The American Poetry Review March/April 2022

Spirit Level When making an axe handlethe pattern is not far off. —Gary Snyder My mother was either horizontal on the couch,or vertical, a plumb line from her spineto the top of her head to the ceiling that spinswhen she drinks, alcohol and an air bubbletrapped, sealed and fixed inside her, her facecarved from wood, a tear gliding slowlydown the curve of her cheek. My motherwas once a spirit in this world. Onceshe breathed for me, above me, beside me,behind me. Now I feel her warm breathon my neck summer nights, peeringover my shoulder as I write every poem, whisperingLet me in. I let her in. I remember every timeshe picked me up or set me down, put meto bed or woke me from dreams, and nowI see how my whole life…

Petrichor Lecture Hant I on the after noun wanrain pourn in this embersan diego hand overthe reeding in hand thenroutes racing to saywhat fortunate whenrain can say Petrichorous petrichoruslector on petra palethrough rain in the desertdoes earth petrel rainprickling my skin inthe mourn trickledecember trails Year’s end petral withdrawalfuture’s end readin the haptic drift’shappening I’m umbralon board fated to fadein rain untravel untrammeluncastled rook Or king rooks sing petrachoralmorning in Normal Heightsrain on the ground or in airan air not raveling but in strandsor points noted railing wrenarrive rooks and wrensbend air in coarse weave and Waves the earth enters air querentthrough rain and swears petricorepetrikouros pretty and soar the airclears and wavers the sun sayerairs and wayers the cours coeurcorps chorus kouros kaurquai queer quer core Afternoon Lecture San Diego Museum of Art The sharp sounds of…

Crazy Sharon Talks to the Bishop I met the Bishop on the roadand much said he—same old porridgeI heard as a child, my little bodya “foul sty.” “Love has pitched his mansion.” MaybeLove pitched her silken tent.Love has raised its dwelling inthe place of reproduction, which can be fitted with a full moon devicewhich functions as a saving grace.And maybe everything can be rent,everything can be sole or whole—like an asshole. I met a Bishop, once,when I was a teenager mad as hell abouteternal fire and birth control.We were sitting in my mother’s living room— for I have built my poems ina place of opulent privilege—I held out my fingers, and wiggled them at him,and said “I’m trying to make you levitate.” He was not holding his crook, or his mitredhat, but he was wearing a…

Night Heron What now? You’d flown infrom a Midwest city namedfor its rowdy summertimeabundance lying saying youwere coming to visit friendsin San Francisco and I had takenthe train from chilly Oaklandto meet you and we rode northcarefully not touching I took youto the tiny one-room apartmentI had escaped to after a badbreakup and fried us nervouslysome potatoes in a cast iron pana little rosemary which wedid not eat because you kissedme hard and we went in a rushto the mattress I bought off a guyin a semi-famous band and had onlythe day before gotten offthe floor and onto the pinewoodbedframe I’d found and hoistedon my back and carrieddown out of north Berkeley armswide weaving through the sidestreetstoeing the center line to avoidsnagging the buckeyes leaning outit was about sufferingin public it…

Books Until the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the deadliest mass shooting by a single person in US history occurred in the middle of the night of June 12, 2016 in an Orlando nightclub, Pulse. 49 lives were lost and countless affected, including those of us reading this. We are the foundation, the mascara, the blush.We are the eyeblink, the heartbeat, the hush. We are the shades that never come off. (from “PULSE: for the 49 murdered and 53 wounded at Pulse nightclub, Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016”) If the grief with which we must now deal pertains to entire groups of individuals, then is it the multiplicative utterances of poetry which most legitimately capture the cries of this dying? John Keene’s work, primarily fictional or biographical prose, can be situated in this space of contradiction…

I Put Tasks I Do for Free into a Folder Titled “Jobs” There are not enough hours in the day before I have to perform affection. That’s an objectively robotic thing to say, my therapist tells me, when I speakabout my responses to sentimentality. My weekly battle with the laser printer—a kind of intimacy, my pleading. I don’t want your flashing red light, I say, telling me you won’t go. I wear shoes I found on a sidewalk. That must mean something, my feetbathed in the ghost of someone else’s feet. When Cynthia, the taller and much-older cousin, looked under the deckand saw that the baby birds in the nest had their heads bitten off, I screameduntil someone inevitably told me to stop. I’ve always been this sensitive, hands clapped over my ears. A pure emotion, like thread…