The Best American Poetry 2014 Read Online Free Page B

dead are living
    like us, growing fat, paying their debts,
    brushing their teeth on schedule.
    Sometimes it’s hard to make your way
    across a room to shake someone’s
    hand or give them a drink. The dead
    are always there, in their evening gowns
    and tuxedoes, expecting to be served—
    asking for more crackers or champagne.
    Just making love is a sacrilege!
    The grandmother is there and the school
    teacher and the delicate sister,
    even those who are not yet born,
    more innocent than babies. You get
    up in the morning to comb your
    hair and you are combing the brittle hair
    of the dead, which goes on growing
    like the eyelids and the finger
    nails, as if the body were the last
    to know or simply stubborn.
    And maybe that’s what the cakes are for—
    to nourish the vanity of the corpse,
    who after all would like to look
    as good as possible on such a great
    occasion. Listen! You hear the leaves
    cracking faintly at dusk, a tire humming
    on dry pavement, the sound of water
    rushing through a pipe? The dead
    are hungry! You must take
    your knives and bowls and go down
    into the cellar; you must begin to chant
    those old recipes you’ve been saving—
    mixing your own blood with the dry
    sand the dead grow fat on,
    that the children of the dead roll
    into loaves for you to eat—
    for the dust that will eventually pass
    entirely through you.
    from Terminus Magazine

CACONRAD
----
wondering about our demise while driving to Disneyland with abandon

    don’t be
    afraid of
    all we have pending
    plasma I sold
    in Albuquerque
    broke even with
    food I purchased to produce it
    we can manage we can start under
    this tree a quiet hour of
    dozing into the bark will
    reveal the step forward
    things thinking about one another
    this crystal and feather
    ask me to bring them
    together put them behind
    the books they want a
    private conversation and
    that means me getting lost to
    fellowship with grass soil and little
    stones who tell me there is no clear
    sense of when we leave this world
    an owl drops a mouse in front of me
    it doesn’t have to mean something
    but it probably does
    help fishing a glass eye out of
    the garbage disposal was my
    favorite time helping anyone
    he was so happy pushing it
    back into his head shaking
    my hand at the same time
    we both wished he wasn’t
    my boyfriend’s brother
    from Denver Quarterly

ANNE CARSON
----
A Fragment of Ibykos Translated 6 Ways

    [Ibykos fr. 286 PMG ]
    In spring, on the one hand,
    the Kydonian apple trees,
    being watered by streams of rivers
    where the uncut garden of the maidens [is]
    and vine blossoms
    swelling
    beneath shady vine branches
    bloom.
    On the other hand, for me
    Eros lies quiet at no season.
    Nay rather,
    like a Thracian north wind
    ablaze with lightning,
    rushing from Aphrodite
    accompanied by parching madnesses,
    black,
    unastonishable,
    powerfully,
    right up from the bottom of my feet
    [it] shakes my whole breathing being.
    [fr. 286 translated as “Woman’s Constancy” by John Donne]
    In woman, on the one hand,
    those contracts
    being purposed by change and falsehood,
    where lovers’ images [forswear the persons that we were],
    and true deaths
    sleeping
    beneath true marriages,
    antedate.
    On the other hand, me
    thy vow hast not conquered.
    Nay rather,
    like that new-made Tomorrow,
    now disputing,
    now abstaining,
    accompanied by Love and his wrath,
    truly,
    not truly,
    if I would,
    if I could,
    [it] justifies my one whole lunatic escape.
    [fr. 286 as Bertolt Brecht’s FBI file #100-67077]
    At a cocktail party attended by known Communists, on the one hand,
    the subject
    being suitably paraphrased as Mr & Mrs Bert Brecht,
    where ten years of exile have left their mark,
    and beneath 5 copies of file 100-190707,
    Charles Laughton
    returning to the stage as Galileo,
    enters an elevator.
    On the other hand, of my name with a hyphen between Eugene and Friedrich
    the Bureau has no record.
    Nay rather,
    like the