April - Poem 29

untitled / Maureen Alsop

If Only  / Bob Bradshaw

  I was 29 again.
    If only I could dial the sun down.
    If only I wasn’t shouting
    into a gale every time
    I ask the IRS
    for a break.
    If only this mass
    of flies would choose
    another old man
    to follow.
    If only the Neptune Society
    would stop  
    sending me ads…
    The boat’s waiting
    at the dock!
    If only my hopes
    weren’t tumbleweeds.
    If only love hadn’t proven
    to be another vault
    I couldn’t safe crack.
    If only I had you
    with me, babe,
    again.

Turn the Radio Up / Stan Galloway

Let it sing you away
to a night when love was new
recall a park, a beach, a quiet invitation
before the cup of hope was cracked
and love squeezed every raindrop
looking for a miracle.
Let the melody float you
on a raft of reminiscence
where the beating of the drum
foreshadows – stop!
Turn the radio up.
Let the long-ago song
block the ache
and lie to you again
that there will be no end.

Love Poem in Reverse Osmosis / Ava Hu

*

We sink like ships
beneath soil.

We flower-breathe.
We hold our breath

under the weight
of green.

What’s the use
in speaking about

the passage of light
through veins

when we are created
as one image?

We are pulled with violence
underground.

We calm fierce animals
by saying their names.

River snakes.  Yellow dust
of bees entering fruit.

Metal turns the mouth
to gold.

Praise water for taking
the form of its mate.

We are pulled by wind
we cannot explain.

Two moons tied
to each other’s wrists.

We are the milk
of ascension, milk

of the mother
constellation.

I call you my other half.
My swallowing mouth.

My moon
eat sun.

Look at me.
Look at me.

Look at me urgent,
melodic, hypnotist.

*

Is This Transgender Joy or Sorrow   / Sergiy Pustogarov

drawing 
lines 
across 
my 
chest.

dreams
dripping
down 
from 
my 
shoulders.

tracing 
hopes 
disappearance 
like 
chemtrails 
along 
these 
fateful 
curves.

figuring 
out 
where 
i 
belong

between 
the 
curves 
i 
chopped 
off.

and 
scars 
that 
i 
swim 
in 
the 
ocean 

proudly 
out. 

firefighting / nat raum

i once craved touch but luck would never bless me
with its presence, so i dashed fantasies of hands
on my waist. sometimes i think about the reasons

i’d rather be cold than hot—i can always layer up
but public nudity is frowned upon, and i hate to sweat.
in essence, i’d sooner freeze than burn the house down

again. i imagine the shapes i’ve forced myself into 
in the name of love, so intimidated by that which stands 
before me should i choose to walk these halls again. i lose 

control like kids of a certain age lose teeth. bones slip
loose from gums and i too sizzle like a lit fuse threatening
to blow—past a certain point, there’s no stopping it.

Wet Fur/ Daniel Avery Weiss

This spring, the blossoms unfolded
from their buds early.
I folded them and put them back.
It has been a spring of threats like that.
The river near my home is flooded already,
and still the sky appears congested:
clouds stumped by blue,
and then they get darker, grayblue
and then they get darker, black and grim,
and then they have floated away,
and the sidewalk is uncanny and dry.

We have dug for greater things than
existence, something fake and tacky.
I am real now, and like you,
will be nothing to me in a decade.
Memory kills me and spares few precious
moments to consider.
The clouds remain here,
floating like grief,
and drawing shade over
everything with feathers.
We have shivered for lesser things than
existence, something sticky, something
squalid.

Something swells from the treebark.
A tumor. A bubble. A knell.
The roads fold. The light at the
end of the tunnel is LED and bounces
off posters of dead bugs, which
block your way.

The sky dies.
From clouds I cannot see against
a backdrop of horrible night sky silence,
an orgasmic onslaught of rain
explodes into the earth. I saw a fox there,
there on the side of the road,
trotting past like the opposite
of symbols,
metaphor murdered
by the blight
of its pure, sopping tail.

a map of undoings / MK Zariel

you'll be one of that boy's harbingers of doom
my friend says, and i can't tell if she's talking about
you or an abstraction. i certainly aspire to bring down patriarchy
and yet i don't do myself any favors, scrolling through

a confirmed idiot's photos all because i wish
he could have been anything else. i loved you the way
i love an unfinished novel—full of promise yet always
fraying in the last couple pages, defaulting to the same

technicolor cover art & deeply straight stock phrases—
still i made erasure poetry from your canned jokes
your oft-repeated anxieties. i tried to get over you and so
had a brief fling with a vengeful ghost. it didn't last.
i tried to get you back and concluded

that, pathetically, i'd rather split my consciousness
into gleaming shards than ever understand yours.