This edition of The Gotham Translator is honored to invite a wonderful poet and a loving person I had the pleasure of meeting through a mutual friend. I was touched by the depth of his poetry. This is but a short bio showcasing the illustrious work performed by Bryan and a few of the accolades he’s received:
Bryan Borland (North Little Rock, Arkansas) is founding publisher of Sibling Rivalry Press and author of My Life as Adam, Less Fortunate Pirates, and DIG, which was honored as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry and a Stonewall Honor Book in Literature as selected by the American Library Association. Chosen by readers of the Arkansas Times as its inaugural “Best Poet,” most recently he received the Editor’s Prize from the Desert Rat Residency of Palm Desert, California. His work is housed by invitation in the Rare Book and Special Collections Vault of the Library of Congress.
LINEAGE
There are things you aren’t meant
to understand.
The only brother to survive the war
had twelve children and four generations
later here you are.
Decades ago someone fed a dog
and because of that you have a dog.
You’ll never know the woman who
planted the tree but you love her
because she did.
MANTRA
Black buzzard, red cardinal,
ruby-throated hummingbird
have love for you.
Rabbit, small and hungry, and full of love for you.
Ladybug you gently rescued from the bucket of water
and the green leaf upon which you rested her have love for you.
Music and electricity have love for you.
Language and words have love for you.
Wooden frame of house and trees who grew it have love for you.
The memory and the forgetting have love for you.
Crow and coyote
have love for you.
Ancestors and yet to be born have love for you.
Old friend has love for you.
Even the enemy has love for you.
The disease and the cure have love for you.
Mystery and explanation have love for you.
Library and mountain have love for you.
Writer and book have love for you.
Mistakes and best intentions have love for you.
Snake who you injured has forgiven you.
Girl who you held holds love for you.
Boy you once were has love for you.
Man you’ve become has love for you.
Moonlight and snowfall have love for you.
Regret and desire have love for you.
Shadow and space are love for you.
Moment of death has love for you.
There is no you who is not loved.
There is no you who is not loved.
There is no you who is not loved.
There is no you who is not love.
INSTRUCTION
If your story had a beginning
it would start not with light
and dark but in the color between
call it shadow call it dawn call it just
before morning waking before your father
when you alone in the world hear existence
into existence before sounds had names
when knowledge was only intuition
and soon the smell of coffee and you
floating with no foothold
no gravity everything miraculous
your small body this new planet of potential
and possibility oh intelligent fledging
there’s a word for this
you’ll learn and forget many times
WILL
Wondering about the paths these things will
take once I leave for other adventures
the proof of this life picked up along the way or
chosen because they made me think
of someone I loved or a place
the toy robot my brother’s that sits on the shelf
not just a material thing the key to unlocking
Christmas morning 1986 when I wasn’t brotherless
the red-tailed hawk feather found in the field
when I leave for other adventures I leave
behind a thousand locked doors
occasionally to be opened by some well-meaning
artist or nephew who doesn’t yet exist
but who I already and completely love
CHOICES
Back in Arkansas after a week in New York
and the heat is breaking everything. It’s a full-time
job to saturate the ground in water, even more so
a privilege. Molly the dog got a rabbit this morning,
her third of the summer. I atone for our sins by
trying to keep everything else alive. This time
last week I was holding my husband’s hand
in the city. But Ukraine and Gaza and war. How
all this can exist at once, I don’t know. The earth
spins. The sun goes down. We only get
so many chances to choose correctly.
THINKING OF THOSE WHO LOVED YOU THROUGH
How to tell yourself to keep going—
that what you think is the end is
a spectacular beginning. That
you will change the world in large
and small ways and the small
ways will mean as much
as the large. That you will
see things you wish you could show
everybody who held your hand
along the way. All those people
who were so strong for you
when you needed them
but who in secret cried for your end
that was really a spectacular beginning.
MEDITATING
The quieting of the mind, that meaningless chatter,
the thunderous approaching herd of worries
not yet birthed to body: how many days
does the dog have left, how many do we,
does the boy I wronged still think of me?
Did I kiss my husband enough? Do I make him feel
wanted? Do I make the spirits ashamed when I perform
beneath myself—but quiet all of this and focus
on the breath, the breathing, the space between
the ex and in, and if I need to think of something,
think of stacks of books around me, Bach & family
photographs come to movement and memory,
think of winter blooms & telling friends
how proud I am of them, yes, go by name:
Alana, Lucy, Gustavo, and Guy. Bless
the slow dance to prayer, for my mother, for any
mother, for the woman who wears the blanket
and how she reappears. For the world. Bless
the sounds, don’t tune them out, welcome them, hear
the symphony of being. Of imperfection.
Bless the snags in the fabric, bless sick days
that slow me down. Bless the bad day
at one job that makes me work to find
another job, and bless the job I love
because of that bad day. Bless the real
work of learning to listen and absolution
when I don’t. Bless being gentle on myself
for not believing these words or receiving these
words though I’ve said and heard them so many times:
I apologize & I forgive you & I love you very much.
I apologize & I forgive you & I love you very much.
I apologize & I forgive you & I love you very much.
Bryan Borland is founding publisher of Sibling Rivalry Press and author of DIG, a Stonewall Honor Book as selected by the American Library Association. (www.bryanborland.com)