June - Poem 23
What I Answer To / Kristina Byas
I didn’t want to be named for a legacy.
I didn't want a life already outlined,
a path worn smooth by someone else's footsteps,
their story folded into mine.
Chapters written before I learned to hold a pen.
Pages filled with expectations, hesitations, and grievances.
Annotations explaining away the choices
they labeled as mistakes
or immaturity.
But I hear it,
how people say it with reverence.
Like something sacred.
A prayer whispered in a dead language.
I’d rather something chosen
for the person standing here,
not for the memory standing behind me.
No family myth.
No invisible audience waiting to see
if I could live up to it.
A name that belonged only to possibility.
Instead, I learned early
how heavy a few syllables can be.
How a name can point backward
every time it is spoken.
How it can feel like being mistaken
for someone you've never met.
And still, I respond.
Maybe it is suitable enough.
Or maybe there’s a name
I might have given myself,
one that feels like an unburdened breath,
and asks nothing of me
but my own becoming.
Mother Goose Goes to Therapy / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson
Sometimes I want to scream.
Sometimes when I’m making breakfast,
I want to smash the carton
of eggs to the floor.
I’ve secretly wished to push
kids down the hill at the playground.
I’ve dreamt of whipping the children
and sending them to bed.
Do you think it has something
to do with my childhood?
Is there a pill you can prescribe
to make the rain, rain go away?
I’ve been seeing beggars riding
wishes like horses again. Just last night
I opened the door to shout hey
diddle diddle at the cow and the moon.
Upon Hearing Stephen Wilson Jr.’s “Father’s Søn” for the First Time / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason
My father fished every Halloween –
glowstick on the end of his deep sea fishing pole
reeling unsuspecting families to the door.
My father used the same pole to fly kites
in the Maine seabent winter winds.
The kite shaped like a shark.
I’ve grown jealous of breezes
rolling effortlessly
as children slipping on ice.
He held the rod over my shoulders.
The wind vibrated down my arms,
morse code of the sky. The shark tried
to snap away, but we gave it slack
with each gust it looped towards the sky
further from the sea. His narrowed arms
surrounded my minnowed body,
held me on earth.
Am I growing into my father’s sunlight
because I miss the melt in him,
because I want light alive again–
or just that I don’t know how to float?
He didn’t echo as his father’s son –
too much wind
never enough shark.
Could I’ve been my father’s son
as well as his daughter?
I think I’m shark enough for him:
packful and almost patient, almost-
learning the poor lessons he taught, poor-
lessons he’d learned before. At least,
I hope so. I hope I find that kite
rolled in the attic, the basement, the garage,
reeking of mold and sky, and fish the sky.
I’ve already got his narrowed arms,
his cackle-laugh.
Perhaps, in the winter winds of Maine, I’ll launch
myself up, icing in the clouds over the sea.\
The gulls will eat my eyes
and I’ll see him again.
Angel Sonnet 7 / Shane Moran
The women who proclaim the good news are a great army,
Beryl said to his fiance’s bridesmaids as he found
his place at the altar, hugging and thanking each of them.
Clammy hands and watery eyes, he watched her father
give her to the altar. And after the first married kiss,
the eating and the dancing. They took a bottle of champagne
upstairs and got in the bath. He sat at the end—opposite
the faucet—his elbows grazing the rim, while she lay
belly down, her ear resting right below his chest.
They scrubbed each other in vanilla. She rose out
of the water, and sat on him with a trill song.
He saw nothing but the crown of her face—a halo.
──────────────────
7. be
come
one end
less ribbon
The Fast Moving Lights Across the Sky are Satellites / Jingyu Li
and I miss my mother. I miss asking her what’s in the sky
even though I just talked to her today, and she showed me the baby
bird that fell out of the tree. It wasn’t quite a baby, it was
maybe a toddler bird taking its first unsuccessful flight
from the nest. My mother continued to garden, knowing the bird
wouldn’t go anywhere. When she finished, she got her phone \
from the house to take a picture. I wonder
if she would have regretted it, had the bird flown
off against her prediction. She loves birds, so she might have
been a little sad, but she would have been happy for the bird,
the way I’m happy the bullfrogs come and leave when
they’re supposed to. It doesn’t take long to miss a place.
The satellites in the sky look like fireflies.
Self Soothe / Stefanie Zito
I want to reach inside
my chest and softly caress
the unresolved spaces
dipping fingers into the crux
of these chambers
and emptying myself
of what was never mine to carry.
As I mine the depths
of my courage
I soothe the spaces that have
held on for dear life–
I hold myself instead
call myself beloved and
whisper sweet somethings
under my breath.
