November - Poem 15
Branded Blues / Megan Bell
Hey Insta,
Fill my feed with laid bare poets who strip it all the way down—to, like, where the worms live, shining the brightest light on their darkest dirt.
Give me god seeking gurus fighting for perfect words, devoted devotees obsessed with blue pens and bloodied shins, ferocious fighters who went to war in quaking mud, fought their way out of cold earth to stand dirty on dry land, dragging their life behind them in worn out hands.
I don't care if you're firm or shaky, I just want your roaring, raining down, traumatic truths. You dragon slayers, spitting in the face of nay sayers, you word warriors, sullied souls who speak with flaming fucking ink.
I want your loving tongues dripping with words unsung.
Tell me what you are chasing, what you are facing, what you are craving. Tell me about the lost years.
I want to hear from quirky quiet thinkers, who carry whole worlds in blistered bellies—all their words clogged in tight throats. Hand them a pen, I say. Watch what unfolds, I say.
Lay it on me—I want your branded blues, your tattooed truths, your hard rock chorus.
Throw those stones. Shatter my walls. Break my heart. Punch me in the gut.
Understand: when you preach from your rib cage, when you breach your breastbone, you will awaken a beast, and that is just another word for the gospel.
At 11:22 am On November 14, 2025 / Alison Lake
My husband is getting ready
to leave for a week and my daughter
is saying her goodbyes. She locks
the door behind him, excited for this
responsibility. Having trouble
with our sticky deadbolt she asks
for my help and I twist the lock,
look out at our leaf-strewn yard,
the brown leaves a carpet also
on our greying deck, the acorns,
so many this mast year, delighting
the neighboring squirrels and chipmunks.
My cat, as ever, is asleep on my knitting
and my body is brimming with all
my blessings, as if the cold, November
air has pulsed through me, carrying
all the unneeded detritus away.
taking the moon back II / Maya Cheav
I grow
gluttonous for love,
like I don’t know when
I’ll be fed
my next serving,
until I see
that all it is
is my moonlight
reflected back to me
in fractals of glass
in the shape of people I once knew
and all the people I have yet to know.
it is a light
that never runs out.
collection plates (a cento) / Jada D’Antignac
composed with lines from Corazón by Yesika Salgado
wanted / someone willing to open my doors and windows.
one bold hand fitting into another,
the skin, the nerves.
your lips / i want to believe it / i choose to believe it / i am
belonging to you. what an illness.
is this how you haunt?
is this what it is to become a ghost?
my glass / a deep red stain / i miss your voice / its rasp.
through the dark the last words found me,
begging me to leave you behind:
what is freedom but the absence of everything?
all my poems are collection plates.
the night sprawled out before me as I made my way home
hoping to write you out.
NO HAY ABANDONO/ THERE IS NO LEAVING / by Julia de Burgos trans. by D.C. Leach
untitled sonnet series III. / Dawn McGuire
III.
No one speaks. We’ve already not said all too much.
You toss back the whiskey without thanks.
The TV flickers green across your face.
Your eyes are on the Shamrocks, not on me.
When McGinty blocks a screamer, the bar erupts.
We both drink memories that scald going down.
Pain is like a mouth you feed a fist.
You want to hit it back, or land a kiss
somewhere— anywhere but here
in some ex’s boots, discarded in the bin.
We’re both inside a claustrophobic
room marked maybe—
we’re not released,
but maybe there’s a room key
Dialectic Duplex / Samantha Strong Murphey
I could say that the birth of a child is a crack in the glass spreading out slowly
from the point of impact. Or I could say it splits cleanly in two shards.
Cleanly the two shards, their curves and edges, might fit back together
if we were the type of people who fixed things.
If we were the type of people who fixed things, the windows would neither be
taped with cardboard nor torn completely out.
Torn completely out, the window is not a window, just a hole.
I imagine a breeze through it. I do not imagine extremes of temperature.
I do not imagine extremes. I willfully believe shelter is unnecessary.
Detached from violence, gratuitous just means without reason.
Without reason, one shard of the break is fiercely protective of their own
and the other shard desperately needs to save and feed every creature.
To save and feed every creature might shatter me.
I could say that the birth of a child is a crack in the glass spreading out slowly.
