September - Poem 12
Covid / Yael Aldana
April Showers / Catherine Bai
What seems inevitable in winter becomes
impossible in spring, there’s no such
thing as watching a tree slowly
take bloom, it’s something you notice one day
when a child takes the red and white
bracelet in their hand and ties it to a high branch
They drop from their father’s shoulder to the ground
pointing upwards on their tiptoes
It’s not the wet, brittle blossom but his trembling chin
He cries, the sight of magnolia petals, bursting
brown at the edges, is happening
yet hasn’t arrived. My love, my love—
I’ll stand still and the world will turn on its axis.
You’ll find me in wintertime
where nothing grows wild and old.
Lunar Ramblings / Danielle Boodoo Fortune
You mustn’t trust anything, especially not the moon.
When you were twelve it came upon your window like a wordless god
promised you shiploads of stars on a constant sea.
It’s been years. Aren’t you tired now of swallowing storms?
There have been a thousand girls like you. They grow here, in the damp
where only the saddest things can bloom.
Each of them is beautiful, but not one of them can swim.
XII: Dithyramb for Herman Hesse / Kendra Brooks
These trees
with limbs that will never embrace
or run or jump or lose their grace.
These trees
have served long the summer shade
and winter stillness equally in equanimity.
Trees I call mine in spite of their freedom
and longevity. Trees I mark the seasons with
as they come and go.
These trees I call home.
Scarred and broken
Decorated in velvet leaves and tawny twigs
Bearing promising buds and hiding busy roots
These trees
I abandon in the rain and cold
These trees
whose scent I crave and know,
their silent songs play on deep beneath ground,
weighted like icebergs turned upside down.
These trees
color my world, shape my days
remind me to not forget the sky,
These trees
will live on after I die.
MASH / Kimberly Gibson-Tran
I Want to Tell You a Story / Yvette Perry
I want it to be full of hope, but not cliched.
I want a tight narrative…a compelling plot…
fascinating characters.
I want you to think you know how
the story’s gonna go,
and then I’ll throw in a surprise
he-realized-he-himself-was-a-ghost type twist
you never saw coming.
I want you to still be thinking
about the story decades after I tell you.
I want you to tell it to your children,
who will tell it to their own children.
This story will be an oral tale only.
I want the letters to burn through the page
if you ever try to write the story down on paper.
I want the keyboard to liquify and spill to the floor
if you ever try to type the story out.
I want this story to be for lips to say
and ears to hear only.
I want this story to transform you on a
molecular level. I want you to look in the mirror and
see someone unrecognizable from who you
were before you heard it.
I want you even to sometimes lose the
thread of your own name. It will be on the tip of your
tongue for a moment as you confuse yourself
for the story’s main character.
Am I ready to speak?
Are you ready to listen?
Journey / Amber Wei
You can let heaven glimmer
only when darkness subsides as deafness
draws closer into my soul
afraid I will hear its whisper
and that altitude gets higher
only to let oxygen and pressure
crush its depths
Get deeper into the ocean
but feel no mercy
for the waves to crash harder
and it be harder to escape
what wonders as lightness
only to be a sunken ship
Hope turns into gold
and it foils our imagination
until one day
we breathe air clouded by salt
and its pungent spice
is beautiful
romantic
because we feel that we never truly
tasted until we know what it was our
hearts were searching for
