April - Poem 13

The Bridge  contd / Maureen Alsop

The sea is alive and says he knows you. Is watching you.  Each day was west and prophetic. The one who is full, the one who speaks through light, the great mind shaking in weakness and the body succumbing. Perhaps the sea will exist now. She is a seed of beginning to us—Wattle heath, redgum. Innocuous and near in this crimson afternoon. The pigeons, a static veil over the fetid postwar ground over a windless, blood-ridden
grassy landscape of hidden sand dunes, weathered pastures. We took from each other a tiny psalm as each raised an axe, a squared token, the sky— sounded our platform—the radio’s seething voices scratch the nightsky. Together we take something from one another. No, we destroy ourselves

A Heist  / Bob Bradshaw

 It’s lunch
 and I’m unwrapping
 a long hot dog
 carefully, like it was
 a priceless artifact
 just arrived from Beijing
 for the Asian Art Museum
 behind me.
   
 I’m happy.
 Why shouldn’t I be?
 It’s like any other day,
 as I sit here watching
 families line up 
 for the Academy of Sciences
 to open.
 
 That's why I ignore 
 a gull's approach,
 his wings raised
 like a street seller's 
 open coat.

 As I go to shoo him off
 his partner sweeps in
 snatching my hot dog
 with the deftness 
 of a Paris or NY
 pickpocket.    

There are never cops 
 when a big heist 
 happens in daylight.

 Remember 
 the '78 robbery
 when thieves dropped
 through a skylight
 at the De Young Museum,
 kidnapping a Rembrandt,

 well, not the old man himself
 but his “Portrait 
 of a Rabbi”?

 But I can’t wait years
 for my masterpiece
 of dog and mustard and relish
 to be recovered.
 
 But what am I to do
 with no cops around

 when that gull strides by, 
 my hotdog brazenly
 held in his beak
 like a Havana
 cigar?

Kalahari Autumn / Stan Galloway

 A cloud of quelea
descends on the tree
beside the waterhole
where the lioness
had coughed in the night.

The thunder and rain
refreshed the grassland,
cheered the air,
slicked trail and sunrise.

Soon no rain will fall,
the grass will mat itself,
the ground squirrels will
see a universe away.

Most animals will seek the delta
or rivers farther north
or die of thirst
because every rainstorm
might be the last.

Heathen / Ava Hu

*

Swirl of the river’s silk,
breath without a name.

River, take me in.
Carp fins fan over river rocks.

The river shifts course.
Lakes, tributaries—

your fingertips in water.
Come to me,

black rocks speak
over the pull of tides.

One last swirl, you said.
The water takes your ankles,

your heart
beats.

You slip under.
The water dreams you.

*

Ode to the Western Skunk Cabbage   / Kirsten Miles

Our feet wetted in soft spring clover
e-street rabbits dot the roadsides

in  spotted brights and darks.
Camelias pink up yards as we walk.

Shane park’s low slung bog western
red cedars a braided rampart 

woody sweetness wafting around us
secret trails labyrinth through emerging horse tails

lattice the grass into murky depths
a primal, swampy incense.


Musk mingled with mossy earth 
brilliant  lanterns thrust skyward 

rising from the black  muck of the bog
and we, walkers on the cedar plank


are granted this: the sudden, sharp scent
the yellow spathe like a cupped hand.

To build a space for this is to admit
that our souls need more than a groomed lawn.


The swamp’s honest stink
the unfurling of feathery fern

reminding us that even the sodden mud
knows how to nurture light.

For My Mother (it’s me again)   / Sergiy Pustogarov

this one’s 
for the roses i’ve planted by random sidewalks,
and the bouquets i’ve given to women
holding my head when i cry.
this one’s 
to the store aisles i slowly walk around the corner of,
wondering if somehow your grey hair will appear.
this one’s 
to every phone call i always answer,
because i never know if it would be
your voice on the other side.
this one’s
for every ring i don’t get,
for every unanswered voicemail 
i’ve left on your machine.
this one’s
to the way my heart broke
when i saw you, and you didn’t see me.
i’m sorry you looked so lost,
gasping for answers.
this one’s 
for the day i asked another to stand with me,
on my own wedding day because 
you were nowhere to be found
when i found the love of my life. 
this one’s 
for the mother who stopped being a mother,
and how i’ve learned that somehow life was still good--
because of the other mothers who didn’t step back,
but stepped forward for your child.

alternate universe: non stop ecstatic dancing / nat raum

my friend tells me the title of soft cell’s 1982 remix mini
and i imagine it: myself doing mashed potato roger rabbit
reject dougies, same moves over generations with different
names. there are only so many ways to move your body
to rhythm and i still haven’t learned to do it right. does it
matter? i don’t sing. i don’t dance. the spirit moves me 
just fine—it’s that nothing besides surgery is that serious. 
birds innately know the way to glide among cirrus striations, 
and they don’t have little bird cops to say the angle of your wings 
is imprecise. we ought to bury ourselves as impostors, resurrect 
shamelessness. bees make honey to live, not to add sweet
to tea. when was the last time i lived for myself? i’d wager
years ago, wasted at art school parties, free of the concept
of flawlessness, arms waving at random like a tube man.

Haibun for the Tail End of Winter / Daniel Avery Weiss

Winter has stretched itself out as a cat, yawning its snowy limbs out wide and long until their muscles quiver, and then retracting. Whether this burgeoning spring pads out a circle, then lies down and rests (gentle purr like pollen!) or leaps into a tree, watches for prey—we will see. There was a man who pulled his dog's leash in tight so he could take one full minute to smell rich branches of pink. The dog stood still and blithely observed a nearby squirrel.

Cherry blossom
out my open window.
Leaf lands in my lap.

fluctuations II / MK Zariel

a text message poem
either i can solve the problem with a big boundary or i can't
in my defense it is late and i am tired (and gay)
this was a cis white dude with cis white opinions
they’re simultaneously too hard and too easy
i can't exactly recruit one of my friends to come and hang with him
while I'm out of the house.
i’m out of the house right now lol
i can’t think or text clearly
do you want advice on the cat disruptions in the early morning?
thank you for helping aid my continued procrastination, i really
appreciate it!!
these are the perils of being cooler and more mature than other people!
i feel like i’m so upset i can’t think
thank you for correcting me before i fully judged