Say We’ve Reversed Ourselves for the Umpteenth Time
Say we’ve reversed ourselves for the umpteenth time
And, even that, while driving under our own influence
Or sharpening our horns against any available
Fence, even then, if freedom’s just another
Noun looking for the wayward verb, and even
Though, Paolo Uccello may have felt ubiquitous,
To the extent that the vanishing point was something
Undiscoverable, a table on which to place
An empty glass, even when, the juncture loss
Of noumpere, becoming umpire, becoming
Ump, and even if, the IUD lost that
Night in the SUV, the umbrage, the uh-oh,
And even if this verse is that
River we’ve stepped in twice, in our blush
And blunder, in our question, “What’s
So uppity about that?” and then, even up,
Getting the synchronized to organize, to screw
And unscrew, to ululate into the night
About what’s better left unsaid, even if
The Saying of the Day, as luck would
Have it, even that the navel is considered the hub
Of a wheel and we’re spinning, pining
For nostalgia and ubiety, so rash we
Are, even when, especially when we go from
Uh-huh to uh uh so quickly, some um, yes, and
An uh or two, and that’s how we make up our minds.
U; DUI, IUD, DIY, YID, SUV, BTU, UFO; uke, nuke; ubiety, the condition of being located in a particular place, AHD; who, whether, either, when, which, whence, whither, whether, neither; exuberate, from breast, fertile; UGT, urgent; ugh; uh-oh, alarm; uh-huh, agreement; uh-uh, disagreement; uh, hesitation; um, doubt; ukulele, flea jumping; Walter Ulbricht ordered the building of the Berlin Wall, 1961; ululate, to howl, wail; navel, hub of a wheel; nombril; umbra; umbrage, resentment or a hint or a shadow; ump; juncture loss/false splitting, noumpere became umpire; reverse is nickname, an eke name, newt, aneute; umpteen; ump is a dash in Morse code; all the un- listings!; a book of contrasts
In This Version, the IV and the Collapsed Veins
In this version, the IV and the collapsed veins
And the card tables we folded up, the metal chairs
Hinging not on vacancy but on someone actually
Sitting down, but not for long, never for
Longer, not with the valediction wrapping up as
It is, all of our valuables in our valise,
And if we ever become desperate enough to steal
Or plunder, or even rob a convenience store,
The Sweet Buy & Bye, for example, where they
Sell flowers that will never amount to anything,
Where the coffers sit in their valleculae,
The end of commerce, the end of the send-out
Or the take-away or the take-out or even the delivery,
Right to our very door, and we will peacefully
Keep the cat’s bowl topped up with milk,
Loving the lapping, lappings for lapping’s
Sake, and think of all the lumens sluiced
Through with blood, neither vocal nor
Bucolic, as if we’re like vagabonds with a vascular
Bundle on a stick, beards of burnt cork,
Our heads full of rags and vol-au-vents,
Because we want to go somewhere where we
Haven’t been before or after, find the vamoose
Trail, abhor all the vacua, count our lucky saccades,
As if we could stop awhile at heaven,
Skimming in on the vulgar, red with blood.
V; vaccine, from cow, vacca; cowpox, smallpox; vacua/vacuum; vade mecum, go with me; vagabond, a rover, vagile, sheath; vague, wandering; vagus nerve; vale, to be strong, farewell; valediction; Rudolph Valentino, taxi dancer; Rodan, 1956; Paul Valéry; valise, valigia; vallecula, shallow grave, vamoose; screen presence; variety meats; condensation/con trail; vroom, varoom; varmint; vascular bundle; vatic; vates, prophet, poet; fate, infant, banish, symphony, coffer, blame; aphasia, prophet of; vulgar, Bulgaria, bulgur; see vulm; vocaholic, vocalic, bucolic, colic; vibrissa, long stiff hair on a cat’s brow, whiskers; poem with pronunciation guide; a lumen is the space inside a vein; saccade, eye movements, etc.; cat’s tongue lapping; swisher sweets; to beat the band at what
If We Could Only Whistle War
If we could only whistle war
Since we had long ago forgotten the words,
Along with our noms de guerre, along with
The what of it, the what what what of
It, whether we were fighting with Frenzy or
Fighting with Furor, whether the madness
That ignited in us had a mixture much
Too lean to take us to the end or where
We needed to go, or whether war gave us
Our walking papers, and we eventually
Found out that there was no Wazoo River
To go up, or if we just bolted, tried
The walk on water thing, or even slept
Through the wake-up call, or woke up to
Our wad of troubles, since who of us can
Really draw a blank, who of us can really
Do without grace or some singular obeisance
To beauty and beauty only, for if
The disfiguration is upon us at all times, if
The secrets the dead take with them cut
Both ways, if we weave anger into the cloth
That covers the wounded, and if it’s the wagon
Wheel that makes the ox wheeze, wagon full of
Toys and bones, and if it’s the caul covering us
At birth, to protect us from drowning, from going under,
Hands out, not empty, not without something else to say.
W; wacky, w/o, wah-wah; wacko from Waco; wad of troubles; wade, waddle; waft, wafter, convoy ship; wag, wagon; wake-up call; Potsdam Conference; walnut, the foreign nut; walking papers; woe be gone; lytta, strip on underside of a dog’s tongue, thought to cause madness; Lyssa, Frenzy (Greek); Maniai, goddess of mania/madness (Latin), ira, furor, rabies; wazoo; drew a blank; crwth, crowd, Celtic stringed instrument; war and sausage, confusion, mix up; chambered pith of walnut wood; nom de guerre
You Be My Xylem and I’ll Be Your Phloem
You be my xylem and I’ll be your phloem
Or you be my phloem and I’ll be your xylem—
We who love the versa–we who love the vice—
We who love the fragment of the chamfered
Columns—the what that is holding the what up—
At the crosswalk, we see someone with Xs
For eyes—not I’s as in egos, neither
I go, nor you go—nor venting, nor
Opening the door to the coal bin, nor
The warmth, nor the burn that gives the warmth—
When we take the up elevator—at the treetop,
At the new leafing, at the cloud cover,
And at the rainfall, and at the root, sucking
Up, carrying water in a cup, one brother
To another brother, one sister to another sister—
What we risk spilling—what the clock
Of it all chimes, carries up to us—now
And at the hour when the beehive is full
Of honey—as if we can ward off apical
Dominance—the spread of branches over us,
The shade, the last word falling and then raked
Up and then burned—the bees that carry Cs and
Ds and Es with them on those windy days when
They’re lost among the wildflowers—delirious
And joyful—the going up and the coming down—
These we know—this where we wrote the x, the treasure.
X; xwalk, crosswalk; xylem, woody tissue; phloem (like poem); x-ray, unknown ray; Xanadu; xanthous, yellow; Xerxes; xmas, from x, Greek letter chi, first letter of Greek Khristos, Christ, ΧριστΟϛ, like Xtian; xyz, examine your zipper; xylophone, telephone, megaphone, microphone; phone, sound, voice; pith, to pith, pithy, pith helmet; root pressure, surface tension, transpirational pull, secondary growth, cohesion-tension theory; vascular bundle
Why We Never Returned Old Yeller to the Library
Why we never returned Old Yeller to the library
May not be the question we originally intended
To ask ourselves this morning, nor whether
We could tell a Doric hoplite from an Ionian
Hoplite, imagining, just imagining the chafing
Of heavy armor on the scapulas of vast
Armies, our Bronze Age giving over to our Iron,
Without which the wrinkles in a pair of
Pleated trousers, so unwarlike, yclept peaceable,
Until death parts us, ripping us out of our
Earth as if we were mandragoras, whether
We might want to say recrudesce, if only for
The pleasure of this rag of a word, whether we
Could imagine the devil’s foot uncleft, whole
Hoof, something that might not even elicit
A yoicks from the you-uns in the room,
But we go back to the question, “what is the rule,”
That we want to live in ylem land, the mandrakes
Giving off their scent, the ylang-ylang’s perfume
That might make us forget “why day is day,
Night is night, and time is time,” or how Carl Yastrzemski
Managed in 1967 to be the last Triple Crown winner
In batting, as we wonder under the shade branches of
The Yggdrasil, roots holding hell as well as heaven, how
We can’t change something that is written, whether about
The end of a rabid dog, or a color that we could only call yellow.
Y; y’all, you guys; y chromosome; yackety-yak; wave-hopping; yin (moon, shade, female element); yang (sun, light, male element); yare, agile; yawp; yclept, past participle of clepe, to call, name, from cry out; yean, sheep and goats bearing young; yearling; yech; yoni, Shakti; yob=boy; yoicks, yogh, ME letter ȝ; youse (you+s); Yiddish, Jewish; yester; yes man; yikes, mandragora sends out its scent; “why day is day, night is night, and time is time,” Hamlet; orto from horto, horticulture; Yggdrasil, from Norse; ylem, the primordial matter of the universe; creatine, creosote, pancreas, ecru, crude; died after eating a dessert prepared with spoiled cherries; broad beans and ceci in the Iliad; what is a rule; power, rod, regula, realm, straight; when I have tears that I might beastly flee
We Had Another Catch and Release Dream, the Zs
We had another catch and release dream, the zs
Of sleep inchoately interrupting rapture,
The turnstile all dreams go through to take
Their own metro, the metro of feeling,
The metro of happiness, or that other long
Train always late that takes us from the prediction
Of the Fall of Babylon in 539 B.C. to Thomas
Aikenhead, 18, hanged for blasphemy
In 1697, or to the aftermath of the Franco-
Prussian War, the year of taking genocide
Tea, being fired upon with both barrels,
And pleading, we will always have pleading,
With those eager enough among us
To want to fall off any appropriate edge
Into any appropriate sea, into the zero-sum,
Into the brokenness, into those blasphemed upon,
Shall we say zounds, shall we say ods
Bodikins, or something new, a zillion
Zut, zut, and zuts, cliffhangers for all of those
Who are running scared from what can only
Be someone else’s death—which
We will not speak about again nor dream
About again, nor write about again, and
For this we are through, through, and
Through, this needle pulling that thread,
And we will wear well what we have written.
Z; catch and let go; the z; zander, pike-perch; za, to sit down; zen, silent meditation; zeal, zebrine, zecchino, zed; Zeitgeist, Time/Spirit; Zeno, zephyr; zero-sum; zeugma, syllepsis, talking together; ziggurat; zillion; zipper, a B.F. Goodrich trademark and invention; zounds, God’s wounds; Thomas Aikenhead, aged 18, hanged in Edinburgh for blasphemy in 1697; ods bodikins: God’s body, nails
Edward Mayes is the author of several volumes of poetry, including First Language, Juniper Prize (University of Massachusetts Press) and Works and Days, AWP Prize in Poetry (University of Pittsburgh Press). He’s published poems in The New Yorker, APR, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Best American Poetry, and Poetry. He lives in Durham, North Carolina and Cortona, Italy, with his wife, the writer Frances Mayes.
