July - Poem 10

Hours of Desire / Clayre Benzadon

I.

Dawn desire is just rest-
lessness. At this hour,
it’s a bubble gum fro-
yo pink, irresistible and
earth-scented like Play-Doh.

6 am desire dabbles in sky-
liquid, splashing against
rhubarb watermelon vision-
scape.

II.

Morning desire is heavy
like a log. It leaves you
hanging, and hard. It is
too early to ask for what
you want. Desire at this

hour is the texture and
color of butter. Easy to
slice through. It smells
like hay now, a little sour
and stale. It asks you

to stay awake and alert.

III.

Noon desire tunes
into the after. Orange
peel, burnt orange
lines the light of this

time. This type of want
slows down in the middle
of contemplation. It asks,
where can I inhabit a body

at this point? Where is my
  beginning and finish?

Noon moon ends soon.

14 Facts About Vermilion City    / RJ Ingram

1 The train doesn’t stop here.
2 But it used to.
3 The lighthouse used to be important too.
4 But it moved.
5 Not once but twice.
6 Our leader was married in the lighthouse.
7 Gerd wakes him up mouth aflame with foam.
8 Mice migrate through the city.
9 About a day ahead of the passing train.
10 Our leader pours sea water in his coffee.
11 To cool it off.
12 His playful mouse surfs across live wires.
13 Before nesting in the lighthouse.
14 It’s become both their home & tomb.

 Haiku At Night / MeraBaird Kuar

The night sky
holding anxiety
like the zodiac

spring aubade interrupted by cat / Kes Maro

the landscape: cello
on the L train platform

mourning doves building
a nest on the fire escape,

and falling magnolia petals.
the city cracks its wrists

and stretches out
that half sleep cats do.

the sycamores on my block
have bright green leaves. i saw

cops pull five people
out of a car in the middle

of traffic on 6th ave
one morning. the postman

and i wondered about how
young they were. an obstacle

course of purple graduation
photos descends on the park.

morning sounds, furniture
being pushed to the curb in piles,

chickadees and hissing bugs. light
coming in the windows. i wake up

to the cat retching down the crack
between the wall and the bed

where the quilt has been
conveniently pulled back

by formless too warm nightmares.
her yellow bile spills down

this trench and over both sheets
and gets stuck between the wood

floor and the poorly aligned
siding. i want to get a new mattress.

i want to get a new wall.
instead i wash the sheets. i pat her back

gently. later we will play a game
where i try to convince her to take

the pills that will make her feel better
and we will both lose when i wrap her

in a blanket and shove them
down her throat.

Table for One in the Smoking Section  / Azmia Ricchuito

My Roman Empire

is building Rome in a day

just to burn it down again

and again

and again.

Victim of circumstance

or arsonist?

Armageddon eyes

Breathing gasoline

Accelerationist.

This is what they call

insanity. 

Out of the Picture    / Tammy Smith

I haven’t seen my mother
in fifteen years. Imagine—a Jewish mother
not missing her daughter or grandson,
not caring we don’t talk
by phone or text,

not missing us at simchas—birthdays,
bar mitzvahs—not needing to stick
her nose into our business,
not worrying whether we’re safe.

I cover my eyes
when I light the Shabbat candles.
Wax melts like grief.

How can my mother
not feel the warmth
of family? I doubt she cares
if she ever sees us again.

My son met her once.
He was three.
Half a day.

She flew into our lives
like a blackpoll warbler—
no landing, no rest,
no refueling.

My friends mutter
strange bird
and crane their necks
to look past my tears.

No one understands
this kind of loss,
its unnameable shape:

a fist in the middle
of a bar mitzvah, a shiva call,
a poetry workshop, Mother’s Day—

where people pass around photographs
and stories of their mothers
while I sit there
with empty hands.

In Your Spinner Dream  / Daphne Stanford

It is Los Angeles in
the year of our Lord
2019 & you are inside 
a Blade Runner spinner. 


Harrison’s here too, but 
he’s not talking. All is
not quiet, nor is it 
illuminated. Only 
dusk & dim neon
lights overhead from 
billboard girls &
storefront windows. 


You drop Harrison off at the 
all-night Chinese take-out
place, flying till you reach 
Santa Monica Pier, sailing 
high over the ocean till the 
sun sinks. You keep going.