January - Poem 25
Taken / Haley Bosse
Sometimes,
The world is the shape
Of a child
And sometimes
A child is the shape
Of the world, but
Always,
Always
A child is
A child
And a child
Cannot bare
All this weight.
son of a mother / Jess Bowe
a field of small boys
in men’s clothing, life is left
to the morning crows.
at birth, my first son
feathers my face with fingers,
his palm the lips of
God on my cheek. Love
warms us both. he’s a garden
housing the world’s seeds.
what will i tend to
across the breakfast table?
what can i offer
in a land growing violence,
blood on the hands of our sons.
Third Draft for a Requiem / Joanna Lee
what good are even
words
against such relentless
boots?
how many mothers’ sons
will we watch clubbed
on cold pavement,
shot
dead?
poems can’t hold enough
silence
(see how it slips,
like blood through fingers
we press to the wound?)
to stem grief’s howling
tide
—like the snowfall here tonight,
coming and coming, ghost
white laughter
through the darkness, as if
it could erase the world.
Dirge in the Dirt / Thomas Page
after Seven Deadly Sins - Wrath, a photograph by Johann Wolf and Kahlen Rondot
What is the price of professionalism when you learn
on the day of that you’d have to be lowered into dirt
burying a sin of wrath when just now you’d learned your friend
died in a car accident? Should you refuse and burn
your career like the smolders of crematoriums?
Or should you dirge in the dirt as a consolation?
Thanks / Sarah Paley
For he who first decided to eat an artichoke,
the inspired one, inventor of the supernal bicycle.
For outdoor showers
For indoor tubs
For water, in general (in all its forms)
For sections of oranges
Black and white cats, though some might disagree
and want marmalade or no cats.
For pebbles found in pockets months later.
Change too, especially bills.
And for the pocket.
Yea, for tea, and for the miracle of sleep.
And for love that is stronger than death.
@upwellpoetry / Amy Snodgrass
a cento from Abby, Henrik, Jen, John, Kristyn, and Sol
¡híjole! mouths defy gravity and
betrayal always happens unannounced
the way ramen broth stews
or bread comes crackling out of the oven
luckily, forgiveness too.
–it is almost within arm’s reach
–it is the seed, huddling in the dark, damp soil
in an unbreakable vase
late in life
not asking for anything
allies appear
listening with ears that can finally hear
radiant, innocent
you may call me a witch
and you need no words
to always take my side and
to watch clay harden into dreams
