November - Poem 20
Backwards Movements / Megan Bell
Evocative. Memories, some broken, some blessed
& every moment in between. All those feelings left on the page,
full of movement,
licked by strain.
Hard times, good times, all of it.
Running mature hands over a worn clock,
struck dumb by the turns of the hour glass.
My existence bleeds into fiction,
as I work the words from way back.
Today, I am a long way from Warsaw, Ohio in 1994.
A village set back in the hills, set back in time.
Backwards movements, forward crimes -
every which way an uphill climb.
Today, I am a long way from that night -
Indiana bound, I listen to tires hit cold pavement,
Whomp, whomp, crunch, crunch -
over & over.
Dad handles the steering wheel,
fingers clenched, jaw tight, he commands
the car, rawdogging our lives.
Hard times, it's hard times.
Sweet mercy, I had the blues -
a stillness, half-naked on the rental couch,
assailed by sunlight. It took me several
turns of the Earth to stop playing those
moments like a riff, to remember
your love wasn't crazy.
To use your front door and breath for fun.
When I Imagine My Anxiety As A Small Creature / Alison Lake
The therapist said this would help,
and so I close my eyes, imagine
some strange cross between a mouse,
a squirrel, and a kitten, huddling
at the doorway of my mind
its yowl so much larger than
its little, trembling shape. I can’t
help but kneel down, softly
quietly, extend my hand so slowly,
and croon “Shhh, it’s okay, your
okay. I won’t hurt you, Easy, easy.”
My anxiety looks up, untrusting,
full of fear. I have been trying
to conquer it for so long, squash
it, erase, it, make it go away, that
it needs time to be won over. I crouch,
hunched as small as I can get, whisper
how sorry I am, thank it for doing what
it is that it is supposed to do, nothing more.
This odd creature quiets, stops shaking,
puts its wet nose into the air near my hand,
sniffs and lets out a tiny sneeze, so much
quieter than it has always been. I don’t
know how long it will be before I can
cuddle it against my heart, carry it
with me throughout my days and ease
its skittish fear. I only know I will try.
amicitia / Maya Cheav
friend,
how long
will it take
you to recover from this plague
so that you are well enough
to rejoin us
in the land of the living?
it is perfectly human
to believe you are a burden,
but I promise
the wretchedness
is not something you have to hold
alone.
wretchedness is plentiful—
there will hardly ever be a year
you go without it.
the good thing is that
hands are plentiful too,
and there are many ready
to carry it alongside you.
put it down,
the grief now.
ask yourself
how long can you survive
in the land of living
without your shade,
friend?
preferably fall / Jada D’Antignac
i was born in june, the height of summer.
i know my skin looks magical
when it reaches its deep shade of brown.
i know i look powerful in a yellow,
orange, or lime green bikini
but unfortunately i do not identify with summer.
i love the sight of autumn trees.
i love leather jackets, boots,
pumpkin flavored coffee.
i love how cool air
mysteriously creeps in
pushing you to search for warmth,
forcing you to lean into comfort.
it may seem that i should
want to belong to june,
to commit more of myself to her
but i resonate more with fall
and the world of octobers and novembers.
NOTES FROM THE FIELD, i / D.C. Leach
another helicopter circles my block low, looking for something, rotor wash shaking
the dining room windows—
I circle the floor, peer into half-finished bisques, beers, risottos,
or they peer into me—
winter. outside a building I can’t name, on no such street, a ladybug
crawls in circles inspecting every tulip and rose
on my collared shirt—
blue sky. year? turkey vultures circle my zenith in this endless parking lot—
I orbit my notebook—
a green dragon undulates its long body in circles around a rectangle
of turf between windowed buildings.
no one follows—
the polygrapher asks if I’ve ever made disparaging comments about small hands
in the presence of foreign nationals.
he circles something on his paper—
Field Guide to 3 a.m. / Dawn McGuire
Oh, stalk with chakras,
secretor of seeds, stalk
with six exchangeable headpieces,
one filled with straw,
Oh, covalent carbon crowd,
flash mob of doubt, oh infrared
subscriber to this account —
it’s 3 a.m.
This poem’s Boss is still at the seedy bar
she prefers when she’s lonely.
You — the stupefied secretary —
are tied to the chair.
A dark stranger rifles the files.
You don’t even struggle
(which isn’t like you). His fingers
run down each page
from top to bottom.
So far, he puts everything back.
You like his hands.
You find yourself hoping
he leaves with whatever he came for.
Notes / Samantha Strong Murphey
there is a skin-taut tomato plumping on the vine outside my window
it’s November and it won’t stop growing red she wrote me letters
my mother and left them on my pillow she faced
every difficult conversation in deliberate type at 16 a boy
left a note on my windshield precisely folded I left one back
I guess you could call him my boyfriend it was all so slow
everything is intentional when a face is only in your head
why won’t it just freeze already? die there is no face to face
the idea of a good tomato can ruin the taste of every root everything
hauled up from the cellar in winter years later a different boy
knelt in my parents’ kitchen with a ring box and read a speech
that I’d written I was not surprised but there was something puzzling
about the way the words died when they touched the floor
he was better unscripted which I couldn’t make sense of
which I still can’t make sense of
