September 1 - Poem 1
The Fountain / Laura Bandy
A new friend, Bob, recommends a film and
all I know of it is a reputation for grief.
The filmmaker, said to be a difficult man,
wrote the movie to work through early cancer
diagnoses for both of his parents. Bob is a runner.
Over the summer he lost a parent and found
their eulogy while out on a run; “All the way
to Lake Michigan,” he said, “the words
just appeared in my mind when I most
needed them.” Traveling in Switzerland
this past same summer, I hiked with my 85
year-old mother and her same-aged Swiss friend.
They left me in the dust, these fit women, gasping
in their wake while impossible landscapes of green fields
dotted with sheep and aquamarine Lake Geneva shimmered
in the distance. At a castle on a high hill, I sank
to a bench outside steel gates and pled for a drink,
hoping one of the spry ladies would walk final distance
to concessions. “Drink from the fountain,” said our Swiss friend,
gesturing towards a stone statue with a metal spigot spitting
water into a deep granite bath. It looked like what it was—
something from another century. I, leery American, made noise
about rust and germs until our friend took my hand, dipped fingers
into the pool. “This is snow water from the Alps,” she said,
“we all drink here.” I made an inevitable joke about the fountain
of youth, then drank bone-cold water I can’t describe, then our friend
told a story she had told that morning and the night before. My own
mind is slipping. As I sit down to write these words, summer
nears her end: Demeter preparing to lose her daughter
to the unimaginable as she has before and will again.
Topple/ Alicia Boemi
The lake waves topple each other.
Sparkle blue on top of deep blue tide.
One…
after the other.
Always moving, but ever so patient.
Much is unlike the man who is impatient—
toppling,
each…
other,
one…
after the other.
No sparkle blue, just deep red ooze.
Your Whole Body is Heavy with a Need to Emote Infinitely / Jesse DeLong
A Cento with lines taken from Jenny Boully, Ford Madox Ford, Don Mee Choi, Hannah Arendt, Sequoia Nagamatsu, Peter Handke translated by Ralph Manheim, Ginger Ko, Kazim Ali, Layli Long Soldier, Rebecca Boyle, Tommy Orange, Catherine Breese Davis, Joanna Klink, Robert Kloss, Michael Pollan, Eric Bennett, Kathryn Cowles, Tiana Noble, Brandi Wells, Alfred Starr Hamilton, Raven Leilani, Lidija Dimkovska, William Bronk, Cole Swensen, Toni Morrison, C.J. Box, Ann Jäderlund translated by Johannes Göransson and Prageeta Sharma.
In every man there are two minds.
I lived on sesame porridge for a year—
parasite upon a corrupt body,
the last cells of my body.
No owl had hooted in the woods behind the house
nor was it my own breathing that I had heard
and then at last I heard the wind in the pine tree,
the empty cup of the tea left behind.
The human debris,
rootlessness,
always a gift also.
Each day is another chance to try
breaking down like the rest of us wanted to.
What were all the remaining hours going to do?
The moon had an acrid aroma like fireworks that have just gone off.
The world, after all, is porous.
Sunny or sunless or in
those nights when nothing catches, nothing also is artless.
It is better to be a man singing to no one.
We end up trying to nourish ourselves on images.
farmyard animals about to be slaughtered.
Like roosters, men.
Women with short hair
like rotting snow.
The sun is
some loose bits of matter, the dregs,
some background mumbler.
If you meant
there are grey, anonymous hours like this,
let us now eat rolls with salami and cheese.
The nevertheless, the yet.
The world is made of sound
deepened by the constraints of the format.
Orphaned words,
the noises were hollow.
In language there are only distances.
It makes me want to find a bar stool as fast as I can.
Gin is white, for awhile.
The grass is naked,
it is against the snow.
See it in the window acting as trees.
Long Term Care / Shelly Krehbiel
Today was the first call. The broker introducing himself,
introducing the product: long-term care insurance.
The kind of thing you commit to in November, when
the rains come in, when people put up pretty lights
and suddenly children seem everywhere. I don’t have
children. And it’s August. A good time of year, still
three months from the long and longer darkness.
Now, the mid-season apples are predictably falling,
the late ones barely starting towards deep red,
towards golden. They say it will rain later this week.
Tonight I went out to gather the purple grapes, plump
and perfect, so I could keep whatever rain comes from
splitting them into yellow-jacket heaven. And so I could
sprinkle seed beneath the vines hoping a brief summer
shower will be enough to start the clover I’ve wanted
to plant for a year. I’ve wanted something that will turn
into green cover for beetles and flowers for bees, something
to stand on in sandals, in bare feet next summer
as I pick new grapes, as I show the neighbor kids how
to know when they’ve ripened. Maybe those kids
will remember the taste when they get older, remember
the sticky stains on their fingers. Maybe they will plant
their own green vines for their own good fruit, wherever
they are, whatever rains do or do not come, whether or not
I buy the insurance. There’s so much to read, to decide.
Maybe the perfect time, / rob mclennan
To read ancient classics. The sound of the press. Curved, thunder. A myth, of high tempo. Rocky terrain. Drifting periods of reflection. All season, fell. A false etymology. Animate. The Greek of Odysseus. How many fine shortcomings. Tales, open windows. Widening. Islands, rings. What carries each surface. The front edge of empire. Solstice, the back end of cover. These weary psalms. Friends you might know. What’s on your mind? Sense, and syntax. System build, the middle, slows. A trove of continued. Have you any questions? Translated into Latinized Roman, Odysseus converts to Ulysses. James Joyce, The Ulyssey. Such a long sentence. He nearly arrived.
Sourdough Aubade / Piper Rasmussen
The end of a haunted night
the end of rain & spiders washing through
the gutter catchment in a twitching flow,
perfectly feeding a bright garden I've never had.
The tomatoes were big as horses
& the spiders mounted up, were children
on a merry-go-round. As I watched at the window,
a mysterious dough began to rise
in an earthenware bowl on the kitchen sill, & the light
grew stronger, & the sun rose round,
like a loaf made from scratch.
That's what I woke to: the sun
in its witching hour. At least the spell it needs
is easy: water, milk, flour.
at the corner of Griggs & Dayton / Connor Simons
five years sober and now – the stubborn pimple
in my right thigh the left eye that grows
lazier by the year the sense of simple
times making meaning the beebalm shows
the mason bees the purpose of a hive
and when the schoolbus stops children flow
out like swirling eddies in the Mississippi – Alive!
yes the ache in my knee when i tear out weeds
the way rock doves whirl from ash trees and dive
into meltwater and the way i’ve learned to need
my neighbors’ chickens and their brooding hum
the thrum of a pickup truck the wind’s gentle speed
I'm still going / Veronica Vo
because Mary Oliver said it is no small feat being alive in this broken world
because someone told me in China, shyness is a kind of subtle beauty. beautiful
because someone can be your parents’ age and all you can think of is loss
because memoir from such a young perspective must be interesting
because this is the only form of survival I know how to do
because calling this survival is generous
because crying in front of strangers who are good people forces the honesty out
because I started and I can’t stop
because I was offered a heavy rock to throw in the river, to release grief
because I feel so lonely all the time
because I made martyrs out of people I love who still live
because making someone a muse means you can never touch them
because this is the only form of survival I know how to do
because if I stop it will all be over
When the Work Begins / Melinda Wilson
What God must have thought on that first day,
gazing into the white abyss of absolute absence.
To design from void is incomprehensible to the
modern mind. Where is the blueprint, the scaffold,
the clay? What to do with an immeasurable lack.
Then lightning strikes,
but from what heavens?
There is no one to care about the how.
So, giddy with his manumission, God begins
the inconceivable work. Inconceivable because
there is not a soul to conceive.
When I regard such privacy, I shudder.
I tremble at the thought of blank spaces,
taught by Frost to fear my own desert places.
Feel like a zero when unable to produce,
incapable of connecting mind with pen,
which is often and unfulfilling but somehow
not hunger-inducing. I know the human
urge to yearn, the futile desire to bring forth
something from nothing.
Whereas God need only drowse
in the great empty, siesta in the time before time,
knows nothing of painful silences nor the cold
of missed touch. God’s position is such
that existence is enough. But without us—
God would be nullity, nonentity, nought.
