March - Poem 2
Zero Days / Kathleen Bednarek
Last night I was met in a dream by a man I had never met before. His face, a composite of men who have worked in body shops or out in the cold. A traffic flagger. Large, red-faced, longer gray hair flowing out from under a baseball cap that said Semper Fi. I arrived in this dream not because I am a Marine, but maybe because my sister recently told me over the phone: Semper Fi, short for Semper Fidelis, always faithful.
The man across from me told me he drank Busch beer from the time he woke up, and that it helped him to come to the shop already on his way to blotto. Lucidly, I noted PTSD as a possibility. I don’t know, what rooms are we ever in when we confess? I can't recall. The emotion normally overtakes the atmosphere.
No one confesses anything unless they can't stand it any longer but the spaces stay. I listened to him and didn't say a word. Even in the dream I never had him do work on my car.
My sister conjures humor from depths, sourcing Bloody Marys in Civil War-themed restaurants during snowstorms staving off the lack of light. Sweatpants and high heels juxtaposed, with an old winter coat for a quick jaunt to the supermarket. You know this is the America of spray cheese. Of Powerball. Of poverty, that's different from other countries' poverty, because it dies of heart. If you give someone dreams, there are those who know the turn. The empty-handed side. Here you laugh. And I shake. But no one will know what kind of shakes. Was it from laughing? Who goes there?
Zero days. A Brad Pitt movie, exited in near darkness. What kind of people are in your dreams? Where are you all sitting, can I sit here? I've been in many rooms. I recall blacklight, deeply cushioned furniture, wood-paneled walls and conversations I no longer wanted to be part of. It was to leave them to return to myself. A different dream. Now it’s Sunday, I'm facing a bare-limbed forest, a winter that won't quit. I think of you enduring. Life will make you its mercenary—pick a song to go into battle with. Dance with it in your room.
Orange / Mymona Bibi
Like the start of a morning or end of a night, orange is tomorrow it’s believing we have a chance it’s the aura of hope. don’t look at it, my love, for orange burns, stings, in a wound as i cut open slice through orange, strings of white, orange, find you in two-toned fruit and one toned flesh, each segment falling, rocking, boatfuls of juice on a small plate. it’s a kiss and the fire left behind on lips and tongues, lighting departures in alleyways. orange is a street full of us, is my knowledge of floating rings and shining jackets and emergency flames where we beg our abusers to save us because no on else is left.
Untitled / Amy Haworth
I weep for the girls
who will not see
another sunrise
who will never know
this girl
cries
for the girls
who I have never seen
but imagine
holding
their mother
I've never met
in this lost
world
where they should
have come home
from school
today.
I Had Two Childhoods / Susan Hankla
One in which a father betrayed me.
One in which good women saved me.
So really I had no childhood at all.
But why get all psychological?
I know how to make biscuits you can see through.
When Courage Fails / Christina McCleanhan
Let depression’s horror sweep across your feet
before it rises to probe your sacredness
with its clinical fingers.
Offer your shoulders
to the heaviness of jealousy’s resolve
if forgiveness feels shallow and useless.
But, do not stop dreaming.
Raise your head and watch the sky,
wait for the rabbit’s jump
from the tall grass
behind the abandoned white house
with mismatched clapboard siding.
The dogs will wait or walk; the dogs look after you.
When fear comes
to pour itself along your breast,
greet its sting
like exposed flesh
reckons with a January coldness.
Welcome reflection
that means to forge your buyer’s regret,
compressing your wounded foolishness
into a proud thickness
that may take another week or year to mold.
But, do not stop breathing.
Slam your fist down into the dishwater,
rest while the countertop slant draws the suds
toward the hidden mildew behind the faucet.
The guests will eat or starve; the guests came for you.
Recognize / Elizabeth McGraw
Call it like you see it, what should I call what I feel?
Wait to perform when I know I am liked,
but they won't like you until you perform.
I am a monkey.
By midday / Alexis Wolfe
By midday everything is slippery-wet
flubber, my hands are two sieves
and i’m hyperfixated on the notes
of a vacuum-sealed Bookkisa coffee
bag again: florals, meyer lemon, melon––washed
process, weren’t the last: meyer lemon, peach, bergamot?
Why all these lemons, melons,
where there are none? Everything
is everywhere. Coffee is coffee,
not ripped petals, drenched fruits. I drink it.
I read about the detrimental effects
of globalization: our foreclosed future,
earth mass smashing
into the continuum of past and future,
completion as a limit and the time
of the finite world beginning. Excess, meet
excess meet excess, you’re all the rage
lately—enjoy a cacophonous
conversation.
The sourdough loaves cool and talk
amongst each other on my countertop and
it excites me–i don't know
who I’ll gift them to, unable to eat.
I say I can’t write anything lately,
but then what is this? What is anyone
talking about anyways
on my kitchen blah blah blah
radio, through the nightshade, at the local blah
blah grandmother-dedicated
restaurant. I don’t care.
Of course I do.
