Poem of the Day
The People’s History of 1998
By Gbenga Adesina
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve / and wanted vengeance.
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve / and wanted vengeance.
The ridge road takes the ridgespine every way
It turns. It threads the granite venebrae
And old. wind-dwarfed ponderosas that twist
1.
Technically it was liquid asphalt:
MC, RC, or 85/100—
nothing very far removed
Tonight in the Southwest
Sadness is disappearing
Tonight in splash-marks
When my sister was small, father carried her everywhere in a woven pack-basket. Once he killed a deer with her strapped to his back. She moved and spoiled his first shot, and the deer ran off with one shattered hind leg trailing like smoke.
They had their own churches in their own
parts of town, some with domes like onions.
My uncle who got around told me they plastered
The best way to eliminate guilt
Is to have nothing to feel guilty about.
Thus spake my surrogate father
Like the bells
That could be ringing out of heaven now
For all my ears can tell,
A large unpleasant woman
Is chasing a songbird around the kitchen
With a broom shouting
Then he deflowers her, pulling away the greenery.
Then a blue vein thinning into a hollow.
Then it is the hollow between her neck and lower jaw.
Maybe enough light • to score a wave • reflecting moonlight, sand • reflecting
moonlight and you • spotting from shore • what you see only • as silhouette
against detonating bands • of blue-white effervescence • when the crown of the
falling • swell explodes upward • as the underwave blows through it • a flash
of visibility quickly • snuffed by night • the surf fizzling and churning •
remitting itself to darkness • with a violent stertor • in competition with no other
sounds