Testimonial by Rita Dove

Back when the earth was new

and heaven just a whisper,

back when the names of things

hadn't had time to stick;

back when the smallest breezes

melted summer into autumn,

when all the poplars quivered

sweetly in rank and file . . .

the world called, and I answered.

Each glance ignited to a gaze.

I caught my breath and called that life,

swooned between spoonfuls of lemon sorbet.

I was pirouette and flourish,

I was filigree and flame.

How could I count my blessings

when I didn't know their names?

Back when everything was still to come,

luck leaked out everywhere.

I gave my promise to the world,

and the world followed me here.

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Speculations about "I" by Toi Derricotte

A certain doubleness, by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another.
— Henry David Thoreau

i

I didn’t choose the word — 

it came pouring out of my throat

like the water inside a drowned man.

I didn’t even push on my stomach.

I just lay there, dead (like he told me)

& “I” came out.

(I’m sorry, Father.

“I” wasn’t my fault.)

 

ii

(How did “I” feel?)

Felt almost alive

when I’d get in, like the Trojan horse.

I’d sit on the bench

(I didn’t look out of the eyeholes

so I wouldn’t see the carnage).

 

iii

(Is “I” speaking another language?)

I said, “I” is dangerous.

But at the time I couldn’t tell

which one of us was speaking.

 

iv

(Why “I”?)

“I” was the closest I could get to the

one I loved (who I believe was

smothered in her playpen).

Perhaps she gave birth

to “I” before she died.

 

v

I deny “I,”

& the closer

I get, the more

“I” keeps receding.

 

vi

I found “I”

in the bulrushes

raised by a dirtiness

beyond imagination.

I loved “I” like a stinky bed.

While I hid in a sentence

with a bunch of other words.

 

vii

(What is “I”?)

A transmission through space?

A dismemberment of the spirit?

More like opening the chest &

throwing the heart out with the gizzards.

 

viii

(Translation)

Years later “I” came back

wanting to be known.

Like the unspeakable

name of God, I tried

my 2 letters, leaving

the “O” for breath,

like in the Bible,

missing.

 

ix

I am not the “I”

in my poems. “I”

is the net I try to pull me in with.

 

x

I try to talk

with “I,” but “I” doesn’t trust

me. “I” says I am

slippery by nature.

 

xi

I made “I” do

what I wasn’t supposed to do,

what I didn’t want to do — 

defend me,

stand as an example,

stand in for what I was hiding.

I treated “I” as if

“I” wasn’t human.

 

xii

They say that what I write

belongs to me, that it is my true

experience. They think it validates

my endurance.

But why pretend?

“I” is a kind of terminal survival.

 

xiii

I didn’t promise

“I” anything & in that way

“I” is the one I was most

true to.

Act by Leon Salvatierra

I’m going to say what love signifies

My grandfather said it was the desire of  the I for another I

And since then I began to search for you

My father said the number of  love was seven

Because creation lasted seven days

Seven days making love to its seven nights

I looked for you in each seven that ciphered my life

And I found you slipping away to other numbers

One confuses oneself with one’s other self

When two bodies intertwine in bed, three loves

have been in my life, four it will be when you have left

five days that I cannot stand you, six kisses in La Paz Centro

seven years of not finding you, love, show me

from one to a thousand your nights

What is your philosophy of love

you ask me in bed: and I respond

It’s not a flower but maybe it is a number. Here, I gift it to you

Hide it between your legs. At the count of two

Make sure that it does not fall: One

Open Sesame. Two

Loves have stepped into your kingdom.

  

Little Father by Li-Young Lee

I buried my father 

in the sky. 

Since then, the birds 

clean and comb him every morning   

and pull the blanket up to his chin   

every night. 

I buried my father underground.   

Since then, my ladders 

only climb down, 

and all the earth has become a house   

whose rooms are the hours, whose doors   

stand open at evening, receiving   

guest after guest. 

Sometimes I see past them 

to the tables spread for a wedding feast. 

I buried my father in my heart. 

Now he grows in me, my strange son,   

my little root who won’t drink milk,   

little pale foot sunk in unheard-of night,   

little clock spring newly wet 

in the fire, little grape, parent to the future   

wine, a son the fruit of his own son,   

little father I ransom with my life.

Blackout

When life seems gray

And short of fizz

It seems that way

Because it is.

Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall by Margaret Fishback

Sometimes I wish that I were dead

    As dead can be, but then again

At times when I've been nicely fed

    On caviar or guinea hen

And I am wearing something new

    And reassuring, I decide

It might be better to eschew

    My tendency to cyanide.