October - Poem 4
Insincere Form / Lilly Frank
Seldom do the words fit themselves in between my lips in the way they are intended to. Usually, what is meant to be an act of courage comes out as, it’s okay, I’m sorry. The shallow breath filling weak lungs bite at limp ankles. Reminded of an existing pulse by the heartbeat felt in the throat, kneel to the curb. Forehead in shaking palms, the inside of the cheek an apple to the teeth. Toes tap the concrete ground. The sun had been setting for five hours. The same breeze whipping over thin skin since the conversation had begun. To gut the soul of truth, stifle the flames of passion. The heart decays into a carcass. Only left with hands, what is there to do with them now? Seldom do they fit themselves in between the fingers of someone who may reanimate spirit.
St. Louis Sonnets Three / 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 next to the playground
had Charlie's Angel hair
gave out chocolates from a box.
It was ok to take the candy.
Whether one-hundred degrees
or fifteen, we were locked outside
until class time. In winter, we'd race
to hug the warm pipes. In summer
we'd fight over squares of shade, a slight
relief from the heat of the blacktop.
Are you Black? A question
I heard more than once.
What's Filipino? The follow-up
to my response. In spring
tornado drills, foreheads pressed
against the wall, a windowless
hallway is filled with kids
fingers laced behind the neck.
Knuckles will protect you from shards
in one-hundred-mile-per-hour winds.
In twenty-twelve, intruder drills
a game of hide-and-seek
Who can be the quietest? Today
slide desks behind the door. Don't forget
To use your textbook
as a buffer for your organs
your heart, your brain …
The teacher reminds them
of someone they’ve seen on
Tik-Tok. They miss the days
before COVID-19, sprinting to
the field behind school. One more shot
at the goal. Time to go home
Home, for some, is never
without war. They’re
reminded, still, of the good
old days, of singing hymns
On earth as it is in heaven.
I overslept again today. / Kathryn Johnson
It’s an upside-down day, and I can’t seem
to find the start. I’m looking, but do not see
the little satisfying thread I can pull, then watch
the full tangle of the day unravel and lie smooth.
It’s a little like the feeling, when the city tests the tornado sirens,
in that moment between hearing them wail
and remembering it’s the first Wednesday of the month.
Or the small serving of despair
when you can’t find your glasses on the nightstand
in the dim light of dawn.
And even more like the panicked mortification when you are the only one talking
in an odd moment of silence, the kind that descends in every gathering.
And of course, you’re sharing an intimate detail about a trip to the dermatologist or
oversharing information about your dog’s habit of digging unspeakable waste
from the bathroom trash. It’s never a delightful anecdote or a wise word. Instead,
it’s a twisting knot in the pit of the stomach. A meal flavored with fear,
seasoned with angst, and finished with a light dusting of shame.
This is the anxious mess of a day that I try to keep at bay
with my little lists and plentiful reminders. And when they fail me,
and I find myself scratching at the edges to find that little loose thread?
Then it’s time
to locate a cat to pet or
to refill the teacup or
to demand a long hug from my husband.
Humble rituals, practiced like choreography,
that unwind the knot,
quiet the noise, and
help me find what I’m looking for
on this page.
The Weight a Mountain Carries / Kimberly McElhattenPAINTER’S BOX / H.T. Reynolds
On a hike up a deer path local runners call Throat Punch, the weight of my breath thumps in my chest as I take one more step, reach for a striped maple above me, pull myself to it, rest the bulk of my body on its trunk, feel my shoulders slump into its bark, and wait for my lungs and heart to resynchronize. Each September, people run this trail for fun, but I’m here with friend, retired Army Ranger, George hunting for the Cadillac an alleged meth dealer abandoned two days ago during a police chase that landed him deep in the mountain on logging roads cut in the sixties after the Air Force abandoned the Blue Knob missile defense base during the Cold War and DCNR merged half of it into a state park and an investor turned the other half into a ski resort. Earlier that day, the resort manager texted me, asking if I knew anything about Needle Trail because he was looking for a Cadillac, he wrote, but I think he meant Needle Patch. A trail race map asks runners to image themselves on the trail as if they are fleas racing along a dog’s back, dodging the saplings like hair. So I’m here ascending Throat Punch with George to get to Needle Patch the only way we know how, even though we’ll later find our way home following a trail of rearview mirrors, reflectors, an edge guard, a headlight, and a box of meth pipes and lollipops through the water seeps, up the switchbacks, and back to Ridge Run where my condo sits, but before that, at the top of Throat Punch on at the start of Needle Patch, we find the black Cadillac with a black cherry sapling trapped between the bumper and passenger-side tire—car windows down, no keys, floss picks on the floor mats, and an empty gap around the stereo, its trim ring removed.
When I get home, a neighbor sends me the local news article, “Man who claimed to be laying on a bomb arraigned, charged with trespassing, criminal mischief,” and I read another, “Police: Blair County man in underwear hides in basement, claims to be a bomb.” Both explain what happened after the Cadillac got hung up on the sapling. The man in these articles is the man the condo board tried to evict when so much got so complicated during the pandemic. He’s also the man who broke into a local warehouse, dumped inventory into a pile, and doused it with gasoline, the man who police found and arrest before he could find a lighter, the man who a judge released on bail three weeks after, and then the man who then found himself being chased by the police down double track and eventually Needle Patch.
I imagine him getting the Cadi stuck in the saplings, the back-and-forth attempts to get it unstuck, his panic, his paranoia, his running through this forest and down the mountain, fleeing the weight of his clothes. This reminds me of a morning years ago and the two women I found walking on Overland Pass—how they spent a night lost on the mountain after jumping out of a pickup truck, choosing the thick fog over a drunken boyfriend. And I remember the young man I found along the state park road on a different day, unsure of his way, trying to find Altoona, and walking in the wrong direction—how he told me someone brought him up the mountain, locked him in a condo, wouldn’t let him out—how when I dropped him at the police station, the trouble he had giving directions—and how he finally asked to call home and for a ride to a gas station. I think of my brother-in-law and how he died cresting Meadow Mountain on his motorcycle—of the toxicology report that read meth, oxy, fentanyl, THC—and how life might have felt like a dark bunker before the weight of him found flight. I consider George and how, on our hike home from the Cadillac, he said he’s mostly adjusted from his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, how deployment prevented he and his wife from having kids, how loud noises don’t get to him like other vets, but how he can’t listen to taps, and how he didn’t need to say more. And I think about our mountains, these Alleghenies, about the weight they carry—how they hold the heaviness of our too muches, too hards, and not enoughs, the things we can’t or won’t, our unbearables and unthinkables—and, yet, ask nothing of us in return.
PAINTER’S BOX / H.T. Reynolds
after Julien Raimond (1744-1801)
a mother shapes a body
through each chamber
of her own—cell by cell
she divides ‘til hollowed
out an offering to be raised
a line is divided over
and over, ‘til the land
becomes known to strangers
and the fenceposts stand
gawking—twitch hand ready
she is called mother
to those speaking in hush
hoods that dull her cries like
snow—they wait for her tinge,
a barren gunny sack of color
but a painter can craft a sky
never knowing Indigo,
who she bloomed from
or how many stripes of flesh
hang from her belt
