July - Poem 7

Drawn-Out Turns / Clayre Benzadon

Whenever I hear a limp-
kin squawking, gawking

at open morning roads,
I think of you, Maureen.

How many times can
I write the same poem

to you, relive the dream
of time? If I wanted to,

I could change the form of this. Because you taught us to fuck with it, structure of a puncture more stretched out. Yesterday, I was watching a video of a man ski down Everest and even after struggling to breathe, stay alive, he was still making beautiful, drawn-out turns. If he falls, he dies. I didn’t get to the end of the footage, because we switched to watching The Bear, but all I know is that I fell too many times and still didn’t die, unlike the man in the astronaut-looking suit high up on the mountain. I guess I’m luckier, or smarter, for not taking that risk.

Maureen, I see,
feel you everywhere.

Whenever I get on
an elevator, you

and Lori are helping
me exhale through my

anxiety. Outdoors,
on campus, I see you

petting a peacock
and naming it Olive,

or Poppy (subtle nod
to your favorites).

I’m trying to keep this
poem resplendent,

not by watering it (down),
but by continuing to add

just one more line, to reach
you just one more time.

I did not use the internet to write this poem  / RJ Ingram

The last time I wrote to you the sky looked like a lava lamp dripping upwards / Periwinkle purples against aquatic blue seal shag rugs / Misty rides her metallic starfish like one of those hoverboards at the zoo / The last time I wrote to anyone we still had that little tugboat that could travel between any of our drains / Gosh Misty missed the good ole’ days / Fishing for sea birds on the flat docks throwing fried potatoes from the shark cages & watching the coral shake of thirteen centuries of slumber / The last time I wrote to you was the summer we returned to those magical beaches & washed the sand from our feet in the neighbors swimming pool / Mother was furious / The neighbors didn’t noticed but it didn’t matter bc mother was still mad / She cut Misty’s hair as punishment / She parted her head into pigtails & handed Misty the scissors & said I love you baby you get to keep one / And neither of them cried although I think they both wanted to / And I handed her a starfish she had rescued from the beach & Misty put it in her had & let the darling glow / And that starfish made her hair grow back just like Misty said it would. 

Aftertaste / MeraBaird Kuar

All this death runs through the woods,
burnt leaves chase after them,
the sun holds them–lifts them up,
they swing back and forth in the air,
their arms wave wildly, sweat splatters
everywhere, they laugh too loud,
their tongues loll, tiny puddles collect their drool
and we plop into them unexpectedly, but sometimes
we’re laughing, heads cocked back, feet up, we warp
like waves, our mouths carry magnets for death to land in,
we swallow without knowledge, we only slightly pause
and purse our lips at the bitter juice,
just enough bite to be aftertaste.

 i don't want this phone, i want to kill god / Kes Maro

title borrowed from Nature by Bianca Stone

i don’t want personalized ads, i want strange
texts from my grandmother with screenshots
i don’t understand. i don’t want to share my location
with you! i don’t want facial recognition,
i want to kill the idea of surveillance as security.
who is doing the watching?
i don’t want to have a face, i want to swallow
the steady stream of catastrophe and spit
lighter fluid. if the government is
going to call trans people terrorists. fine.
what’s a word? i don’t want this phone,
i want to kill god! no more hierarchy, no more
punishment renamed mercy and no more punishment,
no more carceral lens on love.
i don’t want to be the product mark zuckerberg or like
whoever is selling, i want to see like whoever, billionaire traitor,
gut like a fish and strung up, gossamer sheets of gold
flaked flesh poached and flayed so thin light shines in the sky
again and does not burn our skin.
i don’t want predictive text, i want to spell things wrong
because i am bad at spelling. i want to learn to spell better.
forget what i said before about a word not mattering,
it does. i was just hurt more than i thought i would be.
the difference between running and bolting,
how the second can contradict itself, the way we speak
can change what we believe. the distance between us can
change how we feel about ourselves. like, the correlation between
likes and the rate at which young people want to die.
i don’t want this pacifier, baby binky tracking device listening
to all my calls and guiding my thinking. don’t let it parasite us,
don’t let it colonize our syntax, our thoughts just because we know
its happening doesn’t mean we’re resisting it.
i don’t want this phone, i just want to call home. 

What’s In My Bag: Emotional Baggage  / Azmia Ricchuito

I’ve become a bag lady.
My best friend thinks it’s a maladaptive coping mechanism

trying to fill an empty void with Coach bags.

But I’d rather have a closet full of handbags
than one filled with skeletons.

No one understands that I loved
the Loved Leather collection
because it looked like
Dean Winchester’s worn-in jacket.
Now we both have aged leather
and matching daddy issues
except I’m not sure Coach makes a bag
big enough to hold all my baggage.

I bought a blue suede purse
because it was the same color
as my cat’s eyes —
both my deceased cat and my living kitten.
That bag in my closet is better than having under eye bags from crying.

How do I explain the feeling of carrying
a bag that Carrie Bradshaw wore
when she used to be #goals for me
as a writer
until I realized how much her character actually sucked
but her fashion sense didn’t.

And isn’t it remarkable 
that a brand can have
such a comeback?

If brands can
take archival designs
and re-release them
giving them a second chance
why can’t people?

If brands can reinvent themselves
coming out of the closet, literally,
with main character energy
finding their redemption arc
why can’t people?

One day, my purse won’t be so heavy. 
I’ll make a “What’s In My Bag” video
and when I spill the contents of my purse
there will be a sparkling crystal wallet
lip gloss
perfume
car keys

and notably absent
will be all my emotional baggage.

Ode to a Saddle-Stitched Chapbook  / Tammy Smith

Lightweight, portable,
not perfectly bound,
more affordable
to print. It lies

flat, opens fully,
makes poems easier
to flip through,
more comfortable to read.

There’s no room
for an author’s name
or title
on a stapled spine.

So thin it floats
into the hands
of drifting poets
carrying university-press
first editions
at open mics.

Chronicle of Sea-Drifting  / Daphne Stanford

Of mooring, then unmooring—
Rowing my way toward the sunset.

Six of swords leaves something behind, 
ventures somewhere new: somewhere, 

anywhere people don’t recognize your face. 
Please excuse cliched impossibility of running

away from oneself. Perhaps less a running away than some kind of scene change, purview of

train/bedroom windows to different mountains & oceans. No matter how many times you try.

Leave town, the rubber band tethers you: extending, then bouncing back. No ability to 

resist reverse momentum. Attempt to alter
the location of your imagination, instead.