October - Poem 21

Can a Name Predict the Future / Katerina Canyon

Now that the newborn

with the stark black hair

and blue eyes has been named,

what can we predict of his future?

Is the die cast by his name?

Large,

unique,

royal.

A name to live up to.

Dark, imposing,

not grim,

but waiting to be proven—

a great name.

Will he be great?

Can he see how many people

weighed their souls on his name?

He seems to be a peaceful child.

His name is a conqueror of nations.

Let’s hope that he is a mender of hearts.

Untitled After A Storm   /  Sam Calhoun

Then it was over—
nothing but the click
calls of hummingbirds,
their dizzying soirée, 

the drip of rain from 
string light globes 
into wind blown
plant saucers, 

the pirouette of petunia 
blooms onto the deck, 
loose canna hanging 
like wet clothes, 

crape myrtle strewn 
like firecracker casings 
after the celebration, 
no rainbow, no goodbye,

and my heart tugged 
to the far field, watching 
robins, stop, stepping forward, 
stopping again. 

Two Big Dogs   /  at/om

Heavy breath sounds from 

two giant dogs have been 

my lullaby this week, and I 

have been trying to share 

a bed with these great behemoths 

which is to say I have been 

folding myself into absurd angles 

so these beasts can sleep most 

comfortably. My back hurts when 

I wake in the mornings

but today they let me sleep a half 

hour past their usual breakfast time. 

It’s been days since their parents were 

home and I wonder if this big middle 

of nowhere house

has been as scary to them as it has been to me. 

I am sharing a bed with two great big dogs, 

and I am glad for their deep heavy breaths 

lulling me to sleep. 

I am glad for the company, and I am glad to 

be breaking my back for creatures that 

won’t let me spend a night alone and afraid.

Hypervigilance  /  Ellen Ferguson

Peanut Butter & Mary hang around like

Frank O’Hara used to/funny a

couple would persist like that, nature

of the beast --                 coming home

4:50 saw this:

closed door

wild hair and softer smile, thought this:

it’s time

thought, money in the bank, good timing like he had.

thought, we know how to do this, park place bagels for

shiva, thought: get grades in get grades in, thought

Peanut Butter & Mary had friends, they had the

Dark, the cave where they said “who can write the

Scariest story, Mary wins!” thought, “Power in

Likeness of the Arve,” PB wins this round, thought

Wickelfisch, thought save me, thought river, yet –

Turkey loaf for lovers once again, Duraflame crackling,

Mary wins this round.

From one to another /  Brett Gastineau

From one twilight to another, mouth to mouth,

our tongues taste like salt and late October.

We sink into the abyss of the bedroom,

the chord’s of Page’s guitar strum the floorboards,

the beat a second heart matching

the persistent rhythm of our hips.

For hours, the silence in the room had

been woven tight—

a stiff, folded cloth—but now it splits open,

pronouncing itself aloud, expansive,

wet with our breathing.

Where did this come from?

From where no one knows,

before we were born, before we ever touched,

we were already companions in this fierce hour.

Let the moon bark outside the window like an irritated dog.

Let it sting our eyes with its cold, yellow light

which fills the room with the metallic smell of night.

The weavers have grown silent.

Their solemn pilgrimage along the dust

of old trails is over—back when joy was just a thin suspicion,

stunted, and waiting to bloom.

Let us abandon their pale sorrow.

We are the disciples of tree and stone now

and the tiny, stubborn flower opening in the night.

We are subjects of this urgent, flesh-bound light.

We are creators of new verbs, mouth to mouth,

fulfilling whatever is radiant, heavy, and never-ending.

The evening comes down and we refuse to stop.

The Inventory of Good-bye  /  Joy Johnson

To know a last time of drinking some wine 

that happened just past nine one evening 

years ago;  and how about that last fuck

that I groused about but maybe now miss?

A ready good-bye nod I offer to 

that couch I would recline on when time was 

I watched television, or, still working 

on the first degree, benediction was

shunned forever thence (meditation seat

then took up is mostly drainage basin 

gone dry now too).  One by one by twos and 

more, good-byes line up on my brow

to have their poignancy reviewed and scored:

sinusoidally up and down, five stars

to one or even none.  But can I hope 

for a bed of fresh linens when day comes

that I bid farewell to what's closest to

my heart:  my heart, whose death knell will be un-

felt as soon as it's felt, and the line on

my brow dissipates precipitous.  Through. 

What is no longer present   / Nicoletta LaMarca-Sacco

sandbox makes them chase away stray cats

abacuses and boxes filled with misfit toys

graham crackers and milk

babysitting jobs made her feel grown-up

being felt up in a borrowed car

scowled at after curfew

twirl to a tune in the living room

place the LP back in its dustcover

freshman dorm, columns, blonde roommate

space for us to park the rusty chevy

out front as she grasps the picnic basket

filled with hometown treats stuffed in foil

summer jobs just to try them out

summer flings, the same

faraway parent responsibilities

faraway assist her parents as they did for her          

Fig trees thank you to the Carr family LaMarca-Sacco Day 21

leaves’ trefoil shape cover shame

in historic stories & paintings

fruit a teardrop

sweet, plump, seedy

branches appear dead

trimmed, support fruit

a fall treat

humble in the old country

Dad warns, take care

of our figs! & I wonder how long 

I will have with them

silent sentry trees

enough fruit to share when it’s sunny

longing nostalgia when they are gone

in the frigid season

back to welcome spring

THE LAST STORY YOU TOLD ME /  H.T. Reynolds

Tupelo 30/30 Cento Pt. 2 with lines from
Brett Gastineau, Sam Calhoun, Colin Sturdevant,
Joy Johnson, Nicoletta LaMarca-Sacco

before her ghost inhabited this world
before I became godless
each body had a name
that comes with the cold
here, with the lashes of a whisper
practicing voodoo that turns
the sky to bone

Who can tell me the river’s original name
how they seem shallow,
distant, old lives like a weighted net
the shape of glass
an instant folding upon itself

I let the water catch my feet
her language is not strange to me
but she breathes, even broken
there are those who touch a body
and leave it graceful

With this dawn, I am overwhelmed
with its pulse—I thought I’d rather die
whole…

I am afraid of you

 Inez¹, /  Gabriel Phillips

Christmas became a drooping haunted house.

From such an innocent debt.

I heard stars bend from a ripple as a child,

my father told me things were fine. That

the attic was full of blind mice

who could also hear the ripple.

But why? Even mice play and time

is so bright that it isn’t measured

by the sun. Attics shield the light

but the heat escalates. Our attics

have at least one window. Which

we look out once a year.

The mice who aren’t blind

have chosen to burn. They burn

forever. Since their blindness is cold.

But why? If I touch the edge of the pond

I can count up to the final ripple.

But I can’t count, what I can’t see

and sound is measured in heartbeats.

Which is wickedly deceptive.

I dream of answers

I do not have. What I have is

history. Which is a small,

silent thing. I am a mouse.

I have an attic. I do not burn.

It isn’t the ripple,

it is the star who made the ripple.

Christmas is the sound

that attic mice can hear.

When the memory of someone

I’ve never met, sleeps in the light

of every Christmas tree.

¹ Sleeping since 12/25/1938. A star black-holed by a cowardly worm who ate himself. The gift that keeps the pale starlight from fading.