January - Poem 24
Unbecoming / Haley Bosse
Hair falling
Through my face
In a smudge
Of crow’s feather
Backlit by fawn,
A scattering
Of skin
Into water,
Its lick sliding down
The windowpane,
Smoothing glass
Into glass
And its wobbling,
Shining brilliant
With nothing
In the place
Of anything
Else, only
Dripping
And the absence
Of knowing
What I am.
there is a song / Jess Bowe
a blackout poem derived from Anthony William’s book, Medical Medium
i follow my curiosity to a precipice—
the secrets we’ve become used
to hush and quiet. we live
to expand and experience
the fabric of the story,
the reveal of one
unique composition.
How it is from here to Texas / Joanna Lee
While everyone waits for the storm to come,
the moon like a Cheshire cat smile
shines a cold pearly white
over sharp rooftops in silhouette
over a river running black and unpersuadable
over dark cars and dark asphalt
and the white cat that slinks
from beneath one cooling engine to the next
over the trash bins overflowing with torn signs
from yesterday’s protest
and the ground strewn with future ghosts
where they want the new detention center
over the windows like eyes and eyes and eyes
& the tiny screens lit up inside every other one,
bright tired faces drowning themselves
softly while the temperature drops
& you look over your shoulder
to find your shadow becoming
just another part of the night
and you reach your hand
to the human next to you,
now each a little warmer.
How Quick the Bank Knows You’re Gone. / Thomas Page
Song / Sarah Paley
My sixtieth year has come and gone
I sit, a solitary woman,
In a crowded New York shop
The Times and empty cup
On the marble tabletop.
Tattooed barista, pierced busser
all have my goodwill. I savor
bitterness. They are young.
Simply happy to be amidst, among,
they cannot hear the song I sang. I sung.
Survival Chute / Amy Snodgrass
All week I’ve felt good for nothing
other than a dam for fear,
politely containing it so I don’t quite burst
out of my skin, unbloomed.
With deeds
undone and emotions suppressed, my insides
spin in an under-oxygenated orbit:
no arriving or leaving,
just dreading, reliving.
–a hooded towel in a perpetual swinging spiral, resoaking on repeat–
Misery. But then that moment comes
the one that anyone who knows, knows:
the crescendo of a supposed eternity
bursting like a river blocked-up by boulders
that after all that drama reveal themselves to be mere
cotton balls spilled from the cabinet with the broken door.
With each squish
of my fingers, one swell after another,
then more that slow into drips, I plant myself.
Wiping us the mess, I feel again how hope
crosses its arms, relaxes into the current,
and finds the survival chute, every single time.
