June - Poem 30

you can’t take the countryside out of me / A Cento composed by Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

with lines contributed and by Kristina Byas, Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson, Jess Gleason, Shane Moran, Jingyu Li, Stephanie Zito

I go to the trees,
raspberry my heart in blossom,
where sleep left me, torched,
and asks nothing of me
lovestump,
rising off dry ice. — serious — we’re mute ash,
a path worn smooth by someone else’s footsteps.
Yielding detours of my own
and I felt that in my bones.
Unearthing detritus of days gone by,
mistaking this scar tissue
between green covered mountains,
little sticks of dynamite
fading as they flutter, turn pale
like sails over her eyes,
settled inside the wound
and blanket myself in breath.
I can finally breathe.
fluency in us —

Still finding his balance
this moment will never end.
In one dream, the ghost said to get dressed for bed.
I’m delighted to wrap
the laughter of those missing.
Seen
for the son buried warm.
What we owe
a tap root to sink
until it fell in line —

Curiosity called me to climb:
I wanted to do it right, but I was peopling
heroes or foggy mirrors of our fellow struggles
even dreams must bind to —

Am I growing into my father’s sunlight
Because, somehow, I love my father still?
I like watching you smoke,
One mouth moving at a time —

God is a watchmaker in an old southern town,
like a half-dollar rattling the floor til’ flat, hand-holding and
was touch with him. I keep returning
for years, calling it home —

Exchanging hunger for love was routine
in my family. We called it Tuesday.
But the people who chose me back
scatter through the fields, where
my nightmares denting the pastures,
and rejoice in having my life for the living —

I release the interrogation of my own existence
into paper, the winter that healed
the more we flinched against that fire –
After the run of the day the sun takes a dip.
I want those june bugs back —

Birds sing me back to life, making the city
swelt red from my skin
until the day I die and go to hell,
I’m rooted for the season
across our skin again
in terrible corners —

I sometimes shudder to consider
sour obedience.
I lay myself down
then stayed on purpose.
I left the light on in the house.
I believed in infinity then.

I build, I change, I repair.
Begging. I say to you
in some dreams I’m the monster,
roots sprawl, building a staircase as
they move like teeth. Out here in the woods,
I wish I could repent at your bedside
atop the horns you hide.
The cherry, your mouth,
my sensual sanctuary
she gave me. A stone for holding
Kintsugi of hearts, frozen lake,
the sun sporing itself through the clouds —

Hope is enough to let it.
I can be the sturdy clay of earth
settled inside the wound:
I love you—infinity—

I wake up and try to remember
am I still
shimmering and white, monstrous angels
spanning from gold to blue —

I tried to write a love poem but I pained
all the fuck alone in my basement
this internal bruising, we’re just committing
a tap root to sink.
– all I think about is the coming storm
in purple hands.

Watch me silently sit,
the wing fells into the porched arch of my lower back,
belly down. Her ear resting right below his chest
into the untamed fields—a violent dell –
the shadows do not hold,
spikes pointing every direction —

If Michelle Obama is a Man, so Am I / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

Even though we birthed black babies.
Even though we forced them out of our holes
and offered them up to America
as a sacrifice.

Look at the slant of our jawlines
when our heads are tilted to the sky
while we’re thinking, the curve of our necks
when we’re swallowing again and again.

There’s no proof we could give that would satisfy
the doubter: a hand on our breasts? a finger
inside us? Our holes have been probed enough
—every word dissected for missing
consonants, every dress scrutinized
for missing sleeves.

We’ve diapered men, nursed
them, burped them, bathed
them, rocked them, taught
them, led them, held them, grieved
them, enabled them, resurrected
them, loved them. We’ve made men
president, and still some men
can’t say our names without choking
first, without stifling the urge
to say nigger behind us.

Look at all that we begot!
—babies and businesses
congregations and
countries.

Fine.

If we’re men
we’re the toughest
men, the kindest men
the smartest men. If we’re men
(then just admit it)
we’d make the most goddamn
beautiful fathers.

HANDS / Shane Moran

LEFT HAND

Answering the phone at the Berkeley Hotel is how I spent my summers off from college: helping

pretty girls sneak into the pool and drafting poems in the back, waiting for a bell. Every job has its perks, though most jobs are only bearable if the future is on your mind. For me, a present obsessed with the present is too stuck, too Buddhist. 

After I graduated, I became the hotel assistant manager. Hospitality is about pretending you love people despite recurring inconvenience.   I’m quite familiar with such labor, but couldn’t pretend forever. Jim Ryan soon gave me a job writing emails for him in his office. I sat beside Kalea and Sarita, fresh graduates, who walked with me to gossip on the lawn around lunchtime.   

Few things are more interesting than the office politics at an old university. Still, my interest in pretending to be another man eventually dwindled, and my boss noticed and gave me three months to find another job.     Oh.   Well.   My life is over.   Failure.   Ruin.   Blah.   Etcetera.   

Then, probably a week later, I found work in HR—writing about mental health and the quotidian.   No one likes to work, and I know that. So there I was: twenty-six, ADHD, dyslexic, a little girl-crazy, somehow writing for 38,000 people every month, saying things like:

• Remember, getting on SSRIs is probably a good idea.   

• You don’t need to miss your sister’s wedding to finish a spreadsheet.   And if you must, here’s how to cope with it.

• Underrepresent how much you can do in an hour, then quietly exceed what virtually everyone else is doing, since  accumulating wonder is both enjoyable and, in most offices, a marketable skill. 

• Xanax is a perfectly reasonable after-work treat, provided your car is already in the garage.  

• Zoom meetings are for the morning.  Have that drink.  We will replace you.  Live a little.
  
  

RIGHT HAND

Zero is my projected profit from poetry this year.  My days are divided : work, poems, and scrolling

everything except X.  RIP Twitter.  Sometimes, my phone gets so hot that it won’t charge, so I have to take it out of the case to keep scrolling.  Please resist sharing your judgment.  I’m quite innocent—much of my doomscrolling, really, is an algorithm of worthy poems and unreachable women.

Vices are best when people can’t see their effects on your physical body. I avoid overeating, overdieting, gym-ratting, frequent naps on tanning beds, and the like.  I’m waiting to finally get paid for  waking up only to fall in love—for my addiction to heartbreak (and my drinking).  All this is the foundation for the almost-smut, the grief, and the confession I’ve put in this pretty package for you—and, if you ask me, selling it at a decent price.

((Only $20?))

Racing after recognition would be in my LinkedIn bio—if I’m honest. I see you—you see me. If you quote Baudelaire then tell me you watch Baddies, I’ll find you interesting.  Pose for me.   Let’s watch it together, so I won’t feel so judged by the crisp voice of Marianne Moore in my head. You know, one hour of dubious reality TV can feel medical     cathartic, if you will. 

Natalie and her baddies would’ve probably appalled Marianne,  as did Ginsberg and his Beats, as did those pre-internet-porn exposés—but I bet the longer she watched, the more she’d find the ladies' fascination with realness     entertaining.  It is hard to look away.  Knowing her cold eye, after a couple of episodes,  she might write of this life of spectacle over dignity:

I, too, dislike it.     Don’t know why I watch—certainly not for the wig pulling.   Maybe it is the hammer of judgment on my heart,       reminding me of all I’m forbidden to do.

Growing takes time,     they tell me—but it is a constant fight for money and affection, brand and recognition.  I’m eager to determine who I am.  I want you      to know who I am.  I crave an eye that knows what is real and says what it sees. Baudelaire still comes to mind : 

what strange phenomena we find…
‍ ‍All we need to do is stroll about with our eyes               open.

Words for an Adult / Jingyu Li

Please, accept substitutes: a promise ring, 
a cardboard house. Paper folded into a fan shape. 
These were things you lived for. A popsicle stick
could build bridges, a sweet treat meant a sunny day.
Think of paper hearts and think of real hearts.
Among the grasses hide tiny people, bend down
and whisper to them what you hope 
will never change.

Homecomings (and Goings)  / Stefanie Zito

The car was filled with the smell of it
As we moved down the highway from the airport
The rhythmic rumble of roadway under tires
Pavement patched together 
Staccato stretches of billboards 
Peppering the horizon 
A metronome of homecoming
Steamy asphalt and deep fried everything in the distance
Marked the fragrance of summer breaks
Extended family, former homes, 
Now unfamiliar, foreign.
Feeling stranger.
Cold seams unraveling over time.
Connections I didn’t know how to repave.