May - Poem 2
baptismal / M. Anne Avera
weather perfect, lake water clear, god in the cattails beside the shore.
he held the lamb up and, now, you can see the milky white in its eyes,
gone hollow from adam’s guilt still sleeping, waiting to lay waste.
but thy will be done, be filled, be overflowed. water flushes the body.
blood becomes water becomes wine as the soul is washed. a privilege,
to have this grace and goodness restored, for the hide to dry pearly white.
with the glory of the sunrise and the heartbeat of the hymn, we pray—
the parts of us that know better and the parts of us that want for more.
Weight of a Feather / Desirae Chacon
as i sleep
with weight upon feathers
i am blanketed with life
awaiting my awakening
this beautiful life surrounds
as sleep takes me
on divine encounters
of dreams
birds
call into the night
dusky songs
upon silky silhouettes
streams like night-watchers
constantly marching into the
mists of the ny3t
night fox and moonflowers
arise subsequently following
four o’clocks last showing
a reposed slumber
falls upon the land
as my consciousness falls upon
weight of feathers
one more dream
as birds sing
till arising
awakens
to introduce
this dreaming life
to a new dawn
Southwestern Summer Days / Heather Frankland
For days, a heavy cloud
promised rain, fat
drops to remind us
that there could be
a storm, that the heat
could be
chased away
that our garden
may not remain
dried out promises
of spring fantasies.
For days, that cloud lingered
the sun became bashful
my skin remembered
how it loved rain.
It remembered long summer storms
wet mouths of raindrops.
It felt so very alive
like it was more than skin
a leaf trembling, a tree dancing
roots thankful—deep
in the ground
stretching out
and still growing.
Elegy for a Playhouse / John Hanright
What an unceremonious end to an otherwise inspired play.
We really must get our money back.
…
What? Another mailer? Another fundraiser? What does this one say?
Dear valued patron:
We are drowning in debt. We can’t keep the stage lights on without your support. We need your
help. Please, give what you can. Become a subscriber. Every little bit helps.
Yours sincerely,
The Board
Throw it in the trash, dear, with all the other junk mail.
…
Oh, that’s the theater where they do all that social issue stuff. I’m not supporting some agenda.
…
Am I a season subscriber? No, I just came to see Brigadoon for the fifth time in my life.
…
I can’t wrap my head around it. How could a woman play [insert classic male role here]? It’s like
if a man played [insert classic female role here]. Can you imagine?
I don’t support the gender-bent casts they have had
lately either. What does the Met season look like this year?
…
Pay what you can? Can you make change for a ten?
…
Why am I gonna pay $30 for a production of Hairspray when I can see it for free on streaming?
…
Dear valued patron:
It is with a heavy heart that we must say goodbye to our beloved theater, who passed away last
night surrounded by family and friends.
The theater is survived by streaming platforms like Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix, bad spinoff
series of originally good movies, and AI videos of people falling from infinity pools.
In lieu of flowers, for the love of everything good and beautiful in this world, please support live
theatre.
Yours in community,
The Board
Icon / Jillian Humphrey
The hand ruins the brain
’s design. The image, made
real, is marred.
Mind resists; pleads
fidelity, not sloth.
An image is what it is.
Any tangible or legible
construction of that image
is no theophany,
only an icon.
Why insist on the incarnation
of a dream?
You’ll kill it.
But the body must make something.
With its gladness,
a pile of stones.
With its sadness,
drawn figures, shrunken heads
and hands too large
for their arms.
The body writes sentences
to record what it felt
but the mind
cannot resist
interfering. It assigns meaning
to narrative, interjects
cause where there is only effect.
Why this overgrown garden?
A figment is still a vision.
Without it the people perish.
Flower Moon / Shane Moran
Something
holds me in this body
calling—come to me, come.
You see me shine,
but don’t try
pulling me down:
Do you really need
to learn
the light is behind me—
touch my harsh skin, find
I am not
the body you dreamed of—
you agree,
if you worship
from a distance—
you only need
your eyes—
O you of little faith.
Each month you look for me
and you can’t rest
until you’re drunk
spinning—
clouds pass
my face. I’m waning.
WATCHING HAROLD PERRINEAU AS MERCUTIO WHEN I WAS TWELVE / Hali Sofala Jones
Wings.
Glitter.
Gun.
Black skin.
Shine.
Tell me of Mab.
Faster, faster—
No, nothing
can touch him.
Strobe
of sunlight—
a body full
of breath.
Barrel’s mouth—
choreography.
Laugh. Spin. Spin. Laugh.
Violence, theater.
Blade, prop.
The beach,
a fever dream—
The body,
a costume.
A scratch. A scratch. A scratch.
Where is the rattle—
in that laugh?
Tell me of Mab now.
Not worms.
Not plague.
Wake—
Gladiolas / Christina Vagenius
My father tells me the story of hiding under the dining room table
when he was a boy. After his mother died, after his father made the bottle
his new bride. I don't think of this the night I hide from my boyfriend,
two weeks from turning 21, the studio off Goethe. With the southwest
thigh-high black lacquered vase I filled with turquoise sticks, felt sophisticated.
Walking past PJ Clark’s, a bent elbow brasserie keeping the Saturday gladiolas
perky, a wind-whipped sundress rising over the horizon of my knee, he’d say
was the reason his hand felt hard, hey, I’m talking to you. Honey colored neon
shadows, a ladder of blooms I’d watch wobble, then fall. Gladiola, ‘Imperial Mix’
looks small, inside a puddle of water. Seeds born from a storied stem.
I see you under there.
Meditation on a Russian icon and a moth flies through / Sonya Wohletz
The moth interstices its way past the window—
smoke slips from a candle,
frame to its markings: stripes, ovoid. Morphemes
into the shrine of the saint’s forehead,
high and glaucous, indicating wisdom I suppose—
a certain elevating instinct, suspended
towards a god or the moon, who can
tell. Beautiful, isn’t it—what some people
can gloss their mistakes out of.
There is, for instance: a wing, or hand—raised
in blessing through this gospel of winter—
the saint’s eyes, antennae winking as if to
return the benediction or the place in time
where you realized I have no right I have no right
to occupy this language.
The recursive moment is the choice:
to maunder between, back and forth, up, down.
Voices drift like flakes of ash,
like a pilgrim deviating towards martyrdom
on the cold altar of ice along the Yenisei
in winter. In winter it is the embers
that are themselves alone,
smoldering in two palms. Their relic crease
warms to us and thermal blooms
of prayers lifting—wings into
the night air, fluttering like leaves of an old book
written in a language no one remembers
or cares to inhabit.
Is it the desire to understand again
that which imprisons or seals us upon itself?
Does the saint open mercy like a gate
and cleanse these hands,
cleanse my words of fire?
Free of the fire and of the vision free—
the bone moon, oh, it sometimes
relieves me at least of that.
