October - Poem 17
What is Left Here? / Lilly Frank
Cold water degenerating into colder water. We had run out of
money to pay for more oil, so the house just became cold.
Pockets turned inside out of winter jackets, there was a
suspicious hush in the stagnant air filling the living room; the
sound of each seldomly passing car would slice the silence
like a knife.
The less you find yourself speaking is usually an indication of
how little good you have to speak of.
Untapping / Anna Ojascastro Guzon
Far from
the antelopes,
tarantulas, orchids,
narwhales, and
phosphorescent ocean
exchanges, are
answers to
questions you’ve
asked since
you were
told to
be patient
while killing
time in
single-file. You
sought responses
outside cubicles
and contracts
while tracing
the shape
for infinity.
But far
from your
roadless tracks
are messages
left unbottled.
October 17th / Kathryn Johnson
to NCJ
In the early hours after your birth, the moon
snuck his way into your room. From his pocket,
he took the loose end of a red thread and
set to looping it around the little finger of your
so small, so perfect left hand. He did the same for me.
It was a long thread, one that stretched across
decades and continents. It traveled with you
below the surface of the ocean, which is how
I know it was long and durable. I never felt
the salty water wicked along its length.
It hid in the folds of my bedclothes and tangled
a bit in my pockets. It was a sneaky, sly companion
that never made its presence known. Imagine
my surprise, then, the moment it contracted,
snapping into snug place the day we met. That long thread
spooled itself up, its work accomplished when, finally,
we were no further apart than the depth of a threshold.
I never had the chance to admire its cheery, cherry red.
Never thought to miss it when it left. But today, I
thank the thread for its diligence and faithfulness.
A Poet’s Take on Things She Heard Her Mentors Say [In Italics] / Kimberly McElhatten
I get to do this. I get to wake up and write this poem. I get to arrange syntax like a puzzle box, working secret latches to unlock a poem’s true shape and to write a cardinal onto the page where it can sing and become more than a bird.
***
Be all in. I get to be all in poems, say the word poem like I’m eating a juicy plum, sink into the flow of what happens when intention and attention align, trust where the breath goes, the mind follows, and let it be what carries me to the next and to the next and to the next.
***
There are two kinds of people. Today people and mañana-mañana people. People who write poems today and people who say tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll write the poem. Which are you? I am both, but especially the tomorrow-tomorrow of always poems—always time, always poems, mañana-mañana.
ODE TO A BOY BECOMING / H.T. Reynolds
ascared,
brood of mice,
parcel of flesh,
stubborned into stillness,
splinters burring into the folds
of your thinking—
beloved and shredded
paper separating flesh
with its edges, reading
about her from its surface
the next day—
how you bled out
but kept her secrets
despite their interrogation.
You’ve dragged the drain ditches,
collected their discarded trays
with her bite marks still in place,
discovered the ways whiskers can
grow a new cat if planted right
beneath a new moon,
beneath your picked scabs.
You once could fit
into a brown paper bag
without tearing,
without peeking through—
folded into itself,
creased and trembling.
