November - Poem 21

The Girl / Megan Bell

At the corner of Goddamn 
and Good I stood with 
my hair on fire in a little white 
dress stitched by momma. 

Hands itching, body twitching
I turned up the swagger to catch his eye. 
A tall drink of water with a red convertible -
I was desperate for a ride. 

He asked for my number, bought me a Coke, 
told me I was everywhere he'd never been. 
I laughed and said, I know
exhaling cigarette smoke in his amused face. 

Then, I turned, sashaying away
tossing my head, my Virginia Slim 
over my shoulder with a raw ease 
that belied my trembling gut. 

I wanted to hit his body like a rush of nicotine - 
To take him from 0 to 60 in 2.3 seconds - 
To rock his world with the swing of my hips. 
And, I did. 

Friend, I thought about him again as
lust thread its ways through my limbs. 
When my hot body was pressed to cool bricks, 
When he was licking my thighs, my feet 

worshipping me with mad hands, 
my name a song on his grinning tongue. 
I forgave him his sins right there, offered atonement 
for the boy he was; thanks for the man he was becoming. 

We crossed into the promised land in dry, dusty alley. 

He was never the same. 
And, as I pulled my dress down, still without a blemish, 
I blew him a kiss, drifting off with the breeze. 
Leaving him to wonder if I was only a dream. 

Missing / Alison Lake

My days tend to unfurl rather quickly; time falling off the spiral of my life, going somewhere I cannot see or follow.  It’s not that I cannot keep busy; my list never seems to shorten no matter what I cross off.   I rise before the sun, drive in darkness to my daughter’s school, search the clouds for assurance she will be safe.  These days, with my husband waiting in the cold for a doe to cross his path, giving meat to our freezer, I spend most of my time alone, but for my cat.  I look at the clouds, their grey weight, as I fill my days, waiting for the sounds of those I love to draw near.  The darkness of November slipping early into my skin, reaching up into my warm core and letting it all in.  I drive away from my daughter, sending prayers to the sky and watch for an answer.

             unwound cotton clouds

      stretch the distance between

crows sent in frost

HEEL / Maya Cheav

in grotesque bravery 
and all the failings 
of trying to be strong, 
he could not—for a second—
put aside his shame. 
you are not innocent 
in this either—
your pride bloom,  always. 
he would rather die 
with his secret 
tucked between his fingers, 
but you had to pry
them open, 
in a last act of hunger, 
of a desire 
to know his truth—
the explanation behind 
why his eyes were colored 
an unruly shade of  blue. 

flesh and hunger / Jada D’Antignac

these days i’ve been fighting myself. no,
fighting my flesh.

the nighttime melancholy is taunting
but the daylight tortures me too.
foolishly, i assumed i was clean from you. no,
cleansed of you.

who am i to think i could ever escape myself?
it’s humiliating to feel this strong of a need 
to know you again. no,
let you know me again.

i’ve tried distractions
but at some point distractions leave too. 
i’d be neglectful to not care 
about the parts of me i’d lose.
it's torture for my flesh 
to be so hungry for you.

Shoulder to Shoulder at the Kitchen Sink /  D.C. Leach

we scraped the sharp edge of our spoons across the skin
of the ginger root, strip after strip of silence falling
into the drain catch.

only we’d left the ginger in the fridge so long its skin
grew hard, and so we dug and dug the edges of our spoons

into the shriveled skins, whittling away the wordlessness,
its juices stinging at our scraped knuckles, watering

eyes, until at last our fingers were lumps of ginger, our lungs
and hearts were ginger too, and the space
below our navels was aboil.

Urgent Care  / Dawn McGuire

Everywhere I look,
a wound rehearses
inside an object  

Sly scalpels knock together 
on the cart like sibs 
afraid to go to separate homes.

You’d think a thing with wheels
would outrun hurt—
but objects don’t forget.

The gurney remembers every spine
laid down on its metal tongue.
It doesn’t run. It catalogs.

In the corner, a bag of saline
sulks like a middle child.
It wants to be the solution.
It wants to count.

And the chair—
all vinyl authority—
grips my hips so sternly
I feel slandered.

I try to leave,
but my body won’t have it.
It leans in.
It leaves my smudge on the wall.

The instruments keep an eye on me.
Not just the monitors
that incessantly schrei down the hall.

The blood pressure pump
has its fat eye on me.
The EKG leads on the crash cart
pucker their tiny mouths
in my direction.

 

They all know I’ve come with a headache.
A lion’s paw on my heart.
A loss of agency.

The IV poles in the corner,
trying to be friendly, say:

We roll with the damage, pal.
What wheels are for.

Reparenting / Samantha  Strong Murphey

I was the kind of kid elected fourth grade class president

without having to promise anything stupid. The gym teacher

called me out of the dodgeball circle to tell me

cowgirl boots were not appropriate footwear.

We had the same birthday. I thought that meant something.

I can see that the size of the shame of this strange failure,  

still holding its knees in my body, doesn’t make sense.

The river floods into all the cracks it remembers inhabiting.

Regret is different than disappointment. Shame is the origin

of shrinking. I take control of the memory. I coax her out

from behind the dumpster. I polish her little boots.