August - Poem 9
Heavy Night / Zoe Berger
Burning without burning
a deliberate wind takes me
to a party in search of
an empty place
Everyone’s faces
are lively with decision
Their self-heartedness
Guilts me
I know I should begin
to realize my heart
I’ve heard it before:
the answer
is blind and new
Find Your Own Lineage / Dahhee Chung
Expectations genetic,
Birthdays feel generic,
Say, “happy birthday to you”
I’ll only sing it,
if I love you.
I hated presents adorned with bows and fancy paper,
The thing inside often,
More you than me.
A forced smile and a thank you,
It’s the thought that counts,
Umma says.
But I’d rather you cry and shout,
“Why can’t you know me?
What was the thought?”
So I got you a promise,
In an empty Trader Joe’s bag,
I watched you sleep
One more time,
And asked,
“Can you tell me how to fill it?”
The anxiety of expectation,
The quiet consternation,
Tell me how to fill it,
So we can both love celebrating.
Cell D45 / Alison Henderson
1.
The library had holes in it—
a steel rolling rack
carrying mostly fiction, donated.
Atwood, Hoover. Gone.
Covers torn off like lost limbs,
pages missing.
Inmates write letters in block print
over the stories.
But the bottom shelf—
hardcover and oversized:
Spanish-to-English dictionaries,
cookbooks, Aesop’s fables.
Murder mysteries wedged at the end.
I slid a softcover from under
outdated textbooks,
federal statutes swollen with dust.
Fore-edge scratched blue and black:
P. Willis D45.
Patricia? Pauline?
I turned it over:
Claiming the Spirit Within.
I carried it out
in a manila folder
with my court documents.
2.
I read from it
like scripture—
corners curling,
pink-and-white striped duvet
traded for incense.
My favorites circled:
“I Go Back to May 1937,”
“The Necessity,” “The Swan.”
Mornings I read
to women gathered
for meditation.
Laura sits upright
like it’s her first time at church.
Kelsey turns her phone face-down,
black coffee balanced on her lap.
All of us careful not to move
while the words move.
Not watching the watcher—
watching language
arrive one paper cup at a time.
3.
We ride the swan boats
in Echo Park Lake.
I steer, turning the handle
counterintuitively.
We paddle the perimeter,
in and out of shade
beneath imported palms,
past lotus beds.
As we pull in to dock,
someone says
people have died here—
drowned, drunk.
A man in a blue vest
waves us over.
We step out,
bookless, sober,
still turning the wrong way
to come in.
Hourglass / Ash Kemp
I pick up the glass and wood,
turn it over
once,
twice,
the mound of grains disintegrates then reforms. A new question each time, weighted with the promise of the future.
Have we been here before,
staring into the unknown,
wishing it could tell us
everything is okay and nothing hurts? What hope do any of us have of holding on to the shifting grains
in a world aflame with self-righteous anger and condemnation?
Stationary Objects / Hannah Page
I wish on so many
stars for us.
Sometimes, they are
stationary objects;
sometimes, airplanes
just taking off
into the abyss
pitching headfirst into
starless skies above
cities so luminous it is
as if the whole
population is working
together to register
on alien radar and
the pilots cannot see
out the windows in
front of them for all
the pointlessness of
indefatigable blackness
or maybe for all
the potential.
Interpreting Artists / PF Potvin
“check the magic” his friend nudged
across the stage
on a platform
adjacent the folk band a woman signed
her black dress swinging
weaving dipping as her face
sounded
gamboled lyrics
hands twirling
drums words bass guitar
setting space
into action like storms of barn
swallows ponding behind the stage blue crowns
cinnamon faces tails forking
original theater
Route 60 between Barboursville and Huntington / Janette Schafer
after a photograph by Greg Clary
We began believing we were a road.
There are roads built for leaving, rails built for the same.
We mistook the crossing for a route.
All I know is the lay of the land,
key in my hand, turned on the ignition.
We began believing we were a road.
He leaves and returns; leaves and returns.
I no longer know when to turn on the light.
We mistook the crossing for a route.
What did I know of love then
but the leaving behind?
We began believing we were a road.
What did I know of cartography
except for drawing lines?
We mistook the crossing for a route.
Objects are closer than they appear,
a blurring sign in a rearview mirror.
We began believing we were a road.
We mistook the crossing for a route.
Untitled / Kate Thuma
There’s a science to weather formations
that can only ever be a percentage accurate.
I think I like only ever being seen
in parts of almost right.
There are mysteries hunched
in my kneecaps held bent
to spring in unexpected moments.
When my knees and ankles ache
before a storm it isn’t rheumatism
or keep-your-heels-down echoes,
it’s the pressure of so much rain
held against cartilage unflexing,
of an Achilles tendon
wrapped around a bolt of unstruck lightning.
