December - Poem 15

The Number Of Times I Have Sat In My Car Thinking Why Can’t I Just Stay In My Car Because In 8 Hours Or 3 Minutes I Am Just Going To Be Sitting In My Car Anyway.  / Kate Bowers

For Jeffrey

Independence / Katie Collins

Blue vomit coats the bottom of a small pink trash can
The unnatural hue matches the sugar cookies my new neighbor just dropped off.
So much for a house warming present.
The freedom of being alone
Is cleaning up your vomit
Even as you still feel like heaving.
I'm shivering on the bathroom floor

Lotz and Lotz of Fun / Ellen Ferguson

light up the Maybelline eyeliner with a match
The Lotz twins are coming to the bathroom
And they have Marlborough lights
Get out your bonne bell lip smackers 
And your love's baby soft perfume
Because you can try hard, or you can try soft.
Yer mom wears enjoli because she can bring
home the bacon/fry it up in a pan
This year for Christmas Eve 
Go alone to Lincoln center at 1
See a movie about family and
Remember when

What’s hidden  / Chris Fong Chew

In the archive / Memories / are stored / Under lock / and key / Anti-narrative to / National narrative / A forgotten record / Dangerous / to the sovereignty / Of the land. / The archive holds / Secrets protected / By bureaucracy / By systems / and processes / Holding information / hostage / To those / who do not dare / Uncover / what is hidden inside.   

Do you dare to enter? 

Loblollies / Davis Hicks

They don’t lurk or lounge as the roses do.
They’re too strong for that, unrampant and unwilling to sprawl.
Bark-bound, as the books are,
built to last by no one but themselves.
Roots half-invisible, the grafter
self-hugged by its own fallen needles,
recolored in pleasant aging to match
the grapple-grounded.

Changing only as the day drifting into night,
only as the tomorrow becomes the today,
becomes the forever-was.
Still here, still here, still here.
Green and solid and pointed
in sun and snow alike, the opposite of 
adrift. 

Witnessed as the crowd is, 
ever a part and apart and refusing to
compartment-compromise
or commit to any other sever-slickness.

There is no show to stop-
no need for neon
from the level-headed, 
from the tall standing, even when
they are not the linear.
Such strong backs will 
always have their knots.

Artists, active in arch-ache,
ever-reaching for the warmth of the untouchable. 
Workers of needlepoint, knitters
of fresh forest floor refuse who refuse not to reuse
all within
their reach.

Burnt / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

There’s more to fire than burning.
If only fire were a metaphor,
as with glancing at the mirror
and seeing a stranger who has

neither answers nor questions.
How he likes to confront the young
man who stares at clouds with feet
crossed on the windowsill, palms

clasped at the back of his head.
He will tell him that there’s more
to sand and gravel, sand and cement,
sand and water. Sand and sand.

He will burrow his head when he dares.
He will breathe through the silt,
and listen to the sand shifting. He will
run miles with pebbles in his shoes.

But he refuses to weather before
the sun is snuffed out by the horizon.
As if plunging six feet were a sport, as
if blasting bedrock were a metaphor.

In Dreams / Jen Wagner

I think you were in my dream last night. 
But I can’t really be sure. 
I Couldn’t make out your face. 
Only the blue eyes. 
The rest was a blur. 
There was the smell of whiskey on your breath. 
Not the cheap kind either. 
The good stuff. 
You keep reserved for long conversations. 
And remembering back through the years. 
it stung and made my eyes water. 
Or perhaps I was crying. 
Because somehow,
 I knew,
It was 
only 
a 
dream. 
So I squeeze my eyes tighter. 
Bury my face in the pillow. 
Inhale that burn from the whiskey  
And say my prayers
That soon…
Maybe,
It will be the real thing. 

Ashes / Stacy Walker

Make way,
she says,
the phoenix
who burns
our troubles
to the ground.

Holding on,
not ready to let go,
although
the troubles
devour us
whole.

She sets fire
to destroy
the broken,
ripping it
from our grasp,
surrender,
the only option.

Without death,
the dissolving
of the known,
the new cannot exist.

Rise
cannot come
without ashes. 

Transformation
requires
a sacrifice.