November - Poem 28
Grand Canyon Country / Megan Bell
Broken down in Arizona, you died.
Stripped naked, bereft, alone, I cried.
My final goodbye came as we drove on red, rustic earth.
The sky was high and blue.
My world, broken and bruised.
I was, irrevocably, done with you.
Desert spirits and ancient voices
held my hand, propped me up,
witnessed my re-birth in a battered sedan.
Bravely, I drove into dying light.
The vast sky peering down through violet eyes made me sigh.
Just a gypsy and a rally cry, I stitched my wounds and bid your ghost goodnight.
Talking to the Bean Sprout / Alison Lake
I am surprised at you.
To be honest, I didn’t
expect you to sprout,
let alone push
four small leaves up
through the bag’s top.
Her grass died, as did
her succulent, and all
but one of my green plants.
We need so little you see,
a moistened towel,
a window to the sun,
belief.
When my daughter saw you
she screamed, twirling to me
and showing you as proof
of her magic.
As she is proof of yours.
orion and the river the night before the rapture / Maya Cheav
1:06 AM - O: sometimes I wish I was a bird so I could just fly away.
1:06 AM - R: come to LA. you can stay at my place, I’m sure my dad won’t mind.
1:07 AM - O: that would be great if I could just figure out how to get the hell out of here.
1:08 AM - R: birthday?
1:11 AM - O: birthday.
1:11 AM - R: just be safe, okay?
1:11 AM - O: I don’t know if I can, with my dad. I don’t think there’s a safe option. but I can’t live like this anymore. I need to get out.
1:11 AM - R: once you’re out here, I promise you, you’ll be safe with us.
1:11 AM - O: I wanna be more than just safe. I wanna be happy.
i can be that too / Jada D’Antignac
i hate to think of how content i’ve grown with being alone. i see a single bird and admire how freely it flies.
i think to myself, i can be that too. the bird sits alone on a weakened branch of a healthy tree, still and balanced. it stands firm with its chest up, doesn’t waver when a breeze blows. i wonder if the bird ever had to emotionally detach from those it loved to gain its strength. i wonder if it ever had to be weighed down in order to find the power of its wings.
On Thanksgiving Day / D.C. Leach
oven space a hot
commodity no space
for my thoughts beside
the turducken or on the tray
with the brussels and carrots—
invisible spy
invisible translator
everyone wants me to be
a grapevine in the forest bearing
fruit before it fruits—
plausible deniability—
never heard of it. am I a bottle of wine
to be drained?
Shadow Practice, Thanksgiving Eve / Dawn McGuire
Thank you for song, for fresh lists,
for random rhetorical fragments, unstable speakers,
for enjambment—for enjambment as wound
and suture.
Thank you for what is recursive,
postmodern, ironic, shocking,
in time with the times—
and for what is earnest
as dew on a bud.
And thank you for ancient songs—
epic, and reckoning.
Tonight, it’s Grendel—
border-stalker, exile,
breaker of heroes.
Wrath and ruinous rage:
the maker of heroes.
Bold Beowulf is a no-show,
three sheets to the wind.
The lyric can do what it can with him
when this is done.
But tonight—
the air is honest.
Grendel’s mother keens in the dark.
She knows what the Singer knows:
Our monsters forge
our heroes.
No one is safe.
Grendel is tearing the Mead Hall
down to its bones.
He amputates cowards and heroes
all the same. They share
a splatter pattern on the wall.
Give thanks.
Grendel has work to finish.
Don’t we all.
Laughing so I don’t— / Samantha Strong Murphey
Can we laugh at this?
Let’s laugh at this.
I’m laughing at this.
I’m laughing
so hard.
