April - Poem 28

untitled / Maureen Alsop

Riding The Grizzly  / Bob Bradshaw

    At 14
    I rode The Grizzly,
    a wooden roller coaster,
    known
    for its quick—
    stops—
    its—lurches
    ahead 
     
    but what I feared most
    were its tight 
    curves—

    at any moment about
    to fling me out 
    into space
    the way a skeet thrower
    catapults a clay pigeon 
    skyward—

    for its finale the roller coaster
    throwing itself
    off a waterfall,
    taking me,
    white-knuckled,
    with it,

    the water at the bottom
    flying up
    like wild 
    wings!

    Why do such
    a crazy thing?
    I hoped, hoped!
    to impress
    Cara!
         
    Over and over
    as she stood outside
    a railing,
    I would sit down 
    into a wooden crate
    of a seat,
    faking a smile

    like a stunt pilot
    at an air show
    getting into a rickety
    Fokker, a Nieuport 28,
    a Sopwith Camel.
    
    Did 
    she notice me?
    Or was she watching
    her friends
    in another
    car?

    Later I’d try
    writing poetry
    to impress Cheryl,
    but that was years
    away. 

    But that day
    The Grizzly
    was all  
    I had.. My heart
    even then 
    risking irreparable damage,
    against all odds,
    for love,

    —as it would do
    again and again
    and again.

Desire / Stan Galloway

It is no coincidence that
fire and desire rhyme.
Desire flaming high as a barn
brings the news reporter
when someone fails
in spectacular conflagration –
think imploding submersibles.
But some fires go unreported
serving to cook food
and warm rooms
the desire for creature comfort –
think grandma's quilt..
Failing desire clogs the lungs
of everyone around
all smoke, no heat
all negative attention –
think your last stalker.
And there is desire
no one notices at all
tucked beneath the ashes
of betrayal, rejection, callousness
an ember barely warming itself
tossed out in the ash bucket –
think my heart.

Pilgrimage / Ava Hu

*

The joints of one person
become the next.

Your breath,
the only lighthouse.

Fire makes light
but destroys its beloved:

a monk was discovered
sitting in lotus position

for 118 years,
if you just

let him be,
he could tell you

the secrets
of the universe.

Erase everything.
Call me by my name.

*

How To Build A Book Case   / Sergiy Pustogarov

i built a new book 
case. broke some oaken logs just
to shape them into twenty
plaintive shelves.

took nail gun and drill to 
work and made circles over circles,
shelves marching in line to the 
formation of a fibonacci spiral,
and i started wondering if 
i could reach the heavens.

i stacked my books in lines,
and columns,
calculating which cell could 
hold which width,
the dimensions betraying me just to 
see spines bursting through the 
seams of cavalcading nails. 

words spilled down the trellis of 
tanned posts at the edge of each shelf, lit 
brilliantly to shimmer in the 
afternoon glow.

i thought this should 
help me read better.

i woke up the next day 
and said i’m never writing again. 

self-portrait as kill-devil / nat raum

drunk words are sober thoughts and i’m quick 
to label a lie. sugar smooths everything over until 

it ferments, becomes fire down a bone-dry gullet.
this is to say i am doing everything in my power

to remain sweet, but chemistry foils me sometimes.
oh, holy saint of SNRIs, please find me some

substance that will at once keep me honest
and settle me. oh, how the juice sucks all the water

from my blitzed body, its sharp-edged molecules
sliding down my throat. same time tomorrow.

Kaolin / Daniel Avery Weiss

How swift, how
delightfully swift, that
the porcelain unspools
itself between my fingers,
as if melting at my touch,
as if my lowly, earthly body
could suede the clay into
something holier
than dirt.

I have buried it at a grave,
the line between kiln
and cremation
and kill
deathly tight.

a butch is a receptacle until told otherwise / MK Zariel

i rarely received your anger, your scorn, your untidy
perfect scrawls in the depths of your mind and notes app—
instead i was your brick wall, your easy target. cut me off
then suffer publicly, as if daring me to reach out
your hollowed-out face an engraved invitation
your collection of blank phrases echoing

like a ghost learning to network. i hate that i can't care for you
with your voice flattening to the shallow hum of a chatbot
and today i had a crisis of faith and pretended
it wasn't about you—because i apparently can't feel close to Eris
until i feel close to a repressed teenage guy with a martyr complex—
and that is the worst logic i have ever encountered, even in a faith
that prides itself on disorder. i found religion the night

you almost left me. i started to give a shit about it
the night you actually did. the first night it was 1am in Milwaukee.
riverwest was too aesthetic for its own good, as usual, and you were sharp
and curated, telling me i made you into a vessel, content only
to receive, to be held. i didn't understand at the time
why you didn't want that—and i wanted to entrance you—
and i wanted you to be my audience of one—and i wanted you

to believe me, for once, without my having to exaagerate
for your benefit, a habit that unfortunately stuck. you never could
believe much of anything—and neither can i, anymore. a month ago
i walked judgmentallythrough the historic third ward, and i didn't think
about you, and i almost passed out in public. i refuse to believe these two things
had to do with each other. i used to call you my life force and now
i settle for my unwilling muse, the person my internal monologue
is inevitably directed at. i hope you have one too.