The Best American Poetry 2012 Read Online Free PDF Page A

father losing his mind, getting lost;
    My mother losing the ability to walk,
    A sister comforting me as I lamented and talked
    My sad story while our children played together at the playground
    At the Tuileries. Later, when I could laugh again
    And tell the summer as a tale, I said that
    It’s sad to walk around the Seine when you are getting divorced while everyone else
    Is kissing and filming their honeymoons or new loves. Even
    My husband, after we got back together, laughed at that.
    Because he, too, had been heartsick on another part of the planet.
    from The American Poetry Review

ANNE CARSON

    Sonnet of Exemplary Sentences From the Chapter Pertaining to the Nature of Pronouns in Emile Benveniste’s Problems in General Linguistics (Paris 1966)

    This time I forgive you but I shall not forgive you again.
    I observe that he forgives you but he will not forgive you again.
    Although I eat this fish I don’t know its name.
    Spirits watch over the soul of course.
    I suppose and I presume.
    I pose and I resume.
    I suppose I have a horse.
    How in the world can you afford this house I said and she said
    I had a good divorce.
    Strangers are warned that here there is a fierce, fast dog.
    Whores have no business getting lost in the fog.
    Is it to your ears or your soul that my voice is intolerable?
    Whether Florinda lays a hand on his knee or his voluble, he pleads a headache
    and the narrator concludes, The problem is insoluble.
    from The Nation

JENNIFER CHANG

    Dorothy Wordsworth

    The daffodils can go fuck themselves.
    I’m tired of their crowds, yellow rantings
    about the spastic sun that shines and shines
    and shines. How are they any different
    from me? I, too, have a big messy head
    on a fragile stalk. I spin with the wind.
    I flower and don’t apologize. There’s nothing
    funny about good weather. Oh, spring again,
    the critics nod. They know the old joy,
    that wakeful quotidian, the dark plot
    of future growing things, each one
    labeled Narcissus nobilis or Jennifer Chang.
    If I died falling from a helicopter, then
    this would be an important poem. Then
    the ex-boyfriends would swim to shore
    declaiming their knowledge of my bulbous
    youth. O, Flower, one said, why aren’t you
    meat? But I won’t be another bashful shank.
    The tulips have their nervous joie-de-vivre,
    the lilacs their taunt. Fractious petals, stop
    interrupting my poem with boring beauty.
    All the boys are in the field gnawing raw
    bones of ambition and calling it ardor. Who
    the hell are they? This is a poem about war.
    from The Nation

JOSEPH CHAPMAN

    Sparrow

    St. John of the Cross
    On the oil spot,
    in the Municipal Parking Garage, I am a garden
    closed up
    Â Â & a fountain sealed. In the folds of my habit;
    in the wings of my rib cage;
    I hold nothingness like a black jewel.
    Fountain of Self, Fountain of the Interior.
    I strip to my skin. Dark clouds illuminate me.
    Moths fly around;
    I am puzzled by the light.
    Withdraw your eyes. These steel cables are flesh.
    This elevator’s silver car is holy.
    And the floor numbers—strung up like lanterns
    on the boat of the dead.
    I’m half-life. I’m already words
    & the Sparrow.
    Â Â Listen for me in your throat when I’m gone.
    Â Â from The Cincinnati Review

HEATHER CHRISTLE

    BASIC

    This program is designed to move a white line
    from one side of the screen to the other.
    This program is not too hard, but it has
    a sad ending and that makes people cry.
    This program is designed to make people cry
    and step away when they are finished.
    In one variation the line moves diagonally
    up and in another diagonally down.
    This makes people cry differently,
    diagonally. A whole room of people
    crying in response to this program’s
    variations results in beautiful music.
    This program is designed to make such
    beautiful music that it feels like at last
    they have allowed you to take the good canoe
    into the lake of your own choosing
    and above