Read Online The Best American Poetry 2013 by David Lehman - Free Book Online
Authors: David Lehman
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my best friend in 4th grade chased
city buses from corner to corner
Because his cousinâs father could not stop looking
up at the sky after his return from the war
Because parataxis is just another way of making ends meet
Because I have been on a steady diet of words
since the age of three.
from Ploughshares
MARK JARMAN
George W. Bush
Because he felt that Jesus changed his heart
he listened to his heart and took its counsel.
When asked if he felt any of that counsel
had impacted the veterans he rode with
on a bike trek through hills and river bedsâ
some of the men without their limbs but able
to keep up despite the chafing ghost painâ
he said how honored he felt to be with them.
But no, he said, still listening to his heart,
the heart that Jesus changed, âI bear no guilt.â
How much is anyone whose heart speaks for him
responsible for what his heart has told him?
The occupation of the heart is pumping
blood, but for some it is to offer counsel,
especially if it has been so changed
all that it says must finally be trusted.
Nested within the lungs, sprouting its branches,
the heart is not an organ of cognition.
But some would argue that its power is greater
than the mindâs even, once the heart is changed.
And so a change of heart he believed saved him.
I hope we understand belief like that,
for there are many we would grant that mystery.
The challenge is to grant the same to him.
Perhaps we can remember one of the columnists
who often wrote as his apologist,
arguing that a convicted murderer
must still be executed for her crime,
even though she had found the Lord in prison.
Forgiveness was between her and the Lord.
If weâre outraged at him or at each other,
who will come between us and our outrage?
If thereâs no guilt to bear, whatâs to forgive?
Our losses are unbearable. Our pain
will have to be the ghost of our forgiveness.
from Five Points
LAUREN JENSEN
itâs hard as so much is
punctuated wrong. honest. human. my uncle
committed suicide when i was in the sixth grade,
basement/gun, gun/basement as if
these things come in a package with the special bonus
of a cracked open door, cigarette smoke,
revolving fan. when i think of my uncle i find myself
trying not to think about my uncle and then
i think about him even more.
how at a seminar that discussed âhelpful tips
for a successful interview,â two panelists debated
whether first and last impressions
were the most important part of it all, but i find it
hard to imagine a leather band without a clock,
a body without its belly or a poem without its middle.
would âitâs hard as so much isâ followed by
the line i havenât written yet satisfy (you)
me? at times i forget to embrace the afternoon,
only love the morning, only kiss what falls above
the waist and there are so many parts of the day/body,
body/day that go untouched and i think itâs because
in the light i think about what others think
too much. consider that (me writing) you reading
this now might be wondering where the âheartâ went
and if this will eventually fit together, function
how i want, but it wonât. but only because the middles
are such a necessary mess that i could endlessly sift
like the second drawer where an incomplete deck
of playing cards and sewing needles and a ceramic
monkey with a missing tail and other stuff
can be found, and itâs the âstuffâ that i love the most
that i often forget, let go. like two summers
before the gun went in my uncleâs mouth,
and how his chevron mustache would scratch my face
and how he would pick me up over his head
and how his arms held me at my bathing-suited waist.
from Mid-American Review
A. VAN JORDAN
Blazing Saddles
Mel Brooks, 1975
Whatâs so funny about racism
is how the racists never get the joke.
In most settings, racists stick out
like Count Basieâs Orchestra in
city buses from corner to corner
Because his cousinâs father could not stop looking
up at the sky after his return from the war
Because parataxis is just another way of making ends meet
Because I have been on a steady diet of words
since the age of three.
from Ploughshares
MARK JARMAN
George W. Bush
Because he felt that Jesus changed his heart
he listened to his heart and took its counsel.
When asked if he felt any of that counsel
had impacted the veterans he rode with
on a bike trek through hills and river bedsâ
some of the men without their limbs but able
to keep up despite the chafing ghost painâ
he said how honored he felt to be with them.
But no, he said, still listening to his heart,
the heart that Jesus changed, âI bear no guilt.â
How much is anyone whose heart speaks for him
responsible for what his heart has told him?
The occupation of the heart is pumping
blood, but for some it is to offer counsel,
especially if it has been so changed
all that it says must finally be trusted.
Nested within the lungs, sprouting its branches,
the heart is not an organ of cognition.
But some would argue that its power is greater
than the mindâs even, once the heart is changed.
And so a change of heart he believed saved him.
I hope we understand belief like that,
for there are many we would grant that mystery.
The challenge is to grant the same to him.
Perhaps we can remember one of the columnists
who often wrote as his apologist,
arguing that a convicted murderer
must still be executed for her crime,
even though she had found the Lord in prison.
Forgiveness was between her and the Lord.
If weâre outraged at him or at each other,
who will come between us and our outrage?
If thereâs no guilt to bear, whatâs to forgive?
Our losses are unbearable. Our pain
will have to be the ghost of our forgiveness.
from Five Points
LAUREN JENSEN
itâs hard as so much is
punctuated wrong. honest. human. my uncle
committed suicide when i was in the sixth grade,
basement/gun, gun/basement as if
these things come in a package with the special bonus
of a cracked open door, cigarette smoke,
revolving fan. when i think of my uncle i find myself
trying not to think about my uncle and then
i think about him even more.
how at a seminar that discussed âhelpful tips
for a successful interview,â two panelists debated
whether first and last impressions
were the most important part of it all, but i find it
hard to imagine a leather band without a clock,
a body without its belly or a poem without its middle.
would âitâs hard as so much isâ followed by
the line i havenât written yet satisfy (you)
me? at times i forget to embrace the afternoon,
only love the morning, only kiss what falls above
the waist and there are so many parts of the day/body,
body/day that go untouched and i think itâs because
in the light i think about what others think
too much. consider that (me writing) you reading
this now might be wondering where the âheartâ went
and if this will eventually fit together, function
how i want, but it wonât. but only because the middles
are such a necessary mess that i could endlessly sift
like the second drawer where an incomplete deck
of playing cards and sewing needles and a ceramic
monkey with a missing tail and other stuff
can be found, and itâs the âstuffâ that i love the most
that i often forget, let go. like two summers
before the gun went in my uncleâs mouth,
and how his chevron mustache would scratch my face
and how he would pick me up over his head
and how his arms held me at my bathing-suited waist.
from Mid-American Review
A. VAN JORDAN
Blazing Saddles
Mel Brooks, 1975
Whatâs so funny about racism
is how the racists never get the joke.
In most settings, racists stick out
like Count Basieâs Orchestra in
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