May - Poem 20

Garden  / M. Anne Avera

I caught you peering through the overgrown backyard,
where you remember people living once, though

it’s been a long time. Glass shards in the wet grass
throw up strands of light like Jesus’ own hair.

It’s funny how places like this turn out when
there is no one who’ll bother to see to them.

We got lost in the black weedy brush by the fence,
one day. You wouldn’t stop crying, all turned around

in the shadow. I pretended the squirrels could tell us
which way was out, so you followed me following them

back to the sunshine. I could imagine you losing
your way again, now that it’s gone wild back here.

Freedom / Desirae Chacon

you give me these ropes in my hands
entrusting me to harness
the untamed
the wild horses
the uncoralled spirits
of the souls of our fathers
yesteryears

Their fortnights
the work of their hands
sweat of their brow
strength of their backs

you gift me this
this saddle 
to lead the wild
to lead those free roaming kings
queens of the meadow
heirs of the land

Transition  / Heather Frankland

Before you understand the joy of the monsoon,
you must experience seasons of drought—
a swarm of grasshoppers covering buildings
a tomato plant bowing out after producing one tomato
your garden—multiple deaths, multiple years,
and the fear that this will be your forever.

Before you understand joy,
you must experience the pain
that seems abstract—like you have
no reason to have it—the shame
that you can’t shake it,
and the fear that this will be your forever.

Before you understand yourself,
you must experience confusion,
being lost in another’s shoes,
not seeing your reflection for days
hearing your voice like it’s far away,
and the fear that this will be your forever.

Before you understand. . .
you must experience the fear
that this will be your forever
whispered in your ear, seeping into your dreams
making the future seem present-tense,
worst-case always.

Only then do you realize that this guest
will eventually leave,
this shade of forever
will fade away.
It was always fake—that forever
even when it seemed a giant—
it was a pin the seamstress
left in your clothes—and that pin
has no use anymore.
Take it out. Let it go.

Dream-Visitor / John Hanright

Dream-visitor
you gave me
a book
full of birds, who flew
out of the pages –
I couldn’t help but laugh
until I cried a little
in my sleep

If
the dead are alive in your dreams
Death’s icy breath is in your nostrils –
or so they say

A blizzard birthday –
no siblings to snuff out
your candles – prematurely

Dwight Eisenhower is the president
from a hospital bed –
memory is cruel and funny

Charon, did you already –
his spirit is gone to Styx?
apparated into the aether?
to visit only my dreams?

Send me word
over the dark chasm –
sneak past
Atropos’s scissors –
and give me
another book

To Give This Meaning / Jillian Humphrey

I pretend you’re orphans.
Your mother died
so I have come
to comb your hair.
I brush your teeth.
I tie your shoes.
I hold your hands.

‘What did you do today?’
my neighbors ask.
‘I took three orphans
to the park,’
I tell them.
‘I fed them dinner
and cake.
I read them books.
I gave them baths
and three soft beds
and a mother.’

‘Wow,’ they say.
‘Aren’t you a saint.’

I See a Pregnant Woman in the Aisle  / Shane Moran

Doing Yoga, she leans over 
the middle row to explain to her little

one…oh no, two…oh dear lord, three, 
how to use the reading lights 

because nothing can be as simple 
as a dial or a button anymore.

They insist they’ll really read something, 
and we all have to hear this and pretend 

they won’t spend the flight watching
a movie  from the exhaustive catalog 

that they read out loud
in a sorta competition:

“They have Lego Batman! They have Barbie! 
Oh! They have The Never Ending Story.” Hm. 
I’ll give them that one.

I don’t mean to sound like an old man,
but I can’t help but wonder where her partner is…

and I do this for both patriarchal and feminist reasons:
I know I would never travel alone with 3 fucking kids.

A Drowning  / Christina Vagenius

I can still taste the Kool-Aid kiss.
The damp, hugged wall of the art room.
Concrete seamed, flannel snagged
when his tongue slipped the pressed crack
orbit of my lips. Flailing onion and Dorito
chip, eyes brimming with the last rise of
creek water and late night porch swings —
a hand on my breast, here we go pushed back
too fast. 
And the sky of red eyelids, pinched quiet.
When a hand becomes a hook, the soft riot
of where and when and how the breath
can become the last waved goodbye beyond
the buoy. A horizon of tangled reeds and lost
sandals. The last strung bobber, waiting
on the deceived pull of hunger.
It was nice while it lasted.

Acanthus / Sonya Wohletz

Acanthus leaves—unfurl again over my arms, my legs.
I miss you. I don’t know you.

I am startled by this sudden insight—
how the LED lamp on my desk longs
to become an image of the sun.

Lately, it strikes me how cramped
we’ve let our lives become. It’s all the bureaucrats’
fault—their mad faith placed on progress. But
progress is like the body—it is easily made prey to infection.

Still: god turns a stone in one corner, tells no one.

In another corner: creatures take up shelter, tell each other.

Furthermore—about corners:
am reminded how neatly my own words fold
inward upon themselves.
But that is not really a characteristic of corners per se—
that, one might call—collapse or self-sabotage.

This is why I’m laying it all out now. Smearing
the lip gloss across the page. Leaving the spine splayed wrong.
Letting the squirrels live in my walls, feeding them peanuts.
Miming the stains of everything I’m told to make disappear.

This is why the word acanthus has rooted itself into these words,
has laid claim to the column of my human imagination.
It is the brain of her form, it’s her wild hair.

It is a sign or a warning to all who cross the threshold—
not to be held captive by an architecture meant for worship, not shelter.