Try this—close / your eyes. No, wait, when—if—we see each other / again the first thing we should do is close our eyes—no, / first we should tie our hands to something / solid—bedpost, doorknob— otherwise they (wild birds) / might startle us / awake. Are we forgetting something? What about that / warehouse, the one beside the airport, that room / of black boxes, a man in each box? I hear / if you bring this one into the light he will not stop / crying, if you show this one a photo of his son / his eyes go dead. Turn up / the heat, turn up the song. First thing we should do / if we see each other again is to make / a cage of our bodies—inside we can place / whatever still shines.

—Nick Flynn

I can be nice. I can put my body
flat, down straight, and pull
sleep from somewhere deep

in the brain, that no-weather
thing, that blank page-
after-page thing. I can be

nice enough and say nothing, drift
to the cool room under
a blanket, under all the things

I have to do. Count them. Count
forward or backward: glue
broken things, fill the feeder,

work for a living, make supper, go
anxious unto guilty unto
anxious, full circle. I can love

humankind. I can do that.
I can close my eyes on the bright
windows my neighbors have

framing their big TVs. I can understand.
I can be nice when others decide, steeling
myself, but not as well as my tiny

grandmother did, the tallest person
in the room for a moment. I can, mostly,
drive past Burger King, its Good Luck

Staci (oh, Stacy with an i!) We Miss You!
on whatever the marquee’s
called now, be touched and sweetened

or nice enough not to notice. And bite
my tongue. Good doggy. Be nice now, be
nice. I can sacrifice muscle

and bone to sit longer, showing
interest (show interest, my mother warned
as we walked through any really large

set of doors). I know German has
a word, nett, for nice. I can put myself
in that net, drop down so close

to what is underwater
that the fish know me as small,
silent, as sleek and shiny as

they happen to be. And so
weightless there, blue
beyond thought. One would hardly

guess how nice it is, those fish
suspended next to me, their mouths
opening and closing.

—Marianne Boruch

Look at you, sitting there being good.
After two years you’re still dying for a cigarette.
And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up?
Don’t you want to run to the corner right now
for a fifth of vodka and have it with cranberry juice
and a nice lemon slice, wouldn’t the backyard
that you’re so sick of staring out into
look better then, the tidy yard your landlord tends
day and night—the fence with its fresh coat of paint,
the ash-free barbecue, the patio swept clean of small twigs—
don’t you want to mess it all up, to roll around
like a dog in his flower beds? Aren’t you a dog anyway,
always groveling for love and begging to be petted?
You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides
of the can, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones;
you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds.
Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes
and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first
beautiful man you find? The words Ruin me, haven’t they
been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn’t it time
you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets
to totter around in five-inch heels and smeared mascara?
Sure it’s time. You’ve rolled over long enough.
Forty, forty-one. At the end of all this
there’s one lousy biscuit, and it tastes like dirt.
So get going. Listen, they’re howling for you now:
up and down the block your neighbor’s dogs
burst into frenzied barking and won’t shut up.

—Kim Addonizio

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
                     Frisch weht der Wind
                     Der Heimat zu
                     Mein Irisch Kind,
                     Wo weilest du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
“They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!
“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

—T.S. Eliot

Read More of “The Waste Land”

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

—Naomi Shihab Nye

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

—Lucille Clifton

Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses—past the headlands—
Into deep Eternity—

Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?

—Emily Dickinson

Birdsong, face it, some male machine
gone addled—repeat, repeat—the damage
keeps doing, the world ending then starting,
the first word the last, etc. It’s that

etcetera. How to love. Is a wire
just loose? Build an ear for that. Fewer, they say.
So many fewer, by far. He’s showing off
to call her back. Or claiming the tree.

Or a complaint—the food around here,&
the ants, the moths, the berries. She’s making
the nest, or both are. In feathers, in hair or twigs,
in rootlets and tin foil. Shiny bits seen

from a distance, a mistake. But fate&
has reasons to dress up. Stupid
and dazzling have a place, a place, a place
though never. She can’t sing it.

—Marianne Boruch

Your love is like a bad tattoo. 
I’ve done too much time 
in this trailer park and I will 
burn your double-wide down

except I’m lazy. Your love 
is like a bad tattoo although 
you put it on the back of my 
eye. It starts “Ramona” and I

can’t read the rest anymore. 
I’m tired but I remember what 
it says. Something I won’t 
repeat is what. I said “love”

but meant a word that sounds 
like “trigger” and means 
“You’re dead.” Look it up 
if you don’t believe me.

Find it near “damn fool” 
and “dear god” if there ever 
was such a dictionary. And if 
there was, you sure already

read it. I studied some Latin 
strictly due to you: Semper 
fidelis, semper idem, semper 
paratus. Always faithful,

ready, and the same. Me or you, 
what a question. Anymore 
I’m like some Ophelia who took 
the other route, fat, drugged, 
and gone to seed. Alive though.

Lounging in the wading pool 
outside fair Hamlette’s double-wide 
in my best plastic sunglasses

and checking my periphery as if 
epiphanies might have to sneak 
right up on the likes of me. I’m in 
need of some coy flowers, a cocktail.

Somebody bring my notebook, too. 
I’ll write one of my patented I didn’t 
kill myself notes: Hello cruel world 
I’m still not leaving again, it’s me.

Your love is like a bad tattoo 
deep on my superstructure. 
What monks scribble on bones 
in ossuaries, I imagine. My latest

affectation is pretending you are 
a house I’m haunting with my life. 
You don’t think I’m pretending. 
Somebody bring me my hood.

—Josh Bell