October - Day 2 / Poem 2

The Closet / Lilly Frank

Like a dog, I know it is better to be violent
than dead. I will claw my way through this
cage if it is the last thing I do, taking my
last breath as I tear open the metal bars
above. Using my every ounce of malice,
spite, and grief to fuel this endeavor. I
refuse to let the words that you left
lingering inside of me be the last I hear. I
refuse to let the hands of you be the last to
touch me. Devastation is usually found in
the chest; a hollow frame that once held a
heart now sits, labored with this plague of
disappointment. Clamoring to be released
from inside of you, it turns into anger. It
turns into bitterness and distrust. It eats
you alive until you are practically skeletal,
flesh hanging from the bone, clinging to
the most familiar home it has ever known.

St. Louis Sonnet ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

Who would want to read about another
suburban religious school
like the one you grew up in. In the 1980's
the lady, who lived by the playground
gave out chocolates from a box. 
She had hair like a Charlie's Angel. 
It was ok to take the candy. 
Whether one-hundred degrees or fifteen, we were locked outside until it was time
to go in. In winter, we'd race inside 
to hug the warm pipes, once the doors
finally opened again. In summer,
we'd fight over squares of shade, a slight
relief from the heat of the blacktop. 

geosmin / Kathryn Johnson

Each time I encounter the word
petrichor is like the first time—
the rush of delight at its beauty, with the soft sigh
for a word that is as lovely as the reality it describes.

It’s easy to forget that words are signs, indicators
of something else in the world. Like petrichor,
the sweet, savory, dusty scent of rain on dry earth.
The smell is beautiful, yes, but
it exists only to point the way to
what is needed. I learned today
that the perfume of rain on soil
is the perfume of bacteria,

those little pieces of living matter that go ahead
and trail behind us. Microorganisms,
tiny beings, that require water, like we do.
And isn’t it interesting, fascinating, amazing that
we have this in common with dirt dwellers?
That they send us a sign, like little smoke signals,
microplumes of dust rising from the ground
with each drop of rain, to point the way
to our common good?

I want more little moments like these.
Don’t you?
Small, natural efforts to show I care
and have concern for my fellows.
Men, women, bird, and beast.
And even the tiny denizens beneath our feet,
who remind me that we all—all of us—
share common needs.

Our forms are different.
Our purposes may diverge.
Our paths may never cross. 

But why should that keep
me from releasing good into the air?
Or slow my hand when it needs extending, open and ready?
Or pause when I can share the tiny talents
I am blessed to tote around with me in my travels?

How much better to scatter them wherever I go,
and shower the Earth with signs that tell you
someone cares. To spread a sweet offering,
like drops of rain, that will let you—let all of us—
breathe deep the earthy, heady scent of petrichor.

How to Climb an Apple Tree / Kimberly McElhatten

You must know the bark of its trunk, the bends of its branches. You must know its intersections and how the tree comes together, how it stands. You must be sure of the weight its branches can bear and be sure to measure its flexibility against your own weight. You must know the tree will hold you, and you, in return, can hold the tree. You must know the best time to climb is August, when the sun blushes the apples red and before its boughs slump under the burden and drop the fruit taken with sweet rot. Know the more you climb, the easier your eyes will decipher the map of Ys and help you ascend higher and higher to where you imagine you can reach your head above the canopy and peer across the whole orchard to the peaches and cherries and beyond to the willows and chestnuts. Know you’ll continue to hear the words—That’s high enough—hold you and hold you back. Know you’ll remember your grandfather’s papered hands teaching you to make out the map of footholds that you’ll eventually navigate alone, with limbs so heavy in harvest you’ll imagine that perhaps the tree bears enough fruit to feed you there forever and never have need to return home, where there are no branches like these branches to hold you.   

ENTER LADY EGGDRED / H.T. Reynolds

abashed the chicken stood
and felt her awfully thick thighs
the balding patches—blistered hind
twitching next to her bare basket,
her oozing garden of pin feathers
matted yolks and receding cluck,
a reverberation in her beak
split and jaded jaundice

her glycerin eyes seep corrosive
drops tinkling to boiling splotches
of brimstone filling her basket
foul, glazed down—slick red

“There ain’t no coming back,”

she wheezes—wisps of smoke
like tendrils of miasmic string
lassoing the space between her crown
and heaven above—the sizzling hop
down—a tipped over stool after father
had found her out of the house,
out of breath, shivering sweat—smiling

“I know,”

A voice sublimes from the
scorched stone below her feet,
a reverberating heat she no longer
feels, the blood a lattice of glass
within her webbed feet.

“So be it.”

The chicken gasps—
the city resumes its motion,
reilluminated by the noon sun—
bodies racing for food, like streams
of ants she tastes with her rancid beak
gauged toward the sky like a vane.

The sidewalk settles.

The chicken settles—
a collection of black feathers
drifting to her feet,
erupting into embers
none in the human crowd sees.

She empties her basket,
proceeds forward,
leaving the blooming darkness
behind her—knowing not to look
back…

TO BE CONTINUED