April - Poem 11
The Bridge contd/ Maureen Alsop
Fluid-submerged-angelic sun, within the rapport
of our language, the sun—?
Stagnant sun, surreptitious and cold. Tall, toppling,
tariff-ridden sun, what rooms
did you keep? Patterning back across the sea. Coralita
Flowers & Hibiscus Vines strangle out the light of this
wedding: the sea’s photograph, a blotted impulse,
bric-a-brac, deception.
Love In The Dentist's Office / Bob Bradshaw
My dentist leans over me.
She’s a voice behind the light.
When she takes off
her face guard,
she’s perfect—
like her smile.
I run my tongue
along my teeth, stones
ragged as a reef's.
I blush, ashamed
that my mouth
is so common.
I want to talk about Van Gogh
or Wuthering Heights
or….Jane Eyre
but words like "gingivitis”
pepper her vocabulary.
As a rebuke
she hands me a mirror.
"Do you see?”
Before I can ask her
to elope with me
to Fiji,
she hands me
two bottles
of mouth
wash
Agamemnon’s Engagement / Stan Galloway
Brother, you will think me fickle –
Nothing new!
That sister –
Clytemnestra –
she’s got brass
I go hard just seeing her
send a servant cringing to the stables
or survey a room along her subtle nose.
I’ll have her –
I know she has her eye on me –
and I’ll take her
to heights she’s never known –
she will ogle what’s beneath this armor
beg
for more.
You take the other –
I will be your advocate
but know you’ll have the poorer choice –
you will be bound to Sparta –
better that though than you living
in my shadow back in Mycenae.
As brother-kings, we’ll have everything we see!
Annunciation / Ava Hu
*
You are yellow
with pollen.
Counted apple seeds
in your palm.
Hymns stain
your lips.
A moth-winged flower
opens.
A single pistil
emerges
from the throat
of the flower
sticky,
potent.
When I shift beyond
the mind—
the blossoming
heavy, sweet.
A lifeboat,
a song.
*
Wakulla Springs / Kirsten Miles
i .
heels drag the sandy bottom
holding against the slight current
little waves lap along her cheeks
in the shallows
trickle into her ears
between her lips
hair sways with the slipstream
teasing toward the deep outflow
As though there were no terror
in a hole
ii.
the glass-bottomed boat a portal
the crystal surface colorless as air
suspended over wintering manatees
billowy eel grass darting minnows
the shadow of the massive spring
her father is a bright stroke against
the dark cave mouth
she is a small softness leaning over the rail
her skin a contracted shudder
iii.
this fear is not a wall
but a map’s beginning
she watches him clear the deep
finds the rhythm in the spring’s slow pulse
this is the floor of every cavern she will later crawl
the depth of every ocean she will one day cross
learning how to stay afloat
iv
fifty years later adrift
once more downstream
her daughter spies a least bittern in the reeds
manatee and calf swim alongside
pale shadows over those same green channels
minnows dart in the eel grass
night herons crowned in black
rise in a croak of surprise
no glass portal to reveal
the water’s liquid biography
urban sediment an opaque erasure
ghosting the spring’s mouth
The Secret of Us / Sergiy Pustogarov
i wonder if you miss the secret of us;
all that we held within our bosoms
at just nineteen years old.
skinny dipping in the river down the way--
and laying on each other’s chest after
puffing away at a pack of malboros.
we spent hours laughing together,
while our lips became magnets for each other;
and we laughed thinking about if mom ever found out.
we were mesmerized by the peach fuzz trailing on our chest,
while our hands stayed tangled together:
and we told ourselves this was forever.
when all along we knew this was just
a teenage fever dream,
that lasted every weekend for six months.
but it could never give us more than
a few days of solitude,
with the sun setting in the background.
and when the winds turned harsh;
my mother finally figured out
i was down by the boys all the time.
she slammed my bedroom door shut,
and screamed my name as a fag in the papers;
just to make sure i could never love again.
but i still taste your lips every time
that i hit a malboro drunk at the end of a night--
fifteen years later.
imagine you dance on highwires / nat raum
the issue is not the walking of the tightrope—it’s the strength of the net that catches you when you fall. you could balance for hours if only you had learned to trust nylon. too many things called themselves strong and then tore before your eyes for your liking. you know how to look for where the weak spots are. no one believes you. you are the kind of helpless you swore you could never be, wide-eyed in the presence of a spotlight and all these witnesses. you stand on only your left big toe. nobody claps. you skip and skitter to flute-notes and lose your footing. everyone gasps. deep down, you know even if you can’t find the places where weaving wears thin, they are still there, waiting to drop you one last time.
Poem on Fire (Read the News or I Will Cook Your Notebooks) / Daniel Avery Weiss
Your books are booking the book
burnings (your kindle is kindling).
I am going to microwave your mother
board. Pressing “add +30sec” is the key
board. I have taken your word salad and tossed it
out the window. Your five syllable words are
defenestrated.
Deleted your oeuvre, retyped it in Microsoft Word,
and exited without saving.
I have found your latest collection and eaten it,
page by leathery page. It was signed. I ate your name.
I cooked a reduction of your sonnet and now
there are six lines. I wept
at his wily grave and grieved my grieving father and
gorged on a yellow star. Eat this poem when you are done or we will be
disintegrated.
I need you to at least pretend you’re helpful / MK Zariel
a toddler points at a sculpture, saying someone couldn't have made that
the paper-maché gleams under museum light, crafted by someone
uncredited. i tell them that every object they've ever seen is a made thing
and much of it used to be trash. they look amazed, then underwhelmed, then
eventually distracted—the pasted-together dead trees shine with the certainty
that only art for toddlers can. it has one job—to impress without being destroyed—
and i know the damn feeling. i used to be trash too and then i was a girl
and then i was an object to project ambitions onto and then i was a useful idiot
and then i came out. every trans kid is a made thing—sculpted by
the relentless pulling-at-threads, intuition soft like a whisper
i can never tell if i'm having identity revelations or just
making something out of nothing—but hey, isn't that what art is?
the kids continue to gossip, this time about a girl in their class
who they call crazy. instead of telling them to be respectful i just smile
hey, i am too, but i'm pretty fun, right? nobody laughs.
i hope someone pieces me back together into something more beautiful.
