~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Andy Young, Featured Poet

Andy Young’s second full-length collection, Museum of the Soon to Depart, was published in October 2024 by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She is also the author of All Night It Is Morning (Diálogos Press, 2014) and four chapbooks. She grew up in southern West Virginia and has lived most of her adult life in New Orleans, where she teaches at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Her work has recently appeared in Greensboro Review and Michigan Quarterly Review, and her poetry film “Pharmacy Museum Tour Guide, New Orleans” has been selected for more than two dozen festivals and won awards from the Berlin Indie Film Festival, the London Women’s Film Festival, and many others. A graduate of Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers, her work has been translated into several languages, featured in classical and electronic music, in flamenco and modern dance performances, and in jewelry, tattoos, public buses, and reed diffusers made in India.

Bone Saw Villanelle

My friend, an AIDS survivor, will be cut to the bone

again today. He’ll be short another digit.

Surely by now you’re a pro at amputation.

Khashoggi’s fingers were sawed off one by one.

As the forensic doctor worked, he listened to music

—one needs focus while cutting to the bone.

Who will take the blame? Not son

of a king not king—oil and cash make all legit

as democracy’s drugs kick in for amputation.

A hell of a lot better than the whole

foot, says my friend. It’s not like I can quit

because they cut me to the bone.

In the museum, the Victorian cutting saw shone

with its curved jade handle. He asked me to snap a pic,

stunned by beauty paired with amputation.

We wait for updates on Twitter, by phone.

Half of us half-here, half not giving a shit

because either way they’ll cut us to the bone;

each day is its own amputation.

From Museum of the Soon to Depart (2024), Carnegie Mellon University Press; first published in Vox Populi.

Family Portrait as the Golden Mummies of Bahareya

A couple faces one another

as if in conversation.

This is how they were found.

Now they lie in vitrines

like fish in facing tanks.

Could not speak if they

could speak. They were

dressed for their death passage,

not to be specimens in glass.

Her bare breasts shine

like doorknobs. Linen

wraps for the poor, gold

masks for the rich, eyes

so lifelike excavators

gasped when they brushed

the dust away. The revolution

left no money for excavation;

thousands of mummies

still lie in burrowed tunnels

under the houses and roads.

The dead do not ponder

revolutions, but they like

to sometimes be considered.

Small mourning statues

were found in the tombs,

meant to eternally weep

at their side. One man

is a merchant with a Horus crown.

Ptolemaic, someone says.

Our son points to another’s

thickly outlined eyes.

He is awake he says

but does not answer.

A stone girl, five years old,

too poor for a golden crown:

my daughter, also five,

asks if they’re the same

size—yes, almost exactly.

For a while, this is how

our children will think of death:

gilded bodies that keep their shape,

wide-eyed and adored.

From Museum of the Soon to Depart (2024), Carnegie Mellon University Press; first published in Swwim.

On Syrian Political Cartoonist Ali Farzat’s Self-Portrait,

Drawn after His Hands Were Broken

his lips drag down his gaze

straight revealing the sneer

that might otherwise be taken

as the sadness of Damascus

where he was left

in a heap on the street

praise the sneer the wilting gaze

he ringed his left eye 

with ink to show the bruising

creased his face and pillow

with lines jagged as stones’

filled in the dip of his

own neck the tube in the crook

of his arm praise the exactitude

his hands mummy-wrapped

broken fingers halved

by tape and gauze somehow

he unbent the middle finger

of the right hand made it jut

praise the unbending above

the others away from his body

in two dimensions it points

to the heart praise the heart

maybe the finger really

didn’t unbend maybe it’s one

of the fingers which does not

work now this is a self-portrait

how he sees himself

how he wants to be seen

in any case he perched

a pen praise the pen managed

to shade his hair black and gray

his burned beard his posture

wincing against sheets praise

the sheets on which he rests

the sheets on which

he draws himself praise

the ink the printing presses

churning in hidden rooms

the smudges on hands

after touching news

praise food stalls

in occupied squares

concrete pilings that smash

down walls praise bandanas

soaked in vinegar

praise Fridays

of chanting

and chanting again knowing

nothing will change anytime

soon praise the cartoons

of Ali Farzat

praise Ali Farzat’s

middle finger

From Museum of the Soon to Depart (2024), Carnegie Mellon University Press

Picasso’s Kitchen

Museu Picasso, Barcelona

I will suck the bones of the fish flesh

then cast the bones in clay

I will interrogate the plums

with the sun of this bulb

even a saucepan can shout

everything can shout

I shout a round swirl of paint

to make an apricot right in the center

of your wars your morals

to hell with these confines

the lines defined by your limits even

with bread rations I will still live still life

with green lemons and two fish

still life with radishes with conger eels

with snack with jug with green bottles

red bottles blue broken bottles of wine

there will be no face for the woman

with the lemons in her lap I turn

bird flocks into clots of pink and toss them

from a window having learned nothing

but to love things and eat them alive

From Museum of the Soon to Depart (2024), Carnegie Mellon University Press; first published in Pank.

Self-Portrait as Ganoderma Mushrooms

The earth was spongy

where the trash tree had been

before we lived here;

under our feet

the white mycelium

was worming through the dirt,

devouring the remnants of the trunk.

Reishi bodies pushed up through soil:

first puffy like dough, then spreading

` 

into flat, fanned-shaped shelves,

some dark orange with a trim of white:

shiny grand dames with arctic stoles,

some red as if the earth itself grew flesh

and bled for a second before hardening

and going back to ground.

They arrange themselves: orange drip-skirt,

small bundle, brown mother in a hat

with a big-shouldered father.

Decaying ones at the edges

grow through with weeds. Reishi.

My mother took these mushrooms,

in capsules, to try to keep the tumor

from taking over her brain.

It’s on her birthday that I find out

what they are.

First published in Spoon River Poetry Review.

I Water the Hell Tree

you like the Pride of Barbados

because it looks like the tree

that shades your family’s graves

your brother father nephew

beneath it our son threw up

against its trunk last time

we stood to pray there he'd done

the same the visit before

so small and hunched like a stone

beside the stones and fresh earth

of your mother’s plot the aloe

poking out as if to soothe

the burns of grief

you knew it had to be

the same tree had to find

the name here for what you call

it there gehennamaya it comes from

the word for hell you guess because

it blooms in flames of orange and red

because it thrives in killing heat

we found you seeds you planted

four these will be huge

even one too big for our yard

four because you hold

both hope and despair most won’t

make it you say I water it

thinking of water kept

from people in Gaza

I water the hell tree

pray that it will bloom

First published in Poetry Scotland.