November - Poem 17
Matches / Megan Bell
When I was ten, I played with matches.
No, more accurate: I was mad for matches.
Like, I craved them the way an addict craves cigarettes.
Mostly, it was matchbooks - easy to obtain,
lifted from my dad's hardware store.
Sometimes, though, I’d hit the jackpot and find a matchbox.
You know the ones: long wooden matches, a large red striker, a tiny, hungry spirit inside.
For me, it wasn't just the flame's quick bloom.
It was the strike of the match -
that sharp, short hiss, followed by light.
The acrid smell of sulfur -
a raw, elemental promise.
The feeling of intense power in my unsupervised hands.
Listen, I was ten.
I wasn't trying to burn everything down -
mostly the neighbors' shed, too potent a blend of old wood and immaturity.
How To Cut Your Daughter’s Toenails / Alison Lake
Take a deep breath, carefully
remove the yellow and silver clippers
from the bathroom drawer. When she sees
them let her run screaming and crying
from the bedroom. Wait.
When she comes back in, or
if it’s a bad day and you
need to find her, remind her
that you’ve done it all before
and if she’s good she’ll get
to eat a jellybean for each toe,
and two each for the janky ones
that curve over the tops of her
second toes and can grow into the meat.
Hopefully it hasn’t been too long
since the last time and the nails
don’t have to be pulled out
of this tender skin. Sit her down,
cradle one foot at a time in your hands
and speak softly, with love, and try
not to anger when she pulls away.
Clip as fast and accurately as you can
while she mistakes pressure for pain,
howls, with tears wetting the bed’s sheets
and jerks back again and again.
Remain calm. Take more deep breaths,
Save the difficult ones for last and when
you are finally done, give her and you
something sweet to compensate. Enjoy
the next two weeks until you trim again.
bury your daughter / Maya Cheav
she works / full-time as a bank teller, / a job that pays the bills and nothing more. / she comes home and takes care of her three kids, / driving them to ballet lessons / and soccer practice. / she sweeps, / brooms, / dusts all the corners, takes out the trash when her husband is too tired / (which is more often than not), / and washes the dishes by hand every time without fail. / she can cook a mean vegetable lasagna / and bakes a perfect key lime pie. / she tucks her kids into bed at night / and tells them bedtime stories / and lets them sleep next to her when they say / monsters are hiding under their beds. / sometimes, / just sometimes, / she does a lap / in the pool at the gym by their house / and in those moments / she remembers the first few years of her life / where it was her own, / until she blinks it away and comes back to land.
in another life,
she’s a marine biologist / working off the australian coastline, / researching rare species of / bryozoa and sea sponges. / she studies calcification / in the ocean / and the reduction of coral reefs / and their effect on biodiversity. / she travels the world on a boat / and there is nothing more in this world that she would love to do.
but in this one
it’s just a dream / she had some years ago.
big sister / Jada D’Antignac
seated passenger,
he—teenager now—asks if i remember.
i—early twenties—nonchalantly admit
yeah i remember.
he mentions he was eight at the time,
innocently laughing,
waiting for me to join in.
with no laughter to match his,
i keep the actual humor to myself:
how an age gap can reveal ignorance’s bliss.
i turn the music up
and stick my arm through the window,
allowing sound waves and wafts of air to console me.
i can feel them carrying the years.
i let them slip between my fingers.
in the box of 96 my favorites are asparagus and inchworm but I also value purple mountains’ majesty the way it hints perhaps that happiness in fact can be smeared on a blank page or robin’s egg blue the way it hints perhaps that new life can hatch from bone but / D.C. Leach
more and more I’m having trouble
coloring between the lines
or wanting to these crayons have seen
it all tight boxes cold walls dark curves
page after page dictating what shape
the world must take—damn it, man!
can’t you see their lopsided heads?
does not your pity rasp against
the paper collars of their strait jackets?
untitled sonnet iv / Dawn McGuire
IV
We’re both inside a claustrophobic room marked maybe
with a key chained to a soup can for the toilet.
You go first. I chew ice like it owes me.
The bartender wipes down what’s already clean.
His rag makes perfect circles, OCD?
You return, smelling like soap and smoke.
You ask my superpower. I confess
I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue;
we laugh like kids. You touch my hair—
The blinking Open sign lights up
the cross around your throat.
You touched my hair.
Are we not healed, or holy? Not. Without a clue.
But hell, you look good in this light, don’t you?
come hither / Samantha Strong Murphey
the sun was a slit in the tower ragstone iced with soot
the king had grown bored of her called it adultery called it treason
the executioner used a sword it was cleaner than an ax
Anne knelt and said her last words I come hither
to accuse no man God save
the king the sound rivered away into the passage
her daughter was there and one day after two dead older siblings
she would be queen her eyes were open her mother’s were
still blindfolded the head’s eyes were still blindfolded
and for a few seconds the head’s lips kept moving
