May - Poem 27
Body Horror 6a and 6b / M. Anne Avera
6a.
My body is symmetrical, classically proportioned, and even in its curves.
My face is of classical beauty, detailed and intricate as if carved from marble.
My stomach is the color of cream, smooth and pale beneath my healthy breasts.
My body is machine, designed to be pleasing.
6b.
My body dominates space with its bulges of fat, sloping bones, and loose skin.
My face is an angry, moist map of negative space. My teeth sit yellow inside.
My stomach protrudes underneath my ribcage, the pallid skin covering a mat of bones.
My body is animal, milk-fed and warm blooded.
Every Smile / Desirae Chacon
i wouldnt trade any smile
for the riches of the world
no pearl or precious gem
can replace
the alive electric warmth
of one another’s soul
looking back at you
in bright brilliant love
who can replace the beauty
of a human soul
the preconfigured radiance
of another living being
the treasure that is
how precious is that
we are surrounded by
living treasures
life breathed into diamonds
just look around
and you’ll see
in every smile
of a good hearted person
are the treasures of the world
Isaiah is Curious About Forest Animals / Heather Frankland
It depends on which forest, doesn’t it?
In the Midwest, a squirrel is common;
I used to count them when my dad and I
went on walks or bike rides—
there were gray ones, black ones, red ones,
and in rare cases—
those white ones with the red eyes,
all were common, but those, those—
you felt lucky to see
like watching a falling star
or finding a patch of green clover
on the edge where a field
becomes a woods, a woods
that once was a forest.
It is said that when Indiana
had its big forests, trees with trunks
so big that you could break a saw,
a squirrel could climb up one tree
and you wouldn’t see it step down
until it was in Illinois or Ohio.
Imagine that—those adventurous squirrels,
common, yes, but still adventurous,
just climbing from tree to tree,
avoiding the ground as if the ground
was lava or another threat
more threatening than jumping
from branch to endless branch.
Or it would be the forest in New Mexico,
the huge forest that is allowed to still be
a huge forest—its juniper trees
invading nostrils, causing us all to sneeze.
In a forest this huge, you can see
black bears and cougars and bob cats
and mule deer and snakes and lizards.
You can watch the javalina, seemingly innocent,
just wandering around with their herd,
playing with flowers, shuffling dirt,
hanging out with the family unit,
and in an instant, they turn wild and scary
like the boars, the ones kings once hunted in Europe.
You don’t want to be near a javalina then;
you would no longer call them ugly-cute.
You can see coyote pups playing in the forest—
just don’t get too close;
everything feels on edge in a forest
like this; it feels wild.
Still, we are saved the constant ticks
that drop from tall trees.
Maybe the animals large enough
to be seen as a threat are really safe,
and those ticks sneak on you,
crawl and bite and take—
maybe they are the dangerous ones?
Even the common squirrels can seem
dangerous if they are hungry enough
to forget their wildness. What is it
to feel wild? If we were to hang out
in forests more often, leaving our smart phones
at home, and be there with all these animals,
would we then become forest animals?
Could we be defined as such?
On a Headstone / John Hanright
“Good way of putting it” needs to be somewhere in my epitaph.
The last little vanity, in full relief; the dead line each trodden path,
full of mourners heavy with grief; the graves are all totally devoid
of what is most important to life – what distracts the calling void,
what keeps off the chill of strife – that is to say, a name. Whose
last name is this upon the grave? Whose names do all of us lose
each fleeting moment that waves farewell to the terminal letter?
Why do we believe that etching into marble will make us better
able to cope with the prophecy scrawled for all from the beginning?
Oh: An Abecedarian Cento / Jillian Humphrey
And I understood that if I kept it all up no one would know me, Marie Howe
but I knew nothing else — Bonnie Thurston
Carried through town the ache of not writing, not calling. Christa Wells
Distant traffic muted. Birds silent. Luci Shaw
Even the rain knows only one shape. Maggie Smith
Forgive me, Mary Oliver
God overhead, I conjure a stubborn faith in rotting. Jane Hirshfield
Here, on the trail, the air barely lifts a leaf. Luci Shaw
It’s the ancient road the soul knows. Joy Harjo
Just so, she keeps the company of everything: Leah Naomi Green
kisses a man she does not want to kiss Erica Jong
like you would care for a bird or a human heart, Jennifer Michael Hecht
makeshift shrine. Can you hear me? I want — Chelsea Dingman
Nobody knows the next word, Leah Naomi Green
only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off paths between fireflies,
making soft little sounds with their mouths, ohs. Cecelia Woloch
Purple bells of delphinium in a window box — their stained light Dorianne Laux
quickens inside me, Leah Naomi Green
rips open the water bed, eats the incense, and drinks the perfume. Joanne Kyger
Something looks back from the trees, and knows me for who I am: Jane Hirshfield
the tiny life of the single pine needle, which nevertheless shines Mary Oliver
under the broad shadows of the maple trees. Now, everywhere I am talked to by silence. Louise Glück
Voices float into our bedroom, lunar and fragmented. Lisel Mueller
We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. Marie Howe
Expectant, mouth ready, Debra Spencer
you’ve left me with the things you couldn’t take or bear to give away. Wendy Cope
The leaves have already fallen, and a gray sky lowers the horizon. Barbara Crooker
Maranatha XI / Shane Moran
Alight! You are here.
An auspicious fortune
is attached to words:
the lions, the elephants,
the lamb, the dove,
the cow, and the peacock,
the horse and the good eagle.
Illusion disconnect you
from the touch
of God, you—
higher-self—wanderer,
we have stepped from the walk
of self-destruction to the feet
of Christ or Buddah or Vishnu
or Lakshmi—Allah—whomever
you are naming to guide you,
and we have heard it—it is You,
but I have been asked to warn,
that it matter not how much Truth,
or how much I share of Truth,
for no matter how much the
Lord or the Sun or a lampost
or the eyes of child shine to illuminate
the world and all that is you, all that is,
one cannot know wisdom, nor peace,
nor love, nor freedom, nor unity,
nor simplicity—and therefore life—
if a life is not the opening of the heart
like a morning lotus—
granting a throne to Your Spirit.
Bad Day, Go Bag / Christina Vagenius
A crisp line of optimistic euphemisms
pulled through an open window —
words shaken from the rain. Salt
in the wound, born off a Brittany coast,
thigh high lavender waders for when the water
rises. A pair of sharpened shears caught in a tailspin,
St. Peter’s bell rung over a rocky shore, a tidepool
of sunflower sea stars, a bouquet for closed eyes.
Lost tooth lottery tickets, rusted penny pick-me-ups,
the Blue Jay’s last of the season shed feather. Open
palm, oak leaf shadows, hollow bone bite marks,
clean as a whistle. The broken bit of Nag Champa,
a silent retreat. Stopping time.
Mend / Sonya Wohletz
The years have made a pilgrim of these hands
seeking their repose, their quiet labor.
Open them for me and observe: their foliate
fronds, their tired, patient whirring. Their soft stigma.
The fingernails grown long, an impediment
to mundane reckoning, glinting edges blazed in halogen.
Perhaps they crave a deeper abstraction;
a vocation to mend past wrongs.
Though they already bury
themselves elbow-deep in PVC piping—
pulling out clots of hair and fungus,
scrubbing sherds the length of a bad morning.
Picking away at the dermis of deception. It pools
itself a new skin, and demands more of the same—
a dispensation to rupture futile membranes.
How can I weave these hands when I am left
here holding the cloak of my own battered body—
a wound sculptured of storms?
In my dreams my mother staggers towards
me with her tortoiseshell hands as if she can
receive something solid and bring it back to life.
As if we are not both frozen in the eye
of a dying star as inert gestures—
a letting go that never happens.
These hands are for the memories
of the dead who, in their vulnerability and innocence,
demand so much care.
These hands are for the babies. For their soft, warm
skin, their fever-damp hair, the curve of their backs.
These hands are here to make a world where
they can know safety as a gift of their own hands.
