November - Poem 3
Hello, Nice to Meet You / Megan Bell
There’s a monster in my belly,
when it roars, I write.
For years I tamed it, ignored it, stood on its throat -
it kept roaring.
Guttural, it growled words, the whispers becoming shouts.
Never sleeping, the monster woke me time and time again.
I decided to unleash it.
The monster was tenacious:
snapping, snarling, ferocious.
Howling truths buried in my youth.
I shook hands with the monster,
I met myself.
On Being Ill / Alison Lake
I’m sick again,
for the third time
in as many weeks.
My body, always
the weakest, most
prone to illness,
gets worn down,
forcing me
to stop.
It’s not too bad
today really,
just a mild cold.
Everyone else
in my sphere
seems more resilient,
more able to cope.
It’s not just my body,
my mind and my heart
seem overburdened;
worry, sadness, fear
pressing
against each breath.
I can’t watch the news,
pass litter or roadkill,
take my daughter
to her school, without
clenching, hurting,
feeling sick.
It didn’t used to
be this bad,
but lately, it seems
I am always off,
always ailing,
waiting for the day
when I can be well.
love in the time of claudius II / Maya Cheav
GOTHICUS
wants us devotees—
to give our lives to the cause,
to live by the sword and to die by it.
GOTHICUS
wants us with few earthly ties—
with no lovers
and nothing to lose.
saint valentine made it so
love persists even under his reign,
under threat of death and punishment.
saint valentine would wed us
under the shadow of night,
souls intertwined in holy matrimony.
in spite of his decree,
I will not fight for his honor,
just to perish on the battlefield.
I will fight to survive,
to come home to my lover.
I promise you,
GOTHICUS,
you will not make a soldier out of me.
message from a stranger / Jada D’Antignac
to see someone is not only to open the eyes,
but the soul, mind, heart too.
sometimes, seeing someone is comforting their release of softness.
sometimes it’s sharing a story that ties their hardships to yours.
sometimes it’s a prayer, a thought, a message.
simply, it’s to notice and give attention to.
like the stranger who said,
“you appear to have gotten over what crushed you.”
she saw me beyond eyes.
she saw me with the soul, mind, heart too.
ADHDefense III / Laurie Fuhr
Who engages in chronic
phone calendar scheduling,
colour-coding every block
like a crazy quilt of time?
Who commits serial monogamy
with continually-unsuitable partners,
goes to the thrift store to save money and spends her paycheque, or other strange dopamine-seeking addictions?
ADHD might really mean
As Does Her Dad,
but Mom makes lists with more
intensity than I do, never forgets
an item that has just been
disappeared from the fridge
by household magicians.
If she were writing a list for what
ADHD could mean, she might write
Admitting Doesn't Hurt Dear
over and over, a mantra to protect
from the psychosomatic pain
of knowing one is clinical
but needing to sort out
cause-and-effect effectively:
what neurodiversity affects
from what chaos interjects
can no longer be discerned.
It Looks Like Happiness / D.C. Leach
After the Fall / Dawn McGuire
I learned this from my old oak
After years of drought
then torrents of storm
the hard ground shuts its mouth
tight as a fist in a pocket
Rain pools
unable to drain
The oak roots
spindly as the legs
of the frail librarian next door
finally swell and split
Hawk and owl who share
its northernmost branches
Did they know
this was coming?
Did I?
Sometimes you can’t hold up
what is given to you to hold
Phloem and xylem
blood and lymph
through ravaged passages
slow
That great crash
heard over the neighborhood—
you, old friend
When the librarian huffed up
my steep driveway
to see if I was ok
she found me dazed
leaning against the blue studio
Your thigh-sized limbs pressed against it
but did not bring it down
or me, writing there
A hawk’s nest lay shredded at my feet
The beetles will feast
Hawk and owl will build their nests again
Their chicks will burst their chitin capsule
and fledge
Nobody need grieve
Yet I grieve
juvenescence / Samantha Strong Murphey
to her i say don’t tell grandma i let you have a boyfriend
to myself i say i’m protecting her from shame
there are a thousand ways to eclipse a face
to pluck a sunflower to its disk,
to strangle youth from a neck
from the driver’s seat i say because i said so
he quiets a while, changes the subject, asks
mom, do you think a whale can drown?
a whale is a warm-blooded mammal, a whale
needs the same air that we do, i say yes
when they die, that’s how they die
at the game, from the sidelines, i scream at him
i say dig deep i say look alive
