October - Poem 11
Xanadu / Katerina Canyon
I look young,
but I feel old.
He feels young
but looks old.
That’s how we match.
The owl minds the mice
dancing in the dust
while the earth splits
between the trees.
We are satiated
and settled.
The owl swoops down
to steal the snake’s shadow.
It is gone. Just like that.
Like steam escaping from the cracks
of a volcano.
We no longer stand tall.
I’m an “S.” He’s a question mark.
The owl is fed.
The mice are hiding.
The trees still stand.
At the Tornado Memorial County Park, WI / Sam Calhoun
North of the Ahnapee River
we stopped here, driving
up the Door Peninsula
the way meteorites
from Biela's comet
still move somewhere
in the night sky.
Were we here later
we could see the Andromedids,
faint swishing of the trail
like these maples
burning like the Peshtigo fire,
the one that leapt
the Fox River.
At the old well where
seven threw themselves
to hide from the firestorm
I dream of the water
that once was,
and the mill
now paved over.
I want to write letters
on the back of receipts,
leave them like prayer
dolls in the grass,
let the leaves swarm
over them, forget them
like those who perished.
From where we stand
we can't see the river,
nor the swampland where
old snags stand like scarecrows,
Across the old potato patch
a dust swirl marched
into the highway.
I could lay in the grass.
I too could burn in the sun.
Bloody Back Angel / at/om
Grief has always come to me in the words of a horror story I read online once, where a man’s ribs were pulled open from his spine, exposing his bloody back like angels wings,
and maybe it is because I was never able to see angels as anything more than dead people,
but when I grieve I do so with a scalpel and a saw, I do it with a cry that makes others ears bleed, I do it to the sound of bones breaking,
I refuse to do it quietly.
You are gone,
you are still gone,
and I am still bleeding.
I just wish I was doing
so with my bones pulled open,
my bloody backed angel
DocuSonnet / Ellen Ferguson
When children make a movie, it's not art.
A fading theater cannot be their muse.
They star in their school’s play, they land a part
That’s the artistic role they get to choose.
In filming for an audience our loss
Of local cinema not-paradise
They overstep the lines drawn in mind's moss
We've relinquished the sticky floor to mice.
Maplewood is now front-row anarchy.
Neighbors yawn, "Huh? Is it that big a deal?"
Don't inmates run asylums recklessly?
When children tell the story, it's not real.
IF they make one more film about our town
They’ll get no popcorn even when they’re grown.
Wanting the new / Brett Gastineau
I freedom from my chronology,
ignorance of my remembrances,
cleaned of the silences from the myths I created.
I want new bones, so I can be happy with my nothing.
I’ll glory in new flesh, being the meat.
My new body welcoming the effortless air
and containing a volley of heartbeats.
My self bending toward a sun-sweetened time to come.
A body is the story that makes us come true.
A body dreams the reality of our expectations.
Please, bones, let me splendor beyond the rain
and break from a new mouth.
I want to know how grateful feels again.
Subsuperconscious / Joy Johnson
Subsuperconscious
self grows liquid silver feet
and runs to be me.
Recipe / Nicoletta LaMarca-Sacco
ragù alla bolognese
ground beef leaves its juices in the pan
seasoned bed of sizzle
wine, tomato, milk
I always have to look up
the order of liquid additions
there’s trinity
nutmeg, freshly grated
& if you’re lucky
fresh tagliatelle
to sauce
yes, sauce is a verb
UNTITLED 10/10 / H.T. Reynolds
for he shall live whose name is named
—Isis, in James George Frazer’s
The Golden Bough
do not tell her
your name
the harm she
tucks in your back
pocket unzipping
the rain along
the sky’s corroded
edges inviting gaps
into your veins
like snakebites—
a push her venom
a murmuration
pouring to the back
rooms, behind
your eyelids
within that cavity
you hide in
mouth stitched
refusing to give her
what she wants
Circles of Water / Gabriel Phillips
Calm spikes of car silence.
Frogs that gaze at flies. Flies,
but covered in chocolate.
When walls are wet
there is forgiveness
the walls are wet
there is no forgiveness.
How does rubbish bloom
from seeds of waste
which climb in and out
of water, refusing
to pour.
There are leopards
in the driveway
eating rosemary
as if never being shot.
And stones
that remember themselves
as pebbles. Then a touch
which is merciful
under the microscope.
Then the organizing of wind
from smallest to hateful
under the hurricane eye,
which sees your hurt face
as I stab myself with
my own umbrella.
Will you hurt me
as I hurt you?
My paper boat
and the crowd
of water.
My fingers breaking
the rippled surface
waiting, for my turn to cry.
men speak in secret / Colin Sturdevant
To their wives
Who are oars
Into their pillows
At late night
Song of sobbing
All among sons
