August - Poem 18
untitled / Ashley Howell
we came,
made. made.
admitted
we[‘]re humbly made.
made. continued.
sought
having.
Poltergeist (haiku) / Dahhee Chung
Someone is whistling
A haunting tune heard throughout
Three blind mice, slowly.
Dead Languages Sing to One Another / Ash Kemp
after Christina Gosnay
I hardly have a formal education
in language, meter, or rhyme.
I can only describe and observe and occasionally meditate on this beautiful world.
If dead languages sing to each other,
wouldn’t you like to make some harmony?
A rhythm between us—
across oceans and boulevards—
songs of want and wander, awe and despair.
Every dead language eventually evaporates into thin air.
Who can find the time
to make a meager rhyme
Stand the test of time?
Anne / Hannah Page
Invisible ink
revealed in her blood after
lifelong research in
living. Grandmother
awoke pen in hand – bursting
with ink and people,
places, things to re-
animate in black and white.
In her head, movies
in sepia, in
black and white. And in her heart,
ineffable light.
Praising La Jument / PF Potvin
You may have seen it. The man with the orange winter beanie. Some might say sailor. Some keeper. Others crazed. But it’s clear he’s outside the lighthouse door. And the colors may have been different or maybe it wasn’t a hat at all, hard to tell sometimes from the angle, a straight-on shot, center frame, blue waterwalls curling around as he stands in the middle, staring straight through the lens, which may have been mounted or held, but must have been snapped via copter in that pre-drone era, a day after he’d radioed for help and surfaced after hearing the whirling but realized it wasn’t his ride, so spun and flashed back through the door, just as the walls gave way and came down clapping.
We called them fireflies / Janette Schafer
“The lightning bugs were out last night,
just past the gloaming, before the night sky
whisked the light away.”
—Byron Hoot
On that trail before midnight
when I could not sleep,
near the swamp I once
befriended,
a bit of cosmic magic—
The sky, spotless black—
the stars reached down
and joined the fireflies,
the two light sources touching
beneath a bright gibbous moon.
I laid on my back in the wet field,
shut off my flashlight, watched
as the two strands of light—
the mating bugs, the too-low stars,
reached out to one another,
joined hands, swung them back
and forth in reckless embrace.
Sometimes when I remember,
it still pierces me, that dancing
light, swirling en pointe above
my head, my clothes gloriously
ruined in the wet grass.
UNTITLED / Kate Thuma
I can compel my heart
to beat differently for you –
marshaling the muscle
and triggering forming neurons
to link a wish to a maneuver.
I want my blood
to signal your arrival
and rush through veins
and arteries and ventricles
fast enough it forces goosebumps
out of my arms.
My blush is every cell,
at the same time,
reaching to touch you.
