March - Poem 9
Spring Cycles / Kathleen Bednarek
Windows unopened
Birds are impossible guests
To peck house data
-
Holding my fingers
Budding restraint side by side
Make an oath and rise
-
Here in the spring mud
Evangelical preachers
Teach hell and Easter
The Last Summer Nap / Mymona Bibi
Tree roots
were unearthed by animal
play and rot
was marvelled at by residents
of the whole street.
The Robin’s old knowledge
was made anew for us,
the orange of her chest
was fire flickering
above ground.
Another city was bombed
into orange darkness
whilst the children noticed
the tree’s protruding death
and they poked, prodded,
giggled, pointed,
cut, dug, fell, smelt
and everything
but talked.
Grief is a silent language.
My eyes drifted off
into orange darkness–
it is so easy to sleep
under the summer sun
when the noise
is so far away.
The Ten Thousand Things, Some of Them / Susan Hankla
Hoping to see again my mom's dress with the green caterpillars printed on it. Was she the living butterfly?
Did a thousand dishes by hand, happy the ancestors broke up sets of them, the missing cups their slender
handlelessness easier to dry on the tea towel.
Someday in another life we'll see who rapes who. I don't live by the notion of an eye for an eye. I'm sitting here after insomnia has me stingy in the eyes and skin, and a feeling of knowing that something has been wrong.
Just after Dad died, I had the sensation of my heart coming awake, as if before his death it had been on doze mode. Now when I opened the newspaper, the first thing I read is obituaries, & in reading about each person, I could feel that I was in communion with them and their loved ones, all sharing a heart.
Once a frisbee glowed at night so that coming through the door, I screamed to suddenly see it in my studio when I flicked on the light.
I miss my meadow. Grass stains. The skeletal branch on the dessert plate where crisp green grapes gave up their sweetness. I miss attar of turpentine and rose and orange oil when my twin aunts painted China sitting together at a card table and how many undercoats must be kiln-fired, before you actually see anything.
20 Years from Now / Amy Haworth
At the end of our lives
I hope you live next door
So we can laugh in your kitchen
About the diagnosis
And you can pick me up after the procedure
And we can be done (we'll never be done) analyzing
And marvel about how it all turned out
And cook dinner for friends like we did in 2001
Under a full moon descending on snowshoes felt like flight
At the end of it all
We'll make up for lost time
Doing whatever we can with the body we have left
Celebrating your courage that stopped the longing
And my gratitude for how you helped me find my way
and got me to ride a mountain bike race once
By then, at the end of our lives,
I might even have a dog.
I hope I have a dog, but not nearly as much as
I hope I live next door.
Dearly Beloved / Christina McCleanhan
Imagine California, Oakland, the East Bay, it is a decade before today.
There are clouds in the sky, low-hanging from pollution.
Leftover morning fog sails
toward a hillside of homeowner-privileged craftsmanship.
Reach up, lift off, and look
at the fatigue-flushed freeways, spiriting everyday people on their mission
to build a world meant
for entertainment, safety, love, survival,
and the opportunity to cash in or share sick days.
It felt like an electric stamina willed me to believe
I was the cinnamon crunch of hard candy
when rain muted the sun.
Those cool, old moccasins never stopped bouncing
down steps to
the round rhythm, sharpness of bus wheels,
desperate brake pads.
My youth looked ahead, trying to ignore the quiet
shake, shake, shake
of garbage-day premonitions in neighborhoods
that waited for cardboard-castle renewal.
I first ate Turkish delight at twenty-four with a tall classmate.
The powdered sugar coating stuck to the roof of my mouth,
leaving me disappointed, you know?
We saw each other for a while in our classes or in the hallways.
He spoke of volunteering and
the frustration of teaching change with limited resources
I spoke in circles of metered pseudo-intellectual pretentiousness
meant to hide the essence of my ordinariness.
I was afraid I might want to love him,
that he would want to love me,
so I closed my mouth when nodding hello
and forgot about the afternoon on College Avenue.
But today, the laundry basket’s broken handle poked my wrist.
I remembered the downstairs washers that we used,
saw San Francisco in its Converse,
felt Oakland breathe.
Now, I realize that I know nothing-
except that today’s prices would still be too high,
even if I had agreed to a second date.
Tiptoe / Elizabeth McGraw
What’s does a day bring in a season of change? It brings cold mornings, iffy conversations and strained relations fixed with a note.
House at 77 no time for the air conditioning so windows all set afloat.
Lord, the dog smells well overdue for his spring cleaning.
Birthdays on the horizon coinciding with the change in time.
Not quite equinox.
Skies a hazy gray. I lay down my head. The house is quiet.
A young one dances in the kitchen. Winter work overdue creeps in.
It ties in a knot that promises to unravel. A promise of the season to come.
Floating in the Indian River Inlet / Alexis Wolfe
Because I could not stay in the green place
I drove straight to the barren one
my teeth chattering and the Atlantic ghost crabs
doing their sideways dance.
Not even that emptiness could hold me.
My eyes and cheeks stung red
from a sun I did not forgive
because I did not know how to ask for it—
not directions
not a warm bed
I said little
no endworld in sight
I floated
in a made up place
between low tide and earth’s edge
one that could hold
my breath
