February - Poem 20

Sepia / Kristine Anderson

In the faded sepia landscape,
overcast sky, trees not yet in foliage—
early spring, perhaps. Dandelions
dotting the lawn. Or just damage
spots on the old photo. An Iowa farm-
house. Very early twentieth century.
Taken by a roaming photographer,
for the hefty price of $1.00, perhaps.
Six people posing in the yard in front
of the house. To the left, a grandmother
figure, mostly obscured behind a bush
as tall as her shoulders, her face rising
above, wispy gray hair pulled back,
head tilted down, a whimsy of a smile.
To the far right, two tall farmhands
in overalls, wearing caps. All business.
In the middle, two young boys, maybe
pre-teens. Dressed in clothes
they haven’t grown into yet.

I can’t quit staring at the ramrod straight
petite woman to the left of the boys,
dark hair neatly up, sharp heart
of a face, shadows for eyes,
dressed from ground to chin, sleeves
to her wrists, in black. If it’s who
I think, she’d recently lost a child,
a little girl, who lived eleven days.
Two years before that, she’d lost her first-born,
a son, almost 17. Brain abscess.
She has another son, eleven, possibly
the boy closest to her in the picture.
That would be my grandfather, Fred.
The woman’s name is Clara. In two years’
time, she will give birth to another daughter.
In seven years, she will be confined
to a Hospital for the Insane,
where she will die.
Then Clara, my great-grandmother,
will be buried in an unmarked grave.

Beside The Sea / Barbara Audet

She is old, this woman by the wayside, grey wires for tendrils flying out,
dressed in mismatched seams the error of handmade blue gingham.
She is as not as old as the tidal plains her gaze oversees on the gutted turnoff
from the usually busy highway near the autumn-emptied beach.
Not as old but as women go, old enough to harbor a coastal apprehension.
The woman and the wetlands share accordion wrinkles,
They have twin grasps of their singular topography.
The land, the woman are in harmony by necessity,
In concert with no audience to hear the anguish in their duet
of ebbing in the perfection of a sheltered estuary.
Mother Nature on schedule lines up cattails like natural brushed mascara
to define the oscillating edges of the disappearing shore on sea.
The other lost her mother long ago, and cannot compare
if her flesh folds and bends like hers did,
staking claims on her once porcelain veneer.
Customers know the way to her clapboard house,
looking for a Wyeth sketch done in 3D.
They honk their horns in the fog that is always at her door,
Bring sewing to make right or crabs to
team, pick apart.
Neither woman or plain wants to give in to the petulant progression inland.
For her a backward slap against the face, that means a move away to a landlocked existence. 
For the wetland, doom comes in not one fell swoop,
but by a rippling implosion of encroaching improvements.
She listens and swears she hears the land weeping,
as if the Earth could sigh out loud.
The land hears its death arrive in wind sung blues that no human may decode.
Each takes stock of their losses, watching the dismemberment of sand,
swept away, documented by moonrises and capped ocean swells.
The old woman of the fading Virginia homestead, 
made barren by rapacious sea salt, rocks in downtime on her porch, 
aware of cracking floorboards, gone to splinters.
She longs to see the life return, her skin stretched straight again
across praised cheekbones. Only when she feels sorry for herself,
does she dare neglect the tidal tension, goes inside, settles
for a drop-down set of 45s, grooves as angled as her portraiture,
letting Bobby Darren drown out the moaning of her home under siege.

ANTICIPATION / Ashby Logan Hill

                      for Faith

So, feeling enlightened, tonight we slept with both our eyes open.
A wind again, like in the Alchemist, that brings everything back again.
Again, always again as in eddy, undulating pool of new, and heron
bloom blue, breaking into unrestricted beach by pipeline on Saturday
because you had to find yourself alone surrounded by everything
that you love, anticipation like a cat waiting to pounce, or a pelican
drifting into dive, long linger of the lion lurking. And the zebra with
coffee or cream stripes, nothing like a wildebeest or okapi, and my
head lurches up, with my heart beat, door whisper again for a kiss,
the beauty of this, waiting for you to saunter in, again, having not
seen you in months, at the soda counter for an order of two chocolate
milkshakes, ice water, an order of garlic fries, and two snickerdoodle
cream pies, each turn a heart flutter more like a hummingbird waiting.
Secretly I wish for you again. The rain keeps our hearts forever.

Deliberation / Amy Marques

begin deliberating 

before you must

answer:

the tip of your 

tongue is to be

pitied.

Source Material: A Tale of Two Cities

Every piece of the world touches me  / Sonia Sophia Sura

I hold my own hand
to fall asleep.

In the bath, I am a mermaid.
I feel the echo of the 
water and I know
the ocean is
endless.
And I know the ocean
is endless.
and it shouldn’t be.
it shouldn’t be.

Every piece of the world touches me.

It smells amazing
when the earth 
gets wet.

Sometimes I 
see colors
from people.

Sometimes I feel
colors when
I am touched.

Imagine if the 
whole world hugged.

What would that
sound like?

Imagine if we all
went quiet.

Who would speak first? 

Every piece of the world touches me.
I am trying to be
romantic about this,
so everything doesn’t hurt.