Ziphiidae / Katerina Canyon
Today, my husband told me
there is a whale in the ocean
that humans have never seen.
He was surprised to think
there are things in the world
that we are yet to know.
I think of my depths—
the secrets of me locked away
beyond my memory, and I know
there are treasures within me
no one, not even he, will ever see.
The beak nosed whale is only one mystery
beyond human ingenuity.
You cannot gather a dozen shells
from the shore and claim to know the sea.
There are more layers
to the ocean
than Dante’s inferno.
I have dived a small
measure of its depths.
The first layer is green—
where you find algae and air.
The second is clear
where most creatures like to live.
Then it is blue
where man’s ambitions perish.
Shipwrecks reside in blue.
Beyond blue is black.
It is where the true survivors thrive.
Effigies / Sam Calhoun
Raindrops
like effigies,
my fingers spin
through summer webs.
Am I a loom
unweaving this fog
braided through fire?
Not Invited: A Jeopardy Poem / Ellen Ferguson
Settled down / Brett Gastineau
They sit where the porch light dies into dusk,
a porcelain mug balanced between them,
wide and double-handled in its steaming quiet.
The coffee is dark, almost black, reflecting a
small, distorted window of the house behind,
and two thumbs meeting at the rim—
one slightly arthritic, the other with its dark freckle.
The floorboards grayed and
warped in thin ridges that catch the heels.
They don’t talk of forty years, or five;
the weather has taken that away.
Instead they watch a single wasp drag its legs
across the zinc table.
One sips, then hands it off.
The exchange casual.
A slight ring of condensation leaves
its stamp upon the armrest,
where all their former evenings have settled down,
unspectacular and warm.
Jahez / Joy Johnson
Bejeezus, never had that jacuzzi,
did I? Forewent the bizjet, now bluesy,
so bluesy; enlisted as a planet
janizary instead; subjectivized
the biome, imbued with mind, rectified.
My katzenjammer merest blip, muzjik
of emotion in the jazz concerto
that jargonizes the goings-on
on pale blue dot, the jizz that signifies
Life.
Jeez, how dare I not "econ"omize
all aspects of existence, heedless to toll?
Ah, Jezebel, menace us with jezail,
jeopardize continuation, His zeal
replacing odes on odes on poems on.
W.C. or bathroom / Nicoletta LaMarca-Sacco
water closet is English for rest room in Italy
in America, crocheted toilet tissue cozy
made me wonder why we had to keep corrente
from making the roll catch cold?
I blow raspberries under the faucet
because Nonna scrubs at my face &
get lather inside my nostrils
nearly choke & then relief
satisfied that even my brain was clean
she maneuvered the faucet and towel
rubbed dry my ears and neck
declared gioia mia! My joy!
I have a photo
no, video of the big scrub from Nonna
burned into my mind like tasty
charred sweet pepper from her stove
CHRYSOPOEIA / H.T. Reynolds
…to distill so specific a form from a moment
of chaos…
—Dr. Manhattan, Watchmen (2009)
My older brother always resembled our grandfather more than our father. There’s a photograph with the two of us as little boys next to our pap on some couch in some living room and he has his arm around my shoulder and I’m smirking as I drop some piece of food into my mouth, staring off beyond the camera at God only knows what, and my milk-white skin floats against his darker complexion, which everyone said he inherited from our father, but I only got our father’s temper, his curly hair, his flame-kissed eyes that could ignite paper with a glance, my blonde-brown hair next to my brother’ obsidian locks. Everyone who looked at the picture said my brother was a spitting image of our pap. He was kind like pap—an arm around his kid brother’s shoulders kind—whereas I took up his space, filled my stomach, then compared my ambition to his kindness and determined he was better as a steppingstone for my escape from the trailer park, a means to join the world of two stories and full fridges, that there was more to life than wrapping yourself in orange for a week out of the year and bringing a head home to stick on the wall to remind us we got to eat that year. I wanted to believe that I was adopted; I was told as much, but then I aged into my father’s reflection —my brother looking nothing like us.
Dropped Moths / Gabriel Phillips
Atlas held the moth by his wings.
Their antennae bridges dead ends
on either side of lost maps.
He thinks of a blanket
carrying its cocoon. Cloaking the sun.
Flickering lights break their own
butterflies. They have separate
graveyards for shadowless things
and the lights keep switching.
Atlas bounced off the light.
He mistakes himself for a snake.
The birds do not eat him.
The birds that remain untie themselves
so that touching the night doesn’t burn them.
Atlas drops the heavens into match light.
new love / Colin Sturdevant
I’ve watched your footprint slowly
Fall by each particulate of beach
Sand from my car dashboard.
How it’s like the ocean not wanting
How it’s like me not wanting
How the Art of forgetting you
Comes with ease after I’ve met another
