The essential - Aleksandar Ristović

I was not allowed to live my life,

so I pretended to be dead

and interested solely in things

a dead man could be interested in:

petrified reptiles,

museum bric-à-brac,

fake evidence passed off as truth.

I felt a great need to be really dead,

and so at all times I wore

a mask made of wood

on which someone occasionally drew,

with colored pencils,

the look of contentment,

impatience, desire, bliss,

or the look of someone who is thinking

about an entirely different matter.

Cousins - Louise Glück

My son’s very graceful; he has perfect balance.

He’s not competitive, like my sister’s daughter.

Day and night, she’s always practicing.

Today, it’s hitting softballs into the copper beech,

retrieving them, hitting them again.

After a while, no one even watches her.

If she were any stronger, the tree would be bald.

My son won’t play with her; he won’t even ride bicycles with her.

She accepts that; she’s used to playing by herself.

The way she sees it, it isn’t personal:

whoever won’t play doesn’t like losing.

It’s not that my son’s inept, that he doesn’t do things well.

I’ve watched him race: he’s natural, effortless—

right from the first, he takes the lead.

And then he stops. It’s as though he was born rejecting

the solitude of the victor.

My sister’s daughter doesn’t have that problem.

She may as well be first; she’s already alone.

My Father - Yehuda Amichai

The memory of my father is wrapped up in

white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.

Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits

out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,

and the rivers of his hands

overflowed with good deeds.

Beauty - Warsan Shire

My older sister soaps between her legs, her hair

a prayer of curls. When she was my age, she stole

the neighbour's husband, burnt his name into her skin.

For weeks she smelt of cheap perfume and dying flesh.

It's 4 a.m. and she winks at me, bending over the sink,

her small breasts bruised from sucking.

She smiles, pops her gum before saying

boys are haram, don't ever forget that.

Some nights I hear her in her room screaming.

We play Surah Al-Baqarah to drown her out.

Anything that leaves her mouth sounds like sex.

Our mother has banned her from saying God's name.

Downhill - Julia Vinograd

I don’t have a home

and I live there

all the time.

Animals - Louise Glück

My sister and I reached

the same conclusion:

the best way

to love us was to not

spend time with us.

It seemed that

we appealed

chiefly to strangers.

We had good clothes, good

manners in public.

In private, we were

always fighting. Usually

the big one finished

sitting on her little one

and pinching her.

The little one

bit: in forty years

she never learned

the advantage in not

leaving a mark.

The parents

had a credo: they didn't

believe in anger.

The truth was, for different reasons,

they couldn't bring themselves

to inflict pain. You should only hurt

something you can give

your whole heart to. They preferred

tribunals: the child

most in the wrong could choose

her own punishment.

My sister and I

never became allies,

never turned on our parents.

We had

other obsessions: for example,

we both felt there were

too many of us

to survive.

We were like animals

trying to share a dry pasture.

Between us, one tree, barely

strong enough to sustain

a single life.

We never moved

our eyes from each other

nor did either touch

one thing that could

feed her sister.

Untitled - Franz Wright

Will I always be eleven,

lonely in this house,

reading books

that are too hard for me,

in the long fatherless hours.

The terrible hours of the window,

the rain-light

on the page,

awaiting the letter,

the phone call,

still your strange elderly child.

How to kill a living thing - Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh

Neglect it

Criticize it to its face

Say how it kills the light

Traps all the rubbish

Bores you with its green

Continually

Harden your heart

Then

Cut it down close

To the root as possible

Forget it

For a week or a month

Return with an axe

Split it with one blow

Insert a stone

To keep the wound wide open.

The Untrustworthy Speaker - Louise Glück

Don't listen to me; my heart's been broken.

I don't see anything objectively.

I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist.

When I speak passionately,

that's when I'm least to be trusted.

It's very sad, really: all my life I've been praised

for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight.

In the end, they're wasted--

I never see myself,

standing on the front steps, holding my sister's hand.

That's why I can't account

for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends.

In my own mind, I'm invisible: that's why I'm dangerous.

People like me, who seem selfless,

we're the cripples, the liars;

we're the ones who should be factored out

in the interest of truth.

When I'm quiet, that's when the truth emerges.

A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.

Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas

red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself

to the older daughter, block her out:

when a living thing is hurt like that,

in its deepest workings,

all function is altered.

That's why I'm not to be trusted.

Because a wound to the heart

is also a wound to the mind.

Father's Old Blue Cardigan - Anne Carson

Now it hangs on the back of the kitchen chair

where I always sit, as it did

on the back of the kitchen chair where he always sat.

I put it on whenever I come in,

as he did, stamping

the snow from his boots.

I put it on and sit in the dark.

He would not have done this.

Coldness comes paring down from the moonbone in the sky.

His laws were a secret.

But I remember the moment at which I knew

he was going mad inside his laws.

He was standing at the turn of the driveway when I arrived.

He had on the blue cardigan with the buttons done up all the way to the top.

Not only because it was a hot July afternoon

but the look on his face --

as a small child who has been dressed by some aunt early in the morning

for a long trip

on cold trains and windy platforms

will sit very straight at the edge of his seat

while the shadows like long fingers

over the haystacks that sweep past

keep shocking him

because he is riding backwards.