Epistolary - Brandon Courtney

Dear Brother:

I too, have seen our sister make a rainbow with her mouth,
glass of tap water, noon sun. The halo of vapor around
her face was magic; the way a carpet burn leaves the same pink
scar as a house-fire flame.

Dear Sister:

Sing with me from your charnel mouth the paramedic’s song:
the excavation of the buried pulse, the way he presses his stethoscope
to your throat, the way he mistakes the Doppler’s echo
for a place to lay his head.

Dear Mother:

I too, have been called a magician. Watch how I wrap your birthday balloons in scotch tape, pull a needle from my boutonniere and pierce through. Watch how nothing happens, nothing pops. See how your breath is still in the balloons.

Dear Father:

I can count on one hand the barn swallows hung upside down from butcher’s string in the market. How they thrashed beautifully against the onrush of blood. How you mimicked the moth’s pale wing breaking the spider webs shape, shouting so small against the struggle.

Dear Sailor:

Repeat after me: the ocean floor was born to ascend, and meet you half-way. Tell me we can call the edge of sleep our shoreline, write our names in its sand, watch bird’s mistake your eyes for lakes, watch them crash and keep still. It seems now, the only way to hear your voice is to tie the stems of oak leaves in knots, float them from the pier, and listen to them sink.

Record Cold, 1962 by Brandon Courtney

I was told you were buried on the coldest day of the year.  The priest
        allowed the families to pull their cars to the casket
and watch through the windshield, watch as your brother broke
        his ankle punching the knife-edge blade of a shovel
into the hardened ground for your headstone.
        Someone suggested a pick axe, boiling water,
a handful of salt to accelerate the thaw.

that the week before, you walked around the house,
        placing pennies and aspirin in your flower vases to keep them alive,
watching the pennies sink hard, the aspirin dissolve like paper umbrellas,
        forgetting that hair is the first to go in sickness
that it comes apart in the teeth of a comb
        comes apart in the hands of others.

I was told that the nurse did her best with bandages,
        a sling made from old bed sheets cinched
and tied to the meat of your shoulder,
        and how you were amazed that the recoil of a rifle
could be enough to break a jaw. 

My god, it must have been something to see — the children in the backseats
        heads bowed, asleep or praying,
the priest stealing away to the columbarium —
        a respite from the wind,
as your brother used his good ankle to kick a spade
        into the frozen ground, shaving back strips of earth
like the peel of an orange until the stone stood upright. 

And how the rest of the family, hunched in the headlights
        breathing small prayers, warm air into the palms
of their hands, offered what they could:  an ungloved hand to turn
        the pages of the bible, another to strike the matches
and light the candles. I was told they returned to their cars,
        windows cracked, where they could draw enough breath
to hear each other sing.

another pick by sam

Another great poem by Adam Clay:

GRAVEYARD SONG

The bark men have all gone home. Pails of milk
Wait along the doors to cool in the night,
A reflection of ghost looking up from each one.
Covering cherubim of clouds above,
The boy on the brig has come to the Fens
To find his sister who, he’s been told,
Is buried at the feet of a stranger. His mother says
The same words spoken for the named
Were spoken above his twin. He kneels and draws
An O on each grave as if to reach through the dirt
And bring her tiny bones up to hold to the light,
But the boy blinks and seems to know
A prophet is nothing in his own country
So he walks down to Whittlesea Mere
And stares into the heavens with only a stone
In his pocket and the mirror of sky blind to itself

Sam's pick: Adam Clay

My first choice for incoming poet, Adam Clay, entitled: "Love Poem"

A baseball crashed through my kitchen window

and landed in the coffee cup you found in the dirt

and mailed to me. Everything arcs. I looked east

and read the words you wrote in cursive

above the red seam. Yes: what happens behind glass,

stays behinds glass. When the sun is just overhead,

the roads between here and there turn to soil,

grab hold of the land, and begin to bend. 

Adam Clay will be hosted by the series June 7th!         

Samantha's Pick - Mark Levine

Here's my pick for the week, Counting the Forests by Mark Levine.


We had little to work with. That was his plan.
He was out until daybreak or nightfall or until
the re-appearance of his servant who had fled
to the mountains during the ice storm.
He was out; he was out and his voice
was gone too. We heard the streetcars scraping
down the hill outside his room; we heard the drills
pressing the walls of the blue quarry.
Day broke in the silent room. Pale shadows, brilliant dust.
Night fell in the silent room. Silence and the silent sky.


He was counting the forests. That was his plan.
He carried a sack of dried fish
blessed by his servant and cured
in sea-salt. His servant was near; he could hear
the terrified rasp of his servant's breath.
His servant was making the vigil in a mountain
somewhere in the ice-country; and the ice-country was vast
and blue and full of death-forms. So was the forest.


Here in the red forest which was a forest of birds.
Birds and dark water and giant red leaves
with voices in them; and the voices were outraged.
They swept towards him like tensed wings
with their shadows tensed above his likeness like wings.
And he ran from them and he could hear
himself through the nets of the trees; but the red
forest was vast and the trees were covered
with ice. And at the edge of the red forest
he could see into the stone forest and could see


the dead voices rinsing over the stone floor.
He had been there already and had taken count.
And he had counted the animal forest and the
burning forest and the weeping forest and the forest
of the Americas and the God-forest.
What could he say to his accusers?
In some ways they were always right.
He had little to work with. He set out in darkness
and in darkness we waited at the corner of the forest
for his re-appearance. So many forests!
Somewhere was a silent forest. Ice above, ice below.
Somewhere was a coldness with a rope in it
like the knotted rope at the bottom of his throat.

Mark Levine and Robert Fernandez May 3rd!

Mark Levine - an author of several books of poetry, including Debt, Enola Gay, and The Wilds. Mark has won multiple NEA awards and was Whiting Award Recipient in the 1990s for poetry. He earned his MFA from the renowned Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and is currently an instructor there while also continuing with his own writing.






Robert Fernandez - earned his BA in English, MFA in Poetry. Robert attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where he studied with Mark Levine and received a Teaching-Writing Fellowship. He was also a recipient of the PIP award in 2010.