The Best American Poetry 2015

David Lehman, Sherman Alexie

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781476708218
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

The premier anthology of contemporary American poetry continues with an exceptional volume edited by award-winning novelist and poet Sherman Alexie, now with a new essay by Alexie on reactions to the 2015 publication.

Since its debut in 1988, The Best American Poetry has become a mainstay for the direction and spirit of American poetry. Each volume in the series presents the year’s most extraordinary new poems and writers. Guest editor Sherman Alexie’s picks for The Best American Poetry 2015 highlight the depth and breadth of the American experience. Culled from electronic and print journals, the poems showcase some of our leading luminaries—Amy Gerstler, Terrance Hayes, Ron Padgett, Jane Hirshfield—and introduce a number of outstanding younger poets taking their place in the limelight.

A leading figure since his breakout poetry collection The Business of Fancydancing in 1992, Sherman Alexie won the National Book Award for his novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. He describes himself as “lucky enough to be a full-time writer” and has written short stories, novels, screenplays, and essays—but he is at his core a poet. As always, series editor David Lehman’s foreword assessing the state of the art kicks off the book, followed by an introductory essay in which Alexie discusses his selections. The Best American Poetry 2015 is a guide to who’s who and what’s happening in American poetry today.

BETHANY SCHULTZ HURST

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Crisis on Infinite Earths, Issues 1–12

I.

I’m at a poetry convention and wish I were at Comic Con. Everyone is wearing boring T-shirts.

When I give the lady my name, she prints it wrong onto the name tag. I spell it and she gets it wrong again. Let’s be honest: it’s still my fault.

II.

Japanese tsunami debris

is starting to wash up

on the Pacific shore. At first,

they trace back the soccer balls,

motorcycles, return them

to their owners. That won’t last.

There are millions more tons.

Good news for beachcombers,

begins one news article.

III.

In the ’30s, William Moulton Marston invented the polygraph and also Wonder Woman. She had her own lie detector, a Lasso of Truth. She could squeeze the truth right out of anyone.

Then things got confusing for superheroes. The Universe accordioned out into a Multiverse. Too many writers penned conflicting origin stories. Super strengths came and went. Sometimes Wonder Woman held the Lasso of Truth, and sometimes she was just holding an ordinary rope.

IV.

Grandma was doing the dishes

when a cockatiel flew in the open window

and landed on her shoulder.

This was after the wildfire

took a bunch of houses.

Maybe the bird was a refugee,

but it shat everywhere

and nipped. She tried a while

to find to whom it belonged,

finally gave it away.

Then she found out

it was worth $800.

V.

Yeah, so there are a lot of birds

in poems these days.

So what? When I get nervous

I like to think of their bones,

so hollow not even pity or

regret is stashed inside,

their bones like some kind

of invisible-making machine.

VI.

Is that black Lab loping down the street the one someone called for all last night?

Phae-ton, Ja-cob, An-gel, or Ra-chel, depending on how near or far the man dopplered to my window.

VII.

I can’t decide which is more truthful, to say I’m sorry or that’s too bad.

VIII.

One family is living in a trailer

next to their burned-out house.

It looks like they are having fun

gathered around the campfire.

The chimney still stands

like something that doesn’t

know when to lie down.

Each driveway on the street

displays an address on a

large cardboard swath, since

there’s nowhere else to post

the numbers. It’s too soon

for me to be driving by like this.

IX.

Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985) cleared up 50 years of DC comic inconsistency, undid the messy idea of the Multiverse. It took 12 issues to contain the disaster. Then surviving superheroes, like Wonder Woman, relaunched with a better idea of who they were. The dead stayed dead.

Now the Universe is divided neatly into pre- and post-Crisis.

X.

I confess stupid things I’m sorry for:

• saying that mean thing about that nice teacher

• farting in a swimming pool

• in graduate school telling everyone how delicious blueberry-flavored coffee from 7-11 was

• posing for photographs next to beached debris.

How didn’t I know everyone liked shade-grown fair-trade organic?

XI.

I wish I could spin around so fast that when I stopped, I’d have a new name.

XII.

Here’s a corner section

of a house washed up

on the shore, walls still

nailed together. Some bottles,

intact, are nesting inside.

I wasn’t expecting this: ordinary

things. To be able to smell

someone else’s cherry-flavored

cough syrup. There is

no rope strong enough

to put this back together.

To escape meltdown

at Fukushima-1, starfish

and algae have hitched rides.

They are invasive. What if

they are radioactive? Thank

goodness for the seagulls,

coming to peck out

everything’s eyes.

from New Ohio Review

SAEED JONES

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Body & Kentucky Bourbon

In the dark, my mind’s night, I go back

to your work-calloused hands, your body

and the memory of fields I no longer see.

Cheek wad of chew tobacco,

Skoal-tin ring in the back pocket

of threadbare jeans, knees

worn through entirely. How to name you:

farmhand, Kentucky boy, l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Foreword by David Lehman
• Introduction by Sherman Alexie
• Sarah Arvio, “Bodhisattva”
• Derrick Austin, “Cedars of Lebanon”
• Desiree Bailey, “A Retrograde”
• Melissa Barrett, “WFM: Allergic to Pine-Sol, Am I the Only One”
• Mark Bibbins, “Swallowed”
• Jessamyn Birrer, “A Scatology”
• Chana Bloch, “The Joins”
• Emma Bolden, “House Is an Enigma”
• Dexter L. Booth, “Prayer at 3 a.m.”
• Catherine Bowman, “Makeshift”
• Rachael Briggs, “in the hall of the ruby-throated warbler”
• Jericho Brown, “Homeland”
• Rafael Campo, “DOCTORS LIE, MAY HIDE MISTAKES”
• Julie Carr, “A fourteen-line poem on sex”
• Chen Chen, “for i will do/undo what was done/undone to me”
• Susanna Childress, “Careful, I Just Won a Prize at the Fair”
• Yi-Fen Chou, “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve”
• Erica Dawson, “Slow-Wave Sleep with a Fairy Tale”
• Danielle DeTiberus, “In a Black Tank Top”
• Natalie Diaz, “It Was the Animals”
• Denise Duhamel, “Fornicating”
• Thomas Sayers Ellis, “Vernacular Owl”
• Emily Kendal Frey, “In Memory of My Parents Who Are Not Dead Yet”
• James Galvin, “On the Sadness of Wedding Dresses”
• Madelyn Garner, “The Garden in August”
• Amy Gerstler, “Rhinencephalon”
• Louise Glück, “A Sharply Worded Silence”
• R. S. Gwynn, “Looney Tunes”
• Meredith Hasemann, “Thumbs”
• Terrance Hayes, “Antebellum House Party”
• Rebecca Hazelton, “My Husband”
• Jane Hirshfield, “A Common Cold”
• Bethany Schultz Hurst, “Crisis on Infinite Earths, Issues 1–12”
• Saeed Jones, “Body & Kentucky Bourbon”
• Joan Naviyuk Kane, “Exhibits from the Dark Museum”
• Laura Kasischke, “For the Young Woman I Saw Hit by a Car While Riding Her Bike”
• Douglas Kearney, “In the End, They Were Born on TV”
• Jennifer Keith, “Eating Walnuts”
• David Kirby, “Is Spot in Heaven?”
• Andrew Kozma, “Ode to the Common Housefly”
• Hailey Leithauser, “The Pickpocket Song”
• Dana Levin, “Waching the Sea Go”
• Patricia Lockwood, “See a Furious Waterfall Without Water”
• Dora Malech, “Party Games”
• Donna Masini, “Anxieties”
• Airea D. Matthews, “If My Late Grandmother Were Gertrude Stein”
• Jamaal May, “There Are Birds Here”
• Laura McCullough, “There Were Only Dandelions”
• Rajiv Mohabir, “Dove”
• Aimee Nezhukumatathil, “Upon Hearing the News You Buried Our Dog”
• D. Nurkse, “Plutonium”
• Tanya Olson, “54 Prince”
• Ron Padgett, “Survivor Guilt”
• Alan Michael Parker, “Candying Mint”
• Catherine Pierce, “Relevant Details”
• Donald Platt, “The Main Event”
• Claudia Rankine, from Citizen
• Raphael Rubinstein, “Poem Begun on a Train”
• Natalie Scenters-Zapico, “Endnotes on Ciudad Juárez”
• Evie Shockley, “legend”
• Charles Simic, “So Early in the Morning”
• Sandra Simonds, “Similitude at Versailles”
• Ed Skoog, “The Macarena”
• A. E. Stallings, “Ajar”
• Susan Terris, “Memo to the Former Child Prodigy”
• Michael Tyrell, “Delicatessen”
• Wendy Videlock, “How You Might Approach a Foal:”
• Sidney Wade, “The Chickasaw Trees”
• Cody Walker, “Trades I Would Make”
• LaWanda Walters, “Goodness in Mississippi”
• Afaa Michael Weaver, “City of Eternal Spring”
• Candace G. Wiley, “Dear Black Barbie”
• Terence Winch, “Subject to Change”
• Jane Wong, “Thaw”
• Monica Youn, “March of the Hanged Men”
• Contributors’ Notes and Comments
• Magazines Where the Poems Were First Published
• Acknowledgments
• About Sherman Alexie and David Lehman
• Copyright