In honor of summertime, the Blackbird editors have compiled a series of poems from our Founders Archive and paired them each with an artwork by our v22n3 featured artist Tanja Softić. All women, these poets are worthy of celebration for their contributions to poetry both in and out of Blackbird. We hope you enjoy them. We suspect you will.
– The Blackbird Staff
“Safe from Trains” by Ada Limón – from v4n2
She thinks her body is a white hallway
through which people walk on their way
to something finer, apartment 8A
or, god forbid, 12B that smells always of
cabbage and European tobacco.
Her husband, before he left, said he
liked to fuck her as if she was tied
to railroad tracks and this train, bigger
than the local strip mall, was roaring
around the corner.
She asked once, Is it the Union Pacific?
But he said it didn’t have a name.
Do you untie me in the end? She asked.
I never thought that far ahead, he said.
She told him, But every woman tied
on the tracks needs a hero, right?
Look, He said, It’s not like that,
it’s not a love story, it’s not so complicated.
“In Another Country “by Lynda Hull – from v7n1
If Baroque were more than a manner
of music, it would be this last afternoon.
Sun, disciplined by hours, moves slowly
across the floor. The shadows of pears
in the basket compose a pattern
described only once. If you spoke now,
it would be a kind of violence troubling
the skin of the moment. We have stepped
out of the past and the future waits
without us. Outside, the wind ruffles grass,
invisibly bending each blade. A single piano note
repeated without variation floats across
the lawn. Naked, we are suddenly strange,
in time again, you are already moving away
from me. Yesterday, we walked
saying the names of streets and trees,
bringing them forever into us. Later,
you came behind me in the doorway, slid
your arms around my waist. I wanted to ask
if you had said everything, but only
said your name. Tomorrow,
it will all be different. Already,
I see you in a hotel room, curtain
half-drawn. You will sit in profile
unfolding the news of another country.
The same sky will go on reinventing
itself. I will put on the clothes
laid out the night before
while the morning stains with traffic.
I will slice grapefruit
and wonder if distance
will give us back to ourselves.
“Seven Disappointments (2)” by Maggie Smith – from v6n1
We learn early we’re just dots
seen from a great height.
—Amy Gerstler
You are human again, but you remember
both lives. First, a boy’s. Swimming
in the green-black lake, sleeping in a loft
with your brothers, having a mother
and father who each time one of you broke
into the world hoped you would be
something else. Seven disappointments,
one for each day of the week. A life you had
but did not want. Then, a bird’s. Preening
your blue-black wings, sleeping in a nest
made of spun glass, alighting on your sister,
her arms outstretched like a saint, although
she did not know you then. From the air
everyone you loved was scattered confetti.
The speck of one, the speck of another.
It was a dollhouse view: tiny, varnished
loaves of bread, a miniature candelabra,
book pages the size of postage stamps.
It felt as impossible as your name
on a grain of rice: a life you wanted
but could not keep. Once you watched
the landscape roll beneath you, a movie
of a tree played on the river, its reflection
flickering as if projected. You are human
again, but you will not forget. From the air,
the lit windows of your house looked like
a fallen constellation. There were so many
with no silhouettes to fill them.
“Synchronized Swimming” by Claudia Emerson – from v7n1
Prim noseclips firmly in place‚ hair molded‚
bunned at the nape‚ even muscle groups schooled
into exact definitions‚ one body appears
cloned. Linked arm to shoulder‚ a female strand‚
the team enters the pool supple as an otter
flowing from a river-smooth rock to gather
itself into the first of the ornamental
formations. For this‚ they have land-drilled—
practicing poolside when and how to move‚
breathe‚ even their smiles choreographed.
Upside-down now to assume the vertical figure‚
stillness is as much part of this execution
as motion. Hands fluttering‚ the scull supports
legs scissoring the air before they close‚
plunging into the shimmering screen of water.
The girls’ disappearance so quick‚ precise‚
the surface tension barely perceives the clean
incisions—before they reappear with ease:
bright fragments inside a kaleidoscope
dialing inflorescent patterns of glass.
“Elegy with Chinese Checkerboard” by Victoria Chang – from v8n1
An old man lifts a lime tree, ashes
fall from his cigarette like asterisks.
He doesn’t look up.
Our forms of bodies and strollers map
into the land. Cement steams against
stucco torsos and unblinking
blades of new sod. We are latched to this
landscape, where trees need
wooden sticks to stand straight, where workers
trim thistle on the trail,
each day working their way westward,
where fields are
aerated into a Chinese checkerboard,
plugs of brown dirt
lost like confetti, like something to
celebrate.
“i lie back on my red coverlet and contemplate” by Diane Suess – from v6n1
the paintings of seascapes we won’t be seeing in the Louvre.
the miniatures of the infamous Van Blarenberghe brothers.
no rented wooden boats in the Jardin de Tuileries
though this is not about a particular lover or a particular city.
even i am less a woman than a ball of mercury breaking
into forty pieces of silver.
there was talk of Prague, the Klub Cleopatra, that bar called
the Marquis de Sade. as if poetry lies there on a gold settee
smoking a black cigarette in a red holder.
green dress. that Van Gogh green, the color of his pool tables.
the ceiling too is green, and the absinthe we won’t be sipping.
the unmade love in unmade beds. small, oversensitive breasts.
Americans always think it’s elsewhere. believe
in transmutative sex. i did, when a girl, scrutinizing
my queendom, a colony of fire ants, their thoraxes
gleaming like scoured copper.
“If a Person Visits Someone in a Dream, in Some Cultures the Dreamer Thanks Them” by Jean Valentine – from v8n1
—for Reginald Shepherd
Dear Reginald,
It is morning.
I sit at a table
writing a letter
with a needle and thread.
~
I pricked my finger A pelican
out of her migratory path,
even her language family—
whose child is gone
yet she absently pecks at her breast.
~
I write on the bedspread
I am making for you there
May you breathe deeply and easily.
If a person visits someone in a dream,
in some cultures the dreamer thanks them in the morning
for visiting their dream.
~
I call it dream
not that I am drawn to that which withdraws
but to him pearled, asleep, who never withdraws.
~
At a hotel in another star. The rooms were cold and damp, we were both at the desk at midnight asking if they had any heaters. They had one heater. You are ill. Please take it. Thank you for visiting my dream.
~
Can you breathe all right?
Break the glass shout
and break the glass force the room
break the thread Open
the music behind the glass.
