March - Poem 8
Sister Cecilia / Kathleen Bednarek
My fave nun. By the time I was in the third grade, she was on her way to blindness. She taught me meter and "The Owl and the Pussycat." She had a scratched cornea from Ash Wednesday, when ashes slipped off the slope of her forehead into her right eye.
The edges of her thick glasses magnified into serious wattage when the light came in at a slant through the classroom windows.
Poetry teacher, literally reading close. Explaining to a pod of youngsters in a back room at a school named Epiphany how to wield imagination.
We ditched phonics. At home, typing on a typewriter named for a munitions device: Canon. This is what I wanna do for the rest of my life. Volley words. I compared the falling snow to doves.
You disappeared after the spring and went into retirement, in rooms that continued to blur at their edges.
"I suppose" should never be in a poem, or "suddenly," they say. But you and I were together in the fog this evening as I drove home on the interstate. I couldn't see, and wanted to know the sequel:
So, if "The Owl and the Pussycat" were married, and let’s say they had babies they would have had superior night vision— pure hunter's sight. Eyes specialized for darkness. But the owl would have been lost right now because the two taillights I’m following are red. Owls can’t see red. Cats can’t either.
And I could...see you with the fine downy hairs on your face. What did you like about that poem? The plump cheeks, hazel eyes magnifying, the habit like a black hole out of which knowledge was sucked in then flowed out, offset by your white hair looking at me through my eyes as I looked into yours in a memory patterned forward black and white.
Staying with the car ahead of me which is your face, which remembered language though the eye has not seen, ear has not heard. Sought.
Trace, lineage, metronome; in the middle of the fading curves appearing, the tail lights, two disparate things held in relation to one another. Create attention. Keep sitting, looking. Forego the drenching rainstorm, let the fog soak through.
Diaspora / Mymona Bibi
STENDAHL SYNDROME / Susan Hankla
Yes, it's true, often works of art prove
useful-–the incident at the Phillips Gallery
when I saw the movie of myself unglued
by his "Green and Tangerine" color field
painting in The Rothko Room.
At the Whitney, the Louise Nevelson
retrospective happened to my body: hot,
quaking, surprised, nearly walked into a black
wall of her imagination.
I hereby sign this affidavit these instances did occur.
I’m certain / Amy Haworth
Dedicated to DLo
“I’m certain
the path to success
is
never
forgetting
where you’re from.”
An angel
without wings
scatters wisdom
like salt
on a blizzard-bound
sidewalk
providing a temporary
spring
of hope in remembering
instead of wondering.
We grow tallest when our
roots touch
the blistering sun and city hum
music jumping open window to air
who we were
is who we are
we are proof of what watered us
tasting of the soil that grew us.
A Note on Understanding / Christina McCleanhan
I do not
fear
the spiders
the pill bugs
the centipedes
hiding
beneath
the damp surface of cold,
outside wetness
in my grandmother’s yard.
We are not so different-
the earth and I.
Branches, long or short,
offer me shelter
from inevitable elemental shortcomings
much like the respect given to birds-
hatchlings born and grown
on worms and oxygen.
deep
deep
deep
down in the backyard mud
live the memories of my youth.
We are here; they call.
We remember; they call.
My fingers will dip and prod
until they grasp a root, or
the old handle of my grandmother’s trowel,
then, amidst the decayed, rusted earth
I am reminded of
our long laughs,
summer evening shadows,
ants parading along cracked sidewalks,
that first mow after Easter,
Saturday night gravy over chicken,
quilts weighed against winter’s effort,
warming cold bedclothes with floor furnace heat
and love-
usually effortless and mostly free.
A Highway Through Tees Noc Pos, New Mexico / Elizabeth McGraw
A wilderness all of its own as the highway rolls underneath.
The swells from the searching brings my eyelids to their knees.
It’s been a long walk along this road in search of a phone.
Feet clad in jelly shoes and dad by my side.
They said it was a misunderstanding like in the evening show but I was swept up in a hurt and pulled along this road.
We walked for probably just a mile with the stars laid out quite bare. It was lonesome and fun at the same time.
Strange when the familiar faces swung slow to offer the ride. We said no, knew where to go, and remarked not many walk around here.
As they pulled away.
The phone booth found and the call made but nothing spoken of our journey or the late hour. The attendant introduced us to the driver of the rig and that is how we ended up here.
In a wilderness all of its own as the highway rolled underneath.
The swells from the searching brought my eyelids to their knees.
middle child what should i / Alexis Wolfe
middle child what should i
middle child, what else
should i call you? hotfoot
but slow to descend worn
stairs, kind in the cunning,
snagged on life’s pith. last time
we sat in the ice cream
parking lot smelled like wet birds
you drew long faces on your shoes
left school again asked me for
a flight to texas started dating
another dancer, the real sweet this one
played me voice notes of your misplaced
songs without asking if i wanted
to hear or if I needed ( ) only unanswerables
