September - Poem 20
Waiting to be Waylaid / Yael Aldana
Although,
I am a good waylayer
My intentions
are straight
true
I wait to be waylaid
But might do the waylaying
One or two
do the waylaying
physically capable?
emotionally.
capable?
Maybe
Who knows?
Emotional
Questionable
physically
Perhaps
Who is waylaid
and waylaying?
I stand still and nothing happens / Catherine Bai
I plan my friendships two years in advance
I want a painter to move into the casita next door
and teach me how to look for beetles
I write my best lines while rubbing my pussy
sometimes I don’t do it with my hand
I just imagine I am
and then I come
into my own, which means absolutely nothing
I want to flirt with Trotsky like Frida did
and then they probably fucked
because she was so beautiful
I scoop up spiders in my hands
and put them in sleepy corners of the house
like the dry part of my kitchen sink
and the empty flower pot
all I want in life is to find somewhere to put all this pain
and pleasure
it’s worth having every gorgeous tryst you can
no matter how calamitous
I don’t want to die with my feet in your hands
I want them to scrunch up and turn into lotuses
that wilt in a resplendent, muddy river
Mater Dolorosa / Danielle Boodoo Fortune
I am a monastery with all the lights on.
Turn off the lights. I reappear before yo
limping, feral and brave.
The clock ticks, shades go down.
I return to you much older than before.
I am the charred side of the mountain.
Close the door behind you, I will wait.
I will line my eyes and paint my lips
like an offering, shard of smashed window
glory that was.
I am an empty church.
You used to come here to pray
now you barely recognize me.
(I have been through the night, I understand.)
Set me down here, I will spin you a fine web.
I am a necklace of small moons, a pyre
learning to burn alone.
I will burn for you. Set me down here,
I will ask no questions.
XX: / Kendra Brooks
September
Is starting to float away
Like soapy bubble
Rising out over
The incoming tide
On a last chance to hit the beach
Before October
Stumbles up behind us
And obliterates summer
With its wooden club
Of early darkness
One Art / Kimberly Gibson-Tran
I was visiting my grandmother,
a delicious summer back in Chiang Mai.
I’d always liked playing tourist at the night bazaar,
amusing locals with my white face and language
skills, haggling for discount souvenirs to take to friends
in the States. One place painted clay into the tiniest fruit
baskets. Another stall had little ridged-back frogs
the drag of a stick would make ribbit. You could sit
for caricatures or charcoal portraits, buy a heap
of toasted crickets in crackling snaps of kaffir leaf,
let tanks of minnows nibble callouses off your feet.
I thought I’d seen it all before, but there was a cart
of new art—bits of buffalo leather molded
into rose-shaped rings. I wanted one dearly.
The sellers, of course, can tell—a carelessly long
stare and I was done for. Still, she and I argued
back-and-forth. I pressed, demanded calculations,
add-ins, threatened, classically, to walk.
She didn’t give in to my party-trick talk, saw
my nana loaded with bags of other purchases—spun
string lights, foldable lanterns, pinned moths.
She wouldn’t budge, hit me with “Look at yourself;
what is it to you, fifty baht?” It was rude, but true.
The sting of her attitude. The way she got me to buy two.
UnPuzzled / Yvette Perry
1.
I am no longer
accepting false fit. This time:
perfect match only.
2.
Strategy: start with
edges and corners. But my
center’s still empty.
3.
I found a piece that had
fallen to the floor, missing for
years…decades, even.
4.
This is not child’s play.
I don’t have much time left to
find missing pieces.
5.
Once put together
will I look at all like the
picture on my box?
Flew / Amber Wei
The eastern tiger swallowtail blew the
wind away
freedom longing for a
brighter breeze
among the summer
it wandered
until grass met the trees
the leaves without dew
from the night
the swallowtail drifted away
until pleasure became
the vicissitudes of life
and why was it so free
to become camouflaged
among green
when the black swallowtail came,
it changed season itself
as it found grass to be
hidden among rocks
and suddenly it approached
the creek
and it was summer, again
