How Place Shapes Us / Michelle Frost
The Plains infinite sky my grandparents farm windy trees lining the gravel road to town
Family dinner on Sunday after church
Finding Nancy Drew on the bookmobile
wholesome bones
lonesome poems
My brother on the other hand shipped to Iraq
High school Boot camp Persian Gulf
He joined the Marines after graduation
Nobody saw it coming a 100-Hour War
Teens in uniform machine guns
Dead bodies a burning beach
Tonight in our hometown at Chili's
My brother and I find two open bar stools
Veterans of all ages come in and nod hello
What they share is beyond reach silent
Nobody sees it coming
How we become where we've been
Ballad of Big Nothing / David Hadbawnik
What if you squeezed and squeezed
and nothing came out? A whole lot of
nothing made to look like something,
just the feel of a hole
going through you, so deep
you could put your arm in it
and pull yourself out
the other side, in other words,
nothing. It skips
and repeats, there’s static
crackling all around it,
an old-timey feel
and a taste, too,
actually, a tinge
of cherry on the back of the tongue.
It’s the flavor of nothing.
Green lights and then white lights
and then nothing,
you shout into it
and there’s no sound
but a deeper silence
that follows you, tugging
at the loose threads
on your clothes, as if
to say “Don’t go there.”
Hollow as the thud
of a car door being closed.
What was that? Oh,
nothing. Or maybe the number 4,
or a snake, I don’t know,
maybe a handbook on how
to weather death, outlast it
I mean, slither out from
the skin as it sighs
and flips over, slowly,
the nothing beaten deep
into the eyes, especially
at the delicate corners,
where nothing stays still,
nothing you can name.
Don’t check the time, don’t
check for messages.
There are none. This means
nothing. There is nothing
you can learn from it, it has
nothing to teach you. And, look:
it has nowhere to go, nothing
to stop its legs as they swing.
untitled / Alexander Shalom Joseph
I’m teaching a class
at a denver nature preserve
which is sandwiched between
two prisons and a power plant
as well as two highways
and the edge of suburban sprawl
the class is supposed to be
about nature writing
and it was agreed that this place
is the closest nature
for most of the targeted audience
and so I go there
to plan out what to do
in the parking lot I wonder
what nature there will be
to actually see
in this tiny bit of trees
shoved between all the ruin
of the human world
walking through the entry way
I found myself at an overlook
below me
I find wide grass and cattails
a lake and a river
wild turkeys squawking in the sun
the air smelling of drying leaves
and living leaves and freshness
even though I can still hear
the trucks on the highway
see the smog between me
and the mountains
see the shine of the prison fences
there is an immediate ease
yes somehow this
little scrap left of the paradise
that the world once was
still has power yet
somehow there are still
wild turkeys hidden
where you would never
think to look
as free as they have ever been
pecking at the dirt
making noise up at the sky
yes somehow
we have not killed the wild yet
not all the way
may there always be
these untamed splinters
in our city feet
Left, Dickinson / Sally Kuzma
A Cento
what is left what is left
is it past of leaf?
You left me, sweet, two legacies–
You left me boundaries of pain–
I left the place with all my might–
My business — just a life I left.
Nature lost the date of this,
And left it in the sky.
The wind pursued the little bush,
And drove away the leaves
November left;
I left them in the ground.
Since the mighty autumn afternoon
At least to pray is left, is left.
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Fancy the sunrise left the door ajar!
TTYP / Rachel Lee
Paper lines washed out.
Happily dancing paranoia.
Squiggly lines near my cornea.
The living existing at the crematorium.
Screaming babies on a dirt floor.
Keep them off the anthills out the front door.
My arthritis is kicking in and I can't wash the dishes.
Going blind from photosynthesis.
Where's grandma? She'll fix this.
One call away from a well thought out wishlist.
Too bad, so sad. Society found a new brand.
So shiny. Smells from France.
Lavendar and lemongrass.
Somehow life's decayed from spoken words to symbols on a device.
Our existence a tapestry woven from Jesus Christ.
But if you look at the photo just right, the babies are fed.
Words are heard and no longer read.
Demons threatened, they can't pull the thread
There's a glorious meal, no longer water and bread
How does it feel to be composed instead of vexed?
Solar-Powered Hummingbird Lights / Lincoln McElwee
Magic in the science. A nocturnal birth,
powered by the sun.
Not hummingbird moths flowering the feeders,
their pinks and browns blurring over flowers,
but waterproof metal with no need to sleep
after the heartbeat frenzy of waking day.
How they come alive at night,
each color eating the dark.
The reds are sunsets in the Mojave Desert.
The blues taste like autumn in Maine.
The yellows, bright against the night,
like bedtime prayers in a childhood home.
Open the window, let the smell of the light
chime in.
See the wisteria’s sweet perfume of honey
and lilac, listen to the ground ivy’s
pale violet flowers.
Or is it a whispered prayer for the wind to begin,
the hummingbirds motioning in the roses’
odor of sand, silt, clay?
When day breaks and hummingbirds
rouse from torpor,
the solar-powered warriors sleep in the garden,
imbibing more magic for the night.
Untitled / Michelle Stoll
Have you put a seashell to your ear
Heard the ocean?
I learned that magic from my mother
My first time at the sea --
Charleston
the weather unfair, but who knew when we'd have another
chance, another trip from Arkansas?
We filled an empty Pringles can with our treasures
It stayed in the linen closet for years smelling of potato chip and sea salt
Listen, she'd say, listen! It's the ocean
At 30 I burned bridges
traveled the Highlands
Scotland felt like home
-- and I it's daughter
above the North Atlantic,
bold as any mother's love
I stumbled on a shrine to Mary, took with me a shell
left by some pilgrim
I hear it now.
It sounds like some home
I've never known
bedtime writing / Sandra Tan
I write this poem
as you are falling asleep,
waiting for me to finish writing.
stretched out on your side,
phone in hand
drooping with the minutes.
I hear the rustle of blankets
as you roll around
trying to find the perfect spot,
warmer than the aircon
but cooler than the night.
it reminds me of a bird
fluffing its nest,
lining it with feathers.
your falling asleep
is better than any poem
I’ve written.
unlike a poem, it makes me
want to rise from my seat
and enter your dream —
that I may know
what evens your breathing,
makes you stretch your limbs
across the bed
as if holding something large.
