February - Poem 10
Pairs / Kristine Anderson
of feet, one right and one left
(because: dancing, of course)
of hands, one to hold a jar
of pickles, the other to twist the lid
of shoulders, to sling over one a grocery bag,
over the other, a backpack of textbooks
of ears, one to hear the baby cry, the other
to catch my favorite song fading as I run upstairs
of eyes, one to navigate the icy sidewalk, the other
to catch sparrows darting in and out of the holly bush
Haiku One / Barbara Audet
Loyalty bears fruit.
Pregnant deeds give birth anew
Catching threads of hope
Ode to Mother Fletcher / Bee Cordera
You lived lifetimes in one life.
Longer than any of my ancestors
could ever dream.
You see, our mothers turned forgetting
into a hobby. While you made remembering an art.
You never lost one memory, keeper of a stable
matriarchy keeper of Greenwood's agony.
The mothers in my family, we lose memory
like it's buried in our bones wrote in our DNA to do so.
Perhaps the pain you carried
the one we sweep under
the rug of collective dimentia
can find freedom too.
LIKE LOAM / Ashby Logan Hill
For Stanley
Along this line, a horizon forms of lavender, a blue blossom beginning to bud.
Like oleander, like silk, like frozen seafoam, like milk, like the boat lake
near the park by your friend’s house full of frolicking young teenagers
ice skating, hockey sticks in hand, helmets on head, like the feathers of the
geese sauntering toward the worms in the grass, like a rose, how sweet,
like the eyelet somehow still burning in the stove, like snow from the day before,
everything blue, frozen, everything sand, everything silt, like the fields of loam
to the west and north, a storm you’ve been waiting for, like the wind again, always
the wind, like almonds for eyes your grandfather passed along, the left only slightly
smaller, lazier than the other, the newspaper he crinkles between sips of lukewarm
coffee sitting in his white-ribbed “A” shirt, dreaming of Italy, his old cigarettes maybe,
like the sweet, sweaty smell of his old red-white Ford Bronco, a Stanley man it’s said I am, like the curls of red hair bleached blonde for the years of summer spent chlorine.
And I smile a little longer, like him, before the oil stains on his blue jeans call to me.
Bear Hope / Amy Marques
confidence will bear
hope so nothing will
perpetuate apprehensions
new or old
suffering faded
slowly confidence returned
not as an instant
Now: prosper!
Source: A Tale of Two Cities, p. 130
Ice cream / Sonia Sophia Sura
I don't know
how to
understand
my
desires
Sometimes what
might hurt the
most is
what
feels the best.
Ice cream
made my
tummy feel better
(until it felt worse).
Sonnet for Missing Home / Samuel Spencer
I’m far away and have been for some time.
I live in the land of the free
“refills,” is what my brother said while stood in line
one day for the soda machine.
I miss my home’s thick grass and red dirt roads,
the smell of an approaching rain.
I miss the ngumbis and the sound of toads
busting up the night with their vain
attempts at love. I missed my chance to stay
when I mistook a brochure for a dream.
I packed my things and climbed aboard that plane,
to a place where the big lights gleam.
I’ve thrived in this country and gained so much,
but I’d give it all up to return to my dust.
