July - Poem 22
The Absurd Wardrobe / Clayre Benzadon
I won’t lie; I wear food shirts, with sour-
dough engraved on a white tee, plums
packaged on the front, but current fashion hour
invites a little more absurdity: rubber gums
stuck onto the pockets to mimic messy,
animal print galore; the proportions are off-
putting: boxy jackets with skinny jeans, dressy
leopard paired with flower brooches, a Molotov
cocktail waiting to explode. We always come back
to the ‘90s, neon and preppy, hip-hop and grunge,
some days I wear my Lizzie McGuire T shirt to snack
on nostalgia again. Darker, Avril Lavigne has me plunge
into my emo self: netted gloves and deep eyeliner. Today,
I watch a man only wearing Yeezy slides dance. I yell Slay!
Blunder Policy / RJ Ingram
If the holder misses a move this policy will sharply boost speed
Crab apples & neonanobots / Surprise inspection! / Tarragon & rampion shellfish shells prickly in paper wrappers / Dachshund weaned away from blue milk & stratosphere / Hooligans squash their toes in apple butter / Cowhide dundermuffin / Extrapolate pizza I double dog dare ya / Heinousburg population Rex Fowler from high school / Dug tunnels straight to the silo / Found eight or nine reasons to give up trying / Wish I was kidding / Wait that one doesn’t count / It just has to come true / Thought you knew that.
Sleepless / MeraBaird Kuar
A poem comes
in the night before dreams
children run through
the halls ignited
by a mythical fire
that may have tinged
my finger in sleepless
night in the kitchen
hungry for something sweet,
baby waiting in the room
for my scent to return
it's a charred aroma,
half-wild, half-bought
if the sauce, to you,
is as integral as the flesh.
watershed tanka / Kes Maro
this muffled thing, two
centuries of white paint, lead,
sundown, polluted
river—the drainless hills flood
again, spilling down the road.
Houston, We Have a Problem / Azmia Ricchuito
I woke up today
and the sun was
ablaze
sending light
that left home
long before I
was born
my inner space
resembles the cosmos
dark, cold;
there are so many
worlds inside me
some I am afraid to
explore because
they will suck the
oxygen from my
lungs
across the universes
inside me hangs
a no trespassing
sign
even though I’ve
been waiting
for first light
and signs of life
there are no suns
in my solar system
nothing that my life
revolves around
just galaxies
collapsing inward
until somewhere
in that darkness
your light
breached my
atmosphere
I learned the
name of gravity
the force that
holds me to earth
The Ghost of a Little House Called to Me / Tammy Smith
A cento inspired by Netflix’s 2026 adaptation of Little House on the Prairie
The ghost of a little house called to me.
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee.
In this America, this wilderness,
the surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye—
the memory of near delights in all the longed-for town,
and my youth comes back to me.
The ghost of a little house called to me.
Ah, have you thought of the bravery,
remembering our fathers in their wreck:
sullen fires of sunset, fading,
the growing wheat, the growing weeds,
the toiling horses, the tired men.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud;
strange to me now are the forms I meet.
The ghost of a little house called to me.|
The soul selects her own society—
conquering, holding, daring, venturing.
As we go the unknown ways,
we take up the task eternal,
the burden and the lesson—
now I possess and am possessed.
Here I saw a city rise and say
to peoples round the world:
Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Happiness, not in another place—
but this place—not for another hour,
but this hour. Let it be the dream
it used to be. America, the plum blossoms
are falling. America, when will you be angelic?
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
seeking a home where he is free.
The little house can hold all things.
Cento from “The Little House” by Fay Inchfawn, “To Make a Prairie” and “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” by Emily Dickinson, “To the Western World” by Louis Simpson, “The Prairies” by William Cullen Bryant, “The Prairie” by Rudyard Kipling, “My Lost Youth” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The West Country” by Alice Cary, “Prairie Spring” by Willa Cather, “Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” and “A Song for Occupations” by Walt Whitman, “Prairie” by Carl Sandburg, “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes, “America” by Allen Ginsberg, & “The Little Home” by Edgar A. Guest.
Gatitos, Dos / Daphne Stanford
With white paws
golden eyes &
orange tabby fur
kitten siblings (two)
wriggle backsides &
whip tails in pursuit
of feathers on a stick
