March - Poem 23

Tanka  / Kathleen Bednarek

A pear tree reaches
Higher than my tipping toes
Your hands lifting me 
My fingertips weigh the air
Capturing soft fruit

Snapping against your
Arm—you steady this body
The waving sheets
Lower me—my arms are wide
                        Sky—floating with two pears

This was not the way I drew it up in my Coloring Book of Revelations; / Susan Hankla

when bent over it, filling it in with paints,
I feel I am right with the Almighty, 
and then when I stop coloring, I'm 
losing my way again. No one can color 
all day except Leonardo de V, his puffy
shirt glued by his sweat to the scaffolding.
                               But is it unseemly for a girl to do like that? I ask and hear a voice that says do it anyway.

Planting Season  / Amy Haworth

today’s pause at the kitchen sink
peeled my eyes to the out back
imagining how someone would see it
if
they stopped by for sugar or an egg
might be surprised to find
a hot reflection bouncing
corrugated steel
filled with fickle soil that loves carrots -- 
but the spring, when it comes, tastes like sunshine.

Here in Consolationville / Christina McCleanhan

The unspent laments of vertebrates and fishers’ grief live in
the hollowed timber of vulnerable shorelines after receding
waters deposit their haul on consignment until the next
storm swells the limits of its compassion.

Lines that live in faith,
Lines that live in courage,
Lines that dance with maracas and failed dreams and
acceptance and resistance, and tympanic precision that
directs the balancing spin between what has been and what will be.

On a quiet walk, toward the blue cottage, notice how 
shadows hang from leaves. Consider resting
near the snowball bush; the old, black cat’s ghost will follow.

Us, without words, we do understand each other.

Us, who are the missing
socks, useless bottle openers, slim phone books, forgotten
leftovers, empty ice trays, and worn treads of
circumstance, will sing willingness louder
than the ticket-takers care to listen. 

Places I’d Rather Be   / Elizabeth McGraw

It’s Spielberg, no wait, Richard Cunningham. 

You emerge from the barn having brought a new calf into the world. Wipe your hands on the apron that’s been worn all night long. Your hair is frizzled and relief shines all over your face. You’ve met life at the moment it starts to walk. My god. The moment it’s been given movement and the gift of survival and discovery. 

You are greeted by an outsider asking why you aren’t more in.  Your holiday over, you shake his hand. 

When mail comes I drop it / Alexis Wolfe

Smurf tells me he’s been recommended for
another six months in solitary    but sends dreams soft
as the backs of hands—once I came to him talons tied 
with blue ribbon once I was an owl nesting brown 
on his shoulder  when awake he is cold and I am cellless  
I am cells   driving my car complaining about peanut butter 
additives  the leak in my coolant reservoir days running hot
smurf signs his letters to beyond 
the gates  teaches me creole but forgets the seasons
pledges allegiance to Selena  remembers my birthday
and works for greeting cards   one call per x week 
what x week is it? more than five hundred and forty
have passed   he tells me he is Miami   finds hope
 and utility in birds  this my alarm   this  my radio
sometimes says Him  believes in Unlucky
doesn’t say sparrow says sak pase 
has always wanted a Kawasaki
  last month his sister flew in from Japan
they didn’t like her dress, wouldn’t let her through—
now tell me, what is usual and uncruel?

March - Poem 22

Humility  / Kathleen Bednarek

The pulp of Delaware watermelon.  The continuous search of sparrows. A puppy licking my ankle is cordial. Friends talking fast under umbrellas, holding each other up as they pass. Silently stirring a pot adding some water now foaming with beans. Now, isn’t it? Your breath unwavering as you speak. What it takes to regenerate bone. To watch someone be moved to regenerate. In all honesty.
Used auto parts of shame discarded to the rain storm.
My knees. I put a bunting and a banner around the interior of the hall for your get together.
Welcome them into the light of your face. 

Out in the distance,  / Susan Hankla

I am the only one made
to take the story with me, 
this particular
mystery.

But I try to re-enter it, and find I need props,
Shalimar on pure cotton cloth.

You can walk with us  / Amy Haworth

When you walk with us, the wind will brush your skin like a baby’s warm breath and you’ll notice it tickle your back. You’ll wave about 50 yards before we meet with a hug and a smile that etches the lines a bit deeper at the creases that tell joy’s story. We’ll briefly exchange our surprises about the weather, and I’ll shed warm clothes, knotting empty arms at my waist. We’ll turn north and then east, drawn to a new path amongst throngs of young families and old locals. Someone will know to ask us to take their picture “over here, under the sign” and won’t stop talking about how many people and that they knew we weren’t tourists because they’re from Delray and Boca. We’ll talk about farmer’s markets, sobriety, removing data from the web, the difference between being a serious person and taking yourself seriously. We’ll get yelled at by a security camera for walking on the other side of the street but too close to the fortress and we walk further just so we don’t have to double-back and be chastised again. We’ll banter about what we make for dinner on repeat, and contemplate what’s for dinner tonight. Because of our walk, I’ll put peas in the orzo and it will make me happy. We’ll interstitially wonder where exactly we are but it won’t matter because the only direction is forward.

Nightstruck / Christina McCleanhan

Is your forgiveness soft? Does it lean into the curves of sweetness you prefer? Your gut, your bowels- does the release assuage your guilt? Look up, my wilderness, and see the half- moon's face from the swing on our front porch. Does it remind you of how I wear my apologies with resting acceptance, a cardigan that covers the careless stain on a never-worn, party-dress chiffon? And the others? Strangers who rush crosswalks with beep-beep speed, do they feel sorry for the violets crushed beneath their anxious feet? Watch the hornets shaken from their nest—stroked heat, burning anger quick. I could stomp my feet, clap the blackbirds away, but maybe they tire of backyard maples, spruce, and elm like wedding rings make me sigh. Mud tracks on a concrete floor, sweep them wide while the dogs bark and the neighbors watch. When rain falls hard on your tin roof, is love a lightning strike that writhes in agony through corn field luck, or water meant to clean the sins from a poor man's hands? How can forgiveness be soft?  

Neighborhood Library   / Elizabeth McGraw

All these comings and goings clog up the street.

You’re wandering and crossing where you’re not permitted to pass.

Hands full of books likely long overdue.

In the rain.
In the snow.
In the spring.

Arriving by foot.
By bike.
By car.

My god you’re old.
Good grief you’re young.
You’re meeting in pairs.
You’ve come alone.

You come and you come and you come.

And they want to close it. 

i'll die like this / Alexis Wolfe

dog smudged mud across
printed page and i almost raged 
at it—stick chomp stick chomp
stick after careful printing 
sorting
  arranging  cut  pages
earlier i watched a worm disappear
its neck  mashed my fingers 
through wet earth searching
its revival—the flowers slime 
like the worm slimes like we do—
dog bites head off yellow 
blooms all afternoon 
presents stick with longing 
cow eyes here look what i made
i’ll die like this

March - Poem 21

Persona Poem   / Kathleen Bednarek

Poems that start with titles 
end in poems titled “Poem.”
Fallen to earth in the land of the living 
a sign from a number sequence,
this poem’s lines are a paper cut, 
a 99 cent origami after the penny 
has been retired.
A blender gifted to a stranger. 
Nah, give it to a traitor, since it was won 
at a 50/50 raffle. 
Beauty is just symmetry. 
The structure of flowers that fit 
to the rods and cones in the eyes of invasive species.
I need a key cut to get into vaudeville.
Whoever lost money wiping windshields 
and selling oranges to buy more
used this poem to even the score in an informal economy.
It was used to fill in the gap in the toe of too big shoes, 
then was pressed too small by midnight 
your heel slipped.
Sprayed with itching glitter, 
flustered by strobe lights, 
given its blessing to exist as a mirror,
it hooked on a feeling that wouldn’t quit, 
then wandered over… 
Tossed a magazine aside. People.

Red Name / Mymona Bibi

after Emily Skaja’s black lake, black boat
red rain, red raid,
streets know us better
than we know each other
red sky, red sun,
catch us in existence
in the fog, in the crowd 
of foes
flash red, speak red,
tongue cherry, flavoured red,
clutching the flyers 
in your pocket
red doors, red yards,
know your rights,
red writes, red wrongs,
don’t let them pour
your brothers blood
into your cup
red bins, red buses,
bodies cover bodies
hidden body 
behind body,
red docs, red doxx,
the city is listening
‘that’s my name in its mouth’. 

The eyes of the stove / Susan Hankla

have read and reread The Coloring Book of Revelation, because beyond its vivid colors
it is worded. In the dark at 4AM, after cooking over a hot stove all day long, cooking up
something art-reverent the eyes can't leave the olde cookstove all day long, unless the stove 
is moved into a museum of has-been-appliances in the warehouse a stones' throw from 
the Telephone Museum, our favorite stop.

The stove is still good, it functions better with use, even though it's an apartment sized,
even if a pound cake must be hand-rotated, lest it be raw on one side due to the floor here 
in this house being uneven, even slanted. Yes, we know to turn our cakes and exactly when. 
There's always something cooking up in here. We've got out the pressure cooker about to consecrate 
jars for the grape juice of sacrifice to be drinked with the now-rising, Bread of Life. The prettiest 
tea towel with tiny strawberries embroidered on it is draped over the rising dough in the tunnel 
pan on the silver radiator in the sewing room.

Outside, the Mulberry tree keeps us in purple ink so we can keep ahold of newly created
recipes, which are harder to write than most poetic forms, because of the no gray areas
which their intricate chemistry demands. We have made a swinging desk to hang from our ink 
pen tree, to swing in when we are falling-down in the spirit and need to be lifted-up from the dust
on the tent revival floor.

The Coloring Book of Revelation comes along, & we want to thank those who have financially 
contributed to its construction. And also those who have demonstrated their faith in us.

Letterbox  / Amy Haworth

Opened a drawer
and crossed into heaven.
How can it be
your words are here
on a card
when your soul is in heaven?

Somehow you knew
cursive swirls
carry your embrace
from everywhere
and nowhere.

Your thoughts
and encouragement
— now stars —
of your constellation.
Arranged as a life cut short

by a needle and relief.

A voice recorded
by your hand
and saved in the drawer
As if I knew.

For the Girl with the Wooden Cart / Christina McCleanhan

I have searched beneath layers of
rotted leaves from
harvests long scattered by
springs and snows for
daffodils and hope.

And I have lingered in the desire to rest.

I have twirled into rooms
filled with professed love, empty love, social love
and walked away with
one hand clutching at safety
while the other reaches for
a tree with limbs that
prepare for nesting birds and warm rain.

And I am amazed that life continues to feed me.

I will conquer the mosquito army 
by the stagnating overflow...one day. 

Not Easy  / Elizabeth McGraw

It slides into the week 
a day of rest 
but rest is not so easy.

The week’s not yet done 
but the shades are drawn on the work 
that is not yet complete.

Roll into the weekend 
and come with your list. 
It won’t finish itself 
you know this. 

Close your eyes and wake once again to a day like another and wonder where is that day of rest we were promised? 

RETIRED SHEPHARD DREAM ANALYSIS / Alexis Wolfe

been running on E like buzz buzz blap
earlier walked over to C’s studio sat beneath 
treeshade  told me about this dream his friend
spun jungian I’m sat in my little kid closet again
same one where I floorflat I can see the Christmas
lights  all my toys same place I hid porn and H calls me
I’m knee begging her back and she says certain STOP 
SHEPHARDING ME and I woke fast and we laugh 
saying retired shepherd and ex-herder and Flock Off 
these sorts of things then chirp his med change / walking around
in sleepstate  three years never choosing
the person you’re choosing and sorrow that some lifelong
version of love is only ever winner / loser / winner / loser 
N says it’s inability to integrate the feminine
aspect of self    communication without sight
  the closet is key  a shepherd tends but wants control 
it's biblical I tell him  desire to keep flock is older 
than the flock   to know yourself a powerless animal 
and bury this truth—amass amass amass hooves to trample it

March - Poem 20

Stars   / Kathleen Bednarek

There is fired chaos
And with a jagged eye 
It is cut to likeness—

Soften the gaze  
Don’t break…

It is possible to reach all sides
Even though you cannot see us
In an afternoon 

West of spider and swan

For the inside of how you touch
Is formed wholly 
Of what happened to make light

Even the fly 
Without a wide mind
Has taken off

The dark distance 
In its eyes

Threat at the border / Mymona Bibi

there is a difference between border and boundary 
when we touch your border softens 
melts into mine
not everyone has learnt to blur that way 
kissing you is a lesson 
in silence and borderless belonging 
not every body has found 
yet here I am searching
pulling open the flesh of a date
checking for pests in the dark fibres
between us.
I never find anything 
listing boundaries 
not knowing I’m standing
right at the border
this formation is not an accident.
yet here I am searching 
fingers tracing foreign scars
like a wandering drunk 
after midnight
both threatening 
                       to find
                                  to love
                                              to lose 

The Coach and the Gym Teacher’s Baby / Susan Hankla

After school 
I always walked
from Richlands High 
to Gateway 
Shopping Center
across a strip of land
to Gateway
Drug Company, 
where Dad 
filled
prescriptions.
And see
their baby 
in a carrier
in the shade 
in the 
navy blue 
Fiat 
in the parking lot. 
Coach Jones 
and Sandy, 
his wife,
the gym teacher, 
talked about the baby.
I knew it was their car.
No one else in the mountain town
owned a Fiat.
A Fiat is an Italian car.

What we need to remember  / Amy Haworth

What this country has done
Makes my blood boil
Makes me recoil
What this country has done.

Makes my blood boil
Memorials torn down
By self-appointed crown
Makes my blood boil.

Memorials torn down
Erasing what we need to remember
Will the world exist in September?
Memorials torn down.

Erasing what we need to remember
What this country has done
By majority votes won
Erasing what we need to remember.

What this country has done
Makes my blood boil
Makes me recoil
What this country has done.

I Want to Become this Woman / Christina McCleanhan

Last night i dreamt
i was
        squishing blackberries
between pointer and thumb
dirt, seed, fragrance
childhood

       thawing as
spring berries burst
through last season’s
broken promises

i long to marry the earth

Deadline  / Elizabeth McGraw

I lean in and turn on seeking to Devine the creative spark.

Coffee in hand and daylight high I am overwhelmed with my choices and seek a routine.

It’s go time and I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. 

Waiting for applause or the silent eyes looking back at me.

JoJo / Alexis Wolfe

got to thinking about jojo his whole face a tattoo how when I made him and kindred dippy eggs their golden disks flying he said I could never do that eyes like balloon animals every time they fought or I brought home coffee   we corralled nubian goats stalking Japanese knotweed across townish city sidewalks we lived for free took an RV just to pick up pizzas and skip rocks where the Monongahela ran thin / I never saw him again   heard he got picked up for arson in West Virginia  asked for a shot after close bartender called him crazy  said here's crazy flipped a match behind their backs caught the dumpster on fire I mean half the building   got caught speeding near Wheeling but heard he got out  heard he wore horsehair to the Louisiana derby  tye dyed T-shirts at his brother's birthday party started howling in Vermont sang ditties with some boundless jason ended up back where he came from

March - Poem 19

Barking   / Kathleen Bednarek

The dog’s barking begs a long story. 
It echoes and transforms beyond 
chain link. It remembers its mother, 
and maybe its father. The father was 
what gave it the muscly chest 
and upper body, the mother, 
its overall size and ears. It knew 
the back of the cage for a while 
and didn’t want to be noticed. 
Once it was noticed, my neighbor wanted 
its soft believing eyes, 
its black and tan genesis, 
a togetherfuture.
The dog wags its tail so much 
the kids are afraid it will snap off 
and fly from its body. They say 
it will slingshot to Jupiter 
and become one of its moons. 
The dog seems to listen to this. It is 
a tangent of love to watch a being adored. 
It is a ritual to return staying with my hands.

red kite haikus / Mymona Bibi

Red Kite: heard.

every meeting, new
call of curiosity,
‘play,’ answers the wake.

Red Kite: seen.

speck of red-brown, speed-
less, threat to soar down and greet.
necks crane for life’s firsts.

untitled / Susan Hankla

Bit what was your allure?
I weatch butterflies at flowers and still I don’t know.
your voice? Your texts? Your approval of my flesh?
Thank you for my love of sorrow, because it rhymes with a lot of things.
But your temper, jealousy, no sense of humor when your brutish ways were like Heathcliff on the Moors.
So, Go on, Git!

Pitfall  / Amy Haworth

We fell into the hole
Been trapped down here
Playacting hope in the system
While, above ground
the ladders are being burned.

Commonalities / Christina McCleanhan

poverty chickens squawk 
in the dirt yard on the corner-
but eggs are eggs-
they cluck despite their dusty feathers
they eat and sleep, sleep and eat
on plastic drums, metal sheeting
                                        small breast, scrawny thighs do not 
                                        predict their running speed
wealthy chickens preen
two streets away in 
wooden boxes painted like barns-
but eggs are eggs-
they peck their owner for breakfast
they eat and sleep, sleep and eat
on new straw, beneath heat lamps
                                       large breasts, thick thighs do not
                                       impress their KFC cousins

liar liar poet on fire / Alexis Wolfe

i like a poem that lies
  leans back and burps  asks me to take
its waterlogged raincoat  drips a river in my hallway 
doesn’t say thank you  never sorries  stretches its legs 
long and sighs i like my poem pathological 
sticks to the facts straight as a kaleidoscope still as 
a merry-go-round hiccups like a horse lockkneed in mid-
gallop laughs like Austin Powers says shag me
says lightning pop never sets an alarm buries clocks
in its front yard reminds me a prophet has never stared
directly into the face of god and knows no one’s reading this

March - Poem 18

Shrine  / Kathleen Bednarek

Other realms of softness guard 
those laid low in severed belonging. 
Follow me in the early morning 
where the manholes create fog.

Choirs blow through momentary blindness. 
Their songs distant yet 
you can hear them in the garbage bins 
rooting for echoes of mercy,

splashing in the buckets of crabs 
fighting for the top of death in Chinatown. 
A sword in its light through the trees, 
a confusion of the barristers,

appeals of children found standing out 
in the street, swooped up 
placed in the back of vehicles, hiding 
their cheeks against IDs.

Portraits of listening, equal nodding 
and closing the eyes, equal tears and 
nothing left to say but presence. 
I offer you mine in the pale–

what is a small smile but the sun. 
The ruth of hospital halls hovered 
over when a small thud makes the woman 
ask: someone help me.

When your bitterness uses the word 
temporary against itself. When 
the sea is filled with wrappers glinting 
in the light. When

lying on your side looking left to right 
you hear a shot. When it takes you 
under your breath in the morning 
dark, you ask the ceiling for their refuge.

Cigarette / Mymona Bibi

When you hold your cigarette,
my breath draws in 
sucking in the air inside,
my body stuck at the window
watching your cigarette 
clutching you back,
my friends always talk of tomorrow 
and the next year so I keep
them around me like an armour
against the feeling that there is nothing
beyond the blurring of your hands,
behind smoke
now there’s no tomorrow
only - yes - for last night,
in another life
mothers might have healed
bruised skin
without held breath,
in another life
you’d drop the cigarette
and i’ll see your eyes
in my eyes
unblurred 
              unsmoked

I see you're by the T.V. again, / Susan Hankla

in that swell of talking-heads-news.

My outfit of the day is a gunny sack. 

Historically they were worn just after

women being corseted for more than several decades. 

Carry a wicker basket of hot pepper jellies, 

and when you're saying and replaying 

what Trump did, I shut my door. 

(If only I had a chamber pot I'd never hear 

T.V.). I already know the sacred things are all but 

disappeared. 

I blow on purple nettle Devil tea, pore over a Picasso 

voluptuary. Once I hung bunting, but now the sign 

on my office door says Insane Asylum. I search 

for the sky

blue bra lost in surgery, spend time trying to write better,

using a grammar book from the Jeter School for Women. 

Distraction / Amy Haworth

I see what you are, you rodeo clown
   conniving a con
     shaped like the pantry
Smooth, honey-lipped orator
    selling timeshares.

untitled / Christina McCleanhan

oak trees bowing
      throat locked
      wet sidewalk
                                ; do not disappear
 unbuttoned cuff
      holding snot
                    still

1834, this same day in March the first US railroad tunnel made home in Pennsylvania / Alexis Wolfe

and it has me thinking of the hush mouthed
pear eyed black Irish great great grandfather 
I never met  operator of Pittsburgh’s first street car
the one who walked like a cat clawing slow 
on his tin roof even at ninety and when he died 
five years later still had charcoal in his hair, how
when his cherry tree got sick he wrapped it 
in bandages, swore hope long after the others 
killed it off—the next two seasons he reaped 
sweet   biggest cherries you ever
seen, loved three daughters who never married 
and spoke up for unions   put his whole hand in
a beehive and never got stung how in the years
after retirement he’d ride that same car just to
become it, always recognized  and free  the same route 
he’d ride for hours, prouder than if 
he were flying

March - Poem 17

[Memory is something gone] / Kathleen Bednarek

Memory is something gone. 
Already it sort of explains loss. 
Was the sunset that spotless, like really pure peach? 
I believe in the progression of wind fraying the edges of flags
You can still fold the flag when you think it’s done. 
You walk out to the mailbox and put the metal bar up.
And the message will be sent by unknown carriers.

Flight Academy / Susan Hankla

What is your heaviest book; the teacher is leveling 
his punishment.I am to stand at the front of the class,
and hold the heaviest schoolbook I've got
in one hand 
high in the air, until he says 
stop.

A civics book full of 
lynchings 
and crusades. 
Or a small Latin book 
about wars.

In front of the board, sinews 
snap
my armpit wet, 
shoulders ache. 
White blouse untucks from kilt, 
raised arm holding the heavy book, 

till 

stupid arm, it begins to shake
with the big book in the air, 
knee socks inch down 
calves, toward loafers.

Spirit floats to Ben 
Franklin down 
the street
to pick out black 
bikini panties 
with wolves embroidered crimson, 
their tongues licking out  all over them
like sex.

Where it happened / Amy Haworth

Night decisions linger
uncomfortable
Less powerful people drowned in noise
Ease gravitates toward authenticity 
to elevate warmth
not recreate -- but evoke -- déjà vu
Tablescapes communicate promises
with obsession
hallmarks
suspended above
artisans
control transitions
from day to night

For Those Who Dip French Fries in Gold / Christina McCleanhan

Drop the art, pick it up.
Drop the art, rest a minute, pick it up.
They do not tell you in grade school, as you struggle to 
open the lunchtime milk cartons, tie your shoes,
how to be creative.
You are told to paint pictures or 
sing songs, wait for the bus, wait for the juice. 
There is rarely applause for
the girl who colors the cat blue, or the boy who
introduces his best cackling witch between
Fa and So.

Drop the art, buy a brand-new Pilot, pick up the art.
The hands that control time make bargains with 
off-brand gel pens.
The story of a princess slaying in sweats, 
sending a witch to the Pipedown Tower for
a cookie break, naptime, 
takes more than the allotted time after recess to build. 
Give the artist two, fifteens, as well. 
Let the hands be washed of pigment for 
those who do not offer to 
clean the brushes and sweep the floors. 

Pick up the art and consume it.
Let its sweet roar coax the right eardrum into a euphoric ripple. 
The butcher leaves his local cows for 
packaged roasts cut by robots without faces.
The baker greets his truth by 
trading his wheat field know-how for 
an influencer's disclaimer.
The candlestick maker turns down his light, and
turns a profit by yelling, "scarcity," in
a crowded room. 
No shame, no worries. We are only trying to glow.  

Go on, now, be feral.

Live Action  / Elizabeth McGraw

Hear me out, she says. 
It’s got little to do with me, she says.
It’s clear there’s been a misunderstanding and it’s all spun out of control.

Enrolled in the weather pattern. 
Awake at the spark. 
Lightening around the bend.
The transponder struggles to blow out.

Nothing here’s got anything to do with me. 
Walks away. 

I stopped having a story / Alexis Wolfe

or a selfsong maybe when 
i moved to the high plains let that blank space
blankpage me, the one i intended to sit at 
i became: what is it to reject your own story,
know it so well you sick-of-it 
let it flit into a windstorm, watch it 
trip over a cactus and slip behind the
unhazing mountains slitting the mesas or plateaus 
whichever and know the sun always sets in the west 
no not just know, comprehend inconsolable

March - Poem 16

Sheet music / Kathleen Bednarek

Mozart holds a lake of symbols in a metal stand— the silver of a dentist's office. 
Sundays butter the scales, making new pentatonic drifts into a Mississippi of cardboard suitcases and crossroads.
My breath pushes the shift upward in my throat. 
I rise a whole note: Go tell it on the mountain.
My shoulders from behind, hold composure; the room itself, inclusive to my timing—yes,  I made the echo. 
Who’s the rat that scribbled over the concerto? marooned the metronome? made carved faces in the wood of the piano with inattentiveness? Dare. Coda. 
I will use pressure From without or in here.

Found Balance / Mymona Bibi

A found poem using a page from The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Sing Where it Opens / Susan Hankla

The one where your heart opens
like an upstairs window in an old house,
where starlings tickle the sill with their tiny feet.

If I were to put my life into another language 
would it have enough range to be heard down this new street?

My sisters-in-song, one sings & one's lost her voice,
both I recognize as sisters, but why isn't she 
bitter her voice is gone. I don't know how she has the grace to go on. 

Keep singing, she tells my other sister. Sing this one,
she says to me.

She sings how she tried to fly as a bird to her mate
only to be caught, her feathers unzipped by sharp blades 
on the window, so she could not fly, a song stuck 

in her lump of a throat. You must stop right where you are, 
for you are listening to god's voice. Sisters, don't cry.

At Schonburg Castle / Amy Haworth

Suspension / Christina McCleanhan

Hope is haunting me; hope has dwindled.
Almost a hundred degrees before noon.
Skin’s rougher than a sanding block.
Can’t quiet these squawking babies,
crying chickens.
Will there be supper, Mama?
Spare some bread, m’am?
Need an extra pair of hands, Mrs?

I am tired of bones-
soup bones, knee bones, brittle bones
in worn-out pots with
broth twice boiled down for
sopping, not sipping.
Oh! My darling, that 
last Christmas with the spiced punch. 

Think loud enough, and the stomach retreats...

I am tired of stooping to 
pick peas from vines that
cannot feed me, warm me, or barter my escape.
What will I do this time if the cough doesn’t stop?

I miss keeping company with 
cleanliness. Each day, there is a sky to 
welcome and tumbleweeds to applaud.
Sometimes, I bite my tongue to keep 
from screaming, look toward 
the brilliant nothingness
of dust, and wait.
Remember who I am, who I have always been.

Season  / Elizabeth McGraw

It hits you slowly then all at once.

Over and over again.

A season ends and the transition is harder than the brutal conditions

Hard to imagine the days when socks feel silly today.  Hard to believe that print will be warranted in a week’s time. 

The search for bookends and barometers tailspin. Mark your spot. 

Multiple fronts colliding on us.

Which one to choose?

I always choose you. 

Musical porch / Alexis Wolfe

oh easy i’ll just write it—like how earlier 
listening to Scorn walking the alley from gym to home
i couldn’t see twelve feet in front of me there was so much
   dust i started all what would it be like
to be under such rubble we know so little
about  war doesn’t happen here     war i watch
on my laptop  war i pay for   lately i’ve been playing
musical porch  with my neighbor he’s deaf you know—
we take turns sitting in our porch chairs staring
   at the empty grass lot  he grimaces stark staring mad 
when he sees me in my rusted   goes into his house 
 i smirk when I see him / sometimes flop inside
 yes seniority still rules   we take turns 
like this  chasing our own tails  of course I imagine he wants 
to be alone   never asked  his delicate dreaming
  give us this day  our daily porch battle   this is 
our hardship I karate chop the dirt dusters / fist 
fight my projections   my war is spiritual   I am drafted
 at the front lines of my branded beliefs / we go looking 
for it

March - Poem 15

Poem for hope / Kathleen Bednarek

All there was was a crater in the earth. A charred crater. It absorbed the acid sky reflecting it back into

little bones divided amongst themselves to count how many people there were. An enormous event

without clear record. By all accounts there were no worms anymore. No green where there was once

manifold, plurality, lushness soaked in cloud water. Butterflies of the super generation. Atomization

built dust and wind into mountains expending oxygen carried by currents to the lowlands. Agile

spines of jaguar and leopard stalking the plethora, delicate primate arms stretching the canopy, and the

brighter the color the more fantastic the poison; the mind knew which to avoid. The ocean filled with

moon jelly and whale songs. The reversal of time parallel to lunar tides. The ocean blued further before

the conflict placed weapons in the mud, put explosives in the sand, and dismantled the turtle eggs. For

we held the shells up to our ears, we retold the stories, and breathed the bones back together,

occasionally lifting the throat back to scream. There were dear angels, benefactors, gourds filled with

agate, resonant instruments, what the nothingness forgot we reflected about the rainbow. When the

rain fell and fell iridescent from the oil and disintegrated planes, cycling itself over and over until its

falling was upheld, it was supported by the nightfall and the accompanying day-rise. The little bones

filled with air started from the smallest unit of sound that vibrated from the crater, throwing itself up

and up and up like the descent that was now reversed upon it. It was a circle they wanted the center of.

They got none of it.

Your Hands / Mymona Bibi

These streets are veins,
full of the blood that flows from your hands.

Sometimes diluted, tasting like the children's squash,
sometimes of the adults’ memories clumped with clots in your hands.

That day, I wished to see you on Clayton street,
when did the sunrise get so late in your hands?

When will she stop calling me disgusting?
She's only a bully because buses in London are red, red, red, painted with your hands.

The old curtains of fury are drawn,
I was as silent as her voice coming from your hands. 

You were so silent you cut open the sky and drank its vapour,
I watched each gulp and jump of your Adam’s apple and the stretch of your hands.

Tomorrow is for us to crawl out the wound of the world,
whilst soft lampposts burst into red, red, red in your hands!

If we kissed, we could take out the past from each other's tongues,
'kullu yihalif, fiqri yiterif' in the creases of your hands.*

My desire is louder than the wailing streets,
until you slip in the rain and graze your hands.

*Eritrean proverb, ‘everything passes, love remains’.

Questionnaire / Susan Hankla

It said: What Was the Last Soup You Made?

The last soup?

The last soup you made was floating white petals you tore from the funeral 
spray that topped your mother's casket so that the flower parts lay on the surface of plain
tap water in the cut crystal bowl. This is the last soup you'll make, the very last soup 
you'll make of me, she said accusingly in the dream.

The last soup you'll make; what is the very last soup you will ever make?

You reread the question in the magazine and notice that the questionnaire hadn't meant 
what is the very last soup you will ever make in your whole life. It meant what is the last 
soup that you can remember having made.

The last soup you can remember making wasn't soup, it was chili. 

The last soup you were able to swallow was Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup 
that your mother brought you on a day it snowed in the mountains 
and school got canceled. It was the last soup your mother brought you 
placed at the center of the dinner plate of saltines, the bowl of strands 
of white squiggles and chicken shreds in amber broth. You had a cold. 
That was the last time you had soup that you remember.

What is the last thing you remember about home? The yellow kitchen table?
The dining room with the round table where you did homework every afternoon?

Think about something else. 

When you told your aunt that you weighed one-hundred and eleven pounds, she said, 
"The old hag's weight." She was given to making pronouncements. 
That you'd reached the old hag's weight, you were a victim of fate. 

When you told her a certain matching shirt and skirt made you feel unlucky 
each time you wore it, she too had a cursed garment, the brown wool sheath 
which when she wore it to her job as grade-school principal, the children became 
harder to manage, and circulated a rumor that she had an electric paddle.

Like a Piggly-Wiggly bag, your dull dress was really an inauspicious thing, 
with little olive-green flowers, but somehow the skirt of it rode around so that its zipper 
would be in the front, and the shirt tail of the matching blouse untucked, 
so when you returned home from school you looked ravished by William Blakes' Tyger.

The Weight of Your Ideas / Amy Haworth

They say that one day the yellow stones will erupt
from the pressure
and that's all I can see when you describe
being buried
by the weight of your ideas.
The earth's crust can only contain your power
for so long.
It's inevitable what is within you will erupt
from the promise
and the path forward -- 
a beautiful spectacle.
Then, some will say, "of course she has",
while others will know it couldn't have been any other way,
but you'll still be a little surprised it happened the way it did.
The relief in making it rain
will be air to your exhumation 
from the weight of your ideas.

Freedom after John William Waterhouse's painting,The Lady of Shalott / Christina McCleanhan

The day has cooled; the dew is falling.
A hard-working swallow seeks
companionship or food among
the river weeds.
The Pollyanna is stoic; her innocence is reverent.
Nature has draped itself around
her bashful grace without apology.

Onward, Onward, Onward!
 quiet, quiet, quiet. 

She looks, she rows, she listens, and
whispers to herself with stutters
birthed from humility-
A-a-across my p-p-pale moon youth,
White wind blows,
The ch-ch-chain slips from my grip.
Shadowed fate, I know,
I call out reed, oar, r-r-river as I go
with truce on my tongue
toward death do I flow
To Ca-ca-camelot,
charged by the nightingale’s prayer.
My want is meager, my-my-my wrists are fragile.
Cling to submission or fall to exile?
To Camelot,
ch-ch-charged by the nightingale’s prayer.

The river is wide; the current is slowing.
And now, her dreams are lifting beyond
her shoulders: she sees them mingle with
the lily pads. Below her swim fish, beyond the
bend, fog is rising.
She will…she will…she will…
exhale. 

NO COMMENT/ Alexis Wolfe

The U.S. Military had no immediate comment

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad

The White House and Pentagon did not immediately reply to requests for comment

The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment

The U.S. had no choice but to strike because of a recalcitrant ___

There was no immediate comment from Israel or the United States

March - Poem 14

To the Fox Running Full Barrel Across the Road at Night, / Kathleen Bednarek

Vulpes vulpes
‍ ‍you wear a night cape
‍ ‍you listen to the Misfits
‍ ‍your shiny mouth smiling
                               jaw pulled 
‍ ‍back by the gauge of your run
‍ ‍a page lit-torn & flung   
‍ ‍over moon water
‍ ‍a tangerine sheared 
‍ ‍a cigarette flicked  
‍ ‍a firepath dashed perpendicular 
‍ ‍atop old hot rod rubber 
‍ ‍surviving faster than blinking
‍ ‍your eyes split and catch

Fish  / Mymona Bibi

When you fed me your words, you told me about the first time the fish you caught was bigger than your brother’s. That fish has reappeared. I saw it in the bathtub, dead, floating, gutted. Still the pride of that day lives in your eyes.

Rebecca / Susan Hankla

Too late, I heard cancer settled into your milky breasts.
Your body had been perfectly Carrera marble, 
which might have been dealt with well, so that you'd be 
somewhat restored. For that I am sorry. But my darling 

debutante, of the thigh-high 70's fashion boots, like silk waders, you 
of the fingertips-to-elbow kid gloves in the bell of your coming out mini-
dress ringing, ringing a kind of pretty warning. In our twenties we were trains 
too fast to board, so we shrank to toys. 

I see why we didn't apply ourselves to tasks, smoking grass at parties, 
while others made the next brave moves. Some guided us out to the road, 
even waited with us. Gave us pantsuits for interviews, listened while 
we practiced what we'd say, feeding us hardtack prayers. But you were already fleeing, 

while I loitered by a rented punch bowl, or sliced wedding cake, 
or waited, waited by the borrowed car for a tow, untended tires 
thin as balloons, maps all flown away, like purple martins shot 
out of the trees by the violet dawn. 

Lunch Time / Amy Haworth

Lunch’s time
has a majority stake in
the idea that
it occurs at noon
but zones of time
and hunger in degrees
are the true temperature for when
to wander to the microwave for
small talk in 30 second increments
as I nourish and sustain
between
multi-colored jenga blocks that tell
me where to be from 9 to 5.
Stopping for real lunch is
loosening my ski boots in the lodge
with the same effect
so most days I choose
room temp, desk view
and buy time
in 30 second increments closer
to progressing digital conversations,
ideas in slides and
ways to loosen the hold of the status quo
fueled by remains of yesterday’s
dinner.

For Anyone Hungry / Christina McCleanhan

Keep quiet, my darling.
Your mind is thirsty,
Your ankles are weak, 
Your belly is hungry.
Those gentle folk,
who matter,
are looking for you-
lanterns lit,
gourds filled
with joy, waiting to
take turns feeding you love
and honey and buttered grits.
One day, real soon, you will be a
grown woman with babydoll hair,
whispering, “Maybe I can try.”
Go on, sweet, sweet lady.
Weep, first.
Weep for your mistakes, wrong turns,
willingness to drink
Coke flat, and the time spent
whisking meringue that fails to peak. 
For God’s sake, let the threading of
acceptance warm your veins-
death, loss, cannot be reversed, and
biscuits will not be flaky without
cold butter cut into each fold.
But jam,
jam made from strawberries picked and
sorted by careful, patient hands 
almost always sweetens the 
deal.

Friday Night  / Elizabeth McGraw

Friday
6th day of the week
Penultimate
Not penultimate for some, strange
Letting the tight rope go

Night
Twilight 
Sleep
Rest
Dormant

Cheesecake 
Scrumptious 
Creamy
Rich
Delicious 

Factory
Fabric
Oppression 
Productivity
Machine 

Breaking News this is hardly a poem / Alexis Wolfe

everything is Breaking News lately and who am i to argue. J and i talk about interior/exterior writing like its urgent, the former like finding a private fountain filled with mute swans but you’re invited to the property, maybe. everyone is bookclubbing their clubbish book lately we can’t even read alone. we sidestep labyrinth of false messages and i keep my phone in a box near the front door. our democracy has whittled to fanfiction and no, they’re not eating children, yes, we’re approaching the underbelly of the world. what we really need is to fine-tune our good-enough instruments, no one goes to the cobbler anymore. someone once told me the theory or principle that posits just paying attention to matter changes its molecular structure but I think she misremembered the unradical observer effect which is not about transformation by attention alone rather change by direct observation which always involves instrumentation sigh. i’m thinking quantum entanglement or maybe quantum decoherence i’ve never had a mind for principles. i’m thinking of all of the women obsessed with Egypt that have never been to Egypt. I’m thinking sharp movements always catch the corner of my eye, i’m too slow or i’m dreaming

March - Poem 13

Poem for Kerouac on his Birthday (3.12) / Kathleen Bednarek

God got back down from heaven on the third day, 
you sd.
A bashful blue ink blot from your downward pen
pooling a dove of camellia ink under your shirt pocket 
before your heart exploded onto teletype paper.
Lost, bloodshot outside a Kettle of Fish, 
jukebox light reflected in your black hair, avant guarding romanticism. 
What it must have been like leaning against the doorway before the dive, 
your mother love in your head. You gave me the freedom to write 
really bad poetry with all its rags and jewelry. I went searching too 
for Pooh Bear winding my sentences at 2 am in Cawker City, Kansas around 
the world’s largest ball of twine. The agony in the garden is the Golgotha 
of one person in one room spent thinking.
Ah, who am I kidding? 

Spring  / Mymona Bibi

here is the spring,
a mirage of sweet-pea collecting, 
they told us this was nature,
not the millenia of training,
redirecting woman to point at man, 
some compasses need breaking.

non-men don't have the privilege of spirit,
tungsten chains strong enough to lock up the night
so that spring can pass without cleaning, 
without fragrance, but with nutrient-rich
mud under our nails as we dig 
up the graves of living lovers.

god is as masculine as the ‘door’ or ‘book’,
both shut by the mere flick of an 
accusatory tongue as violent
as the winter before.

when will you ungender us?
so we might continue popping
bubble wrap between table legs,
carelessly playing, forgetting the position
of the sun in the sky.

Reverse Ekphrastic / Susan Hankla

Why not present all the conditions for something to be a piece of art,

by listing all details and how they coalesce

and call those a painting, or sculpture, or a sketch.

Like the way you looked when you could tell just by seeing 

our friends arriving at their home from the hospital that day,

by the slow way they walked, and how they held themselves,

you knew without any exchange of words that Bill didn't make it.

Out of Stock  / Amy Haworth

Patch, pellet or pill
there’s a line of ladies
released from lies.
Waiting to replace what gets lost
with energy found
Flawed studies steered generations
away from the alchemy
our mothers should have had.

 A Hovel In Camelot / Christina McCleanhan

The room was small, no more than a postage stamp.
A window, a chair, a shelf for dry goods and potatoes.
When loneliness swept across her thoughts, she
danced
         barefoot
                   across the wooden floors while
                            sing    ing

 Raising Hal
                    le
                       lujah hymns.

She bought bread with daydreams
hid in quiet from 
angry rain, blew kisses at 
pigeons - felt like you, like I
do after trying on the silk
of a night that sweet-talks its way
into the drawers of our intellectual
curiosity.

I have only ever been to Mars in my
nightmares.
but I understand how to ignore
lima beans served on a plate by
a big-footed giant who is too
arrogant to cover the floorboard cracks
with the rug we sewed together

My pockets, after church, are
full of holiness and fortune cookie madness:
vulnerability sounds like faith and
looks like courage, from your friend
Brené Brown.

The window was large, wider than a rich man’s sack.
A cloud, a plant, a curtain to draw against the sun.
Her laugh built fires on the coldest day. 

Stabby Things  / Elizabeth McGraw

It's stabbing snowflakes.  
Hitting a toasted ground. 
It's falling moisture in a season that slowed migration 
and keeps the insects away. 


No gnats on my window screen means fewer bugs on the pitch.  
We wind the week towards the respite. 
But no rest for us there. 


It's running and running and running some more.  
If the weather passes and we can stand clear. 


I'd call that a victory and a good way to pass a time that belongs to my others. 

On endings / Alexis Wolfe

typing with my forehead again 
what’s left to say? Churp
slurb birb chirp day turns
tunnel vision. A no-longer-admired
once said if you know how a poem 
is going to end it’s not a poem—I guess
that’s a law of living replace “poem”
with “life” but who can speak in nots or laws
or tell me anything about endings—how’s
this? i’ll make of you a sorryfish

March - Poem 12

Windy Hill / Kathleen Bednarek

There is no 
meandered end 
to the red barn
holding itself up.
Even when you pass,
two muddy ruts run
parallel 
against their  edge 
of sight. 

We cannot wait for / Mymona Bibi

when the drinks are cool / when the sister acts non-alcoholic / when rivulets burn / when the city’s teeth are veneered / when limerance is the body’s speech / when walking is painless / when his name is officially misspelt / when her love is unidentifiable mostly to herself / when we pour libations and supplications over graves in Arabic / when without hands we use tongues / when without tongues we use hearts / when without hearts we feed the worms / when I stitch a road from here to Sylhet / when the drugs of war win / when resistance comes from wound-mouths / when hallucinations are generational / when the djinn are at the door / when the wrested mangroves give way to flood / 

Grateful / Susan Hankla

for the memory of being in the tub at my aunts'
hearing the telephone ringing, then both twins

poke their faces into the bathroom to say, "It's for
you." Tell them I'll call back, I said. "We can't do

that," they said. Wrapping the yellow towel around
me, I sat in the designated phone chair, while they

listened to my end of the conversation. And for
the memory of being in the tub on another day,

and hearing way far below, in the driveway
Mrs. Mounfield holler from her black Mercedes 

sedan, "Susan! Susan! Come down. My son's gone 
nuts and you've got to do something, because I

don't know what..." I dressed, flowered jeans sticking
to the apples of calves, 32 B bra frunpy and wet

the rest of the day, water being the perfect conductor 
for urgency. I did my best to help. Now he's inventor 

of some kind of special golf club, and rich as shit. 
I blame myself.

Precious  / Amy Haworth

A re-mix of the famous line from Mary Oliver's The Summer Day
          To tell
              me
              what is real
              is to tell
            it
       like you know it
Keep your plan
               to yourself
      And do
              with it as 
              your heart beats
              one, two, three  
         re-wild  your soul
              and stop
being so precious
with your life.

Yes, I Promise / Christina McCleanhan

after a dream, i cannot return to sleep, without
a glass of water, a piece of buttered bread, cheese

picture a peaceful current below an incline,
grass painted in shades of
prozac that seed into a Stepford landscape,
a cedar red canoe, a woman, a white dress,
a green sweater, a red lip
meant to make someone, anyone, fall
headfirst into
the flesh of summer
she calls out, “help,”  as the boat
hits shallow water, but laughter
lives louder than
sorrow in
her tone
i mean to help her, i mean to offer my hand, but
where are the sticks to grab hold
of? The roots, the pockets
of dirt to slide down?

like a peeled orange
on a hammock day,
she smells of woodsy heat, I am sure
this Calliope has melted butter
with Coltrane playing
on a radio
in the window of
her studio apartment.
Her gift is heavy already
against
my spine
when she departs
-fast nor slow, but all
at once. 
joy, peace, it is time 
to work.

don't know, it's late / Alexis Wolfe

lately i don’t know it’s like
late in bed typing rhythms by
keyboard light worn screech 
from other room think of you
saying hope parents are 
going swimming! or something 
like that during my life i needed 
options on earth I am 30
listening to podcasts about
quitting and that one daybed face 
saying magic cunt and how
 its not about what you
 was wearing but how

March - Poem 11

Poem for Offices / Kathleen Bednarek

It’s amazing anything gets done
when you consider the fact 
as I do every so often that 
the amount of people who
understand what to do is likely 
equal to the people being trained to 
do something they’ve never done before. 
As I’ve been released for approximate hours 
each day committed to increasing productivity
even in my off days so as not to disappoint the balance.
And there is this tension in lines and in lack of silence being 
needed into all the waiting spaces and our gradations of escape 
looking into wanting phones to say the war will ever end. But there 
are the quiet ecru walls in the break room and people who thank you
and say goodnight. Information changes by summoning my kingdom 
of data. I want to be grateful for my usage and I appreciate yours. That my 
Person may be seen standing in midair without these floors pinging with the hum 
of machines at night. When the Blue Heron rises from the stormwater basin at headquarters. 
One light going off by timer signaling an incremental change in the sun’s position on the matter.

In / Mymona Bibi

My road to you was always in,
into the house, inside the room
we turn over our bodies
melt in our sheets.
we all hope that loss is a game
of hide and seek.
that our grief is the darkness
of the empty street corners 
we’ve sought each other in.
there is a prayer between your thighs
and a god in my jugular
both throbbing to the music
in front of us.

Don’t Try this at Home / Susan Hankla

A slammed door is always wrong.

then forever out of plumb.

In another world  / Amy Haworth

A blanket of tides pulled over the shores
laps the chin of the world.
Cotton candy clouds race on the wind,
currents are currency running north to south.

I push against what I know will keep me alive
and re-route breath through a workaround,
and allow the hand of the whole ocean to dunk
me under to a garden that needs no water
where the purple lattice of a sea fan bows
and a baby shark offers a pirate eye 
like a submarine I move through the depths
sized wrong and manufactured for temporary survival.

The slower I go the longer I stay.
Even if I want to go up, I must stay down.


I swim in a cup of warm tea,
a cocoon cocktail of body heat and neoprene.

And I realize how easy it could have been to say
"I have no interest in that"
and how I would have missed frogfish and pygmies,
giant grouper, camouflaged flounder, and wingspans of rays -- 

How I would have lived never having known
us

in the ocean.

Kitchen Window Thoughts / Christina McCleanhan

When August comes,
it is complicated and trying.
Parched days unfold,
dusk attempts to seduce,
burned out mosquitoes,
drunk on muggy blood,
and stagnant creek conversations.

Morning shadows dance 
across
a curated wilderness
that settles
across your freckled skin
during the honeysuckle season.

The greens will blend with time.
Washed-out January colors
brown needle scrub pines,
and the starlings
anticipate the first frost, 
waiting to retire for the season.

Sycamore trees root below
tall grass.
Long forgotten trunks
fall near a horizon line
of roof peaks
peppered by telephone poles,
interrupted by bird whistles.

Listen, Darling-
when life takes 
its breath 
from me,
how wonderful the rest would be,
if I could lie 
in peace
beneath 
a walnut tree.

The Point Is  / Elizabeth McGraw

Marked by a silhouette.

I’m kidding, marked by a marker more like it.

A reckoning with what we hold compared to our capacity to tell the story. 

I’m being ambushed as I write this. After seeking my escape. 

cracked tongue i was / Alexis Wolfe

cracked tongue i was
small child who believed in 
secrets the long hallway of
light spilling from passing cars—
next it is april   still we are 
shedding winter’s quilt  
we exist every - as patchwork
what am I? don’t know
just glad dogs know nothing
about personal space
colonized time
people can smell labor 
and deer, human hair from halfmile
the night always being compared
to a wound—some things i guess
remain a given
I am all mouth stuffed with sky 
wind dying  spinning still
these crumbling lines
   the light streaming through

March - Poem 10

this kid / Kathleen Bednarek

(for K.W.)

the edge 
of the moon still visible 

padding the earth body 
with its rounded blanket
those storied wishes

a vision of a world beyond us  
barely disappearing  

circling the neighborhood 
looking into the backseat
seeing part of my face

what am I going to do 
returns  

holding you under your soft arms 
my palms under your armpits 
my lips in your hair

lifting I don’t know 
in a dream seen through 
the dark with you

For that relative who'd come to stay / Susan Hankla

summering at my grandparents,

who took her false teeth out
for the boarding house repast,

leaving them on the table,
later saying, "That sure was good."

How else to show appreciation.
Coming from Stone Mountain

to dry out, she didn't know
better. I bet Opal laughed.

I bet Willie didn't. It was someone
related. He feared he'd used up 

the good will when he'd asked if 
his sisters would look after his five. 

Come from Indiana to Virginia 
after Lulu died, there was talk 

of separating the girls. But he married 
Miss Opal, and nobody ever talked of loss.
Opal sewed a dress every day some weeks.
Made the girls face each other, and sit
in hard chairs when they rough-housed.
She lost a brother Elga by him drowning
with his new wife in Lake Louise. The little boat 
capsized in the wake of an ocean liner. The obit 

read: The Sad Death of an Unhappy Man. She 
was grieving him when Mom was conceived.
The summering woman did dry out. 

She went home fat.

Get Lost  / Amy Haworth

I'll consider it
Maybe we've got it all wrong
I won't rule it out
This current state of progress
has removed wondering
We pin locations and know the fastest route
Efficiency or ease winning out
Now getting lost is a malfunction
We've been told the way
Shown the path
And forgotten what we no longer consider

We were made to wander
To look up
     at the stars
Instead of down
     at our phone
Can you imagine?
What did we do when we spread a map eagle-armed

Obscuring the road to see the route?
I'll consider this:
We were made to forge trails
not follow them.
Once upon a time
getting lost
was our way of being found.

For the Quiet Nightingale / Christina McCleanhan

The night cold has come home for a visit.

Frost on the windows,
damp on the front porch swing,
fog clinging to the iron fence posts.

Where did she go? Has anybody seen her?

Darkness hums in stillness, waiting for the rain.
Your sweater is inside,
near the out-of-tune piano,
but it’s best to hideout by the brick pile.
There, no one will
touch your skin-cracked bottom lip,
laugh at your swollen ankles,
witness your overdressed misery.

She’s sad again. Go check the bathroom.

Moonlight slips between the porch boards,
lightening strikes, a sharpened sailor’s curse.
You tried to decline the invitation,
now you’re frozen and wondering,
how much longer will it be
until you can go home,
open the kitchen cabinets,
pull down one of your grandmother’s old plates
and cut a leftover chicken sandwich,
toasted and gravied,
into triangles.

Wait! She left earlier, before dinner.

Frost on the windows,
damp on the front porch swing,
fog clinging to the iron fence posts

The streetlight blinks as her shadow passes.

Bursts  / Elizabeth McGraw

I am trying to encourage small pops of inspiration cause that’s all the space I have.  In bips and bops they are revealed.  They emerge, burst, then disappear.

You gotta be ready because when they appear.  It’s just for a moment then they travel and unravel and leave but just a trace.

An image, a memory, a smell, a taste of the feast that was promised.

I am lost without them.  Discovered anew.  These small baubles of choice.  

It’s a capturing, a rapturing, and a voice.   To be heard but mostly just remembered.

Nan taught me / Alexis Wolfe

(Hi kirsten<333)

Nan taught me to
pucker up put the sun
in a headlock seek the blade
beneath the mattress
I was there and she 
was there but staring into 
her stills I was 
underneath sure
those polka dotted tulles 
glabella squinched 
temples prodded by
knockknees peering 
at the certain 
violet: me crushing 
the Coors can
  me balancing paper 
plate of friend’s berry 
pie my eyes matter 

of fact blood-blackened 
me one hundred 

years old pigeon chested  
and counting me
tits out for Jesus
my work was once called 
 sophisticated—untrue 
the most
embarrassing thing 
in the world to be 
a poet but if I could
take you for a spin 
on that? 
not tell you show you
to hightail it to the elevator 
knock on any door no
it’s not your birthday 
maybe it’s your mom’s 
say this is my only night 
in town do you have 
Purpose? I’m it

March - Poem 9

Spring Cycles / Kathleen Bednarek

Windows unopened 
Birds are impossible guests
To peck house data

-

Holding my fingers
Budding restraint side by side
Make an oath and rise

-

Here in the spring mud 
Evangelical preachers
Teach hell and Easter

The Last Summer Nap / Mymona Bibi

Tree roots 
were unearthed by animal
play and rot
was marvelled at by residents
of the whole street.
The Robin’s old knowledge 
was made anew for us,
the orange of her chest
was fire flickering
above ground.
Another city was bombed
into orange darkness
whilst the children noticed
the tree’s protruding death
and they poked, prodded,
giggled, pointed,
cut, dug, fell, smelt 
and everything 
but talked.
Grief is a silent language.
My eyes drifted off
into orange darkness–
it is so easy to sleep
under the summer sun
when the noise
is so far away.

The Ten Thousand Things, Some of Them / Susan Hankla

Hoping to see again my mom's dress with the green caterpillars printed on it. Was she the living butterfly?

Did a thousand dishes by hand, happy the ancestors broke up sets of them, the missing cups their slender 

handlelessness easier to dry on the tea towel.

Someday in another life we'll see who rapes who. I don't live by the notion of an eye for an eye. I'm sitting here after insomnia has me stingy in the eyes and skin, and a feeling of knowing that something has been wrong.

Just after Dad died, I had the sensation of my heart coming awake, as if before his death it had been on doze mode. Now when I opened the newspaper, the first thing I read is obituaries, & in reading about each person, I could feel that I was in communion with them and their loved ones, all sharing a heart.

Once a frisbee glowed at night so that coming through the door, I screamed to suddenly see it in my studio when I flicked on the light.

I miss my meadow. Grass stains. The skeletal branch on the dessert plate where crisp green grapes gave up their sweetness. I miss attar of turpentine and rose and orange oil when my twin aunts painted China sitting together at a card table and how many undercoats must be kiln-fired, before you actually see anything.

20 Years from Now  / Amy Haworth

At the end of our lives
I hope you live next door
So we can laugh in your kitchen
About the diagnosis
And you can pick me up after the procedure
And we can be done (we'll never be done) analyzing 
And marvel about how it all turned out
And cook dinner for friends like we did in 2001
Under a full moon descending on snowshoes felt like flight
At the end of it all 
We'll make up for lost time
Doing whatever we can with the body we have left
Celebrating your courage that stopped the longing
And my gratitude for how you helped me find my way
and got me to ride a mountain bike race once
By then, at the end of our lives, 
I might even have a dog.
I hope I have a dog, but not nearly as much as 
I hope I live next door.

Dearly Beloved / Christina McCleanhan

Imagine California, Oakland, the East Bay, it is a decade before today.
There are clouds in the sky, low-hanging from pollution.
Leftover morning fog sails 
toward a hillside of homeowner-privileged craftsmanship.
Reach up, lift off, and look
at the fatigue-flushed freeways, spiriting everyday people on their mission
to build a world meant
for entertainment, safety, love, survival, 
and the opportunity to cash in or share sick days.

It felt like an electric stamina willed me to believe
I was the cinnamon crunch of hard candy
when rain muted the sun.
Those cool, old moccasins never stopped bouncing
down steps to
the round rhythm, sharpness of bus wheels,
desperate brake pads.

My youth looked ahead, trying to ignore the quiet
shake, shake, shake
of garbage-day premonitions in neighborhoods 
that waited for cardboard-castle renewal.
I first ate Turkish delight at twenty-four with a tall classmate. 
The powdered sugar coating stuck to the roof of my mouth,
leaving me disappointed, you know?
We saw each other for a while in our classes or in the hallways.
He spoke of volunteering and
the frustration of teaching change with limited resources
I spoke in circles of metered pseudo-intellectual pretentiousness
meant to hide the essence of my ordinariness.
I was afraid I might want to love him,
that he would want to love me, 
so I closed my mouth when nodding hello
and forgot about the afternoon on College Avenue.

But today, the laundry basket’s broken handle poked my wrist.
I remembered the downstairs washers that we used,
saw San Francisco in its Converse,
felt Oakland breathe.
Now, I realize that I know nothing-
except that today’s prices would still be too high,

even if I had agreed to a second date.

Tiptoe  / Elizabeth McGraw

What’s does a day bring in a season of change? It brings cold mornings, iffy conversations and strained relations fixed with a note.

House at 77 no time for the air conditioning so windows all set afloat.

Lord, the dog smells well overdue for his spring cleaning. 

Birthdays on the horizon coinciding with the change in time. 

Not quite equinox.

Skies a hazy gray. I lay down my head. The house is quiet. 

A young one dances in the kitchen.  Winter work overdue creeps in. 

It ties in a knot that promises to unravel. A promise of the season to come. 

Floating in the Indian River Inlet / Alexis Wolfe

Because I could not stay in the green place
I drove straight to the barren one
my teeth chattering and the Atlantic ghost crabs
doing their sideways dance.
Not even that emptiness could hold me.
My eyes and cheeks stung red
from a sun I did not forgive
because I did not know how to ask for it—
not directions
not a warm bed
I said little
no endworld in sight
I floated
in a made up place
between low tide and earth’s edge
one that could hold
my breath

March - Poem 8

Sister Cecilia / Kathleen Bednarek

My fave nun. By the time I was in the third grade, she was on her way to blindness. She taught me meter and "The Owl and the Pussycat." She had a scratched cornea from Ash Wednesday, when ashes slipped off the slope of her forehead into her right eye. 

The edges of her thick glasses magnified into serious wattage when the light came in at a slant through the classroom windows.

Poetry teacher, literally reading close. Explaining to a pod of youngsters in a back room at a school named Epiphany how to wield imagination.

We ditched phonics. At home, typing on a typewriter named for a munitions device: Canon. This is what I wanna do for the rest of my life. Volley words.  I compared the falling snow to doves. 

You disappeared after the spring and went into retirement, in rooms that continued to blur at their edges. 

"I suppose" should never be in a poem, or "suddenly," they say. But you and I were together in the fog this evening as I drove home on the interstate. I couldn't see, and wanted to know the sequel:

So, if "The Owl and the Pussycat" were married, and let’s say they had babies they would have had superior night vision— pure hunter's sight. Eyes specialized for darkness. But the owl would have been lost right now because the two taillights I’m following are red. Owls can’t see red. Cats can’t either. 

And I could...see you with the fine downy hairs on your face. What did you like about that poem? The plump cheeks, hazel eyes magnifying, the habit like a black hole out of which knowledge was sucked in then flowed out, offset by your white hair looking at me through my eyes as I looked into yours in a memory patterned forward black and white. 

Staying with the car ahead of me which is your face, which remembered language though the eye has not seen, ear has not heard. Sought.

Trace, lineage, metronome; in the middle of the fading curves appearing, the tail lights, two disparate things held in relation to one another. Create attention. Keep sitting, looking. Forego the drenching rainstorm, let the fog soak through.

Diaspora / Mymona Bibi

STENDAHL SYNDROME / Susan Hankla

Yes, it's true, often works of art prove

useful-–the incident at the Phillips Gallery

when I saw the movie of myself unglued 

by his "Green and Tangerine" color field
painting in The Rothko Room.

At the Whitney, the Louise Nevelson 
retrospective happened to my body: hot, 
quaking, surprised, nearly walked into a black 
wall of her imagination.

I hereby sign this affidavit these instances did occur.

I’m certain  / Amy Haworth

Dedicated to DLo

“I’m certain
the path to success
is
never
forgetting
where you’re from.”
An angel
without wings
scatters wisdom
like salt
on a blizzard-bound
sidewalk
providing a temporary
spring
of hope in remembering
instead of wondering.
We grow tallest when our
roots touch
the blistering sun and city hum
music jumping open window to air
who we were
is who we are
we are proof of what watered us
tasting of the soil that grew us.

A Note on Understanding / Christina McCleanhan

I do not 
fear
the spiders
the pill bugs
the centipedes
hiding
beneath 
the damp surface of cold, 
outside wetness
in my grandmother’s yard.
We are not so different-
the earth and I. 
Branches, long or short,
offer me shelter
from inevitable elemental shortcomings
much like the respect given to birds- 
hatchlings born and grown
on worms and oxygen.
 deep 

deep

deep 
       down in the backyard mud
       live the memories of my youth.
       We are here; they call. 
       We remember; they call. 
My fingers will dip and prod
until they grasp a root, or
the old handle of my grandmother’s trowel,  
then, amidst the decayed, rusted earth
I am reminded of 
our long laughs,
summer evening shadows, 
ants parading along cracked sidewalks, 
that first mow after Easter,
Saturday night gravy over chicken, 
quilts weighed against winter’s effort, 
warming cold bedclothes with floor furnace heat
and love- 
usually effortless and mostly free. 

A Highway Through Tees Noc Pos, New Mexico    / Elizabeth McGraw

A wilderness all of its own as the highway rolls underneath.
The swells from the searching brings my eyelids to their knees.

It’s been a long walk along this road in search of a phone.
Feet clad in jelly shoes and dad by my side.

They said it was a misunderstanding like in the evening show but I was swept up in a hurt and pulled along this road.

We walked for probably just a mile with the stars laid out quite bare.  It was lonesome and fun at the same time.  

Strange when the familiar faces swung slow to offer the ride.  We said no, knew where to go, and remarked not many walk around here.

As they pulled away.

The phone booth found and the call made but nothing spoken of our journey or the late hour.  The attendant introduced us to the driver of the rig and that is how we ended up here.

In a wilderness all of its own as the highway rolled underneath.
The swells from the searching brought my eyelids to their knees.

middle child what should i / Alexis Wolfe

middle child what should i

middle child, what else
should i call you? hotfoot
but slow to descend worn 
stairs, kind in the cunning,
snagged on life’s pith. last time 
we sat in the ice cream
parking lot smelled like wet birds
you drew long faces on your shoes 
left school again asked me for 
a flight to texas   started dating
  another dancer, the real sweet this one 
played me voice notes of your misplaced
songs without asking if i wanted 
to hear or if I needed ( ) only unanswerables

March - Poem 7

The Morning Bus / Kathleen Bednarek

Standing, 
waiting for the 
morning bus

on the corner 
of Eastern,

one man 
laughing 
at the 
blurting

of one 
goose 
yearning 
through

its neck 
toward 
the harbor—

To pet 
that long 
neck!

He slaps 
his leg 
with the 
broken foot.

Questions / Mymona Bibi

to saunter along the river is to ask questions,
the question of how 
as your shoulder blades try to kiss
each other in the morning stretch,
of why do your fingertips tap 
your thigh in wait
and where does all the water we forget
to drink wash away to? 
what does all of yesterday melt into?
perhaps the curve inside your elbow
sweaty, creased, brown, lines, separate
when you reach over
to ask me a question 
i can’t answer
not yet
not under this crescent.

REPEAT AFTER ME / Susan Hankla

exploits
escapades
episodes
capers
charades
moments
pentimento
caprice
carapace
spirit wind
convalesce
pork rind
sinshine
codex
architect
Kotex
context
text
sex
Vienna sausage
Kosher dill
hill
safety match
soft serve
swerve
Brillo-pad
hard water
patio
slaw 
slay
barbeque lays
my little pony
paint-by-number
printed matter
gray matter
it matters
safety in numbers 
salad days
Sundays
supper
sup
porcine
pork
telephone
Bible
bubble 
Swiss Miss
mittens
smitten 
witness
waitress
wellness
wasted
stunted
student
pork chop
music
magpie
chocolate cheesecake
nabs
stabs
wanted
stunted
pinecone
telephone
leave me alone.

Mother of Good  / Amy Haworth

Love your neighbor
Love your mother
Mother may I
Mother’s Day
Day after day
Day after tomorrow
Tomorrow never comes
Tomorrow come what may
May I
May-be
Be happy
Be on time
Time to go
Time to change
Change your attitude
Change is growth
Growth is good
Growth rate
Rate your experience
Rate of approval
Approval of the President
Approval of the way we live
Live and learn
Live your best life
Life is good
Life will end
End the way you begin
End state
State of things
State of mind
Mind the gap
Gap between things
Gap to close
Close it off
Close the door
Door to nowhere
Door to somewhere
Somewhere out there
Somewhere over the rainbow
Rainbow wishes
Rainbow bridge
Bridge over troubled waters
Bridge to build
Build the future
Build up
Up we go
Up to something good
Good for you
You…
Good…

To Live is to Accept Circumstance / Christina McCleanhan

During the spring rains, 
on a Friday evening walk before the moon is full 
or on a late-morning Tuesday 
after the geese have stopped chasing the runaway dog,
you might be the first to spot
the new blooms on a secluded bush of wild roses
and tangled onion grass. 
You will visit whenever there are no groceries to buy, 
mouths to feed, clothes to wash, or faucets to fix, 
and remember other freedoms you have known. 
Because no one else sees your adoration,
you can pause to suck deep breaths 
of cut freshness and damp sweetness, 
to bruise one, maybe two of the petals; 
There is no owner to judge. 
There is no cost to regret. 
Linger in this place.
Rest during this season.
Look up at the sun with laughter, my friend.
The wrinkles will be worth it.

Days like these    / Elizabeth McGraw

Don’t require much of me certainly not all of me and somehow make me wonder is this something new.

Uncomfortable for sure far from a flow that I intimately know.  It’s feels like a stretch but before the release that’s always best followed by a deep deep sleep.

In it there is candor that hides a more indirect level of speech. I listen and lean into and watch. Note the books on your desk and order one so that I might know the situation better.

Showing up and showing down trying to find a footing.  Like a back up singer accustomed to the solo I do-wop with the chorus. Inadvertently though it always seems I’m always a bit out of step.  

Found a niche that feels new and maybe a spot to grow.  No scaffolding here this I know so build it for myself until I go. 

Always ready to stay but life’s so short so much to see.  I’m a traveler loyal the most to me. 

windlogged / Alexis Wolfe

sitting in the window again wishing i had 
a desk, its like sitting at the easel 
of the word—sentence jumble, vessel / portal 
and so on, you know—remembering my mouth 
could be blown to bits but it probably won’t.
lately I wake windsick, the wind bangs my 
house loose and something bigger than an animal
is scratching up the attic—a young opossum
is called a joey if you didn’t know and their cries 
sound sort of like pushing a shopping cart 
with a broken wheel. Each time I hang my laundry 
I retrieve it a few hours later from the dirt. 
Each time my phone rings I scream and the wind
picks up. Someone always wants me 
to meet their dog  walk their dog  watch my dog.
I feel about the birds the way everyone must feel
about their dogs—they’re all my pets and invited 
to dinner. Last year, I ruined my friends shoes and now
she won’t talk to me any more: no one is worth more 
than a good pair of Hokas. I used to walk into a new
city but now i’ve drunk all of them. But still isn’t there so 
much? enough burn bright? to make a myth of war?

March - Poem 6

First Day at the Conference / Kathleen Bednarek

When there are this many voices
When the ceiling is forty feet higher than any 

person here
Where there are designated tables with nothing 

on them that could be sold so people know they 
can sit without purpose

Where this is non-fiction and the essayist 
recommends free chocolates 

The amount of voices sounds like the ocean & 
the closer the voices are to me they sound like the 

people on the shore
When I don’t know what to say I say “thank you”

This table is made to look like grey sand
It’s the first time I’ve ever been asked “are you 

using this bench?” Though I’m the only one here 
& I am not sitting on the bench 

I’m at the ocean sounding like the 
people on the shore 

A Photo / Mymona Bibi

A photo of a ripped photo -
torn in the shape of a border
in a land, in a tongue, in a house.
My camera clicks,
captures a moment 
to be sent on whatsapp 
captioned in a different language -
receive a city fertile with my
body in a photo of a photo 
with the edges worn like rubble.
Hate speeds up
the decomposition process.
The photo of a photo is deleted.

SAYINGS / Susan Hankla

Keep your feet on the ground even though friends flatter you.

You are on the verge of something big.

Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.

When the moment comes take the top one.

Man knows more than he understands.

Don't be afraid to smile, you never know who's falling in love with it.

Want to catch the fishes, one must go home and build the net first.

You have a remarkable power which you are not using.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Life always gets harder near the summit.

Keep your feet firmly on the ground, even if your friends flatter you.
You are on the verge of something great.
Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.
When the right moment comes, choose the best one.
People know more than they understand.
Don't be afraid to smile; you never know who will fall in love with it.
If you want to catch fish, you first have to go home and build a net.
You have extraordinary power that you don't use.
It's much easier to be critical than to be right.
Life always gets harder at the top.
If you want to stew on the ground, and you're your own child.
If Jy and midde-in iets groots.
Logic is dead wrong and dead gees.
I want to die well, die the best.
Mense see more as what happened.
Moenie bang wees comes to glitter; I don't want to live.
And he went to the net.
He will build krag what you cannot.
This makes us believe in wees as we reg in wees.
The die lewe is highly moeiliker daarbo.

Split Personality  / Amy Haworth

so Dimness asked / Christina McCleanhan

Should the Lord ignore your prayer, your pleas, your bargaining tantrum,
what will you do? 

Well, I will…
Sing!   
I will sing the scripture of my grief. 
whole notes!
            high notes!
                 the sweet, pleading dusk notes! 
I Will Lift My Arms in Praise and Holler His Name
to 
the preacher
the choir loft sopranos,
the congregation of early morning baritone frogs,
the man spitting tobacco in the mud by my mailbox,
the child who is too grown for cherry Kool-Aid,
and the sparrows. 

And could you still submit, if He does not answer? 
If his back turns on you in disappointment, 
what then will you do? 

Well, I will…
Wait!
I will wait without worry, a storm’s mischief 
becomes joy 
beneath the Dogwood trees, 
where I will rest until 
His peace commands my feet.
Tired, though I may be. 

Oh, ho, ho, if death’s stillness bears
upon your tethered mortality, 
would you still extend 
the Eirene of your Father’s grace
to a fellow traveler? 
Might your fatigue be better soothed 
in a cold, dark dwelling place?

Go now, small one
save your strength 
for those in need of a shoulder. 
Go now, tepid beast, 
go peddle your Belial’s privation 
to those whose foolish tongues
confuse vinegar for wine. 
Me, I will sing. 

Incomprehensible    / Elizabeth McGraw

Lady at the airport lounge in a language I don’t speak. Who talks this much so early in the morning?

Friends travel to town and you’re having a personal crisis and barely engage.

6am flights arriving an hour prior to boarding.  3am wake up call.

What has been left unsaid that needs to be spoken at this hour?

Incomprehensible.

Tickets to a rodeo that I saw last year. Do I really need to see the mutton busting again?  Don’t even listen to the rascal flatts, no offense.

Meeting starts at 6pm so jumped on the 6am flight. Naturally.

Sold the old cooper for the new fangled ride and I hate it.  Cameras and all. 

Drive 13 hours every summer and still never a phone call in between.  

Left the family chat group. Have Facebook friends don’t need more.

Hosted a month, never heard another word. I did the same. 

Snow in March at this latitude.

Incomprehensible.

contemporary bicoastal lullaby / Alexis Wolfe

won't always be this 
simple: thunderclap,
bioluminescent sea, soft language
begetting breath beneath 
   beating chest. shh 
shh shh whispersongs
soothe even sung by yellow
ing teeth. lay still in this
wet quiet, thumb in your
mouth, invite
surprise—

March - Poem 5

For Art on His Birthday / Kathleen Bednarek

When I consider art it has a double meaning. As much as the Tate Modern it was a September
installation of clothing and records in front of your parent’s house, a yard sale to help you pay to make
it to Peru. The excess of your namesake Rimbaud who I always thought of as your kindred
spirit/brother. Always Adventure ADVENTURE. Excellent. Worry is a waste of the imagination 

living fully is creating inspirational quotes by the way you are. And I don’t think it’s ever over? 
Macchu Picchu is otherworldly, to sit up in the clouds with the condensation and stones in your hair.
Wanting to be taken rather than granted. Like death. I have no idea when. It’s something we are all
granted. It’s probably all an energy song anyway and you are still jamming at the Oasis where the 

jukebox is thankfully useless.  Pick B4 and keep running barefoot in my neurons. I’ll meet you at the
streetlight on the corner where atoms have vibrated into appearing as Philadelphia. And it’s be excellent
to one another, not just a quality. It’s a function. As we are all in the car coming back home laughing in
our bodies.

We never needed eyes for this / Mymona Bibi

I’ve never slept with the filth of noise stressed and stretched a place to thrive between legs and behind them - in a tent - I once nearly died in a tent suffocating underneath them - in a library chewing

on hardback for a chance to be safe before I tasted blood and flesh, teeth sunken sucking whistling inside, spitting outside, the city is loud from the curdle of birth, gutters filled - relief when the cloud silenced the sun and sometimes the running palpitation of an orgasm ripples through - lightning! off go the lights we never needed eyes for this - down sets the sun we never needed eyes for this - in a friend I feel unnamed bites bumps slow down / reconstruct / retile / sew the tarmac closed / taut / stressed and stretched / now - round 2!

I choose to live with a thumb in my mouth not my thumb but my city which tastes like everyone I’ve ever loved.

Mrs. Wyeth / Susan Hankla

A woman rests her arms on a windowsill of a wooden house and looks out.

 She wears a wide-brimmed leather hat and earth brown cable knit sweater buttoned up to her throat.

 Her arms are crossed on the windowsill, and one pinky is up. The gesture expresses openness, maybe.

 She looks out the open window that has no screen. It swings out. What could be captured in her hatchet-blade gaze?

 Who is she? She's her famous husband's, the artist's wife. But who does she think she is?

 Is she counting geese? She wears a man's hat every day. My mind drifts to when my husband almost died.

 I wore his brown Stetson to see him at the rehab place. He is also a well-known artist. He has nine or ten 

 visitors every day. Some get there before I'm even up. For years I was angry all the time. Now I've just made 5 copies 

 of his DNR. He tells the nurses at the rehab place that I never come see him. I'm there every day. When home by myself, 

 I do his laundry and turn the lights out early and look out at the sparkling snow covering unraked leaves.

Alligator Alley  / Amy Haworth

The first time we drove
straight
across Florida
it was you and me. 
Running away while we had a couple of hours
to be who we were before a baby.
I hoped to see an alligator
instead there were only rivers of grass and broad winged birds
Perched like Kings
Looking
Watching
Holding the sky?
After that — these birds — I no longer cared
about an alligator.
It was their nonchalance that made me pause
as we moved 70 miles per hour
they stood air-drying 
Aloof to the encroaching asphalt and the noise
Part of my soul bowed as they took flight.
Their spell cast, I learned their name,
Anhinga a’ñinga anhangá
and rolled it over, tasting it, teaching my mouth to say it.
Holding your hand as we drove
straight across
something had shifted 
tamed
in that wild land.

The Definition Of / Christina McCleanhan

To kiss 
is to exchange
lit divinity
without interruption. 
 as friend
      lover
      family 
      or foe
this spit-worthy violation of vulnerability 
is a mark 
to be wiped across memory’s sword. 

And you,
no longer my beautiful man,
        you met
the ugliness of my raw eagerness 
with watering can and trowel 
in the sturdiness
of your gentle hands. 

There.
Sunrise came early,
on your steps,
in the cold.
Our bare feet found the truth
I would leave in your home.

i was unfair…

    … cruel…

The shelves were not mine to claim. 

On my front stoop   / Elizabeth McGraw

We’ve known each other for ages and it’s really just years. 

We reach out with our stories and fears.

We share no Astro sign.

We believe in each other and it feels kind.

You say you love us but you love the unit more. What we are making together in outside circles has struck a real chord.

I don’t hear it from my family or an internal crew.

So when you travel to say you’re starting a family and it starts with you.

I’m a sister

I’m an auntie 

I’m a friend

Your new sweet family is just starting out. 

I hope for you the blessings of imperfection and nonsense that lets you holler and shout.

A cacophony that shatters all the rules

A love that abides and ultimately cures. 

It’s a world for the loving and adventurous alike. 

Don’t be fooled it’s hard but for the living it’s a calling and a dreading and a life. 

And like all things never lasts. 

Pinto Canyon, after the phone rings / Alexis Wolfe

Julia calls and it’s earthflight 
and blinding, calls me her bright&shiny, like if 
we stare too long into each other’s swirling 
we get a headache. She tells me about a coworker 
who didn’t cry at his girlfriend’s or mother’s 
funeral, though they were only a week apart—
he makes me believe in parallel realities, she says 
incoherence and your own power are hunting 
you down. If a man asked me to trade 
places, I’d place one hand in a hot 
frying pan and the other into a blender. I walk 
down the winding and know the meadowlarks 
sing for me, I hold the cows’ cries of separation 
and whisper may what is for them never pass
them by. Once, a bald professor read my account 
of an infant’s forehead and said this beauty can only
be written by a woman. I resented it, but knew 
what he meant. That same child once suffocated 
on a dog toy and I fishhooked him faster 
than spit, faster than fingers. The same one who, 
allergic to living, sometimes turned blue chewing 
oats. I would balance him on my forearm 
like a small clown, thrust my palm until he blushed 
pink and snot smeared his eyes. There are so many 
things I still cannot do alone. Julia says, I can’t wait 
to raise a child—it’s like going to war! 
Of course, there are more apt metaphors.
Of course, there are a million poets 
dragging tonight, but she called me

March - Poem 4

Day 4  / Kathleen Bednarek

I’ve counted on my fingers, counted on flagrant red petals that slipped  
and counted on people who ended up being known by their actions like came through or left me stranded. 
Counted on paychecks, counted paycheck dollars, counted days until, days since, counted blessings, thought of absolution (really?) after ten Hail Marys        
Hide and Seek counting to 100, sometimes skipped or sped through the numbers, eyes closed, eyes opened seeing where you were. Counted time 
with no drinks; years went by and we spoke across tables about time as a free fall, the rising and falling of each Worm Moon or Strawberry Moon, eclipses hidden by weathermen counting tenths of inches of rain. My height marked on the wall purple magic marker line ____ below my best friend’s (for now my line is above her eleven year old daughter’s). My,     
my, my….no it’s not mine. Impermanence–this breath on my 
lip, the fall and rise of the belly. I’ve been dreaming of a butterfly; fake snoring whistling like a cartoon character, one eye open to see you giggling, I blink and fully grown living in Manhattan, a city of how many people? Taste the innumerableness of this soup! Floating carrot and translucent onion swirling, dash of pepper, splash of dark vinegar to cut. 
How I can’t even begin and then do 
and then I am borrowed to–
About thirty minutes into 
the science show about black holes: the universe is expanding though it may be infinite

Swollen / Mymona Bibi

the city swelled like the curve of a cat’s back
when I ran out before dawn shivering
from the police in my apparitions,
you sliced the moon and found a sun inside it unkissed
dying - rays untouched.
the light of the new sun burnt the apparition from memory, 
we stumbled on cobblestones back home 
where we believed we were meant to go,
before you could help me stitch up the moon 
so the nights would be ready for the sleepers.
in the padding of the night-cat’s paw
which crawled away from us is a reminder:
we can’t go back to bed until the city empties itself. 

Introductions / Amy Haworth

Inspired by the beautiful prompt and poem by George Ella Lyons 

I am from sagebrush
and last year's aspen leaves
I am from frozen eyelashes
and roller skating in covered courts.
I am from goodbyes to sister friends
from moon boots and mittens
I am from will you be my friend
and green mountain cabins and cards.
I am from outside looking in
hollow longing filled with good grades
    and folded notes
I am from bridesmaid dresses
and moonlight snowshoes.
I am from U-Haul adventures
and severance packages.
I am from new year's sparks 
turned rings below purple mountains.
I am from bedrest to baby
at 36th and Vallejo 
I am from sea shore and man 'o war
finding patterns as a doula for change.
I am the cycle of the sun
watching age wrinkle as she teaches
I am awake. I am alive.
I am.

Dear Spring, Come! Quick! / Christina McCleanhan

Close your eyes. Listen…
to the thawed dirt…the robin’s shuffle…the barking dog
the distant siren…the neighbor’s saw…

Hold out your hand. Wait for Manna.
Turn the palm upward. Wait for forgiveness.
Clench into a fighting fist. Wait for peace.

First, you are exposed flesh; then, age and hydration become evident
when tendons resist the stretch. 
Why must our joints strike in protest?
“Kneel,” I tell you, “Kneel.”  
Pick up the spade. Slice into the earth. 
Slide the worms, the rocks, the necrotic rot into the bucket. 
Ignore its missing handle. 
Renewal is rewarded with nourishing grace, not presented elegance.

Now, be still.  Breathe.
One beat, two beats, three.
Space rests on your skin against your lines, fingerprints, 
and
the knuckles meant for gripping life...

Attention-
offer it, plant it often.
Go ahead, share your fear.
Exist.

Horizontal  / Elizabeth McGraw

Is it Monday, God no.
It’s Tuesday.
No alarm and it’s 4am.
Stayed awake with a single idea about work until 6:05.
True alarm.
First drop off at 7:18 but not before a heated debate on the term crashed out.
Husband in Amsterdam.
As it relates to sister.
Second round begins.
This is not torture.
Torture is knowing you leave for the bus stop in forty-seven minutes and wonder what might you accomplish. Shower for self.
Food for others for the entire day. Quick text. Morning Joe. A novel. 
Walk the dog. 
Head covered. Alarm set. A recovery.
New day. Same day. 
All is well. 

Grievances, Dreams / Alexis Wolfe

You have to dance, not
over-dance, someone said.

People are just like grass, 
Agnes Martin tells me:
that is the way to freedom. 
If you can imagine you’re a rock,
or—even better—a grain of sand, 
you are free. To be free 
one must summon a vision of quiet, 
one must not over-dance. We are 
our own dragon, longing 
to hold one.

When you wade in the river,
you are just like me. When your 
hair is caught in your car 
windows, you are just like 
me. A function of language
is to relate—relatively, I am dreaming
alternatives to Subject/Object 
syntax structure—colonialism burned into 
the brittle bones of our 
language. Each sentence 
a door, yet: He (subject, dominant) holds
her (object, passive). We speak 
Corporation—it is all so 
boring. What about Subject/Subject-ing
with me? We hold we. The body and 
the language resist, there’s one. 
This is less about listing grievances 
and more about summoning a vision 
of quiet within the school of Dreams. 

This evening I biked over a hill
and smacked my face on the orange
moon. I couldn’t stop squinting 
into the flat horizon—Now, 
what is the function of that?