Free The Best American Poetry 2012 by David Lehman

forward through an underground tunnel.
    Lambs that, only recently, were gamboling in the field. An old mule, in Alabama, that could take no more of anything. And then, what follows? Then spring again, summer, and the season of harvest. More catbrier, almost instantly rising. (No violets, ever, or song of the old creek.) More lambs and new green grass in the field, for their happiness until. And some kind of yellow flower whose name I don’t know (but what does that matter?) rising around and out of the half-buried, half-vulture-eaten, harness-galled, open-mouthed (its teeth long and blackened), breathless, holy mule.
    from Five Points

STEVE ORLEN

    Where Do We Go After We Die

    They’re at their old favorite bar. The funeral’s over. The question
    Commands and divides them. One sees the pictograph
    Of the great wheel; another, a figure of closed eyes,
    Another, the heavenly throne surrounded by a choir of angels,
    Remembered from Sunday School. Scripture,
    From many sources, is cited, science invoked
    And contradictions exposed. The peacemaker
    Among them declares that all the stories are true
    But on different planes, you can travel among them
    When you’re dead, if you want to, even this one,
    And find those you cared for and follow them around,
    Walk through their pratfalls and the wreckage
    And be amazed again at the poignant bravery of the living,
    Then the fabulist adds that you want to help, but you can’t,
    You’re a ghost, that’s a rule in all the stories,
    And that’s why both compassion and a coolness of spirit
    Can be felt on every street, making the best of a bad deal.
    Someone tells a story about Jon, who died
    And gathered them here. It brings them to tears.
    Another story, and they curse his transgressions.
    Then other friends who have died, story and commentary
    And rebuttal, they drink, they complicate,
    They begin to forget the quirks they loved
    And the spirit that flows like a river powerful enough
    To ignore the seasons. The lights flash off and on,
    The bartender is drying the last of the glasses,
    Stories slide under the chairs into the shadows,
    Speech reverts to its ancient, parabolic self— Yea,
    Though I walk through the valley —
    And actions lose their agency— It came to pass —
    The things of the world become scarce,
    And what’s left spreads its wings
    And flies around among them, like bats at dusk.
    from New Ohio Review

ALICIA OSTRIKER

    Song

    Some claim the origin of song
    was a war cry
    some say it was a rhyme
    telling the farmers when to plant and reap
    don’t they know the first song was a lullaby
    pulled from a mother’s sleep
    said the old woman
    A significant
    factor generating my delight in being
    alive this springtime
    is the birdsong
    that like a sweeping mesh has captured me
    like diamond rain I can’t
    hear it enough said the tulip
    lifetime after lifetime
    we surged up the hill
    I and my dear brothers
    thirsty for blood
    uttering
    our beautiful songs
    said the dog
    from Poetry

ERIC PANKEY

    Sober Then Drunk Again

    On the lightning-struck pin oak,
    On the swayed spine of the Blue Ridge,
    a little gold leaf.
    Once I drank with a vengeance.
    Now I drink in surrender.
    The thaw cannot keep me from wintering in.
    I prepare for death when I should prepare
    For tomorrow and the day after
    and the day after that.
    A clinker of grief where once hung my heart.
    Memory—moon-drawn, tidal.
    The moon’s celadon glaze dulls in the morning’s cold kiln.
    from The Cincinnati Review

LUCIA PERILLO

    Samara

    1.
    At first they’re yellow butterflies
    whirling outside the window—
    but no: they’re flying seeds.
    An offering from the maple tree,
    hard to believe the earth-engine capable of such invention,
    that the process of mutation and dispersal
    will not only formulate the right equations
    but that when they finally arrive they’ll be so
    . . . giddy ?
    2.
    Somewhere Darwin speculates that