January - Poem 10

Norway Spruce / Haley Bosse

This year’s new growth gone 
From near-translucent 
To wintermint
And reaching toward 
An almost-unreal shade
Of what only comes 
To pine,
Branch extended 
Just a hand’s reach 
Off the wooden railing,
Warped and disconnected 
In the corner,
A wobbling danger 
For each day it’s stood,
The diving board from which 
My mother’s dog once leapt
And hovered for a moment
Before landing, 
We suspect, 
Among the branches
And wiggling her way 
Into the duff below. 

Every new year, 
My grandmother bemoans 
The looming death
Of the tree, 
Its roots stretching 
Even now, 
She insists, 
Into the foundation, 
Rasping softly
With their mindful creep,
One wrong move 
Enough to send us,
Trembling and uncaught,
Into the earth. 

songbird / Jess Bowe

Around the corner
of the beech-lined trail, gray
feathers kiss the wind.

Nest-fallen Wren sleeps
a final time on the roots,
the forest pulling

her body further
in for inevitable
embrace. I fold green

around her lived-in
wings, one yellow for joy,
star-flower for Thanks.

Somewhere over the rainbow,
I sing her into the grave.

Grief Ghazal  / Joanna Lee

All this cold, fragile grief: we’ve been there, waiting for the rain—
smoke that doesn’t clear, a god who doesn’t care, waiting on the rain.

January dark comes early and school bells mourn an ending
as a child cries somewhere, waiting in the rain.

Bare heads and covered faces, our fingers
tearless searching eyes that stare waiting in the rain.

We become prickled, hard, cactus skins in starless night
our hearts dry as despair, waiting on the rain.

A prayer for those who flee the fight; two
for those who stay to dare, waiting in the rain.

Tell me, brother—how will history remember us?
we were just, we’ll swear, waiting for the rain.

Where will you find a poet who can sing us through to morning?
lost on a road to nowhere, waiting in the rain.

Conestoga / Thomas Page

It feels like everyday I’m driving a conestoga 
whenever you point out the same ponderosa 
although we don’t live anywhere near any jatropha
or see along the beach a mimosa. 

Whenever you point out the same ponderosa 
while asking me if we have any more samosa 
or see along by the beach a mimosa
dreaming of what it must be like to be a mariposa.

While asking me if we have any more samosa 
which may be filled with some scabiosa 
dreaming of what it must be like to be a mariposa
you can point out the arboretum’s gloriosa.

Which may be filled with some scabiosa 
although we don’t live anywhere near any jatropha
you can point out the arboretum’s gloriosa—
It feels like everyday I’m driving a conestoga. 

Boobs  / Sarah Paley

To you, the boys and men who cared so much
when I was a mere stripling girl
about the glacial progress of my Bazookas.
I’d like to apologize for my ingratitude.

Your concern for my slow bloom
boomed off the brownstones in Park Slope
“FLATSO! HEY FLATSO!”
“You ain’t even got Mosquito Bites.”

“You walking forward or back I can’t tell.”
You cared so much and let me know.
Where were my Hooters? My Twin Peaks?
My Knockers? The Gals?

One boy didn’t share your worry. For a few weeks,
or maybe a few days, Darius was my boyfriend.
We’d lope in unison to the park. His arm around
me not searching for nonexistent Tatas or Melons.

This was around the time my best friend Rachel’s
Dream Team appeared. Oh my! Magnificent!
Outsized – like Barbies. You chased after her to snap
her bra strap from behind. She had to swat you away

or be escorted through your throngs like John, Paul, George
or Ringo. It was too much for Darius who disappeared,
maybe in search of some Golden Orbs he could flatter.
And then one day, it seemed to happen overnight –

your chorus changed. “Hey girlie, how’d you know I love
Milkshakes!” “Bouncie, Bouncie!” the construction workers
said in rude rhythm as I passed by on my way to school.
Who, ME? Yes, they were here. Ripening Newbies.

And Darius reappeared but too late. I’d moved on.
He exclaimed and explained to anyone who’d listen
“I never woulda broken up with her if I knew she was
gonna sprout Tits!” And now, half a century later, a still

unfinished woman observes that shy girl as she trudges toward
womanhood, folding into herself, amidst your boosterism
for her burgeoning Boobs. What do I see from this impossible
distance? I see an unsung hero. I see Joan of Arc.

escape   / Amy Snodgrass

a found poem

mind the sparks of your candle:
heaving with malevolence 
deliriously intoxicated
shaded with a heavy cloud
of delusive assurances

I begin to shrink:
I hardly know what to hide
and what to reveal
and must whisper 
bitter things 
of atmospheric tumult
that writhes and yearns

amazed at the blackness 
of spirit transmuted into bits 
of folded paper: resolutions 
formed in the hour of fear 
of the approach of what is coming

ah! the sparks of your candle: beautiful wild 
vindictiveness in its white cheek
the lights flitting to and fro
kindling a spark of spirit
the commencement 
of delirium to beguile me
with the spectre of 
a hope escaping 

                   into the free air
      now clear and still

Source material: Emily Brontë‘s Wuthering Heights 

With the exception of a few minor changes for verb tense consistency, all words are directly from the book, reordered.