January - Poem 4
Extant Horizons / Haley Bosse
Their blue a promise
of elsewhere
as much as proof
of hereness
though you wish
here wouldn’t bother
though you wish
these cousin mountains
would split beneath you
and drop you in the sea
just like your distant
finny relatives
gazing up at the illusion
of bright white nothing
dancing beyond your shrinking bubbles
and then behind your tired eyes.
body heat / burning haibun / Jess Bowe
new year and i’d like to be
an old me, one still at a crossroads, one
fooled by the costume of loneliness
worn by spacious possibility, the void dressed
up in a bed too big, a carrot in the shape
of a face; i’d tell her to think about
it, the sense to run, the voice of sunrise
screaming to her bones look how far you can
stretch out your arms! look, i know
you’re tired of learning how to keep the heat
on, tired of wearing chainlink over the soft
of your silvering coat. i know you wonder
if your hands will sink into more than sherpa
in the middle of the dark. can i be a spark
of a star, dancing across the backroads?
or a scroll of light, carriage of warning,
constellation in the shape of an arrow
go this way! this is a map from your future,
and an accident has been reported.
you are no longer on the fastest route
to joy. pull over and warm yourself
with kindness. it’s just the cold talking,
and the heating costs are much too high.
the voice of sunrise:
soft wonder, you are the route
to joy, warm with kindness
Poem to a physicist (reprise) / Joanna Lee
Bitter texts still sit
gathering the dust of the unrequited
on the lowest bookshelf : Schrödinger;
Einstein; Dirac; I wish
I had learned my quantum mechanics harder,
learned how the waves of us can crash into
one
another
and devastate or
leave no trace, infinite
footprints
whose hum no human skin can feel,
on a beach where God bathes without sunscreen.
Watching from another ocean,
could you yet teach me
to temper my frequency &
bend it
round an ending
that doesn’t land broken
in a puddle
on the floor? or
demonstrate, at least, how to encounter elastically:
one vibration smiling across a room, and we both walk away, un-
wounded?
Or just (to hit all the classic buzzwords) put time
in reverse, do this shit over? the homeless cats
that sleep on my front porch
waking up tomorrow to a slightly
different sun.
Higher
math never had a damn thing
to do with love.
Bloodstains / Thomas Page
I’ve had to clean up blood twice,
scrubbing the red off the beige
carpet—mellowed with age.
Wouldn’t it be oh so nice
if I never had to see
you apologize to me
for letting body slice
or a gashed fleck of toenail
to flood my clogged pores. Wail
in unison while I ice
away the labored pain
while I let floating guilt pang
me. I continue to roll dice
allowing myself to care
for you alone like a bear
lost in the winter. I splice
triangles of bandaids
over the wound as I bade
myself to watch the dear price
you pay for my negligence.
My troubled, labored conscience
remembers the Prince song thrice
about blood and rain mixing
into purple life nixing
all familial deaths
On My Way to Lunch for Spicy Jicama Salad and Rissoto Nero / Sarah Paley
It’s grey, grey, grey on Great Jones Street today
with clouds drifting behind a scrim of mist,
punctuated by exclamation points
of dangling yellow traffic signals.
This vague day sets everything in sharp
focus – the red, yellow, green, red, yellow,
green disappear down the Bowery as wet
wheels hiss on the slick black and I remember
the cow pie on a summer day in a field
of golden hay and know that what thou
lovest remains, the rest is dross and what
thou lovest well shall not be reft from thee
and I remember to try to remember to come
back to any small part of you.
River Street Fire House, September 2001 / Amy Snodgrass
for Ilyce
There’s a beach I go to when I feel lost.
Accessed only by a narrow overgrown path.
Black sand with sparkling flecks. Black cliffs
with ledges just right for swinging.
We used to be so every-minute-close I would call you if I sneezed.
We always knew exactly what we meant. Now we are worlds apart.
Our sons have turned 18.
You taught me how to pump breast milk.
You found me the right daycare.
You clipped that car seat right in.
But– even before all that, and certainly
before all this– we were lost together
on that awful day and in all
the weeks after. We had no idea.
Remember that small, two-bay fire station?
How we found it one night, just around my corner?
“Let’s light a candle.”
It lasted all of two minutes: “Ladies,
we need you to leave now, and thank you.”
We had no idea how young we were.
I wonder– where do you go now when you feel lost?
Take me someday? You’ve never seen this beach.
Someday, I’ll bring you. I’ll say, “Remember that time
you brought me milk during the lockdown?” and you’ll say
“Remember that time on the bench by the football field?”
and I’ll say, “Remember that time you said that thing and saved my life?
We will swing our legs, soak in the salt, and know exactly
what we mean: we were, we are, so lost, so lucky, so lucky, so lost.
