January - Poem 20

Other Fairies / Haley Bosse

You were born in a year 
of lesser fires 
and unrung quakes. 

The worst you faced 
were children sick around you 
and then, of course, 
a fever of your own. 

We lay curled 
and sweat-stuck 
into blankets. 

When the rain started or 
when the rain stopped, 
we pulled ourselves up
to learn its dance. 

Look, the moon said,
and there we were.

good on paper  / Jess Bowe

some people don’t try hard enough when it’s hard,
i’ve heard. some people make rash decisions.
some people don’t let the lovemaking heal them
after the last fight. there’s a folded packet
of paper in my old bag, sitting on my closet
shelf. i never asked what to do with it, so i kept
it at the bottom of the dark. i wonder what home
we’d have today. we'd probably fight about the elk
antlers. they don’t belong in the living room. 
you’d probably be asleep on the couch after work.
your brother would still hate me. i’d still 
be counting minutes into the morning
for the booze to lift and the beer to wash
itself out of my hallways. somewhere inside 
of us are two kids: one listening to you read,
one laying on my bedroom floor after the funeral.

Poem I write while packing up the Christmas tree ornaments  / Joanna Lee

I did not mean to be thinking of you.
I was just stealing a few minutes
before dinner to tuck
your little glass angels
into their bubble wrap sleeves,
stack the crystal-and-gold snow-
flakes precisely one atop the other.
And yet here we are, the ghost
of your cigarette smoke
staining the bottom of each box
like cheap fingernail polish, a yellow
memory.
Funny, I can see you
in your red sweater, arm
over the back of the couch,
the cigarette in your hand.
I have heard your voice on repeat
in my dreams, and one cold clear day,
it emerged out of my own lungs
when another car collided lightly
with mine. But I cannot see you
take the smoke into your body.
Not remember how you must
have lifted it to your lips.
Only hear the cough—a wound
of gravel and gauze born
far from the ocean & which leaves me
imagining that last hospital night,
what it must
have felt like finally to run
out of breath,
and no one listening.

I did not mean to be thinking of you.
You, too, always hated this job.

Embrace   / Thomas Page

The doctor left you in the room in tears 
saying that if all else fails in the dead 
of night that it would be the sum of fears
that if you were to die that night in bed 
then it wouldn’t be a surprise, he said 
in a manner so clinical you froze
thinking of everything inside your head—
I remember how long you held me close.

You turned to me when the shock loosened gears 
turned in your head. Take your brother, you pled, 
home so you all can sleep in our home years 
settled in the dirt. Your face was all red
holding back the severity that spread
deep in your eyes trying to not wet throes 
as our own hearts were beginning to shred— 
I remember how long you held me close 

Gingerly walking over to you with spears
in my gut, knelt down to embrace you stead-
fastly, you whispered soft prayers in my ears,
your arms trying to cleave cleanly with thread
me to you that I could maybe have led
you away from all of the rubble those 
realities piping wet poisoned lead— 
I remember how long you held me close 

O princely doctors, whose words sharp as sheers
upon a precipice they don’t mince prose
the way you cut briar roses with shears—
I remember how long you held me close. 

Summer Blagoveshchenck, 1828  / Sarah Paley

(mistranslation after Pushkin)

Calico cats, centipedes, monkeying goats, dog,
NOT funny, humble bumblebees taking
their morning prambles and blitzing Bluebells & anything
NOT red. The thrush plays harp strings –
B to not so minor C to B because he likes a timeline
yet tomorrow’s hero trills
B crescendoing to a howl that resembles the express
from Tiadavostock to Irtusk
Screaming through fields of cabbage and barley. Tick-tock,
station masters shapes appear and mock...
ButImissmyplace! Six months ago none of this
could happen but the passing seconds...
No, not C! Anything but C in any key. Mellow
a penalty not spoken
No, I’ll repeat for the silent spider, no kangaroos can
hop de hop near this clamor.

Hope  / Amy Snodgrass

(Thank you, Carolyn Herman, for the prompt!)

Things I both love and hate:
speed bumps
Ziploc bags
saddles
lorazepam
K-cup coffee makers
calluses on my toes
wind

Things I only love:
those birds passing overhead, looking like petals swept up in a dance
this close silence tempered just enough by distant monkeys howling
the constellation of freckles on my daughter's cheek
an assuaging of my fears by any means
all the chances I get to leap, literally or figuratively, with my son
light reflected in water
a horse’s forelock

Things I only hate:  
Plenty, but I will give them no platform here.

How wonderful, wonderful, to re-invent ourselves.
You can always stand up, even if everyone knows you as a coward.
You can (of course!) begin to flood the world with kindness even if 
you have been known (for years!) as the bitch. 
You can choose to assuage someone’s fears (mine, if you like) rather 
than stoke them. 

Listen.
Ride bareback.
Go barefoot.
Buy a glass French press.
Curl into the skirt of a sequoia until the gusts soften into breeze.
Invest in a Bento box and forgive yourself for the rest.  How wonderful, wonderful. Wonderful, and just right.