September - Poem 18
Love’s Lonely Auspices / Yael Aldanas
I picture my mother in heaven, about to sip a from a tiny cup of tea with a raspberry floating. She has an appointment to wander through a field of Christmas candles later, gossip with her friends over tepid coffee. I wonder how she reacts when I sent the message, I need you, please help. I don’t call on her often, only when I really need her. I assume she is busy. I wonder if she sighs, puts her tea aside with a clatter. I wonder if she can be there and with me at the same time, if she waves her spirit arms to clear scales from my eyes, so I can see what is in front of me. I wonder if she whispers my name with golden angel breath to someone who can help. I know that before she leaves to her field of flowers she stops and watches her grandson sleeping, the boy with her face, with the one curl in the middle of his head. I know she tells him he’s the king of all he sees, that he is not a boy but The Boy, her boy, before she returns to her field of flowers.
Where are you really from? / Catherine Bai
You asked me where I was from
and I pointed at the moon and made bunny ears
You asked again, no, where are you really from
and I said I already told you! but maybe you'd believe me
if you turned into that little black garden snake
hissing by your ankle
and made friends with a turtle by the lake
You shook your head and said I'm talking about your nationality
and I said I already told you twice! and I told him again
in the dialect of my father's village
in the language my mother learned
in the other language her father spoke,
when he was abandoned in the south
and raised by wolves, who never told him where they heard
his strange, mysterious babble
You see, I'm Polish, he said, his patience
startling and clear. I would never do this out loud
but I smiled—
my tender, pitying heart
my tangled roots, the creeping rhizomes
I didn't want to be crude
and point at his mother's vagina
One day you'll return to the soil and realize
oh how dark
what a mess
Where am I from? I asked, desperate
the earth never says
Ortoire/ Nariva / Danielle Boodoo Fortune
My mother will not leave
the parked car, not even to stand
at the sea wall’s edge. Dark water groans
against worn rock. It calls out to her,
she says. Deep water always has.
I lean out the window, face in the wind.
To me, the waves say nothing.
People ask “You live on an island.
Why you can’t swim?”
See, communion with the tide
is a difficult science. All the bodies
in the heavens will have their turn
pulling the nets
and the course never stays
the same: mad Atlantic
two blind rivers,
ground gives way again and again.
Ortoire/ Nariva / Danielle Boodoo Fortune
My mother will not leave
the parked car, not even to stand
at the sea wall’s edge. Dark water groans
against worn rock. It calls out to her,
she says. Deep water always has.
I lean out the window, face in the wind.
To me, the waves say nothing.
People ask “You live on an island.
Why you can’t swim?”
See, communion with the tide
is a difficult science. All the bodies
in the heavens will have their turn
pulling the nets
and the course never stays
the same: mad Atlantic
two blind rivers,
ground gives way again and again.
Parable of the Pallets / Kimberly Gibson-Tran
I’ve been told fruit at chain stores is bought
from large farm batches strapped to pallets,
that it’s someone’s job to check for quality.
I imagine a quick stab and slice by pocketknife,
a taste-tester’s chin dripping at the sale.
Chances are, oranges from a single crate made
it here from the same orchard, but when I pry
the white interstices of four sibling orbs,
flay and impale their little cubicle meats,
each one is entirely unique. One is sour as sin,
half-turned to ferment. Another, fibers stiff
as a grapefruit or pomelo. Next, the bitterest.
I palm the last, caress its pores. No one knows
where home is anymore.
Bomb Fragments / Yvette Perry
I need to tell you
something I just remembered
I know it’s late
(or rather, it’s early)
There’s a picture, remember,
of us together
You were six, seven,
your sister was a toddler
I think it was spring—
April? Had to be
It would have been afternoon
I remember the
low bent of the sun
In the picture, you’re squinting,
wearing a green dress
We had driven down
that morning, six-hour trip,
left at four AM
(I remember that
part specifically) and
you were excited
that you got to ride
in the car in your PJs
with Winnie the Pooh
You slept the whole way
Your grandfather was driving,
me, you, your sister
were in the back seat,
your grandmother in the front,
our bags in the trunk
It was just us five
And that’s what I had to tell
you: it was just us
Years ago, you asked
me and I said Daddy was
taking the picture
But no, wouldn’t have
been enough room in the car
Daddy wasn’t there
We got a nice man
who we’d met standing in line
to take our picture
Daddy wasn’t there,
stayed home, had to work (or, so
he claimed at the time)
Anyway, I just
remembered about that and
needed to tell you
Give me a call back
when you wake up and get this
message, love you, bye
Combustible / Amber Wei
An explosion of feeling
tempered by madness of regret
transitory suggestions,
neglected
for hands hold no arduous
personality to be soiled, by
perception
And instead, there is rust in the
breaks that find pedals
moving to become immobile
And suddenly we stop
Halted by the ability to halt,
itself
And we stop knowing we can
when the explosion of feeling
never cared
