October - Poem 27
American Tragedy / Lilly Frank
Quietly, discontentment tickles the back of my neck.
Quickly, discontentment becomes a perpetual itch.
O’ suffocation, O’ loneliness. How the feeling
flooding over me is something I scorn.
I think these feelings.
these feelings,
they make me a bad person.
With my hands in my hands in my head,
I forget how to pray.
With forgetting how to pray,
I feel so deeply, and unforgivably, incurable.
Inspiration / Anna Ojascastro Guzon
He spots a fruiting body
gently heaving puffs of air
among the chemical scents
metal limbs and
stirring rods broken again.
It expands within
the plastic dish which in
absently, he ashes.
Patient, controlled, it speaks
as one kneeling in prayer.
When he hears it
there is a destruction
of devils in flight.
Antipodes / Kathryn Johnson
What child hasn’t spent a full summer day
with no other task than digging down
through the Earth and out the other side?
Why do children feel
the pull to tunnel into the soil?
What do they hope to reach? Maybe
they seek the connection the trees experience—
telegraphing news and greetings along unseen paths.
It’s funny how mycelium and myelin echo each other.
The vast network beneath us.
The vast network within.
With each shovel full, the children reveal
this path in themselves, one illuminated
by the winking lights of thought.
Dreaming of Winter in July/ Kimberly McElhatten
When my daughter was a teen,
she’d start talking skis and snow
in July—right about peak
heat—and she’d sing Christmas
songs and talk the play-by-plays
of our best memories on
the slopes, like the time we skied
a snow-belted nor’easter
and did not see the moguls
before we hit them—how
she tossed up her arms to the
falling flakes—how they waved up
and down and side to side like
conducting prestissimo
into the white sky with snow
falling so abundantly
that run after run after run after run
felt like first tracks, again and again and again—
and how that night, that winter,
all winters, she dreamed—still dreams—
is dreaming of winter in July.
COWABUNGA / H.T. Reynolds
I bet Michelangelo never had to pick the pepperoni his brother insisted on adding to the family pizza. Never had to add canned mushrooms they nuked in the microwave so the temperature would match, the texture wouldn’t be so jarring. I bet Leonardo would have been able to plead his case to his [mother], wouldn’t even need to pull rank, or pull a blade to get his way. Donatello would have synthesized a mushroom pizza from his brother’s leftover crust, void of the stink of smoked meat. But I was Ralphael—trenchcoat and temper—red-rager—disobedient son—bed-bound and immobile, content with the only compromise I could get. Michelangelo knew how to smile while buried beneath the city’s filth, glide along the curved concrete on a skateboard like Icarus with wheels—too cool for wings, never needing the lecture. I dragged my body from my bed in our living room—my swaddled legs in plaster shells clunking to the trailer floor—to my board with brakes, with handles—a chariot that barely fit within those walls—but I tried, like he would, screaming at the top of my lungs, “COWABUNGA,” before launching myself toward the front door. The door gaped open like I was Alice, like I was catapulting myself from building top to fire escape—from the Rat King to Shredder—from a wheelchair to walking. I bet Michelangelo never had to pick himself up off the floor, turn himself sideways like a beached capital A, drag himself around his chariot, toward the ocean—his bed—and hope not to suffer the indignity of a snagged sheet. I bet Leonardo would have had the respect for his own room. I bet Donatello would have invented proper clothes that fit—would have avoided the Velcro—the sweatpants—going commando. I bet Ralphael would have chewed off his own legs—carved out his hip bone and would play hockey with Casey Jones. With the capsized chariot wheel squeaking still, my bound legs—my entombed skin’s thrumming itch ignored—I took a bite of pizza, whispering, “cowabunga,” sharing a laugh and high five with my green brothers.
