October - Poem 20

Funk / Katerina Canyon

My memory says you will empty

me into the drumbeat of us.

We are so  far apart

at the back field

that a twitchy horse could

have emptied its shape.

My memory says you must not break

the melody as we shape the wind.

We have not known one another

that well in joy.

It holds me when you listen.

No one you were with

was quite so lost

that I will recall this and

remind you at length.

I am out of my own mind

which is not certainly out

of the sky.

I cannot turn on my head

without noting some time

you estranged my sun.

Run through the field, head

pounding and carving my bass.

I don’t hope you will lose your music.

At the most

I hope some of the empty, shapeless

notes that carve you

run after the treble outside you

whole inside the measure—

one for each sky.

On The Rock River  /  Sam Calhoun

See them dance on the Rock River, 
ghosts of the Sauk in fog
where every sandhill 
knows their song.  

They perch on boulders
like trivets keeping 
them from the cold
oven of earth,

catch fish in the pools beneath 
the Black Hawk statue,
warm bowls in the sun,
eyes mirrored like stars,

see how every twig 
tangled with detritus
from every flood 
waves like flags,

how the fish, captive, 
flash into morning,
scales listing every
color of the rainbow. 

Cinquain for the Rotten Apple   /  at/om

Apple: 

the smell dances 

in the hairs of your beard 

I am far too bitter a fruit, 

tainted

I Can’t I’m Grading Papers Until I Die  /  Ellen Ferguson

A rough angel on our mantel

Left a small sign in her dust:

“I Can’t I’m Grading Papers Until I Die,”

the sign said.

Shelley noted as we know,

sticking knowledge on our minds,

that the knowledge that we know is

“Like a lichen on a rock.”[1]

This, our embedded epigraph

Our framed epigraph, stuck epigraph

Stuck like a lichen, like a lichen on a rock.

[1] Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, but also, consider whether it was worth it, or as T.S. Eliot asked in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,

“And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me”

[1] Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, but also, consider whether it was worth it, or as T.S. Eliot asked in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, “And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me”

Alchemy /  Brett Gastineau

You wander ways I do not understand,

practicing a voodoo that turns the sky to bone.

Is it a fearsome grace, born of stone,

you bring from far that draws you?

Do you argue with spirits

to release their memory-sickness

and the butterflies of their broken dreams?

They are punished by an absence

that fills every vein

binding phantom sinew

to forgotten muscle.

They are marred by the mechanics of pain

that disturb their rest inside their grave.

Yet as you face them, their exquisite hurt pours into your hands.

Missives  /  Joy Johnson

Picture to be wronged by one not be 'scaped;
A daughter and her mother mayhap or
Mother Earth and the species will doom. 

When every letter is a lie or tries
To explain the one before that impugned,
What way t'wards the truth can be constitute?

Look a daisy in its eye to espy
(No daisy can you find, you say?  Us scourge)
The potency of this world to bring forth. 

Believe me, now's the time for amends and
Time there is though more and more thinly 
Each and every.  Write to future:  "existence".

ACCLIMATING TO THE DARK /  H.T. Reynolds

it’s like remembering

the terrain of your body

how far my arm could bend

before becoming yours

how you’d lean into it—

like you’ve always been there

capable of seeing everything

The Immortal Nine To Five /  Gabriel Phillips

Gabriel let a puppet sink into the Coosa.

Gabriel painted the bridge purple.

He can hold bags up to light

to tell if insides are lonely.

Gabriel predates the dinosaurs

by walking with fish.

He doesn’t believe in water

and swims when he has to.

Gabriel wakes up on time.

Gabriel borrows the soul of Pluto.

He doesn’t know what people wait for

then leaves the metal chair outside.

Gabriel doesn’t stop sitting,

building his home inside the moth.

He is the purple grape

and the clubbed foot that smashes it.

Gabriel was a golden heifer.

Gabriel was the breath of many people.

He cannot find socks

then the left shoe is missing.

Gabriel is quiet

unless he is waiting.

He holds himself up to the light…

Gabriel moves his mouth without making a sound.

drowning  / Colin Sturdevant

our own history whitened out & washed

all I know is a quarter or third of truth

our ancestors didn’t come by wooden boat

but left ports with names like Messina

holding our breath for what seemed like two weeks

cradled in steel floating lungs, pow’r’d by breath

all to make to Ellis submerged below deck

how to finally come up and inhale promise

and be seen out of that black, roasted as

immigrant. as being. as bean. as hardened

as black water, what keeps one going

in the night, in the day, like a lark

to crown a new land, sing, in words

unheard to English speaking ears