April - Poem 3

The Day contd / Maureen Alsop

I turned the page and the river opened. Thin pages, subaqueous and fetid, a
continuum. The eye of the storm crosses the bay at midday.

The trees remain unsettled. Buttercup blue waters collect beneath the roving papers, 

an inconclusive thesis. The tyrant sun. A revolting sun. Navigation itself is research, 

trial and error, a means of breaking and returning. 

A cloud is a misappropriation of desire, a subtext and sometimes a desire. 

The spirits here were woeful. Absolutely woeful. The reflection of ideas rather than
choices.

I am writing a series of postcards to you. A mindless compass without stamps,
seriously, I am getting these together.

Kidney Stone Blues / Bob Bradshaw

My CT shows a stone
teetering on the edge
of my uretha canal.

I obsess over it.
Like a monster in a fairy tale,
it grows bigger,
--every night-- till it’s a boulder
rolled down from a glacier, 
stuck in a ditch.

“It can be painful—
like giving birth,”
my doctor says.

So, shouldn’t my wife
be the one carrying
this damn stone? I ask.

“You’re funny.
Women must love you,”
my doctor says.

What do you mean? I ask.
“You have a tiny stone. 

Yet the thought of it 
wandering down
your uretha
inflicting pain
keeps you 
from sleeping!

But your wife
is looking at pushing
a boulder
out a straw
when she delivers!
When she screams
what will you 
advise her?
To man up?“

My urologist 
shakes her head. 
“If you feel pain,
you can’t bear,

maybe you should
ask your wife
what she would do.

Don’t be surprised  
if she offers
helpful words like
Push!
Push!”

Tenth Birthday  / Stan Galloway

Sunday nights we’d race home from church
to catch the end of It’s About Time,
or Land of the Giants
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
or Time Tunnel –
shows about astronauts and science
in a topsy-turvy world.

At 10, it was no different than at 9 or 8,
except my birthday was a Sunday,
and Apollo put a module on the moon.
Human history hit a high-water mark
and I was blowing out ten rocket engines
on a cake that lasted maybe for a day.

The Mountain / Ava Hu

*

Quickly, a bobcat darts.
Mist closes after it.

Everything broken 
mends

if your mind believes
there is no mind. 

Do you become invisible
in the mist?

Do you hold 
what disappears?

The evening star
breaks open.

You break open
a brush of light

across the purple
mountain.

*

Morning News / Sergiy Pustogarov

in the morning dew drops kiss my feet as i dance with the golden butterflies.

in the morning 
            i dance with 
                        dew drops 

my feet 
            kiss                  
golden butterflies

dew drops 
kiss
                   butterflies

i am not a monsoon, but a summer storm / nat raum

ire takes over dusk. bruise-grey
clouds replace chalked orange

skyscape. this is a fraction

of what surges veins, anger
spiking adrenaline like lightning

zips its way through a cloud.

i’m a cliché. disrespect marked 
my forehead, bastard child of ash

wednesday and carrie (1976).

i no longer believe in honorable
shades of grey. you either bleed

or you’re dead.

The Raccoon / Daniel Avery Weiss

The headlights unfurl from the blackness
one thick, suspicious glare. Pupilless and very near to rabies
not being a metaphor. I have seen them

wild and hungry, clawing at each other,
a scattered family in a marsh on the Gulf, snapping turtles clad
in a zebra's disposition. This is

not that: this is in the garbage,
equal parts frozen and furious,
and bewitched by my sad, untrashed life on this earth.

You are right.
There is more trash than I know what to do with.
I eat it every day. Do share.

They skitter away, spitting
primal squeal and swearing vengeance against
every wall and all the grass. Perhaps I will join.

fluctuations / MK Zariel

a text message poem

my anarchism stems in part from a hatred of imposed order.
i hope this wasn't too weird to talk about.

she kept getting flustered when i complimented her
he is on the board of a fucking startup. it is terrifying.

i've gotten to the point of asking everyone i know if they know people in milwaukee.
we all have our contributions.

this may sound strange but you're really good at explaining this stuff
can i send you a poem?

i love being your resident anarchist friend
this is less about logic and more about how my bodymind responds to things.

your fight scene was iconic
i know casting decisions are final, it just worries me.

he wrote it in 3 minutes and didn't care
i could create a homebrew flashback condition

the discord is nuts right now
i hope you get chosen