September - Poem 2
Coffee / Yael Aldana
Should I have coffee now?
I can’t sleep,
4:43 a.m.
Computer’s blue glow
should I have coffee now?
I put on Rupaul’s All Stars.
should I have coffee now?
my bearded son will wake up in 4 hours.
should I have coffee now?
My relative with dementia
is probably already awake.
I’ll take him to his ultrasound
appointment later.
Morning brings his body’s
remembered practice
too hot tea,
insipid morning shows
It’s the here and now
that’s a problem
slips out of his hand
disappears before it hits
the floor.
He resets, starts again.
and again, and again.
The stray cats in the spare
room are probably awake.
should I have coffee now?
I get up. He’s sitting on
the leather couch
behind too hot tea.
The cats are barking, he says
I’ll get them, I say
I’ll have my coffee now.
I never said I was good / Catherine Bai
Every version of me that has died is a child
my parents loved more than I did.
I threw up in their mouths and they swallowed
I threw darts at their legs and they caught them with their chest
I curled my fingers into a fist and they simply held it, a stone
they cast into the river knowing every current will sink.
Still, they dive headlong—
through their bubbles they tell me to stay on the banks.
They’ll go first, the river says.
They’ll go first.
Tearing Down the Monument / Danielle Boodoo Fortune
If you ask the island,
it will tell you its name
in a thousand different ways
until you no longer need to hear it
because it has already taken root in you
like red mangrove, like vetivier
like your own bones. The island
has named itself over and over again
ever since the beginning, when
limestone first leaned toward the sea
The island still names itself
anew each morning, just like
when the ships came, in tongues
that man could never truly understand.
You cannot discover what you have hurt,
what you have stolen, what you have
never really seen to begin with.
For the swamp sees itself in the heron,
and the oilbird in the mountain’s face.
You do not need to name something
to see it, to walk through it without
leaving loss and rot in your footsteps.
The island belongs to itself.
If you ask, it will tell you that they
only named the shape of a thing
they wanted to believe.
While we learn to see again,
tearing down that which erases us,
the land breathes its own true name
in the chest of each screaming bird
and the language of each crashing wave.
II: Dithyramb for Billy Collins / Kendra Brooks
(in response to his poem Marijuana)
I too swallowed the moon!
Gazing up one lonely night,
I opened wide and took it in,
like a lozenge meant to soothe
the dryness in my throat.
In amazement & comfort
I soon lost track of it on my tongue
And the moon slid right down.
Half choke/half panic
I caught my breath mid-slide
as its roundness almost blocked
my trachea like a lid.
In knowing it was too late
I convinced myself, and those
maybe watching, it was wholly
what I meant to do -swallow the moon!
Thank goodness for the reflux
of a poem fully chewed.
The Joy of Painting / Kimberly Gibson-Tran
I come home to my husband streaming
Bob Ross’ old show. It’s the beginning
of the episode. Bob lifts a giant brush
and swabs the background into painted woods.
Then he steps through. We watch him shape
a seascape. The hues of greens and blues
curdle fantastically into waves. He squiggles
foam into existence. Isn’t it simple? I say,
Couldn’t we do it? Somehow the scene falls
together. Did you know Bob Ross was
a drill sergeant? Khiem asks me. Imagine.
No mistakes, says Bob, his reddish afro blurring
in unremastered history. And the rest of the line—
only happy accidents. Bob tells us to be brave,
drags two black trails down our perfect storm
for palm trees. He’s right. Something was missing.
We didn’t know. How could we know until it was there.
Prism / Yvette Perry
I try my best to be a pane of glass,
transparent, clean of streaks, dust, and smudges.
I try to just be something you look through
to see sky and trees outside your walls, see
people you know—alive, dead, remembered—
make their way to your front door, ring your bell.
I try to keep myself out of your tale.
I tell myself I have two ears and two
eyes but only one mouth for good reason.
I am what you look through to understand,
to think then say aloud that which makes you
confused, or ashamed, or full of fear. But
I can’t be see-through. I’m here, you see. I
absorb your dark, then create a rainbow.
The Evergreen Changes / Amber Wei
Love is not mine
to be bemused
radicals drop
and circadian silence becomes
the reservoir for those atomic nuclei
to be withholden
from nuclear fusion
Forget this silence who I am
to become the boreal forest
who the winter was
because evergreen remained
when snow crept and exited
And titanium is
not unbreakable
but in another universe,
it was isolated
So find me
past the influence of the changing seasons
away from the silence
railway hammers find as
the void
Build towards the directory of habits
so that my voice finds the utopian grove
too heavy and the bird songs
say that patterns are chatter,
blending towards a void too heavy
Beauty becomes magnified
and burdened beyond will
so titanium rust becomes profitable
as all likelihood is lost in the void
Love, what was, is what
the boreal forest becomes
driven from the winter’s change to what
the summer said
every breath it breathed was
