October - Poem 16
Fountainhead / Katerina Canyon
Hearts crack.
The admirer and her
soap operas orchestrate
in the center of judgment.
Cursing.
I neglect the animals of summer—
leave off their gospel
to bleach the sky milky
with death
while outside the intimate
centers of copulation.
The animals of sunset
are sewing their own
fountainheads out of
sheets of love.
When I am surrounded
away from different
occasions
without the white sky,
water,
I break
my tomorrows,
and impotence is
silent
hate at work.
Satiated does not mean always
or crowded.
When I am famous,
I will hope again.
An Open Road (The Road Home) / Sam Calhoun
It's the tipped cooler,
highway rushing
like cool water
away from this,
nothing left but bones
of the trip rattling
like the log jammed
dam behind us,
the sun rising
like a coda,
every tree whispering
echoing highways
every motor running
like wind is meaningless,
every wave to shore
passing into dark earth,
the white knuckled drive,
my fingers gibbous moons
waiting like worry stones
for the night.
Two Skulled Elk / at/om
I am a bull elk, antlers intwined
rivals skull hanging in front of my
sobering eyes, reminder
this world is cruel and so
I must be as well.
Standing tall, King
of the forest
I never
was a
fawn.
Minimundus / Ellen Ferguson
Build me a minimundus
Klagenfurt my head
Lake Wörtherseeing among us
Wake to my unknown bread
Out back by Mahler’s cabin
In the dense Austrian wood
Solve me like a problem
Lift me like a mood
Klagenfurt’s a bestial town
Terrifying holidays
Krampuslauf is all around
winding, wild ways –
But the minimundus in my mind
Is stranger than the Klagenkind.
Untitled / Brett Gastineau
The sky is what the dead woman expelled from her mouth,
a twilight that never turns to night.
My mind does monster me.
And she is the beast ever stalking me in this dream.
Her eyes opaline—a milk glass.
A faint dusting of blue around her mouth.
Her skin a brutal brilliance against the vague landscape.
And she is getting closer.
The bees in my stomach have stilled.
And I am sluggish, slowing, stopped.
The struggle has slipped away from me.
Here I am, the dead woman clinging to me.
Her weary lips kiss me obstinately.
Her hands slice me; she is frantic in this act.
My flesh opens to her easily as my dying begins.
My wounds leak in silence.
My blood is silent and dripping from my finger too.
I am dislodged from myself, looking back at myself.
My gaze, like hers, is already lost.
Pup’s First Birthday / Nicoletta LaMarca-Sacco
My first dog ever.
Name: Pupcake. Alternate names: Puppaccino, the Pupster, Canuzzo, & Smalls.
8 pounds of chaotic unresolved anger. Fangs and fur.
On his first birthday, we ran down to Tractor Supply and got him a plate of turducken. He placed his front paws on either side of the dog dish and menaced us with growls till every bite and every drop of gravy was safely saved aside in his tummy. Even when our clothes rustled gently as we sang happy birthday like silly humans, he startled and growled. And he kept it up for 15 more years.
Died last October, three months after turning 16.
POLY DOUBLE DURN / H.T. Reynolds
shout out to Ellen Ferguson for introducing me to her
abecedarian double burning haibun—I just had to try it!
continued
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.
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.
Captive / Gabriel Phillips
Cat
some source
of dribbled light
Sundrunk
to death
around bent fabric
Denim
then smiles
length of rope
Hangs
quick frost
frozen over desire
Wants
to purr
carpet of sight
Eye
where iris
stabs both nights
Mare
which manes
wheat then pain
I
am caught
red and slave
The unhoused youth I gather with beneath a steeple / Colin Sturdevant
Tonight, I heard a young man
Sing of birds together and not
Together, tethered by his vocals
In a Vietnamese ballad.
Tonight, I witnessed a forest
among you that felt it didn’t
Belong in the body it wore
What needles that felt foreign,
My children cast out to the road.
How dysmorphed your journey
to grow into a glove
that doesn’t quite fit right.
Tonight, I remove the hummingbird
off my neck & chain smoke brush
to bring you luck
I hope the fumes rise as a song
To some heaven of some kind
Where your wishes will be heard
like a foreign-to-me song
All songs sung in solemn
are not strange bodied to any
of us tonight. Not even the hummingbird
I give up to loosen fortune for others
