August - Poem 20
I’m not balding / Zoe Berger
I’m just getting more head, reads the shirt I’m wearing,
which makes you giggle, which reminds me
we’re both on hair-loss medication, which brings up
how my mother said she’d recognize us on the street
by our matching whiskers, which makes us snort and start
and roll onto our backs with our bellies up—
two stray dogs, following the smell of blood.
Fracture / Ashley Howell
Bones break and heal and then we forget they were ever broken, forever changed inside us and yes, you can say the same for hearts what a silly, lovely analogy for the thing that calls us out of ourselves love and heartbreak-heartache-heartsick I walk again on my broken ankle my arm healed after the kid pushed me off the jungle gym and I don’t think about it until my elbow hurts as I age or I need to balance on one foot but I think about how love broke me every day, yes, every day, my love
Fractal / Dahhee Chung
If I stare at my garden for days and weeks, every morning,
Will I understand this reality?
Stare at the dried up blooms ready to move into the cycle of dying,
Bright baby leaves play merry-go-round beneath their elders,
A crown of paper white and dead brown flowers.
The same bee circles its path between the third and fourth plant
Back and forth, while.
Sprouts all look the same until they’re grown,
Like babies.
If I stare at baby Pharaoh sleeping and count his lashes,
Will I unlock the mystieries of life?
His breathing rhythmic,
Still down to his belly,
At night his pose matches his daddy’s.
Will reason one day click?
My eldest son told me once,
I didn’t choose to be born,
You chose it for me,
So you’re responsible for why I feel bad.
Can I also blame my parents for his melancholy?
How long should I stare at the patterns before the grand pattern makes sense?
Kemp day 20- It’s Like an Owl Daydreaming He’s a Kingfisher / Ash Kemp
Which is to say, days go by without human contact.
Days to go buy canned goods are few and far between.
Which is to say, our stores are running low.
The stores are below ground, hard to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for, or who.
A king fishes in a rotten pond.
Which is to say, I don’t have time for daydreams anymore.
Time is running low, or down, or out, maybe.
Maybe it was never there at all.
I did everything all the way / Hannah Page
I smoked
each cigarette to
the acrid nub, brought
men crashing
to their knees with
the gravity of
the Colosseum
crumbling or my favorite
scheme unsewing.
Sometimes it means
losing the
thread. Backtracking
blindly, selecting
different triggers. Pick
your battles, darling.
So much
anchored in the space
between my keystrokes
and you
sleep safe and
protected beside
me – my poetry
raining from my lips
and fingers, blossoming
like ink on our mattress.
Prometheus / PF Potvin
when you’re old
enough & finally see
the movie, study how
it opens at the same
waterfall in the photo
I left on your desk
with my papers
years ago when we
used it for changing
diapers & your river
washed the ink from
my black pants, green
wool sweater while
I sat crosslegged, eyes
closed in the rim
roar of Europe’s largest
prize before it all
crumbled & we found
ourselves swept
over the brink
onto rocks below
where next lives waited
in the dark scars
of eddies for a spark
Listening to Jeff Buckley in the car / Janette Schafer
burning up my expensive gas
but I just finished a good parking lot
poetry session, wrote about
remembered kisses, encountered bears,
how I’m still here after so many
close calls. Start the car,
the engine turns, Jeff Buckley is next
in the music queue, “Lover, You Should
Come Over.” I dare you not to listen,
not to give that voice and song your
full attention while you are on earth
and he is not. Think of that person you
wish for. Let the gas burn. You can
refill your gas tank. You can’t
refill time.
An Eye in a Jar / Kate Thuma
Inside the tree that held
a nest that rested on branches
becoming pages,
I’ve held the memory
of so many eggs hatching
in my hands
behind every poem
that’s taught me how
to be alive.
Another reason crows bring gifts
to people near them —
they can see with an eye in a jar
inside the book I pressed fingerprints
into in the Athenaeum Drum,
remembering its childhood home.
