June - Poem 27

They Said I’d Understand When I Was Older / Kristina Byas

it was for my own good
at least that’s what they told me
at least that’s what I told myself

because the truth is always quieter
than the lies we
inherit
embody
and
protect

Same Mom. Same Moon. / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

My mom, at home in her slippers,
likes to stare up at the moon and hope
that I, forty miles away at home
in my bed, am staring out the window
at the same moon. “It makes me feel
close to you,” she says. Same mom.\
Same moon. Same moment of quiet
recognition. She likes to praise
God’s handiwork:
the moon, of course.
And me. 

carbon-rod dating  / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

I set fire to this house myself
and lay on the floor with you.
Your sunset-cloud eyes tendered me,
the smoke roiling over the ceiling.

Electricity warps with possibility.
Fire already combusts.

Our hands fell close, but sparks
sang better the less we touched,
the more we flinched against that fire
callusing out of every sooty bond of us.

Water births life.
Fire breeds it.

I stole the attic bird nests to weave
my kindling lips, painted them
with rosemaling rocking chair cinders,
pressing them, finally, to your lavender-stalk neck.

A nucleus fissions radiation.
A fire always radiated.

When the roof avalanched around us,
embers and charcoal and crisps,
a single electron of mine jumped
across the crush of bones to you.

Angel Sonnet 11  / Shane Moran

A child who’s lost the one who made him,
searches for her in the trees and in the unknown
bodies of others. Beryl found a woman other 
than his wife to push grief into and she loved him. 

Four years later, his wife asked for a divorce. 
Their daughter: eleven. Two is better than one,
was the pitch he gave her about her new bedroom, 
which was a carbon copy of one from an Ikea ad.

And when his daughter returned home each week, 
if there was no woman for company, there was crying
through the night. Beryl listened to his mom’s old cd’s
Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love? Can the child within my heart….

──────────────────

11.   chance
rise 
          or kill 
                   what sprouts
out the dirt of  you

Excerpt from “A House in Other Words” / Jingyu Li

mother 
garden         green
        home

       mother
geese         imagine
       home

        garden
mother      home
         green

       garden
geese        imagine
        green

        geese
garden       green
       imagine

        geese
mother     home
       imagine

A mother always faces
                            home while the geese look south \
            to warmer weathers

                                      But what happens when a mother faces two homes?
                         her daughter & infant son
                                                         her mother & father & country in a country far away

      She wishes she could fly the distance—like geese—oh if she could fly!

Roots Entangled  / Stefanie Zito

A seed knows how to grow
And so do I, for I began as such
Tucked in soft and sacred darkness
A cellular unfolding 
A dreaming into being 
Stretching into new spaces\
The liminal land of womb. 
I’m still cracking open
Emerging
Taking root
Going deeper
Growing into the knowing 
Of my being-ness
How to harmonize with
The holy mess of it all.