December - Poem 27

Dec 27

Stay Where Your Body Sleeps / Kate Bowers

For Nena

Once more, she walked the forest of the night,
Jumping out of her body when she heard the wolf cry
Thinking it was her baby tangled again somehow
Against his crib and anxious to reach him
Before he slid away.

It was always the same, snapping back
To Rip Van Winkle face down on the chair
Spine cracked open
And the window opaque with winter mist.

She looked out of long habit through the curtained pane,
Never mind that tedious list in the kitchen,
The appointment book schedule filled
for busy

Then she called me to share her plans.

Defragmentation.

At first, I thought I had heard her incorrectly,
That instead she had said decompression, but no.
I was not confused.

She had always chosen her words well.
In fact, she was filled with words and sentence fragments,
Whole paragraphs, entire chapters that were not her own
And really had no option but to flee her form
when and as they wished to speak.

Until she could get back to the trees,
The sound of birdsong through sunlight opening pores
Across their surface, the trees breathing
More deeply as they felt her there,
Pulling
The smoke of pain from her, then stirring
Their branches,
rushing back into her butterfly-winged lungs pure air
From their sighs, their quiet wind, until then and then,
Her body would not be her own.

I authorized her leave to H.R. as compassionate care.

Yes to the village, but sometimes
It only takes a forest to save you.

Frankenbite / Katie Collins

Stolen words
Reshaped
Strangled
Contextless
Egged on by the unseen
With a jilted mouth
I spoke my own doom
Long hours
Hot cameras
Was this in the terms and conditions?
Who did you turn me into?

You are Manhattan / Ellen Ferguson

Cherished repulsion
Turtle Bay, Hell’s Kitchen
Bad pantry night
Bad attic sounds
You are Manhattan
Lifted from a stoop
Sideways, like a taxi shaking
Dark cherries in a cocktail swerver
East of Eden, canals ruminate near gardens,
Lahmajun rolls its eyes at a cat
You are not Brooklyn
But she’s not safe either.

Digital Waters / Chris Fong Chew

101011001110101 0100100100110A wave of ones and zeroes washes up on the shore
1011100101011001 11010101Displaced by broken and frayed wires101110010101101
10111001010110011Circuits that end in oblivion 010010110100010 010100101010101
10111001010Sparking at the end of a torn terminal101100111010101 0010010011011
0101001When scientist dig into the layers of rock and earth 01010000101010001011
10They categorize periods entombed in010100010010010 0100100001001 0010101011
1001010Fossil records, carbon dating the rocks 010010010001001 0101010001001010
0101001010101Posturing why carbon increased a million years ago 10101001010101
01001000010100101010And dropped in the last ice age 101010100010010 0100100100
101010010010001 010100101010What will they say about our digital age 0101001000
00101010010100101010Broken wires rusted containing decaying 0101001010101010
0101001010010Ones and zeros of a digitalized era 010010010110101 10101001010010
10101010Seen as the future of humanity 101010010101010 100101010101010 1010101
01Quietly powered by coal and pressurized fossils 010101110101010 01010101010101
10110001Quietly burning away the plants and trees 101001010100101 010101000101
0101010101101Quietly replacing the atmosphere 100101010101010 10101010101010
010100010101010101011With unbreathable air, quietly 100100010101010 100100010
101010101010101 010101010101The technology created consumes the creators01010
101010100100010101010And opposers, quietly destroying us all 01010101001010101
10101010101010bzbzbzzbbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzzz….10101010101010 01010101010

It can’t all be concrete / Davis Hicks

In between the groupings of life,
Nowhere close to the homes none can afford
pay attention.
In the limbo of the overcast sky
between 6 and 10 o’clock,
pay attention.
This is where life is lived, between the parking lots.
Notice the small hands fiddling
with the handlebars of bikes
not yet marred by time or crashes,
and the big hands that fix their helmets.
See the bodies on courts,
in their distance-dance
of dashes across half-vanished
painted lines, darting
as a fish might with the purity of clarity
chasing flying balls crashing across,
the color that lives in eggyolks,
encircled with infinities.
Their shoes or shirts or any detail
lives between the colors of lemons and limes,
all the citrus life.
See how fresh they feel,
unmarred by anything resembling
strife, even if only when choosing
to chase each other.
There,
between rides and games,
know we are still
a community.

Sol Invictus / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

O the orange sun!
The ecliptic – nay, epileptic – orbit.

Behold the earth crackle along its path:
The stuporous trances. The gnawing
Desiccation – the desiccated skull.
The rapid heaving. The strained contraction.
The wounding of compacted ground.
The widening wound gushing water.
And wine -- water into wine.
Watered-down wine.

Woe that we cannot walk backwards into the future.
Woe the shifting horizon our gazes cannot fix upon.
Woe the widening peripheries littered with bodies.
Pile upon pile upon pile. Upon pile.

Where is Quintus Curtius Rufus
Laid to rest by restive powers?

Behold the governors and generals:
The burning highways -- the emptied alleys.
The troops marching on graveyards.
The dead armored and marching.
Right arms stretched heavenward. Saluting

The Misbegotten Son -- Unconquered Sun --
cupiditates factae deus --
Spare us.

We Will Build a Home. / Jen Wagner

We will build a home.
Not with a hammer.
Or nails.
We will not need them.
We will use love.
And our walls will be the witnesses.
Infused with the energy that brought it to life.
Immortalizing our stories.
Long after the ability to put pen to paper ceases to exist.

We will build a home.
It may not be brick.
And it may not be stone.
That idea of home will exist in our bones.
But our walls will be the witnesses.
Of peace
And joy.
Of calm.
And celebration.

We will build a home.
It will be a garden.
Inside and out.
Inside we will grow.
together.
apart.
But the love.
The love will fill the cracks in the walls.
And flow through the spaces in the floor boards.

We will build a home.
Forever safe.
Forever filled
With laughter.
And with music.
And we will dance.
And the walls will be our witnesses.
And they will hold our love.
The way it holds a familiar smell.
And sometimes we will catch the scent.
And smiles will form on our lips.
And tears will fill our eyes.
And everyone who enters will know.
This is not a house.

This is a home.

Reflection / Stacy Walker

I’ve almost reached the end of my
Notebook,
It’s almost the end of the
Year,
Sometimes I think I’m at the end of
My rope,
The road,
The line.

It’s the end of a
Chapter,
Things change –
They always do –
As we turn
To the next.

Looking back,
I feel every
Poem,
Thought,
Reminder,
And note;
Each month, week, day,
And moment
Of a life-changing year,
Because aren’t they all?

Kirsten Miles