Frank’s American Childhood / David Hadbawnik
Evening, sun already down, sky a dirty gray as streetlights wink on. Yet there are two men still at work in the bare bones of a building down the street, one of them climbing a ladder to reach something high on the roofless inside wall on the top floor five stories up, while the other man stands close by to pass him things, and hold the ladder, their dim outlines visible against the darkening sky of Frank’s American Childhood
*
There’s a worker mopping the floor in the lobby of Frank’s American Childhood before 7am on a Wednesday morning. He sets the bucket of water against the wall in the rear of the lobby, across from the reception desk, and steps forward with the mop to the glass front of Frank’s American Childhood, where he begins mopping back and forth, back and forth. Within a few strides the mop has lost its frothy wetness and swipes over the floor like a damp rag, leaving only the barest sheen of moisture on the tiles. The man squeezes between a sofa and coffee table as he backs his way towards the reception desk, flinging the mop head a little ways under the sofa and table without moving either
*
At bedtime, Frank’s American Childhood wakes up in its mother’s belly like popping bubbles, she says, and she looks up this phenomenon on her phone, and finds it, and the father of Frank’s American Childhood tries to feel it too, but cannot, and both of them hope Frank’s American Childhood is all right but don’t want to jinx it by saying anything, so instead roll over and go back to sleep
Sorry this is a bit late. I will make sure to get them to you on time going forward. / Alexander Shalom Joseph
when I was twenty years old
and hungry and bright
I sent a book of bad poems to tupelo press
and thought I would be famous
a few months later in the morning light
I woke and opened my phone
to find an email there
the results of the competition
I was set to with
that would tumble me to stardom
showed I was not in fact
a winner at all
not a star or even a comet
but just another bit of the darkness
they say doing
the same thing over and over
expecting different results
is the definition of madness
actually the definition of madness
according to a quick google
is being mentally deranged
either way art making is madness
and so is life
we all do things over and over
but in art we find miracles
the artist alchemizes
the deranged belief
stirs it, burns it, smokes it
smiles
and thinks it may end up differently
today is the first of thirty poems
that I will write for tupelo press
having been mad for a decade
the repeated pattern has now
yielded different results
Abscission, in Thoreau / Sally Kuzuma
Though he had a scientific bent
I don’t expect to find this botanical term
for the way an organism can drop parts of itself
so I search instead for what is falling…
I search his Excursions.
First I find water, then weather:
river water jarring rocks
roaring and surging over a small
slippery wooden bridge somewhere in Quebec—
then strangely pausing in its course
to let a man pass
and snow outside the deserted hut of a woodsman–
the snow Thoreau imagines as he reconstructs
in words another loner’s life in the woods
on a stormy winter evening,
pipe bowl in the embers.
Closer to abscission is the sound of pignuts dropping,
their fall hastened by the work of a chickaree–
a kind of squirrel– whose scampering is audible
because of another abscission
that laid a rustling leaf-carpet underfoot.
He thoughtfully reminds us that one falling leaf
does not an autumn make; it takes a concerted
windfall in October when sugar maples in their glory
fire up and then let loose
their rich yellows, deep scarlets,
their unexpectedly bright and delicate tints.
And sometimes, he notes, the ones who blush deepest
are the last to let go.
untitled / Rachel Lee
I’ve become accustomed to the brain damage from the loneliness and regrets
I can see the paint pealing
Pause for the special effects
I'm blessed
Possessed
Diseased and obsessed
The Floor is falling
Catch me in the act
Too afraid to interract
Whispered words are hacked
Distract
My bags are packed
Run until my feet turn black
Blowing smoke rings
Distracted by False dreams
Sewn up by the seams
Keep me distracted by shiny things
On Tree Frogs and Morning Coffee / Lincoln McElwee
I want a slender branch to know the whole of me, a leaf to hold my weight. I want to point with my claw-shaped bones and climb, climb, climb. Would you enter the arboreal to find me? Would you croak too at my call? What does it mean to be treeless? To hide from fish, to fear freshness? And how do I explain the moth’s taste? The dusty sweetness, the thin bite of a life held to the light. How many ants have you eaten? The hummingbird feeder crawling with chitin. What of the low earth do you crave? And what is the odor of a sunrise? Lately, it’s fully washed, sweet and citrusy. It’s pumpkin, cinnamon, allspice, orange zest. It’s the waking remnants of strawberry bedtime gummies that have never helped me sleep. And what does a tree frog do with the ability to change its color? Would I be as chameleon-like in life if my skin could corral its melatonin? Would I ignore the dangers around me, the cat, the hawk, the skunk? Would I explore the holey hollows of other trees? Would I be content, even here, on this moss-ridden balcony? Let me be a hundred yards from water and thirsting. Let me be lovestruck in a roadside ditch. Let me be pure movement in the marshes. For a moment, O morning, just let me be.
Rapture of Hackberry Leaves / Michelle Stoll
The racket
leaves make
(so large I mistook for opossum beneath the Hackberry)
when their golden
bodies leap
from tops of trees,
twirl between branches
blow kisses
over shoulders
to lichened bark
unimpressed bird
to leaves still ahold
(clinging till the end, taking in the show)
The thing they cannot
keep to themselves
when the ground
says Welcome home
when they curtsey
among their kin
(cushioning the fall, spent from gravity's rush)
when the wind tangoes them
as never before on the limb:
...Laughter!
(Again! Again!
after “periphery of speech” (2004) by Hara Mikiko / Sandra Tan
dull yellow cured yolks
cooling on the edge of the sink
in a metal bowl, bathed
in soft, warm light from the kitchen
that whispers late hours,
dinner after the day’s trudge.
when the children are in one place
and the corners of the table
are filled. who do you imagine
to be waiting for you?
the luscious curve of the metal
sink, flecked with water.
someone rinsed their hands
a while ago, waiting to prepare
the meal, fluff steaming rice
into little mountains like the ones
you parsed on the train home,
train handles swinging
overhead on rubber leashes
like rows of birds.
