July - Poem 25
Good Ol’ Days / Clayre Benzadon
Today I dye my hair blue again—
haven’t worn that color, era, since 2020.
I’ve learned it’s ok to not be so well in the brain.
Whenever I visit Franklin, I come back to my child, plenty
good, full of god and fear. I miss the old band days
but don’t miss our fights. Taylor York, I love you to death
but we need to take a break. “Good Ol’ Days” says it all, in breaths.
Sabrina / RJ Ingram
I wrote this by candlelight if you can believe that.
Mother warned me not to do this too many times if you can believe that.
My memory’s running tepid was I the tall one or was I the fawn?
I can hardly remember my name anymore but I bet you can believe that.
The one who attacked me she was a mother too.
A groundhog wearing her own mother’s skull & believe that proven rumor I do.
Sabrina I know you to scoff at the word mother yourself.
But also I believe your loyalties are maternal by nature & I swear it to be true.
We buried her son & wrapped his crushed skull with terrycloth
She had every right to throw his bones at me you’ve gotta believe that to make it true.
But that poor lost Lieutenant converted the entire lighthouse
Into a morgue & I truly believe that
Something parasitic must have found its way into my hair as he carried me out around his shoulders.
I can’t believe that thing he buried within me exhumed itself say it isn’t true.
Sabrina please tell me my body’s not being controlled by a mushroom
Even though the fungi in the Undergloom tease in whispers that my nightmares ring true. Your Sister, Erica Goodbye
Unwritten Letter Between Handmaids / MeraBaird Kuar
What is a last name really
just a way to acknowledge a connection
I took for granted, the modern convention
to follow a name through history
because history sometimes hops through
time and hoops and loops around
upending shapeless tradition like naming
patterns, and sometimes people in pockets
of humanity, defy the norms for their own
reasons and I keep the names I’ve learned
from the old world, front of mind– doodled
paisleys all over my perception of each
personality, so when you're called ofglen
I only conjure that retelling when necessary
when I see you, I remember all the Emilys
I knew before and that is how I know
the classy badass you are underneath
the blood red cloak of oppressive times.
The Snake At The End of The World Says, “New York or Nowhere” / Kes Maro
I have walked the length of two
continents twice. I have slept
on a sandbar between two rivers.
There are always two rivers,
at the beginning and so there will be
at the end. Two rivers, two eyes, a two-sided
scale, when one dies, the other soon follows.
When I ingest the nuclear waste emptied
into these, the final pair of rivers, the end
of civilization, the path of my walking
will unfurl as a massive serpent and it will open
it’s jagged maw and chew.
You Changed Me for the Worst / Azmia Ricchuito
The nights that I spend
overthinking everything
I did and everything I said
knowing I couldn’t save you
but you’ll still accuse me of
leaving you for dead
even though God knows
that I lost pieces of me
I’ll never get back
I lay awake and
cry at night because
I know you’ll never change
And I miss the
version of me
who wasn’t used to
all this pain
I’ve never stayed
anywhere where
I’ve had to beg
and even though
we share blood
no, we’re not the same
I’m a writer but you
rewrite history
and your books
are all fake
and if I could,
I’d burn them all
Gave myself papercuts
and bled all over
your pages
trying to write
a happy ending
but I’m not like them
and I can’t pretend
that my heart’s not broken
and there’s no Band-Aids
you emptied
the medicine cabinet
like you always do.
The Etymology of Suffering / Tammy Smith
It originates inside a wound,
shipwrecked before language—
or perhaps it goes back to the womb
wet and slippery, tangled in the dungeon-dark,
clinging to waste.
Every family in pain
resembles a Greek tragedy.
In Latin, to suffer means
to bear from beneath,
to carry what has been placed upon us.
Then comes parental Pig Latin,
rooted in bedroom-and-kitchen speak—
the vernacular of family diction,
where pain and suffering
become one sacrifice.
But who can disremember
the smoky smell of sacrifice
permeating a parent’s master bedroom,
where there is nowhere left
to hide from devils?
When Your Mother Is a Curandera / Daphne Stanford
And she doesn’t know it, her saying you need to eat more thyme feels like nervous system mapping. The way thyme leaves spring from the root, Bonsai-like, attempting to graft woody stems onto hair follicles as you brush wrist & forearm against the green of its tiny. Before lowering your face into the thick of its sprouting to taste one sprig more, you open your mouth.
