November - Poem 5

Fringe of Paradise / Megan Bell

Listen, I'm here for springtime, 
emerald trees, abundant sunshine. 
If you need me, I'll be quietly tending my garden. 

Head bowed, hands filthy, yet, still folded in prayer. 
The earth's crust lodged under my nails, 
I seek God kneeling among tall vines and tangled weeds. 

My children's laughter echoes across the yard reminding
me why I sow myself into this soil. 

Our home, a fringe of paradise. 

The Winds of November / Alison Lake

She walks into November,
Amidst leaves
That have given up
All pretense
Of holding on.

The wind opens her,
Scours her,
And bits fly off
To join the milkweed seeds,
The tufts of cattail.

Bone appears, and blood,
Breaking off in the gusts,
Collecting against
The song of the crow
And cry of the goose.

She is less than the skeleton
Of a leaf lined with ice,
Frost shimmering
On brown, bent grass,
Tender and weeping.

She joins everything
windblown,
Humping against
the exposed roots
of the hemlock tree.

Swirling into a nest,
Letting in the beetle grub
And cicada larvae,
 The nose of a mole,
Forgotten owl pellets.

The wind roars on
Over top of what remains
The weak light shining,
Just enough
To reach inside.

 A weyward plant waiting for spring.

in the shadow of the fig tree / Maya Cheav

atticus laid flora’s body to rest. / they had grown up / together and now they would die / apart. flora at twenty / and atticus in who knows how many years. / in their youth, / he had come to enjoy her company, / twisting down along the tiber / with knucklebones and rolling hoops. / flora was a friend / and nothing more, / though both their parents had pleaded with them to get married / and their friends would tease them all the more. / now their parents were dead / from typhoid and antonine / and their friends were too / so atticus was the only one left / to attend to flora’s funeral. / he was too poor to pay for mourners, / or even a bier to tuck her body into, / and so all there was to do was dig a hole in the ground / and leave her there. / outside the city walls, / he made the fig tree’s shadow her personal necropolis. / he played the flute poorly above her grave and / in place of a feast, / he ate one overripe fig / that had fallen from the tree / many days ago. / he hoped and he prayed that it would be enough / so that her shade could cross / the river styx and leave / this earthly plane / into the underworld. 

 perspective / Jada D’Antignac

the view doesn't really change,
only the position.

now, having moved forward,
i see more clearly—

less anger,
more empathy.
less rage,
more patience.
less avoidance,
more consideration.

i’ve sprayed the window
wiped dust from the blinds
changed the curtains
sat plants on the sill.

my view hasn’t changed much, but
i wait for the sun 
instead of turning away from storms.

i water the plants as i wait.

ADHDefense V / Laurie Fuhr

there is a sacred place within
where the mind does not diverge-- 
strange and solitary, yes-- but 
if we allow solitude to differ 
from isolation, as it allows 
a rare self-connection,

if the locus of hyperfocus is locatable
on an internal GPS, it is a place
where bound duties cannot get in
and bother you, not even

the hundred faces & thousand ads
of socials, in a true Room of One's Own, 
a place beyond poverty,

a secret space to meditate
in search of both attainable
& inconceivable peace,
and finally find rest
while living,

a cloister to read or
write a book to share
what being you
is really like, and--

through stories gathered here--
finally let others in to see

   your altar of unusual talismen, 
   your secret smoking area,
   your room of childhood toys,

   your list of disappointments,
   your audiobook wish list,
   your unutterable triumphs and sins,

   the stressful, precious inner library
   of very personal stims,

   your personal ice cream shop
   of preferences, all those conflicting
   genres & interests coexisting,
   32 flavours and Ani Anise,

   and you, the pralines 
   and chocolate sprinkles,
   Skor bits and whipped cream,
   bananas and splits,
   one or both as you see fit,
   all the extra sweetness on top, 

even as in outer space, outer life
you forget the whole bowl
in the laundry room, 

don't find it until 
it's melted, 

drink ice cream 
soup.

Eros with Knife and Cast Iron / D.C. Leach

he chops ennui, sautés it
with potatoes and garlic,
peels frustration and rinses it
with the carrots, thinks to keep
his love away, tonight, from the blue
flame, but she slips behind him
in the galley kitchen, grips him
by the body like a wooden pepper mill, grinds
his night’s worries into the cast iron.
oh no!— he thinks—oh no! her pink lips are
coloring the night pink.

Kentucky Haibun #2 / Dawn McGuire

Once, long ago,
a very old garden gnome
fell in love with the flying goddess
hood ornament
on the ’72 Buick next door.

Her silver hair flowed over her shoulders.
Her gaze always faced east.

Once, he feared she winked
at the broken irrigation timer
on top of the compost heap.
He decided it was the sun in her eyes.

And once, her smile tilted ever so slightly
in his direction!
(When the front axle broke).

Even when the March winds
swept the moss from his ears,
and the spring rains made his bronze belt glisten,
she did not turn toward him.

And so it became his work,
his pain, his claim—
to compose each day
a small but reverent song.

For example, November 2:

Though she may not smile for me,
I shine my cap
in case she does.

On my 38th birthday / Samantha  Strong Murphey

he’s behind on his 4th grade moon observation journal. 
Last entry was five days ago. We look at the moon 
on a screen to catch up. There are years 
that went unnoticed, fallow fields mistaken for 
waste. It was now and Thursday and that September 
and I was quietly walking the neighborhood 
wondering how people manage to grow 
hydrangeas in Texas. Do wild hydrangeas exist? 
I’ve never seen it. One unobserved year, I laid my life
in a pasture. I lived as a dead horse, beating. 
Another, I lived as a cloud heavy with water. 
Here, can you just hold this for a minute I begged 
and begged of the ground. I hid the year I was nothing
but a grapefruit, scraped empty by a spoon with teeth. 
All I can tell you is that tonight, the moon looks full.
It’s too much to be asked which direction it’s going—
bigger, smaller.