May - Poem 1
untitled / Meredith Ann Avera
I write, now, and think of You.
The abstract, the royal, the heavy,
the You.
Yes, there You are:
my guest and my friend
and my thief and my lover.
You come without body or blessing
and Your presence remains,
regardless of my desires.
Do I want You to stay?
They say the learned doctor
secretly doubts the eternal soul
or the everlasting human will,
while these things lay
like a reservoir
beneath the poet.
Hand in Hand / Desirae Chacon
Hand in my hand
times behind
and times ahead
centuries of bridging
emotions
Melancholy with fury
mixed with waters from the Seine
waters collected in my palm
feeling every single emotion
we’ve ever felt
every single tear you ever cried
falling from your eyes
most beautiful rain
lashes like wings of a dove
when rain falls from them
your tears of the Seine
turned into these waters that
fall into my hand
& tears from the fountains of laughter
when you smiled at me
surrounding in light of the Sun
falling
warming
scintillating
breathtaking
a breathe is respirated
cognitive reminiscence..
next
echoes of laughter
permeating our souls
stitching every single pain we’ve ever felt
into purpose
a balm for our solemnities
a salve for our sadness
a love for a reward
warm skies
dry grasses
balmy blue skies
of oil pastels in the middle of
a hot June
it was 1930
before the dust
fleeting moments of this chapter
of our life
of this life
of this time.
I Remember Little / Heather Frankland
Mae—my great grandma’s name—
three letters to contain
a legacy of memories
given to me by others—
she never forgot
a birthday, she never forgot
a name, she never forgot
to make you
feel valued.
I remember little
me—shy with curly blond
hair from Midwestern
summer humidity,
horns I hadn’t learned yet
to be self-conscious about.
I remember little
me listening to Mom and Grandma insist
that my cousin and I join
Great Grandma on the screened-in porch,
insisting that we sat on her lap
to be read a story.
It was a green porch
or it could have been
green leaves seen
through the screen.
My cousin
more confident that I,
knew what to do
and I followed, trying to pay
close attention
to the story, to the lap
to my mom watching.
I remember sensing
how much this old woman
was loved by my mom and grandma
like it was armor, a block of kindness
like it was concrete bricks
my small hand could touch.
Maybe some of that magic
would flake off
on my palms, in my wild hair
on my quiet tongue—
for being loved that fiercely
must be magical
for being able to love that much
must be something beyond body.
Great Grandma was a magical being
to me, like the unicorns
I believed warded
off my nightmares
or the double rainbows
that promised good luck
or feeling valued even when
you were small and too shy
to say much at all.
Remember, Shelley’s Heart Didn’t Burn! / John Hanright
In blessed memory of Neil Silberblatt
Melodies of Rachmaninoff
Repeat through the cottage –
Stifling a cough,
A poet flips the page
And busies himself with a piece,
This one is brand new,
And nothing will disturb his peace;
It must be brief yet ring true,
For it is his epitaph,
His greatest poem’s epigraph.
Run from that empty urn;
Take up a pen,
Which never lies,
Nor never dies;
And remember:
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Memories of the immortal bards
From yesteryear and today
Play in his mind’s yard
And then fly away,
Back to their home with the Muses;
But he catches some
And passing out his bon mots, amuses
His party guests, impressed by his aplomb.
Those days are all gone;
All that remains are dusk and dawn.
Run from that empty urn;
Take up a pen,
Which never lies,
Nor never dies;
And remember:
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Day and night are the same now,
His varicosed hands chill,
And damp sweat rests upon his brow,
But his soul and body are still
One – two nurses tend to his needs
While his love and friends tend to his heart –
The latter of which bleeds
Across the pages of his enchanted art:
“Full fathom five” and all that fine
“Shakespearean rag” and rhyme.
Run from that empty urn;
Take up a pen,
Which never lies,
Nor never dies;
And remember:
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
What untold secrets reside
In that undiscovered country:
Where poets rest upon the divide
Between grass and tree,
One hand in now, the other yore;
Where sick and well are all in all,
Where kings sleep with the poor,
Where bitter tears never fall;
In that realm where beauty reigns –
Somewhere with no more pain.
Run from that empty urn;
Take up a pen,
Which never lies,
Nor never dies;
And remember:
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Marionette / Jillian Humphrey
My mind marionettes.
When I swing my hands, she
walks. When I dance,
she dances.
When I knead dough,
I knead the mind.
And when I slide my trowel
into the garden, I dig —
my two marionette hands plant
something — in the brain.
Do you see how my hand hovers
over this page and my mind
is tied to it with a string
attached to a bucket
pulling ink from a well?
I can’t think unless I make
something. Striking a match
does less than washing the dishes.
I stand at the sink
for thirty minutes
noticing bits of food
and feeling water
run down my wrists
toward my elbows.
I look up to see my face shining
back — not in the drinking
glass — in the window pane.
There inside me, a flame.
UNCLE FATHER / Shane Moran
There is howling in the morning, I listen
to them breathe. Today, brushing their teeth,
the girls told me I look like their father.
Another way to say, I love you.
These young ones explain my life to me.
Show me as they squeeze their faces—
love can land on the tips of their noses.
Getting on the bus they wave goodbye,
and I miss their mother. I don’t forget.
Sometimes I go back in time. Sometimes
I yell. This is my work—to keep them
out of a fire. I’ve made all my wishes
upon these girls. I listen for the air breaks
from ten till two. At two, I’m waiting on the porch.
WHAT I MEAN WHEN I SAY DOWNTON ABBEY SAVED MY LIFE / Hali Sofala Jones
“One thing we don’t want is a poet in the family.”
—The Dowager Countess of Grantham
There’s something sacred about the way
they hold grief with posture,
how even despair is draped in velvet.
I watched the same war end twelve times,
same telegram arrive in trembling hands,
same butler pour tea like nothing was burning.
My skin flared—red sprawling wherever it wanted—
but the screen stayed pale and British,
orderly as pressed napkins.
God, I needed the soft tyranny of it.
What was dying in me
didn’t matter at Downton.
Matthew still crashes the car.
Sybil still dies, lock-jawed in bed.
But nothing there is final.
Even now, with these hands,
I can return us—whole,
to the beginning.
Cereal / Christina Vaagenius
I made a grocery list of all the ways I wanted to be loved.
Squeezed between the Wheat Thins and tender ripe limes.
Wondered if I'd find them tucked beside the condiments,
the chickpea pasta, the bone white bleached flour, always
escaping the battered seams. Or if I ‘d have to ask someone
for help finding the bread I like with the little seeds that turn
my teeth into piano keys. The cookies shaped like windmills
no one buys anymore, pushed into my 3rd grade pocket, turned
to crumbs by the time I remembered them. Toast-colored sand
castles rising between fingers, swept out to sea. Or if the all ways
I wanted to be loved
would be hidden at the bottom of a cereal box. Marshmallow shamrocks,
four-leaf clover good luck, my fingers digging for a prize shaped to fit
the palm of my own hand.
Lithium 2 / Sonya Wohletz
If it cries—the mistake was involuntary.
What can I say, I am struggling still,
as though my abilities to human were in question;
though I am not—
I am not aching with the mistake of
gorgeous charity but raw
at the filing of stars through my ear root,
thick with the music of brain waves,
their deltas emptying into that peace,
that thankless peace that exists between old lovers.
How lucky, to be uncertain, and yet break
fast quietly at the table before dawn—
how lucky to know the hour
when you are called to recount your
sufferings, knowing they will be received
with suffuse laughter. The noble way, I guess
it opens concrete
certainties so therefore belie
the calculated movement of ancestors, whose
bones angle in such a way that we
may know them, and speak of them with reverence
and wish them safe returns.
I myself was like this—a stray projection
of those past failures, those past griefs,
all of which articulated and unnamed of
myself, simmered in the sliver of the pasture moon.
It will cost me so little to tell you:
(and would you have such patience as to absorb)
the pillared salts before and behind me, and
how now to take them in,
to ingest and hold steady the silent
messages, to steward such fresh image—
a zest, warm yellow separating
my palms from yours.
