December - Poem 9
This is the day when I say Velociraptor / Kate Bowers
And all the magic falls down.
Fossil fanning
A McDonald’s meal on the bluff
Everywhere to go and nowhere to be
If you were to ask. And I were to answer. The worst thing you could have in this world is a biology. Erase that from your passport and you could go anywhere.
Aliveness is the trade value. The dollar mark. Beyond the blood, beyond the youth. The inhale wanted is that spark, the vermillion bird nested in your heart they no longer know, the very candle of your eye that will fly rather than be crushed.
Imagine
One’s disappointment at arriving at table only to find crumpled and scarred tin foil and thin meat juices left in the Pyrexed bottom of a glass casserole dish
WHEN—————————-YOU
had been expecting a newly roasted leg of lamb fresh from the field this morning, traces of its pulse still palpable to one’s hanging tongue, one’s unclosed mouth.
Such careful grammar in this interspecies convo, is this not true?
This is the season of the monster, the ungainly at any size. Who can love a film accreting on glass, a bun turned to mold?
70 million years is a long time to await the return of an unusually clawed, unshod foot to stamp you down, delicately offset with balance on the other.
Left. Left. Left, right, left.
6 feet.
100 lbs.
Heretofore a child’s plastic toy.
A cartoon.
A sticker on a roll of bandaids beside the grocery checkout belt
Now alive, engorged by your fear.
Winged…
I Have an Idea for a Book / Katie Collins
I have an idea for a book
A woman finds out she has cancer
And goes off in search of the children that came
From the eggs she donated
To update their family history
She didn't know what she was passing on.
An outline comes easily, but the draft is caught on the fifth page
That stares blankly out on my color-drained face.
I have an idea for a book
There's a princess in a tower that's waiting for her prince
Only for a whole team of knights to storm the tower.
Twelve men coming in at all once overwhelms her
So she jumps out of the window.
To her shock, she flies and sees her face in the lake below.
Like Medusa before her, she's frozen as she realizes she's been a dragon all along.
An outline comes easily, but the draft doesn't fill more than a paragraph
Before I'm sketching the wordless characters.
I have an idea for a book.
I have an idea for a thousand.
The thoughts spill out of my brain.
A few break containment.
Some even get to the page.
But very few capture my imagination long enough to bind me to my keyboard.
A men's wool blazer - Italy Design size 38 (maybe worn once) / Ellen Ferguson
Let’s go somewhere better
I’ll wear your sweater
You’ll wear my blazer
Your hair in a bun
Let’s go to Vegas
No one will catch us
We’ll live life
With no wife
Two kids on the run
Get rid of my blazer
No need for your sweater
I’m back in a family way
But just for a minute
Since I’m still stuck in it
Like traffic in downtown LA
Wordsearch / Chris Fong Chew
Within the space of the sentence
there is the word within
the letter and shapes,
within shapes, within shapes.
Break down the shape of the sentence
and find its most basic parts. Meaning derived
from shaped lines on a page, lines communicate
sound, communicate meaning, communicate
Definition: in the space of a dictionary, the sentence
is a definition, a part of speech, a meaning of a word
defines the meaning of a word.
Rebuild the space of the sentence, follow Bachelard
transforming words, descriptors, infinitives, conjunctions,
architect the sentence, derive feeling from meaning.
Search for words in the vastness of the body. Find definitions
in the vastness of the mind. Find vastness in the space
of the world.
Keep expanding the line, increase in length, reaching across the page
Stretching the limits of the language, the words, the meanings, the ideas.
The nonsensical is created in the space between knowing and not knowing.
Profundity is found in knowing what you do not know. And in here, I don’t know.
The snow knows / Davis Hicks
In the softest off-set steps,
which accept any presence
and even hug it back
you can hear the honesty
of listen-light,
the presence of pushing-powder.
Even when exhale is smog,
Inhale is the clearest clean there is,
the moonshine of winter breath.
With drawn-in shoulders,
the screech-screen of wild things
two-stepping in their places,
following silence-song’s paces.
Inside is the tight-built wasp nest,
clinging to all edges.
There,
when all scrambling things are asleep
and none but the birds are talking,
you will be heard
with the constant continuance
of an attentive sky.
Saturday is for hanging laundry / Victor Barnuevo Velasco
She declares, like it is the eleventh commandment. Saturday is for drying outside. The best time to start is before the sun climbs up the ipil tree. Before it casts shadows on the corn drying on the mat on the ground. She loves to watch the gray leaves form like clouds on the clothes. The clothes heave wearily; the breeze is inviting but they cannot escape. Their shoulders are pinned to the lines that tie the house to the fence that encloses the whole yard.
Sometimes she sees a thread dangling from a shirt. She thinks the stitches will unravel, and the pieces will fall on the ground, where they will reassemble and form an army of shirts and pants and underwear and socks. They will form a line behind her. She will march them past the bougainvillea that has not been hedged for months. Past the gardenias and roses that have not bloomed for three summers. Past the wooden gate, into the streets. Through the bamboo groves. Down the river, where other shirts and pants are waiting. They have already taken a plunge in the deepest part of the water; floating. She will take a plunge. The depth of the water carries her back. She is suspended among armless shirts and pants missing their torsos. She will stretch her arms and bask in the sun.
But first there are bed linens to strip. And pillowcases to check for blood, from her children scratching their scalps in sleep. And mud to scrape from the pants of her husband. And holes to mend. And shorts to hem. And school uniforms to iron. And church clothes to starch. Because Sunday is for church. Church begins her week for Saturday.
Amen / Jen Wagner
God.
Please.
Not again.
Not another one sliding into my DMs.
Thinking…
I’ll hit her her up—
Tell her all the things she wants to hear.
Pretend.
Then back away slowly.
Start the process of ghosting.
Until she’s bitter,
And it ends.
Please, God.
Just spare me.
From another mediocre conversation with a man
Only wearing
Patagonia,
And flannel.
Because that’s the uniform.
Wing tips and dark denim
with the creases still in them.
In Jesus name,
Please hear me.
Lord…
Please, don’t make me have to say no.
That never ends well.
They call me a bitch
And a “ho.”
Oh, and…I’m ugly now.
As though
I don’t know
Exactly what brought them here.
It was pretty eyes.
And a smile that’s wise.
But…!
I am not a woman that will be owned.
God…
They don’t like when I shun their cages.
Even though they’re the ones that “don’t want to label it.”
So I’m off…
To much safer spaces.
Ones that I’ve created.
A place for us—
That we don’t have to be brave in.
And Lord…
You’ve delivered for what I’ve been praying.
So…
Thank you.
And goodnight.
Amen.
form and function / Stacy Walker
Scientifically,
It seems,
A body functions to support
Its survival,
A self-sustaining machine,
Built to support
Its own needs.
A body requires nourishment,
Completing the necessary tasks
To discover,
Vet,
And ingest.
A body carries
Its organs,
Precious cargo
Supporting its life,
Managing,
Contorting itself,
To protect
Its most vulnerable parts.
A body supports the lives
Of other bodies,
Built to create,
Grow,
Protect,
And nurture.
Spiritually,
The body carries
A soul,
Home to a spirit
Passing through.
A body supports
A spirit’s purpose,
Moving to create
What is meant to be,
Empowering,
Allowing
A spirit
To contribute its gifts
To this earthly realm.
What I’m learning,
Though,
Is the purpose of a body
Is not
To prove something,
Is not
To be used
To do endlessly,
Simply endeavoring
To endlessly
Do more.
In doing for doing’s sake,
In proving,
A body must relinquish
Its purpose,
And repurpose
To become
An ever-evolving thing,
Manipulating itself
To be something else,
To do more,
To look different,
To serve something else.
When a body’s repurposing
From its purpose
Pulls it away
From itself,
It breaks down -
As a body
Does not wish
To manipulate
Itself.
You see,
A body
Does not care
What other bodies
Think of its form.
A body wants to serve
Its purpose,
A function
That matters,
Each body its own,
Knowing it existsAs more than a vehicle for a soul,
And more than a case for organs.
A body’s purpose
Is its own.
