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25 Articles

Banished Wonders The American linden sways nonplussed by the storm,a bounce here, a shimmy there, just shaking like musicleft over from the night’s end wafting into the avenues before sleep.I remember once walking down Clinton Street, and singingthat line returning, New York is cold, but I like where I’m living.There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening. And of coursethere was music, though it was me and my incessant remembering.And here now, what does one even offer?Darling Cockroaches of the Highest Order, hard underthingsof hard underworlds, I am utterly suspicious of advice.What is the world like out there? Are you singing in the tunnels?I should say nothing sometimes.I should say, Memory will leap from the mountain.Dearest purple spiderwort in the ditch’s mud, how did you do it?Such bravery, such softness,…

STANLEY KUNITZ MEMORIAL PRIZE

APR announces the Twelfth Annual Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize for poets under 40 years of age. A prize of $1,000 Publication in APR May 15, 2021 deadline A prize of $1,000 and publication of the winning poem in The American Poetry Review will be awarded to a poet under 40 years of age in honor of the late Stanley Kunitz’s dedication to mentoring poets. The winning work will appear on the feature page (back cover) of the September/October 2021 issue of The American Poetry Review. All entrants will receive a copy of the September/October 2021 issue. Poets may submit one to three poems per entry (totaling no more than three pages) with a $15 entry fee by May 15, 2021. The editors of The American Poetry Review will judge. Winner will be notified by July…

STANLEY KUNITZ MEMORIAL PRIZE

SOMEBODY ELSE SOLD THE WORLD

Somebody Else Sold the World & before I knew it, the violet skyflagged with the sun’s violentdemands: for magnolias in bloom,for natural light, anyplace withoutlocks or doors. Different kindsof masks for being & breathing.The antagonists with their vanitytans sang the usual jingles aboutliberties & wars while we buttoned upour confinement & dreamed abouthugs. We talked about was & when& the antagonists got more franticin their doubletalk when we missedour friends & dentist appointments.Molars fell out without breathable air.Hair forgot its natural colors withoutthe testimony of crowded intersections& barbeques. Words lost their familyrecipes. Friends lost their words,then lost their parents. A few foundlove somehow in the gerrymanderedgrocery lines & farmer’s fieldsupturned with their own unsellablevegetables. The antagonists corneredthe ensuing curfew, fabricatingarguments & armed to the teeth.No masks, blinking phones whereears should have…

THE NATIONAL POETRY SERIES

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, 2021 through March 1, 2021 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: https://www.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…

The God Incentive He kept me through childhood.There was a reasonhe kept me from sin like a biscuitwarming in the oven.It’s okay I tell the rain to keep him a theorybut bring him downonce in a while.It’s okay to be honest or selfishbut find the spot where you sinka little into the velvet stadium seatof secrets other secretshave rubbed away.See I have been alone and didn’t know itwaiting on the inside glassof a trafficked worldwhere one mistrust passes anotherwith a long yellow hornthat no hand can quiet.Something other than scienceis pressing down on my night watchsaying sing hereinstead of signing off this hour.Ride the hard part,that is the good part as many holy animalsmust know and let go of,everyone is still barely alive. Mercy Later There is this green chair to which I…

Born in the year of the dog & bittenby one six years later walking home solofrom first grade & turning into an alleywhere a brown mutt mounted a dirty poodleI didn’t take their bodies for orangecones to swerve or turn back fromI paused & watched as they humped in frontof a garage belonging to the blue buildingwhere we rented the back end of a second floorapartment while my tia resided in the front halfI walked into their barked warningsheading towards the back door of homeby staying close to garages & garbage cansuntil I got too close & the cur got offthe poodle & mounted my bodyin a different way w/stiff paws& claws that tore at my facew/a tongue lapping up bloodw/a nose pelting my forehead wetw/teeth peeling off my skinonly…

WATER BELIEVES WHAT WE CANNOT

I wrote this love letter in the spring, when there was pandemic, which was news, and weather, which was not. Now pandemic has been superseded by police brutality, the American presidential election, and wildfires. The unknowns, the unknowable, accumulate; the future refuses to emerge from ellipses. By the time you are reading this, our imaginations will be stretched further, thinner—across the suffering between us, and the suffering that binds us. And still: you keep showing up, we keep showing up: in love, and in rage. Perhaps—to borrow from John Cage—this is the best, the most we can do: make space for the rage that will one day bind us in love. | 1 | In the morning one of you says, We no longer know how to live safely in the world. Outside…

WATER BELIEVES WHAT WE CANNOT

Goya Three corpses bound to a tree stump,castrated, one without arms, its head impaledon a branch. A dark impression, richly inked,with a delicate burnishing of figures. Pondering it,I feel like a worm worming. If I want the truth,I must seek it out. The line between the innerand outer erodes, and I become a hunter puttingmy face down somewhere on a path betweentwo ways of being—one kindly and soft;the other an executioner. Later, out in the plaza,I light a cigarette and have a long pull,with small exhales, taking the measureof my own hand, its lustrous hairyknuckles dinged from grinding meat. To a Root in Air Swatting flies from their faces, the boysplay in garbage heaps of burned corn cobsand crushed plastic bottles. Their tear-rimmedeyes do not seem to bother them. Men chop woodfor fires…

Temporal Sitting in the cafe of a local bookstore, I listen to the coffeecolored woman lull her child to sleep. A soothing tongue passes through the gap in her teeth and I can’t help but wonder if this were the song my ancestress sang to give me breath. Giving in to my curiosity, I turn and ask if she is from West Africa. Her smile replies, yes. She asks me if I have ever been home. What is home to a motherless child? I think. Not yet, I reply. She smiles again and I begin to envision her mapping West Africa on my face with her eyes. Traveling down the Ivory Coast of my cheek bones, she settles on the Congo of my smile. Looking north, she calls my hair Senegal…

Your Empty Bowl 1 The doctor makes a curving incision in the left topback of my skull andlifts the cap— “What areaam I here to work on?” But Ijust want to wish his son a Happy Birthday—It had been my aim, the reason I’dwalked right into this Doctor dream—In the morning,—my neighbor reports from his yearof losses: a well dried up and the threat of fire, the offerof haven, now his sister’sstroke— “I feel,” he said, “like a bowlthat God keeps scooping out—”It made me nervous, how emptied he was—how every few monthsa place, a face, that mattered to him,crumbled into gone—My solution was ridiculous, so I extolled it with fervor. I said,“You should meditateon an empty bowl, you should go outside and sitwith an empty bowl in reallife—” For weeks,I’d been…

The French Church—never much on looks, red brick leaningin the direction of Romanesque—settled into modest circumstanceshow many decades on West 16th?Nothing divine in the details,veneer peeling from doors nevermeant for here, never open. No light,evenings, through colored glass,though by day you could discern,twenty feet above the sidewalk,Christ stepping onto the waters of Galilee,sea and savior oiled by exhaust,nearly indistinguishable. Weeknights,downstairs, a dozen groups renouncedat length crystal or alcohol, skin or smoke,and what each circle resisted glowedat the center of their ring of chairs,nearly visible; there you could consecraterelinquishment, or find someone already ruinedto pursue whatever made you, for the night,unsinkable. The rent, collected each timethey passed the hat, kept the church afloat.Of the congregation eight souls remained,Haitian evangelicals. Only onceI saw someone mount the stairstoward those slapdash doors—who could have…

The Enchanted Bluff You can see here, though the marksare faint, how the river must once have coincidedwith love’s most eastern boundary. But it’s years nowsince the river shifted, as if done with the sameview both over and overand never twice, whichis to say, done at last with conundrum, when it’sjust a river—here’s a river … Why not say so,why this need to name things based on whatthey remind us of—cattail and broom, skunkcabbage—or on whatwe wished for: heal-all;forget-me-not. Despite her dyed-too-black hairwildly haloing her shoulders, not a witch, caftannedin turquoise, gold, turning men into better men,into men with feelings—instead, just my mother,already gone crazy a bit, watching the yard fillwith the feral catsthat she fed each night.Who says you can’t die from regret being allyou can think about? What’s it…

CONSTRUCTING LOVE AND TRUTH

ML Your poems make me fall in love with you. The poet you. That’s because I search my whole life for voices that organically resonate in my bones and spirit and I find one, then I fall in love. These poems in Atomizer make me fall in love in a way that wonders: Do you think, as you have evolved and grown as a poet, that the matters of the heart—love, rage, sorrow, ecstasy, holding—have become more important to write about in a generous manner, for you? These poems in Atomizer are so generous. They bring the reader so close and it feels like that is intentional. Can you comment on this notion of ‘generosity’ and ‘heart’ in these poems? I am thinking, specifically, about poems like “Killing Rabbits,” “Match.com,” and…

Hymn for Dan We went to visit our brother.They had a special, blue roomfor the purpose of waiting.A counselor came over andcalled my sweater “too provocative.”Nora started laughingand then I started laughingand then our brother came outand told us about the squirrel he had been feedingpackets of peanut butter each day to pass the timeand how the squirrel was now too fat to climb treesand he was worried because winter was comingand we were all laughing and crying from the laughing.We stayed as long as we were allowedthen Nora and I walkedback through the snow, towards the hotelfive years ago.Last night, in bed, I typedBeing and Nothingnessinto a Wikipedia search.It was a book my dad had putin the basement bathroomof the house we grew up in.Something else about my dad was…

Jubilate Civitas I will consider a slice of pizza.For rare among pleasures in Gotham, it is both exquisiteand blessedly cheap.For its warmth is embracing, its smell the quintessence of hope.For it can be found in all boroughs, every few blocks, yetnever two slices the same.For its makers speak many tongues.For dusting the counter with cornmeal and flour, withoutlooking down, they pummel and roll out the dough.For they heap out the still-steaming sauce and with a touchof the ladle paint it in rings like a bullseye, or a treestump,or a thumb.For they howl at each other’s jokes, grasping great handfulsof cheese.For wiping both hands on an apron, they nod at the phrase“not too hot,” and start one of a hundred littleclocks in their heads.For their corded forearms reach deep in the oven…

PARADE (RIMBAUD #6)

Every morning, without fail, a sparrow perches on the gutter of my mother’s home—my childhood house—and whistles to the reach of the morning sun’s stretch—what she calls miracle, but what now is just routine. Praise be this body that rises, too, in the morning for no good reason, except routine. Blessed is the blood that eats of itself—the self-devouring cells self-sustained. I’m still young and, as my mother might call it—living in sin—skinning myself bare in the basements of gay-clubs that are overwhelmed by shame and those turning-away from shame, and we all rejoice together, in the fire of each other, if not later in heaven. We give our whole lives every day. Death sizes me up like the shade cast down by my shadow. I do not recall my…

SIX BESTIARY POEMS

A Prologue The world, is it finite? Pliny the Elderon what he saw and heard, 37 “books” toround that up, early C.E. as heproceeded to be infinite. His Naturalis. His Historia.First bestiary ever in Book 8. Land lifeand sea life and through-the-air and underground life.Same as now. Only ancient—the one thingPliny never imagined: he’d be ancient.We watched the Cassowary go famouslyscary beside an ordinary house in Queensland,a Tasmanian Devil road-leap on cue, at dusk,Carmen on the radio west of Hobart, the Lyric Operaall the way from Chicago to that end of the Earth.When you see a Platypus love his mudas he does, what happens?Or while the Echidna slips into grass as into a pocket.And Kangaroos, Wallabies lying down totheir regal so what as brilliant birds span out overheadwithout number.You think this…

Diary Entry #2: Quarantine Sonnet Every once in a while, especially at night,in the time it takes to mourn deaths and letters, if I’m dreamingof the theater or the Egyptian exhibit at the MET.If I’m dressed in a sweater. If I’m temptedto kiss the green on the side of the road.Every once in a while, especially after flushingthe toilet, in the time it takes to make a loverof the neighbor’s door, in the time it takes a little leavento leaven the whole lump, if the breeze can’t keepa secret—at the lake, at the grocery store, at the church.That’s when I watch from my window, Americariding a tricycle of ruin. And the schoolsspill out her mouth. And the libraryis closed. And the clouds are closed. Marked at Birth and You Ask No One what…

EMILY DICKINSON AND THE PRESENCE OF POETRY

Because the moment of our reading inflects what we notice, to read Emily Dickinson today is to read her differently than in the past. Not long ago, with global warming in the headlines, I noticed (as if for the first time, though I had seen it before) a line in a letter to her friend Elizabeth Holland in 1873: “Science will not trust us with another world” (L 395).1 Dickinson was responding to a different moment, a different crisis, but the words reach across the centuries to amaze, to beckon. When my father died: “Gimblets—among the nerve—/Mangle daintier—terribler” (Fr 242).2 Today, connecting with each other as best we can while giving each other a wide berth, something else comes into focus, something about intimacy and presence in the face of…

Cain my brother‘s keeper? at best i am biologically my brother’s brother. twenty some years ago i wasborn into a club he was already a member of. we were kid-roommates in a carpeted midwest atticin Ohio winter arrives late October unannounced with bags and stays through April. my brotherice king frost-bitten product of snow storms learned frigid from the four decembers he enduredbefore me. the day papa promised to give us a tv was the only time my brother intentionallysmiled in my direction. since we stopped sharing a room, our interactions are all exit strategieswhen he left the house at seventeen he did not say goodbye. i did not go running after him. onenight i hope to gather our wrinkled flesh around a bottle of whiskey older than us. and tradestories…

LA CAMA TIENE CANDELA, or THE BED IS ON FIRE1

Would you believe me if I told youshe loved me, she loved me evenwith perejil on her breath. She said,I was her garden of Hibiscus,of Bayahibe Roses. She kissedmy forehead. A bell was ringing.A light flickered and in it, our arms:the same deep brown like wet earthcradling the Massacre River.Would you believe me if I told youshe slept beside me every nightsince gliding her finger acrossmy teeth to memorize my smile?The landscape cloaked in plumand restless but she’d say sleepingwith me was like swaying in tall grass,under the moon-sun, pelicans preeningnearby. She professed she loved metonight, tomorrow night, yesterday too,over and over the lap of jade waves.Come, she’d say, into this fieldof soft sea grass perfumed with charcoal,perfumed with rosemary, a rowof palms for shade. Believe a lovelike this is…

it’s winter orit’s the last day of winterand they’re calling for a second warit’s winterit’s the second day of the new decadethey’re callingyou have only just acceptedwhat happened to your father’s fatherwho died long before you were bornleft the men you are made fromto cry into bottles of Boone’s Farmtheir hands blue and holding little white bonesyou imagine a world where your fatherwasn’t your father, was the man he wantedto be which was the man his father waseven drunker, and meanbut for good reason, the war hard etchedhe could smell the blood from men’s scalpsit’s winter orthe last day of winter and you have been hurting yourselfbecause you are just a scared little boyyou are hurting yourself because you are youthe boys in gym class spit in between swipeswith their…

THE ARCHI-TEXTURE OF THE CITY AS A NETWORK OF TRANSLATION

APZ Books Street Gloss by Brent Armendinger Brooklyn, NY: The Operating System, 2019 Paperback, 126 pages Translation is a practice fraught with unequal power relations, a site where belonging and exclusion are negotiated and legitimized, and one in which existing ideologies are often reproduced. Yet it also can serve as a mode of access and collective experience, an aesthetic and ethical strategy that can challenge hierarchical structures and create alternative versions—not just of the text but of the economy of literature and language to which it belongs. Brent Armendinger’s Street Gloss makes this collaborative act explicit, while opening up its strictures to the archi-texture of the city. Accomplishing this requires letting go of one’s authority-as-interpreter but, moreover, it demands taking in the vocabulary of the streets, which is where Armendinger relocates himself…

THE ARCHI-TEXTURE OF THE CITY AS A NETWORK OF TRANSLATION

2020 APR/HONICKMAN First Book Prize

CHESSY NORMILE Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party The APR/Honickman First Book Prize is an award of $3,000 and publication of a volume of poetry. Chessy Normile’s Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party, with an introduction by Li-Young Lee, was published in September 2020, with distribution by Copper Canyon Press through Consortium. Copies are available at our online store at: https://the-american-poetry-review.myshopify.com The prize is made possible by the partnership between The Honickman Foundation and The American Poetry Review.…

2020 APR/HONICKMAN First Book Prize

SOME HISTORY OF FIELD WORK

Then November seemed like a whole other gender:the veins of wet leaves splayed upon the bedrock.Skin of the land beneath which you could hear yourown blood rushing boyhood out. Under orders nowto be a man, I lie down on a large nurse tree, a fallenlog feeding the rest of the forest with its body; long scardown birch bark. Please let this be enough. After a whileI get hungry, too, my tongue a useless fruit. But I will liehere until something sings be this. Birds, back me up—you who leave your first feathers in the brambles.For years, men had to hide their porn in the woods.Desire in exile, insects running in rows. We boysquickly gathering in the reedy ditch to see. Little hands—we were hardly what the ladybugs were looking for.But…

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