July - Poem 15
Closing Time Half-Sestina / Clayre Benzadon
I hate Semisonic’s “Closing Time”,
didn’t realize there was a hidden metaphor
lurking in between the infinite homes.
I’ve never stayed up late enough to have experienced
this phenomenon: lights on, getting kicked out
of the bar, waiting to pick someone up at six
in the morning. I wake up sick as a six-
headed dog, kneeling on linoleum tile, time
to vomit once again. Now I let my dog out
and try to hold onto my soul, a metaphor
for almost-death. What I never experienced
was a new beginning from some other homes.
Today, I reach towards sobriety. Many homes
convince me that I don’t belong within its six-
story boundary, that I don’t know experienced
architects who can fix the clock of rum time
within my system. This is all just a metaphor
for enlightenment. Dear Semisonic, I’d like to take y’all out
(some time).
Enchanted Stone Acrostic / RJ Ingram
Evolution blesses the luckiest among the foxkittens / Not every foxkitten gets to jump between the realms of dreams & into & out of every apocalyptic nightmare / Cat-eyes & whiskers whistling like blades of grass / Hermits used to breed the foxcats to guide them through the elements of chaos / Anthracite & its submetallic lustre of fur from pours dripping with molten rocks or bolts of lightning like honey like water weeping from the fountain like diamonds raining down like ice / Not every foxkitten grows up on a balance beam overlooking an arena full of paying customers waiting for an animal of any sort really stand up on its front paws in a handstand / Tonight folks you’ll get to see our main event our dancing family of foxkittens / Each & every one of them a trained performer a prodigy at the cascading lines between what’s real & what’s really there / Dusk is more than a time of day to them it’s the ringing of the faded light that activates the magic of the stones / Stories tell of heroes guided by the foxcats between the worlds like crossing between the pages of a book / Together we would accompany our grown up foxkittens from one part of our story into the next / Owed nothing for their help in the travels they cross over with us because they want to / Now for their next trick let’s see what the enchanted stones will unlock in the youngest / Evolution blesses the luckiest among the foxkittens.
Always Underwater / MeraBaird Kuar
There’s a princess-sized pressure
to perform when your name is known
when your reputation bubbles around
you, when you are put under protection
that heavy cloak of hidden dangers
feels like an itchy wool-blend, looks
like a collection of remixed trinkets
there are better days when life travels
a predictable path, but even then
seashells litter the way, alerts
the resourceful, foreshadows
& sabotages what’s next, but I frame
this pain in song and shiny things
too busy finding the next to weigh
the price of silence-- the only true
thing of value I’ve ever owned
so I’ll be here, all smiles & naivete
but in my mind I am always home.
long island deer / Kes Maro
the blue jays in the yard are massive,
overgrown. we spot twin fawns
in the late morning. my grandmother
complains that they eat everything.
we remind her, not the roses. they don’t
like the thorns. the yard is so green.
the lawn is bright and muddy, but the deer
eat the hostas and some of them
have antlers and when you scream at them
to “get!” they freeze. the fawn’s mother
is big too, like the birds. its what happens
when there are no more natural predators
and no more natural habitat. just cars.
just green curtains between the houses
on the hill and strip malls below. there’s no
coyote out here or anything else that could take
game this size, but there is so much fertilizer.
so many gardens. too dense for hunting
bows or rifles. my grandmother wants
the squirrels off her deck. she wants
the cats gone too. she wants to know the grass
is being watered every day. she wants to see
the hostas from her window.
My Love Language Is Illiteracy / Azmia Ricchuito
They say the pen is
mightier than the sword;
my tongue is sharp
but my pen is sharper.
I am fluent in fatality.
A trash can
full of dead trees
a crime scene
like something
out of a low-budget
slasher film.
There’s blood on your hands.
I’m hemorrhaging pages,
finger-painting
lethality.
My heart is the
worst kind of weapon—
fragile and unreliable,
a beating war drum
that has forgotten
how to sing.
When the war is over
and the writing
is on the wall,
two sentences
survived:
I love you.
Come back home.
It Was Not Sickness—Then / Tammy Smith
A cento after Sylvia Plath, T. S. Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Charles Bukowski, Anne Sexton, Langston Hughes, Louise Glück, William Wordsworth, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Robert Hayden, Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, Marie Howe, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead—
like a patient etherized upon the table,
like a ghost in marble of a girl you knew
who would take away my hours—
a cave of mirrors,
where the doors are doors of paper,
where you forget where you are.
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
the path sick sorrow took, the many paths—
men without eyes, men without faces
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Then, with cracked hands that ached,
what did I know, what did I know—
the darkest evening of the year.
It knew no medicine.
Meanwhile, the world goes on—
and I have promises to keep.
I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
Tomorrow, of course, I love you.
It was not sickness—then.
In Your Atrocity Exhibition Dream / Daphne Stanford
Ian Curtis starts out singing &
dancing maniacally on stage, yes,
but then plateless SUVs swarm &
masked agents push people to ground.
Gill Scott Heron singing The revolution
will not be televised and it wasn’t &
it isn’t but also it depends on which
screens we’re watching. Now the
multiverse is everything everywhere & suddenly rainbow wigs replace toupees &
the same clowns are pointing & grinning
but nobody’s laughing. Smiles painted on.
Funny thing, performing. Funnier still,
writing to conjure action from lines & sets
& character names: as if it really is possible
to imagine worlds & speak words into being.
