January - poem 2

Stitched Up  / Tess Adams

They closed me with catgut—
a surgeon’s neat crosshatch
where the world had split;
my body a torn thing
stitched back into use.

Sutures tugged and burned
rough twine pulled through silk.
Each knot a small salvation
each scar a line of text
I’d never planned to write.

They mended my belly
my bladder, my broken gate—
made me a patchwork of losses
that somehow held.

I trace the seams—
their raised relief, their quiet shine.
I wear them as testament—
not to what was lost
but to what was re-made.

Unwanted Winter  / Haley Bosse

Wooded midday. Snow nearly
Scarring light. Wondering at
Quick damp. Crackle 
Of the plastic sled. Electric blue
Window of your thighs. How 
A breath catches. Then
Scatters out behind you. Coats
The sharpened hill. How
Even now you fly. 

Mother Magick  / Jess Bowe

three ingredient pasta dinner
tastes like firesitting feels;
for this moment,
you are warm and tethered
to meaning. you are close
to each other and binded
by story and songs and the scent
of smoke prays its way into
every fiber stitched across
your body. you are blessed
by memory.

in every room a song,
in every crisis, you know
what it means to be safe
and you do not learn the word

Crisis or broken poor without;
you know what it means
to have music sung in your doorway
while your blankets
wrap around you like angels
and you say them by name
uriel michael raphael sandalphon

the oven cracked open down the hall
sends heat and you never ask
because you never suspect
your mother is cracking open;
all you hear is melody
painting photos on blank walls.

under the night, poetry is written
in an upstairs room, candle flames
dance their shadows
and your mother, alone,
is sobbing her thanks to the close-up
clouds of winter.

you won’t know the furniture
she’s moved, the stacks of clothing
in the garage, the grief she’s shaken
hands with at all hours. morning is a rising
thing and her well-trained gaze 

catches the shadow of a child
wrapped around her waist
glowing on the back wall of the kitchen,
coffee and bread in the air.

magick comes from nothing.
there’s no need for it
when the world always knocks
at your door.

in the empty night, with bare hands
and feet to kiss the cold of the ground
that’s where it strikes,
each spell
and intention,
each noticed wonder unobstructed
by Things; what can you do
with the Invisible

that opens your eyes
to tiny white faeries
grazing the lips of pink
peonies— that pauses your steps
in the driveway
the sun spilling gold across
your rooftop,
the rain
calling out to light
splitting in spectrum

speaking
‘blessed are the mothers’
who make peace in their walls
with ghosts and crumbs
and still know god
at the end of the night
at the bridge of morning
and still wrap arms around
the world with room in their pockets

and somehow make
fireworthy
three ingredient pasta dinners. 

Haibun: Second draft for a requiem / Joanna Lee

siempre quiero estar contento
triste no valgo la pena

                                    --Estopa, “Te Vi Te Vi,” Destrangis

You were conceived in a season of darkness, of regret and little hope for a brighter anything. Born sour, plucked by hand and secreted into a clear plastic cup during January workdays that began before dawn and ended after night had made its daily return. Washed and paper-towel-dried, you were set with a half dozen brothers into special dirt and a small peat pot, anxiously perched in the sill of the most southern-facing window. You, miracle of mid-winter: those first two baby-fine leaves like a second shot at love. And like love, you grew. At two inches you caught the light as the days lengthened; at four, you were given a pot of your own: clay of some desert earth shaped in promise. Paychecks were poured into your fast-drain soil, and you soaked up each successive summer on the front porch where daylight lingered longest. Come fall, you’d be carried icon-like to the back of the house, your own room lit with your own fluorescent lights, defying the shortness of the days. Soon, your leaves were as big as a hand, fragrant as tea. You grew thorns—thorns! Spring rolled into summer and your branches reached for the sky, their willowy lengths dividing, thickening, hardening into arabesques. But there came a turning point. Some plague, one overlong winter, and for the past eighteen months, you’ve been slowly dying. The leaves dropping soundless, you ceasing to look upward. Each day a slow shear. No more drinking of the light. No more green laughter. Like me, you will never bear fruit. It is the burden of one who has planted the seed to put it to rest at its failing. One midwinter evening I carry you from the house to let the night seep through all at once—leaf, stem, trunk, to the cradle of your roots.     

Eres de los que no vuelan
presidario del silencio frio,
frio que la sangre hiela

Placeholder   / Thomas Page

Most people understand how serious
it is when I say what you’re dealing with 
“Oh, I know a guy’s son,” or “a classmate,”
or whatever distant connection they have 
with what they think you’re going through. 
People always wanted to commiserate 
about what how it must be like to be you
or to deal with you or to deal with it. 
Secrets are like the foil over candies—
torn open rather easily by children;
savored in the mouth as it melts. 

Time Travel  / Sarah Paley

Memories have a gravitational pull
though I seem to become untethered
and find myself floating like a novice 
astronaut taking in the galaxy of my childhood –

the iron key
turning reluctantly
in the grandfather clock

      the slurp of the mud
      swallowing my red boots
      as my sister pulls me from above

      a fireball’s dye
      alarming my red
      tongue

      the smell of lilacs, pine needles,
gasoline, cut grass, the rotting trunk
I sat on for hours in the woods

These comets hurtle towards me or hang
like dumb dead stars insisting on existing.

What are we without them? What do goldfish remember?
Involuntary traveler, there is no cure for memory.

Lap Swimming in Costa Rica  / Amy Snodgrass

(after living here for 12 years)

Somehow I’m still surprised every year
when these December winds make waves,

shaking my early evening laps 
into a frenzy: unwelcome and hard.

Here these winds –warm and long–
mean Christmas. These winds make 
everyone around me glad with tidings.

But even after all this time, I long 
for the dry scent of snow coming, for
the pine wreaths, the toffee and the elves,
and I wonder when my mother will come.

The winds shake the crane cables:
abandoned, shameful, and smooth.
Arcs of half-painted steel above the pool
claw into what’s left of the sun.

I pause and I float, watching others 
on the deck gesticulate as they discuss 
the next stages of construction. I watch 
them wave and point in the direction 
of the winds, and smile 
their holiday smiles. 

To them, the winds are faith.

To me, the winds are dust-filled omens,
darkening my lane with whipping dry leaves—

I don’t know how I got here.