October - Poem 18
A Rose Has Thorns / Katerina Canyon
I have a garland
whose leaves are tinged
at every turn but agitation.
My marigolds have
bright orange petals,
but cannot sit still
beside eucalyptus,
and I am exhausted
beyond skill.
At Baileys Harbor Boreal Forest State Natural Area / Sam Calhoun
On the shore mist
hung from grass
like bellflowers,
waves ringing
a rhythm from ships
too far to see,
my footprints
echoing highways
of sanderling prints,
our shadows
like sundials
darting home.
I want to wait,
let the water
catch my feet
like driftwood,
yellow here
in the sun,
let me slip
into the nothingness
that comes with the cold,
where the tamarack
turn to torches,
and fail,
I too, will fail.
I too will light the world,
and move on.
Mortality / at/om
One morning I read an obituary for another friend I so dearly loved,
I remember a woman a few years older than me said
“This means you’re growing up.”
Growing up queer and mentally ill means your friend group
comes with a high mortality rate.
What a wonder it is to see someone you love grow old,
how beautiful it must be to see somebody die old and healthy and happy.
I don’t know if I’ve seen it yet, but I imagine it’s pretty nice.
Wickelfisch / Ellen Ferguson
“Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni
The Mississippi River rolled through town
When you came home for lunch
From the funeral parlor to call an old flame. Every day.
Meanwhile, your roommate ruminated whether Shelley,
In “Mont Blanc,” described the Arve, a tributary of the Rhône, or
Power that resembled the Arve, perhaps Holy.
Years later you and your roommate would have a child.
Those two would float down the Rhône, wearing Wickelfisch.
At no time during the preceding would anyone call your roommate
The Sweetest of Peas, prompting her to ask, “Am I the sweetest of
all possible peas, or just the sweetest of peas yet encountered?”
That had already happened.
What remains after these occurrences:
untethered waves of thought, no
Wickelfisch anywhere, just the rivers bearing down.
Molecule of our last goodbye / Brett Gastineau
Who can tell me the river’s original name
before stone captured the sound of snow
before our sorrow became a figure of speech?
The body is capable of storing memories—
a few bright naming words—much like
the sudden spark where water strikes the root.
Between your breathing and the silence
of the bank, a single green syllable suspends:
not a word, but the motion of light
undoing its own shadow.
We live forever in our wounds.
Did we ever think of the consciousness of trees or
their reflection in the river? Did we ever pause
to wonder if there was an etiquette to their dying?
The river flows inside the memory of the dry bed,
telling us that time is not a line—
time is the shape of glass.
Silence becomes our most holy text
Light becomes a word for knowledge.
An instant folds upon itself,
endless, like water entering water.
S.W.A.K. / Joy Johnson
At infinity is the aquamarine
line: across it beings like mermaids stretch
to be between worlds. Frogs legs subtend.
That between-beings die means all’s not fine.
Utter darkness: deep sea vents are the place
the life-giving water and fire conspire.
Everywhere else glows the radioactive
radiance of a half life: man has made
arrowheads and he naps skins, partakes of the
wholeness of a fire after a flood in
flour.
Between-beings exist to evanesce.
Wake to freedom, comrades -- flags are not this! --
the shared fate of living marginally.
Don’t fiddle. Get ready,
get ready to die.
Count in magic sevens, still written on
every face is fate. The goddess inhabits
the underworld from whence she seals deals with
a kiss ... employs an intelligence sublime.
Make no mistake: a drowned stone is fine.
A WINTER SOWING / H.T. Reynolds
nothing blooms below a February snow
but the primrose, the snowdrops
around the hellebores moodily sulking
like witch hazel ensnaring each crocus cup
with their slender arms like ten monsters
erupting from the sun—from a little boy’s
closet, the handle chewed off by a crocodile,
its leathered hands like dragonhide, its breath
scorching like geyser steam, go to sleep,
and he did
but nothing blooms below a February snow
this mound of dirt freshly returned
with a sleeping body, a box,
a chiseled rock with his name
carved out like his cheekbones
his heart,
pieces of lung
still pretending
they enjoyed working
he’s careful now
with his ghost steps
avoiding the puddled rain
held atop his grave like soup,
an offering—a holy water font
abandoned—dirtied, forgotten
like his shoes,
nobody will see
beneath the casket lid
—closed
in the dark
his own words a reverberation
in the space between blades of grass
that gap like a mattress—
they are a waste
of money and there’s no reason to,
so I’ll just buy my own flowers—
He perches like a raven
beneath the cemetery yew
watches each season pass
‘til he’s purchased his own flowers—
Sun and the Labor Underneath / Gabriel Phillips
We just danced on the top of my hair
after inventing the speed wagon.
Keeping our legs restless
now has double advantage.
1. Horse. 2. A place for horse to rest.
Looks like oak isn’t the death of us
after all. It’s cedar.
When I laid my hand on a blank
sheet of paper, someone started over
with a brush this time. No one
in particular was around us.
Not even Pledger. Always leaning
against the blue barn to pick
the paint off of my shoulders.
My hat had a hole in it
where the birds would lay their eggs,
nest of my hair. They know this
because I was once a tree.
Now I am a speed wagon.
