April - Poem 16
The Bridge contd/ Maureen Alsop
Hyperbolic unable to stick the lens to the sky sun
Pitter patter sun
We love Whitman forever stand in his shade and weep sun
Blanket: sun
One done and done sun
Dun-colored sun, of course
Morphed sun or morphological sun or morphine sun
Where is the
Rehearsed sun
Preplanned pancreatic sun
Death star of Dionysus
Need I say it
Mute sun
Injured sun
Rapture sun of nosebleed
Nose to the sun
Spaceship view of
Performative sun
Generational sun
Eliot’s Gerontion sun, a depraved sun, for sure, with many other features
Generous sun, give me some foxglove
Traditional sun
Liberated sun
Paper-mache sun, what earth is this?
Sunday sundae sun
Distrustful loathsome lover sun
Triangular sun (at dusk)
Subdued sun
Haloed hallowed held
Multitudinous sun
Awash with
Dribbling diminished dementia disordered sun of contagion & hysteria
A bloke’s sun
Old-mate-sun
Misguided sun
Bay sun
King Kong / Bob Bradshaw
What was Kong thinking
as he carried off Ann?
He gazed down
at her as tenderly
as if she were Skull Island's
first orchid.
Ann screamed,
and kept fainting
as if the steam and clouds
of the jungle island
were chloroform fumes.
Did Kong think opposites
would eventually attract?
What were his plans?
"The Eighth Wonder of the World!"
Kong became the biggest star
in The Big Apple.
How I cheered
when he broke loose,
his chains shaken off
like party streamers.
I knew it would turn out badly
when he kidnapped Ann,
climbing the Empire State building
the way any ape
takes to the treetops
when threatened.
What was his plan,
to live forever with Ann
in the world's tallest tree house?
What did Kong know of Helldivers,
their bullets swarming him
like bees from a broken hive?
We gathered around him as he lay
in the street.
Was Kong just another romantic
who could never
think things through,
just another fella
who had fallen for a girl?
Or like many of us, was Kong more,
a creature unable to adapt
in a fast changing planet,
Ann Darrow like the old ways,
something he could never
cling to forever?
How It Ends / Stan Galloway
The ring lies on the shelf
the dust of disconnection
deflecting sun
a dark circle that once meant
what?
Can you promise yourself until death
when you wake up to the dawning awareness
that the one you’ve given your life to
no longer thinks of you?
Intimacy devolved into indifference
emotional eviction long before awareness
love like rose petals fallen from an old bouquet
unswept in an empty room.
Honey Guide / Ava Hu
*
We drift
to and fro in a boat.
Topography of what
we mean to say:
the lines of mountains
pull to a thread at dusk.
Put your hand over the side
of the boat.
The spotted honeyguide
leads us to the hive
hoping we destroy it
so he can eat what we leave behind.
*
Spring on west 11th street / Kirsten Miles
pink peony snouts are breaching ground in the verge
love-in-a-mist throws delicate green tangles
amidst the California poppies rising from
western cedar mulch I shoveled over the grass
my contribution to lawn replacement now
a thoroughfare delighting neighborhood dog
walkers, threading through the bleach-bright driftwood
tall iris spears, donated rhododendron, silvery artichoke
last summer the lupines stacked their star shaped leaf clusters
thick purple buds tightly tiered in colorful spires
the neighborhood held its breath, or at least I did, anticipation
drawing me out each morning with the dawn
today nine deer, those local demi-gods, carefully dismantle each
new shoot, pulled from the ground and laid neatly to rest
Hour Glass Crystals / Sergiy Pustogarov
she sat at the desk,
heard the scrape of the wooden chair
along the creaking floor,
and turned the hourglass on its side--
peering as the sand crystals
pulled by an invisible force
fell to their opposing ends,
and the clock stopped ticking.
here she said,
“i can remember this moment--
when times stands frozen,
as the moments are no more.
this is where love is born,
when power knows no greed,
and brutality cannot steal from being--
for nothing is yet to be born nor die.”
but as she sat there, she heard the rush of oceans
from inside a simple ball of glass;
and knew that even then
the waters were calling back for their power.
gravity began reaching out her arms
to claim back the sands of time.
for existence, if ever frozen
loses hope for the tide to come tomorrow.
social transition (non-transgender version) / nat raum
here i am mixing beer with lemonade and saying
i’m a failson, job a rapidly moving target. tax day
said you didn’t need that body, right? those organs
so shiny and unharvested, those legs you wish you could
cut off anyway? i shove the feeling down and ask
table twenty-two if they want more bread to soak
up their piquillo pepper sauce. i am impermanent
and impotent at once; i don’t know where to keep
putting all of these skeletons i am amassing. what
i want to know is how can you hear i’m a hurricane,
say no, i love you for the precise curvature of your eyewall,
the power behind the winds, then back away when you see
the true strength of the storm? you promised
an exorcism and delivered another dent in the armor.
what, you thought this was the only time i’ve wrestled
my demons and lost? you don’t even know my full name.
Post op for cataract and the azalea / Daniel Avery Weiss
After a distant friend’s social media post
Broken pinky and the rosebush.
Intravenous immunoglobulin and the tulip.
Bomb and the forget-me-nots.
Names on my cast and the dandelions.
Gutted house and the magnolia.
Thigh fracture and the begonia.
2nd degree burn and my basil.
Tape over needle in hand and the foxglove.
Post-regret scar and the lavender.
Eighteen stitches removed and the marigolds.
COVID test and the water lilies.
Our bodies die and dill.
self-portrait as my cat / MK Zariel
i’ll make a small tortured sound anytime someone
leaves the house and i don’t know why—desperate
for community, for something to cling to
i’ll knock something over and it will be loud
and immaterial. people are used to me
by now. every stranger i meet talks about me
like i’m not here. i scratch the couch
and it doesn’t respond. i scratch the wall
and leave a mark like graffiti like an endearing
story to be told online. i am a meme template
i am suspicious of most food i am in need
of attention and also want to be left alone
i could chew on this. i can’t quite manage to fall over.
