The American Poetry Review November/December 2022

FIVE $10,000 PRIZES AND BOOK PUBLICATION PARTICIPATING PUBLISHERS: BEACON PRESS, ECCO, MILKWEED EDITIONS, PENGUIN BOOKS, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS NOW SUBMIT ONLINE ENTRY PERIOD: January 1, 2023 through March 1, 2023 ENTRY REQUIREMENTS: Previously unpublished book-length manuscripts of poetry accompanied by a $35.00 entrance fee. Entrants must reside in the United States or be American citizens, and winners will be responsible for compliance with Internal Revenue Service guidelines. SUBMITTING: http://thenationalpoetryseries.submittable.com/submit (and/or review and follow the guidelines on our website: www.nationalpoetryseries.org) The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five books of poetry each year. Winning manuscripts are selected through this annual open competition judged by five distinguished poets. Each winning poet receives a $10,000 cash award in addition to having his or her manuscript published by one of the NPS participating…

INTRODUCTION My relationship with APR began as an assignment, not with a submission. Sometime in the mid-nineties, as Poetry Curator of the Painted Bride Art Center, I had been invited to edit a special edition of Philadelphia poets along with then-associate editor and now board member Ethel Rackin. The office was next to the bookstore Barnes & Noble on Walnut Street. During those pre-internet years, quite hungry for contemporary poetry, I would stand for several hours in the periodicals section and, bimonthly, read each new issue of APR; my favorites, I purchased and took home with me as a kind of roadmap to a community of writers I longed to join. I looked forward to diving into its large-format, newspaper-style offering of poets. Nervousness and excitement, in equal measure, overcame me that day…

After we leave New York, I read a book about how to notlet the internet destroy my brain. I thinkthe answer is to have been raised in California, to be a completely different person. At homepeople clap every night for healthcare workers.They clap like someone who’s seen their friend’s play or flown in a plane when planes were still new.I call it sweet but don’t know how to judgepublic gestures, like when after the towers fell, after our mother pulled us out of school,my little sister chastened me:“You shouldn’t be reading right now.” My friends take me canoeing in the Housatonic River,where the drought is obvious, water lowand undressing the downed trees. Steve noses his canoe through narrow channelsof branches. I break through brutely, scrapingthe belly of the boat against water-softened trunks while a beaver slaps…

Begin With Me after Lucille Clifton I began like you. With what I was given,a mama, a third, a daddy, and a little brotherI love like a corner piece of heaven. We were a poor people given nothing,we had to earn our life like we wanted our life. I knew my mama’s voice through all the other mamas’ voices.I knew my little brother’s lyinglike I knew our father’s lying,same song, higher key. I am alive living near some gravesI share the last night with Death will make a space for youthere’s love in that. I’ve asked my dead for forgiveness before the moon touches usand make what I say true. I want to walk into my very own home. I am a black bell ringing into a void I truly fear. A Sun Story Every summer someone out of breath,…

Echo in Winter At the center of silence, a mirrorthat renders no face, a mirror I would shatter with the pressureof my presence. Cracks in the surface mirror stripped branches shiveringthe vitreous sky. Day white as a mirror fogged with breath, as brief—dusk alreadydarkening the edges of the meadow like a mirror desilvered. Whelmed by grief, once,my body left a mirror image in the snow. I emerged colder.I observe my suffering now like a mirror, impassive pane. Years, like you, I was certain—my agony infinite as a room of mirrors. But now I stand where you are not, oneI thought I needed, like a mirror, to know myself. If I risked it now,I would be swallowed as a mirror swallows the object it sees. Is that love? How I watched youvanish into desire, never arise—and still linger, at the lip…

Each Morning Calls Us to Praise This World That Is Fleeting Each morningwakingamidst the not-ever-before,dressing inside the not-ever-again. Under sunlight or cloud,brushing the hair. Not yet arrivedat the end-crimped finish,drinking coffeeand buttering toast. Permitted to slip into coat, into shoes,I go out,I count myself part, carrying onlya weightless shadow,whose each corner joins and departsfrom the shadows of others. Mortal, alive among othersequally fragile. And with luck—for days even, sometimes—this luxury, this extra gift: able to even forget it. Poem Holding a Wristwatch Belonging to the Brazilian Poet Ferreira Gullar I’ve been waiting to find again my own just-right proportion.So often a person is too big.Less often, too small.Either you block the view completelyor you stand peering, squinting, one small handshielding your face from the sun.Sometimes I stand next to trees hoping to earn my arms’ reach.Sometimes a horse.You can’t find…