August - Poem 15

Tug of war / Zoe Berger

Life is teeming around us
And still everything is embarrassing

I’m convinced my dentist hates me
Anyhow I smiled all the way through

Too bad we can’t sort of die
In an attempt I went somewhere warm

I was looking for a single source of truth 
Living is a conversation with your body that never ends 

“Hey Stanley” (Letter to a stranger) / Dahhee Chung

In corpse,
 I glimpsed your water bottle,
a Clackamette Skate Park sticker
Slapped on dead center.

I was conceived there and rode down the Pacific in Umma’s belly,
I can’t remember what I saw.

I like the dings and dents,
What do you like to do?
Yeah, I like this class too.

Sometimes, I just stare at your tattoos,
And the shadow on the ceiling
Of the little girl’s frolicking profile holding a big balloon,
“Inhale, wiggle your fingers and your toes.”
Okay, until next time.

Have You Ever Seen a Baby Vape? / Alison Henderson

It’s not like I don’t care about babies. One crawls across the living-room hardwood. Maybe I don’t want one. I know I don’t. Her mother asks, Have you ever seen a baby vape? Then they leave. Dana walks into my room and suddenly I’m not angry at all. Five women, one teenager, one baby: yelling, laughing, moving furniture while I try to nap. I didn’t sleep last night. I’m trying to sleep enough for yoga, then the fire show. Last time I tried poi, they gave me two sticks with fire on the ends. I swayed while everyone watched. It was humiliating and boring. Bella was there, so I wasn’t cynical. We had fun. I ran into Robert again. The next day or the day after, we ate Caribbean food in Santa Monica. It was authentic. I thought I liked him. At the time, I did. His house was a Sprinter van. His face five inches from mine, his bare chest against mine, he said he wanted to wait before sex. I said I hadn’t in six months. So we did. I came. He didn’t. Afterward he read me his poem. He roared and wept like a bad method actor who had cast himself. He wanted it as the closing voice-over of his film about twenty years in prison for trying to kill his wife. After that, I didn’t want to fuck again. There were still hours before curfew. He kept coming on to me. I asked for a cigarette. He said, I have a cigar for you. It was not a cigarette. Then he told me Rapunzel. The tower was what made her irresistible, he said. In the story, she lets down her hair. In mine, the hair doesn’t leave the van.

Future Acrobatics / Ash Kemp

(uplift speed poetry prompts)

limbs tangled/sheets askew/arms reaching/
pulling/taking/ accepting/ breath synced/
stuttered/sighed/moaned/a
fullness/ a space/a moment/more/
music seeps from every pore/
falling back/ out of breath/
grounded/connected/bodies/inside and out/
screen goes dark/ windows shuttered/
the VR headset back in its drawer/
until next time

Ode to a Stranger in Times Square / Hannah Page

Bedtime Wonder / PF Potvin

Under the wailing boom of sirens, she huddled in the single bed each night with her daughter as the buildings shivered, telling tales of the grandmothers and inventing what she didn’t know, and when she knew but couldn’t say, she’d squeeze her hands together until the veins danced like shadow fires and repeat, “that’s good my love, that’s the way to ask a question.”

To the woman lying down on the sidewalk /  Janette Schafer

The sidewalk feels cool against your hot cheek
you’ve spread your length out from head to toe
let people stare as they walk past, go about 
their day.  No one has stopped yet and truth be
told I almost didn’t either except that you are 
young and I am old and eventually the one who
will pick you up is never the one you want if you 
just wait for them.  Sometimes we can be angels.
Someone was an angel once for me.  Today I
thought I forgot my wings, but here they are again
right where I left them, these stunted nubs at 
my shoulders underneath my skin.  I touch the 
back of your head, say: I don’t know you—
I am here.

THE RED   / Kate Thuma

After Marina Abramovic’s “The Artist is Present” 

Before she knew he arrived, 
the red sensed him. 
It surged forward, ungovernable, 
reaching out the tips of its fingers 
to kiss the edge of his collar 
into the exact shape and shade
as the hole hidden behind her knee. 

He loosens his legs to shake free 
the dust of love travelling in his cuffs. 
She’s silent, tethered, whole, controlled, 
even as the red leaps and screams and 
throws its severed edges wildly. 
It knows beyond knowing: 
there are too many threads between them. 
They weren’t ever meant to be 
anything but sewn together
into the most exquisite knot. 

She opens her eyes 
and a string of holy phenomena unfurl. 
The red sighs and softens, 
warm, bleeding, somehow carrying a heartbeat 
to a phantom limb. 

She still is. 
They both still are.