October - Poem 15
Ides of October / Katerina Canyon
Chase the stubborn bloom
butterfly smooth-eyed bush brown or dark
grass brown. The darkness
you welcome
found
floating into your classroom
lighting innocent wings
that flutter and float
in your humid air.
Your kipas souvenir opens
in a red-hot flicker
while the imbued notes
hover and penetrate
through rigid desks without
repercussion.
You do not sing.
You do not flap your arms.
Your hands clasp
between tightened fingers.
Keeping
closed
in the season of unmooring,
I chant with the wind
breathing
razing again.
You do not explain.
You do not conceal.
After a Summer Shower / Sam Calhoun
How quick the cardinal
returns to song, slips
to feeder, rain feeling
it’s way listing to earth—
Just a tuft of wind now,
the sun as if only waking,
touching grass himself
across a lone marigold bloom—
Bees breaking loose from limp
night blooming cereus,
petals shuffling like clothes
forgotten on lines—
Sob Story / at/om
(I) worked somewhere labelled “essential”
most of my coworkers were laid off and
were paid more to be at home with their
loved ones than I was to keep going.
I lived in a small home of people who were
as nervous as I (was) and I was afraid to leave it,
I felt guilty when I would come home, change
clothes and disinfect the ones I had stripped off.
I would shower and go right to my (isolated) room.
They didn’t make me do this, but the unease
of looking at other people then, when every
step (I) took already (felt so) unwanted it was best.
I would go for drives on Saturday mornings in the
Honda Accord I had for years, and these were our
best days and these were our last days and God,
driving (alone) through the mountain region with an
energy drink, a pack of cigarettes, and a sad playlist.
Those were the days I learned of my Mamaw’s dying
in a phone call. They were the days (I had nobody) to hold me.
I got addicted to watching Monk,
I think he made it all feel alright.
(I think) if I was asked how it felt to live like that I would
talk about how that Honda accord, all those cigarettes
and energy drinks, all of those hours or days long tv benders
acting like (the only person) I could see myself (in). They were
(my support system) that saw me through a time I can’t talk about.
Nobody wants to hear about 2020 anymore,
and I never (was) one of those anti-mask conspiracy creeps,
and I think now I should probably be a little more
conscious than I am. Maybe I should go back and be
a little more like (Mr. Monk), he always made me feel right
I am still waiting for those big thanks for essential workers,
I am still waiting to hear I did a good job.
Leslie from Michigan pulls away: a villanelle / Ellen Ferguson
As part of a study on impulse control here
This year the team studied children aged ten
Some boys, some girls. The findings were clear.
We learned lessons galore from Leslie; in fear
she pulled away as she started to leave, when
As part of a study on impulse control here
Beth left for Anchorage to research brown bears
After our marriages, we were tired of men.
Some boys, some girls. The findings were clear.
One was a highflier who liked to pour beer
On all of our hearts, then burn them again
As part of a study on impulse control here
Once we posed as Angels, Charlie’s. Mere
Fire escapes could not stop us again.
Some boys, some girls. The findings were clear.
Last spied playing a voice on a wire.
Lord those days. Lunch with two real friends.
As part of a study on impulse control here
Some boys, some girls. The findings were clear.
Unfolding / Brett Gastineau
From the congregation a weepy conjuring,
words of faith practiced pretty,
prayer remnants on the wind.
The pair before them playing at bride and groom
they hoped would convert sorrow into music.
Each as pale as soap.
In their eyes a look that suggested
the other was the answer to the homesickness they suffered.
At the alter was a rusty sign with the word LOVE printed in box letters.
In the pews the mothers rest their sheltering hands on their children’s shoulders.
The old men fingered the tarot cards in their suit pockets
and wished they could be reaped.
The groom whose heart somersaulted was overwhelmed by his bride’s
gleaming and wanted nothing more than to crawl beneath her veil.
He looked up into the sky and recognized that the time for rain had arrived.
Afterward there would be the long walk absent of prying eyes to watch them.
The evenings would spread like shadows and they would be left
to share in the common wreckage of it all.
Belle Dame / Joy Johnson
"I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful -- a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild." -- Keats
The lady whom I did espy
With haunches of a watery hue
Was none other than our Mother:
Earth, readily in view.
She is festooned in garlands green,
Bracelets of all the colours,
And looks on all with love each day:
To wit, air smothered!
Her language is not strange to me
Or to a one who'd listen close,
And between the rustlings of spring leaves
I hear her gasp.
This vernal day the buds burst forth
Again so as to say, "… go on …"
But still we loiter deaf and blind,
Not honoring our home.
We adored her for a while, so fresh;
Now we do presume o'ermuch:
She falters in the waves that crest
Yet bears no grudge.
We meet her tears in rising seas --
Her teardrops are glaciers that calve.
She moans as one by one they fall:
Love's cry and badge.
By her salty kisses, numbered
Many more than four, we've slept.
End of plenty, now our perfidy--
Regard her new aspect.
So, says the world, that what begins
Will also find its end. This dream
We'll waken from and be surround
By our legacy.
In between start and end, splendor
Invaluable and … cargo
Of awful pain -- she holds it all.
(Much: man-made sorrow)
Might Art add beauty to the ache
We must endure whilst laboring
To mother souls to see anew
And wakening.
Ofttimes find me alone and pale
And turning pages of Palgrave
Wondering for ways to save us
From a climax grave.
Long indeed she's shown us mercy
Though it is said she’s us enthralled.
But come what will, no matter scores,
Death-pale we'll all.
mylar balloon / Nicoletta LaMarca-Sacco
Wonder what the celebration was?
Melancholy mylar balloon twists crushed and creased over a wire above my head. It moves only when two birds flap and jiggle the wire.
Fewer people use helium balloons. They’re dinosaurs like glitter. Many people celebrate with soap bubbles instead.
Eeyore would love this one. No more rice thrown at brides because birds can eat the rice and die. Confetti is better for brides anyway. Hard to imagine when the weather churn forces that mylar balloon to the ground that its microfibers might find their way into the water we drink.
POLY— / H.T. Reynolds
shout out to Ellen Ferguson for introducing me to her
abecedarian double burning haibun—I just had to try it!
I. AKA Duality
father wore many
faces, was many things, but
my father is gone
Addict—you birthed the sinner from sand, embalmed him thoroughly until
Beads of acrid sweat coagulated along his skin, pulsed from his veins with every
Caliber of self fading alongside dream, alongside singeing bone dissolving to ash
Dispersed like a breath, that crystal in his back pocket, the baby in the basin
Ether, dissolving into stars—that luster corroding that cinnamon morning
Fragmented into shards—a gasping raven—a decomposing body like
Gasoline vapor hollowing him out—deflagrated by the palm of a white-handed
Hierarchy. But you, father, looked upon your child, devoured him like an
Inhalant, a whippet reserved for when the paint can becomes empty, the pipe
jagged shards of glass piled up like albums vibrating through a
Kinetic night laced with ghosts strung up by gossamer nooses—
Lines like wisps of smoke recoiling from an open mouth, a gaping space
Malformed by a lover’s lurid palm, his loaded tongue cocked and trained
Nuclear. Father, you’re flaring at each crumbling edge, exposing your
Organic charm tinged with your hoarded stories—myths forced upon us like
Pills deposited down our throats while you committed to our decline
quietly stripping away the tethers we inherited. We were
Resistant to smiling, to joy found in days with an untempered sun, a
Semantic program executing decades later, at the mall, the salon, at
Therapy with your presence stitched to me like a shadow—disobedient and
unruly floating through Neverland waiting for morning’s
Variant, that mythical silver liner that whisks father, his bottles, his appetite away.
Word is he was found beneath his newspaper stacks, that the bottles kept his
xanthic skin, his matching liver, the rings around his eyes
yearning to consume him like Charon’s obol
zipping the body bag closed, the cause of death unremarkable.
(continued…)
Cologne / Gabriel Phillips
Tragedy, tragedy
what colors are the colors of tragedy?
I paint this woman over sleep,
dreams are terrible painters.
I paint her with water from boiling puddles.
I wait.
I poke her dimples with fresh torn thorns.
I wait.
I smear her flesh with a parliament of owls.
I wait.
My wife, my wife
my fallen angel of thorns.
How she hated the woman
how she left the attic window open
how she tested her broken wings
how she doesn't blink at the gnashing stars...
I wail for the woman to take me.
She moves.
I lumber towards her hither.
She moves.
I let her pull me closer.
She moved.
She doesn’t smile
because he didn’t paint one.
She hushed his eyes
with a couple of faces.
Then left him,
beside her silhouette.
“Tragedy, tragedy
what colors should I smear on his tragedy?”
Omens / Colin Sturdevant
were something I believed in
before I became godless
if you were to prick my eye
as I sleep, blackbirds would swell
& breach as never before heard music
