June - Poem 8
In Good Company / Kristina Byas
We found each other
by accident
by chance
by luck
then stayed on purpose.
No shared blood,
but shared
faults and burdens
laughter and cries
in the space between strangers and kin.
Where home became not only a place I go
but the people who chose me back.
A Shepherd's Prayer / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson
Will nothing quell the bleating of the sheep?
A man is just a man, that I know well;
don’t let those be the memories they keep.
I carelessly led my tender flock deep
into the untamed fields—a violent dell.
Will nothing quell the bleating of the sheep?
I broke their legs simply to see them weep
and watched them quiver in the place they fell;
don’t let those be the memories they keep.
I cannot look at them, I cannot sleep
without seeing their eyes which seem to yell,
“Nothing will quell the bleating of the sheep!”
Those times when I would take my rod and sweep
through the lea like I was under some spell,
don’t let those be the memories they keep.
Lord, I know that what I’ve sown I will reap
until the day I die and go to hell.
Will nothing quell the bleating of the sheep?
Don’t let those be the memories they keep.
On the Restoration of Wells College’s Statue of Minerva’s Head to Her Body / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason
for 156 years of Wells College Alumnae
The Restorationist guilded your severance
with stony glue, aligned you,
with that soft precision as you deserved, rebar
drilled deep into your body and brain, reassuring
her. No one could sidle such love
to ground you headlessness
without alighting your scroll of wisdom.
Your daughters’ grief agonied
waved upon you in rainbow forms:
your rage of war, paradigm of strategy,
Kintsugi of hearts, frozen lake,
geese demanding in the 2 am hush.
Your daughters forever rush to your honor.
Your beheaders didn’t mean –
– they love you too – kissed
your face with fears, lips
raw with the blood of consequence.
Their bodies pushed stark to implications,
to lost jobs, lost paychecks,
a last tryst across your campus.
You forgave them, headless
as you were, but never heartless
You lead daughters in battle
whole, calm in your alcove
breathing in our feathered fears,
exhaling it as arrayed wisdom
we inhaled in return.
When we left your care we kissed
your feet, you deserved
our soft marble savior.
When we arrived to you, home
upon your armored breast, a liminal
space of devotion it was your sacred,
immovable hands that caressed
our scared hearts, forcing our chins up
– look at that world
it is yours
THROAT / Shane Moran
I fear both will soon be with
in heaven: my two Gods.
I hold straw to your brown
bark lips. Your tongue is bar
of dry soap, creeping out,
begging. I say to you
how well you hold bottle
resting in my left hand—
you grab
and ungrab,
take
and untake,
grasp and swat
at everything.
When I was boychild
looking to you,
my Godwoman, you held
my hand and clicked your fingernails
together, telling me,
I love you—infinity.
I believed in infinity then,
when your limbs were in
your control, when you’d spend
your days warning me
about tattoos, and piercings,
extramarital pornography and condomless sex.
Godwoman, Grandmother, first Lord—
I wish I could repent at your bedside
for whatever sadness
I ever brought you.
Still, if Second Lord, whom you spoke into
omnipotence, commands, I must let you die
beside me. And let myself weep
like Mary at Jesus’s ankles,
crying, Lord is dead— but who would want
to speak of that. Lord does not speak at all.
In Lieu of a Love Poem / Jingyu Li
I tried to write a love poem but I painted
a picture instead, and you were ugly and the cat
was beautiful and I wished I had more talent
but it’ll take some time. I tried to write a love poem but
thought it was too cheesy, afraid our friend would crinkle
her nose and say ew! or a classmate would say your poems
would be better if you were heartbroken, so I focused on
the picture, I focused on painting your hairline
not too high, not too low, and whispering don’t worry
you’re not going to go bald, and I don’t know why you’re
so worried about it anyway, you ask me to shave your head
everytime you need a haircut and don’t want
to go to the barber. I could get used to you bald or with
long hair or fur everywhere like an otter. But right now
I still can’t get your face right even though I’ve studied
it from so many angles and times and places, how you bend
the shape of your eyes to make each distinguishable
expression, how you hold the cat just right, the way
she lets you, I can see it through the frame.
Knots / Stefanie Zito
A core memory of mine
seated on the floor
toying with the tangled
cords of a phone line
quietly tracing the loop of tension
slowly unfurling the willful cable
until it fell in line.
I’ve been told how patient I am
praised for it in fact
it’s expected of me anymore
as women have been trained
since girlhood. I’ve stayed tidy–
in my lane, straight and narrow.
Watch me silently sit
with deft and diligent hands
skillfully coaxing the jumbled
snarls given me, luring
them in an orderly queue
like the one I’ve been cued into.
I’ve held my patience
my place in line so long
gripping this cloak of
composure even as the edges
of my fortitude fray.
I sometimes shudder to consider
who I may be were
I to lose it altogether.
It has me in knots
but I’m harnessing the courage of
my own disentanglement, slipping
free from the cordage of control
and securing myself from within.
