February - Poem 3
A Note / Kristine Anderson
The sun sets in the west,
my older sister explained.
You can remember
because cowboys
ride into the sunset.
So how to explain
my riding eastward
at almost seventy,
leaving the Pacific
& a lifetime of sun,
& desert-inspired air,
heading from dusks
toward sunrises—
fire spreading across
the Atlantic sky.
Too many sunsets,
maybe. Days,
lives, dreams
twilit and fallen
behind Coast Range
mountains into
the sizzling ocean.
Sister, you would’ve
known something
of what I’m saying.
Surface Certainty / Barbara Audet
A life depends so often
on the certainty that a foot
coming to rest on a surface
will not push through
to a lasting void.
A child will rush onto the ice.
Unaware that clear
enticement of a slide
across its barren beauty
is uncertain
at the least.
Breaks, cracks, jagged edges
must form
when the surface
inevitably lies
proving unreliable.
Holding onto choices,
the verbal slide
traipsing so certainly on.
This forward march
on broad expanses
of dangerous expressions,
ego-frozen,
is no skating endeavor,
glibly tracing figures
from the past.
It reminds one
of thick boots j
ust behind,
willful walkers
posed to tiptoe on
heart-stopping socialized brulee,
intimidation-made glides.
Masked boots
that lift in unison
to land with malice
on the worn surface
of a cold world, upending
Soundtracked with a life-taking
cacophony of crystals
thrown into the uncertain face
of its unrecognizable delicate civility.
For Mario / Bee Cordera
I wake up every morning
next to you and that is a poetry.
I fall asleep in your arms as we watch
horny hockey and even that is poetry.
Sharing your breath, sharing your time,
we are poetry.
Elegy for the Something of Death and Water Lilies / Ashby Logan Hill
And afterwards still you and I left, the only ones singing,
angel-headed and high-lighter glow in expanse of night.
Old riverboat for your pleasure in Bardo as fisherman's wife.
And something from me, an elegy I wrote to you before dying
of death, a simple few instructions on the backs of notecards —
green and gold sleeping bag for sarcophagus lined with flowers,
cold but glowing prostrate body in the bed of my pick up truck,
my brother said on pyre of palo santo and white pine pontoons.
And I wanted the jars I had made for my brains to be whipped,
mosaiced from the classes we'd take after work on Wednesdays
to stand there right beside Bastet and Anubis at feet and head.
It almost made sense this set of requests, not the Viking fire
you envisioned. It was almost as if you could hear me calling.
That’s all I’ve ever really wanted. Something like this for death.
Social Seamstresses / Amy Marques
musingly built
the pattern--
inaudible and invisible
which
may have been a
mender
in due season.
MAx / Sonia Sophia Sura
Max plays the guitar.
I feel it
through my toes
on his knee.
I hope to fall asleep.
Awake, I dream of the ocean, of finally reaching water and waves.
I could have gone there from coldened Spain
to India, or Thailand, or Bali,
but my Heart called me to Texas.
Why do I come here to find pieces of my heart
everywhere I didn’t know it would be?
Everywhere I did know it would be, actually.
In the frustration of highway cars and
expensive living I
find my Heart
in Max’s tiny home.
I find my butt glued to my body.
It is cold but not like Massachusetts.
Max acts beyond words can describe.
It’s like we’re kids who’ve been friends all along.
We sit next to each other in the bed,
stuffed animals in every direction,
Essay on his lap, Journal in mine,
Shower Dripping to
a rhythm that
doesn’t
bother me tonight,
it’s
slower
tonight.
Two
different notes.
The cat
is somewhere
outside,
under Great Tree or
car.
The Howling of
the Graveyard Ghosts
don’t
reach
us.
We are bubbled-in-light,
the Two of Us,
the Together of Us
as Separate
but One Unit
of
remarkable
friendship.
The Whole World
might think
We’re made for Each
Other,
wearing the
same Jacket,
the same Smile,
the same Love.
I’m
unlike
a friend
he’s ever had
and
He’s
unlike
a friend
I’ve
ever had.
Long Distance Haiku / Samuel Spencer
My body and soul
are riven now because my
heart is where you are.
