December - Poem 1
First Used In Print / Kate Bowers
For Rajh
Spoken before yes, that prior time
Dark, medieval, true
In 1565 now early and modern, printed
This word gratitude.
Silent, felt in the body
Of the little cat, calicoed, precise
Living under the Chinese restaurant wall,
Not welcome, much sought,
Coming forward taking plump, hot shrimp
From my cardboard, moaning
At the pleasure of it sliding into,
Expanding the belly, her eyes half closed.
Abracadabra, “I create as I speak,”
From the Hebrew, the Aramaic, appears
On the page this same year
455 annums ahead of another plague,
Toxic with separation
Felt in the heart. Queensland dolphins
Adrift without visitors
Carried by mouth that year
Corrals and sea sponges, shells,
Barnacle covered bottles
All to shore, gifts lining a path,
A threshold silent to play
Thanking humans vanished.
Unbounded comes out of the air
Onto the page in 1565, soaring,
Feathered with possible, flying
Still a risk, saying spontaneous what you feel
Grace from gratis, gratia,
The Latin you say before a meal,
Prints itself in 1596,
The body, the heart
Practice this way, learning the brain
Down through repeatedly
The word gratitude into action
Generosity appearing as text in 1566,
Reflexive, raising its head amid daily clouds
Of sound thank you’s echoing
like an Angelus bell across fields.
A Pushmi-pullyu, so coined in 1920,
not one without the other.
*Merriam-Webster
Unraveled: / Katie Collins
I pulled a thread in my dress and my hem came undone.
I wish that was the worst of it.
I could explain a hem that unfolds to a raw edge away with a self deprecating joke and a smile.
But the thread kept going.
The more I pulled, the more unraveled I became.
My dress, once a woven fabric cut and sewn into elaborate shapes to cover my body was now a pile of threads on the floor.
I had destroyed it entirely, but the thread was still there, now coming from my very body.
Something in me had to keep pulling.
So I pulled.
I pulled out my hair from legs to eyelash.
I pulled off my skin from the chapped sections of my thin lips to to mole on my right elbow to the soft tissue at the core of my epidermis.
I was tearing myself apart more and more with every pull, but the thread was still there and I had to get to the end of it.
Not long after my blood and muscles lost their casing, they too are pulled into a spool of thread.
I have successfully stripped myself of every quaff and every calorie, but there is still more left to unwind.
I pull and pull until my heart unravels.
My mind is left surrounded by ill-used string.
I've never left well enough alone.
1. Pumping/breast feeding door sign up for grabs: double-sided (see pics). / Ellen Ferguson
Of all the feel ings of all the th ings
Given away on Swapcandy, all feelings of things in parts, in boxes
You are challenged to a duel over me, sign of the breast of times:
You’ve never been food, have you?
You’ve never been cans clinked for cats coming running, leaving
perches under porches -- you’ve never been better than rafters of carcasses.
You’ve never been plates perched midair, spiraling fanfare napkin, woman gasping, man heart in hand,
Will you marry me?
Go ahead, clamor for marathon adrenaline, cvs oxy, sure --
Decant your spirts with abandon, knowing this:
I was the sign
of woman as food,
sacred
exchange in which a woman behind a closed door (that I signified)
transformed
into a meal
for worshipful devouring learning in that moment to crave nothing ever again:
Not his touch, her companionship, their accolades, cash for trade:
only to descend again: brain into breast into mouth.
A Winter Elegy / Chris Fong Chew
The first track of December yields
back time, as flurries are
spinning through turbulent air.
Shaking leaves, trees threadbare,
a chill runs down your spine.
Somewhere, a family huddles
for warmth in an empty room.
Warmed by promises unfulfilled
in their collective hope and misery.
Across the way, a furnace
devours coal for flames, black
smoke rises from the chimney
as a child decorates a tree.
A lady says, “merry christmas”
you reply, “happy holidays.”
You have learned to read
into words too much.
The winter cold brings a darkened hope
as death renews, restores, and reshapes
the space of the living.
Time is slowed, frozen as ice crystals
form on the windowsill and you question
when the cold will stop, pouring in.
Near the edge of the woods I remember to look up / Davis Hicks
As I step aboard crunch-frost
clouds form as exhales,
and the chill makes me dragon.
Cold, that distant angel,
invites every cell to participate,
calls every hair to attention.
Hollow echo is the morning church bell, all cracking.
Sound-swallows seize my senses.
Invasive, even as worship.
The birds, in their drifting density-storm
silhouette the staggered sky.
Those common grackles spackle-sparrow the air,
their bodies building, becoming arrows
in their rapid false-falling flight.
I wish to know their names,
if only as a fae does.
Remedios, in the garden / Victor Velasco
At midnight, the crape myrtle vanished
with the fireflies that burned its branches.
The night was shattered but far from over.
In her bedroom, mother wound silence
around her waist. She slipped grief
under the pillow and dreamt of father,
who she had not seen in decades. In daylight
the myrtle flowers fell, staining the gravel.
A frog lay on its back, stunned by the sun.
In the backyard, mother stripped the hibiscus
and wrenched the ixoras she tended with care.
She dug up a box she buried before I was born.
She handed me the secrets she feared
for twenty-two years. I received her losses:
a photograph of a man, his letter, money
bundled in a rubber band. She begged that
I pack them for my journey. It was a good day
to learn how to box up what remains.
Had a black-naped oriole appeared, that, too,
would have been a loss. Its yellow in the golden
bamboo, burning like her shadow.
The missing bird, the box, my mother in her garden--
I have visited this scene a hundred times.
Each time, she said it never happened.
No Cheating / Jen Wagner
The story prompt asked for the last photo I took of the sky.
“No cheating.”
It says.
(Politely)
But what if the last photo I took of the “sky”—
I saw it in the blue of your eyes?
Not a single cloud in sight.
Just shifting hues of sparkling blues.
Is that cheating?
I wonder.
As I drift into a dream.
I could lay all day and stare.
At the shape
Of your face.
The way it moves
As we laugh
As we reminisce.
As we remember.
As we embrace.
The blue of your eyes.
For me—
Is the only way
I ever again
care to view
The sky.
a life / Stacy Walker
I’ve come to believe we’re never really
gone;
Another life, another plane of existence;
Who knows?
This gave me peace
when he died.
But now, as I consider,
he was still alive
a year ago,
and without him here,
the world goes on.
Whether he’s been reborn,
is looking down at us,
or is the cardinal
or the rainbow
or the familiar song on the radio,
He’s not here.
The daily witnessing
of him
is no longer.
For a while,
I’m sure,
he crossed the minds of many;
over time,
less
and less so.
Even the nurses and aids
who likely cursed him
under their breath
as he cursed them
over his,
Saw him.
His presence,
undeniable,
but a year ago
tomorrow,
he was gone.
Is he somewhere
that’s not here?
Remembered by some,
a few,
fewer.
What does that mean
about an existence?
What does that mean
about what matters?
What does that mean
about what’s next?
What does that mean
about love?
I don’t know.
