April - Poem 18
untitled / Maureen Alsop
I came from the place of fire I wrote don’t write, invent complaint. People stopped leaving me. People came day in day out to find praise which was better than everything I’d been used to giving. In the hibiscus season, people wore the noise outside my head. Harder I said I said where is the leader now. I was eager for every wish. I was parts of the wish and far pushed to become it.
Wu Wei / Bob Bradshaw
I loved my ’61 beetle.
I could hear in its chugging
four cylinder engine
its steady advice:
"Just keep going.
Keep going”.
Driving along Big Sur
I saw the sea
for the first time—
its arms spread out
as if saying “Take it
all in…”
Like a red-winged blackbird
I wear my heart
on my sleeve.
Yet I know the wisdom
of letting go—
like the coast’s cypress,
the storm’s winds
surfing through it…
“Go with the flow,”
a friend advised.
“The future’s like
your beetle, without
a gas gauge
or even a way
to know how far to go.
You're a poet.
Trust your gut.
Wherever it leads.”
That sounded Zen,
advice the Kerouac in me
wanted to hear.
Years later,
my heart’s mileage
piling up, I travel
the off roads mostly,
tapping along to music
on the radio, as happy
to be singing alone
as I would be if Bob Marley
and the Wailers
were bouncing along
in my back seat
jammin’…
One and Two / Stan Galloway
Alone contains the word one, not two
As do abandoned and lonely
One is found in stone and bone
Things hardened against abrasion
Together sounds like two from the start
Connection as in network and trustworthy
Two become artwork and understood
Soft, alive, empowered, too.
Water Walker / Ava Hu
*
Moon crosses water.
High winds, witchcraft,
the rising of waves.
Walk on water water.
Water whose devotion
knows no end.
Speaking water,
shivering water,
water with many mouths.
Do you lift
the feet of the god?
Do we live in salt?
Can we walk on water?
*
Driving his Bluejay to Tallahassee / Kirsten Miles
into the sultry southern air this car
the same deep, ink-wash blue of that
Volkswagon hatchback that carried us through
the seventies when we were young and invulnerable.
the AC is a ghost, and the air is a riot of wild ginger
honeysuckle, a spicy, blooming that fills me
I describe it when he calls, erasing for a minute that
metallic scent of his hospital room, all the wires
he is finding his footing again
a stubborn rally in the heart of the storm
the machines losing their argument with his will.
I am steering our memories toward the celebration
the Bluejay humming a low, steady prayer
this feels less like a goodbye
and more like a reunion
as my father’s stubborn pursuit of life
which introduced us accompanies me
I lean into the curve, breathing easy in the petaled air,
driving through the scent of everything that’s still alive.
On the 25 / Sergiy Pustogarov
quarter
century
flip
it on its side
roll
it round
the table
guess
which side
comes up
first
lucky
poor
never
know
which
one you get
till
all the fate
is told
heads
or
tales
never tell
their
truth
till halfway
through
the game
life
never shares
its secrets
till halfway
through
its thrall
guess
i’ll be back
at fifty
tell yall
which one
made
it better
heads or tales
coping mechanisms / nat raum
my body finds the concept of recoil to be an afterthought.
i am not immune from being the problem—after all, ask
for impossible things, get incomprehensible results.
i could still stand to move a mountain or two, terraform
my shrinking territory into something easier to traverse,
hazardless. sometimes i think i have sculpted enough
for a lifetime; sometimes i see only progress ahead,
jagged dead pines studding craggy peaks, deep rapids
which swallow those brave enough to dare. looking
behind me is carnage, ahead still a void. and i still
discover bruises of my own, say where did this come from?
and shove my thumb into the center of gruesome
purple blemishes—i have to test the pain, push myself
to every one of its edges. i am as pink inside as outside,
as soft as i always have been. it’s all relative. the present
finds me identifying five things i can see,
four things i can hear.
Sonnet of Marmalade Chicago / Daniel Avery Weiss
I yearned to eat the yellow as a child.
A skyline yawning wide with sulfur wings.
A hundred late night lemon lives alive
in looming towers. Children teethe on each
and every planet in their path—the men
in suits and oath that yesterday looks like
today. Stupidity is just a thing
that carves a face from light pollution. Street
lights can digest a city whole into
a snowbank now—the gnarled limbs that gave
this here its somber glow, which so gave name
to clouds and nights, are now a mess of LED.
And what am I allowed to do but lie
awake and mourn the orange in my head.
(personal) growth / MK Zariel
social awkwardness is not a knife; it is a dull ache
deep in the marrow of my bones. i get annoyed
and yet don't notice for a solid month—don't notice
until i'm already venting, brittle truth and honeyed lies mingling
to form something still easy to ignore. i try to paraphrase
to explain with the utmost accuracy—by then you've walked away
you've cast off understanding like the layers
you shed in the early days of summer. i try to apologize,
i watch my cat chew a plastic plant, i find it somehow relatable.
i used to long for destruction and now am almost
content with artifice. i read a thinkpiece, set a boundary,
stop exaggerating, start crashing, watch my cat chew
a living plant, and hope to grow toward the sun one day
without claw marks holding me down—the greenery here
is full of perfect little monocultures, attempts at normalcy
i learn to avert my eyes like a desperate soul
with a seasonal allergy. social awkwardness is a pesticide
and so is the fear of not being believed. with it in the air i grow
twisted, toxic. i am a violet wilting at the center, queercoded
even in decay. will you walk through this field of poisoned lavender
and find it sweet despite yourself? i am a plastic plant
currently being eating by a determined feline with a grudge
failing at boundaries and not quite sturdy enough
to avoid a collapse.
