September - Poem 10
Wet Work (after watching Furious) / Laura Bandy
noun: work involving murder or assassination,
used euphemistically.
—Merriam-Webster
Sarah does it.
She likes it and
she’s good at it.
Don’t note the
guillotine necklace,
the ACAB earrings—
those are mere
trinkets. What I mean
is how when there’s
twin girls, grown, one
needs to manage
men, close the cases
with a red pen, ink
streaming. Yet who
would have thought
the old man to have
so much blood in him?
I’m the other one. I am
here to sponge up
all messes. My neck-
lace is daisies, ears
pierced with cream
enamel hearts. It’s true,
my trade is marshmallow
although, in the dark,
you can’t tell us apart
and maybe I’ll cut you
a slice of fresh risen
bread or find your
jugular with a shiv.
“Which twin is really
which?” the last one
said. Weird sisters, newt
eyes, boil and blister—
which witch? You’ll never
know for sure, mister.
—italicized lines from Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1.
Too Much Love / Alicia Boemi
It’s never enough to say I love you.
So I’ll walk alongside you for eternity.
Feet to the pavement.
Soul in the depths.
Take me away.
Poem That Was Supposed to Be an Imitation of “Field Transmission of Tulip Virus in Patriotic Colors” but became “8 Moods, All Similar, in One Day” / Jesse DeLong
Not the tulip, which remains closed, but the burr,
which latches to your pants as you pass by.
Not the space key, which moves you forward,
but the bracket, which is meant to clarify or make a correction.
Not the free flowing but fully transparent stripes of a highlighter,
but the blotchy pen, messy enough to see
from the backside of the paper.
Not the blank white index card with its perfect lines,
but the old note found in a drawer, it’s references illegible now.
Not the bathroom vanity, her side, blooming with shower steam
and the smell of lavender soap, but the office window
turning a yellow-green from the air’s contaminants.
Not the white shirt fresh from the laundry, but the sock crumpled
and covered in cat hair beneath the nightstand.
Not the pill and its euphoric promise, but the hard, chalky
feeling of its passing down your throat without water,
or, maybe, its wearing away, yes, when it leaves
you—maybe the day feels like your body in a panic
because the pill has closed, like a tulip, your neurons.
in the gaze of Melpomene* / Shelly Krehbiel
how you tricked me with your dark eyes
in my dark night. there are such eyes
as this warned about in old books,
caught in snatches of filtered light.
on canvas your eyes are portals.
how I am drawn to their allure.
it’s too late now that i’ve seen more,
seen that sharp blade you hold so close.
not hidden. you never mean harm
as malice. you need pain to turn
into song’s purple enchantments.
you are why music requires night,
why daffodils need cold winter.
muse, because i want to become
what you promise, i will come close.
i will be taste against your skin.
i will be erased by sleeping
in the dream worlds you make of me,
of my blood spilt on beauty’s floor.
*a contemplation of the painting, Melpomene by Giuseppe Fagnani
The Marvel Universe, / rob mclennan
Excelsior! For the endless, resurrected. Dime-store models, pulp. Those scrappy kids. Celestials, eternity, infinity. A cluster, stones. Behold! Creating history, continued. Continuity. The streets of Brooklyn. What the in-crowd, spoke. In whispers, secret. Chosen, many. Stringbean, puny, stretch. Big brain. These gods of thunder, hammers, patience. To still, get up. A method, marvels. Let, the perfect storm. To me, my Kirbyesque. When comics, woke. The war-time Captain, punched out Hitler. Great responsibility. My word, these hopes. My stars and garters. Exceptions, vary. The needs of the few. Amazed, we soapbox, are. We are still speaking.
Embryo / Piper Rasmussen
Amanuensis, scribe
of innate knowledge,
anamnesis endowed,
all amniotic handiwork.
Once she was anemone
alone & pluripotent
a minister, monastic.
An alluvial illumination,
a miniature marvel made manifest.
Her caul a veil in the Mother's
cloister. What was once the nave,
her mammalian manse.
reading recent translations of Li Bai / Connor Simons
Tuesday morning, up early with a kinked neck. I want
to rip apart the sky like a bored child pulling
at cotton balls while its mother sits on the edge
of the tub, waiting for the dye to set in her hair.
*
Shouldn’t a day be kinder? The dead mice who knew
the taste of peanut butter before the metal snap
broke their necks are an answer to that, I guess.
*
And once I spent a whole evening crushing silverfish
in our apartment bathroom with my big toe, turning
off the lights, sitting cross-legged on the toilet, turning
on the light and becoming a generational cataclysm.
*
Li Bai wrote that the road to Shu is hard – most are.
Who would travel so far to arrive here?
There are peaks, leopards, and stretches of pale mud.
*
It’s the heat, I think, that does this to me. I sleep
in strange positions so my cheek is cool and warp
my limbs like garden twine twisted to hold up
tomatoes who just want to flower then wilt.
*
And also wrote, ‘if only I owned the fabled parrot
to tell you of the feelings in my heart,’ which, yes,
being tongueless most days, I understand.
Focus / Veronica Vo
ancestors speak through this ground you stand on
the trees bend in to listen
rub your hands together
feel that light
inside
a perpetual sky
a day’s blinding silence
forefathers through this
haunting as support: is the body not a vessel too?
Infinite Things (SENT 9/9) / Melinda Wilson
The pine forest does its holding in the dark,
warns there is something wants to be feared.
Something wants like I want the toilet to stop
hissing. Something to be feared the way the dog
recoils after the crackle map cracks on Jacobus.
Has no way to know what it fears and no way
to stop fearing it. Impossible to borrow
another's design and step out of oneself. Unless—
Useless. Better to shudder through it. To become
intimate with the thing that one fears.
Like I will always still somehow hear it.
The toilet’s hiss long after it’s been fixed.
There is form of attack in maintaining calm,
So I try to love the hiss, learn to stand the siren
song of every sudden exhale. Work hard to recall
the detail of my young nephew’s face when he fled
the washroom and the flicker of self that flared
when he accepted the hiss as his home.
