The Best American Poetry

Reb Livingston Presents a Poem by Rebecca Lindenberg

from Love, an Index

A

Abandon, what I did when you touched me
            that winter with an ungloved hand.
Ache, the heal of broken things: bones, disappointments. 
Allegories 
    of Love, Fragonard’s babycolored paintings,
            Ovid’s pursuers and storied looms, his Atalanta 
            her golden balls. The longing to know 
            how things become what they weren’t always.
    of Death, skulls, as in depictions of the penitent
            Magdalene. What should knowing we’ll die
            elicit? What does salvation have to do
            with being safe?
Angelbones, you alone
            have them. Where the wings came off. Where the wings belong.
Apartments, 
    Brooklyn, its winding stair reminding me
            of Yeats: “all men rise to greatness by..”
            A bicycle chained there. 
    South Dakota, we gave your son the only bedroom,
            woke early to salted baguette and snow.
    Salt Lake City, a porch ghost, a view
            of the valley’s glittering grid, my sister, your
            poor broken friend, we grilled squid 
            on the Smokey Joe. Tripod. Carpet. Halloween.
    Laramie, a basement, a stoveless kitchen,
            toaster-roasted eggplant, baseboard
            heat and sex in woolen socks.
    Rome, 5B, stone floors, white kitchen, white as the madness 
            I felt there, a bed that was twin beds held 
            together with so much duct tape, always 
            suggesting itself as metaphor;
Anger, 
    yours, with your father maybe, me maybe.
    mine, with you for finding expression of it 
            towards my family instead; there are other ways 
            of telling the story of our two angers, entwined 
            like bodies in the act of love. But in this one 
            I am not a villain.
Anne Carson, 
    the “Short Talks” from Plainwater, poolside 
            in Greece during an Easter Parade, clanking 
            in doorways for ouzo and bread; 
    The Autobiography of Red, in which Geryon 
            understood that people need
            acts of attention from each other.
Attention (see also: Anne Carson)
            “Geryon understood that people need acts of attention from each other.”

B

Binary, 
    code, allows a computer to represent text – b 
            is "000011110”. L-O-V-E too is a series 
            of 1’s and 0’s where 0 means “off” and 1 means “on”. 
    opposition, like presence-absence, male-female, love-
            innocence, love-hate, love-longing.
    star, two astronomical bodies orbiting each other 
            so closely they’re lost in each other’s light, and appear as one.
Bogota, city in the Andes surrounded by steep
            jungle. We did not fight in Bogota. Beaten 
            gold. White sanctuary. We love
            the Mexican restaurant full of wooden stairs
            overlooking vast expanses of Modernist architecture, 
            colonial plazaslit-up slums. La Candelaria
            is home to statues of ghosts, presence of absence. 
            Carts sell hot corn. We passed a woman
            laying on the sidewalk, pregnant a second time – 
            her belly swelled in half-globes around a dark scar
            like a peach around its deep groove. Storytellers 
            ride the busses, shattered petals and piles of thorns 
            and broad bruised leaves carpet the lot 
            where a flower market teems in the day. Sushi
            joint. Iranian embassy. A row of buildings trimmed 
            in tropical flowers and razor wire. Bookstore. We watched 
            Bollywood dubbed into Spanish on the old-fashioned TV 
            in your sublet apartment.
Bollywood, where love is an exhuberant fantasy
            of song. Many stories stop before they end.

C

Chopin
    etude. Major keys seem to have to do with light, minor
            keys with shadows cast by Major keys. 
    nocturne, an evocation of watchful owls, shimmer 
            of satin and violins. Or of a woman at a desk 
            with a glass of wine, trying to see through 
            her own reflection in the window.
    prelude, an introduction to the silence that follows it.
Comfort, erotic. (Example: Campion, “For when she comes 
            where comfort is she never will say no.”) 
Compromise, I will get up early with you 
            so long as there is coffee. 
Conversation
    about poems, you like “the sound of rice
            poured into a pan.” I like the bird 
            who rings like a wetted wine-glass rim, 
            and the bird who casts its shadow on the sea. I like
    poems, “held between two people, Lucky Pierre-style.”
            (See also: Frank O’Hara.) With Coleridge, when done reading 
            “I rise as though in prayer.” Such poems gather 
            everything into the now of the poem. I want to gather 
            everything into the now of this poem, but I can’t. 
            All is gloss (see also: Gloss).
Coquette, you called me once. Coy, you called me. I am
            neither. I am all candor and anxiety. But whatever
            I am, I am all for you.

D, E

Deadwood, ringing with slot machines. We drank pear wine
            in a cheap motel. I said “you take me
            to awll the noicest places” in a funny voice because
            it wasn’t true yet and I didn’t care. You funny-
            voiced me back, “Whaddya want? They got ice
            machines, they got HBO, dial up some
            va-va-voom.” We laughed. We showered 
            together and your peppermint soap gave me chills.
Desire, a chord played deep in the bass of the body. It’s good 
            to feel and to forget.
Divorce, far from a way you thought 
            you had of thinking of yourself. This story
            includes a divorce, which is how I come in.
D.H. Lawrence (see also: Desire), tells us “no, no, it is
            the three strange angels – admit them,
            admit them!” 


Emily, my sister, a wit and when asked what single thing 
            she’d bring to a desert island, she said: “a yacht.” 
            Like me, she fears to make mistakes.
Epithet, 
    Homeric, such as “swift-footed,” even when he’s sitting down,
            or perhaps “breaker of horses.” For women, “soft-braided” 
            or “glancing.” I have some for you, tall man, with your angelbones
            and your poppyred birthmark and your soft, soft hands
            and all those songs you made. My myth-maker. My great dark man.
Ex-, a prefix meaning “formerly and no more,” 
            connoting renunciation, affixed 
            to such nouns as lover and Catholic; 
            not likely to be placed before certain other 
            nouns, like sister or “breaker of horse” or bicycle.
Eye (not to be confused with I), in the Middle Ages
            (as recounted by Andreas Capellanus) it was thought 
            impossible to desire anything you’ve never seen, thus
            blind could not love. But there are other ways 
            of paying attention. (See also: Attention)

* * *

Rebecca Lindenberg currently holds a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and is completing a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from the University of Utah.  No Tell Motel first published this poem in February of this year.  Rebecca wrote, "I wanted to give some of these poems a form that was more conceptual than metrical – hence “Love, a Footnote” and “Love, an Index” are both part of a series that uses scholarly apparatus to talk about passion, physicality, memory. I hope these forms will help reveal an underlying harmony between “eros” and “psyche,” two abstractions that sometimes seem superficially incompatible."

Reb Livingston Presents a Poem by Lynn Behrendt

Gossip

Did you hear — Pinky Snortbutton proclivitized the socialist schemes vehemently.
Then when snuffle sharded Hairy Humbug repented,
the whoopsies who lived in the stone forest next door actualized plentiful anyway. 

Meanwhile Piggy Sleuthbrethren rekindled those waxen imaginariums
and started slinking toward mayhem. He may or may not hem her in. 
He may or may not. Ho hum. 

Harmony Spelunker on the other hand was devoted to her shiatzu rhizome dander of 
a dharma poodle but when he dabbled her in butterdunder
he clinked glasses with asses.

And then you know what—
He said that she said that he said that she said that she hoped
he would not hem her in. May he not. May he not hem her in.

Hold on just a minute ye wee blinker donkey bucket.
I know what you're thinking.
You're not so shattered.

Matter withers whether biddies bid hither or not.
Weather permitting, leastwise.
Anyhoo.

Like I was saying. 

Stinkfreed Freudelbomber
hi-hoed it on down to the swish-in-the-pish and gave her a what for. 
Did she spin her spartan wombat around into his knickerlicker or what. 

Gave him a clunk on his dung heap and saddled on out to the heathen hippie coral 
you better believe it mavis gave us 
all we got scott and thensome.

Sure is quite resplendent to be unthinking on their hurdles, nowadays, isn't it? 
It sure is redundant. Sure is a mighty naked shower we got us in, brother
Sure enough is. 

Unbound. Unbartered. Regurgitated yet martyred. 
Like a sour dilly in the sweet street net.
Longest snooze on the shoal.

* * *

Lynn Behrendt is the author of petals, emblems (forthcoming from Lunar Chandelier Press).  No Tell Motel first published this poem August 2008.  Lynn wrote "I am interested in the things that for whatever reasons aren’t or can’t be said, in negative space, in shadows echoes and auras of objects & ideas, the unconscious—those kinds of things. Lately, I think that my poems are a means of exploring and working with these phenomena, using sound as a kind of Geiger counter for the unknown."

Reb Livingston Presents a Poem by Shane McCrae

In No Place

And we divorced in any anyhow / But sudden anyhow

but hurry we    / Divorced in sudden     hurry the affair / Become the main thing don't

want to be mar- / ried still become the main thing anyhow

Already sit and don't go out



in an- / y sudden every sudden thing     and we

In any hurry turn to salt and break      / The farther I

run far from you     the less / I feel my own body

and turn to salt     / and break     and hurry have

to get now back / Home to Chicago every sudden thing / Marries



already there's no money left



And we divorced in anyhow the eyes



Except the eyes eyes     turn to lime-

stone in their sockets and the eyes

go also numb / And any hurry hurries home     and once

I had a lover and a lover and a fine

Lover I had a lover and she was mine

As lost as sudden suddenly

The woods behind my house are trees

In no place



every time I touch you I feel less

Of my own body fingertips and wrists     / Elbows and shoulders strange

to feel the numb- / ness as a tingling as an extra burst

Of life to signal something dying

hur- / ry the affair become     the main thing hur-

ry any anyhow become your home



Is anyhow your home and have you ever

had another / And wander through the woods     and make the forts / Made

of stripped trees     my forts / As sure as my

body is mine as sure



The trees would either way

bend but to strip them first



Is mine if I am in it is / And have I have I ever ever have

Is anyhow my home and have I ever / And have I ever every sudden thing

In every sudden thing I look for you

And that is how I look for you



Bend but to strip them

ladders hanging from the trees

But first we had to choose the tree     and clear the hives / From the tree

but first we had to climb

* * *

Shane McCrae is the author of One Neither One (Octopus Books) and Mule (forthcoming, Cleveland State University Poetry Center).  

No Tell Motel first published the "In No Place" in April 2009.  Shane wrote, "I don't write free verse poems—mostly because I can't. But I am interested in the musical effects achievable with free verse . . .my attempts to create a meter that is simultaneously formal and free, and to think, for musical purposes, at the level of the verse paragraph rather than the line. As a consequence, the metrically important unit is the verse paragraph—e.g., a traditional sonnet has seventy feet (5 feet per line x 14 lines), and since what matters when writing in this way is the total number of feet (and, of course, the poems do rhyme, though some of the rhymes are very slant, and don't follow a regular pattern), individual line lengths can vary, so long as the thing has 70 feet at the end. "In No Place," for instance, is made up of three sonnets, or 210 feet. Where a line "ends" metrically is denoted by a "/" if that point falls anywhere other than the actual end of a line, and generally where each new line "begins" metrically is denoted with a capital letter (the only exception being when a line begins mid-word)."

Reb Livingston Presents a Poem by Kirsten Kaschock

She will say it’s not personal and she will it’s over

But this is not that story.
We were moving, with cardboard boxes.
We could not get at it with a broom, but
there was a bird dying for three days
in the chimney.  I called the landlord, he said
the bird is already dead.  The bird was not
already.  The bird was not dead.  The bird
spent three days dying.  I was finished with school
in the house for three days packing with Led
Zeppelin because of the loud.  So there was that,
the three-year old, the infant, me and drowning
chimney sounds: furious, then—
pointless.  It was three days, each
with a little less bird, and a fourth day with nothing.
And we left after that day.  We left the day after
the nothing day—packing done
bird dead.  
                                             I will always
hate Syracuse.  We will never be friends.

* * *

This poem is from Kirsten's upcoming collection,  a beautiful name/for a girl (Ahsahta Press). 

No Tell Motel first published it in December 2004.  Back then Kirsten wrote "I have very little patience for any of my poems, especially these—whose themes are maudlin: insomnia, death, death, death, and juggling.  But the juggling one is actually about death, so there you go—autobiographical.  I like to write about moments of impact.  Car crash, blind date, divine vengeance . . . I also like the fabular because I think the word fabular is lovely.  I want to make my own poems feel like the gas you might siphon from a Hummer to illegally and freely fuel your own faerie-tale roadster.  Pert.  Lip-burning.  My question is—why would I equate poem with fossil fuel?  Is there something about poetry that does not sustain itself?  In my poems, what is not self-reliant translates into a question of performance, of audience. Who did the bird die for?  And how and where must I, as witness or creator, enlarge and take such small deaths?"  

Reb Livingston Steps Up to the Plate

For the next three months, Reb Livingston, co-editor of No Tell Motel, and herself an estimable poet, will run our Sunday poetry page. She succeeds Robert Hershon of Hanging Loose Press, who did a fantastic job. (Thanks, Bob.) Reb lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and five year-old son. Her own books include God Damsel (No Tell Books, 2010) and Your Ten Favorite Words (Coconut Books, 2007). She is the editor of The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel anthology series.  Welcome, Reb. Tell us, how would you introduce yourself?
<<
In August 2004, I launched No Tell Motel with the help of my co-editor Molly Arden, designer, Nancy King and technical advisor, Chris Morrow. Around that time a lot of online poetry magazines were appearing, but most were following the format of print publications. My years of working as a producer and content manager at AOL in the 90s taught me that's not how people read on the screen. I wanted to create a publication that brought the poems top-level so they would be read, all of them. Instead of publishing issues, I choose a format that features one poet a week, a new poem each weekday. I've been doing this for almost six years, published over 1400 poems by over 280 poets writing in a wide range of styles. In 2006 I expanded the publishing venture with a micropress called No Tell Books that to this date has published thirteen titles by such poets as Jill Alexander Essbaum, Rebecca Loudon, Karl Parker, Hugh-Behm Steinberg, PF Potvin, Ravi Shankar and Laurel Snyder. Our two upcoming titles are Glass is Really a Liquid by Bruce Covey and Crushes by Lea Graham.
>>
OK, Reb. How about one of your poems?

The Epistle of Damsel

Magi, seer of Sea-Slag, to Damsel nee Woe-DoDo, Miscreant, Apron, etc., who now travails in GOURD, Hey:

2. I am versed, consoling you and your remedies, realized without dose and haven

3. For it is chronicled that you ceased attachment with the malign and fiend nee Shepherd, Beau, Gigolo, Fishyman, Harpy, etc.,

and weaved the bombast and wicked into your own elixired scribbles to uplift the defunct

4. Which when I perceived, I knew that either you are Czarina herself weeped from the egged-eye of the lady dragon or Sultana, daughter of the Higher Ache

5. On this unrest I inscribe, wholeheart and storm, longing for your hornet, the stinger of verity, to join and heal our deported bedrolls

6. For I hear Shepherd calls you cruel and Gigolo counts you needy as Beau chants weird, all intending you unrest with unfeeling

7. My metropolis is haul, but upbeat and expressive for the both of us

Magi
* * *

Magi, you are courtly, bunches you receive me, though we have not yet met

2.  For it is revealed that those who bereave me do not recognize me, that they who do not grieve might beckon to only buckle

3.  As to that invitation to your metropolis, I must relate regret and unmet expenses during this ongoing midstrife and that regret extends to all who once clutched me

4.  But after my cocooning I will emit one of my dishtowels who will absorb your malaise and give wife to you, and to all who came along to clutch me.

Damsel of Gourd

-- Reb Livingston