“Young Poets” By Nicanor Parra, translated by Miller Williams Write as you will in whatever style you like too much blood has run under the bridge to go on believing that only one road is right. In poetry everything is permitted with only this condition of course you have to improve the blank page.

the name before the name before mine By Jay Besemer the unknown has hold of me and its grip is strong as honey on the underside of a spoon the unknown i mean is not the usual one the future the tomorrow of survival but the past and what happened in the name of the name after mine and in the name of the name before mine i do not know enough to speak i do not know enough to remain silent there is a fear that holds me and it sounds like wind it sounds like katydids in catalpa ah the tall grass of the days before i knew there was a before me where do i live if there’s no home remaining where do i live if the home i helped build can never be mine and the one i was born into never was

Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America by Matthew Olzmann Tell me what it’s like to live without curiosity, without awe. To sail on clear water, rolling your eyes at the kelp reefs swaying beneath you, ignoring the flicker of mermaid scales in the mist, looking at the world and feeling only boredom. To stand on the precipice of some wild valley, the eagles circling, a herd of caribou booming below, and to yawn with indifference. To discover something primordial and holy. To have the smell of the earth welcome you to everywhere. To take it all in, and then, to reach for your knife.

Good Dog By Steven Duong is what I say to my fish when I pet her. A dog is anything small & good to me. She nips my finger, breaks no skin but the water’s. Today I took my pills & felt little. Now I feel lots. I love this thing of mine. Her fins are good & her tail is too. Good dog.

Special Problems in Vocabulary By Tony Hoagland There is no single particular noun for the way a friendship, stretched over time, grows thin, then one day snaps with a popping sound. No verb for accidentally breaking a thing while trying to get it open —a marriage, for example. No particular phrase for losing a book in the middle of reading it, and therefore never learning the end. There is no expression, in English, at least, for avoiding the sight of your own body in the mirror, for disliking the touch of the afternoon sun, for walking into the flatlands and dust that stretch out before you after your adventures are done. No adjective for gradually speaking less and less, because you have stopped being able to say the one thing that would break your life loose from its grip. Certainly no name that one can imagine for the aspen tree outside the kitchen window, in spade-shaped leaves spinning on their stems, working themselves into a pale-green, vegetable blur. No word for waking up one morning and looking around, because the mysterious spirit that drives all things seems to have returned, and is on your side again.

The Bats By Mark Wunderlich I share my house with a colony of bats. They live in the roof peak, enter through a gap. At dusk they fly out, dip into inverted arcs to catch what flutters or stings, what can only be hunted at night. Sunlight stops their flight, drives them into their hot chamber to rest and nest, troll-faces pinched shut. I hear them scratch. In darkness they chop and hazard through the sky, around blue outlines of pines, pitch up over the old Dutch house we share. They scare some but not me. I see them for what they seem— timid, wee, happy or lucky, pinned to the roof beams, stitched up in their ammonia reek and private as dreams.

Whisk By Anna Scotti I told my grandmother I am afraid and she made that little wave, each plump finger brushing away my worries just the way she’d brush crumbs from around the toaster tray, the way she’d sweep the dog’s dry tracks from the trailer floor. Oh, now, it’s not so bad here, she said, but I am afraid that when I’m gone no one will remember her, her dimpled knuckles, the way her mouth turned down at the corners in a sweet prim frown. No one will put flowers on her grave; even I don’t do that now, but what I mean is, no one will intend to. I told my mother I am afraid she’ll die alone and she laughed out loud: Let’s hope that’s the worst thing coming. I looked down at my own hands, knotted in the dog’s fur, and saw that they are like my father’s, blue-veined and broad, and I stroked my hair, my cheek, with the hand that is most like his, until the dog struggled to get down, until the kettle whistled; then I sat alone at the kitchen table and stirred a cup of tea.

Boy By Annelyse Gelman He found himself kneeling in mud And asked the river for forgiveness. The river punished him with silence. His whole life it had consumed him, The fear of doing it wrong, and now— He walked among the trees Like a gallery, uncertain where to start. Afraid of looking at them wrong or in The wrong order. His whole life Even the streamlets, the streamlets had Shied from him like mice. He _____ To be _____. In the clearing the dew Evaporates. The grass looks dull, dutiful. One by one, the components of feeling Slide around his body without touching his Body. His body is a snow globe. His thoughts Snow. In him on him falls the snow. He is Buried, utterly, like the sea is buried by rain.

The birthday of the world By Margie Piercy On the birthday of the world I begin to contemplate what I have done and left undone, but this year not so much rebuilding of my perennially damaged psyche, shoring up eroding friendships, digging out stumps of old resentments that refuse to rot on their own. No, this year I want to call myself to task for what I have done and not done for peace. How much have I dared in opposition? How much have I put on the line for freedom? For mine and others? As these freedoms are pared, sliced and diced, where

Letter By Tadeusz Dąbrowski Yesterday I sent you a letter. And today on the phone you tell me you are pregnant. I pack up and return, you greet me at the airport, you’re even lovelier than in my letter that’s on its way to you. We build a house, our child grows, our parents shrink, then a few years of sweat and tears, in which we prudently pickle cabbage and gherkins for the ever-colder days. In the coloring book of our life there are fewer and fewer blank spaces, the crayons grow shorter, we try to be precise, but even so we go over the lines. We busy ourselves with everyday matters, and our paths are ever deeper, they start to look like tunnels. Meanwhile my letter’s on its way to you. You’ll open it when it suits you best.