November - Poem 7
Fourteen / Megan Bell
My coming of age was incinerated, at fourteen. She brought matches. He brought kerosene. With a flick of her wrist and fire in his eyes, they started a blaze that still burns. The flames of their destruction ate the darkness fueling our anxiety. We sped west trying to outrun the heat. I clung to you - believing you were a Phoenix, who would you rise from the ashes. Finally, whole, finally, everything I needed. But you were lost to his white, hot blaze. I started burning that day. I started mourning and never stopped. My body might have been in that car, but you left my soul on that hill.
My coming of age imploded, at fourteen. I was in a Chrysler fueled by fear, and police lights. I watched my belongings scatter, my sanity shatter. I clung to your ghost. Broken down in Arizona, I held a funeral on the Navajo Indian Reservation. I buried the smoldering remains of our lives beneath red sand. A new person was born on that desert highway. Turns out, I was the Phoenix.
My coming of age erupted, at fourteen. A flame throwing bitch with a fiery tongue was my queen. She was tender arms and hateful words. She was scorched earth. I clung to my wits. I survived by slipping away. Curled up in the fetal position, with my head in your lap and one foot out the door, I didn’t know how to leave you to your choices. I walked through hell for you.
My coming of age was fractured, at fourteen. Grieving, I watched good Indiana folk fan fading embers. I clung to their faith and my magic. Slowly, the ashes reassembled and I began to begin again. Board by board and nail by nail a frame took shape. No one else was going to rebuild this house and that was a bitch. All your debris dumped at my feet, and I had to be the one to spin gold. Yet, somehow, I did it. And survived my coming of age.
Back then / Alison Lake
I carried my woundedness
like a shield, hoping someone
kind
would penetrate my armor.
As waves long for shore
I yearned for a touch
gentle
that would steady me.
Desperate, I latched
onto the only ones I saw
hard
bitter
broken
longing only to suck
the rest of my innocence.
It could have ended there,
with me joining those undead.
Instead,
I pulled the blood-lost
pieces of myself
back into my arms,
empty of the shield,
and began again.
CEREBRUS / Maya Cheav
there was a time
when you could fool me
with cheap words and bitter apologies,
and even if I felt every inch of my body,
every ounce of my blood
knew you bore secrets
and unkind things,
I’d still believe you.
there was a time
when I could not be strong
and even when you were cruel
in all the ways there were to be,
I would still be kind to you.
but that was a century ago
and I have learned to be kinder
to my body.
you will need to come to understand
that goodbye means you will no longer be awarded
a patch of grass in the elysian fields.
that goodbye means your shade will not be granted
a boat ride across the river styx.
that goodbye means that if you move in my direction,
I will sick the hounds of hades on you.
that goodbye means the lemures of yesterday will ever haunt you
and that is no one’s responsibility other than your own.
that goodbye means vale.
anatomy / Jada D’Antignac
mood swings and torturing cramps.
doctor appointments and prescriptions.
a body of beauty, a job of discomfort.
scrunching like a baby in a womb eases the pain
so i hold my abdomen
the way pregnant women hold their bellies,
but when i look down
i don’t think pregnancy or children—i think agony, suffering.
when i look down
i don't hope—i fear.
excuse me for my pessimism.
should i relearn anatomy
as a reminder to respect the process?
or should i travel to the garden
and beg eve to think of me?
early worminations: event parking shift / Laurie Fuhr
greetings from where the sun has not yet come up, and the sky, too warm for snow / not sad enough for rain, has knit a tight fog bats and insects stick to like fake Halloween webs left longer than the season.
the new young mayor of this city you've never heard of, baby faced and fresh playsuit, visits the pioneer park benevolent club. at five this morning I could barely wake; now I sit in a beat-up pickup truck, pickup a term first coined for grain trucks, but all I haul is bushels of tired.
I park beside the Mayor Mobile to ensure it isn't blocked-in, with its nose pointed out of the lot, getaway-style. with his squint-eyed smile and probable campaign dollars, he'll make a clean exit, his own security lead a skillful driver for flight from community events or crime scenes.
my yellow neon glows in the dark like a statue of Mary in another city, the rabbits and squirrels worship its glaring light by staying away. songbirds still sleep, the only sound is the bronk of hood fans exhausting breakfast steam into the hungry air.
I eat minimum wage for breakfast, the lowest in our country, I eat gas lamp glow but I'm Casual, no benefits, to stay flexible for music tours. telling others what to do for low pay: see how I'm free. cringing at impending six-month winter: see how I'm trapped in vulnerable flesh fabric, weather-rated for our shortest season.
two ravens perch atop the grain elevator, surveying the grey barn where fancy monkeys are meeting. monkeys being messy, the birds know something will be dropped, a piece of muffin, a shiny coin, and they alone will have something of substance from this late-Autumn day,
where the hands of trees reach for their stolen children, but hold only emptiness, and snow, soon to fill them, is only a wetter, whiter emptiness. everything but dairy barn HVAC cries for the weeping mothers of the world, and for the mothers too weak to weep,
so much of the Earth oblivious to the bleach-whitened smile of our newly-minted municipal leader, mini-figure with plastic hair driven off by his bodyguard into the sunrise of his next speaking engagement busy as the Earth is
making its lists of genocides, supervillains, pedophislanders, rape victims, sexist legislation, hate crimes, unconquered diseases, deathdeathdeathdeathdeaths, unclaimed bodies, mass graves,
banned books that warned us about all this, underpaid teachers, stunted children, the disappointment of every grown child raised on peaceful dreams, the first blizzard of the year melting on the hot black Percherons, their steaming, and all the necessary turncranks of dawn.
The Sun Is Setting / D.C. Leach
I’m drunk tonight your Tuesday
my Friday the porch light unsure
what to do with this in between
this orange and lilac sky I’m lighting or lit
candles all day that won’t burn
or would have had anyone come
the economy flickering or am I confusing
the porch light no the candles I didn’t
light it’s night here not on the floor
the floor? the restaurant I’m at home it’s night
in most of the house and glintering? glinting!
off the silver of this west coast all day
IPA can is t he klitchen fickering
the light fl— somewhere
in my childhood I’m flying on a plane
west the sun always still never stopping burning
the stewardess introducing me
to the pilots she’s eating Sunday
a sundae with me and I’ve stopped crying—
my mom is there.
the sun is bright.
she looks happy.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement / Dawn McGuire
I used to think
ice just made Coke colder,
a pond skatable,
my back teeth ache.
Black ice was my mother’s
favorite fear.
After I learned to drive,
she’d hide the car keys,
check the weather,
measure the tire tread twice,
watch out for slippery shadows
under streetlights.
My daughter is driving now,
but we live in a warmer state.
One less worry,
one less fear.
When a number flashes
with no name,
my daughter's best friend
turns off her phone.
She tucks her green card
in her bra,
won’t go near
the mall
She keeps a jug of water,
room temperature,
in the closet
where she sleeps sometimes.
Open Carry / Samantha Strong Murphey
Holstered at eyeline. When you’re five your eyeline
is a belt. I swoop her toward me, plastic baggage on her
little body. Transparent backpacks are required, even for
kindergarten. It is November. Leaves in the schoolyard are
blown off the trees like snow, which never happens
here. This is Texas. I see it all tumbling
up the bus steps: the library books, lunches,
carefully folded fortune-tellers, passed notes. There is
a wisdom to this—misplaced, like keys. There are keys
jangling in the holster of some dark legion behind a door.
It is not our fault, and my our I mean what is still tiny
and untouched inside these unzipped frames.
We all strap things onto our bodies,
make things visible, think it will protect us.
