Quite Excellent LydonTeaches

Message To a Former Friend
By Tony Hoagland

I just wanted to write and say,
in case you are hit tomorrow by a truck

or are swept from the beach by a freak wave;
or in case your ex-wife decides

to take her own life
right after taking yours;

or in case you go to the doctor,
who finds a lump in your neck,

and you are carried swiftly out onto the terrible waters
of clinics and infusions

and I never see you again —
I just wanted to say,

Bon voyage, my friend, my dear and former friend.
I just wanted to confess

how much you meant to me back then,
before I learned to hold my love in check

thanks to my tutorial with you.
Thank God I got those holes sealed shut

through which every passerby
could see my neediness,

and thank God I banished you
into that frozen part of me

where nothing moves or breathes.
And yet it’s funny, isn’t it?

Our weakness can never be eliminated;
neediness is part of what we are.

Living is a kind of wound;
a wound is a kind of opening;

and even love that disappeared
mysteriously comes back

like water bubbling up from underground,
cleansed from its long journey in the dark.

Right in the open, there it is,
waiting for someone to arrive

and kneel and drink from it.

Mother Talks Back to the Monster
By Carrie Shipers


Tonight, I dressed my son in astronaut pajamas,
kissed his forehead and tucked him in.
I turned on his night-light and looked for you
in the closet and under the bed. I told him
you were nowhere to be found, but I could smell
your breath, your musty fur. I remember
all your tricks: the jagged shadows on the wall,
click of your claws, the hand that hovered
just above my ankles if I left them exposed.
Since I became a parent I see danger everywhere—
unleashed dogs, sudden fevers, cereal
two days out of date. And even worse
than feeling so much fear is keeping it inside,
trying not to let my love become so tangled
with anxiety my son thinks they're the same.
When he says he's seen your tail or heard
your heavy step, I insist that you aren't real.
Soon he'll feel too old to tell me his bad dreams.
If you get lonely after he's asleep, you can
always come downstairs. I'll be sitting
at the kitchen table with the dishes
I should wash, crumbs I should wipe up.
We can drink hot tea and talk about
the future, how hard it is to be outgrown.

“What I Didn’t Know Before”
By Ada Limón


was how horses simply give birth to other
horses. Not a baby by any means, not
a creature of liminal spaces, but a four-legged
beast hellbent on walking, scrambling after
the mother. A horse gives way to another
horse and then suddenly there are two horses,
just like that. That’s how I loved you. You,
off the long train from Red Bank carrying
a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two
computers swinging in it unwieldily at your
side. I remember we broke into laughter
when we saw each other. What was between
us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed
over. It came out fully formed, ready to run.

“Young Poets”
By Nicanor Parra, translated by Miller Williams

Write as you will
in whatever style you like
too much blood has run under the bridge
to go on believing
that only one road is right.

In poetry everything is permitted

with only this condition of course
you have to improve the blank page.

the name before the name before mine
By Jay Besemer

the unknown has hold of me and its grip is strong as honey on the underside of a spoon

the unknown i mean is not the usual one the future the tomorrow of survival

but the past and what happened in the name of the name after mine and in the name of the name before mine

i do not know enough to speak i do not know enough to remain silent

there is a fear that holds me and it sounds like wind it sounds like katydids in catalpa

ah the tall grass of the days before i knew there was a before me

where do i live if there’s no home remaining

where do i live if the home i helped build can never be mine and the one i was born into never was

Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America

by Matthew Olzmann

Tell me what it’s like to live without
curiosity, without awe. To sail
on clear water, rolling your eyes
at the kelp reefs swaying
beneath you, ignoring the flicker
of mermaid scales in the mist,
looking at the world and feeling
only boredom. To stand
on the precipice of some wild valley,
the eagles circling, a herd of caribou
booming below, and to yawn
with indifference. To discover
something primordial and holy.
To have the smell of the earth
welcome you to everywhere.
To take it all in, and then,
to reach for your knife.