April - Poem 30

you’ll need to speak louder / A cento Composed by mk zariel

with lines by and from Maureen Alsop, Bob Bradshaw, Sarah Carson, Stan Galloway, Ava Hu, Sergiy Pustogarov, Nate Raum, Daniel Avery Weiss, and MK Zariel.

as though there were no terror.
i have always been able to allow myself to fail
i hope someone pieces me back together into something more beautiful.

pink peony snouts are breaching ground in the verge / the many-tailed surge
so what am i? says the inner voice / weeps at the disembodying chaos
i wonder if you miss the secret of us
But you can mitigate the spirit only so many times

Reinvigorate the meanings in a cloud 
Leaving me looking at the ruins.

Audrey Hepburn Searching for a Stray Cat[1] / Maureen Alsop

like soldiers on a crumbling castle wall,

Evergreen—[2]sun inside sun,[3]  

Handsof someone I knew[4]—April is the

monthof rising sap—[5] earth

waitingto crack open, to bloom, to

burn[6]and come alive in graphite on the page[7]

and somehow

that sometimes sends me   

into a tailspin.[8]

__________________________________________________________________

[1] April 22, 2026, “My Perfect Reader,” Bob Bradshaw

[2] April 26, 2026, “Picking Blackberries, Circa 1970,” Stan Galloway

[3] April 19, 2026, “Magnum Opus,” Ava Hu

[4] April 24, 2026 “I Blanked and Forgot the Meaning of Life in the Back Pocket of My Jeans Before Putting Them in the Wash.” Daniel Avery Weiss

[5] April 20, 2026 “On returning from Birdsong Nature Preserve,” Kirsten Miles

[6] April 15, 2026, “closure,” MK Zariel

[7] April 25, 2026,  “sonnet for syanna,” nat raum

[8] April 2, 2026, “untitled,” Sergiy Pustogarov

The Old Couple, The Washer And Dryer, Dance The Watusi  / Bob Bradshaw

  Whenever old videos
    of American Bandstand
    are playing,
    I’m inspired 
    to do laundry.

    Soon the washer's 
    boogying,
    throwing
    its heft around
    in slow, deliberate
    dance steps

    and as American Bandstand
    jacks up its volume
    the washer’s lid 
    starts popping up and down

    hurling clothes out
    like a stripper 
    flinging off 
    one piece of clothing
    after another!

    As she does this
    she rubs her hip
    gently at first
    against the dryer’s,
    then brazenly--

    swinging its hips
    left and right--
    the two banging
    each other 
    in a loud clamor,

    the house’s pipes
    clanging along
    joining in  
    this jubilant 
    moment

    knowing how life 
    is as short
    as a spin
    cycle—the timer
    unable to be
    reset.

April Ends / Stan Galloway

Iris buds have opened
on the back bank
feminine and frilly
after five years of
leafy show
a kind of second puberty
after planting tubers thinned
from the neighbor’s fenceline
a signal that beauty may lie
ahead

Afterlife / Ava Hu

*

Look at me urgent,
melodic, hypnotist.

Erase everything.
Call me by my name.

Dear wilderness,
without you
I am snow.

A house made of rising water 
before it floods the lungs.

Two hands 
become one.

The way you let go, 
I let go too.

Night birds sing 
all night long.

Your mind 
is a river.

We are the last 
two lines.

Until the world
enters your mouth.

Everything that reaches for you, 
everything that carries the light.

The world, the size 
of a hand closing around an apple.

It’s hard to hold on
to the language of birds

come morning.
Can we walk on water?

A looking glass,
ritual object,

mirror, transmission, 
you.

You slip under.
The water dreams you.

Shake leaves into essence,
a listening.

A lifeboat,
a song.

Is there still time 
to build an ark?

Their bodies press 
into flowers.

Put your hands 
over your ears.

Who will remember
the names of trees?

You must change 
your life.

Who will remember 
the names of trees?

How big are you 
compared to the moon?

You break open
a brush of light

across the purple 
mountain.

Who will be the water
who lifts the boat?

We are the black ribboned song 
of Orpheus descending, 

the ascent all depends 
on how you hear it.

*

While you enter hospice I host a poetry salon in which we discuss thresholds / Kirsten Miles

Through the front window Mount Angeles is obscured by clouds,
even Unicorn Point is a shadow

I dream we join your grandson, travel into Hang Va
another generation finding a future in a cave

seventeen poets are gathered under two hundred year old Turkish Hazelnut trees
the Stellar Jay kvells at the bounty while we write

I will invoke you every time my mouth is delighted by some amuse bouche
you so love to surprise your tongue

Behan, Heine, Wordsworth, your reserves,
my first poets on your bookshelf

the tide rises, the tide falls at Cape Flattery when you visit
look, how I have followed water as my source

there is an Emily Dickinson Coconut cake on the table,
little cucumber sandwiches fine enough for a high tea

in Brooklyn, a paintbrush in one hand, a slip of granite in the other
your bright bloom holds a piece of your heart, gently

on the west side of the house, four deer nestle in the yard under the window
below my room

the poppies are rising in Blacksburg, and
the lilacs are emerging, early flags before the day lilies and trillium

the floors creak under our feet, Gentle House walls full of poetry
and the footfalls of those whose love entered here, you are here

the poets have eaten Emily’s cake, written, shared their efforts
now the salon begins, a warm hum, conversation and laughter fill the air

a little girl again, I am listening to the flow of conversation below me
voices of your friends and students swirling up in the evening air excite my imagination

Danny is waiting for you for his next pet and your next walk
for he is, yes, your best boy

now, as the evening closes, there is a pearl in Black Mountain whose glow lights your way
and we will love her for all her days

the penumbra   / Sergiy Pustogarov

i belong just below the arc of the horizon,
glinting over your golden head,
casting rays that curve around buildings
through the reflections of your eyes.

i bask in the sunset aura
escaping over your forhead.
the peace flows through 
your fingertips,
and touches every particle 
in every atmosphere you inhabit.

i belong in the shadow of your being,
where schrodinger becomes the only one 
who can calculate my position, 
even then leaving half his calculations to 
guesswork.

i am an eclipse circling 
your presence,
only to return in a million years 
still shinning with the same light 
you sent me into orbit with. 

foiled orchards / nat raum

would that it were as simple as reaping exactly 
what i sow, but proverbs don’t account for

changes in the rain or the soil or the sun. i toss
seeds in tilled dirt with reckless abandon, harvest 

shriveled husks come the end of the season.
haters will say overwatered but really, the landscape

itself can warp, fertile fields now sapped, clouds
absent from the sky for weeks. fault probably

lies a little in column A, a bit in B—i’m trying 
to help, only dousing the vines who starve.

i do too much because everyone does too little.
who could blame me for trying to save it all?

Wing / Daniel Avery Weiss

There were still things that did not get said;
how his purple suit could be so dry cleaned,
how her pearl necklace could gather up its own pearls on the beach,
hitch them to its one twine spine,
how a man's ears cannot be pierced because
they're made of rock.

These things did not get said.
I did hear, however, about the economy
shipping options the poor use for goods
and bads and in betweens, each of which they settle
like a carbonated beverage
into accepting. The walls, the walls, they're
gold.