The Best American Poetry 2012 Read Online Free

weather.
    Indians were neither loaners nor debtors.
    Salmon was our money. So was the weather.
    Back then, people wrote gorgeous letters
    And read more poetry. So did the weather.
    On all issues, there was only one dissenter,
    But we loved him, too. So did the weather.
    Before Columbus came, eagle feathers
    Gave birth to eagles. So did the weather.
    We all apprenticed to wise old mentors
    And meditated for days. So did the weather.
    We were guitar-players and inventors
    Of minor chords and antibiotics. So was the weather.
    Every person lived near the city center
    And had the same income. So did the weather.
    Before Columbus, eagle feathers
    Lived in the moment. So did the weather.
    from Green Mountains Review

KAREN LEONA ANDERSON

    Receipt: Midway Entertainment Presents

    Two kinds of fair: carnie and perambulator
    of the local: shiny peppers on paper plates
    and buttercream silk goats: Lizabet & Hope
    among the floral displays gone south:
    please enter again, this was very strong,
    next year. A staged race of pigs in felt coats:
    picked out in red, green, blue around a track,
    shivering a ring of fat kids used to this
    easy choice: commercial, delicious
    fries or the sad white bread of the VFW barbeque.
    Right among the sloe-eyed dirty cow hose-down,
    a tired show horse to pet. Sort of oversold
    at the 5 buck K9 demonstration; 4H got a thousand
    for a rough old hog in red second-place satin.
    Dad explains: Claire’s photos won because
    Claire’s photos were best. It’s that fair, the big gray
    hair of a tufted chicken, the mascaraed rabbit that
    no one gets are supposed to mold you from the fantastic
    to the rational: I would like to thank God for this medal.
    Down at the midway end past the chainsaw bears,
    the Old People Tap Dance Show, and the bee man
    in the ag tent, madly pointing at the holes
    in his rigged up hive, Mom inspects busted latches
    and the blanks between boards and wires,
    the scuffed blue of the Tilt-A-Whirl’s shelf; on which
    is the kind of fair you could get used to;
    all places being equal to the blast of bad rock
    and the rust metal floor; a flat coke no one would want;
    ordinary; just one boy’s or one girl’s sweaty hands
    on offer, unspecial.
    from Seneca Review

RAE ARMANTROUT

    Accounts

    for Brian Keating
    Light was on its way
    from nothing
    to nowhere.
    Light was all business
    Â Â Light was full speed
    when it got interrupted.
    Interrupted by what?
    When it got tangled up
    and broke
    into opposite
    Â Â broke into brand-new things.
    Â Â What kinds of things?
    Â Â  Drinking Cup
    Â Â â€œThinking of you!
    Convenience Valet”
    How could speed take shape?
    *
    Hush!
    Do you want me to start over?
    *
    The fading laser pulse
    Â Â Information describing the fading laser pulse
    is stored
    Â Â is encoded
    in the spin states
    of atoms.
    God
    is balancing his checkbook
    Â Â God is encrypting his account.
    This is taking forever!
    from Poetry

JULIANNA BAGGOTT

    For Furious Nursing Baby

    Frothy and pink as a rabid pig you—
    a mauler—
    a lunatic stricken with
    a madness induced by flesh—
    squeeze my skin
    until blotched nicked. Your fingernails
    are jagged
    Â Â and mouth-slick. Pinprick scabs
    Â Â jewel my breasts.
    Your tongue
    your wisest muscle
    Â Â is the wet engine
    of discontent.
    It self-fastens by a purse-bead of spit
    while your elegant hands
    flail conducting
    orchestral milk
    Â Â and sometimes prime the pump.
    Nipple in mouth
    nipple in hand
    you have your cake and eat it too.
    Then when wrenched
    loose you’ll eat sorrow loss—
    one flexed hand twists
    as you open your mouth
    to eat your fist.
    from The Cincinnati Review

DAVID BAKER

    Outside

    Stevie lives in a silo.
    A silo lives where, mostly, Stevie is
    or is not. Tipped over—a hollow vein.
    The silo, I mean. For here home is out
    there on the grass. If you want a drink or wash
    your hands, just dip into that trunk, hot and