October - Poem 7
A Call Coming from Inside The House / Lilly Frank
It was a shocking discovery to find the mold on the undersides of her bones. Plagued fate, socially flawed, tortured inability, it all made sense now. The staleness of her crumbled into breadcrumbs, leading me back to the most familiar home I had known. Distance often becomes perspective. Perspective often becomes regret. Whether you chew the pill and taste the sour, or swallow it whole and choke on the size, the inevitable reality comes. You were familiar yet unkind. You were familiar yet calloused. A jaded reality parts from behind my eyes. A distorted kinship shatters into a stranger that you have seen undress themselves. A woman leaves the very home poisoning her, and would you imagine, the aches somehow went away?
A Fool’s Villanelle / Anna Ojascastro Guzon
I pray, though what I pray for I do not know.
Permit me please to deny the fury I fear.
The fool on the hill shall cross a chasm of sorrow.
Or choose to recline on a shore of status quo.
How deep is the ocean? I won’t ask unless it’s clear.
I pray, though what I pray for I do not know.
I have a hunch that the warm waters are shallow
A chambered nautilus whispered in my ear:
The fool on the hill shall cross a chasm of sorrow.
No matter how long she paces to and fro
Digging deep into a path from which she won’t veer
I pray, though what I pray for I do not know.
A dive without a safety net below;
An acceptance that weathering is never fair
and the fool on the hill shall cross a chasm of sorrow.
Accustomed to the terrain, I learned alone
that rage against a loss won’t smooth from wear
The fool on the hill shall cross a chasm of sorrow.
I pray, though what I pray for I do not know.
Alice's Evidence / Kathryn Johnson
Who knew
that midlife would be such an adventure?
Is this why
I feel so much like the first girl
to fall down this particular rabbit hole?
Surely,
someone has been here before me.
There must have been
a series of other fallen girls.
Who else
would leave the tonics and sweets,
so clearly labeled
for the next adventurer?
Eat me.
Drink me.
Were the pebbles I ate
like teacakes really a clue?
The little door
that leads to the garden is open today,
and the sun glows where it shines on red roses.
I want to plant my own garden,
full of scruffy marigolds,
savory herbs, and
musty root vegetables.
A harvest
that can be made into
wines
and breads
and stews.
Delicacies
that I will package
and leave for the next girl.
i am / Kimberly McElhatten
of the blackberries in June, their bright-not-ripe-yet magenta and the temptation to pick the ones on the verge of ripeness that might turn my lips and fingertips bruised-knee purple
of the red-eyed vireos that come and go from a nest of hatchlings hung from a young ash, and of how they pass inchworms from each other to their chicks
of red clover on distant memory like an open field of my mother plucking one petal at a time, touching the nectar like clean honey to her tongue
of January skies laid out lapis and bluebird above Blue Knob with the touch of sun on my shoulders like a yellow hearth and soft snow spraying behind my skis
of peacocks with their necks strutting indigo and trailing viridescent eyes along the cornfields and cow pastures stretched between home and the longingness for somewhere else
of the green plateau that made me, of the plum mountains that remake me, and the burnt October sunsets of who i was & am becoming
EXPIRED LAMP BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR / H.T. Reynolds
A Golden Shovel after Emma Lazarus “The New Colossus”
Was it ever yours to give—
were any of us truly welcome
beyond the sea-washed gates—your
mild, commanding eyes growing tired
above your fragmented stone pedestal, your
baleful flame becoming solvent for the poor
bodies, the sacks of wind inflating with your
copper grin—the noxious tinge of green huddling
along walls, streets converging upon the masses
stripped bare and perpetually yearning.
Had no one told you there is no to-
gether, no tomorrow, no space to breathe
without the carcinogens, only the illusion of free
will, the inheritance of prescribed labor, the
roles assigned to us at birth by the wretched
percent who pollute our accords, then refuse
more your invitation, unleashing lightning—proof
this land no longer resembles your
promise, mother—a collection of walls teeming
with razor wire—blood and bones upon every shore.
