Tag: You Do Not Have To Be Good

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: You Do Not Have To Be Good by Madeleine Barnes

AND NOW THERE IS NO MORE BLUE

as though a certain fruit split open
and stained the air in a way I am not
imagining, as though the surface of his
turquoise ring changed to gray
in a way nothing should change
when touched, as though the surface
of the lake turned dark green when
the swans left—dramatic, as it must be,
the ritual of giving up blue, the sudden decision
not to see it, his decision to come to me broken
like they all do, because he wants me to perform
a different ritual with what light’s left.
Where are we? What else is in the room?
It still matters. He touches my ear
searching for the stray, unattainable—
wanting to catch hold of it. He leans
into me, which is what the sea can do
and it’s the same people, same music,
same ghosts I couldn’t forget from the very
start. I promised not to use less force
and by this, I meant several things:
I’d do what not everyone does,
I’d become arctic like the edges
of his body, and I wouldn’t give in
to loss and more loss even when
he indicated that it was enough.
Still: I look at him now through no particular body,
moved just enough to think I’ve found it…
the green that means something, an arrow,
a hunger is being ripped out of me
and there is a kind of music to it
that I don’t regret, or pity, and why
shouldn’t it matter, I try to say to him,
that it was so rough, that what
bruised me bruised you.

This selection comes from the book, You Do Not Have To Be Good, available from Trio House Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Krista Cox.

 Madeleine Barnes is a poet, visual artist, Mellon Foundation Humanities Public Fellow, and English PhD student at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She serves as Poetry Editor at Cordella Magazine, a publication that showcases the work of women and non-binary writers and artists. Her debut poetry collection, You Do Not Have To Be Good, is forthcoming from Trio House Press in July 2020. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Women’s Work, forthcoming from Tolsun Books. She’s the recipient of two Academy of American Poets poetry prizes, the Princeton Poetry Prize, the Gertrude Gordon Journalism Prize, and the Three Rivers Review Poetry Prize. Visit her at madeleinebarnes.com.

For money, Krista Cox is a paralegal at an environmental and insurance coverage firm. For joy, she’s an Associate Poetry Editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection and Executive Director of Lit Literary Collective, a nonprofit serving her local literary community. She serves on the board of the Feminist Humanist Alliance. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Journal, Crab Fat Magazine, The Humanist, and elsewhere. Her internet hangout is http://kristacox.me.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: You Do Not Have To Be Good by Madeleine Barnes

Retelling

There was one who did not return—
the boy in my high school who inhaled gauze

before the anesthesiologist could bring him back
to the same room where they took out

four of my teeth, cotton rolled against my gums.
There must be room for error in every procedure

but I want to know if he heard, lying down,
the light spray of water in his mouth,

or the summer heat that makes it hard to inhale,
heat that stays wrapped up in the lungs.

My sisters give me a lucky pomegranate seed
as if they know how close we are to going under.

Some say luck itself is simple, but have you ever
felt luck unlock wrong, held your hand

against the wall that luck broke down
so you could fix wrong and live with certain losses,

so you could match the groove in every brick
that pinned you to the ground,

luck nothing more but a tongue that moves.

This selection comes from the book, You Do Not Have To Be Good, available from Trio House Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Krista Cox.

 Madeleine Barnes is a poet, visual artist, Mellon Foundation Humanities Public Fellow, and English PhD student at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She serves as Poetry Editor at Cordella Magazine, a publication that showcases the work of women and non-binary writers and artists. Her debut poetry collection, You Do Not Have To Be Good, is forthcoming from Trio House Press in July 2020. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Women’s Work, forthcoming from Tolsun Books. She’s the recipient of two Academy of American Poets poetry prizes, the Princeton Poetry Prize, the Gertrude Gordon Journalism Prize, and the Three Rivers Review Poetry Prize. Visit her at madeleinebarnes.com.

For money, Krista Cox is a paralegal at an environmental and insurance coverage firm. For joy, she’s an Associate Poetry Editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection and Executive Director of Lit Literary Collective, a nonprofit serving her local literary community. She serves on the board of the Feminist Humanist Alliance. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Journal, Crab Fat Magazine, The Humanist, and elsewhere. Her internet hangout is http://kristacox.me.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: You Do Not Have To Be Good by Madeleine Barnes

INCIDENT ON THE TRAM

The girl on the tram without a ticket
is forced off the car between stations.
The officer has different colored eyebrows.
He speaks harshly and spits at her shoes.

Seven hundred crowns, he says to her in English.
She shows him her wallet, five American dollars,
a medical card. A large yellow leaf is stuck
below her heel. When he twists her arm,

her shoes make no utterance. Two hundred
hours from now, four thousand miles overseas,
her mother will drop the phone. In three hundred hours,
the news will air. They will have found her clothes.

The tram doors open and he pulls her off.
The passengers stare in different directions
while the fields change color, full of testimonies.
Something about the way he struck her head

to wake her—did he have a badge? A pin drops.
The tram makes its way through the mountains.
She is walking at night on the path
beside the river. Cables shudder overhead,

making their secret violent connections,
her voice a wire so thin
it cannot be traced to a body.

This selection comes from the book, You Do Not Have To Be Good, available from Trio House Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Krista Cox.

 Madeleine Barnes is a poet, visual artist, Mellon Foundation Humanities Public Fellow, and English PhD student at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She serves as Poetry Editor at Cordella Magazine, a publication that showcases the work of women and non-binary writers and artists. Her debut poetry collection, You Do Not Have To Be Good, is forthcoming from Trio House Press in July 2020. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Women’s Work, forthcoming from Tolsun Books. She’s the recipient of two Academy of American Poets poetry prizes, the Princeton Poetry Prize, the Gertrude Gordon Journalism Prize, and the Three Rivers Review Poetry Prize. Visit her at madeleinebarnes.com.

For money, Krista Cox is a paralegal at an environmental and insurance coverage firm. For joy, she’s an Associate Poetry Editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection and Executive Director of Lit Literary Collective, a nonprofit serving her local literary community. She serves on the board of the Feminist Humanist Alliance. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Journal, Crab Fat Magazine, The Humanist, and elsewhere. Her internet hangout is http://kristacox.me.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: You Do Not Have To Be Good by Madeleine Barnes

SURROUND her WITH COLORS

Step one: Andromeda. Step two: dark eyelashes.
Step three: adulthood with faint traces of childhood.
Stabilizer: On. Auto-focus: off. Love
how she touches you. Think: the stars are planning
the erasure of two-hundred-year-old silences,
so let her try to reach you. Step five: look at her
without expressing fear. Draw a tarot card
and let her tell you what it means.
Give her a crown of almonds and wet grass.
Frame something teal, something velvet,
something worthy. Give her a cathedral,
an amber glove, remix raspberry and neon.
Give her a lilac cube, enamored hi-shine,
avalanche of electric violet.
Cover her in changeable taffeta and ginger root.
Love her vices, her moss and copper.
Bring your relics. Step seven: sing.

This selection comes from the book, You Do Not Have To Be Good, available from Trio House Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Krista Cox.

 Madeleine Barnes is a poet, visual artist, Mellon Foundation Humanities Public Fellow, and English PhD student at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She serves as Poetry Editor at Cordella Magazine, a publication that showcases the work of women and non-binary writers and artists. Her debut poetry collection, You Do Not Have To Be Good, is forthcoming from Trio House Press in July 2020. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Women’s Work, forthcoming from Tolsun Books. She’s the recipient of two Academy of American Poets poetry prizes, the Princeton Poetry Prize, the Gertrude Gordon Journalism Prize, and the Three Rivers Review Poetry Prize. Visit her at madeleinebarnes.com.

For money, Krista Cox is a paralegal at an environmental and insurance coverage firm. For joy, she’s an Associate Poetry Editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection and Executive Director of Lit Literary Collective, a nonprofit serving her local literary community. She serves on the board of the Feminist Humanist Alliance. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Journal, Crab Fat Magazine, The Humanist, and elsewhere. Her internet hangout is http://kristacox.me.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: You Do Not Have To Be Good by Madeleine Barnes

Forty Black Ships 

I was dressing her in armor for the war.
I guided her feet into bronze socks,

helped her step into netted yellow pants,
tied her shins with quilted grids of gold.

Crinet, grangaurd, shoulder plates.
It was almost time, but I didn’t know.

And when the nurse knocked I helped her
rise from the violet bed. And when I

dispatched her into the battlefield, I said:
take my spears and black-tipped arrows.

Run toward your mother, and her mother.
I will follow soon when I find the right plates

to cover my trembling breastbone.
I’ll come when I cannot see you anymore

but for now, my shield, my daggers,
forty black ships in the sea offshore.

I was sure that she could not hear me weeping
as I lowered the helmet over her curls
and kissed the heavy visor.

This selection comes from the book, You Do Not Have To Be Good, available from Trio House Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Krista Cox.

 Madeleine Barnes is a poet, visual artist, Mellon Foundation Humanities Public Fellow, and English PhD student at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She serves as Poetry Editor at Cordella Magazine, a publication that showcases the work of women and non-binary writers and artists. Her debut poetry collection, You Do Not Have To Be Good, is forthcoming from Trio House Press in July 2020. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Women’s Work, forthcoming from Tolsun Books. She’s the recipient of two Academy of American Poets poetry prizes, the Princeton Poetry Prize, the Gertrude Gordon Journalism Prize, and the Three Rivers Review Poetry Prize. Visit her at madeleinebarnes.com.

For money, Krista Cox is a paralegal at an environmental and insurance coverage firm. For joy, she’s an Associate Poetry Editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection and Executive Director of Lit Literary Collective, a nonprofit serving her local literary community. She serves on the board of the Feminist Humanist Alliance. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Journal, Crab Fat Magazine, The Humanist, and elsewhere. Her internet hangout is http://kristacox.me.