May - Poem 13
Common Responses to Common Advice / M. Anne Avera
“Yeah, I guess exercise helps.”
I punish my body, punitive in routine and
break myself down to the core. I stress myself
to the maxim, to find some other pain to feel,
to find some way to get out of this endless hole,
because if I can’t do twenty-five squats,
then I guess I don’t deserve to do anything
at all.
“The medicine has some side effects.”
I don’t recognize the mind these thoughts
come from, but I’ve gone so far beyond
what I used to be that I don’t see the point
in trying to remember her anymore.
Maybe there’s some personality left under
the sweat-damp, ugly mask covering my face,
leaving it unrecognizable, but I won’t take it off,
won’t take the chance of there being nothing there,
not a single thing left.
“Time feels more fluid these days.”
Time is liquid. Time is filling my throat.
Time is all over my hands and dripping
down my elbows and covering me in its
cold, cold current.
I have trench foot from time.
I will soon drown as time’s stream
and flow becomes a river mouth, becomes
an outlet to the ocean.
“I don’t think about it.”
It comes back to me in light-bursts, in star-
fragments, in moon-slivers so thin they look
like the fingernails I bite off. I will never
forget it because it is a part of my whole being.
The Way the Light Falls / Desirae Chacon
The way the light falls softly in your shoulders
cloaking you in golden satins
The Way the clouds soar over head
The way this ground feels so pristine
yet held the footsteps of so many others
who trodden cross your forestscapes
who wondered at your beauty
who love what you put forth
in your effortless generosity
The way that everywhere I look
makes my eyes feel new
drenched in amazement
and saturated in a new hope
that roads await that have not yet been taken
for me
so
As the light falls
i venture into the unknown
yet to be
A Long Semester / Heather Frankland
I’d never understood
running on empty
until now—the analogy
of a car, that E
in red lights,
a slight smell of fumes,
turning the air conditioner off—
anything that seems
to make the car lag.
Go back to the basics
coasting, hoping
that you have enough
to get to the next gas station,
nervous how you go
up the hills—
will you make it?
Wishing for more
down hill drives
and worrying about full-stop
stopping at stop signs—
what if you can’t start up again?
You think to yourself—
how did it get so low?
Once, you always,
at least kept
your tank at half.
Remember when you could
breathe more easily?
When you didn’t feel fumes
escaping from your
tired brain
when you didn’t
feel the flutter
of your anxious heart?
Indefensive Mirrors / John Hanright
CW: body dysmorphia, fat shaming, sizeism
child in swim shirt
reflection in pool
fingers pointing
ugly
“you’re too thin”
“you’re so fat”
“put a little meat on your bones”
“getting big, aren’t you?”
fun house.
mirror – shifted shape
not mine
mirror –
a reflection, not a verdict
when will fat not warrant an apology?
stomachs should be fed
Sleeper / Jillian Humphrey
She’s such a good eater,
she’s such a good sleeper,
they’d say
if I were still a baby.
Shoulder (2) / Shane Moran
Some nights, I found you again on the couch.
How am I supposed to let that not affect me?
Of all the things I asked you keep
Under control—it was your
Love for me. Easy to leave me—
Dream (alone) the darkness your friend,
Ever understanding and drank-in—a hug
Round the neck. I didn’t want another body.
Inside This Flower / Christina Vagenius
Maybe I could be one of Emily Dickinson’s flowers
pressed on a page, given a name like Trailing Arbutus
or Ox-eye Daisy, enduring the heat of the greenhouse.
The torrential tears of mispronunciation. Cold rain,
dried flat from the exhale. Color worn with how did I get here?
Shuttered petals giving way to the spiral vein, born
from the broken stem. Put me under glass, instead.
Let the sun bloom new life in me, lines submerged
beneath a poet’s fingers. Turn me blue. Waxed,
remembered. A token treasure, opened up. Over
and over, again — until one last breath, bookmarked
nourished, forever.
Quetiapine 1 / Sonya Wohletz
Professor L orates the mercury mines at Huancavelica—
the political aims of Viceroy Toledo, administrative proceedings, census tracts.
A classmate offers a précis. It is full of commands.
At office hours again with a bruised neck.
Where others dispute subaltern identities,
hungry spirits follow in swift pursuit.
Clumps of hair clog the drain. Gas lantern above entryway—entrancing
as in an endless carnival. Slip of paper—
issuing warrant for a summary execution.
Another trip to the Emergency—
kindly observes the worms pullulating those mulberry brains.
Sinus infection perhaps.
One hemisphere short of complete defection, and still.
Souls drip like Spanish moss from live oak.
Now, soft—the sleep of silver.
The phone—ringing, ringing—
Hölderlin again. Of course you are melancholic. Of course you are beautiful.
Meanwhile the ores
are smelting—perfume the high village.
And within the richest hill, furtive figures
await a bride price they know will never be paid.
I, too, have loved her orphans.
