Fire
Matthew Dickman


Oh, fire—you burn me! Ed is
singing
behind the smoke and coals, his
wife near him, the rest of us
below the stars
swimming above Washington
state,
burning through themselves,
he's like an Appalachian Prince
Henry with his banjo
and whiskey. The court
surrounding him and the deer
off in the dark hills like the
French, terrified
but in love and hungry.
I'm burning all the time. My 
pockets full of matches
and lighters, the blue smoke
crawling out like a skinny ghost
from between my lips.
My lungs on fire, the wings
of them falling grom the open
sky. The tops of Michelle's long
hands
looked like the beautiful coats
leopards have, covered in dark
spots. All the cigarettes she
would light
and then smash out, her eyes
the color of hair spray, cloudy
and stingy
and gone, but beautiful! She
carried her hands around
like two terrible letters of
introduction. I never understood
who could have opened them, 
read them aloud,
and still thrown her onto a bed,
still walked into the street she
was, still
lit what little fuse she had left.
Oh, fire—
you burn me. My sister and I
and Southern Comfort
making us singe and spark, the
family
ash all around us, the way she is
beautiful to me in her singular
blaze,
my brain lighting up, my tongue
like a monk in wartime, awash
in orange silk and flames.
The first time I ever crushed a 
handful of codeine into its
universe
of powdered pink, the last time
I felt the tangy aspirin drip of
ecstacy down my throat,
the car losing control, the sound
of momentum, this earth is not 
standing
still, oh, falling elevator—
you keep me, oh, graveyard—
you have been so patient, ticking
away, smoldering—
you grenade. Of, fire,
the first time I ever took a drink
I was doused with gasoline,
that little ember perking up
inside me, flashing, beginning to
glow and climb.

Do You Speak Persian?

Kaveh Akbar

Some days we can see Venus in midafternoon. Then at night, stars

separated by billions of miles, light traveling years

to die in the back of an eye.

Is there a vocabulary for this — one to make dailiness amplify

and not diminish wonder?

I have been so careless with the words I already have.

I don't remember how to say home

in my first language, or lonely, or light.

I remember only

delam barat tang shodeh, I miss you,

and shab bekheir, good night.

How is school going, Kaveh-joon?

Delam barat tang shodeh.

Are you still drinking?

Shab bekheir.

For so long every step I've taken

has been from one tongue to another.

To order the world:

I need, you need, he/she/it needs.

The rest, left to a hungry jackal

in the back of my brain.

Right now our moon looks like a pale cabbage rose.

Delam barat tang shodeh.

We are forever folding into the light.

Shab bekheir.

Remembering Fireworks
Elizabeth Jennings


Always as if for the first time we watch
The fireworks as if no one had ever
Done this before, made shapes, signs,
Cut diamonds on air, sent up stars
Nameless, imperious. And in the falling
Of fire, the spent rocket, there is a kind
Of nostalgia as normally only attaches
To things long known and lost. Such an absence,
Such emptiness of sky the fireworks leave
After their festival. We, fumbling
For words of love, remember the rockets,
The spinning wheels, the sudden diamonds,
And say with delight 'Yes, like that, like that.'
Oh and the air is full of falling
Stars surrendered. We search for a sign.

The Song of Wandering Aengus
W. B. Yeats


I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when the white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

The Vast Hour
Genevieve Taggard


All essences of sweetness from the white
Warm day go up in vapor, when the dark
Comes down. Ascends the tune of meadow-lark,
Ascends the noon-time smell of grass, when night
Takes sunlight from the world, and gives it ease.
Mysterious wings have brushed the air; and light
Float all the ghosts of sense and sound and sight;
The silent hive is echoing the bees.
So stir my thoughts at this slow, solemn time.
Now only is there certainty for me
When all the day's distilled and understood.
Now light meets darkness: now my tendrils climb
In this vast hour, up the living tree,
Where gloom foregathers, and the stern winds brood.

Liverpool
Michael Donaghy


Ever been tattooed? It takes a whim of iron,
takes sweating in the antiseptic-stinking parlour,
nothing to read but motorcycle magazines
before the blood-sopped cotton and, of course, the needle,
all for — at best — some Chinese dragon.
But mostly they do hearts,

hearts skewered, blurry, spurting like the Sacred Heart
on the arms of bikers and sailors.
Even in prison they get by with biro ink and broken glass,
carving hearts into their arms and shoulders.
But women's are more intimate. They hide theirs,
under shirts and jeans, in order to bestow them.

Like Tracy, who confessed she'd had hers done
one legless weekend with her ex.
Heart. Arrow. Even the bastards' initials, R.J.L.,
somewhere where it hurt, she said,
and when I asked her where, snapped 'Liverpool'.

Wherever it was, she'd had it sliced away
leaving a scar, she said, pink and glassy,
but small, and better than having his mark on her,

(that self-same mark of Valentinus,
who was flayed for love, but who never
— so the cardinals now say — existed.
Desanctified, apocryphal, like Christopher,
like the scar you never showed me, Trace,
your (        ), your ex, your 'Liverpool').

Still, when I unwrap the odd anonymous note
I let myself believe that it's from you.

Talking in Bed
Philip Larkin

Talking in bed ought to be easiest

Lying together there goes back so far

An emblem of two people being honest.

Yet more and more time passes silently.

Outside the wind’s incomplete unrest

Builds and disperses clouds about the sky.

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.

None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why

At this unique distance from isolation

It becomes still more difficult to find

Words at once true and kind

Or not untrue and not unkind.