August - Poem 5

fallow / Zoe Berger

Cycle fallow. I plant seeds elsewhere. 
Throw myself against the world. 

Body a straight fuse. 
Thinking of you. I mean me.  
I mean everything 
that’s not me. I mean
strangers kissing 

on the internet. Anything 
but this. This blind deaf faith.

There are ways   / Ashley Howell

Autumn air at the beginning of August
blue music in the red hills
I love the way sunflowers grow like weeds
in the Colorado sun

There are ways to find gratitude
if I can only remember
how to sit in the morning light
and write my list, take a breath

Screen Time / Dahhee Chung

The boy with the iPad,
Holding its silicone handle,
Walking in circles,
Talking in loops,
Not fruit loops,
“Becaz I don’t like it!”
“Let’s go for a walk
     In Big circles,
          Around the Neighborhood.”
“Do you know why I don’t like acid?”
“Around all the slabs of trees with faces,”
“Mommy, do you know why I don’t like acid?”
And the pretty gardens
          wild ones, dull ones.”
“Mommy, do you know why I don’t like acid?”
“And the sounds of cars whizzing,
The birds tswit tswit tswit sing.”
“Mommy, do you know why don’t like acid?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s baaaaad.”

Monday at Full Circle Pottery / Alison Henderson

Shark wears thrifted jeans.
She stacks and unstacks kiln shelves,
arms like freight elevators.

No one knows how long she's worked here.
Maybe since the Greeks.

The studio, wedged between
a vape shop
and a half-price spa in West LA.

Inside: a menagerie of glazed creatures,
Picasso-faced teacups,
miniature yogis in metallic turbans.

Shark's compost jars and vases
stand apart, quiet as ruins.

A windowless room.
Canvas tables, two slop sinks
holding silty mirrors of fluorescent light.

Shelves sag under sharp tools,
wet buckets, and armies of unfired creations.
Dried clay caked in the sponges.

She glides from room to room
with the calm of something prehistoric.

Children flicker.
Adults in earth-tone shawls drift to their cubbies.
From the mental health clinic across the street,
Monday patients arrive after lunch.

Shark leans over a bearded man 
at the wheel.
He holds the clay too tightly.

The sponge is the hardest part, he says.
She bends over him,
her hands rounding his,
showing him how to let the clay pull,
thumbs meeting.

Shark’s long black hair licks the wet rim.

The vessel wobbles.
She lifts his hands from the clay,
repositions the sponge in his palm,
sets the angle.
Now, she says,
try again, the way you let it go.

What does language mean when you can’t speak? / Ash Kemp

It’s not just that I don’t have the words to answer you,
it’s a ball of twisted, burning steel in my throat,
cauterizing any semblance of thought
making its way out of my mouth.
 

It’s not just that I can’t handle rejection,
it’s a deep cavern of shame opening up
and swallowing me every time
I perceive failure or anger.

It’s not just that I’m overstimulated,
it’s my skin too tight,
in a body feeling more than what is there,
with a heart beating faster each time I hear something too loud.

So I don’t have the words,
I don’t handle rejection,
and my heart beats louder as my mind goes
in every direction.

Ovum / Hannah Page

I struck matches
off my armor
in the middle
of Broadway
running errands at
the corner deli
where I consumed
my self through the
breast – a hedonist
eating my heart from
my chest, breastplate
a hollow aftermath.
You caught me every
time: red-mouthed
and red-blooded
hopping on the
pulse of the regular
man but kick it
up a dozen BPM.
That’s right:
Pattering like an adder
predatory and pining.
At birth, I crushed
the egg in which
I came to terms
with alchemy: set
myself free and reeling into
traffic, where I begged
all the cars to take me,
take me – anywhere
but the groin
of American hypocrisy,
anywhere but this highway
that leads to a superhighway
that leads to ruin. I am
your road sign, perilously
handwritten: Heed not
what may come, but what
is already up under
the ruthless treads
with which you attack
every faceted surface.

On the occasion of contemplating Spanish  /  Janette Schafer

They call Spanish one of
the Romance languages
and I think of my own 
romance with it—how I loved
and lost it.  The first language
I learned to think and speak in,
a language that I still hear
sometimes in my dreams,
a song that my loved ones
can still sing to each other
that I can only hear but never 
duplicate, even though I can
read and write the notes.

Somewhere in my brain
I hold this magic:
in a memory of Abuela’s 
perfectly curled hair,
humid equatorial heat
rising from the pavement,
the smell of arepas 
and platanos frying
in olive oil.

GREENLY  / Kate Thuma

Everyday 

I’ll distill 
a fresh me-tincture 
a higher concentration 
than is truly safe 
for inexperienced users 

(mayinducehallucinationmanialove-liking) 

I’ll soak it 
into a ripped corner 
of cerulean paper 

and fold it 
into a crane 
that animates 
with the tap 
of my toe

Everyday 

a paper bird
that smells 
and smiles 
like me 

(like orchards dripping peaches)

will fly greenly
into your pocket 

to belong to you