December - Poem 18

I’ve never been to the bardo / Kate Bowers

Someone said the other day
And I thought that is a helluva way
To use a contraction, leaving
That space hanging like a reservation
You know you will want someday 
Once the kids are out of college
And the house is paid for, when
You turn around and find that space
You have been longing for just waiting, waiting . . .
All the magazines on the table,
Empty chairs everywhere and you with
Your Bardo River Cruise LinesTravel Planner
On your lap patiently waiting like the peach you are 
For customer service to process your call.
 

Throw away your HA today if you like,
Or better yet donate it to the HA Bank
For those who never wait and consequently run low
On HAs too early according to the map of the world
And could use a few to warm up the crowd
Of their thoughts while they race 
From the refreshment stand to their front row seats,
Spilling popcorn and slopping soda, their hair flying wildly
In every direction underneath their always askew hats,
Making it in the nick of time for the next curtain to part,
The real talent to appear.

None of those Highlights for Children or HGTV reruns for them,
Nor Father Knows Best in black and white film
Spooling and re-spooling in a windowless room
While the receptionist struggles to confirm
Their appointment is not next Tuesday instead of
Now, right now, this very moment now.

They are long past it all, laughing
All the way to the bank, multiple
Windows in every room wherever they go,
(A condition stipulated in their contract rider)

And believe me when I tell you

All of their windows are open

                                                                        All of the time

Every single step of the way.

Mary Shelley Teaches Romanticism at PS #30 in Yonkers, New York, 2025 / Ellen Ferguson

(after Philip Levine)

She threw a tack at Chester and said, “Do you get my point?”

“Is it your fascination with the supernatural or strange?” Chester asked.

Outside, the snow fell on the new parking lot, where the woods used to be.

“No, you idiot,” Mary Shelley said.

“Is it your elevation of the role of the poet?” Bailey said.

“No,” Mary Shelley said and threw him out the window.

“I know,” Sandy said, “it must be your elevation of the Moment, you are having a Moment, just like Keats in that trailer for ‘Bright Star.’”

Mary Shelley thought back to the good times at PS #30.

                        When they performed “The Odd Couple,” starring she and Percy Bysshe.

                                                “Of what strange nature is knowledge,”

Mary said. “It clings to the mind                                             like a lichen on a rock.”

Chester, chastened, looked out the window, where Bailey’s body bathed the parking lot like lichen.

Unfamiliar home   / Chris Fong Chew

“Here a tree swings east, towards the heart
drawn towards something in its veins
a land once called home.”

The root of the tree digs deeper into the soil 
burrowing into the ground, grasping at the bedrock 
moving towards the center of Mother Earth. 

With every new root, every new path, 
the tree becomes more embedded
in the soil of the land
joining an ecosystem of its fellow green. 

And as the roots burrow down, branches climb up high 
reaching and grasping for the canopy light. 

But even as its roots burrow deeper each day
the branches continue to climb towards the rising sun 
grasping for something familiar 
in the great unknown. 

What’s next? / Davis Hicks

Do you think they’d notice?
Does drift-work get seen,
even as the dunes undo the detail?
Do you think there’s anything worth more
than a year: more than Thanksgiving round-table and 
4th of July boiled peanuts? What could be that savory, 
could be generated and thrust with anything 
resembling a life?
Is any given date built for something
unlike the last? What’s originality worth?
Do you think we’d get away with it, drifting out the 
distant drive towards 
nothing 
but the horizon?
Would we remember
to leave our phone behind,
to make our soul
untrackable?
Would we return our library books first,
give back to a public
who would not feel
how we’ll never return
to the stacks?
Do you think we’d be able to work?
At a bowling alley or burger bar,
wherever there’s low lighting and 
the smell of mozzarella sticks? 
Could we stay where the sweet tea is,
hold lonely ground and 
refuse to develop a taste
for the unflavored in unwarmed places?
Maybe we could learn-
but if we did,
change would never really stop 
the ongoing argument 
we have 
with
ourselves.

Rapture / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

Tomorrow the past will change once again.
Hour after hour, day after day – the years
advance in minute disintegrations.
Plums rain the ground. The flesh breaks

on contact, rots in the blaze of the sun,
and bleeds on stones. A stone heart
is revealed to circling crows. The surface
it rests on is severe and in constant motion.

It does not distinguish between what it
catches and what falls. There’s no difference
between marching combat boots and running
bare feet. In the core of the earth, gravity

is a patient gardener. It waits for all in equal
affection. I press my ears to the ground,
hoping to hear the pulse of the fossils.
It gives me back the silence of understanding.

Light years away, another star dies. A crow,
built by civilizations by linking stars, loses
an eye. The fate of its people changes.  We spin,
waiting for the universe to become a grain.

How a Star is Born / Jen Wagner

In the midst of cold, inky black space.
Where dark clouds hover.
Gravity shows up.
With a weight so unfamiliar.
I spin away.
But it hangs on.
And warmth spreads.
And then..
The crash out
and the collapse.
I give up to what is pulling me under.
I surrender.
And let myself implode.
Only to discover.
The beauty comes only after the fall.
The destruction is a necessary part of how a star is born.

ownership / Stacy Walker

I ponder the process
I could partake in
To join the parties
Around me,

The gatherings
Of groups
That seem
To so naturally
Get along.

I never quite feel
Like I fit
Or belong,
Sure I’m somehow
Different.

Always a little uneasy,
My smile a bit
Too tight,
Fidgeting my fingers,
Adjusting my stance,
Sure I’ve done something
Misplacing.

I’ve so recently
Learned to love
What’s inside me,
What sometimes sets
Me apart,
What feels so foreign
Elsewhere,

And when I bully myself
Into belonging,
Into being
A proper part
              Of something,
And
Owned by someone
Else,
Everything in my body
Screams no.

I’ve been proper,
Correct,
Appropriate,
And for the first time,
I insist
On belonging,
Being owned by
Me.