Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation

By Brett F Lauer, Lynn Melnick and Carolyn Forché

One hundred poems. One hundred voices. One hundred different points of view.
 
Here is a cross-section of American poetry as it is right now—full of grit and love, sparkling with humor, searing the heart, smashing through boundaries on every page. Please Excuse This Poem features one hundred acclaimed younger poets from truly diverse backgrounds and points of view, whose work has appeared everywhere from The New Yorker to Twitter, tackling a startling range of subjects in a startling range of poetic forms. Dealing with the aftermath of war; unpacking the meaning of “the rape joke”; sharing the tender moments at the start of a love affair: these poems tell the world as they see it.

Editors Brett Fletcher Lauer and Lynn Melnick have crafted a book that is a must-read for those wanting to know the future of poetry. With an introduction from award-winning poet, editor, and translator Carolyn Forché, Please Excuse This Poem has the power to change the way you look at the world. It is The Best American Nonrequired Reading—in poetry form.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
• Release date: Mar 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781101615386

Book preview

Cover for Please Excuse This Poem

Also by

BRETT FLETCHER LAUER

A Hotel in Belgium

Also by

LYNN MELNICK

If I Should Say I Have Hope

Book title, Please Excuse This Poem, Subtitle, 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, author, Brett F Lauer, imprint, Viking Books for Young Readers

VIKING

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First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2015

Copyright © 2015 by Brett Fletcher Lauer and Lynn Melnick

Introduction copyright © 2015 by Carolyn Forché

This page constitute an extension to the copyright page.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Please excuse this poem : 100 new poets for the next generation / Brett Fletcher Lauer and Lynn Melnick, editors.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-670-01479-8 (hardcover)

1. American poetry—21st century. 2. Poetry—Collections. I. Lauer, Brett Fletcher, editor. II. Melnick, Lynn, editor.

PS617.P56 2015      811'.608—dc23      2014007144

Ebook ISBN 9781101615386

Version_2

for my father —B.F.L.

for Ada & Stella Donnelly —L.M.

CONTENTS

Also by Brett Fletcher Lauer and Lynn Melnick

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction by Carolyn Forché

DOROTHEA LASKY Jakob

SAMUEL AMADON Barbour Street

OLIVER DE LA PAZ In Defense of Small Towns

LEIGH STEIN Warning

GABRIELLE CALVOCORESSI At Last the New Arriving

KATE LITTERER There I Was Unrequited

TERRANCE HAYES Talk

BEN MIROV For the Faint of Heart

MATTHEA HARVEYThe Crowds Cheered as Gloom Galloped Away

JAMES ALLEN HALL We Fall in Love with Total Strangers

ANGELA VERONICA WONG New York Boys I Miss Kissing Your Faces in the Backseat of Cabs

TARFIA FAIZULLAH Postcards to the Other Brown Girl in My Weightlifting Class

EMILY KENDAL FREY Let a Room Be Made as Dark as Possible

JOSH BELL Poem Voted Most Likely

METTA SÁMA Impenetrable, Porous

SHANE BOOK Mistakes

CARMEN GIMÉNEZ SMITH Bleeding Heart

TRAVIS NICHOLS Testimonial

TANYA OLSON Boyishly

PATRICIA LOCKWOOD Rape Joke

JENNIFER ELISE FOERSTER Richer Than Anyone in Heaven

JENNIFER L. KNOX Modern Poetry

GEOFFREY G. O’BRIEN Second Summer

CARLEY MOORE My Uncle in Reverse

MARK BIBBINS Concerning the Land to the South of Our Neighbors to the North

GREGORY PARDLO Rolling Thunder

YONA HARVEY Sound—Part 1 (Girl with Red Scarf)

JENNIFER CHANG Obedience, or The Lying Tale

STEPHANIE BURT Amaretto Sour (Drag Night at the Nines)

MAJOR JACKSON Blunts

HEATHER CHRISTLE Acorn Duly Crushed

KEN CHEN Yes, No, Yes, The Future, Gone, Happy, Yes, No, Yes, Cut, You

TIMOTHY DONNELLY Clair de Lune

MARK McMORRIS (a poem)

JOHN MURILLO Sherman Ave. Love Poem

MÓNICA DE LA TORRE Letter from One Practitioner to Another

MATTHEW ZAPRUDER Tonight You’ll Be Able

CATE MARVIN Yellow Rubber Gloves

DANIELLE PAFUNDA Dear Mom and Dad

AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL High School Picture Re-take Day

FARID MATUK July

ROBYN SCHIFF Imagination

L. LAMAR WILSON We Do Not Know Her Name

MATTHEW SHENODA Living Ancients

JEFFREY YANG U.S.

MEGHAN PRIVITELLO Perspective

PHILLIP B. WILLIAMS Prayer

DANNIEL SCHOONEBEEK Bildungsroman (Spare American)

MELISSA BRODER The Wait for Cake

ARACELIS GIRMAY Kingdom Animalia

MAUREEN N. McLANE Haunt

DEBORAH LANDAU Untitled (dear someone)

MATTHEW ROHRER Light Music

ERIKA MEITNER Sex Ed

AMY KING The Identity in My Crisis

JILLIAN WEISE Poem for His Ex

ERIN BELIEU When at a Certain Party in NYC

XOCHIQUETZAL CANDELARIA Migration

ARDA COLLINS The News

MATTHEW DICKMAN Ghost Story

DAWN LUNDY MARTIN Untitled (If there is a prayer)

JENNY BOULLY Sestina of Missed Connections

CACONRAD America You Don’t Give a Damn About Their Dead

ALEX DIMITROV James Franco

BEN LERNER From The Lichtenberg Figures

NATALIE DIAZ Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation

FADY JOUDAH The Tea and Sage Poem

JAMAAL MAY Athazagoraphobia: Fear of Being Ignored

EDUARDO C. CORRAL In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes

ARICKA FOREMAN Like the Rain, Smell It Coming

CAMILLE RANKINE Symptoms of Island

JOANNA KLINK Poetry

D. A. POWELL Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen

JENNY ZHANG Don’t fucking text your friends when I’m reading a poem it took two years to write

LAURA GOODE Dear Fred, I Thought of You Today.

RICARDO ALBERTO MALDONADO America! America!

HAFIZAH GETER where to bury a missing girl

MICHAEL DICKMAN Nervous System

JOSHUA BECKMAN Untitled (I like your handsome drugs.)

ADRIAN MATEJKA Almost Intervention

SALLY DELEHANT Flowers at Night

ERIKA L. SÁNCHEZ Quinceañera

PATRICK ROSAL Uncommon Denominators

OCEAN VUONG Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

SRIKANTH REDDY Sonnet

PRAGEETA SHARMA On Immigration

JERICHO BROWN Like Father

RAE GOUIRAND You Form

AMANDA NADELBERG Wilberforce

IAIN HALEY POLLOCK Child of the Sun

KHADIJAH QUEEN From I’m So Fine

ADA LIMÓN The Unbearable

ZACHARY SCHOMBURG Someone Falls in Love with Someone

JENNIFER MOXLEY The Fountain

ELIZABETH WILLIS The Witch

SANDRA SIMONDS Golden Buddha

KATE COLBY Tartarus

KATY LEDERER That Everything’s Inevitable

JULIAN TALAMANTEZ BROLASKI Ricky Martin on Homosexuality

KEVIN PRUFER In a Beautiful Country

About the Poets

About the Editors

About Carolyn Forché

Editors’ Notes & Acknowledgments

Permissions

INTRODUCTION

Most poets begin writing poetry in secret. As with love and other experiences, there is a first time and it is remembered. The first poem might be written on the back of something else, or in a notebook shown to no one. It might be a poem where someone falls in love with someone but that person falls in love with someone else. It might be a poem about floating alone / in the cold blue, or about sex or the distance / between a missed train and love. The poet begins to understand that when she picks up her pen, she doesn’t know what’s going to happen. The poet knows only that when he’s writing, his true self is speaking on paper or in his thoughts, strangely and without fear. This anthology is a collection of such poems. They are filled with ending up in the wrong adventure, and with the little things we tell ourselves about our pasts. One poet writes, Inside here are many moments, and it is true: the neighborhood, summer boredom, handsome drugs, suburban rabbits // and warrens of junkies and the number of clips emptied / into an unarmed Guinean man / on a dark Bronx stoop. A father’s embrace is here, and a grandmother who only wants to tell . . . who died / and how. Another poet writes, I hope we all die just like this, in someone else’s arms, young and beautiful and true. In these poems, we sleep under the stars, get stopped by the police, and hang from trestles as the trains come. In these poems a good way to fall in love / is to turn off the headlights / and drive very fast down dark roads. Inside the poet there is the burning chandelier . . . where the language begins. The poet tries to dance like firelight / without setting anyone ablaze. Inside, the poet is dreaming of tornadoes again, too many for the sky to contain. Another spent all night / collecting your photographs / and cutting them up. These poems were written young, but death isn’t absent here: there’s a dead woman in the river / dead baby in the cradle / there’s a dead soldier in the desert / & three crows wonder over and over / whether to cry out.

Most poets continue to write in secret until they trust someone enough to show her a poem, and this sharing continues one to another until the poems are strong enough to be sent out into the world, as these poems have been, the poems you are holding now, and as your poems may someday be sent, because why not? When you look down / inside yourself / what is there? It is a question any of us can ask ourselves as poems begin within us. There is often a feeling that precedes or accompanies the poem as it is born, and the poets write, I can’t shake that something is coming. I opened wide my door to it. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. These one hundred poems, drafted by one hundred younger poets firmly launched on their careers, will provide writers with inspiration and aspiration, and all readers with exhilaration. In poems you will never run out of ways to say I am here. And having read this far, you also know what it means to be waiting, like an animal, / For poetry.

Carolyn Forché

JAKOB

Dorothea Lasky

I am sick of feeling

I never eat or sleep

I just sit here and let the words burn into me

I know you love her

And don’t love me

No, I don’t think you love her

I know there are clouds that are very pretty

I know there are clouds that trundle round the globe

I take anything I can to get to love

Live things are what the world is made of

Live things are black

Black in that they forgot where they came from

I have not forgotten, however I choose not to feel

Those places that have burned into me

There is too much burning here, I’m afraid

Readers, you read flat words

Inside here are many moments

In which I have screamed in pain

As the flames ate me

BARBOUR STREET

Samuel Amadon

My junior year of high school I had

to go all spring to this

middle school on Barbour Street

for an afterschool thing for college

applications or whatever

& I tried to look like I wanted to

be there but those kids knew I didn’t

& they could see I didn’t know

shit about them or their neighborhood

so it’s not surprising they didn’t wave

that summer when Spencer

& I rode past them day after day

on the way to the gym where we were

getting ready for football

season or fucking off on our bikes

& Spencer kept pointing out to me

how even though a block

out there was about twice as long

as my block instead of there being

three hydrants evenly placed

along it there was only one at the end

of each so there had better not

be any fires in the middle

of those streets which I would think

about the summer I was back from

school when I’d drive

Ray Rose home from work at this

Italian restaurant where Kenny got

me a job. Ray had a tear

tattooed by his eye & somebody had

told me by then what that meant

so I never said no to him

& every night I got to be the white kid

in the North End past dark parked

on the edge of some huge

project waiting for Ray to finish

whatever lesson from jail he was

teaching me since

everyone from jail always has some

endless lesson they want to teach

& so I learned a little

more about the ghetto than I was

supposed to & I kept Ray friendly

& even got the chance to

teach him something I’d just learned

about Hartford which was that there

used to be a field where

his mom lives now & when the circus

came to town they put up these tents

which were rainproofed in

gasoline & then all these people died

in a fire which it turns out is actually

the first thing after

insurance Hartford is famous for.

IN DEFENSE OF SMALL TOWNS

Oliver de la Paz

When I look at it, it’s simple, really. I hated life there. September,

once filled with animal deaths and toughened hay. And the smells

of fall were boiled-down beets and potatoes

or the farmhands’ breeches smeared with oil and diesel

as they rode into town, dusty and pissed. The radio station

split time between metal and Tejano, and the only action

happened on Friday nights where the high school football team

gave everyone a chance at forgiveness. The town left no room

for novelty or change. The sheriff knew everyone’s son and despite that,

we’d cruise up and down the avenues, switching between

brake and gearshift. We’d fight and spit chew into Big Gulp cups

and have our hearts broken nightly. In that town I learned

to fire a shotgun at nine and wring a chicken’s neck

with one hand by twirling the bird and whipping it straight like a towel.

But I loved the place once. Everything was blond and cracked

and the irrigation ditches stretched to the end of the earth. You could

ride on a bicycle and see clearly the outline of