August - Poem 8
Iris / Zoe Berger
You look naked in your clothes you with your
bicycle tee shirt and a key around your neck
We take a walk in the woods and chirp a song
off a cliff I do not tell you I love you because
I don’t but something feels unsaid just the same
A robin landed on our windowsill this morning but
I may be imagining tender things again
again I do not tell you I love you
again I don’t
hummingbird / Ashley Howell
to colors
like chakras
root to white
wings to whisper
nibbles at sugar
hunger to bread
beak to needle
sewing the air
into quilts of hums
threading colors
to patterns of
spine and snake
Lion’s Gate / Dahhee Chung
(Dedicated to Elijah,
My son born 08/08/08)
Eighteen years eve,
A portal opened in me,
A dying star between my legs,
Imploded from the other side.
The prophet,
They said would be a girl
For nine months.
The doctor said, “Who lied.”
Yet all along
I knew he’d be the prophet,
Never died,
but flied,
Both of them with two names,
Their second name the same name,
Fighting demons and spewing curses,
For a God,
Who tells them,
“I am the night.”
Lion’s Gate open,
Each year relived
I step out-
That same
gray
cold
room,
Sanitized dull,
Except for the blood
And almond eyes,
That stared bright,
As I sighed,
“An alien… “
Before the portal died.
Forest Service Road 151 / Alison Henderson
Jagged gravel, thirteen miles one way. New Mexico mountains, high desert sun, worn cattle grates interrupting winter wilderness. Chama River Canyon cutting through open pasture, charcoal blue, a choir breaking over boulders, bursting into impossible high notes. Towering sandstone, walls of red clay like raw cathedral. Roughed-up corners, edges crumbling vertical into gentle rapids.
Ten, maybe fifteen times I drove it fast, barely braking, black leather and blonde. On purpose. If I had no fear down to the ground of my subconscious, I could do anything. I could move mountains: Christ in the Desert.
At the end of the road: PEACE. The road dead-ends at the abbey, where a BMW man sits beside the Father on a bench beneath the portico, the front doors black and looming. Heavy.
On my way out, he is shuffling back to his car. I slow, lower my window.
What are you looking for?
He looks at his feet, takes a step back. Finally, our eyes meet.
Purpose, he says, like it’s a question.
You already know, I say.
I say it like I know, like I already know his purpose. I accelerate, whipping rocks into a grayish bloom, blasting the Stones. I retrace the canyon.
And again.
I transfer my earthly belongings to the one in the yellow hat, / Ash Kemp
after Desireé Dallagiacomo from prompt by Ollie Schminkey
I transfer my earthly belongings to the one in the yellow hat,
who made me laugh carrying on with a monkey like that.
Home Again / Hannah Page
Today, we soldiered on
picking up again our burdens
tearing again at our hair
when the pattering of our own
hearts became an unbearable
reminder pitched just so
to startle back into motion
your eyes the shade of
my eyes the shade of
the sky between the trees
outside the City Clerk’s –
lapis against my white
dress with the faux
pearls that kept
falling off even before
I put it on that morning
your favorite jam band
on stage and in
the kaleidoscope of tinsel
and acid with you
at my back, I
never felt more home
&
the marks on my
thighs grow
less angry as the days
go by
& this is the most
satisfying rabbit hole:
the kind
where everything is right
sized at the end
of the tunnel.
Last Coast / PF Potvin
santa and mrs. twin golden labs six of us grinning at a funeral all
blowing in the fan’s shimmer but one pic sits tauter pinned by antelope
magnet a mother in blue wool beanie plaid coat his semiquincentennial
cap and solid red jacket crinkle with collars popped to shield breezes
off napes no teeth but lips pulled up like bananas someone’s snapping outside
frames of tomorrow they look left and can’t break from staring
Hymn to a buck / Janette Schafer
A friend of mine who hunts once told me
he dreams of deer come August. I think
of a lame buck who once took refuge in my yard.
I think of a buck who once took refuge in my yard.
It is early August and the worst of the heat
is behind me. Autumn is its own kind of sanctuary.
For me, September is its own kind of sanctuary.
I count my life in autumns, in turning of leaves,
when crispness in the air greets me.
The crispness in the air greets my skin, a lover
remembered, who comes behind me, whispers,
Hey, old friend. I still think of us.
Hey, old friend, I still think of us. I recall the lame buck
who slept near the oak, gone now for three summers.
I wonder if my friend who hunts has begun to dream.
GHOSTED / Kate Thuma
Where there was something
and suddenly isn’t,
the air still holds your shape
with the surface tension
of a real ghost.
I can run my hand
through the fog of it-you
and unfeel the nothingness
of your unpresence,
but my hand still comes away wet
with the proof of your living.
