August 24 - Poem 24

I cannot remember the wind making a choice /Zoe Berger

and yet it blows one direction 

Foolish to think because I cannot observe 

its shape or define its edges, that it makes no difference 

to what it touches

I have been watching from inside  

A tree falling to its knees, its limbs rearranged

Dunes shifting side to side on their desert feet

How can I be above that which moves an immovable object

I have to agree 

I am in the path of affection 

Preserved / Dahhee Chung

Grab me by my ankles and hoist me up  

Until the clicks clack down my spine, 

Bleed me dry then paint me pretty, 

Pluck my eyes, a glass one will do.

I’ll even sing you a tune, if you’d like.

My limbs so heavy, I’m useless anyway,

Nail me to the wall, before I fade away. 

untitled / Ash Kemp

Deafening silence

The dark side of the moon 

Leaf in the puddle 

Sandhill Song / PF Potvin

Behind the barn

in the field where dawn

yawns orange and gray

a crane pitches

its head and shrills

vibrato like a rubber ball

tossed between birches,

pines, and oaks then echoed

back down into its own

waiting throat

Marital Bliss / Hannah Page

We watch Pawn Stars 
in sweatpants like 
anybody’s neighbors
spewing weed smoke 
onto the green faux
velvet loveseat that I 
ordered on Wayfair,
assembled myself 
over both discs
of the Taylor Swift vinyl 
that skips a few times
now when I spin it 
on the same daisy-print
suitcase player you sent 
to my old apartment – 
one of few objects
that have practiced 
permanence through 
these many timelines.

I forget when I first
left the bathroom door 
open with you; when you 
first asked me to make
a decision with 
consequence. I recognize
patterns. Small picture
means small potatoes
to the girl who never kept 
the ring. Now I am
stacking them up my
finger, weighing down
my left hand until I am
able to drown myself
in our bedclothes,
in your redolence,
in the essences you
draw out.

Lotus / Janette Schafer

a demi sonnet after a photograph by Erin C Murphy

Every living thing carries a version 

of themselves that is drowning. Consider

the lotus, opening in sunlight, closed

to the moon. We bloom despite our darkness. 

I never knew I needed green and blue

without black. Loved buoyancy of floating

without slipping beneath a still surface. 

Fibonacci / Kate Thuma

The 

world’s 

perfect 

math triggers 

apotheosis 

of the wind – an oracle who

speaks holy truths and prophecy into the curl of

a leaf that catches in my wild hair. You untangle me with reverence, as foretold.