August - Poem 29
11 / Ashley Howell
I keep looking at the clock and its four pillars like I’m pulling you out of time or trying to make a mirror out of loneliness and they say twins and multiple sea creatures and flames all mean something and I hope so as I look at the clock and see you
through
***
the blessing of space and the burden of knowing we all fed each other umbilical and that we all move and heave grief as the clock continues to twelve it passes just like this was the first time I’ve ever loved spring and then the snow returned
***
Sublime Fugue / Dahhee Chung
Three feral kittens played near my flowerbed,
As I sat in a lounge chair
Ritualistically blowing prayers like a steam engine screaming for help,
Watching intently.
Mama cat and I
Made eye contact for forty-five seconds before she turned her head,
Forfeiting her win this round,
And so I fed her babies,
Three like last time,
I hope they’ll survive the streets.
My friend warned don’t name them this time,
Periwinkle, Mugwort, and Lilac gone,
So I omitted that I already call her Creamsicle.
The news reports everyone is dying today.
I see a face in the sky,
Illusory like her mother
moon revealing Mama’s been watching all this time.
An eclipse punctually arriving,
One face dispersing, and the other dying,
Then resurrecting in three hours, slowly brightening.
My eldest boy stood by with his arm permanently tagged
Ephemeral,
When his favorite number was infinite.
A nuance Fitzgerald might have elaborately called first-rate
In so many, many more words.
My grief at midnight is a mirror / Ash Kemp
My grief at midnight weighs me down
Shows me the other side of a life I don’t want but often feel trapped in.
A mirror to the grief of my past
My unattainable present
Sitting on my shoulders like
What. Am. I.
Doing. Here.
Where does the midnight go when I’m still awake but not seeing?
Is my grief a reflection of yours?
Mundanities / Hannah Page
Today I did yoga, clipped my toenails
sanded my callouses & drank 40 ounces
of water
in a row, scrubbed my face with harsh
teas & took a shot
of Apple Cider Vinegar
of collagen
of 99% isopropyl alcohol
If only if only the woodpecker cried,
the bark on the tree was a little bit softer
I could carve into it both our names
with my galactic blue fingernails,
inscribe them in a heart – a token
of an homage to our mutual
adoration blossoming from that eternal wound
Found Art / PF Potvin
As the children
splashed and swam and shrieked
with voices echoing ripples
across the blue back of lake
two women with walkers
approached and eased their spines onto the bench
laughing to themselves
about the graffiti
carved on the backboard
“Enjoy the Little Things”
hermetic / Janette Schafer
finger-point wiping venom off the chin
hazel eyes not quite jade—concentrated
i curse the mind-disease that makes me
misunderstand; should my hand be in your hair
or folded on my lap?
A AAAC CC DEEEEEEEEE FFHIIIIK MM NNO OOPPRR RS SSSTT TTTUUUX / Kate Thuma
(after “I Used to Experience Memories of the Future as Panic Attack)
All of the rooms in my brain that aren’t a part of consciousness –
an insistent throbbing pinky knotted in thread
and enacting what has been ordained.
And I am here,
and I’m feeling it through tears.
And that pinky blue at the tip from the thread
between us thrumming with the coiled tension of
extracting the always-was with silver fingertips.
I received your message.
I think we were decided by an Old Testament angel.
It dulled the sound but kept the sensation,
my body couldn’t hold such bigness then.
She is holding our mouths.
Snap awake. Look at you,
spider-drawn over trembling keys of ivory spine
stretched under my bedroom door.
String in the moment of attack,
suspended in the wisps of the feather moon.
The angel in the corner tells me to stop screaming,
tongue pressed against a twisted backwards eye tooth,
When we speak with voices that aren’t ours,
when you taptaptap goodbye,
you were still far and long away, but I heard you.
You’re sending love down the line.
You’ve been tapping messages to me through time.
