modern anglo-amerikan siiri ve modern siirin anglo-amerikan dili

Assault to Abjury
by Raymond McDaniel

Rain commenced, and wind did.

A crippled ship slid ashore.

Our swimmer's limbs went heavy.

The sand had been flattened.

The primary dune, the secondary dune, both leveled.

The maritime forest, extracted.

Every yard of the shore was shocked with jellyfish.

The blue pillow of the man o' war empty in the afterlight.

The threads of the jellyfish, spent.

Disaster weirdly neatened the beach.

We cultivated the debris field.

Castaway trash, our treasure.

Jewel box, spoon ring, sack of rock candy.

A bicycle exoskeleton without wheels, grasshopper green.

Our dead ten speed.

We rested in red mangrove and sheltered in sheets.

Our bruises blushed backwards, our blisters did.

is it true is it true

God help us we tried to stay shattered but we just got better.

We grew adept, we caught the fish as they fled.

We skinned the fish, our knife clicked like an edict.

We were harmed, and then we healed.

*poem is from Saltwater Empire, just published by Coffee House Press.

Hush Now
Maggie Smith*

My head was cloudy,
not transparent

as the plastic body
in the children’s wing

of the museum,
but free of charge

you could still push
rows of multicolored

buttons and watch
pain register in the gray

knot of my brain.
Neurons lit up neon

in the different parcels
of my skull. One color

for grief; one for fire.
To keep calm as I felt

flashing, flashing
behind my eyes,

I memorized beat-up
jeans, six pearly snaps

on my cowgirl shirt,
the sky blanched

cigarette white. Then
I pulsed like a strobe,

like seizure. Hush now
and run, light hissed

inside the hot coils.
Run as fast as you can.

Yes, I said, shorting,
still lit. Then what.

* Maggie Smith is the author of Lamp of the Body (Red Hen Press) and Nesting Dolls (Pudding House).

Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Paris Review, The Gettysburg Review, West Branch, Third Coast, Crab Orchard Review, and other journals.

She lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she works as an editor.

Terzanelle: Manzanar Riot
by Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan

This is a poem with missing details,
of ground gouging each barrack's windowpane,
sand crystals falling with powder and shale,

where silence and shame make adults insane.
This is about a midnight of searchlights,
of ground gouging each barrack's windowpane,

of syrup on rice and a cook's big fight.
This is the night of Manzanar's riot.
This is about a midnight of searchlights,

a swift moon and a voice shouting, Quiet!
where the revolving searchlight is the moon.
This is the night of Manzanar's riot,

windstorm of people, rifle powder fumes,
children wiping their eyes clean of debris,
where the revolving searchlight is the moon,

and children line still to use the latrines.
This is a poem with missing details,
children wiping their eyes clean of debris—
sand crystals falling with powder and shale.

*poem is from Shadow Mountain, just published by Four Way Books.

okey, dusty.

okay. watch me but don't touch me. i'm a turkish delight.
this is not a book.
which you can read.
but look.

vay anasını acaip oldu.

kensi adıma söylüyorum, süperman'a hastayım.

The Assignation
by Ciaran Carson

I think I must have told him my name was Juliette,
with four syllables, you said, to go with violette.

I envisaged the violet air that presages snow,
the dark campaniles of a city beginning to blur

a malfunctioning violet neon pharmacy sign
jittering away all night through the dimity curtains.

Near dawn you opened them to a deep fall and discovered
a line of solitary footprints leading to a porch:

a smell of candle-wax and frankincense; the dim murmur
of a liturgy you knew but whose language you did not.

The statues were shrouded in Lenten violet, save one,
a Virgin in a cope of voile so white as to be blue.

As was the custom there, your host informed you afterwards—
the church was dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows.

*poem is from For All We Know, just published by Wake Forest University Press.

Line Poem
by Caroline Knox

Long jetty, long shell-racked jetty, cracked warped planks.

Beautiful fish, beautiful sea-bass poached with an August tomato,
on an ironstone plate.

A snake's slough, a snake's spinal cord, a dry-rot stump.

A twill tape measure, an audiotape cassette unspooled and puckered,
shining.

Agate prayer beads, kazoos, whistles, rattles.

A bike chain and a bungee cord. A möbius strip and a broccoli elastic.

Split vanilla pod inset with paltry-looking flat oily brown seeds.

Egg-and-dart molding of vitreous fake sandstone. Contrails,
mares' tails, mackerel sky.

*poem is from Quaker Guns, just published by Wave Books.

May Day
by Phillis Levin

I've decided to waste my life again,
Like I used to: get drunk on
The light in the leaves, find a wall
Against which something can happen,

Whatever may have happened
Long ago—let a bullet hole echoing
The will of an executioner, a crevice
In which a love note was hidden,

Be a cell where a struggling tendril
Utters a few spare syllables at dawn.
I've decided to waste my life
In a new way, to forget whoever

Touched a hair on my head, because
It doesn't matter what came to pass,
Only that it passed, because we repeat
Ourselves, we repeat ourselves.

I've decided to walk a long way
Out of the way, to allow something
Dreaded to waken for no good reason,
Let it go without saying,

Let it go as it will to the place
It will go without saying: a wall
Against which a body was pressed
For no good reason, other than this.

*poem is from May Day, just published by Penguin Books.

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

*From The Apple that Astonished Paris by Billy Collins.