November - Poem 19

Scavenging  / Megan Bell

When our roof collapsed,
I fell, headfirst, into a howling rage.
The only place I let it roar was on the page.

I could be found cross legged and heartbroken
masticating dead dreams,
screaming silently into my journal, a fractured fiend. 

Every word I spoke aloud, a dirty lie.
Every word I wrote would not deny -
a filthy truth.

Angry words pounded down like rain.
I was stuck under the weight of shame.

My pen, pressed so hard, 
it slashed sinless pages until they bled,
destroying perfect blue lines, turning them red.

It was inhumane how I treated my journal,
that bloated, abused carcass, 
that desperate sad funeral. 

But...but one day it became a song to the living,
One day it became a prayer to me.

Hear me when I say this:
I survived by picking that bone clean.

Let Your Commitments / Alison Lake

Not hang heavy,
Like an iron chain
Around your waist.
Instead, let them act
Like a string of pearls
Adorning your tender neck,
Each one adding luster
To the length of your days.
Rejoice that you are
 Needed, that others call
To you with hope,
Look to you to guide
Them, a gentle hand
On their arm as they
Navigate the busy street
That is life. Touch those
Pearls with your full soul,
Clutch each one, then
Let them drop back
Against the hollow of your
Throat, between the wings
Of your clavicles, reflecting
The world onto itself.

coriolanus and his mother / Maya Cheav

“you are victorious,”

you know him by rank,
by his honorable stature
in the body of the army.

“and your victory means good fortune to my country,”

I know not this soldier.
in his sunken eyes
I see a boy.

“but death to me;”

I know him
by the sound of his laugh,
how it curves around the earth.

“for I will withdraw vanquished,”

I do not recognize
the violence in the shape of his fists
nor the bloodlust in the form of his smile.

“though by you alone.”

tell me, now.
do you bring me a son
or an enemy?

tainted / Jada D’Antignac

who stole your glow 
and stained you blue?
you were once so radiant,
who would have wanted to change you?

your eyes lost a glimmer
your tongue grew sour
your heart has hardened
you can’t seem to recognize your power. 

who ran off with your glow 
and tainted you blue?
who would want to take 
your radiance away from you?

Today I Sit on the Stone Steps out Front  /  D.C. Leach

Today I sit on the stone steps out front and sip
my coffee under the late morning sun. No need-to-know,
no access denied or threat to human life. No in-laws
making pointed comments like plenty of people
do jobs they don’t like and adults just bite the bullet
or here I emailed you this job with the NSA, the CIA,
the FBI. No sound here but the occasional crow
or passing car and the golden cat pawing
at the glass door to come and join me.

Tomorrow, I look back on myself sipping
the stillness, the warm rays, visions of neighbors
walking their dogs. My thoughts are a line of geese
swimming upstream on a slow bend in the Patapsco river.
Herds of golden leaves tiptoe across the waters there. 
The loudest sound is me, pawing at the stanza above.

Lessons from a Havanese / Dawn McGuire

Dread,
if you’re asking,
is outliving my little Cuban dog.

All twenty pounds of him
press against my back,
anchoring me like a paperweight
to this page. 

You think a poem a day is hard?
I think of scrappy Havanese,
dodging bullets
at the Bay of Pigs.
Ex-pats storming the shore
got their ankles licked.

Tonight I try to write
in my little bungalow,
with coyotes down the hill
shrieking the song of the kill.

Sammy knows his job.
We’re clasped tight
like a folding knife.
No room for fear.

Hard to explain—
I feel more human
when a little dog
lends me his soul.

On walks,
when people reach out
to scratch my head,
I let them.

Trust—
it requires rehearsal.
Maybe
I’m almost there—
plus, I’ve learned to chase
a dried pig’s ear
like it’s prayer.

All this to say: Katie, 
I’m sorry I doubted you.
If you scratch my belly—
I'll come back.

Sacagawea / Samantha  Strong Murphey

what country was she        read between the lines      of shining oceans
history’s first lesson       things that aren’t written      aren’t believed
she is a coin     and soon     a statue     in Meriweather’s journals she is
an apparition      mostly faint      occasionally vivid      she disappears
from the entries        for weeks at a time       the Hidatsa speak it
have spoken it       for generations         that she lived 50 years beyond
her written death        she lived into her eighties       far outside the spyglass
pushed into the socket      a second life asleep under a wagon      a second life       
gunned down       by raiders        only her tribe could see