October - Poem 8

Phantom Lover  / Lilly Frank

I am in the palm of your hand; spoon fed the promise of a different
tomorrow. The way the sentences had parted from your lips,
bewitching, enticing, and oh so disingenuous. And somehow, it fooled
me every time. This cycle gripped me by the throat. Paralyzed and
ardently in love, I stayed for the promise. I stayed in the desperate
hope to one day, embrace the man you could never become. In
retrospect, there was no heartbreak. Devastation, passion, sure.
Whatever you want to call it. But the man I had loved was not the one
in front of me, he was never in front of me. Phantom lover, I beckon, I
plead, I grovel. Palms and kneecaps soiled with the soot beneath the
plush of the carpet.

Theory  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

From your bedroom
the entire world         is darkness 
 and you can be alone. 
We are     each alone
without the need to commune. 
Some day well    become        the flicker from our screen
a thousand light years from
 the next closest sign of a human being.
We won’t go outside to follow 
a flock when we can join a swarm 
of hash tags,     as they transform
into a unit    an illumination of our culture.
Did Homo Erectus see their own end? 
The evolution of their mind 
brought all life on earth on a ride
launching us forward as a species 
like a snap of hot oil from a pan.

intervals / Kathryn Johnson

We are timeless.
I don't mean eternal. Instead,
I see that we live our lives avoiding time.
We are willing tourists to the past,
painters and architects of the future,
and too often we turn from and
ignore our present.

Today is a rainy fall day,
with a low, heavy sky and
I am tempted
to imagine
that tomorrow may be
crisp, blue, and adorned
with little clouds.

Or rush forward
to the snow I hope will fall
in the last days of the year.
I could keep going–

racing into the spring and reliving
the humid, bright afternoons of an Ohio summer.
Only to find myself right back
in the middle of
a wet and cold October afternoon,
wrapped in a cardigan and unsure

where the time has gone,
how a year has passed.

What if I did different today?
I could stitch time
into the sleeves of my sweater,
an appliqué of minutes and hours. Instead
of living a timeless life, I could choose
to be time-full.

I could approach time
like a blushing bride,
not to keep it bound,
hand-fasted to me
but to be a helpmeet
and to make a life together.

How on Mother’s Day and After / Kimberly McElhatten

How on Mother’s Day, I dig three holes to plant three trees, and how the sun beats on my bare shoulders when I hear—chweep, chweep, chweep—the alert call of two eastern towhees and how I’m the danger and find their nest next to where I dig, and in it, four white eggs speckled brown and yet, I keep digging at the dirt and sandstone for three more hours because it’s Mother’s Day and I’m alone and have the time and how, though, I can hardly sleep that night, worried my tenacity may have killed those four babies left all those hours without a warm-bellied blanket while I dug in the dirt and planted trees.

How I check on the nest every day until they hatch into a miracle of naked bodies and big gray eyes and how for eight more mornings, I follow their progress, and on day six, I notice the nest sag between the branches under their growing weight, and how when I touch my hands to the bottom and shift it for a stronger purchase, they huddle close.

How too soon they’re downy and slim feathered flightless fledglings with mom and dad chweeping after their shy bodies tumbling across the grass, into the ferns, and through the woodland asters, and how I’ll hear chweep, chweep, chweep for days until shy becomes assured, and how too soon four and two become an empty nest in the arborvitae.

PICKLE POEM / H.T. Reynolds

a man bought a pickle—
brought it home for his wife

she was unimpressed,
asked him about the alligator
he said he took it to the vet,
waited for the receipt
but their fax machine
was broken
so they drew teeth,
and he lost,
wound up with a wallet
full of bills,
knew he needed
to bring home something—

the pickle

she was unimpressed
watched him peel himself—

the man’s flayed skin
falling like wet confetti

she took pleasure
in his ochre flesh
glistening slick curves
ligaments snapping
against his quivering
thumbs

she was unimpressed,
taking a bite of his pickle