July - Poem 18
Putx Punk / Clayre Benzadon
-after Diane Seuss
In the heat of it,
In the heart of it all,
I found gawd. Lawd,
I felt fantastic, fanatic
in my love for the music.
Percolating heave of a growl
growing louder and more
intense, into the mic. Hair
in my face, eyes all raccooned.
My guitar. My Back Velvet Rose.
I yelled out Death! and the crowd
went wild. I jumped and the crowd
catched me. Us band members
nicknamed each other putxs
to remind ourselves that us sluts
strut down the street with lust,
our butts bulging out of our jeans.
We run, and punk follows us.
We dance and the funk refuses
to end. In the heat of it,
our electric acoustics lit
on fire. In the heat of it all,
us putxs ran away and lived
up in a farm together, feeding
goats and nourishing each other
with awesome knowledge.
Backrooms House Arrest / RJ Ingram
The mime was rescued from the backrooms accessed through Sabrina’s gymnasium / The florescent lights flickered against the peeling pale yellow wallpaper you know the place aisles upon aisles of empty & endless backrooms / Sabrina found the mime cowering in a corner helpless & alone / Only a toddler / The mime junior wore a muted expression for centuries after emerging from that horrendous prison / She tried bribing him with ice cream & cans of caviar & even pickled ginger with saltwater taffy pulled from the Earth’s last surviving oceanside boardwalk the poor black & white capped child / But an eternity spent in that labyrinthian yellow series of cells fatigues your imagination / The mental gymnastics it takes to starve off the madness those re occurring dead ends those cords dangling from nowhere all that furniture that looked like it was designed by AI / Sabrina had no idea how she heard the mime child he was by his nature completely silent even the creaks in the chairs beneath him quiet when he moves around picking at invisible grapes on an invisible tea tray Sabrina offered him & putting the grapes on his finger tips like a witch’s claw that only the mime dared to see / The pebbles she scried with were meant to show her sound waves & she was trying to see if they could hear the train / But there was a particular quietness coming from a far off corner that did not typically exist in her enchanted gymnasium / The spoons to practice kenisis hummed their usual hum / The carpet stifled even the most normal day to day sounds / But something was there her stones just couldn’t hear & she realized the great clock was opening a door to an eternal prison & whoever was inside must have uncanny abilities just like her & mother or more likely
Mother found him first
And sentenced him
To house arrest
My Infant Son Teaches Me About Myself / MeraBaird Kuar
He doesn’t know he can walk yet
each step he’s taken has been lost
in the kerfuffle of a contagious cry
in the music of my voice, not the words
in the half-need for nourishment at my breast
when I praise him, he praises me too
because I answered his call, removed him
from the trenches of war with the mind
as it tries to move the body, not an inch
here and there, not a moment to moment
motion, but an isolation choreography
meant to convey the whole story, command
of society’s level-up process, not just to climb
a ladder, to be prepared for the boss at the top.
If I had to define it / Kes Maro
We were a century
of cows, the end
of a composition.
We were a particle
or prefix implying
assent or compliance.
You were free
from all connection
to the outer world.
I was a weaver’s
shuttle. Our home
was a fence, an outer
wall. We were smokeless,
You were any young
animal. The world
was the clearness
of a pearl and our home
was a sort of key.
We were the same
as water, clarified
butter, a collection
of three cities.
We were anything stamped
with an impression. I was
the stalk of a lotus.
We were no different
than an egress from a house.
I was the slope, ridge, side,
flank of a mountain, a place
of cessation. I was causeless,
groundless, useless, needless,
unnecessary. We were
the payment of a debt.
As a Poet Participating in This 30/30 Project, I Admit I’m / Tammy Smith
An Abecedarian
Adrenaline-driven, a word junkie
Buying books I’ll probably never read,
Charging multiple devices at once,
Distracting myself from finishing
Everything on today’s to-do list,
Faking that I’m fine when I can’t
Generate new poems from old prompts.
Heaven forbid I give myself grace
Instead of beating myself up—never.
Jeez, dear reader, can you relate, or am I only
Kidding—or kicking—myself for acting
Like an entitled brat? But I digress. Maybe it’s
More than grandiosity, this relentless
Need to write at such a sophisticated level that
Opportunities arrive and renowned indie
Presses begin soliciting my work. Imagine how
Quickly I’ll become famous,
Running spectacular poetry readings and facilitating
Stellar workshops, surrounded by other
Type A personalities who write even more than I do
Under circumstances more demanding than mine. What’s the point
Vying with poets half or twice my age if all I’m doing is
Worrying about who’s winning the submissions game,
Xeroxing copies of poems they claim they wrote
Yesterday, perpetuating the myth that it took them
Zero effort to survive this thirty-day project.
Ode to the Riffle Shuffle / Daphne Stanford
The way you bridge-
curl cards into a
Gumby Arch—
then merge both
piles, card deck
riffling. Then a circling.
Then a crumbling away.
