The Best American Poetry 2012 Read Online Free Page B

creature smothered in death clothes
    dragging into the forest
    bodies he killed to make meaning
    the woman who found that she
    to her bewilderment and horror
    had a body
    *
    As if certain algae
    that keep islands of skeletons
    alive, that make living rock from
    trash, from carcasses left behind by others,
    as if algae
    were to produce out of
    themselves and what they most fear
    the detritus over whose
    kingdom they preside: the burning
    fountain is the imagination
    within us that ingests and by its
    devouring generates
    what is most antithetical to itself:
    it returns the intolerable as
    brilliant dream, visible, opaque,
    teasing analysis:
    makes from what you find hardest to
    swallow, most indigestible, your food.
    from Salmagundi

BRUCE BOND

    Pill

    Say you are high all the time save those moments
    you take a sobriety tablet and so descend
    the nerves of the heart, thinking straight,
    they call it, as if the mind were an arrow
    shot from the eye into the eyes of others,
    the ones you wronged, the ones you never knew
    you love or do not love, the black fathoms
    of their pupils deepening as your eyes close.
    And sure it hurts, how something dead walks out
    your sleep, how it goes from blue to red
    like blood. And yet the stuff keeps calling you
    in a father’s voice. You loved your father,
    so it’s more than bitter seeds you swallow.
    It’s quiet pleasure within the limitations
    of one life, until the great space of a day
    gets wider, brighter, as if you were slipping
    into summer with its giant measures
    of desire, the way just sitting makes it rise.
    And yes, with each dose comes the gravity
    and boredom, the slow crush of August heat,
    though you are learning to live here, in a town
    with one good street to speak of, one flock of trees
    to storm the night. In time you are addicted.
    And it takes more of the drug to get you back
    to the world, where morning swallows flit
    in last night’s rain. In time you tell yourself
    you are the age you are: the little pains
    inside your arms, your legs, they are just that:
    the pinch that says you are not asleep,
    that the compulsion you feel is the pull
    of the planet you walk, alone. And the dawn,
    however deep you breathe, is everyone’s now,
    everyone’s breath in the sky above you,
    everyone’s sun aching into layers
    of mist, spitting fire in the eye,
    its one black star dissolving, like a pill.
    from Colorado Review

STEPHANIE BROWN

    Notre Dame

    I was staying in an apartment near Notre Dame.
    There was a park for the kids to play.
    Roller skaters in front of the cathedral in the evening, and my older son joined in.
    We shared the floor of the apartment.
    Too many family members of mine sleeping there.
    One morning I woke up and in the instant
    Before my full vision came back I saw or apprehended or felt or however
    You want to call that almost-seeing that happens—
    Two angels hovering: one was male and one was female.
    They were there to be with my younger son, protecting him or visiting.
    The male especially was there to care for him.
    They were checking on him as he slept.
    I had interrupted by seeing them and so they had to leave.
    In fact, the male angel stayed maybe a moment too long
    And the female was communicating this message like, “Hurry up, come on!”
    It was known to me that I wasn’t supposed to see them.
    They were annoyed with me.
    After waking, fully, and lying on the floor before everyone else stirred,
    My mind wandered over to Notre Dame:
    My parents made a pilgrimage every year, just to be near it.
    I loved the thoughtful gargoyle up at the top.
    Inside the human souls came to visit out of pain or tourism
    Or death approaching, or craving union,
    Out of loneliness and sickness. Out of boredom.
    Candles burned their prayers for someone.
    What had I seen? Anything? You always doubt something like that.
    How could that be real? And yet
    It was a terrible summer, and it required angels, real or dreamed,
    With my