Poem of the Week | March 11, 2019
Poem of the Week “Another Last Day”
This week’s Poem of the Week is “Another Last Day,” an excerpt from Alex Lemon’s upcoming collection.
Alex Lemon’s Another Last Day will be published this spring by Milkweed Editions. He is the author of Feverland: A Memoir in Shards, Happy: A Memoir and the poetry collections The Wish Book,Fancy Beasts, Hallelujah Blackout and Mosquito. His writing has appeared in Esquire, American Poetry Review, The Huffington Post, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry, Tin House, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, AGNI, New England Review, The Southern Review, Grist and jubilat, among numerous others. Among his awards are a 2005 Fellowship in Poetry from the NEA, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. He is an editor at large for Saturnalia Books, the Poetry Editor of descant and sits on the advisory board of The Southern Review and TCU Press. He lives in Ft. Worth, Texas, and teaches at TCU.
Another Last Day
I
all this time
death has refused
to take me & now
when the willows
darken from my chest rips
a flame-winged black-
bird my bones knot
with goodbyes breaking
to not be a carousel
whirring darkly
II
ambulance lights
in the distance throb
my blood & in my guts
I feel my home
on fire
my family
singing ablaze
from fire-curtained
windows—We are good
We are good—they croon
but it is too late always
now too bright
III
forever along the river
it is a hot hot gust
today I welcome
fat raindrops welcome
whirlwind & hello coming
darkness where am I
IV
sun-bleached mannequins
rise into the sky
from the bruised water
empty birdcages bend
low the lilacs
a torn orange dress
I long ago yearned to
wear laces the brambles
without knowing
what I am
I go
V
when I look down
there is nothing
of me but a ragged duffel
bag sinking into the shallows
two babies are zipped up in it
or just one baby
besides me
it is suffocating
in here it is dark
I would be anything else
sunflower black ice
prickly pear
this life of heat
waving apparitions
I am tumbling king
protea pothole
I am asleep I
am drowning
XVI
behind my closed eyes
I am driving a car
that has no steering wheel
only an array of doll arms & squirt guns
hundreds of them lined up
along the dash as
I pull triggers & shake
tiny plastic hands the car
veers from roadside to ditch
the radio turns on wipers swoosh
the seat cages around me
the car speeds
around me apparitions
of all of the people I love
fade in & out around me
unsmiling they flicker & glow
around me go out
in the rearview mirror
only to flashbulb
back into being
I mash the brake pedal
lift & lever the arms
but I don’t know anything
beyond the serpentine careen
a sudden plunge into dark
in my guts it is oilslick & silent
until the plummet
like a sudden sunrise
begins to bleach
the falling stars
soon the blankness throbs
I am again awake or half
so an all-swallowing white
canvas above me the ceiling
with some beast
from the other side
of myself about to rip
through me into
the slaughterhouse
of this day
XVII
looking out
from the city’s edge
the inferno dusk
over the domed hills perfectly
landscaped over the old dump
makes me need a jean jacket
of waxed denim
with patches of bands
that I have heard play
only in my head
above the immaculate mounds
pinholes throb
the dead refuse to be left
underground
sooner or later
all of my insides
will drop out of me
my pockets will turn
into wind
around whatever becomes
of my bones a few dimes
a museum pin will ping & bound
until they don’t
the air thick & still
no industrial strength zipper
no stretch of taut & unwrinkled skin
will anymore be able
to contain all of this
XIX
crumpled red in the mouth
of the golden lab
that saunters into the street
from between two cars
in the parking lot
is a severed hand
glinting between its teeth
in the dark
watching from the sidewalk
I am dumbstruck
all things end in violence
in the city
because you can not love
everyone enough can not love
anyone as much as they need
as much as they deserve
the sharp-ribbed dog sits
back on its haunches
in the middle of the street
spotlit by a slowing car
it crouches in front
of the stopping car
whips its head
back & forth
I am filled
with a blood-warm glow
spilling over
with a blood-warm glow
I am rivering I am watching
there is a hollowing-out
hunger inside me
I could eat god
XXII
lying in the outside dark
I slapbox the ghosts
of my ragged breath
they are pearl-lipped
outside of me
I sing
to everything
there is no sleep
in this life from my back
every twisting star
up there dead for ages
looks lovely
XXV
with the brilliant glint
of a knife-tip
I conduct
the air-scribbling black
flies through morning’s
mottled glow
XLIX
around town I wave
at strangers
in crosswalks
all of these lonely
failings draped
over us
it is impossible
to feel
the pearled lightning
in the dirt
through the sidewalks
this concrete blight
croaks no rain ever
from above
L
I jumble through
the overgrown kale
leaf beetles
in the mug
of my hand
hummingbirds buzz
the daylight above
from a shadow-swabbed
window I hear a neighbor
yell at the TV
in the sunshine
I wait
for the next cry
the last day that will
come in intensive
care the sickness
each one of us
has but never speaks
of the sun
fingerprints
my closed eyes
each day of this life
deathmad & beautiful
LI
on the carpet
of the family room
my feet bring
mud
which is a kindness
a prayer
this is it this is it
the rain started
an hour ago
it washed out
my weeping
eyes
they say everything
has happened
or maybe now
nothing at all as
my skin is ice
cold everything is
just fine
LII
out of the colander
of cut greens
a shimmering blue dot
plummets to the floor
as I crouch to it
I hear whispering
you poor plaything
the beetle pinballs
over the tiles
rolls out
of my grasp
let me show you
the many ways of never
the pecan tree
outside the window
sighs & rubs its hands
your mother your father
I am older now
the world is a terrible place
but I want to last forever
clinging to its teeth
Author’s Note:
Another Last Day was born out of place of deep fragility—of a tenuous relationship to the self, and a radically strange relationship—a position almost severed—from the landscape around me. The sequence labors toward understanding a body that continues to fail me, and one now rocked and mystified by the ardors and arduousness of parenting, of being a present and good partner, all while working to be a person who can love themselves as much as they love the world they live in. And as much as the inner world of these poems is deeply troubled, the world outside of me seemed to be falling apart—a shitscape of politics, of ecological and humanitarian dismay. And so the sequence treks and observes and attends to and sees and in the end finds (maybe?) a radical, rollicking kind of quiet hope.
SEE THE ISSUE
SUGGESTED CONTENT
Poem of the Week
Mar 25 2024
“Prayer Meeting” by Michelle Bitting
“Prayer Meeting” by Michelle Bitting is our Poem of the Week. Michelle Bitting was short-listed for the 2023 CRAFT Character Sketch Challenge, the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and a… read more
Poem of the Week
Mar 18 2024
“Gone For Always” by James Braun
“Gone For Always” by James Braun is our Poem of the Week. James Braun’s work has appeared and is forthcoming in Fiction International, Puerto del Sol, DIAGRAM, Bayou Magazine, filling… read more
Poem of the Week
Mar 11 2024
“Snarge” by Brianna Steidle
“Snarge” by Brianna Steidle is our Poem of the Week. Brianna Steidle is a poet, translator, and dog trainer. She holds an MFA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins… read more