May - Poem 15

My Life Becomes...  / M. Anne Avera

Slow as syrup-drip and then landsliding together,
overflowing, my life becomes these things:

Letting our dogs in and out of doors,
and watching them patrol the backyard,
tiny, noisy dictators in the violent green.
Each of them are weary to cross the threshold
into the empty brown territory between
the neighbors and us—
I like to call it
no-man’s-land.

Watching your face glow, crest, fade
when you listen to your music so loud
I can hear it even though you’ve headphones.
Your face!
Like an open window, casting our scent
into the nighttime.
(The windows, which you keep open
for the cat, stay unraveled. I can’t bring
myself
to complain.)

Polyrhythmic circadian, the way I never
can make myself fall asleep at a normal hour,
or when you do.
So I make it my mission to count your breaths
and feel them
on my neck.
As if I could remind myself you’re here and
I’m here and this is all and this is everything.

Aching for a place next to you all the time.
If I could knit myself into your skin
it would never be
close enough.

Back Home When It Was Summer   / Heather Frankland

Normally, box fans everywhere
cracked windows that let in air
the sound of the cicadas and trains
lightning bugs—little lanterns
that made it never too dark,
like they were on their own
little-Red-Riding-Hood path
the dark forest, the wolf with the hot breath,
the promise to protect, the impossible escape.
Still too much city-like haze
to see the stars. I would count them
I counted five or seven, and often one
would be a planet or a plane—something
that’d struggle to carry a wish.

When it reached 100 degrees, only then
would Dad allow us to turn on
the window air conditioner,
the only one we had;
it was in the living room.
An old unit, we worried
that it wouldn’t work one day,
that this would be the summer
it decided to quit
we measured out its servings,
in teaspoons for 100-degree weather.

All the doors would be shut, windows, too,
we would cluster around that unit,
me, sitting on the floor, on the shag carpet,
sitting almost eye-level to its vent.
The sound, a lullaby—we should have told stories
all of us in one room, but the heat too much
to concentrate on anything other
than the feel of the cool air
or to remember how the weather lady
cracked an egg on the sidewalk
it sizzled on camera—seemed
a potential way to make breakfast.
Who wanted to use the stove
and the oven would be worse.

The only other thought in my young brain—
it’s hot, can I sleep here tonight?
Please let me sleep here tonight;
our room might
as well be on the moon
its stuffy self, a block of heat,
ghosts must be in Victorian high-neck shirts
the bunk bed could be a closet of tired dreams
my familiar nightmares, not their familiar selves,
even they would rather feel the cool air.
Too tired and too hot to really dream,
my thoughts circle on wanting Kool-Aid—
my brother made it— I saw it being made
he stirred it with Mom’s favorite wooden spoon,
the red color staining the wood.
It should be cold by now, in the fridge,
it would taste so good,
if only the fridge weren’t so far away,
little can make me move,
I need to stay by this
window air conditioner.
Here, for now, I plant my roots.

Star Sand / John Hanright

Okinawa holds
Billions of skeletons
The dregs of dead stars


Dead stars on the Earth
Submarine supernova
The reefs are dying


Dying from the heat
Are there no more witnesses?
Living sand answers


Answers to our prayers
Ecosystems stabilized
By calcified stars

Inside of Me / Jillian Humphrey

there’s a german and a party
inside me a butcher and a hog
that keeps slipping
his hands

half basket case half drunk
I’m the child of a minister
and a playboy
magazine under his mattress

every time I pop a wheelie
the chain skips
every time I’m born
they send the sirens
I can’t outrun
the feeling I’m always
one mistake away
from having a good time

here I come
from a long
dark alley
of embezzlers
and executioners

instead of working it out
between themselves
they’re working it out
inside of me

A Proposal  / Shane Moran

He just needed to be a little better
of a guy and he could have had me,
Daphne tells me on the patio—

And this is why the house no longer
has a hot tub, and this is why she wanted
a career. I can’t say I want won’t take 

my hot tub with me, but won’t you listen:
I will forsake all expectations for you,
and prune the hydrangeas once a year.

I See Nothing But Lost Days  / Christina Vagenius

It was a needless want, to be sure | silence finds the car door | I could beat necessity senseless | cut every last cord | but I bend for it | bandage the wound and ascend to it | are we there yet? | I have hummed the same song for a week | made a bed for all the lost notes | promised to sweep them into tidy jingles someday | what’s the word for a dance down the middle? | the serpentine crown with gold scratched just a little | there’s a chipped tooth shark beneath my ring finger | fist rising fast | kick start the old generator | to the last sunken moon | plan your night out better | no one wants to see | your light leave a mess for later | find the bed | close your eyes | disagree with the meter | the hole in your heart filling last | believe her | it was a needless want, to be sure | I’m going nowhere, fast | Hold on.

Thursday Observations / Sonya Wohletz

1. The zoom calls must always begin with a greeting—baring of teeth
a. (I think it is laughter? That can’t be accurate)
b. Followed by a demand. Who cares what kind
i. There is no room for bargaining
1. Let alone compromise
2. We go in circles
3. Someone make another spreadsheet, for god’s sake!
2. Lately my thinking is slipping backwards
a. Images on loop, technicolor halo
i. Robotic specters, LLMs
1. Wide eyes and improbable proportions
2. Unreality soaking in through the membranes
a. The generators grinding grinding
b. Dust muscling the turbines, the power grid
3. Today, a conversation with a friend:
a. Do we need a ritual to banish worry?
b. Don’t answer that email, don’t apologize
i. You did nothing wrong, honey
1. That gas won’t pay for itself
2. Do I need to write your boss’s name on papel cartucho and put it in my
freezer?
4. I sense it in the rain, the incongruencies:
a. The spirits are catching up to us
b. Planting seeds at the crossroads
i. Forks sprout like seedlings in all directions
1. But these badlands are so empty
2. There are no banquets, no guests
a. And the crops brewing in your eye, mutilated twigs—
i. Wink back—knowingly, uselessly