July - Poem 27
Heaven, Either Way / Clayre Benzadon
I’m afraid of heaven turning backwards.
I’m scared of elevators without the emergency call button, ones that shake more than usual, all you can see is metal around you. Like being stuck inside solitary confinement, only more steely, with even less space. What if heaven were a small space?
I fear for my own life (does that make sense?)
The freeway looks either extremely empty or too crowded for miles. My brain can’t comprehend it, it starts to go on overdrive and panic, internal prefrontal cortex control panel has lost power and now I’m hyperventilating but I need to keep going because there’s nothing else I can do while in the middle of the road. In the middle of clouds.
The anxiety before the medical professional comes in with that tray (you know the one): the slotted white plastic one, with the rubber band and the needle inside the tube, and then they tell you to relax as they suffocate, squeeze your arm to death with the light green band around your arm.
I wake up with a green band around my arm, as if it were the day after a concert and I were too drunk to take it off, or I wanted to keep it on, on purpose, to show everyone I’d gone to up to the gates, they let me in, and all the angels were playing heavy metal.
I existed in limbo.
More Less Than We Could Handle / RJ Ingram
14 We teased at an extinction & flames cut our music lessons short.
13 We lied about making bright little macarons & making good on our rent & mixing earl grey into the shortbread.
12 We bought an oil rig & named her Grenadine we killed so many little frogs. Mostly by accident.
11 We were not very good to our parents. Locked them up.
10 Didn’t we?
9 We were devoid of humility bc at that point the human in us jumped from broken escalators.
8 We burned off all the grammar too not just the Oxford comma.
7 But we brought somethings back with magic.
6 We found it hard to satisfy extinction in a world after Jurassic Park.
5 We built a train & a series of stops. We put our menagerie in the boxcars. We thought we were playing a game.
4 We wasted no labor in our journey to get here.
3 We simply wanted to arrive at the end & came.
2 We didn’t expect so many more children at the end of the world.
1 We are so glad we came!
Tate & Liza rate the end of the world ︎︎︎︎
Koala / MeraBaird Kuar
Kaleidoscopal world of dreams, the scents of others don’t reach
ornate design of this compact package wears its own perfume
perfectly comfortable, so much so that they sleep through
every noise, change of atmosphere, they call it the itis
the sleep that draws a heavy curtain over consciousness
just when the belly gets the time-released contents
is it the poison requiring all the body’s energy
or the nutrients finding their travel route and final destination
we are all stuffed animals, after our favorite meal
shale / Kes Maro
i split a piece of shale
between my fingers, easy,
and it feathers in three.
the same as cooked fish.
the same delicate shape
fans out in tones
on the ocean’s surface, mirroring
light and uneven seabed.
the flesh, the rock, the sea,
meet the way each fiber
in the kittihawk’s feather layers
over the others and how each
feather layers over the others
and how the wings fit against
the body and how they split
the air when flying. the shape of
pressure is the shape of surviving
it. i split open my flesh flaking
like the fish’s, the seabed’s every
fiber layered over the others
and over the others again.
Foreign Body: Unidentified Foreign Object (UFO) / Azmia Ricchuito
My first home
was a strange
landscape
in which I lived
as a foreigner—
a parasite;
I was evicted
by a scalpel
and this was
supposed to be
freedom.
It was a trap,
and maybe that’s
why hearts grow
behind prisons
of bone
as old as the cosmos.
I wandered,
never lost…
my grandfather
showed me the
North Star
but he never
told me
that it wasn’t
the only way
home;
that sometimes
the thing that
beams you up
doesn’t
carry you away.
It wraps its arms
around you;
tenderly
to welcome you
home
behind a fortress
where every heartbeat
echoes your name.
You are no longer
a traveler;
a space cadet.
You have found
your place among
the stars;
the place where
you belong.
My Humble and Sincere Regrets to Taylor Farms Iceberg Lettuce / Tammy Smith
I can’t recall a time when you were this
contaminated—part of an outbreak
now reaching four more states:
Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania—
nine in all. I can’t escape
your tainted image all over the news,
shredded and chopped, reduced
to dates and codes to check before I eat you.
Even Walmart pulled you from its shelves.
Even Taco Bell is forgoing you altogether.
Before now, I never imagined
you could carry a parasite.
I picture wasps paralyzing
grasshoppers, laying eggs inside them,
then burying them. Who knew
I was so susceptible, so dependent
on prewashed greens stuffed
inside zip-top bags? Too busy
to prepare broccoli or cauliflower,
cut up carrots, mushrooms, peppers
collard greens, a head of lettuce,
or rinse everything under running water?
I should be ashamed I don’t cook,
embarrassed I buy my produce
at the nearest convenience store.
But I digress. The warnings keep spreading.
Forgive me, but I don’t want to spoil
my summer weekend, my twilight
gin and tonic, my Sunday morning coffee and book
by ending up tethered to the toilet.
It’s Too Early to Cry / Daphne Stanford
Today & the sky is a thick haze
Of wildfire in the foothills..
Sun a red orb in a smoke-grey
Sky. All the gulls are hiding in
Trees or staying low, closer
to water for oxygen. Cluster
behind my right eye leveling me
To my bedroom, grey curtains
To grant me the illusion of peace,
Safety, comfort—despite my not
Having seen you for more than a
Week, now. Epson salt baths help
As do kittens, as does shutting my
Eyes & allowing myself to escape
This waking life for two brief hours.
