Poems in Circuit: 3
"out of the ring of fire around"/ "Meadowsweet, tway blade, crowfoot, ling, angelica,"/ "and pretends to be part of my body"/ "I’ve already said too much"/ "Missing or illegible] then"
For your weekend reading-and-letting-the-poems-get-inside-you-because-damn-we-need-poems-now-don’t-we-dear-lord-do-we-ever pleasure: a circuit of poems we found in one of our poem-needing-skulls.
Much love,
Colin + Cate
George Floyd
by Terrance Hayes You can be a bother who dyes his hair Dennis Rodman blue in the face of the man kneeling in blue in the face the music of his wrist- watch your mouth is little more than a door being knocked out of the ring of fire around the afternoon came evening’s bell of the ball and chain around the neck of the unarmed brother ground down to gunpowder dirt can be inhaled like a puff the magic bullet point of transformation both kills and fires the life of the party like it’s 1999 bottles of beer on the wall street people who sleep in the streets do not sleep without counting yourself lucky rabbit’s foot of the mountain lion do not sleep without making your bed of the river boat gambling there will be no stormy weather on the water bored to death any means of killing time is on your side of the bed of the truck transporting Emmett till the break of day Emmett till the river runs dry your face the music of the spheres Emmett till the end of time
The Ice Cream Man
by Michael Longley Rum and raisin, vanilla, butter-scotch, walnut, peach: You would rhyme off the flavours. That was before They murdered the ice-cream man on the Lisburn Road And you bought carnations to lay outside his shop. I named for you all the wild flowers of the Burren I had seen in one day: thyme, valerian, loosestrife, Meadowsweet, tway blade, crowfoot, ling, angelica, Herb robert, marjoram, cow parsley, sundew, vetch, Mountain avens, wood sage, ragged robin, stitchwort, Yarrow, lady’s bedstraw, bindweed, bog pimpernel.
You remember the feeling but not what made you feel that way
by Elizabeth Barnett We get used to trash along the road or don’t even have to get used to it but then some kids put their beer cans on the tips of small trees trying to come up. Little star. Now I know the cancer is in my body and always will be. Still, we can convince ourselves of anything. When Bea wants to play, that’s what I do. She gets under the covers and pretends to be part of my body. We tell her daddy she’s gone, but she’s right there. I say this is just me.
Naturalized
by Hala Alyan Can I pull the land from me like a cork? I leak all over brunch. My father never learned to swim. I’ve already said too much. Look, the marigolds are coming in. Look, the cuties are watching Vice again. Gloss and soundbites. They like to understand. They like to play devil’s advocate. My father plays soccer. It’s so hot in Gaza. No place for a child’s braid. Under that hospital elevator. When this is over. When this is over there is no over but quiet. Coworkers will congratulate me on the ceasefire and I will stretch my teeth into a country. As though I don’t take Al Jazeera to the bath. As though I don’t pray in broken Arabic. It’s okay. They like me. They like me in a museum. They like me when I spit my father from my mouth. There’s a whistle. There’s a missile fist-bumping the earth. I draw a Pantene map on the shower curtain. I break a Klonopin with my teeth and swim. The newspaper says truce and C-Mart is selling pomegranate seeds again. Dumb metaphor. I’ve ruined the dinner party. I was given a life. Is it frivolous? Sundays are tarot days. Tuesdays are for tacos. There’s a leak in the bathroom and I get it fixed in thirty minutes flat. All that spare water. All those numbers on the side of the screen. Here’s your math. Here’s your hot take. That number isn’t a number. That number is a first word, a nickname, a birthday song in June. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. Here’s your testimony, here’s your beach vacation. Imagine: I stop running when I’m tired. Imagine: There’s still the month of June. Tell me, what op-ed will grant the dead their dying? What editor? What red-line? What pocket? What earth. What shake. What silence.
Museums
by Dan Beachy-Quick Must I, in this question I am asking, include myself Asking it? Must I include my face— My face that I cannot see—through which I speak This question about my eyes, about the field Of vision, in which my hands press down these letters Unattached to my arms? The sunlight Comes in the window and lights up my hands As they work. The world is not being kind But there is the sensation of kindness. There is an appeal to a rule when we realize a term Behaves uncomfortably. God falls down Into grammar and says I am but the words are spoken From a bush on fire. God is included in this grammar Philosophy offers to the fly stuck in the bottle— There it is on the table, walking in circles within the empty Bottle, pausing only to rub its forelegs together, In anticipation or prayer. I remember Walking into the glass-walled museum and seeing myself Reflected in the head and in the belly of the metal rabbit’s Mirror-like skin. This was not long ago, this experience Of the ancient world, reason simultaneous with appetite, Watching myself think, seeing my eyes thinking, My body a body that contained this thinking That I write in the margins of the books I read, a script That over time appears less legible, a form Of cuneiform I cannot read myself what I wrote In the margins. There is a fragment that floats in the air Floating in my mind, spoken by a voice not mine: To study circumcises the heart and calms, The book steadies the heart [many words are missing Or illegible] if not, to turn away, Fire courses through the veins [many words are Missing or illegible] then Anger, anger. Leaning back in the tall grass, Putting my book aside, my toe covers the sun. I am imagining this world but I’m inviting you in So I can join you. In the old language, the language No one ever spoke, the language whose words In the scholarly papers are marked by stars, Asterisks that say this word exists by not existing, The imaginary root pushing down from the sky Into our heads, the root of the tongue; In this language “I” meant “here,” it did not mean “me,” It meant a location in which this body I am Was not an expression of love but a word of Presence. Here I am. Voice in a boundary. In this place I am I once had a dream. Cylindrical seals rolled across the earth Printing in the mud the image of a woman braiding Her hair was loose and then her hair was bound. These roads end at the horizon where I also end, Present in this world as the alphabet is present In this poem. *I. *I. Sometimes *I like to stutter. *I like to think the sky is blue. *I see sometimes it’s red. More soon on the nature of impossible constructions. The man in the moon. The sea rose. The living room.