Alex Lemon’s most recent book is The Wish Book (a finalist for Best Poetry Collection by The Writer’s League of Texas). He is the author of Happy: A Memoir (Scribner—a finalist for Best Book of Non-fiction by The Writer’s League of Texas) and three other poetry collections: Mosquito, Hallelujah Blackout, and Fancy Beasts. An essay collection and a fifth poetry book are forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. His writing has appeared in Esquire, American Poetry Review, The Huffington Post, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry, Tin House, Kenyon Review, AGNI, New England Review, The Southern Review and jubilat, among others. Among his awards are a 2005 Fellowship in Poetry from the NEA and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. He is an editor-at-large for Saturnalia Books, the poetry editor of descant, and sits on the editorial board of TCU Press and the advisory board of The Southern Review. He lives in Ft. Worth, Texas, writes book reviews for the Dallas Morning News, and teaches at TCU and the Low-residency MFA program at Ashland University.---------
XLVII
a tower of sand dollars
on the window ledge
an egg of moonlight
cradled in the head
of a spoon
past midnight & everyone
sleeps
in the darkest cave
of my body
there is a book
of monsters
it grows
each day a page
all of my dead
singers hackle
the cobwebbed black
I tell the stars
all the beautiful things
they don’t know
They Say It’s Best to Leave the Knife in
—after Sophia De Mello Breyner
I hear the lullabies of the dead in scarves
Of falling snow. In each blue vein
Beneath the skin of a breakable face.
We have front row seats to the doom-show,
To be the ghosts that sing in the glittery
Dark. I do not know anything about silence
The creek holds. I do not know how
The body can suffer incredible amounts
Of horror & still go on, can still hold
Bottomless reservoirs of love. I have given
Myself wholly to more midnights than can
Be counted—been buried in people just
To practice the simple fact of an ending.
The breath of night cloaks, cloisters—
Kissing the rat-scurrying shadows into gods.
Do No Harm
It might be foolish, wanting
To slurp & sinew a bit
Of everyone, but blow
The dust off the good
Word, polish lush its sharp
Edges & then, if you can
Handle the white-hot blush,
Stare at the universe I made
In its new glow—look
At the merry grinding in each
Letter, how it is both
Within & beyond—a funeral
In a fun house that is over-
Flowing with murmuring
Blowup dolls, the doorways
Blacked out by the beaded-
Curtains made from hundreds
Of rattlesnake spines hanging
Nailed from each lintel—hiding
The rooms where the need
To many of us have for action,
To do something about every little
Thing that has to do with us
Is dying. Its moans swallowed
By the midway’s barking music,
The jangling & rusted machines,
The endless echoes of heavy
Panting & all of it fits neatly
Into your purse or pocket—
A compact, the glass eye you
Carry for luck, a compass.
It is a word silvered lustrous
With multitudes, erected piece
By neon piece from every
True & kind thing one might
Ever imagine saying—darling,
Honey-child, my gorgeous little
Honey-child, my gorgeous little
Catastrophe—the caring that knows
The beauty in the wreckage,
The wonder of an untorn & spotless
Yellow dress ghosting in the topmost limbs
Of the chinaberry after the tornado. It is
Something to be he held up, an empty, open
Mouth offered up to the long dead starlight
That peeks through the shred of the post
Storm clouds. Its comfort is the thunder
That punches the ribs, the last, breath-snatching
Flourish of lightning on an almost clear
Day, the telephone pole that goes up in
Flames & the sparks that waterfall from
The powerline as birds of paradise up & down
It bloom. It is wisteria in a suddenly gustless,
Franticly charged air. It is the pearls inside
A dead bird the neighbor’s cat leave split
A dead bird the neighbor’s cat leave split
Open on the front porch, a black box
Recovered from ocean bottom debris
That, from take off to last blip on the radar,
Reordered nothing but Sam Cooke songs.
It is the meteor they say this will not miss,
Rainbows from smokestack to powerplant,
Doubling across the horizon. It is the ripe fruit
Taste of a hard grimace. It is not going back
To the old ways. It is remember: if you are
Hurt help is already here—mouth to mouth,
Chest compressions—I will stop the bleeding
With my own skin if I have to. It is come, come
Closer still in the quiet of the electricity out all
Night—where out there in the nothingness,
Everything can be seen. It is the lovebursting
Sprawl in one drop of our blood, the stardust
That marrows our bones, that showers the
Coming boom we hear with a hush-hush-hush.