March - Poem 17
[Memory is something gone] / Kathleen Bednarek
Memory is something gone.
Already it sort of explains loss.
Was the sunset that spotless, like really pure peach?
I believe in the progression of wind fraying the edges of flags
You can still fold the flag when you think it’s done.
You walk out to the mailbox and put the metal bar up.
And the message will be sent by unknown carriers.
Flight Academy / Susan Hankla
What is your heaviest book; the teacher is leveling
his punishment.I am to stand at the front of the class,
and hold the heaviest schoolbook I've got
in one hand
high in the air, until he says
stop.
A civics book full of
lynchings
and crusades.
Or a small Latin book
about wars.
In front of the board, sinews
snap
my armpit wet,
shoulders ache.
White blouse untucks from kilt,
raised arm holding the heavy book,
till
stupid arm, it begins to shake
with the big book in the air,
knee socks inch down
calves, toward loafers.
Spirit floats to Ben
Franklin down
the street
to pick out black
bikini panties
with wolves embroidered crimson,
their tongues licking out all over them
like sex.
Where it happened / Amy Haworth
Night decisions linger
uncomfortable
Less powerful people drowned in noise
Ease gravitates toward authenticity
to elevate warmth
not recreate -- but evoke -- déjà vu
Tablescapes communicate promises
with obsession
hallmarks
suspended above
artisans
control transitions
from day to night
For Those Who Dip French Fries in Gold / Christina McCleanhan
Drop the art, pick it up.
Drop the art, rest a minute, pick it up.
They do not tell you in grade school, as you struggle to
open the lunchtime milk cartons, tie your shoes,
how to be creative.
You are told to paint pictures or
sing songs, wait for the bus, wait for the juice.
There is rarely applause for
the girl who colors the cat blue, or the boy who
introduces his best cackling witch between
Fa and So.
Drop the art, buy a brand-new Pilot, pick up the art.
The hands that control time make bargains with
off-brand gel pens.
The story of a princess slaying in sweats,
sending a witch to the Pipedown Tower for
a cookie break, naptime,
takes more than the allotted time after recess to build.
Give the artist two, fifteens, as well.
Let the hands be washed of pigment for
those who do not offer to
clean the brushes and sweep the floors.
Pick up the art and consume it.
Let its sweet roar coax the right eardrum into a euphoric ripple.
The butcher leaves his local cows for
packaged roasts cut by robots without faces.
The baker greets his truth by
trading his wheat field know-how for
an influencer's disclaimer.
The candlestick maker turns down his light, and
turns a profit by yelling, "scarcity," in
a crowded room.
No shame, no worries. We are only trying to glow.
Go on, now, be feral.
Live Action / Elizabeth McGraw
Hear me out, she says.
It’s got little to do with me, she says.
It’s clear there’s been a misunderstanding and it’s all spun out of control.
Enrolled in the weather pattern.
Awake at the spark.
Lightening around the bend.
The transponder struggles to blow out.
Nothing here’s got anything to do with me.
Walks away.
I stopped having a story / Alexis Wolfe
or a selfsong maybe when
i moved to the high plains let that blank space
blankpage me, the one i intended to sit at
i became: what is it to reject your own story,
know it so well you sick-of-it
let it flit into a windstorm, watch it
trip over a cactus and slip behind the
unhazing mountains slitting the mesas or plateaus
whichever and know the sun always sets in the west
no not just know, comprehend inconsolable
