Wind, Trees - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Freeman is the author of Dictionary of the Undoing several other books, including The Park (Copper Canyon, 2020), and There's a Revolution Outside My Life (2021), co-edited with Tracy K Smith. The founder of the literary annual Freeman’s, he is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. His latest books are The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story (Penguin, 2021), and The Wind, Trees (Copper Canyon, 2022), a collection of poems. His work has been translated into over twenty languages.

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Decoys

Bomber pilots knew wind could be a mercy fifteen thousand feet up

river like a pelican's neck engine drone a chorus of song clouds could

be a mercy rain could be a mercy snow could be a mercy

the wrong type of moon

did ties whistle and whip when a payload was cut and began

its four minute journey back to earth the silence of that first

800 meters descent frightening to them sitting in the bomb bay

goggled and scarfed delivering death like a baby from above

who thought to name a 13-foot-long 4,000 pound bomb Satan

had that person ever crouched close as a plane birthed a payload

which drifted and wondered about the free will of objects

we set in motion how they resist us as if a silent hand is

sometimes saying no during World War I when

the Germans were using zeppelins in aerial campaigns

the French planned to build a fake Paris eleven miles south

on the river complete with a replica street plan Arc d'Triumphe

working trains partially snuffed out lights that at night

might fool the bombers who'd fly right over a blacked out Paris

engine drones a lullaby they never had to use it the war ended

in 1918 all records of the city outside the city

were destroyed Fernand Jacopazzi the engineer

who had designed the stage set Paris lit the Eiffel Tower

instead then died in his home in 1932 at age 54 his lasting gift

the realization good and evil are both drawn to light

even if they need to be tricked by it

Boxing

In the waning days

of those years in London

I took up boxing. I didn't

want to unload on some

unsuspecting soul so I

found a sparring partner.

She turned up, neck

tatted, face pierced, dred-

locked and strong as hell.

A Turkish woman with

East London stenciled

on her left forearm. Before

boxing she trained horses

in dressage and before

that was trying not to

drown herself in drink.

After an hour I was losing

my breakfast and last night's

dinner. See you Wednesday

she said not discussing

whether there'd be an if. Thus

my living room turned into a

boxing gym. Couch the cut

corner. Not once did she knock

me down, but she could have.

I did that all on my own, using

my shoulder for the cross

rather than my hips, leaping

at the upper cut. Thinking it was

about power rather than grace.

I'd done this before, retreated from what

couldn't be controlled by measuring

rage out in iron. One plate, two,

the stack. The infernal

music you play in a room

that's mostly rubber and steel.

Thinking if I was just strong enough in my

body I could carry it all.

Making a racket. Skipping

rope. Meantime dad's at home

losing hope. Some muscles you

don't make out of joy.

Then Carla shows up in her

car fumed in weed. Horse

hair still on her hands. Like this

she'd say, and stop a hook

right below my eye. Glove sweat

and wrap funk. Rope slap, foot

squeak, cut time, then out

on the roads. Flesh tumbled

from my body. My lungs

endless. I stopped hitting something

and poured my body into a form.

At my desk my feet moving. I began

running before we'd spar. What, I don't

work you hard enough? she said once,

catching me outside, still sweaty

in my trainers, then ran

me until I puked. What do you

want. She asked. Are you here

to hurt someone? We can do

that, I didn't need to answer, I was

there to accept the world was

going to punch. To remember

it may not mean harm

but that's precisely why I needed

to be ready for when it would.

We took to boxing on the roof,

right beneath the nose of my

employer, the noise had woken

a neighbor, who complained down the mews,

so the last spring, as the sky lost

the color of a bruise and daylight

arrived earlier, we set up

under the blueing ceiling

of the world and threw hooks and

combinations, breath

drowning out traffic on the avenue.

I'd learned by then most power

came from my ass. But I'd forget.

Throw with my arm. A chill

spring morning I was hitting

one two, one two three, and a

voice comes over the wind—

light as a falling leaf

nah mate, just flick it, like this

and we both look up.

There's a builder across the

way, footwork loose, dancing

on the scaffolding he's tethered to, floating

nonetheless, arms faster than

air. Like this.

Among the Trees

Each morning on the Common Martha stops

beneath the conifers, paws on dry needles,

the part of our daily stroll where

she allows me to kiss her stilled Austrian

head. A long way from boar hunts and pheasant

shoots she was bred for in 1840s Saxony.

The Spruce are emigrants too. The copse

planted to temper winds on the newly

cleared Wood. Now they stand

apart, transplants, like all souls, turned

toward one another, while we pass

through, a softer wind.