September - Poem 26
Slipping into Dolly / Yael Aldana
I slip into my Farrah Fawcett wig
looking more like Dolly
than Farrah.
Dolly has the right idea
hiding her tattoos and her men
slipping them beneath her skin-tight
snake-skin sequin
razzle dazzle.
slip into
silken armor
my I-can’t-breathe-corset
slip into
blue bejeweled close to heaven
high heels
slip into
triple thick
Razzmatazz.
slip past your predilections
you can’t see I’m a revolutionary
mothertrucker.
cause I’m all acrylic nails.
You miss my them/they them pronouns.
Cause I’m all over drawn red- orange lips.
slip into your propensities.
and you let me.
Because I look like a girl
from Tennessee
who needs a beer.
Cooking / Catherine Bai
how do you explain the grammar of love
to someone born without a tongue
a couple makes out wetly on the sidewalk
one reminds the other to get turmeric
the flavor won’t come through without it
Before I Lose Myself / Danielle Boodoo Fortune
I turn off the light
and let the other self in.
She folds herself into me
Spine notches into spine,
ribs pass through each other
like joinery. Her heartbeat
chases mine like a fever,
like the sound of something
slowly being broken,
pressed down against
itself till it cannot hold.
She is who I might have become
if I was not afraid of being alone.
Here in this dark room, I am both of us.
XXVI / Kendra Brooks
Our GracieLu resides inside my chest,
she landed there on her way to rest.
My heart beats slower on rainy days,
and flutters gaily when it’s time to play.
I’m sure she gave me her last word
but when I speak it it feels absurd.
On the porch just after dusk that night
Mel, the mobile vet came & shaved her leg,
then injected her with a deathly dose.
The big Buck moon was shining high
as she breathed in one last time,
then flew out on flight devine.
I ducked, I quaked, I tried to dodge
as her spirit flew right into me.
Two weeks she’s stayed, and won’t dislodge.
Both GracieLu’s soul and her final pain
have settled softly into my domain.
Most say it is impossible –a lark,
but ever since her passing when I wake,
I find I have the most incredible urge to bark.
star-pulse / Kimberly Gibson-Tran
star-pulse . . .
the cicadas
fire drill
Hometown / Yvette Perry
I wish I had a home, a ‘hood, a from
When roaming, meeting others when they’d ask
And where did you grow up, I’d not be dumb
I would not struggle with this basic task
Right off I’d name a city and a block,
a school where I attended all the years
I’d have from there a crew, some mates, a flock,
home girls who shared my victories and tears
Instead of one hometown I have a list
street names for years or just a month—one where
I had pet fish, another my first kiss,
and there the playground where I learned to swear
I do not have one from, I have a sea
with waves of my become and memory
Hinges / Amber Wei
Find words that made
imaginative illusory whisper
the agony of its day
prioritization clouded by mist
of contractual obligation
unchanging to bemuse
what was altogether
frankly openness
mouth aghast
as we speak in wonder
Who is to know that the
audacious are incoherently
unstable
riddled with thoughts of peace
transience absolved
Why was the door opening
only to leave parts of the hinges
behind
opening again an impossibility
of conception
and it became an unruly
conquest
a game to yield joy as a bonus
smiling until the corners of the mouth
inched above
