December - Poem 23

Dec 23

Sam Shephard / Kate Bowers

This morning I am reading about Sam Shephard,
How he once had a father-in-law named Johnny Dark
And loved Patti Smith who remained a long part of his life
after they broke up.

She remembered him as a quiet cowboy,
and quiet he often was, always with a notebook at the ready,
like any true gunslinger, which poets always are.

That quiet.

Sam himself said he preferred driving to flying,
even though he had done a helluva job playing
Chuck Yeager on film.

He liked to throw his things in the back of a pickup and go,
driving for hours alone, always alone,
across the flat states
where you could see cars hundreds of miles away running
parallel or straight at you knowing
it would be hours until you would
meet under the same sky if ever.

Knowing this from his own lane on a road more often empty
than not—wide and rivered,
that time there in green.

Can you see him even now pulled off onto the berm, angled
and scribbling against the steering wheel,
looking up to gaze across the land
through a windshield
brimful of insects splashed
into thick dust,

the engine still running,

that sound of his pen.

Writer’s Block / Katie Collins

Miles I have traveled
Through dark woods on snowy nights
Along the roads less traveled
I find myself lost
In words and worlds not meant for me
Can you find me here?
I’m hiding in the thoughts others dared to think.
Praying no one pulls me back to the blank draft on my home screen.

Mr. Coffee 45 cup percolating coffee urn / Ellen Ferguson

Don’t you want me, Baby?
                                    the year was 1981                    The Human League released the question
and we all listened to it on the radio                            because that was how we listened at the time.
you brought me home that night                                 restless                     a little excited
                                              planning parties into the night

high school graduation and even then, you knew a good thing:

me , that is : a coffee you had to call Mr.

years passed & it was 2004 when you slid me in your luggage --
                                                                                    a huge duffle suitable for moving overseas --
                          off we flew to Bozeman, Montana, serving coffee
to the good entomologists       who remembered her well,     what she did for the littlest of us.

It’s hard to imagine that every 25 years you won’t need me, want me:

Won’t anyone give you a grandchild?
You’ll ache for a cup of joe then.
Forgive me:
I’m part of the grindset
fading like the parchment
you made with my remains.

1492 (History Began) / Chris Fong Chew

History began when it began when it began when it
began when it began because a man with a paper and
pen, paper and pen, paper and pen history began it
began it began history began it began it began history
began when the shores of land history began when shores
of the land were crossed by man with paper and pen
history began it began it began it began when history
began when it began when it began when it began paper
and pen paper and pen paper and pen began began
paper and pen history began crossing shores of man of
man of man history began it began with with with began
with 1492

When lost in the brush / Davis Hicks

What you can do was decided
well before you arrived,
before the slip that sloped away from the living,
before the blunder that thundered you
beyond the ridges of route-running
and off the paths of the boot-bound and pack-bearing.
Fire and water are now, as they always were,
the primordial pleasures
only preparation can summon.

Silhouettes bleed across the dark,
their self-held edges fuzzy at best,
the sound of loosely drifting leaves carrying
the subtle-supple songs of larks,
when sun and all the rest
have decided to hide,
or otherwise tarrying.
It will be terrible as things used to be,
Abstract and endless forest
staring back
as the library of Babel would-
there is no balcony to jump from.
Your tongue will time you,
your gut will remember the last time
you watered
your ever-wilting garden.

Worse than that,
in the terrible and the endless,
there will still be the beautiful and the still.
Your horror will not be noticed
by the hollow eyes of squirrels
too involved in their own pantry,
the dry-goods hiding place
of well-dug treasure.
The warblers will still sing their western song,
the voices will still carry just the same.
The oaks will not notice you.
the copperheads pale head will only glance,
even as you scream.
the loblolly unwitnessed will not witness you.

We’re all thumb-twiddlers and toe-tappers,
this time of almost-night
when subsistence-seizing tasks are either finished
or will zombie themselves at sunrise..
Either way we will all find
resting places below the cover.
We must,
hiding as the birds do
in the dark and silent
outside the view
of surviving starving eyes.

Wind will move as constant as the tide
you may never see again,
same as anything beyond the treeline.
Bitting, harder than the thorns
running rabid-rampant and tearing in deeper than the bones.
Get against anything solid and slick
and impossible to blow away,
unlike your body with
its cooling blood and chattering teeth.
unlike your body and the way the smell of it
can vanish in the gentleness of a breeze,
can return to the earth
as quietly
as you got lost.

Hear the whippoorwill, learn its consistent cry
and memorize all that might be
your final siren song.
Do not sleep too deep
and keep an ear unfolded
for the crunch of leaf or twig
or for anything at all.
When it, or you, cracks,
hear the sound of wings beating into the wind
and do not take it personally
when nature does not notice
that you thought
you were special.

3 / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

I am packing
America in pieces.
Count the dented

ribs of my chest.
Here is a ball
of snow hurled

at my bedroom window.
Here are glass jars
storing heat for winter.

Here are shoes
with soles
that became tongues.

They lapped the heat
of summer asphalt.
You have asked many times

how I stayed alive.
Count the dreams
I am sending back.

Unpack them with care.
May they become
your lasting courage.

The one. / Jen Wagner

You
Are
Are
You
The
The
One
One?

Within / Stacy Walker

Find the part
Amidst the chaos,
The one that holds
It all together.

In the spiral,
The endless questions,
The one that knows
All it can weather.

In the moments
Things start to crumble,
A knowing prevails,
It holds on tight.

There’s a part
That knows your strength
Will get you through
The darkest night.

Kirsten Miles