Photograph at 14 / Katerina Canyon
Hair chopped short by nerves,
styled by no one,
body—lanky,
eyes—cut hard,
green band uniform.
Kids called me
Jolly Green Giant.
Long black bass clarinet
in my hands
Musical notes dance
from my fingers
and float into the
desert air
between my depression
and thoughts of
jumping off the bus
at high speed.
I rarely smiled.
My lips often bit hard
around my mouthpiece.
I blew my instrument
loud enough to drown out
Insults—magic.
Baby Elephant Walk was
my jam.
God bless Henry Mancini.
Happiness hid between
the lines on quarter notes
and eighths.
There’s an incantation
in the keys when you strike
them right.
The sickly, gawky nerd
of a girl could play
a badass woodwind.
I can’t believe
I was ashamed of that photo.
Dreaming at Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, WI / Sam Calhoun
The whole sky one day
would open, and a tree
pulled taut like a slingshot,
long condensation trails
migrating north would echo
my breath far beyond
any mountains.
Deep in the marsh we ebbed
along the boardwalk catching
webs, fishing spiders anchored
like balloons before drifting
like years we lost as kids
to the sky, our dreams
tucked like talismans
to every meteor.
I want to bless
every moment here,
drift with the coontail
sleepwalking like memories
past the ever dwindling
waters of youth, cattails
dancing like candle flame.
For Miss Wefers / at/om
I think we both know I am no longer built for my Catholic school upbringing, but something that has always stuck with me is the saints.
The people who we could know and touch and love, who embodied the tangible teachings of God.
A title given only after somebody dies.
When I was in sixth grade I already feared your age, worried I would be within your last classes before your retirement but you taught another twenty years after I was gone.
Your bell collection probably sitting soundly on your desk, your competitive Jeapordy games causing students to leap with joy in the classroom, with the Liberty’s Kids theme ringing in the halls.
I am so happy you saw a lonely sixth grader, obsessed with a historical cartoon, and listened when I told you it was my favorite.
I am so happy you saw a lonely sixth grader and introduced me to a new student who became my best friend for the next decade.
So happy you saw a little sixth grade friend group form and did all you could to keep us together. Twenty years later we still talk, we still share stories, and we all miss you so much.
I am so happy that in your forty years of sharing your wisdom you sent hundreds of kids like me into the world knowing somebody cared about us.
The last time we talked was last autumn, you called me the name I picked a few years ago, never bound me to the one you knew me by.
Because for twenty years you kept knowing me.
And with a lifetime of incomplete assignments, failed classes, and more detentions than I could count,
A few of which were yes, from you.
I was more than just a grade,
and you were more than just a teacher.
You were a saint.
Vaso Vagal Vegas Syncope, a Villanelle / Ellen Ferguson
Bookstore bombshell Martha fell today
Bronxville ladies suddenly abuzz
Vaso vagal Vegas syncope
The news hit Clementine worst, the ladies say
Landing like Vegas on Claudia because
Bookstore bombshell Martha fell today
Claudia’s cardiac arrest hit late in May
“It rounds up to June!” – oh sure it does
Vaso vagal Vegas syncope
“It’s our pretend honeymoon!” It was Monday.
Alone in Jersey, Claudia, like she was…
Bookstore bombshell Martha fell today
Clementine, Claudia’s Mom, had to listen all day
To Claudia, reliving her own fall, her hus-
Vaso vagal Vegas syncope
“Moms suffer till they die” was Clementine’s way
Of saying you were always married to us!
Bookstore bombshell Martha fell today
Vaso vagal Vegas syncope
Night thoughts / Brett Gastineau
At midnight I fly once more,
not upon the wing of a bird,
but astride the dark wood of my father’s coffin.
My father sleeps inside, wrapped in shadow.
This silent vessel crosses the invisible tides.
Above us, the stars are thick and smeared,
like greasy oil lamps weeping over a kitchen table,
shimmering through a film of solitude.
I remember the walls of my childhood,
the old paper where silent faces lived and breathed—
strange, twisted figures with long, accusing noses
and brows furrowed deep,
their cheeks swelled like trumpet players blowing
that sudden, untamed happiness that only
jazz and the heartbroken know.
Where are those players now, those swollen figures
that flowered from the walls?
They have put down their brass into a well;
they have surrendered their golden breath.
The night has swallowed them in its great green mouth.
Yet here I ride, through the vast and star-choked sky,
carrying the quiet weight of my father into the wind.
Let the world sleep.
I am flying and the music of those forgotten trumpets
echoes softly inside my blood.
Delinquent / Joy Johnson
Venus, made of Love and close-by twin,
On whom I consternate each day, forlorn,
She wears an atmosphere for blanket warm
And shelters naught but stone in her storm's wind.
'Tis true her light is bright both eve and morn,
But seen from Earth where life can recognize
Her star-like form that wanders through ski's barn
So we can write to her poetic sighs.
Lurking under every pretty word is,
Pernicious, truth of our sibling stillborn
And how close she is to Earth's own verges:
But unresponsive to our no return.
No monument can endure forever,
But my faith's in Nature -- that She'll long term.
SPLIT PEA SOUP / H.T. Reynolds
after the Great Smog
of December 1952
twelve thousand people died
when the thick viscous breath
left the throat of the mine
the shaft of a baron’s cigar
holding the night captive
in its baleful glow
they prepared the cauldron
beneath the smokestacks
collected the husks like cairns
added in the remnants of pork
from an expired shoulder
exchanged for a pound of tea
nobody went outside
while the soup simmered
stirred by death’s cold finger
Affordable Housing / Gabriel Phillips
And with that they were off to bed
a clang of their forks on blackest china.
Beds are rolling closet darkness.
Kicking webs from walls, loosening
the seventy-five-year mortar. Cracks
they can snuggle into.
What would whispering do, what
do people do to(for) whispers? What
kind of person throws a bed
without pretending to be an animal?
I don’t doubt the scurry
of light or the child’s bubble
that shapes itself as a hidden
reptile, which shivers.
I don’t doubt it. Though
I doubt I could eat another bite
from the surface of the table. Excuse
me. The bed is hungry
and darkness ruins after midnight.
