January - Poem 15
living ghosts / Jess Bowe
Tolerance / Joanna Lee
Sirens
were once
bird-bodied
women if you
believe the old
myths, their echo-wail
through the nightwash
breaking darkness into
startled shards, luring
us too close
to the rocks. In this
instance they are distant—
a black train through
a black tunnel, headed
south, the sound waves
receding or
a tide going out:
someone somewhere
dying, but not
any neighbors
we know.
No one
is tying us
to the masts
plugging our ears.
Nowadays
they’re more a track
in our shuffled
trauma
playlist that comes up
at least once
a day, a reflexive
audible Father,
Son, Holy Ghost, white
noise colored
red. Someone
somewhere is dying,
but a fortnight
into the new year
and this city
has of yet no
reported homicides.
That has to mean something
right? In the cold
stillness of pre-dawn,
the streetlight beside
the vape shop’s
dumpster holds
the light
of a north star.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Your Celebration of Life / Thomas Page
You always reminded me to cut my lines
like the plaque away from my teeth but I was bad
at making a metaphor feel short. Regardless,
I wanted to write about when I was driving
to your Celebration of Life when I saw
a red Camry that had pulled into the left
lane to turn onto Lynn from Gunn Highway.
In the back, with his face pressed against
the window was a child staring intently
at me as I drove past. When we made eye-
contact, the child lifted his hand with
his middle finger pressed against the glass
and sneered at me. Sneered at me, an innocent
man just driving to a celebration of life.
What had I and my dirty silver Focus
done to this nine-year-old child to make
a crude reference to pheasant under glass?
After I drove past, I was miffed at first then
laughed at the absurdity of it all.
Courage / Sarah Paley
Harold Smith, the elevator operator
lets the daughters of the dead tenant
formerly in 2A pray out in the corridor
in front of the deceased’s apartment.
“I’m gonna have to tell them they can’t no
more at some point.” he says. “It’s kind of creepy
but it makes them feel better…” Marco
the Super isn’t aware. “Oh, man, if he
finds out...” Harold doesn’t finish the thought.
He shakes the Super out of his head: “You ever
meet Mickey Rooney?... No? I did. He bought
suits from my father’s store.” He adjusts the lever.
The wooden box he has manned for thirty years
opens. “Nice guy.” Sunlight and interlopers appear.
Fussing about in the Branches / Amy Snodgrass
after Jimmy Santiago Baca
8:15pm: I am still awake thanks only
to the testosterone pellet inserted in my side.
The incision itches but I have more
pep in my step, and I am glad for it.
Stretched out here on my gray couch,
I allow my arched thickness to send me
on its favorite ride: the Pride-Shame roller
coaster. Cresting the first hill, I gaze at my
children’s art on the wall across the room.
Pop! A wolf howls! A snake meant to be eating its own
tail escapes that fate (Seemingly a miracle, this saving of
a life more likely happened because of underdeveloped
spatial awareness.) and an elephant trumpets a stream
of confetti back over itself onto a triangle holding three
balloons, all representing, in my hopeful mind, two
childhoods going well. Happy.
I wear my menopause–loony and beautiful–like a lined
and woolen cloak. I am equal parts 1) sunk under its weight
and 2) enthralled with swinging it out and around like
a detective, superhero, knight, magician. I can be anyone
I want now!
I still have to check my son on the tracking app, though,
to make sure he’ll be home by 9. And my daughter will
pop out at any minute—I hope I hope I hope—with a story
and a plan.
But me? I am being reborn: howling whenever I want,
dancing under fantastic elephant confetti, no longer eating
my tail. Who knew? Who knew, all that time I thought
my children were doing art projects to develop their
creativity and their prefrontal cortexes when all along,
they were actually building my future, handing it to me
on a canvas, setting it on a shelf next to a broken vase
and a rusted horseshoe, open side up.
