April - Poem 27
untitled / Maureen Alsop
The Drive-thru Car Wash / Bob Bradshaw
I love losing myself
in the yugen
of broccoli forests, living
“in the moment”
at Safeway.
Yet nothing
beats a car wash
with its cloudbursts
and flash floods
and its sudsy clouds
washing up against my glass—
And fierce rains sweeping
across my hood,
my beetle
now a submersible,
long slats flailing at it
like the legs
of a deranged giant octopus
escaped from 20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea.
And though I feel
like a guppy, its bowl
overflowing, the faucet
at full blast,
I’m as safe
as if I were riding a car
on Santa Cruz’s Big Dipper
—pushed along, as we all are,
by forces outside
our control.
And yet as a bright light
breaks over me,
my car emerging
into the Ordinary
again,
I wonder what
it’s like for a babe
in a womb being pushed
along,
as if it too were riding out
on rollers,
its old world--
of dim waters and tides--
being left behind
for an almost
inconceivable
life. A new
yugen.
Relationship Advice / Stan Galloway
Jealousy clamps
a leg, bites through the flesh,
holds you at the bone.
Suspicion filters rose from daylight
shifting everything Othello green
smothering affection with a dingy pillow.
Distrust demonizes innocence
creates ghosts where no spirit ever wailed
and sucks the marrow from integrity.
Snow / Ava Hu
*
We are whirls
in bark and wood.
An amulet of snow
heavy with moon.
Has the die
been cast?
The serpent turns
with her tail
in her mouth.
The hero turns
and refrains.
Branches bend
under the weight.
Inhale.
The earth is a desolate
wilderness.
The earth is desolate,
dear wilderness,
without you
I am snow.
*
all the steps from the pole barn to the berm / Kirsten Miles
measure Place road gently carrying that
rib bound vessel beating out to sea
past the little ponds blueing down the sky
elegant Long Tails glide over mirrored peaks
Hooded Mergansers with their impossible crests
slaty sided Harlequins, their mousey peeps
returned these years since river Elwha flushes
back her path and claims her mouth
Bushtits and Pacific Wrens flit, eagles whistle
over the growing crest of surf as the path
turns towards the Strait
metering the breeze along the spit where
sand is still learning its own course
loose grains silt down footprints on the bank
yesterday’s channel is today’s dry bone
the current drifts a restless
scrimshaw for steelhead and salmon to scry
This is the way
I am built of the same silt same wild
unpatterned spilling
the same stubborn refusal to fit
I’ve spent my seasons dammed
up steel struts straining before the thrust
unmakes the bank
the way the heart must lose its shape
to find its reach
see how the river takes the weather’s pitch
gale winds scrape the gray skies clear
tides lap or ravage, she makes a braided delta
tosses the skeletons of prehistoric trees
today her mouth widens
sand spits trail from her eyes salt-singing
each day newly carved
Main Street BookShelves / Sergiy Pustogarov
i wish i knew which way my words would
go,
between collapsing
sonnets
and lines spiraled so
far away;
they aren’t even free
verse
anymore,
just something i like to label
not quite there.
still slipping between
agents’ fingers,
readers’ minds,
and journals’ grasp.
i’ve spent the afternoon
passing up the
main street
small town
bookstores,
staring through the
windows
to spines lined up like
soldiers marching to
their next homes bookcase.
but i’ll just go home tonight and
type words onto a
screen
for others to wonder what
happened in
my life.
hollaback duplex / nat raum
the fever jostles you like earthquaked skyscrapers
swaying in hopes their foundations are sturdy.
even sturdy foundations hope for chaos sometimes—
who doesn’t want to be a bit undone? sameness bores,
wanting those who don’t usually unravel to bare teeth
at their enemies for once. the fight in you is innate.
once your instinct takes over, enemies ought to flee
in droves. you feel hungry. you need to sate the itch,
unsatisfied after decades of starving. hundreds
of hands stroke your throat at once. it’s up to you
to take your own and grab back, fracture wrists
and hearts and ties to that which no longer serves.
no more heartbreak—untie the tethers and release
yourself into feverish sky, still gently quaking.
An exchange about my dog./ Daniel Avery Weiss
you do not have to optimize for productivity / MK Zariel
a text message poem
most of my tasks are basic self care.
i'm reading lacan for the first time. it's not going very well.
yes, that's happened before.
plans ended early so i'm killing time:
someone implied i was cis today and it really bothered me
i won't hold her accountable so it might be perfect!
dealing with a bunch of interpersonal crazy stuff.
he clearly is just afraid of culture <can you ask not to talk politics?>
that means we don't shit talk people's art in front of them
i've seen people of all genders do this.
if he's a poetry reader at all, that'd be great to know
tell me before inviting twenty different people.
yes, i'm sure
if it's not a hell yes, it's a no
