Trojan Poetry 24: "I Would Steal Horses" by Sherman Alexie

I Would Steal Horses
by Sherman Alexie

for you, if there were any left,
give a dozen of the best
to your father, the auto mechanic
in the small town where you were born

and where he will die sometime by dark.
I am afraid of his hands, which have
rebuilt more of the small parts
of this world than I ever will.

I would sign treaties for you, take
every promise as the last lie, the last
point after which we both refuse the exact.

I would wrap us both in old blankets
hold every disease tight against our skin.

Trojan Poetry 23: "The Daughter" by Carmen Giménez Smith

The Daughter
By Carmen Giménez Smith

We said she was a negative image of me because of her lightness.
She's light and also passage, the glory in my cortex.
Daughter, where did you get all that goddess?
Her eyes are Neruda's two dark pools at twilight.
Sometimes she's a stranger in my home because I hadn't imagined her.
Who will her daughter be?
She and I are the gradual ebb of my mother's darkness.
I unfurl the ribbon of her life, and it's a smooth long hallway, doors flung open.
Her surface is a deflection is why.
Harm on her, harm on us all.
Inside her, my grit and timbre, my reckless.

Trojan Poetry 22: "Earthworm" by Louise Glück

Earthworm

By Louise Gluck

Mortal standing on top of the earth, refusing

to enter the earth: you tell yourself

you are able to see deeply

the conflicts of which you are made but, facing death,

you will not dig deeply—if you sense

that pity engulfs you, you are not

delusional: not all pity

descends from higher to lesser, some

arises out of the earth itself, persistent

yet devoid of coercion. We can be split in two, but you are

mutilated at the core, your mind

detached from your feelings—

repression does not deceive

organisms like ourselves:

once you enter the earth, you will not fear the earth;

once you inhabit your terror,

death will come to seem a web of channels or tunnels like

a sponge’s or honeycomb’s, which, as part of us,

you will be free to explore. Perhaps

you will find in these travels

a wholeness that eluded you—as men and women

you were never free

to register in your body whatever left

a mark on your spirit.

Trojan Poetry 21: "Bats" by Henri Cole

Bats

By Henri Cole

Each night they come back, chasing one another

among the fronds after gorging on papayas,

to drink from the swimming pool. With my sleep-

stiffened bones, I like to watch them, careening

into the bright pool lights, spattering the walls with pulp

and guano, like graffiti artists. Sometimes, when they meet,

they hit one another's furred wings—Love thy neighbor

like thyself—and then soar off again to drink

more bleached water. Sometimes, it seems as if

they are watching me, like a Styrofoam head

with a wig on it. "The patient reports that he has

been lonely all his life," one screams to the other.

I can hardly stand it and put my face in my hands,

as they dive to-and-fro through all their happiness.