July - Poem 11

Stairwell Cosmology / Clayre Benzadon

The life I almost keep touching
is measured in stairwells. By how
many I can climb, and see, I keep
going until I run out of steam and
almost faint. Every rotation is another
entry into the cosmos, full of salt
and sand and possibility. The first portal
led me towards a dream dollhouse, mini-
ature village of my life. I was a small
figurine trying to figure out how to exit
this imaginative utopia. Then I climbed up
to the second floor. This time I was trapped
in The Platform situation, scarcity filling my
plate. I crouched onto the floor, started writing,
engraving my name onto the wood, hoping it stays.

Crossover Episode   / RJ Ingram

The one where the main characters fight over their seats at a table & absolutely nothing else / The one with the trip to the zoo & the lost girl who asked uncomfortable questions / The one when the laugh track broke & laughter punctuated every line every door closing & every awkward silence / The one we skip when the kids are watching bc we don’t want them to know where their uncle Randy went / The one where one of them wins money in the lottery & everyone fights over how to spend the money they miss the window to cash in their prize / The musical episode bc there’s always a musical episode / The one that follows a single character the whole time told from their perspective from beginning to end / The one guest starring that famous actor from that one show playing the role we know them for & will only remember them by for the next one hundred years / The four episode trip to Hawaii / It usually is Hawaii but it doesn’t have to be / It could be a well known European city or a secluded ski lodge somewhere made up / The important part is they’re away from home & one of the couples break up or someone unexpected leaves the show or dies / The one that tries to return to normalcy except a side character has elevated their reoccurring role after an award show nomination / And of course the season finale cliffhanger. 

broken pantoum portrait of w / Kes Maro

red under the cheek like split cactus fruit
boiling. red like the great forest’s stretch

marks. red like rot, like a deer melting off
its bones on the way back home. red like

speckled mushroom warnings.        the great
forest’s stretch marks. red like bruises, like nails

in the back’s skin.       speckled       warnings.
red like love opening a pomegranate & spilling

garnet across the kitchen.           bruises
in the back’s skin. red like hands stained with

beauty supply store dye.
         spilling across the kitchen.  red like a bird’s

round eye.       hands      under the cheek.    
a       round     rot, like               home.

Two-Sided and Scratched  / Tammy Smith

In Memory of Bonnie Tyler

For a few minutes, we connect
without blame—
no lousy Wi-Fi, cracked screens,
or static.

My brother texts me:
“Another One Bites the Dust.”

He heard the news:
Bonnie Tyler died yesterday.

“It’s a Heartache”—
our family’s soundtrack,
two-sided and scratched
like an old record.

“It’s a Heartache”
meant middle-school girls
with big Aqua Net hair
bullying me into eating
my Ring Ding alone
in the cafeteria,

eyes closed, listening
to “Total Eclipse of the Heart”
on my Sony Walkman,
with no one to turn to.

Pathetic.

I started writing poems
and short stories I could fold
and tuck inside the cases
of my Madonna and Whitney Houston
cassette tapes.

My brother’s favorite song
is “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

His journey took him
to dark places
where doves cry,
though Dad, if he were here,
would say I’m pushing it.

More heartache.

Every time I turn around,
I remember something else
Dad used to say—
his voice as relentless
as his Reagan-era rhetoric,

another product of the eighties
my brother and I still replay,
along with the price
of listening to his soundtrack:

“Bat Out of Hell,” “Livin’ on a Prayer,”
“Born in the U.S.A.,”

and Bonnie Tyler—
especially every now and then,
when one of us
gets lonely.

July, Dusk  / Daphne Stanford

Wildfire plumes indistinguishable from cumulus covering horizon. No rain to wash the grey out, and deer scattering between traffic from lack of shelter. Beaver swims a wide fan steady beneath the footbridge, head emerging, tail puncturing the surface just enough to distinguish it from catfish or turtles. Blue heron watches for fish, eyes piercing, beak still, from the edges, picks one leg up from cattails, places it farther into the stream. Red-winged blackbird trills, piercing the silence.