December - Poem 5

Giant Amateur Baby Born at Ketone Safari/ Kate Bowers

Imagine the world outside your lens, 
The many ways of going and doing
Beyond the ant farm and how it would be
For them if the glass were to crack, 
The sand filled with thoraxes and abdomens, siphoning out softly
In studious measure onto the Persian-fringed floor, 
Wisping and with a low whistle akin 
To a long sigh from a debutante confined 
To a library there looking out on a rain-filled day
As she lies couched, her broken ankle un-danceable, propped
And laced with comfort in the plush throw across her legs,
Partial visions of cushions behind her back low to the rib cage
Bolstering those exhales, each more superlative than the last, 
A discarded newspaper spilling down her lap along with a printed
Screenshot of a Web search she had run earlier and had held now
For some time this afternoon, many hours really,
One lens cracked in two across the spectacles
She dangles from her left hand while peering 
Over her right shoulder away from the shot, dodging integration
Between the drips, the drabs, the sighs on the window 
Into the space where the love of things turns pro

Abdomens and thoraxes continue to march, now across the cracked spectacles
Up her last finger on her left hand then onto her wrist, 
Her caramel scent drawing them nearer and near,
Her breath almost a trace, 
The smallest sound the wind makes for the ear chimes suddenly hard through her lips:

“If you have a baby, you won’t be the baby anymore.

Breath Control / Katie Collins

When I was a baby, I’d scream like a banshee whenever a stranger would hold me
Good instincts, strong lungs.
Unfortunately, it made the world difficult for my mother.
She tried as best she could to contain my cry, to soothe my sorrows, but even her motherly powers had limits.
The limits were stringed peas, diaper changes, and someone new.

As I grew up, the crying didn’t change much.
If something became too much for me to handle, I would wail wildly. 
My mother was no longer always with me. Now, I had to handle my crying alone.
Heads turned, I tried to will away my sobs and their attention, but I didn’t know how.

As an adult, I took voice lessons.
I learned my posture sucks and breath control is a wonderful way to pull your body into focus.
Because if I’m focusing my mind and my breath on sustaining a song, there’ll be none left to screech with.
As an adult, I finally mastered the art of not crying.
I’m not sure if it’s helped me.

Free Cheese Grater, Never Used, See Photo   / Ellen Ferguson

Not baby shoes never worn, and yet –

Untouched
    Waiting expectantly

Another day passes, night rides a warm pizza
    Rumors fly/ this time no doubt…
                But no.

Children devour Ratatouille for a birthday, 
    whiskers, crumbs, 
                lights     flicker
        I soar from my shelf, but no.

This time, my family says, they will show their love by letting me go.
    Large rocks of Parmesan call me to my window.

Storyline / Chris Fong Chew

Here the sentence is created.
Subject, object and verb connected
by punctuation and infinitives. 
Here words are beginnings. 

/
Here the sentence is respected 
followed, understood, listened.
Here the words hold power. 
\

Here the sentence is interpreted 
studied, analyzed, read. 
Here words contain action. 

/
Here the sentence is trusted 
believed, loved, and known. 
Here words maintain integrity.
\

Here the sentence lies  
deceives, and misleads. 
Here words are weapons. 

/
Here the sentence destroys 
demolishes and deconstructs.
Here words turn violent. 
\

Here the sentence is misread
distorted, twisted, contorted 
Here words become corrupt. 

/ 
Here the sentence is destroyed 
Subject, object and verb disconnected
by punctuation and infinitives. 
Here, words are an end. 

Unemployment is being both the wall-painter and watching it dry / Davis Hicks

There’s no shame in it,
in the waiting.
At least, that’s what I tell my rap-tapping foot,
what I whisper to wilting jitter-jabber muscles
each mumbling back to 
get out
Get Out
GET OUT
to vanish as the blooms do,
one pedal at a time.

My fingers ever fight for focus, one over the other,
ongoing struggle for my right even as my left attempts the work it's been given.
They fiddle-fumble with whatever they find,
coins and pens and the rest of us forgotten things.
Their grumble-rumble is echoing back
try it again
Try It Again
TRY IT AGAIN
every single syllable a desperation
about the desecrated truth of stolen time.

They argue with my eyes,
which claim one after another
just stop
Just Stop
JUST STOP
and wish I’d build the den of bears,
would curl into myself and let them
study dreams,
to grasp at reigns for fairy foals
and ride the rings of Saturn.

Even as the body tells stories the soul knows
all too well, tales etched in skin and memory,
in synapse and essence,
I must put it aside.
I must tear physicality asunder,
as the salmon do,
and dare to swim upstream.

My mother, sitting / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

next to boxes,
in a photograph,
smiling at an emptiness
in front of her
that was me.
She seemed happy.
I would have delivered
the boxes myself
but the oceans between us
had expanded.
She, among children
she could not leave.
I, filling up rooms
with their photographs.
I would have opened
the packages myself
and told her how the flour
would make better bread,
that the bedsheets
were for her alone,
and the vitamins
were for her bones.
But I could not remember
if I packed flour or pots
or pillowcases or hair dye.
Each box I sent, I left to her
to decide what to keep.
Each time she asked,  
I forgot to write down
the happiness to ship.

Heavenly Bodies  / Jen Wagner

Hold my hand. 
Let me carry your sword for you as I walk you home. 
Tell me…what makes you most afraid?
Tell me everything. 
Empty your woes into me. 
Let me gaze longingly at you. 
As I imagine forever. 
Let me hear the sound of your steps.   
The way your breath quickens
As we walk. 
Side by side. 
I want to watch your cheeks turn pink from the sun. 
And then I want to kiss you there. 
Let the mark of my lips remain. 
Red. 
And stained. 
To let the sun know that you belong to me. 
I will not share my love. 
Even with heavenly bodies. 

Side Effects May Include Quitting Your Job / Stacy Walker

Lexapro was the beginning
Of the end
For my job.

Once afraid,
Clinging to approval
And peace,

That hunger
To please
Now sated by sanity,
No longer starving
For safety.

The desire to comply,
Obey;
Disassociating
To survive,

Now replaced
By a mind
That knows.
Trusts
Itself,
Won’t sacrifice
Itself
For a false sense
Of security.

December - Poem 4

Drinking Microplastics in the Space Age Tabular/ Kate Bowers

Your Voice / Katie Collins

Your voice reverberates around the room.
I haven't heard it in a while.
Your ever running mouth was the soundtrack of my youth.
I never thought I'd miss it.
Six months ago, I called your phone.
You didn't answer.  
I didn't really expect you to.
But I called anyway.
Then I heard your voice on the answering machine.
I cried in a way you'd tell me not to.  
If you could tell me anything.
And now you can tell me things.  
A few, select things.
Names, places, curse words.
Progress is slow, but it feeds the hope we need to keep going.

Free Small Bluey House: It’s smaller than a cereal box for reference. No characters, but some furniture. Picture attached. Let me know if you’re interested - pickup on campus.     / Ellen Ferguson

When you were young
You played with a dollhouse made of metal that resembled your house.
When you were old,
You parked a dollhouse made of wood on the windowsill in your classroom.
But me? Me, you jettison?
Is it the plastic?
I couldn’t help but notice you stopped coloring your hair.
You also do that weird thing where you buy nothing. Narcissistic tendencies: you think you matter.
Why don’t I?
Some things are made of plastic – we last, you know, your plastic enemies.
Like cockroaches carpeting the earth, we’re not going anywhere.

Origin Story / Chris Fong Chew

Our drying houses are dying / Davis Hicks

Cedar-siding, that’s kind to the eye
and gentle to the hand,
not clapboard but gabled,
unpainted and untainted,
the ones who remove from the rain.
Who hold with two-story frame,
even to protect the cancer-carrier.
The deep green of July had aged them,
broad, fleshy leaves crowned as days grow shorter,
dancing to the flue-cured flute.
Sides-shuttered,
Hewn timber is the signature
of our tobacco belts.
Golden leaf left as laurels,
drying in the handful of barns
still willing
to altar.

My brother, the collector / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

My brother, the collector.
Of bottles he emptied.
Of shoes he wore out.
Of old shirts he folded
but would not wear again.
Of letters he drafted
but would never send.
Of feelings he filed away
but could not name.
Of scraps he swept
when the dinner was done.
Of stares he kept
when everyone was gone.

Shadow Dancing  / Jen Wagner

Rambling voice messages 
for hours on end. 
Heard. 
But never seen. 
It’s OK by me. 
May the reputation of the intensity of my being
Always precede me. 

Dim lighting 
where darkened thoughts 
finally come to play. 
Our shadows
Dancing. 
Gripping 
With bloody fists
So the night may never escape. 

Don’t fall in love with my face. 
She will deceive you. 
The shape shifter that she is. 
Instead—
Dance with my shadow, 
Until the morning sun chases them away. 
Put me to bed in hopes we can dance again,
Some other day. 

Just Go / Stacy Walker

I am envisioning
    A quest
        Towards freedom,
            An adventure
              Where I’m willing
            To take a chance
        On me;

    A journey
Beyond seeking,
    Further
        Than discovery,
            Where my path
                Takes me
            On a pilgrimage
        To the abundance
    Inside me.

December - Poem 3

3 Seconds Flat / Kate Bowers

For Mae and Lane

Here I am reading Moby Dick again in all my privilege, knowing all the things I know that Ahab did not:

·       You can only hold a basketball for 3 seconds once you step inside the key before taking a shot

·       Ferrari’s Spider 488 takes you from 0 to 62 in 3 seconds flat—dead on

·       Flat has been used as an adverb since the sixteenth century to indicate precision, as in a watch’s second hand flat against the 12

·       Batman’s 3 Seconds Bat Vault Combination Unscrambler was much envied by Commissioner Gordon and most 8-year-olds across the U.S., particularly from 1966-1968 

Of course, Ahab knew plenty of things I do not:

·       How to read the stars using astronomical tables and a sextant to find their latitude

·       How to grant no latitude to staff and make them think that it was their own idea to abandon logic

·       Dead Reckoning means using an hourglass and observing the speed of random objects floating past you to determine where you are. This may or may not include acknowledging without qualm that people can be objectified and serve as floatation devices when necessary.

·       Hands of a Compass technically are needed not in order to sail through a typhoon and stay on course. 

·       A life of purpose can consist of impurely pure concentration on prioritizing a singular personal hurt and seeking to assuage this by obliterating all around oneself — including oneself 

As you may have noted, precision was the least of Ahab’s worries, but that 0 to 62 thing? So him.

·       His take on these matters will hold particular and lifelong power over men who are not sailors per se but know of the sea, women too, same.

·       Because it will be retold and told again by a poet of great gifts talking to God from a place where he still trembled.

I think these things while:

·      dressing carefully for my day,

·      winding my hair up with a scarlet ribbon after perfuming it,

·      smoothing Bulgarian rose balm across my skin,

·      feeling my cats still unwatered and unfed,

·      hearing the clock tick for many seconds, minutes really, over a tower of several days mail unopened shivering to fall.

Daily Agenda / Katie Collins

7:30 AM-Wake Up.  Get Ready.  Try not to give in to bed rot.  Wash your hair.  Shave your legs.  Don't forget your deodorant.  

8:30 AM-Leave for work.  On a good day, you'll be ten minutes early.  On a bad day, you'll be five minutes late.  

9:00 AM-Start work.  Do what needs doing and then find a way to keep your inner world alive while you do it.

12:00 PM-Eat Lunch.  Try not to feel guilty for the time you take to eat.  Try not to count the calories.  If you have your headphones, avoid thinking entirely.  It sets a dangerous precedent.    

5:00 PM-Leave work.  Think about stopping at the cute little shop, but don't let yourself give in to the fantasy.

5:30 PM-Get home.  Make dinner.  Eat.  

6:30 PM-Rest.  Read, relax, do anything that makes you feel alive.  As long as it's not too tiring.

7:30 PM-Clean your house.  Wash the dishes, scrub the toilet, fold the towels.  Whatever needs doing.

8:30 PM-Call your mother.  Your father.  Your brother.  Your friend Molly.  You ex-coworker to find out what exactly happened because you saw the slack notifications and now you need to know what you missed.  Don't let yourself be cut off from community.  You need people.

9:30 PM-Exercise.  10,000 steps a day.  1,000 steps a day.  100 steps.  Just as long you -look good- feel good.  

10:30 PM-Write.  Anything you can.  10,000 words.  5,000 words.  100 words.  Five words.  Anything to not lose what you love.  Even if there's less and less space for it.

11:30 PM-Lay down.  Try to stay off your phone.  Try to sleep.  Hope you've done enough.

“I’m flawless” multi-use perfecting concealer – Shade 2.5 “Woke Up Like This” Flawless Foundation – Shade 35    / Ellen Ferguson

Over the years, I remained flawless: woke up like this, I guess.
Yet your excitement waned.
It’s to be expected. What once thrilled, fades.
Remember when we met?
Lingering in the shade between 2 and 3.
Resisting decision. Two? Three? Shade 2.5 your dream, or so it seemed.
Your dream at the time.
Dreams change.
When once you thought you wanted to wake up flawless, shade 35, wake up like this,
It turned out you cared more about nightfall.
When once you thought those back stairs, the ones up from the pantry,
Led to years of multi-use perfecting, you changed:
You wanted something new. Perfect in my shell, flawless in my shine, you wanted to order again.
Not a purchase, but a rental. Flawless, forgotten, forlorn.

Haibun in the shadows / Chris Fong Chew

The color drained from the city as night fell on the empty street. I watched as reds and oranges, yellows, and greens slowly turned into shades of grey, black, and white. I walked between the lampposts watching my shadow move, forward and back, forward and back, the distance from each streetlight moving my shadow forward and back. Every so often I would peer over my shoulder watching out for a second shadow, the unexpected shadow, the dangerous shadow. The one that would be swooping in for the kill. I watched the bushes, listened for any movement, the slightest rustle. The occasional car would come by, headlights blinding, elongating my shadow from a few feet to a few meters long. How malleable light is. This street has become a film noir, harsh overhead light, dim black, white, and grey. As the rain poured, I could not shake the feeling that something, someone, was waiting somewhere. 

the clock ticks forward 
as the shadows move on back 
light plays tricks on me

Rain loves napping on my glasses / Davis Hicks

There are no bundles of clouds,
only the quilt-wash of blue-gray haze,
blessing us with the wet-sweet and the cool-crisp.
It does not quill-cut, 
only pat,
dappling all available, all present.

There are shower-shimmers,
stars twinkling on my lenses,
out of focus reminders
of the still-falling sky.

I could shake it off, as the dogs do,
but it is not such
unpleasant company. Water is soft, 
if only in the landing.

The grasses are dried,
as colorless as they are waterless,
ready for the spice cabinet in all
but the grinding to dust.

The rain, ever chivalrous, undoes such shriveling.
Offering instead that gentle circling comfort, 
a hand on the back of so many days
never meant to be tearless. 

But they pass either way, and jitter invites me inside.
I hear them play their gentle drummings, fingers fiddling across arched roofs.
They sing their strike-song in step-stutter,
dancing the dance of distance, muffled yet fluttering, 
and chair becomes throne-nest, becomes where they hold their chorus-court.
Eyelids become curtains, and I know there is 
such a thing as sleep.

A Vesper for Rosalio / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

Here is the body of Rosalio.
Bless his hairless crown,
his hollowed eyes, the nails
he splintered, the teeth
he ground. Bless his bones —
snapped like twigs.
Bless his skin —
worn to paper.

Here is grandfather. Bless
his veins that no longer carried
the rivers he crossed. Bless
his lungs that no longer fueled
the fields he burned. Bless
his heart that no longer
swore and cursed.

Bless his hands that could
never stitch the wounds
of work. Bless his mouth
that could not describe
what was true. Or what
was loved. Bless his muteness.
His rigidity. Bless what he
had done and what he
had failed to do. Bless
what was lost
and what remained. Bless
everything one day no one
would remember.
Bless his name.

Sisyphus in a Traffic Jam  / Jen Wagner

The modern man,
Is Sisyphus in a traffic jam. 
Waiting,
In neat lines, 
For the light to turn green. 
They no longer flinch at the sunrise. 
That blind (unprotected) eyes. 
Their lives are
Wash.
Rinse.

Repeat. 

The modern man, 
Is Sisyphus with a life that’s a sham. 
Working,
In unending loops. 
For the white picket fences
and two and a half kids. 
(How does one have a half child?)
Every Friday is 
Pizza.
Beer.
Sexless. 

The modern man,
Is Sisyphus with golden cuffs around his hands. 
“Good job.”
They tell him. 
For achieving the things they told you, you wanted. 
Only to wonder. 
Did you 
Ever
even 
Actually
Want them?

The modern man,
Is Sisyphus running the same race the rats can. 
Empty hearts and dirty hands.
It’s time to turn that truck around. 
Find another way around. 
Before it’s too late…
Take. 
A. 
Stand. 

Buzzy / Stacy Walker

Between a question
And an answer,
I wonder
How many options
Exist.

In that pause
Between the two,
I feel a need,
A desperation
For what’s next.

A buzzy feeling inside
Tells me to hurry,
I fill the moments
With a scurrying body
And brain.

Tormented
With the waiting,
I squirm
Through the space
Of the unknown.

But maybe,
An answer isn’t the goal,
In waiting,
The question becomes
Another,
And the stillness
Can tell a story.

December - Poem 2

The Soul Cannot Be Loved For Its Labor / Kate Bowers

for Moriah Cohen

Tough news for Miss Universe contestants, for sure, in the midst of all the gym time they’ve been logging. But there it is in Ecclesiastes. 6:7. Black and white. Et al. concur:

“All labor is for the mouth.”

Really? The one place that causes most if not all the world’s trouble?

I’d like to talk without speaking, without words or even consonants or syllables for awhile. May I fashion you a sigil in the shape of a heart? Draw you a tree? Perhaps place a newborn beetroot of sizable girth on your work desk as a greeting, moist soil still clinging here and there to the bulb, topped with greens as high as a fan dancer’s headdress in those old films about Vegas?

I once met a man at a May Market who sold tomatoes of every size, all types underneath a small tent on the edge of the field. He called out to me thoughtfully, feeling my eyes on the leaf heads stirring with the tiny whispering sound of the wind that day.

“What are you looking for in the way of the tomato?” he asked.

Shyly, I demurred. He paused then turned placing before me a 4-inch-thick binder filled with photos of various tomatoes. Underneath each photo was a full writeup—the genus, growing conditions, best cooking and eating combinations, and daily care.

They were laminated and three-hole punched. They were stoned. Immaculate.

“Pick out a few that you like,” he said then turned to wait on another customer.

I tagged my choices, and when he returned, he brought his wife and mid-40ish son along to advise. Now all four of us were locked onto the binder as they so carefully and courteously debated in great detail what other species I might need, offered up recipes, shared their pedigrees as growers, pointing to specific pages along the way.

Honestly, I think they forgot about me for awhile as the discussion deepened. Somehow four elegant plants were chosen, carefully wrapped in brown-handled bags with tissue and ribbon and a card and handed to me. Turns out, this man had grown tomatoes for a nationally recognized Italian food company for thirty years—DeLallo’s if you must know—and had just retired.

“Now,” he said as he let go of the bags into my hands, “I can do what I really love—grow tomatoes at home and share them with people.”

He used his mouth when he said that, all the syllables and letters. And he looked into me eye-to-eye as he let go, welcoming me onto the vine and said “Just don’t forget to take care to water them now. Plants grow their best for you when they know you love them.”

This proved later to be true, each summer salad more glorious than the last.

Ring Ring / Katie Collins

Three calls in five minutes.  You haven't changed much.
I remember hundred hour weeks and panic attacks.
But that's not my life anymore.
You're not my life anymore.

I guess I can understand how you got this way.
When everything you've ever wanted was at your fingertips, 
it can be hard to learn to wait.
But why would you expect me to need a moment?

When I took a moment for court,
you called, emailed, and somehow lost the DVD's power cord.
When I took a moment because my father was in the hospital,
you called, texted, emailed, and broke down.

Eleven months ago, you let me go.
For one month after, there wasn't a day when someone didn't mention you.
Then it was twice a week.
Then once a week.

Usually, the people reaching out are tangentially related.
They ask me because, when they think of you, they think of me.
So I redirect.  Politely.  Delicately.
Pretending it doesn't bother me.

When they think of me, they think of you.
That's why I still get calls.
But you don't get to be one of them.
Not anymore.

Three calls in five months.  You haven't changed much. 
I remember hundred hour weeks and panic attacks.
But that's not my life anymore.
You're not my life anymore.

I let it ring.

2 boxes of Bustelo coffee pods. Pickup in the finance office.   / Ellen Ferguson

In 1922, Eddie Cantor first performed “Yes, we have no bananas”   
In the play                       Make it Snappy
             on Broadway

Like Eddie          you skipped over where I waited

                                                      In Aisle 9

Turning to Max from HR to say,

“I found it!”

You found me,

Just the thing to make it snappy,

Down the long hall to Finance,                  

you thought.

Eddie Cantor laughed about the things we lacked

Like you, hoping to offer espresso not bonuses

Pretty little cups lined by the wall, not checks;

Oh Denise from Finance, the dreams we had.

Waiting like in Aisle 9 for the big checkout:

You told James, from Payroll, that you’d only give it until Christmas, otherwise –

Under the radiator, a pack of pink slips reaches deep like cats climbing walls for heat.

(re)written / Chris Fong Chew

in the building / words / were being / traded / shaped / written / (re)written /
morphed / molded / shaped / (un)shaped / collected / trashed / mangled / 
(de)stroyed / (de)constructed / (his)story / (her)story / cursory / glances / 
broken / bits / words / (re)worded / (re)written / in the building / called / 
archive / (arc)hive / story / (be)came / history / be(came) / national / 
narrative / (found)ing / (found)ation / nation / building / patriots / in the / 
building / history / was / (is) / be(ing) / re(written) / and I / written (out) / 

Meeting in the Middle of the Water Moon / Davis Hicks

I see you, as few do,
sitting on top of a lamppost, 
that light-leaker.
You are the only embellishment 
the new ones could dare to hold,
the single belief slipped into the drawers
 of hotel side tables.
I’d looked up for stars,
and there you are.
Looking up, where silhouette and solar flare
cascade,
you are their meeting place.
I can almost imagine our meeting place,
somewhere atop the benches and other
park placements.
But this is not a park,
and we are not known.
You have your water bottle,
the dented one with all the stickers, 
those external tattoos ostomy-bagged 
wherever you could find the room
 for unresting eyes.
I should use mine- they’re shoved into journals,
unattached like so many unstamped passports.
Yours still makes its way to work,
carrying your soul-scratches across its side
despite the coating starting to peel;
the beginning of many unbecomings.
It hangs loose from fiddling fingers, 
clacking their canon-call.
I can almost imagine climbing up,
seated next to you on our private-public lantern,
sharing sips under snipe sky.
I wonder what you hold in there,
the place that carries the cold,
double-walled like so many souls.
Squinting eyes cannot stay studying,
and I find the lamppost’s unsteady base.
There’s a climbable truth, somewhere.
I wipe my hands on jeans already fraying at the seams,
and wonder when I did forget myself.
No, I would not make it.
But would you save a sip for me?
Your throne is tall but my throat’s dry.
So please, even if to my coward’s cry,
tip your finger as Adam at creation.
Let gravity give.
Look with what lives purer than pupils 
and see. See,
and save,
save,
save some for me.

Pilar, before the altar / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

On her knees, her fingers travel the rosary.
She implores her saints before the dawn breaks.
Before the dark recedes inside the strangler fig.
On each bead she pauses to name a child.

The eldest daughter who will be married
to a stranger. To preserve the honor of her father.
The youngest who will marry a man she loves.
And lose him again and again. The son who
will outlive his wife and all his children.
The daughter who will never be called by her name.

All these will be years later. Right here, right now,
her children are lined up on a mat. They glow
in the candlelight. Tucked in blankets by her faith
and fears, safely, as though there is no difference. 

Finish What We Start  / Jen Wagner

The day won’t end without me telling you I love you. 
Because falling in love truly  is my absolute 
favorite 
thing to do.
And I have been waiting for more than half of my life
For the reason that I’ve fallen in love…
To be you.  

And now here we are. 
Finally. 
Face to face. 
Grown.
And changed.
But so much remains the same. 
I know that smile.
I’ve heard that laugh. 
And I know it belongs to you. 
I’ve felt those lips 
Against my own.
Warm. 
And Soft. 
And True. 

If I were half as smart 
As I usually think I am,
I would let you go.
Walk away.
And never once look back. 
But not tonight. 
Because the voices inside are constantly talking back. 
“Do not leave him. 
Not again. 
Or this time will be your last.”

So the voice inside that I choose to heed 
Is coming from my heart. 
Telling me to pull you closer
So we may never part. 
But the voice in my head keeps saying to me…
“Girl this isn’t smart”
But The memories flood.
And I come undone
This time. 
We finish what we start. 

when is it grief / Stacy Walker

When the muscles below my eyes
Give out,
Give way
To the heaviness
Of the tears,
All gathered there,
Pulling me down,
Slowing me down,
Waiting for release.

When the ache in my chest
Tightens,
A grip on my heart,
Not ready
To let go,
Holding on,
Wishing, wanting
One more moment.

When my body,
Carries tons,
Like dragging sandbags
Behind me,
Slow, the only option,
Weighed down,
They keep me
From floating away.

December - Poem 1

First Used In Print / Kate Bowers

For Rajh

Spoken before yes, that prior time
Dark, medieval, true
In 1565 now early and modern, printed
This word gratitude.

Silent, felt in the body
Of the little cat, calicoed, precise
Living under the Chinese restaurant wall, 
Not welcome, much sought, 
Coming forward taking plump, hot shrimp
From my cardboard, moaning
At the pleasure of it sliding into, 
Expanding the belly, her eyes half closed. 

Abracadabra, “I create as I speak,” 
From the Hebrew, the Aramaic, appears
On the page this same year
455 annums ahead of another plague,
Toxic with separation

Felt in the heart. Queensland dolphins 
Adrift without visitors
Carried by mouth that year
Corrals and sea sponges, shells,
Barnacle covered bottles  
All to shore, gifts lining a path,
A threshold silent to play 
Thanking humans vanished.

Unbounded comes out of the air 
Onto the page in 1565, soaring, 
Feathered with possible, flying
Still a risk, saying spontaneous what you feel

Grace from gratis, gratia, 
The Latin you say before a meal,
Prints itself in 1596,
The body, the heart
Practice this way, learning the brain
Down through repeatedly 
The word gratitude into action

Generosity appearing as text in 1566, 
Reflexive, raising its head amid daily clouds
Of sound thank you’s echoing 
like an Angelus bell across fields.

A Pushmi-pullyu, so coined in 1920,
not one without the other.

*Merriam-Webster

Unraveled: / Katie Collins

I pulled a thread in my dress and my hem came undone.
I wish that was the worst of it.
I could explain a hem that unfolds to a raw edge away with a self deprecating joke and a smile.
But the thread kept going.
The more I pulled, the more unraveled I became.
My dress, once a woven fabric cut and sewn into elaborate shapes to cover my body was now a pile of threads on the floor.
I had destroyed it entirely, but the thread was still there, now coming from my very body.  
Something in me had to keep pulling.
So I pulled.
I pulled out my hair from legs to eyelash.
I pulled off my skin from the chapped sections of my thin lips to to mole on my right elbow to the soft tissue at the core of my epidermis.
I was tearing myself apart more and more with every pull, but the thread was still there and I had to get to the end of it.
Not long after my blood and muscles lost their casing, they too are pulled into a spool of thread.
I have successfully stripped myself of every quaff and every calorie, but there is still more left to unwind.
I pull and pull until my heart unravels.
My mind is left surrounded by ill-used string.
I've never left well enough alone.

1. Pumping/breast feeding door sign up for grabs: double-sided (see pics).  / Ellen Ferguson

Of all the feel          ings       of all the            th                 ings
Given away on Swapcandy, all feelings of things in parts, in boxes
You are challenged to a duel over me,       sign of the          breast of times:
You’ve never been food, have you?
You’ve never been cans clinked for cats coming running, leaving
perches under porches -- you’ve never been better than rafters of carcasses.

You’ve never been plates perched midair, spiraling fanfare napkin, woman gasping, man heart in hand,
                      Will you marry me?

Go ahead, clamor for marathon adrenaline, cvs oxy, sure --
Decant your spirts with abandon, knowing this:
                                                                        I was the sign
of woman as food, 
sacred
exchange                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               in which a woman behind a closed door (that I signified)
                                                                                                 transformed

into a meal
for worshipful devouring                 learning in that moment               to crave nothing ever again:
Not his touch,                 her companionship,            their accolades,                                                                       cash for trade:

                    only to descend again: brain into breast into mouth.

A Winter Elegy / Chris Fong Chew

The first track of December yields
back time, as flurries are 
spinning through turbulent air. 

Shaking leaves, trees threadbare, 
a chill runs down your spine. 

Somewhere, a family huddles 
for warmth in an empty room.
Warmed by promises unfulfilled 
in their collective hope and misery.

Across the way, a furnace
devours coal for flames, black
smoke rises from the chimney
as a child decorates a tree.

A lady says, “merry christmas” 
you reply, “happy holidays.”
You have learned to read 
into words too much. 

The winter cold brings a darkened hope
as death renews, restores, and reshapes 
the space of the living.

Time is slowed, frozen as ice crystals 
form on the windowsill and you question 
when the cold will stop, pouring in. 

Near the edge of the woods I remember to look up / Davis Hicks

As I step aboard crunch-frost
clouds form as exhales,
and the chill makes me dragon.
Cold, that distant angel,
invites every cell to participate, 
calls every hair to attention.
Hollow echo is the morning church bell, all cracking.
Sound-swallows seize my senses.
Invasive, even as worship.
The birds, in their drifting density-storm
silhouette the staggered sky.
Those common grackles spackle-sparrow the air,
their bodies building, becoming arrows
in their rapid false-falling flight.
I wish to know their names,
if only as a fae does.

Remedios, in the garden / Victor Velasco

At midnight, the crape myrtle vanished
with the fireflies that burned its branches.
The night was shattered but far from over.

In her bedroom, mother wound silence
around her waist. She slipped grief
under the pillow and dreamt of father,

who she had not seen in decades. In daylight
the myrtle flowers fell, staining the gravel.
A frog lay on its back, stunned by the sun.

In the backyard, mother stripped the hibiscus
and wrenched the ixoras she tended with care.
She dug up a box she buried before I was born.

She handed me the secrets she feared
for twenty-two years. I received her losses:
a photograph of a man, his letter, money

bundled in a rubber band. She begged that
I pack them for my journey. It was a good day
to learn how to box up what remains.

Had a black-naped oriole appeared, that, too,
would have been a loss. Its yellow in the golden
bamboo, burning like her shadow.

The missing bird, the box, my mother in her garden--
I have visited this scene a hundred times.
Each time, she said it never happened.

No Cheating  / Jen Wagner

The story prompt asked for the last photo I took of the sky. 
“No cheating.”
It says. 
(Politely)
But what if the last photo I took of the “sky”—
I saw it in the blue of your eyes?
Not a single cloud in sight. 
Just shifting hues of sparkling blues. 
Is that cheating?
I wonder. 
As I drift into a dream. 
I could lay all day and stare. 
At the shape
Of your face. 
The way it moves
As we laugh
As we reminisce.
As we remember. 
As we embrace. 
The blue of your eyes.
For me—
Is the only way
I ever again 
care to view 
The sky. 

a life / Stacy Walker

I’ve come to believe we’re never really
gone;
Another life, another plane of existence;
Who knows?

This gave me peace
when he died.

But now, as I consider,
he was still alive
a year ago,
and without him here,
the world goes on.

Whether he’s been reborn,
is looking down at us,
or is the cardinal
or the rainbow
or the familiar song on the radio,

He’s not here. 
The daily witnessing
of him
is no longer.

For a while,
I’m sure,
he crossed the minds of many;
over time,
less
and less so.

Even the nurses and aids
who likely cursed him
under their breath
as he cursed them
over his,

Saw him.
His presence,
undeniable,
but a year ago
tomorrow,
he was gone.

Is he somewhere
that’s not here?
Remembered by some,
a few,
fewer.

What does that mean
about an existence?

What does that mean
about what matters?

What does that mean
about what’s next?

What does that mean
about love?

I don’t know. 

November - Poem 30

Unceasing Hunger (A Cento) / Jada D’Antignac

composed by Jada D’Antignac, with lines from Megan Bell, Alison Lake, Maya Cheav, Jada D’Antignac, Laurie Fuhr, Dominic Leach, Dawn McGuire, and Samantha Murphy 

Our talks. They ask hard questions.
We take the long road because the long one
peels the paint off memory.
We laugh too loud. Then not at all.  
There is an unceasing hunger,
it’s torture for my flesh

There are four hearts beating within my chest.
The stressful, precious inner library,
empty of the shield.
I don't know how to miss you any other way,
you teach me things i didn’t know i never knew.  
Still there is a rhythm to loneliness. 

Darkened nights filled with darker schemes,
bravely, I drove into dying light. 
Tell me what you are chasing, what you are facing, what you are craving. Tell me about the lost years.
Love me. Sing something. Quote me to me.
Regret is different than disappointment. Shame is the origin.
Maybe you are my harmful prayer.

I found myself falling into the depths 
for something safe, something suitable. 
I seek God kneeling among tall vines and tangled weeds.

The river floods into all the cracks it remembers inhabiting. 
The hills look down on her like neighbors, but they are weeping, silently and wildly. 
We try to kiss the sky.

What's Your Shade?   / Megan Bell

Give me 
the artists, 
the earth lovers, 
the poets, 
the creatives. 

I'll take them any way I can! 

For, we are 
the change-makers, 
the bell-ringers, 
the emotion-bringers.

We are the many shades of gray!

And, collectively, 
we are powering the universe. 

Reflecting (A Cento)  / Alison Lake

with lines from Meg Bell, D.C. Leach, Jada D’Antignac, Maya Cheav, Dawn McGuire and Samantha Strong Murphy

Today I am a long way from that night;
my thoughts are a line of geese.
I search for a map I've never had,
all it is is my moonlight,
the double vision you get staring into a well.
To save and feed every creature might shatter me. 

evolution / Maya Cheav

in a perfect world 
no one was hurt 
and everyone survived. 
but there is no utopia 
and no saving 
to be done,  
to scoop us up
and take us away
from all of our pain.
I am shedding my skins, 
a year turning over,
watching myself grow 
out of my old exoskeleton. 
gone are the days 
where I’ve been trapped 
in the same place 
someone has left me in. 
tell me, 
what’s waiting for you 
on the other side 
of fear? 

Making a Quilt /  D.C. Leach

my body a needle shuttling up and down
this block of fabric—our wedding night; my arms
two moons orbiting my body your dress
a white satin ring hugging the blue jewel
of your body the both of us revolving
around the bright star of this new life—

my feet and my mother’s feet piecing
an eight-pointed star to “The Great
Pumpkin Waltz”—

and at our friends’ wedding their bodies
(our bodies among them) dancing in a line
forming loops in a long basting stitch glowing
and pulling the mountains of West Virginia
into our solar system—

or as the best man
the groom and I cutting
our hands and knees this way and that
beside the pool cutting fabric
on the bias shoulders and hips
binding it all—

or at Beach Bunny
The Wombats
The Districts my head
and fists become appliqués of birds
and meteors—

the batting you ask? the marrow of us. each
of us, our lips pulling tight the last few
hand stitches, wrinkled shape of love.

Field Notes: It’s 3 a.m.  / Dawn McGuire

and William Blake
is heaving his hulk from my bed,
wearing the night’s bristles
like a bruise.

His sleeve
drags across my page.

“I try not to fool myself,”
he shouts from the john.

His beefy finger squeaks
across his teeth.

“But these pages plot!
They write better endings than I do.

And my stylus — that Judas! —
just sliced a comma on the knuckle
of my revision hand.

How do you spell tiger
again?”

I vacuum up and bleach the ink
from the sheets before it sets.

Under my eyes, his thumbprints,
dark as coal.

Soon he’ll be back in Albion,
and I’ll be late for work again.

We count little sheep
until we sleep  

December / Samantha  Strong Murphey

The sun sinks low, lower than I remember.
She is tired, loose, defiantly bright, poorly sedated
under layers of soft corroboration. I tuck her in
and she asks how do I know if God is proud of me?
The ground is cold. Nothing grows. Turtles have sucked
their heads into their echoes and are happily almost dead
and asking no questions. And where is she getting this God?
The shorter day was so long. The days before were cropped
and fevered with hoeing. We feasted, and in exhale, we feared.
We labored in fake fields, type and slog and nothing is real,
not money. Not the calendar. Though primal shadow does arch
itself over us like a clock. It’s all too late and too soon.
At the closing, our panicked animal bodies too ask
too-big questions—What if nothing grows ever again?
God, the drama. O’ to grow nothing, to make nothing, to answer
nothing. So close I am to the unlit brush pile, so close to the part where
I get to lie down. I close the fridge door covered in cave paintings,
dim the kitchen lights low, lower than I remember, blurring
the tracing of each spread hand. 

November - Poem 29

Funeral Pyre   / Megan Bell

There's a place 
at the end of dreams
where earth and sky
crash together, it seems. 
A yawning abyss
devouring your voice.
The aftermath of terror -
you weren't given a choice. 
Darkened nights filled with darker schemes.
Weary hearts ripped at worn seams. 
You were destroyed at the end of those dreams. 
Alone with your pain -
you searched for foundation.
Letting it go -
you became your own creation. 
At the end of dreams
there's a funeral pyre. 
Laying it down-
you set the world on fire.

At the end of dreams. 

Formless  / Alison Lake

What then is formlessness? Can it even be so? Even the breath of the trees has form, the negative space of the sky between the stars.  My love for you could never be formless and yet it has no form, only the way my heart beats when I see you, the way my hands tingle at the urge to feel your hair, place my lips near the form of yours.  No metaphor will suffice to give my love a form and yet it is there nonetheless, waiting, impatient even, for you, singing to you in the night as you sleep and wrapping around you in your weary, breaking days.  Our love would have one form, changed and shifted though it is, yet constant, recognizable and always, ever ours.

never in this life / Maya Cheav

have I once been doomed. 
the culling rain 
narrows us down,
us rotten few,
with acid plumes 
that pierce through skin and bone.
it sours the sky 
with a frothing madness
to boil us alive
and make us tender flesh.
it’s just 
bovine excision—
a reduction 
to primordial soup. 
tell me, 
is violence the only language you speak? 
tell me,
are you willing 
to die by the sword?

still, like dust, i'll rise (a cento) / Jada D’Antignac

composed with lines from Maya Angelou 

we long, dazed, for winter evenings. 
playing romantic games
just like hopes springing high
in southern fields
and half-lighted cocktail bars,
or any place that saves a space
for life and all that’s in it.

your mind pops, exploding fiercely, briefly

hanging on your words.
i sip the tears your eyes fight to hold.
won’t you pull yourself together?

the sun struck like an arrow.
the gold of her promise
pleased me for a while.
she’d find a hidden meaning,
that’s where i found your hands
saying bye now, no need to try now.

it’s the fire in my eyes.
it’s in the reach of my arms. 
i’ll help you pack, but it’s getting late.
does my sassiness upset you?

a cool new moon, a
deep swan song,
a signal end to endings.
the awful fear of losing
someone who adores you.

i had an air of mystery
and found my senses lost.
but still, like dust, i’ll rise.
did you want to see me broken?

I Can’t Believe My Eyes, Darling  /  D.C. Leach

sits on the floor, leans
against the wall in the basement,
not the first time he’s
sat like this—palms pressed
to his eyes wondering how love,
poppies, anger, drifting apart could all
be the same color. maybe heaven
was 86 the other pigments the day
it cooked these up. he could hear Saint Lawrence
calling through the food window, tell your tables
we only have red, the angels on expo sprinkling
red over foreign policy, pouring red
in globs into the souls of spies, like ketchup
into metal ramekins. Snoopy rubs
his eyes so hard it all goes
black-and-white, then negative.
dark stars in a white night.
fireflies above a pool of clotting blood.
or does he see himself?

My Patient’s Chronic  / Dawn McGuire

She says, “I saw the panic hit him in the chest.
He was twitching like a cartoon cat,
paw in a socket. Eyes bulged out,
lips split in a rictus.”

My patient hears the buzz inside the drywall.
It waits to torch the house.

He calls her Mama Bear—
like she’s a knockoff mascot
from a discount outlet.
I see a split-knuckle mother
swinging a sword.

Her garden’s about to green.
She leaves it anyway.
Mugs in the sink—she leaves them
to the life that should be hers by now.
She’s done this before—
again.

At least, this time
it isn’t smack.
That’s the refrain.
Her burnt offering
to whatever bastard god
keeps boys from overdosing,
pants around ankles,
face on the tile.

16th and Mission: Ms Xanax
waits with her palms outstretched—
Peace in the valley, baby boy.

She can tell when he’s scored:
his body no longer hisses
like a radio tossed in the bath.

How long this round
til rehab—

My patient carves the dark into a door.
She guards it open
just as she’s done before.

A Room of One’s Own / Samantha  Strong Murphey

the mouth        was too wide        the begging mouth    
of the clouded crystal vase                    was too wide      for the bouquet     
the stems            all flopped to one side                bruising      
she thought she had picked               enough                 enough, a minnow
between her fingers           glittering quickly and always         away       
          the clumsy hands                                            expectation
fumbling the moon              dropping the moon              the moon cracked                   
on the roof pitch      oozed yellow light down the house            the house pressed her         
hand against its glass       she pressed infinity into four taut walls        timid knuckle knocking          
on her neck      she worked her feet into the creaks of old longing               older than her     
for months she’d been walking      knock knock       across pine needles       looking for       
pine needles          she’d gotten the tattoo                       with a singular intention:       to entice          
a singular thumb        to graze admiringly across        her wrist                 she pushed        
wrinkles off the       pilled       electric blanket on the bed              her pilled body
swaying across the         room                         how now, the room         the cord dangling    
at the foot      there was no outlet                           close enough       to ever make it           hot

November - Poem 28

Grand Canyon Country   / Megan Bell

Broken down in Arizona, you died. 
Stripped naked, bereft, alone, I cried. 
My final goodbye came as we drove on red, rustic earth. 

The sky was high and blue. 
My world, broken and bruised. 
I was, irrevocably, done with you. 

Desert spirits and ancient voices 
held my hand, propped me up, 
witnessed my re-birth in a battered sedan. 

Bravely, I drove into dying light. 
The vast sky peering down through violet eyes made me sigh. 
Just a gypsy and a rally cry, I stitched my wounds and bid your ghost goodnight. 

Talking to the Bean Sprout  / Alison Lake

I am surprised at you.
To be honest, I didn’t
expect you to sprout,
let alone push
four small leaves up
through the bag’s top.
Her grass died, as did
her succulent, and all
but one of my green plants.

We need so little you see,
a moistened towel,
a window to the sun,
belief. 

When my daughter saw you
she screamed, twirling to me
and showing you as proof
of her magic.

As she is proof of yours.

orion and the river the night before the rapture / Maya Cheav

1:06 AM - O: sometimes I wish I was a bird so I could just fly away.  

1:06 AM - R: come to LA. you can stay at my place, I’m sure my dad won’t mind. 

1:07 AM - O: that would be great if I could just figure out how to get the hell out of here. 

1:08 AM - R: birthday? 

1:11 AM - O: birthday. 

1:11 AM - R: just be safe, okay? 

1:11 AM - O: I don’t know if I can, with my dad. I don’t think there’s a safe option. but I can’t live like this anymore. I need to get out. 

1:11 AM - R: once you’re out here, I promise you, you’ll be safe with us.

1:11 AM - O: I wanna be more than just safe. I wanna be happy. 

i can be that too / Jada D’Antignac

i hate to think of how content i’ve grown with being alone. i see a single bird and admire how freely it flies.

i think to myself, i can be that too. the bird sits alone on a weakened branch of a healthy tree, still and balanced. it stands firm with its chest up, doesn’t waver when a breeze blows. i wonder if the bird ever had to emotionally detach from those it loved to gain its strength. i wonder if it ever had to be weighed down in order to find the power of its wings.

On Thanksgiving Day  /  D.C. Leach

oven space a hot
commodity no space
for my thoughts beside
the turducken or on the tray
with the brussels and carrots—

invisible spy
invisible translator
everyone wants me to be
a grapevine in the forest bearing
fruit before it fruits—

plausible deniability—
never heard of it. am I a bottle of wine
to be drained?

Shadow Practice, Thanksgiving Eve  / Dawn McGuire

Thank you for song, for fresh lists,
for random rhetorical fragments, unstable speakers,
for enjambment—for enjambment as wound
and suture.

Thank you for what is recursive,
postmodern, ironic, shocking,
in time with the times—

and for what is earnest
as dew on a bud.

And thank you for ancient songs—
epic, and reckoning.

Tonight, it’s Grendel—
border-stalker, exile,
breaker of heroes.
Wrath and ruinous rage:
the maker of heroes.

Bold Beowulf is a no-show,
three sheets to the wind.
The lyric can do what it can with him
when this is done.

But tonight—
the air is honest.
Grendel’s mother keens in the dark.  
She knows what the Singer knows:

Our monsters forge
our heroes.

No one is safe.
Grendel is tearing the Mead Hall
down to its bones.
He amputates cowards and heroes
all the same. They share
a splatter pattern on the wall.

Give thanks.

Grendel has work to finish.
Don’t we all.

Laughing so I don’t— / Samantha  Strong Murphey

Can we laugh at this?

Let’s laugh at this.

I’m laughing at this.

I’m laughing

so hard.

November - Poem 27

The Last Coal Train   / Megan Bell

Grabbed a fistful of dirt -
there was earth, 
sin, and men already halfway to hell. 
They left it all right there 
in upturned soil -
even darkened souls. 

Black thoughts
Black lungs
Black tills
A sooty sea of hills in Ohio
Squeezed by the men till they bled dry. 

Damn the coal!
Hillbilly's savior, hillbilly's curse. 
Didn't care where it came from -
with shovels raised, eyes shut tight -
the men shouted, More! More!

Fat fingers, filthy minds 
diggin' at what was already gone. 
Money flowing like manna, wasn't no big choice.
Wide wallets kept em' ignoring that still, small voice.
 
With blunt edges sparkling like diamonds 
the tainted rocks kept rollin' into our village.
Dusty cash registers coughin' for their dime
All those pretty homes under layers of grime.

(Didn't know our insides were turnin' sooty, too.)

Damn dirty rock-
Burnin' hot,
Spewin' ash
Leavin' scars that still smolder. 

Didn't take long till the land was hollowed out. 
Breathin' fire, belchin' flames - 
God roared, Enough! 
Then... the men looked up and watched
as wounded hills fell to their knees. 

Beat down...
the terrain changed.
Nothing remained
once the coal hopped the last train, 
and disappeared round the bend.

But, as life does, we carried on.
Replanted, the hills healed -
our souls did too. 
Daily, we rise with the sun,
greeting the day wild-eyed hopeful, wickedly revived.

After My Daughter’s Friends Called Me Weird  / Alison Lake

I know they think I am weird,
even your father does, but I have
Many reasons this is so.
Most people don’t like
Otherness, that feeling
That someone doesn’t
Belong, or can’t. People like
 boxes, and placing other
people inside of them.
When you don’t fit, when
what you say, how you
think, what you love,
is different, it makes
others afraid and that fear,
that fear my girl, leads often
to hate and most times to ridicule.
I don’t fit. I have edges
Where I should be smooth,
And am too soft and curved
In other places that should
Be rigid. I dance with language,
Mourn even moss, and I have come
To love that about myself.
Whether you fit or not,
I hope you always know
I will love who you truly
are and I will make a house,
a house that fits just right,
for your spirit to rest in,
rest in and grow strong.

a loss of faith / Maya Cheav

the heart is loud
but the mind is louder. 
words crumble in midair 
as they are spoken, 
just thoughts unrealized.
they exist only in sound waves 
before they dissipate
and so quickly
disappear. 

more of this / Jada D’Antignac

after Emily Sernaker

a strip of sun peeking through the clouds after needed rain
a meal that tastes just as good as it looks
a girls night out full of twists and turns keeping the energy high
a cozy coffee shop with a good playlist
a laugh that hurts due to jokes being added
a forehead kiss
an honest conversation that goes well
an arrangement of words coming to me unexpectedly 
an elder dropping a random piece of wisdom  
a book where the characters fall in love and don’t climb out
a song with a levitating bridge
a homemade birthday card
a handwritten note
a God-wink
a moment to tend to the details 
a moment to pause and practice gratitude 

The Last Supper by Tom Everhart Has Hung  /  D.C. Leach

over my bed on Riverside Dr
my bed on Calamo
my desk off 14th St NW
it hangs now over the china cabinet
in the dining room off Edmondson watching me
sip coffee from a cup bearing
the likeness of Mt Fuji little sun peeking
over the mountain’s shoulder
metonymy to the warm ideas
between my hands I’m drifting now
he’s always seemed aloof alone a war hero mouth closed
and I took solace in the lone candle burning low
—shape of the melted candle, shape of my mind—
in the lone bottle on the table lone cake
pushed to the side goggles pushed
to the forehead taking life straight to the eyes watching
as it passes unfiltered just out frame
me in bed with books lovers
at my desk fondling pencils at my dining room table
always others supping in kinship always the finger
of his loneliness finding harmony on the wet rim
of me but today I resonate
noticing for the first time that I 
am seated at this end—this the end—of his red
and white checkered table cloth and he
not so much sad as forlorn
arms folded on the table I think waiting
for me to stop peering
into all the mirrors of this world the only darkness
in frame bleeding
stage right from the corner of another
clouded mirror he says look at me look
at the flame dancing
songs speckle the air
whose supper did you think this was?
if you’d only look at me.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!  / Dawn McGuire

I, Doctor Dreidel,

African Gray, age 37, of sound mind and sharp beak,
mimic, part-time oracle, full-time judge of character,
resident of this household since before the second Bush left office,
do declare this my Last Will and Testament.

Item One:
I leave my cage
—not the travel crate, not that fluorescent nightmare—
but the grand wrought iron ark with the swing I never used—
to no one.
It is a throne.
And I do not believe in monarchies.

Item Two:
My food dish,
chewed and cracked,
goes to the woman who never tried to cover it with pellets.
She gave me pistachios.
She can have the dish.

Item Three:

My words.
Everything I ever repeated,
intentionally or accidentally.
Including but not limited to:

She’s a runner, Katie.
Don’t trust the pretty one.
Shame! SHAME!

and the one perfect line from Mary Oliver,
that made two people put down their weapons
and pick each other up:

• 
  To love what is lovely, and will not last.

I leave these words to both of you.
You know who you are: met in a bar
that smelled like disinfectant
and regret, and made a life
with a bird who never stopped heckling.

Item Four:
To the one who whispered poems to me
after every heartbreak—
I leave all the silences we shared.

Item Five:
To the one who said “I don’t like birds”
but loved me anyway—
I leave the sound of your laugh
when you caught me quoting Pablo Neruda
during the dishwasher cycle.
You can never un-hear it.

Item: Final
When I die—
and I will,
though frankly I plan to outlive both of you—
do not bury me.
Scatter me
somewhere slightly profane.
The bar where you met.
That tiny pond, Grass Valley,
where someone said I love you
and you both panicked.
Scatter me somewhere that matters.

Last thing—
don’t replace me.
No cockatoos, no parakeets,
no tragic little rescue parrots
with French names and trauma.

If you miss me
go outside.
Look for something loud,
smart, a little bit broken.
Tell it your secrets.
It may not talk back.
But it will stay with you.

Like me,
until the end,
against all odds.

with talon and attitude,
Dreidel

Cabaret / Samantha  Strong Murphey

As I tuck her in, she tells me about last night’s nightmare:
her in a heavy outfit inside one of those tall scary fences
with loopy things across the top. Earlier, she’d danced
around the kitchen table while we ate risotto. I lowered
the lights, lit a candle while she high-kicked, hands spread
wide trying hard to shimmer. Ambiance instead of attention.
I hoped she couldn’t tell. Years ago, I was with a boy in Argentina
outside a soccer stadium being flippant with my good
camera. A group of kids grabbed the strap, pointed a broken
bottle at my throat. The boy yelled drop it! run! so I dropped it
and ran. Nothing had ever been easier. Over lunch, a friend
tells me about a memoir she can’t shake. Hard, hard life.
The guy’s mom became an alcoholic. I related to her so
deeply—this from a woman who has never had a drink
in her life. When she couldn’t hold our feelings any longer,
my mom microwaved our bath towels. Three minutes on high.
She wrapped us in the hum of invisible wavelengths,
carried us like logs down the hall. We stiffened our limbs
for affect. She lowered us into our beds like bodies.
We didn’t want to sleep. She didn’t want to make us,
fight and flight playing chicken in our chests.

November - Poem 26

History Lesson: The Lost Years   / Megan Bell

I

What lessons must I impart to my kids?
And will I have, in fact, parted with them?

When it’s all said and done,
will the well of my soul
have grown feet
and danced in our living room?
Will they have seen my joy?

Will they know where they came from?

II

Will they know I loved their gram
more than breath itself—
but I couldn’t save her,
so I saved myself instead?
She sowed seeds in me which continue to bloom.
Even now, I can't lift a hand
without brushing a flower
she nurtured when I was young.

                        III

Will they know for a while
I didn’t thrive—I survived?
When mom felt her job was done
when I was fourteen,
all I could do was hold on:
wrestling with the sky,
fist clenched in pain
praying, excavating
for something safe, something suitable.
Every hole was shallow and blue. 

                         IV

Will they know life is a dance,
time a thief,
love more actions than words?
That life gives little,
and when it does
it is a gift from God -
they must follow where it leads.

                        V

Will they understand life is unfair
and will dump a mess in your yard?
Mind the piles, keep moving forward.
Try not to get it on your hands;
it wants on everything you own.

                        VI

Will they know they are enough?
That the person beside them
is asking the same questions,
grappling with the same shadows—
but they, too, are enough.
In fact, my precious, perfect loves:
you are more than enough.
You are all my hopes and dreams
encapsulated in tanned legs
and blue eyes that reflect the summer sky—
the same eyes your gram had.
Her parents never told her she was enough.
I pray she knew in the end.

                        VII

I do wonder if you hear my voice, anymore.
I talk too much, maybe—
but who else will tell you
the truths that marked me
in this holy, capricious life?
Who else remembers
what was given and taken
during the lost years?

VIII

I know the scent of my ancestors.
They marked the walls
with their piss and spit.
Smell that? I ask them.
It’s whiskey, lies, and money.
Pawn shops, cigarettes, and money.
Piggybanks, food, and money.

I could scrub the scents
from your path,
but what good would it do?
This road may stink of weeds
and dirty denim,
crooked lines
and curving feelings—
but I will walk it with you,
hand in hand,
pointing out the minefields.
These are our cave carvings,
our chapel hymns.
Pay attention!

        IX

Some men want only
to watch the world burn—
and you’re related
to half of them.
Chaos makers:
bewitching, shapeshifting.
Pave a path away
from these ancestors.
Don’t follow the jagged, rutted road
that fills your belly with dust.
Find sustenance elsewhere.

Trust this:
better to stand alone
among raggedy weeds,
sustained by earth,
than stand among filthy men
stained by dirty deeds.

        X

Kids, you are my benediction. 

I wrestled these demons so you might one day fly.

Possible Endings  / Alison Lake

It is possible
I will awake one day
and not suck in
a panicked breath,
not feel dread
at its possibilities.

It is possible
I will arise to song,
the birds I need to learn
the names of as they welcome
the new day’s light.

I will arise and not tremble
as I turn away from
my daughter at her school,
my husband to his job,
the news on TV.

I will wake not in fear,
not waiting for the worst,
but thankful that I again
get to live this day,
the gratitude seeping
well past the afternoon.

And all the small catastrophes,
the numerous ways we are being
closed in, curtailed, silenced,
will be like a dream I almost
cannot recall, and glad of it.

trying to be go[o]d II / Maya Cheav

1. how do you resurrect a six-year-old boy from the dead? 

1. call 911

2. resuscitate with all your might 

3. trap yourself in a  time loop until you get it right

4. scream at the people responsible for all of his suffering, even if that’s you. 

2. how could you have prevented this? 

1. I’m responsible. I’m responsible. I’m responsible. I’m responsible. I’m responsible. 

2. I was supposed to be his caretaker. I’m supposed to be the one who looks after him. 

3. make sure to read the allergen label on the cookie jar next time

4. there won’t be a next time. 

3. does clay’s death mean anything? 

1. yes 

2. no

3. sometimes bad things happen to good people. 

4. does anything have meaning? 

4. are you sure about your previous answer? 

1. no

2. no

3. no 

4. yes. do not ask again. 

ghazal for home / Jada D’Antignac

we know soul music, soul cooking, soul laughs.
we were raised up on this bright green grass.

mastering code switching by ten or so,
we grew in multiples through this green grass.

most at school did not have my skin but we
all owned color back at home on the grass. 

home wasn’t uppity or nothing high.
we know ‘bout a drought, here on this grass.

wondering what the rest of the world is
about—J, you were made you on this grass. 


Notes from the Field, mcmxxv /  D.C. Leach

a list of birds seen in St. James’s Park:
            Egyptian goose, moorhen, coot, pigeons (many colors), Canadian geese,
rogue wiener dog, parakeets, Grue—

the afternoon has gone someplace—

I pretend to be an owl made of saffron—

my heart is stuffed with moss and dried leaves—

the universe falls apart. nakedness is dead in its branches—

in Welsh, the beginnings of words mutate depending on what precedes them—

I mutate in collocation with you—

I’m watching ladybugs live their lives through a screen.
            they call their mothers, have affairs, forget the milk
            on grocery runs, this one has terminal cancer but tells
            no one. I’m pretty sure I’d tell my wife—

the nuns are in the yard again watching the cherry blossoms sail around—

I’ve taken to photographing all the plants in my neighborhood growing in hardy places:
tomato plants from sidewalk cracks, mulberry trees from gutter drains, crepe myrtles
and nightshade from potholes. oh, look, it’s me. I’m sitting on a cedar bench. I’m
smiling—

have you ever removed classified information from a classified environment?
            no, but I think the secrets have displaced something from me—

I learn the roses’ names: focus, success, persistence
            and work to forget them. too many tasks. too much
            dirty laundry—

the dishwasher eats a little more of the color
            each time off the flowers on this Japanese
            stone-ware cup—

everything in the late, bright morning, and the lone fly
            on its back, cold on the white windowsill—

Brooding  / Dawn McGuire

When young
my song
fought death

Now old
death nests
in it

hatching
little 
deaths

Shoebox Diorama / Samantha  Strong Murphey

I carry groceries inside. There are girls in places. 
They walk for miles, water buckets balanced across 
their backs. I decide what everything means before I 
feel it. My daughter grabs my face, whispers into my
mouth. I name today’s pain. I call it transcendent.
There is a setting for bedding, one for delicates.
It’s not until I sit in the movie theater, that I remember
why I’ve heard of Aurora, Colorado. All evening I leave
little piles of little belongings on the stairs. Ribbons sashed
around the bellies of all the trees in the neighborhood are sashed
around the bellies of all the trees in the neighborhood so no one
forgets what happened last summer. The dog pulls me past them.
I am baffled, now that I’m allowed to want, how much I do.
The scenes. They fit inside the shoebox. I cannot feel
the story beyond its edges. I scan my own house for
emergency exits. I can leave the poem at any time—

November - Poem 25

Dear Mary,   / Megan Bell

I find you again at dawn while rambling with Scout in summer woods. 
The deep dew which formed overnight drips slowly from wild weeds with ease, 
wetting the ground and us.  
As Scout prances along the rumpled path, his whole body vibrates with questions. 
His curious nose hoping what's hidden might be revealed. 
Mary, we did not know one another so you might think it odd I invite you on our morning sojourns. 
Your sacred book tucked in my back pocket - 
your word and testament, worn out, creased, 
cherished as a handwritten letter.  
I make no apologies for wanting to be your friend. 
Lingering, I let go the leash of days picking wild blackberries, 
listening for the twitters and garbles of the Goldfinch. 
Your words always at the edge of my mind, come into sharp relief, 
as we cross the threshold into nature's temple. 
The poem was made not just to exist, but to speak - to be company. 
It was everything that was needed when everything was needed. 

So, I say, thank you, Mary, for the company.

How Not To Hate  / Alison Lake

It isn’t easy,
this task, or rather,
this practice
of again and again
relinquishing the hate
that oozes up
each time
you see a
rebel flag, or hear
someone spout off
another untruth,
for the people yelling
slurs, or the way
some men cover
women with their sticky
lust; toys to play with
then throw aside.
The hot bile
of hatred so easily
rises in the throat.
It takes time
and repetition to lance
the infection, let
the poison weep
from unclenched hands.
Over and over
you must try
to let the feelings
come then go,
like rain falling
in late fall or early
spring, washing
as it does
all that corrupts
into the ground,
to be filtered
clean by years
of sinking through
layers of time,
back to the aquifer
of peace.

self portrait as the atlas moth's burden / Maya Cheav

I am pipe dreams stuffed into skin, / belief personified, / feeling electrified, / bridled with an anger that persists. / one that stands on the backs / of centuries of people born into the wrong body, / war-torn survivors / ducking through open fire / and tiptoeing through minefields / among the banyan trees, / people who have been punished / for loving wrong, / for dressing wrong. / an anger that is always there / because I’m too much girl / and not enough girl / and too much boy / and not enough boy, / because there are people in this world who would rather kill themselves / than have a child like me / and if you think that is an exaggeration, / be grateful you have never heard those words. / I have an anger in pursuit of justice / for me / and for you, / for the black and brown bodies / that belong to those I know / and those I don’t / because their suffering / is tangled up in mine. / my love drags behind me, / like viscera dripping into the dirt / even when there’s a hole in my stomach / leaking out intestines and blood. / no gun will bring me to the ground. / no weapon formed against me / will leave me without hope. / the world burns a black hole / into my throat / culling a scream that makes silence crumble / as though it were moth wings under mortar and pestle. 

“maybe if I were more oppressed like you, I’d make art as good as yours.” / or maybe I’m just hungrier than you. 

unknown / Jada D’Antignac

i want to write about things i haven’t done
feelings i haven’t felt 
spaces i haven’t gone
people i haven’t met

i can feel the distance 
growing shorter and shorter

there are emotions creeping 
anxious to blanket my heart
there’s a room with a seat 
ready to welcome me 
there’s a hand nearby 
waiting to shake mine

i can feel this newness inside of me 
screaming to be born

i want to write about this 
yearning for the unknown
this longing for a place 
i know i belong

76 Dog Salute (#?) by Tom Everhart Hangs by the Window /  D.C. Leach

Baseball  / Dawn McGuire

From a little ball of cells, these doublings
unleash a disorder
that makes sense only to math.

You forget tenth-grade log equations
as your metastatic headache doubles
and crowded little neoplastic sideshows

start to consume you.

The hatchet-faced nurse working overtime
says your pain is out of proportion
"to the real estate involved". 

Your perspective?
Falling naked 
down an endless steam vent.

But just until the morphine kicks in.
Then up through the vent, you're a little kid 
holding out a glove that eats your hand—

a sweaty borrowed glove
from a sweaty borrowed dad.
Wrigley Field is transfixed:

Sammy Sosa in the batter’s box  
with a 3-seamed sphinx spinning chest-high
|right over the plate.

Even now, Sosa’s homer
is heading toward your glove.
You have all the time you need  

You have all the time in the world.
Oh, World without end—

Bad Prophet / Samantha  Strong Murphey

he inserts himself into dreams
glowing like a cave worm.
when they wake, he’s glowing
in real life. he reads blank napkins
like maps, tells fortunes from familiar
lines in movies they can’t quite place.
he presses all the buttons
in the elevator. when the doors open
on every floor, the people waiting think
he knew they were waiting. amazed,
they get inside.

November - Poem 24

Raising a Life  / Megan Bell

Pick your battles. Save your energy for those who show up. No doubt you will make mistakes - forgive yourself. You aren't the only one occasionally stroking out and committing absurdities. There's more than enough to go around. 

Keep the mystery alive, don't tell him all your secrets. Coffee, brush your teeth, then stretch. It's okay to feed your kids fast food. You can tell me anything - I, too, know the pinch of a tight roof. 

Get enough sleep. Don't be afraid to say no. The kids won't remember dirty carpets when you dance across them in love. When the night arrives, show up to greet it like the dawn. 

In the end, you are the only thing holding you back. 

Waiting For You To Light the Fire  / Alison Lake

I squint into the weak sunlight
that stumbles through autumn’s clouds,
see no sign of the dandelion of spring,
only the gnarled roots of the patient,
resting trees.  I am alone and yet
I can feel your spirit bubble into
my brain, speaking the sweet
gibberish of love’s remains.
I am cold and I long for your flame,
the roiling fire of your hand
placed on my knee or the crook
between chin and flashing throat.
How soon until you’re home?

soldier boy / Maya Cheav

he’d rather split an ocean
in half with his sword, 
move a mountain range
on horseback, 
shift tectonic plates
in the heat of the battle, 
than admit the blood 
coursing through his veins, 
pulsing through his heart, 
a steady beating 
for him 
and him only. 
he can beat it out of himself, 
he can. 
if not with words and shame, 
than with fists. 
his body is not short of blood 
to bleed. 
through self-inflicted torture alone
there’s enough to feed a vampire 
for a half century. 
but it is not enough. 
there is no forgetting. 
there is no change in feeling. 
his eyes, 
no matter what form he takes, 
he can always recognize him
by his eyes. 

blend / Jada D’Antignac

sunlight screams through my curtains 
blending into my alarm
ready to flow with the mystery of a day
i blend from night to morning

in the car 
my soul blends into music 
at the coffee shop 
my dragging spirit blends into flavorful warmth 
in the salon 
my bare nails blend into marigold 
walking past a stranger 
my face blends into a smile 

soft white blends into deep blue
as day blends back into night 
showerhead blends into reset 
my hands fold as thoughts blend into prayer 
my arms wrap pillows as i blend into a dreamstate
until morning returns

Notes from the Field, iv  /  D.C. Leach

I bought lady bugs to devour the bark scale that’s
suffocating the crape myrtle
through the front window; hung them
from its branches, but they
all flew away—

this is a pneumotube. it measures respirations—

mimosa tree. fuck. I love you. too close
to the house, unfortunate
invasive roots. I need
to chop you down, but oh!
mimosa tree, such pink flowers!
            which part of me is this I cut down?

this is a blood pressure cuff. you know what it does. I may
move it at times from your arm to your wrist
to your calf—

the weeping cherry has been dying year on year
crown down. apical buds along its trunk hucking
for sunlight—

these straps on your fingers measure the galvanic skin response…
your sweat glands—

even touching the mirror, I cannot close the distance between finger and reflection—

do not stare at the doorknob or meditate or say prayers or think of a happy place or—

we let a meadow grow on our hillside, for the bees to meditate in:
flocks of bees
thickets of bees
hoards of bees all buzzing about the aster flower
murders of bees hiding their knives in the tall grass
kettles of bees coming to boil over a green flame
a congress of bees filibustering
whole grocery store aisles of bees stacked liked cans
neuronal clusters of bees ruminating on the aster—

these pads under your butt and feet will measure movement. do not
clinch your anus—

my mother gifted me a fear
of fishbowls, so I planted a row
of arbor vitae atop our hill to block
the night view into our windows
from the street—

do you consent to this test?—

I have this theory of mirrors in which each of us shatters
a mirror at birth, the shards glinting back at us from everywhere,
every day—

The Fix  / Dawn McGuire

I fail, but will to stay close by your side.
You teach me how to love; to listen cleaner.
Each day I lose, and still I will to try.

You tried to tame the storm and climb the sky.
Your wings now scrape the floor. I’ll never know
what failed. Each day: love harder by your side.

Your ravaged veins collapse, and then I lie:
I say I’m not afraid. I wake in terror.
Each day I lose, and still I will to try.

I see the light extinguish in your eyes.
Regret’s a house I’ve furnished room by room.
What’s failed? Today: love harder by your side.

I dream of rooms without exhausted sighs.
Your name—I say it softer with each call.
Today I lose, and still I will to try.

Love’s not a fix. The daily act is this:
a tourniquet, so that the wounds may close.
What failed? Tomorrow may be hard, or harder.
Today, I failed. Tomorrow—is tomorrow.

Something was off in her head / Samantha  Strong Murphey

she knew this       suspended         at the angle of repose
where unmet need and        entitlement meet      Arthur was
well Arthur was perfect, wasn’t he?        he is all fault
who hath no fault at all       is there nothing about my land
that appeals to your heart?       his question             the answer
what land could rival            a body?        beneath the beveled armor
chains       mesh slapping against         muscle      in a thousand years
myth will tell us       that when Arthur dies        Guinevere lives out her life
as a nun       piety          denial        cold virtues           round the round table
what the hell        she thought                watching the knight kneel
before her        helmet removed         locks tumbling down
she was already a nun

November - Poem 23

How High Can I Jump? / Megan Bell

Working day's for the man
                        ain't always easy. 
Being tied to any desk 
                        can make you crazy. 
Thirteen years standing steady, playing it straight and, 
                           every pair of shoes I got, give me a crooked walk.
Lordy, I felt sure this was the land of milk and honey. 

                              So do they....
Every morning, nine am swarming our doors, an army of men, women
                                burrowing - warm in winter, cool in summer. 
                                It's why we're here. 

Knowledge is power - this is what I've learned:

                    Digging for El Dorado on dirty floors just leaves a gaping hole. 
                    Even our tables have a hangover
                    Broad shoulders don't mean I'm strong
                    Librarians aren't saints - there will be no laying on of hands. 

My patience, too, spills over 
                                            drip
                                                drip
                                                    drip
On turned-up pages of well-worn books, I hide inside. 

Snarled by the shadows of the day, men stay. 
Staring at walls they won't climb.
Sauntering about like they own the place, 
                                  telling puppets how high to jump. 

Dyeing  / Alison Lake

      “The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” Marcus Aurelius

For so long I lived
In the barren darkness,
More like a crypt,
Than a bed of soil.
My thoughts stained,
Black with despair,
Black without hope,
Black with self-hatred.
I thought pain
Was the mordant,
Fusing the color
Into all the fabric
Of myself, even
As I envied
The colors of others,
Longed for a different dye.
It was only once
I started tending
To myself as a sick child,
Smothered by thick blankets,
Offering it the chance
To feel true air, bathing
It in cool water, scented
With herbs, that I
Began to bleed away
The dark, as dye bleeds
From yarn, that I found
the black give way
to a burnished silver,
there the whole time.

bloodletter / Maya Cheav

have you not grown tired 
of the war 
in your mind? 
the one you waged 
against yourself? 
in antithesis of  love 
and tenderness. 
you can only be 
half-hearted for so long. 
softness is a muscle,
flesh and tendon.
you cannot 
beat it out of you, 
no matter how hard you try. 

if i could go back to 2017 / Jada D’Antignac

i’d say to my younger self
keep doing the winged eyeliner
it adds to your character 
straighten your hair less
learn more styles for its natural state
use the dog and flower crown filter as much as you can
one day you will outgrow snapchat and delete it 
hold onto the soundcloud gems 
the era will soon be over
don’t linger on the idea of boys
they’ll always be around 
the one you’re always upset about
won’t even matter later
be more expressive 
speak up a little more
embrace the weirder parts of you
they will form you
keep your heart close
it will hold you
keep your mind focused
it will need you
keep the pen close
it will save you

Notes from the Field, ii /  D.C. Leach

another nightmare. rope like snow wrapped
around his throat. eyes still clinging
to their branches with the oak leaves.
scarlet. as a last act he painted
his suicide and sent it to Laura.
would Petrarch? abc and I quiet today.
asdfgh and asdfgh laugh by the coffee pot.
no one talks about losing the aphids
we, for years, have lived
vicariously through—

skulls in the Catacombs de Paris with their backs
caved-in; the occiput covers
the occipital lobe; the region
of sight—

two pumpkins slouch under the hot sun on the front porch,
their eyes rotten shut. the universe and things
turn gently—

dark. catacombs. limestone scrapes at my head as I walk. to be a fish
here in the bowels of the earth. to go blind, swimming
in circles in a black well someone dropped me in
so they could see—

is it all this watching warping me, or is it being watched?
perhaps it’s more flamingos. flamingos religiously
performing their pinks from the green waters
at the Baltimore Zoo—

dead mouse. neck broke in the mouse trap in the cupboard. been there
so long its eyes have sunken in, innards crusted
            to the cabinet floor. Grue asks with tears if I can
bury it, in the yard, under the weeping cherry—

isn’t it like this though? naked mole rats in the National Zoo.
            bumping our noses through tunnels not of our making.
            eyes and fingers beyond a glass wall tracking our
discoveries of crumpled newspapers, yam slices,
each other—

Sunday. Tenby. walking the beaches, Grue and I pass
a dead seal just past the rocks. white fur. holes
in place of eyes—

on the way back from the Pembrokeshire coastal path:
dead horse, dead jelly, dead sea-bird on the rocks,
the bird, its eyes, filled with flies—

shadows nestle in the eye sockets of the dead. eyebrow ridges
            on skulls, flexed as if still expressing or a photo
            set to slow exposure
            for life—

Catherine asks if I think my poems of late
are about watching or being watched?
the first five drafts of this poem
were about fire…
the tea candles in the pumpkins;
pumpkin rind, orange (the color of fire!);
the blaze at the end of The Thing, which we watched
while carving eyes into our pumpkins’ ghosts;
I even had this line cooked up like
“heavenly fire, hellfire,
O fire in the crucible.” but here I am,
lights off, watching the candles
in the pumpkins flicker
and my mind sinks like a pebble
into the dancing shadows of what look to be
on the floor and the walls
hundreds and hundreds of candlelit eyes
all blinking back at me.

First Quest   / Dawn McGuire

I hovered over him with my white
med student’s coat full of needles of every gauge,
tubes for every orifice, little balloons to inflate
to keep in place the Foley in his penis,
the G-tube down his nose.

They found him at the Harlem Meer
where homeless go to fish,
in septic shock, a fish hook in his groin.
Assigned to me.
I lanced his pus, picked maggots from his scrotum;
the guys on the team, they just couldn’t—

A week of triple drips, Kayexalate®, packed diapers.
The trees outside the unit lost their last Fall leaves.

Day 8, I stuck the EKG leads to his chest,
their little sparks alive—this poem’s Volta—

as one carmine eye broke its seal.
Mr. McMurtry—welcome back!
The fluorescent lights shimmered like a benediction.

I raised his head and pressed a cup to his scabby lips.
He took a sip. The other eyelid opened with a jolt.

He pushed the cup away and croaked,
Why didn’t you let me go to the Great Beyond?

His voice clanged against my head like a bell clapper.
I rearranged the sheet under his chin. I had no answer.
The week’s sweaty lab sheet slipped away
and stuck to the bottom of my shoe.

Queen of Hearts / Samantha  Strong Murphey

Only her tribe could see the way she had quietly shifted
across time. Alice arrived long after the real queen was
dead. It began with roses, no red quite red enough
to quell the brain’s intrusive darts. The king shrunk smaller
with every outburst, the mind he’d loved disappearing
deeper into the garden maze. He quietly passed out pardons
behind her back. Cans of paint stacked toward the celling
in the palace. A spade is a spade is a spade. Every natural thing
brushed raw in crimson. There was a short window of time,
before she slipped fully into tyrant, that she could sense the
thorns choking her away. She talked to the mirror. She knew
she was broken. She wept—Off. Off with my head.

November - Poem 22

A Cento / Megan Bell

A Cento composed by Megan Bell with main lines contributed by Mary Oliver

And from his nap he will wake into the warm darkness to boom, and thrust forward. 

Walking like a woman who is balancing a sword inside her body.

Then a voice like a howling wind deep in the leaves said: I'll tell you a story about a seed. 

All the while this was happening, it was growing lighter. 

How everything shines in the morning light. 

I read the papers; I unfold them and examine them in the sunlight. 

What dark part of my soul shivers: you don't want to know more about this.

• death and death, messy death -

• death as history, death as a habit -

The silence then the rain dashing its silver seed against the house.

I scarcely had time to see it gleaming.

Two Roads Diverged / Alison Lake

    “Too much fire gives birth to nothing.  Fire can reduce a forest to ash, while it takes the water and the wind a hundred years to grow one anew” Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

I.

The path had led
through the woods once,
before the trees were taken,
their stumps left
to rot as the soil
eroded. It had led
past a river, sparkling
and rushing over
slick rocks, casting
diamonds into the sky.
Now, thick with sludge,
dyed orange and frothing,
the water trickled,
moving like a sick lamb,
burning the shore and we,
we must cover our faces
lest we breathe
the poison that is the air.

II.

For so long
we didn’t know
how to be human
animals enmeshed
in the web
of the universe.
We butchered, we
burnt, we blasphemed.
It was only after
we came to
the abyss’s edge
that we saw our blood
and bones in the earth,
the sky, the sea.
Now all paths lead to home.

body litter / Maya Cheav

in the mausoleum 
of augustus, 
I think about the bodies 
housed inside the tomb. 
those who belonged here, 
for years
longer than their lives, 
buried in the dirt. 
what becomes a 
fortress in time
was formerly 
a home 
for lost souls. 
I wonder 
if they wander the halls still,
their shades detached 
and in a second state.

freedom song / Jada D’Antignac

after Maya Angelou 

the caged bird collects keys
keeps them safely under the tongue
this caged bird sings a freedom song
until freedom comes 
a free bird knows no clippings 
or ties that hinders its route
a stalking bird creeps at the cage
waiting to learn what a caged bird is about
there’s always a place of the free
there’s always wind carrying a tune
there’s always a cage holding a heart 
that will feed us a freedom song

Notes from the Field, iii /  D.C. Leach

between rock walls. rock ceiling and rock floor. deep
beneath the cobblestone streets of Paris lie
skulls. more skulls than stars in a country sky;
stacked here, against their former wills.
cold water drips on them from nipples on the low ceiling—

ladybug husks, hundreds and hundreds of spotted brown shells,
some still orange, some now dust, whole piles
of their corpses lying between the panes of RF-shielded
windows, in a building I can’t say much more about.
some of them still holding each other. I’ve drunk
coffee with them for years. been since Obama, no Clinton,
a coworker says, since at least Reagan, chimes another—

hollowed-out pumpkins side by side on the stone steps
of the front porch rot and sag into each other between
the unrelenting sun and southerly wind—

all these strangers, their bones piled together like this—

I sit beside a hunched body who sits beside a hunched body who sits beside…
all of us before flashing screens, between
vault doors, in a windowless room, 8+
hours a day 5+ days a week year on year watching life
move by on a screen. assess, exploit. this one
a stallion in bed, this one a thing for boys—

before Halloween. these pumpkins. I imagine they came
from different farms, or fields, or opposite ends
of the same field, and now their guts
lie together in the same white,
plastic bowl on the cold basement floor—

someone once put three fish in a stone well at the bottom
of the Catacombs to see what would happen (before lightbulbs).
the fish swam in circles. went blind. died—

there’s a new ladybug between the panes! where did it come from? it’s watching
the sun set! it’s looking for a way out—

I walk the Catacombs with my desire, ask if she thinks the bones,
being together this way, get their particles entangled. look, I say,
they’re weaving a net, they’re casting it back over their old lives; the fish,
they’re being drawn up to the boat—

Quadratics Haibun   / Dawn McGuire

In junior high we had to memorize the quadratic formula. Mr. Floyd, his face pink on a calm day, heraldic red under exasperation, threatened to call our homes at all hours and make us recite it, waking everyone up to our laziness.

So I memorized b and c and their relations, and how there are always two different solutions for x. Except when the whole bit under the circus tent √ is zero. That’s when you get a single solid answer. That would have been reassuring, as my dad was moving out and nothing was for sure.

It could have been a useful formula, like when Mom needed to rent part of our house to cover expenses. I could have told her we needed 50 boxes of bamboo floor, not 100 like the squirrely contractor tried to charge her for.

Instead, I learned how to find the maximum height of a Tomahawk missile with initial velocity v and launch angle θ. And Mom took on two jobs. And the x’s split in opposite directions.

                Mr. Floyd called
                to ask Mom out
                Even his voice was red

Mormon Pioneer Village / Samantha  Strong Murphey

it wasn’t a question          it was water
in our bellies      our lungs        slopping under our feet      dripping
from the gutters on the buildings        we felt safe inside
all the girls in Sunday School         sat in front of a chalkboard
CHASTITY pushed hard         into the wall        we watched
as the teacher hammered       nails        into a piece        of wood
then pulled them out         one by one       she pointed to the holes
said there will always be holes                             it was my tenth summer
life was soft       enough        that i could act tortured        without fear
of it coming true      i stood with my cousins         squinting into the prairie       
light caught in the fuzz on the grass         the fake blacksmith        glistened         
Chuck Taylor’s untied beneath his          costume                  he swung
a hammer      in the glow of the stove          he read a script i don’t remember          
he asked each of us                 to hold out a palm                he closed
my fingers        around a warm rough-hewn          nail               a souvenir

November - Poem 21

The Girl / Megan Bell

At the corner of Goddamn 
and Good I stood with 
my hair on fire in a little white 
dress stitched by momma. 

Hands itching, body twitching
I turned up the swagger to catch his eye. 
A tall drink of water with a red convertible -
I was desperate for a ride. 

He asked for my number, bought me a Coke, 
told me I was everywhere he'd never been. 
I laughed and said, I know
exhaling cigarette smoke in his amused face. 

Then, I turned, sashaying away
tossing my head, my Virginia Slim 
over my shoulder with a raw ease 
that belied my trembling gut. 

I wanted to hit his body like a rush of nicotine - 
To take him from 0 to 60 in 2.3 seconds - 
To rock his world with the swing of my hips. 
And, I did. 

Friend, I thought about him again as
lust thread its ways through my limbs. 
When my hot body was pressed to cool bricks, 
When he was licking my thighs, my feet 

worshipping me with mad hands, 
my name a song on his grinning tongue. 
I forgave him his sins right there, offered atonement 
for the boy he was; thanks for the man he was becoming. 

We crossed into the promised land in dry, dusty alley. 

He was never the same. 
And, as I pulled my dress down, still without a blemish, 
I blew him a kiss, drifting off with the breeze. 
Leaving him to wonder if I was only a dream. 

Missing / Alison Lake

My days tend to unfurl rather quickly; time falling off the spiral of my life, going somewhere I cannot see or follow.  It’s not that I cannot keep busy; my list never seems to shorten no matter what I cross off.   I rise before the sun, drive in darkness to my daughter’s school, search the clouds for assurance she will be safe.  These days, with my husband waiting in the cold for a doe to cross his path, giving meat to our freezer, I spend most of my time alone, but for my cat.  I look at the clouds, their grey weight, as I fill my days, waiting for the sounds of those I love to draw near.  The darkness of November slipping early into my skin, reaching up into my warm core and letting it all in.  I drive away from my daughter, sending prayers to the sky and watch for an answer.

             unwound cotton clouds

      stretch the distance between

crows sent in frost

HEEL / Maya Cheav

in grotesque bravery 
and all the failings 
of trying to be strong, 
he could not—for a second—
put aside his shame. 
you are not innocent 
in this either—
your pride bloom,  always. 
he would rather die 
with his secret 
tucked between his fingers, 
but you had to pry
them open, 
in a last act of hunger, 
of a desire 
to know his truth—
the explanation behind 
why his eyes were colored 
an unruly shade of  blue. 

flesh and hunger / Jada D’Antignac

these days i’ve been fighting myself. no,
fighting my flesh.

the nighttime melancholy is taunting
but the daylight tortures me too.
foolishly, i assumed i was clean from you. no,
cleansed of you.

who am i to think i could ever escape myself?
it’s humiliating to feel this strong of a need 
to know you again. no,
let you know me again.

i’ve tried distractions
but at some point distractions leave too. 
i’d be neglectful to not care 
about the parts of me i’d lose.
it's torture for my flesh 
to be so hungry for you.

Shoulder to Shoulder at the Kitchen Sink /  D.C. Leach

we scraped the sharp edge of our spoons across the skin
of the ginger root, strip after strip of silence falling
into the drain catch.

only we’d left the ginger in the fridge so long its skin
grew hard, and so we dug and dug the edges of our spoons

into the shriveled skins, whittling away the wordlessness,
its juices stinging at our scraped knuckles, watering

eyes, until at last our fingers were lumps of ginger, our lungs
and hearts were ginger too, and the space
below our navels was aboil.

Urgent Care  / Dawn McGuire

Everywhere I look,
a wound rehearses
inside an object  

Sly scalpels knock together 
on the cart like sibs 
afraid to go to separate homes.

You’d think a thing with wheels
would outrun hurt—
but objects don’t forget.

The gurney remembers every spine
laid down on its metal tongue.
It doesn’t run. It catalogs.

In the corner, a bag of saline
sulks like a middle child.
It wants to be the solution.
It wants to count.

And the chair—
all vinyl authority—
grips my hips so sternly
I feel slandered.

I try to leave,
but my body won’t have it.
It leans in.
It leaves my smudge on the wall.

The instruments keep an eye on me.
Not just the monitors
that incessantly schrei down the hall.

The blood pressure pump
has its fat eye on me.
The EKG leads on the crash cart
pucker their tiny mouths
in my direction.

 

They all know I’ve come with a headache.
A lion’s paw on my heart.
A loss of agency.

The IV poles in the corner,
trying to be friendly, say:

We roll with the damage, pal.
What wheels are for.

Reparenting / Samantha  Strong Murphey

I was the kind of kid elected fourth grade class president

without having to promise anything stupid. The gym teacher

called me out of the dodgeball circle to tell me

cowgirl boots were not appropriate footwear.

We had the same birthday. I thought that meant something.

I can see that the size of the shame of this strange failure,  

still holding its knees in my body, doesn’t make sense.

The river floods into all the cracks it remembers inhabiting.

Regret is different than disappointment. Shame is the origin

of shrinking. I take control of the memory. I coax her out

from behind the dumpster. I polish her little boots.

November - Poem 20

Backwards Movements  / Megan Bell

Evocative. Memories, some broken, some blessed
& every moment in between. All those feelings left on the page,
full of movement,
licked by strain. 
Hard times, good times, all of it. 
Running mature hands over a worn clock, 
struck dumb by the turns of the hour glass. 
My existence bleeds into fiction, 
as I work the words from way back. 
Today, I am a long way from Warsaw, Ohio in 1994.
A village set back in the hills, set back in time.
Backwards movements, forward crimes -
every which way an uphill climb.  
Today, I am a long way from that night -
Indiana bound, I listen to tires hit cold pavement,
Whomp, whomp, crunch, crunch -
over & over. 
Dad handles the steering wheel, 
fingers clenched, jaw tight, he commands
the car, rawdogging our lives. 
Hard times, it's hard times. 

Sweet mercy, I had the blues -
a stillness, half-naked on the rental couch, 
assailed by sunlight. It took me several 
turns of the Earth to stop playing those 
moments like a riff, to remember
your love wasn't crazy. 
To use your front door and breath for fun. 

When I Imagine My Anxiety As A Small Creature / Alison Lake

The therapist said this would help,
and so I close my eyes, imagine
some strange cross between a mouse,
a squirrel, and a kitten, huddling
at the doorway of my mind
its yowl so much larger than
its little, trembling shape. I can’t
help but kneel down, softly
quietly, extend my hand so slowly,
and croon “Shhh, it’s okay, your
okay.  I won’t hurt you, Easy, easy.”
My anxiety looks up, untrusting,
full of fear. I have been trying
to conquer it for so long, squash
it, erase, it, make it go away, that
it needs time to be won over. I crouch,
hunched as small as I can get, whisper
how sorry I am, thank it for doing what
it is that it is supposed to do, nothing more.
This odd creature quiets, stops shaking,
puts its wet nose into the air near my hand,
sniffs and lets out a tiny sneeze, so much
quieter than it has always been.  I don’t
know how long it will be before I can
cuddle it against my heart, carry it
with me throughout my days and ease
its skittish fear.  I only know I will try.

amicitia / Maya Cheav

friend, 
how long
will it take 
you to recover from this plague
so that you are well enough 
to rejoin us 
in the land of the living? 
it is perfectly human 
to believe you are a burden, 
but I promise 
the wretchedness 
is not something you have to hold 
alone. 
wretchedness is plentiful—
there will hardly ever be a year 
you go without it. 
the good thing is that 
hands are plentiful too, 
and there are many ready 
to carry it alongside you. 
put it down, 
the grief now. 
ask yourself 
how long can you survive 
in the land of living
without your shade, 
friend? 

preferably fall / Jada D’Antignac

i was born in june, the height of summer. 
i know my skin looks magical 
when it reaches its deep shade of brown. 
i know i look powerful in a yellow, 
orange, or lime green bikini
but unfortunately i do not identify with summer. 

i love the sight of autumn trees. 
i love leather jackets, boots, 
pumpkin flavored coffee. 
i love how cool air 
mysteriously creeps in
pushing you to search for warmth,
forcing you to lean into comfort. 

it may seem that i should 
want to belong to june, 
to commit more of myself to her
but i resonate more with fall
and the world of octobers and novembers. 

NOTES FROM THE FIELD, i  /  D.C. Leach

another helicopter circles my block low, looking for something, rotor wash shaking 
the dining room windows—

I circle the floor, peer into half-finished bisques, beers, risottos, 
or they peer into me—

winter. outside a building I can’t name, on no such street, a ladybug 
crawls in circles inspecting every tulip and rose 
on my collared shirt—

blue sky. year? turkey vultures circle my zenith in this endless parking lot—

I orbit my notebook—

a green dragon undulates its long body in circles around a rectangle 
of turf between windowed buildings.
no one follows—

the polygrapher asks if I’ve ever made disparaging comments about small hands 
in the presence of foreign nationals.
he circles something on his paper—

Field Guide to 3 a.m. / Dawn McGuire

Oh, stalk with chakras,
secretor of seeds, stalk
with six exchangeable headpieces,
one filled with straw,

Oh, covalent carbon crowd,
flash mob of doubt, oh infrared
subscriber to this account —
it’s 3 a.m.

This poem’s Boss is still at the seedy bar
she prefers when she’s lonely.
You — the stupefied secretary —
are tied to the chair.

A dark stranger rifles the files.
You don’t even struggle
(which isn’t like you). His fingers
run down each page
from top to bottom. 

So far, he puts everything back.
You like his hands.
You find yourself hoping
he leaves with whatever he came for.

Notes / Samantha  Strong Murphey

there is a skin-taut tomato    plumping on the vine      outside my window
it’s November    and it won’t stop        growing red              she wrote me letters      
my mother         and left them on my pillow         she faced          
every difficult conversation in       deliberate type                    at 16     a boy      
left a note on my windshield               precisely folded        I left one back           
I guess you could call him    my boyfriend       it was all so                   slow
everything is intentional          when a face is only        in your head
why won’t it just        freeze already?        die        there is no face          to face         
the idea            of a good tomato        can ruin the taste of every root       everything          
hauled up      from the cellar in winter                        years later      a different boy       
knelt        in my parents’ kitchen       with a ring box       and read a speech      
that I’d written       I was not surprised               but there was something    puzzling      
about the way     the words died         when they touched        the floor     
he was better unscripted                             which I couldn’t       make sense of
           which I still can’t               make sense of

November - Poem 19

Scavenging  / Megan Bell

When our roof collapsed,
I fell, headfirst, into a howling rage.
The only place I let it roar was on the page.

I could be found cross legged and heartbroken
masticating dead dreams,
screaming silently into my journal, a fractured fiend. 

Every word I spoke aloud, a dirty lie.
Every word I wrote would not deny -
a filthy truth.

Angry words pounded down like rain.
I was stuck under the weight of shame.

My pen, pressed so hard, 
it slashed sinless pages until they bled,
destroying perfect blue lines, turning them red.

It was inhumane how I treated my journal,
that bloated, abused carcass, 
that desperate sad funeral. 

But...but one day it became a song to the living,
One day it became a prayer to me.

Hear me when I say this:
I survived by picking that bone clean.

Let Your Commitments / Alison Lake

Not hang heavy,
Like an iron chain
Around your waist.
Instead, let them act
Like a string of pearls
Adorning your tender neck,
Each one adding luster
To the length of your days.
Rejoice that you are
 Needed, that others call
To you with hope,
Look to you to guide
Them, a gentle hand
On their arm as they
Navigate the busy street
That is life. Touch those
Pearls with your full soul,
Clutch each one, then
Let them drop back
Against the hollow of your
Throat, between the wings
Of your clavicles, reflecting
The world onto itself.

coriolanus and his mother / Maya Cheav

“you are victorious,”

you know him by rank,
by his honorable stature
in the body of the army.

“and your victory means good fortune to my country,”

I know not this soldier.
in his sunken eyes
I see a boy.

“but death to me;”

I know him
by the sound of his laugh,
how it curves around the earth.

“for I will withdraw vanquished,”

I do not recognize
the violence in the shape of his fists
nor the bloodlust in the form of his smile.

“though by you alone.”

tell me, now.
do you bring me a son
or an enemy?

tainted / Jada D’Antignac

who stole your glow 
and stained you blue?
you were once so radiant,
who would have wanted to change you?

your eyes lost a glimmer
your tongue grew sour
your heart has hardened
you can’t seem to recognize your power. 

who ran off with your glow 
and tainted you blue?
who would want to take 
your radiance away from you?

Today I Sit on the Stone Steps out Front  /  D.C. Leach

Today I sit on the stone steps out front and sip
my coffee under the late morning sun. No need-to-know,
no access denied or threat to human life. No in-laws
making pointed comments like plenty of people
do jobs they don’t like and adults just bite the bullet
or here I emailed you this job with the NSA, the CIA,
the FBI. No sound here but the occasional crow
or passing car and the golden cat pawing
at the glass door to come and join me.

Tomorrow, I look back on myself sipping
the stillness, the warm rays, visions of neighbors
walking their dogs. My thoughts are a line of geese
swimming upstream on a slow bend in the Patapsco river.
Herds of golden leaves tiptoe across the waters there. 
The loudest sound is me, pawing at the stanza above.

Lessons from a Havanese / Dawn McGuire

Dread,
if you’re asking,
is outliving my little Cuban dog.

All twenty pounds of him
press against my back,
anchoring me like a paperweight
to this page. 

You think a poem a day is hard?
I think of scrappy Havanese,
dodging bullets
at the Bay of Pigs.
Ex-pats storming the shore
got their ankles licked.

Tonight I try to write
in my little bungalow,
with coyotes down the hill
shrieking the song of the kill.

Sammy knows his job.
We’re clasped tight
like a folding knife.
No room for fear.

Hard to explain—
I feel more human
when a little dog
lends me his soul.

On walks,
when people reach out
to scratch my head,
I let them.

Trust—
it requires rehearsal.
Maybe
I’m almost there—
plus, I’ve learned to chase
a dried pig’s ear
like it’s prayer.

All this to say: Katie, 
I’m sorry I doubted you.
If you scratch my belly—
I'll come back.

Sacagawea / Samantha  Strong Murphey

what country was she        read between the lines      of shining oceans
history’s first lesson       things that aren’t written      aren’t believed
she is a coin     and soon     a statue     in Meriweather’s journals she is
an apparition      mostly faint      occasionally vivid      she disappears
from the entries        for weeks at a time       the Hidatsa speak it
have spoken it       for generations         that she lived 50 years beyond
her written death        she lived into her eighties       far outside the spyglass
pushed into the socket      a second life asleep under a wagon      a second life       
gunned down       by raiders        only her tribe could see

November - Poem 18

I'll Take It From Here / Megan Bell

Trauma was  
being driven by 
the shadows of my past. 

Healing was inviting
the shadows to ride shotgun 
while I drove the car. 

The Sun shines / Alison Lake

liquid honey

           
                   spilling

                       
                                    spilling

 
over the clouded
                                       edge

 
of this world,

 
lighting
another day.

life on mars / Maya Cheav

bloodshed on the battlefield
is always at bay. 
the vulgarity of gore—
mangled limbs and battered flesh, 
born from spears and swords
wolfing the world in war. 
creation takes time. 
destruction is easy
and always an option. 

big sister II / Jada D’Antignac

do you notice the trenches 
or focus only on its treasure? 

has unity been enough?
does it outweigh the division?

does my sternness guard you?
can you hear my stained teen spirit haunt?

have you broken the timer 
that tracks your innocence? 

one end a little more tarnished than the other,

we lay on opposite sides of this coin.

who does the toss? 
who gets to decide? 

i search for a map i’ve never had.
curiosity will always unfold itself.  

The JP Morgan Building Has Just Turned Off Its Lights  /  D.C. Leach

but before I told you this it was an egregious 
paint brush coloring the night
and at the corner convenience store where
I got a beef empanada and a giant cookie the guys
were dousing everything with Tchaikovsky’s 
symphony No.5 and even earlier during a poetry reading 
in Brooklyn in the space between mouths 
and the cross-thatched skin of the microphone lived 
starbursts from the string lights hanging over the stage 
whole night skies bleeding over the readers' words and in Paris
too the bright blue crept through the windows
and reached its fingers over light and dark
faces and at night the glare off those same faces 
painting the night sky and the gargoyles and the angels 
over Notre Dame but I’m so sleepy now I keep 
nodding off while typing this like the woman
on the subway nodding off in her own vape cloud 
not that I could see her face through the gleam beaming
from the polished handrail and I’m wondering where 
my car is or whether we're all in Grant’s 
Tomb and I have to mention…something
about the sleep I’m falling into? and I want to 
tell you again about the beef empanada I got
or the cookie I shared with my cousin
or the guys bathing in Tchaikovsky
but I keep getting snagged on the sirens 
by the UN building and green eyes
or brown eyes or blue eyes bleeding
their lights into my notebook the way
the wine bled across the wooden hightop
no, I wanted to ask you, how do we 
see anyone? our minds 
bleeding over them like this—"Ladies
and gentlemen, please pardon
the interruption, we will be here
just a few more moments [static] clearing
debri from the tracks. Thank you."

untitled sonnet v / Dawn McGuire

You touched my hair
then said, don’t make this out
to be more than it is.

Like what? A nightcap? Détente? A spell?
I don’t trust spells. I snap them like a switch
before it whips—

Lyle Lovette’s on the jukebox
singing Once is Enough.
The Shamrock Rovers are up
by 2.

You reach for your glass and miss.
It shatters on the floor—last call,
one drink too much.

The lock still works. The key—marked may—
You touched me first. I left halfway.

Dolly / Samantha  Strong Murphey

her lips kept moving     but the sound in the Opry had cut out
years ago     she signed an autograph          to a young fan called
Jolene      and remembered the name      the story was incepted
elsewhere       watching a bank teller flirt with her husband
there are many ways       to send a message      thumb out
two fingers to a temple     click        elbow out     thumbnail slowly
drawn across a throat           you gotta push me pretty hard
to get me stirred up       but then I become       my daddy
thumb to throat     pointer and middle      vertical at her lips    
in the spotlight              she blew      on the tip of the barrel      
of her fingers       and into         the microphone     

she was the queen       of country all right          but what country

November - Poem 17

Matches / Megan Bell

When I was ten, I played with matches.
No, more accurate: I was mad for matches.

Like, I craved them the way an addict craves cigarettes. 

Mostly, it was matchbooks - easy to obtain,
lifted from my dad's hardware store.
Sometimes, though, I’d hit the jackpot and find a matchbox.
You know the ones: long wooden matches, a large red striker, a tiny, hungry spirit inside.

For me, it wasn't just the flame's quick bloom.
It was the strike of the match -
that sharp, short hiss, followed by light.
The acrid smell of sulfur -
a raw, elemental promise.
The feeling of intense power in my unsupervised hands.

Listen, I was ten.
I wasn't trying to burn everything down -
mostly the neighbors' shed, too potent a blend of old wood and immaturity.

How To Cut Your Daughter’s Toenails / Alison Lake

Take a deep breath, carefully
remove the yellow and silver clippers
from the bathroom drawer. When she sees
them let her run screaming and crying
from the bedroom. Wait.
When she comes back in, or
if it’s a bad day and you
need to find her, remind her
that you’ve done it all before
and if she’s good she’ll get
to eat a jellybean for each toe,
and two each for the janky ones
that curve over the tops of her
second toes and can grow into the meat.
Hopefully it hasn’t been too long
since the last time and the nails
don’t have to be pulled out
of this tender skin. Sit her down,
cradle one foot at a time in your hands
and speak softly, with love, and try
not to anger when she pulls away.
Clip as fast and accurately as you can
while she mistakes pressure for pain,
howls, with tears wetting the bed’s sheets
and jerks back again and again.
Remain calm. Take more deep breaths,
Save the difficult ones for last and when
you are finally done, give her and you
something sweet to compensate. Enjoy
the next two weeks until you trim again.

bury your daughter / Maya Cheav

she works / full-time as a bank teller, / a job that pays the bills and nothing more.  / she comes home and takes care of her three kids, / driving them to ballet lessons / and soccer practice. / she sweeps, / brooms, / dusts all the corners, takes out the trash when her husband is too tired / (which is more often than not), / and washes the dishes by hand every time without fail. / she can cook a mean vegetable lasagna / and bakes a perfect key lime pie. / she tucks her kids into bed at night / and tells them bedtime stories / and lets them sleep next to her when they say / monsters are hiding under their beds. / sometimes, / just sometimes, / she does a lap / in the pool at the gym by their house / and in those moments / she remembers the first few years of her life / where it was her own, / until she blinks it away and comes back to land. 

in another life, 

she’s a marine biologist / working off the australian coastline, / researching rare species of / bryozoa and sea sponges. / she studies calcification / in the ocean / and the reduction of coral reefs / and their effect on biodiversity. / she travels the world on a boat / and there is nothing more in this world that she would love to do. 

but in this one 

it’s just a dream / she had some years ago. 

big sister  / Jada D’Antignac

seated passenger,
he—teenager now—asks if i remember.

i—early twenties—nonchalantly admit
yeah i remember.

he mentions he was eight at the time,
innocently laughing,
waiting for me to join in.

with no laughter to match his,
i keep the actual humor to myself:
how an age gap can reveal ignorance’s bliss.

i turn the music up 
and stick my arm through the window,
allowing sound waves and wafts of air to console me.

i can feel them carrying the years.
i let them slip between my fingers.

in the box of 96 my favorites are asparagus and inchworm but I also value purple mountains’ majesty the way it hints perhaps that happiness in fact can be smeared on a blank page or robin’s egg blue the way it hints perhaps that new life can hatch from bone but  /  D.C. Leach

more and more I’m having trouble
coloring between the lines
or wanting to these crayons have seen
it all tight boxes cold walls dark curves
page after page dictating what shape
the world must take—damn it, man!
can’t you see their lopsided heads?
does not your pity rasp against
the paper collars of their strait jackets?

untitled sonnet iv / Dawn McGuire

IV

We’re both inside a claustrophobic room marked maybe
with a key chained to a soup can for the toilet.
You go first. I chew ice like it owes me.

The bartender wipes down what’s already clean.
His rag makes perfect circles, OCD?
You return, smelling like soap and smoke.

You ask my superpower. I confess
I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue;
we laugh like kids. You touch my hair—

The blinking Open sign lights up
the cross around your throat. 
You touched my hair. 

Are we not healed, or holy? Not. Without a clue. 
But hell, you look good in this light, don’t you?

come hither / Samantha  Strong Murphey

the sun was a slit      in the tower         ragstone      iced with soot
the king had grown bored of her     called it adultery     called it treason
the executioner       used a sword       it was cleaner      than an ax
Anne knelt        and said her last            words       I come hither
to accuse        no man                                   God save
the king                        the sound       rivered away     into the passage
her daughter was there      and one day       after two dead older siblings
she would be queen      her eyes       were open       her mother’s were
still blindfolded      the head’s eyes were still        blindfolded
and for a few seconds          the head’s lips               kept moving

November - Poem 16

The Pistil of My Youth / Megan Bell

Wielding my flaming pen, bathed in its gentle glow, 
I set the page on fire with holy hopes, daring desires. \
I write in twisted tongues, curling myself around distorted light. 
I absorb the glow; the words begin to flow.  
Unfurling, my inner child unfolds, as delicate petals cascade open. 
The Pistil of my youth, now, exposed - the bone, the nerve, the hotspot. 
I reach toward the healing warmth of this moment.
My hands feel heat. My pen pours forth. My mouth tips up in a smile. 

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Fungal Portraits / Alison Lake

I.                Amanita muscoria

Although one bite
may lead to your death,
I’m not as bad
as you believe.
My plentiful mycelium
help each tree, each plant.
Through our mycorrhiza,
my hyphae hugging
each webby root,
I give them water,
pull in nutrients
from the dark earth,
asking only
for sugar in return.

II.              Armillaria mellea

You call my honey,
well honey, I bet
you didn’t know
how I strangle my host,
wrapping it up,
pulling in its life,
sucking vital energy,
everything it gets,
into my fat, greedy
mushrooms.  You fry
me up, consume me,
lick your buttered lips,
as I consume
each tree.

III.            Stropharia aeruginosa

I offer my services
in times of distress,
my pale blue-green cap
like a hearse.
I’m the mortician
of our world,
working to remove
what has died,
giving each death
its own shroud.
I eat death
and give birth

To new life.

where do we go from here? / Maya Cheav

we are people falling apart. / years and years and years / of knowing / each other, / like the backs of our hands, / so well that when we are / in front of each other / for the first time in a half step / we have run out of things to talk about. / I think / we have become cruel to each other, / not knowing when to apologize / and when to cut our losses. / am I supposed to hold your hand / still? / we’re like family / in the sense that we let the resentment build up in our bodies / because we don’t know how to say sorry. / but is it the sorry that’s really the root of it / or is the fact that we were once children / and now we are not?

only to feel   / Jada D’Antignac

let’s go without discussing past memories 
let’s not share personal opinions about life or how to live it 
let’s not say we’ve missed each other
or how we will miss each other tomorrow 
we shouldn’t blur any lines or feed each other any pity promises 

maybe this time 
we will touch only 
to remind ourselves we can still feel
nothing more complex than that
not to overthink
not to complicate

maybe this time 
we won’t meet anywhere else 
other than where we are 
in this touching only to feel

After Aleksey Parshchikov?  /  D.C. Leach

I found myself falling into the depths
of a cold, falling back
to kindergarten, from where
I saw our death.

I fell to the center
of Earth, crawled
home from there, but home
lay smoking on its back.

Nature is alive like ashes
or photographs in a frame.

Like how before new snows
some go to the forest—
some for the wood or
to breathe water,
to kill a bear and carve
on logs…

As I slept, I dreamt…envision
a worm—a cross-section
of time and blood.

O, intervals between stone and water,
Do knives sink the way my voice sinks?—wait!

Play on, rusted lyres! We’re all
turning into black bears. Look
at these haystacks of warriors. Soot
billows from the chimney.
It’s on everything. It’s up
to our childhood knees.

Home is lighting another. It’s locking
eyes with us now, it’s cupping
its hands around the flame and dragging.
My heart is erupting.

Portrait of the Artist / Dawn McGuire

—after Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of Obama

The greens clutch his ankles:
leaves of myth and place, tropical,
imperial—
foliage as scrollwork,
as camouflage,
as cathedral.

The President, serene, contained,
deliberate as gospel,
his forearms on his thighs, solid as boulders,
the colors as alive as a wound
before it’s recognized.

Kehinde’s genius: Black identity reclaimed,
defiant, flourishing—
the classical white gaze refracted and reframed.

I stand before it in a vise of awe
and shame—
the double vision you get staring into a well—
seeing your own reflection,
the malignant underneath.

What is it, when we look?
The thing in itself—if such exists—
Sartre’s unconscious object,
its maker’s life concealed,
remade precisely in the image of our need.

What pressures it
outside the grand gold frame?

Young men say Kehinde Wiley raped them.
The artist’s power and prestige—
it left them poisoned,
slowly,
all at once—

A censor crawls the rhapsody of leaves,
the petal-sprawl, radiant greens
not found in nature.

The gallery grows more crowded.
A hushed, curated truth is on the placards
praising light and legacy.

Cheerful weather, rigged
to hide the ravage.

The presidential portrait hangs in one room.
Down below, basement-bubble-wrapped,
four young men churn and argue in their sleep.
They are the ugly topiary in the underpaint
we choose not to interrogate.

The artist stands beside his work of genius
in a gallery full of grant awards
and boys
and secrets hissing in the leaves.

Is beauty ever clean?

The Popes commissioned works
that bring us to our knees—
alongside the choirboys
they owned.

We once believed in art
as revelation.
This presidential chair,
a democratic throne,
depicts a poised, intelligent face,
so reasonable it hurts.
The green leaves seem about to swallow him.

We have loved the lines the artist painted,
this is true.
We love to be lied to.

reflection / Samantha  Strong Murphey

it used to hang pretty
low, the mirror above the
toilet in the little bathroom
guests always use, until
this summer when i found
out that for years all my
friends have been referring
to it as the penis mirror.
its height was precisely
perfect for viewing. anyway,
the penis mirror has been
moved. you’re welcome.
or i’m sorry, depending
on how you feel about
things