you ordered—pennywhistles, cellophane hats,
those hand-crank noisemakers—but the happiness
that finds you, scrawls a receipt, says,
“You paid for this,” whatever happiness is.