untitled / Michelle Frost
Flouncy blow these flimsy limbs
Today's fresh Autumn breeze
Arizona sunlight dims
Refreshed are desert trees
November swings in Merrily
New pumpkins scary Bold
The Poet dreams of Autumns past
Poems squirreled away such Gold
Oliver's Geese Frost's Road
Stafford's Yes and
Every bird I've ever known
whistling my name calling me home
Balance / David Hadbawnik
Trying to fix this
and yet he can’t, the balance
is not there, close
both eyes and fold one
leg behind the other
and stand there, feeling it,
only to fall to one
side or the other, a tender
breathing that loosens
the spine on its way
back to zero, the shortest path
between two points is always
to wobble and keep count
starting from there, the eyes
closing and opening to let
go of themselves seeing and
being seen
untitled / Alexander Shalom Joseph
the
structure
is
how
I
survived
waking to
wild days
was nearly
too much
for me
and so
I broke
it up
took the morning
minute by minute
waking and tending
to basic needs
then meditation for
twenty five minutes
then I write
for an hour
then I do
a work out
then there’s breakfast
I do this
ever single day
and by nine am
I feel somewhat alive
and maybe even safe
thanks to how I
caged the days with
these same rigid routines
but
this morning
you
in
the soft light
your eyes on mine
just when I wake
all structure
falls away
into
your
sleepwarm arms
Burden, Thoreau / Sally Kuzma
What burdens in those journals of his?
Answers vary…
Sound– the wood’s whisper, barely audible–
burdens the breeze along the cliffs.
Love, as epithalamium, hymeneal–
the nuptial, marital, mating sort–
is the burden of bird song, flower song–
in air, water, woods, deep down
into the bowels of the earth.
Sin is a burden too, the weight–
the Newtonian gravity– of being human
which can be countered by the buoyancy of virtue.
Devoted worshippers of beauty, he says,
who find music in the storm (albeit in a minor key)
and allow themselves to be watered, like beanfields, by rain
bear burdens more easily than the rest of us.
It’s what our boat carries– our physical bulk,
the freight of what we need to subsist.
It’s what the breasts of common men release
when they cannot keep themselves from talking.
Lightning Strikes / Rachel Lee
Everyone knows his name
His ginger fur
Distinguished fame
The phone rang and rang
Lost and found
He’s at the pound
A premeditated game
No one to blame
Sculptures, paintings, poems
His collar, pictures, small totems
When lightning strikes the ground
And thunder rolls east
I think of my canine beast
He never pulled the leash
So I let him loose
This is my fragmented memory of Zeus
Outside My Living Room Window / Lincoln McElwee
Just last week, outside my living room window, a lone branch of yellow leaves was pure spotlight against the chalky white of birch bark and green leaves. Stressed trees gossiped about leaf drop and loud children, the lawnmower and the leaf blower. A grandmother, ready to leave, struggled with a child on the playground. She looked around, as if asking for help, but there were only the aphids, the woodchips, the leaves, the shedding paper birch trees. She kept pointing to her right, to somewhere out of sight, until, finally, she grabbed the kid and sat down in a patch of sunlight. The kid played with the playground woodchips, throwing them so hard that they landed on him instead. An airplane hummed overhead. The grandmother’s bright yellow sandals baked in the sun. Then they walked uphill, away from my apartment building, but the kid ran back to the patch of sunlight, and the yellow sandals beamed through the aphids, the leaves, the trees. Now the yellow leaves are shriveled up and brown on the ground. Now the rain pelts the earth like punishment. Now the trees gossip about the tall maple near the playground that uprooted in the rain, leaving a mud bath in its wake. Now the aphids are dead or dying. Now the days feel like a broken sandal strap, the absence of yellow, woodchips wailing for the life they once knew.
Becoming a Morning Person / Michelle Stoll
Because the birds
are easier to hear
before traffic picks up
Because by 7 a.m. my limbic system
is off to the races
I forget who I am
Because turning my ship around
takes longer now
more effort and energy
Because I want a little thing
an hour
that's mine
The geese --
I would have missed them
We know where we're going
-- do you?
chin chow (清草) / Sandra Tan
a jelly-like dessert made by boiling the stalks and leaves of the Chinese mesona with potassium carbonate and starch, served chilled.
when I slide the dark jelly out
from its porcelain bowl,
its gentle, tumbling form
exudes a coolness one feels
without touching.
my carton of milk, left on
the top shelf, has grown
a skim of fine slush, curdled drops.
I mix both, cleave large chunks
with a spoon as though
there were no end to fullness.
carry these soft-bodied beings
that slip over the rim’s curve
into the mouth, the way
a retriever grips a bird.
to give grace to sundown.
pour milk into the night.
