May - Poem 6
In Defense of Invasive Species / M. Anne Avera
All hail the kudzu plant—that noxious weed,
villain of the South. Impervious to pesticides
and cattle that graze on its wide, fat leaves,
it creeps. Oh, how it creeps! Spreading wide
and impossible to kill, it coats the ground
in a glaze of verdant green, sucking sun from
the plants of weaker constitutions. Their poor,
sodden bodies like a graveyard in the shade.
I sit sprawl-legged
on the road shoulder
and suck up the dust.
I am cooled and protected and
hidden from the gym coach
by kudzu and my own wit.
Never noticed it before,
but I take it in now—
how the wide, hungry leaves
blot out the sky.
More than anything else,
I am the worst at running the mile
and the worst at being in middle school.
No one would believe me
if I lied about period cramps, so,
knowing I’ll be reported
for cutting out of class,
I lay myself back
and curl into the weeds.
All bow to this prime bane of farmers,
this roadside decoration. Oh, Kudzu,
you fire-resistant beast, you foreign guest,
I believe in you. You, who wants nothing more
than survival and stretch and propagation
beyond your soil.
Exhaling-(Part 3) / Desirae Chacon
i exhale..
if only…
hope it beginning to hurt
i exhale..
40 days later..
and that person
of all those collected
feelings, prayers and thoughts
enters this season
enters my life
walks past the clothesline
past the spring flowers
crosses the road high to meet me
as autumnal evening rays begin to
meet the grass
as it lay
among the flowers
rays
like curtains in the sky
Cat to Mouse / Heather Frankland
I’m supposed to eat you.
You’re supposed to run.
But let’s sit in the pool
of sunshine instead.
I’m tired and need a nap.
I need to dream
just a bit longer;
there’s something I was meant
to figure out, some quest maybe,
some greater mystery only seen
with my half-moon eyes.
I am not lazy; I’m dreaming.
It’s a lot of work.
See how I breathe so laboriously;
it’s not really a snore;
it’s like a deep sigh
of exhaustion and contentment
that got captured
in my wind pipes
in my nasal cavity.
Sit near me, please,
I like the company,
but not too close—
the human might notice,
and we would never hear
the end of that—
I’d get demoted to—fat lazy cat;
you’d get demoted to—should-be-food.
We don’t have time;
we have too much dreaming to do.
Montages of Mortality: A Collection of Last Words/ John Hanright
Thomas Paine: “Taking a leap into the dark. O mystery!”
Richard Sheridan: “I am absolutely undone.”
Henrik Ibsen: “On the contrary!”
WWI Lieutenant Gordon Flowerdew: “We have won.”
Julia Ward Howe: “I am so tired.”
Henry James: “So here it is at last, the distinguished thing.”
James Baldwin: “I’m bored.”
Archduke Franz Ferdinand: “It is nothing…it is nothing…”
August Strindberg: “Everything is atoned for.”
Ben Travers: “This is where the fun starts.”
John Millington Synge: “It is no use fighting death any more.”
O. Henry: “Pull up the shades; I don’t want to go home in the dark.”
Osamu Tezuka: “I’m begging you, let me work!”
Paul Walker: “Hey, let’s go for a drive.”
Salvador Dali: “Where is my clock?”
Groucho Marx: “This is no way to live!”
Specimen / Jillian Humphrey
white woman, 40, Ohio
eating Chick-fil-A
in a minivan
beside the soccer fields
next to her, a golden retriever
You could pin me
to a display board,
fasten my wings in place,
and label me, correctly:
middle age middle class
middle western mother of 3
You’d be wrong.
I am crying because there are leaves on the trees again.
Write that down.
My grandfather had a talking parrot.
I fed a goat a chocolate chip cookie.
I do my cartwheels left handed.
Not every blue bird
is a bluebird.
I am a species
you’ve never observed,
a weird little bug
you know nothing about.
Cinco De Mayo / Shane Moran
On TV, the president
is threatening another
round of bombing in Iran.
In La Puebla Mexicana,
a round of shots for the five
of us in sombreros
and singing Selena—sweat
on the table. We pay
our war taxes in exchange
for tacos, tequila, and corn on a stick.
Margaritas! We ask the waitress,
flip from CNN to the Semifinals.
Name a reason not to—
go numb, amigo
A Love Letter To The Hand On The Door / Christina Vagenius
I plan a trip to Iceland on a day
when the overwhelm, the soon-to-be
voice of assertion begins his unruly
decent down the stairs, belt in hand
pulling at the open holes of adjustment,
accommodations, lost. My tip-toe tender
heartbeat heaving behind the door
that doesn't lock
waiting on the sound of my brother’s cry,
the wall cracking the whip, his searing
treaty. Brandished by the hand
that never heals.
I didn't know the fear would find a way
through the wood’s knotty pine that day,
follow me here
to the hardened sap place inside me
turning everything cold.
Self-Portrait: Reflection in a Sky Light / Sonya Wohletz
As viewed from below, experienced as from above:
Small card table, cards spread out before the figure
who is both me and not me—
a picture, maybe of a bird, or a saint.
Benedict perhaps, with his rule, his clarity,
among the disorganized scatterings, as though
gathering shiny fragments for his shrine,
or nest, depending on how urgent
the viewer’s appetite for mimesis.
In the image:
my head is covered, my gaze—insolent,
or is it something else my mother named for me,
some outdated adjective which I have since forgotten?
The scene is otherwise still—light bleeding through
in colors of the cold world, rearranging themselves
into discrete features of an interior. Let ritual
explain itself, it seems to say. Let ritual preside
This lone black bird—visible through the window on the left.
Observe how its beak scrapes
away at expectation, at your tired
preening. See it sharpen
grief into the vague horizon—the figure whom I call myself
daubing in blue greening: I am gazing
down or up the curve of her back. I catch myself here,
on the event horizon of recognition.
The reflection is the mirage—beyond it are the confused symbols
of circumstance, stretched beyond any prophet’s striving. Substance
traces no impression as it falls, falls—seals itself into stasis.
