August - Poem 28
Mosquito Poem / Zoe Berger
& if I trust you what would I do with my mouth / what if I said I need you alive / I don’t mind being jerked around by strong wind and avoidance / & what if I like the candles you light for me / a reminder of all the other hot-blooded creatures that do the same / always lighting candles and believing in them / all the sweeter when I smell out your warm body through the smoke / I am thirsty for the river worming through you / I find great pleasure in keeping you up all night / I’m in the room with you now and your cursing is just turning me on / if I could get inside you I would / I was never drawn to the light / I am hiding under your bed and in all the dark / I earned it / give me your neck / I can hear your heart / I will try not to think about the heat breaking or the attention I demand fading / I will do my best to disturb you after I’m gone / let me bloom onto your blushing flesh
Im/balance / Ashley Howell
I don’t dream of you much anymore
I’ve stopped inserting myself into yours
I’m just waiting to see if you will come find me
In reading the feminine
There is much talk of lactation
One breast always produces more milk
My own, my friend’s, the speaker of the poem’s
There is imbalance in giving life
Life is not symmetrical, and it shouldn’t be
So I’ll let my dreams drip out in ounces
One side 7 and the other 1
Giving imperfect life to our past selves
Running together through the mountains
As the sun set behind the foothills
And then walking our separate paths
Borrowed Words Today / Dahhee Chung
For Dolly Parton
“Your beauty is beyond compare
With flaming locks of auburn hair
With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green
Your smile is like a breath of spring
Your voice is soft like summer rain.”
“Islands in the stream, that is what we are
No one in between, how can we be wrong?
Sail away with me to another world
And we rely on each other, ah-ah
From one lover to another, ah-ah”
Oof,
*a moment of silence
Legislation / Ash Kemp
I am reading the news on my phone,
Barely recovered from another migraine,
Seeing they are pushing hemp beverages off the market again.
We were sold wine mommy culture and now the wine business are whining that
They are losing their customers.
In a country that would rather poison its populace than provide safe food,
Is it any wonder they want to line the pockets of alcohol companies rather than let people get California sober?
Clean / Hannah Page
Tits out on the couch next to
my husband scraping
the basin of my skull
for the dregs of an idea
worth pumping up the color
on or ornamenting with all
the trappings of a good word
painting and all that’s flowing
forth redirects my childhood
trauma to the shower
chair we recently installed
after his surgery. I still
wash his back where he
cannot reach the bisecting
scar, and after I deflate
onto polyurethane – stable
in the cleansing rain.
Crossing Cuyahoga / PF Potvin
it’s been seven years since
we sprinted the bridge
passing each of the eight
shirtless guardian pillars
stone faces, eyes set, foreheads
crowned with laurels
looming fourtythree feet
above the span, each
clutching a transit
creation e.g. wagon, stage
coach, car but none
moving how we crossed
on our own legs
with our own steam
racing to the finish
in first form
Late August / Janette Schafer
oday, the first nips of fall,
sun beats on my window
like a tappy snare drum,
wind rattling the panes
like small melodic percussion—
a triangle or chime.
No rain today, only breeze
only Bob Ross fluffy clouds
and happy little trees
and I’m catching up on work
and writing gauzy poems—
happy little me, happy little me.
PRIME / Kate Thuma
There’s a lot I don’t understand
about robots.
In some ways they’re no different
from a semi or a Camaro.
And in others,
they do the biologically impossible
and become a father,
with something more like blood
warming a metal hand
on your thin shoulder.
A boy needs his father’s voice in his ear:
be strong enough to be gentle.
I’d hold a funeral for a sound
when it’s the voice
that taught you about being human.
