October - Poem 25

I Guess I Don’t Really Even Think About You Anymore [Derogatory]   / Lilly Frank

Love fossilized in the couch of your two-bedroom apartment. A relic of what once was, something you could pull out from between the cushions and feel for. Kept in your museum of regret, another token victim complexity, another reason to loathe yourself [completely justifiable]. The birds sing in the morning, the leaves get caught in the storm drain, the evenings become longer than the days. Something I have decided to no longer live with is the very thing that is eternally inscribed into your consciousness. I plead for someone to love me differently, you plead for someone to love you even a fraction of the same. How mortifying? No, really, tell someone [NOT ME] how mortifying. 

Ghazal for the New Day ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

The sunrise begins

to imitate the leaves 
or is it the other way around?

The sun acts as a sibling

rather than a mother 
not the other way around.

The weather vane attempts

to create disorientation 
and the other way around. 

The leaves are turning

against each other 
and the other way around.

The headlines are

painted in black and white
and the other way around. 

The new lines are dead 

to each other, rather 
than the other way around 

Will the daylight lie

prostrate to a king? Mother, 
pray for another way around.

Hippomane mancinella / Kathryn Johnson

Do not make the mistake of 
taking shelter under
the boughs of the manchineel tree. 
Do not be deceived;
the fruit of the manchineel tree
smells so sweet,
looks so sweet
with its fresh green 
and bright skin. 
Named for the manzanilla,
the little apple, manchineel 
is its formal name. 
It is better known
by its alias: manzanilla 
de la muerte. (Little death apples.)
Take caution. A little death may fall 
when rain sifts through the leaves and
limbs of the manchineel tree. 
It’s almost like the tree of death exists 
to let us reenact the first deaths, 
the first apples, stolen at great price. 

Summary Statement of Mrs. Harry Mayhugh, Wife of a Miner / Kimberly McElhatten

PEACEFULLY PASSING  / H.T. Reynolds

so you want to die
asleep, an abrupt end
to a dream— 

what about your lover—

your hands
like talons along their waist,
your warmth leeched
in the way they hold you,
your peaceful face a relic,
ghost-gray eyes hollowed out,
your body a slack portrait
they once recognized… 

the air ripened strange—
a stranger who went to sleep
as lover—peacefully passing