October - Poem 16
The Gates Keeper / Lilly Frank
Whether you are made of skin and godliness
or bones and sin,
death absorbs us all the same.
Chewing the crumbs of what remains of your skeletal frame,
there is no heaven or
hell, to be seen here.
You can absolve yourself of your guilt or let it swallow you,
to the naked eye,
it is all the same,
just guilt.
In our waking hours,
we may caress the face of
many different lovers.
For this, feel no shame.
Just as for guilt as it is for shame,
just shame.
Mistake after mistake,
we ingest our own truth as if a
poison suffocating the flames of our
passion, desires, and authenticity.
What a nonissue,
just a mistake.
Now coming home,
eyes swollen with the pollution
of salted tears. We perceive lost
love as a failure, a collapse of who
we are.
The very ground you walk is incidental.
How misguided to believe that
you, a speck on this dirt plane,
have crushed the meaning of
humanity, humanness, personhood, and purpose
with such pardonable consequences of living.
Because as it stands,
A life uncalloused is a life unlived.
You Were Named After a Flower / Anna Ojascastro Guzon
You can’t help
walking in
your dad’s shoes
though it seems
you’re anxious
about what
other men
are saying
about you.
You gaze in
a pool that
seems as deep
and wide as
your ceiling
at night when
you feel there’s
no one on
earth who will
hear you if
you slip and
fall into
the endless
reflection.
You might not
have the breath
of those who
inspired you.
You might not
reach the air.
If you do
you might not
stay afloat
when it’s your
duty to
sail the ship
while fathers
have conquered
open seas
before us.
Development of a Worker Bee / Kathryn Johnson
A honeybee’s transit
from egg to hatchling is
surprising and wise.
Her earliest days
are spent in an open cell,
being fed by her sisters.
These same sisters
cap her cell in time
for the soon-to-be-bee
to build her cocoon.
She changes in privacy.
A kindness we could learn to mimic.
This little gift of solitude
is all the more poignant when
we consider the bee’s lifespan.
Because the week of metamorphosis
represents a quarter of her life.
Food, quiet, and time are costly
when you live only a scant 40 days. Still,
she dedicates these dear resources
to readying the sisters who
will follow in her small footsteps.
The bee never denies its young.
Her very nature would cry out against it.
A wisdom we too could choose.
View from My Condo, Mid-October / Kimberly McElhatten
Impatiens, pink and leggy, bend toward the sun with seed pods like full bellies—remind me of my mother, how she taught me to plant, to water, to deadhead touch-me-nots into the shade of fall. On the bank where I scattered hen-of-the-woods last week, hopeful for next season, a sugar maple commands my consideration. Our neighbor Kevin jogs by, and across Ridge Run, more sugar maples mix with mountain laurel and fern and oak. Where the mountain drops to South Poplar Run, the
sun rides the leaves
trailing gold—hushed orange beyond,
on the next ridge east.
AT THE WITCHING HOUR / H.T. Reynolds
at 3 each morning,
my feet find
the bedroom floor
my hands
the French press
in the kitchen
the swollen-box
tea-timer we keep
above the stove
to decide when
I’m ready—
watching me watch
the murky balloon
take in the cold air
outside
pressing frost against
my window
the deer family peeking
in, reminding me
to add cream
to the shopping list
I extend my body
upon the living room
couch
pretend to be resurrected,
the product of intention,
the circle of spices,
the incantations,
the blood-tipped knife,
the goblet of opaque fluids,
whispering tendrils
into the shadows—
a wheezing prayer
against a mother’s breast,
the grimoire splayed on her lap,
the incense framing the room,
the flickering heart in the corner—
my sire patiently awaiting his cue,
the stage lights to erupt,
the dolly at slow pan,
the focus pulling on his face—
a man,
a stationary body in the dark—
splayed open
