September - Poem 29

Dead Mall / Laura Bandy

At the dead mall the plants are missing and the people, too.
But oddly not the
Carousel that cantilevered frozen horses
Downward on poles from a rotating ceiling
Exquisitely lit and pulsing, effulgent
For fiberglass stallions to prance beneath—
Geometrically pleasing, the eternal circle
Hosting children to ride in place for years,
Infinities, even, as the turning never quit
Just slowed down a bit when the brick and mortars closed.

Kill the lights, pull down those metal security grilles,
Let the mannequins dance together, romantic-like, to the
Mall’s
Night music, a mix of crickets, scrabbling rats and
Organ song or calliope, depending on the mechanics
Peculiar to that whirligig spinning. It's true, the
Queue of humans is non-existent of late.
Reduced to plastic people lingering who,
Some would say, are simply specters
Turning up at a familiar haunt, lonely and longing to
Undulate as they once could, credit cards
Vibrating in pockets or purses,
Waiting to be called up for action most
X-static, most time-honored, most American orgiastic;
You know the drill. But where to buy, now, when capitalist
Zoos are abandoned? Oh, go ghost your own machine.

Floating in Space  / Alicia Boemi

What do they say about us?
That we walk among the stars. 
Float across space. 
Travel time.
Hand in hand.
Mirrored souls.
A fire that burned away the others.

I Say This Plainly Because I Lived Plainly /  Jesse DeLong

My friend sent me a picture
of a blank check
I’d written her in 2012. I lived
in a two-bedroom house with duct tape
on the windows and a dead animal
in the walls. On room had a window
unit, the other a heater,
so that I migrated
depending on the season. I told her
she should have cleaned
me out of the $300 I had
at the time. She could have lived
for a brief time, for us, anyways,
like royalty. 

Bird-Listening (A Ladder) /  Shelly Krehbiel

Andy Weaver, Burlington,  /  rob mclennan

Sleepless, loom. Perambulate. We learn, learn. Every planet on earth. This suburban, expanse. These two young gentlemen, both alike in dignity. Wakes early, late. A noise on the stairs. No record. Still, impossible to parse. A hard precise. To hold, the middle distance. But we can walk. Quite miraculously, barely. Evening, through clear air. How Robert Bateman, Batman. Don’t tell anyone. What the dog knows. Ancient magic, sworn and stable. Hinterland, paved. Some roads, inlay. These are not the droids. A frayed knot. Everything, you might project. Away from, stand. What happens in Oakville. An open book. To live in the present.

"Miseducation" on Aux  / Piper Rasmussen

Miss Lauryn says the isms in a row, euphemism-euphemism-euphemism unforgiven
even as the tower teaches how to write the words, the discipline of -ism is concrete

the water tower gushes high-to-low, relies on gravity to handle the distribu
-tion & -ism & -cracy, the nounization of the fluid movement

when one is married the next compulsion is to find Knights of the Round Table
with whom, over dinner, you can decide how to feel, sloshing with courtship:

Chivalric Romance is a neglected form. Let's add -ance to the noun-izers, don't you
think? Presenting your ideas under the water tower is something like irrigation

lets it settle. Too much thought in a drought simply slips off, floods, saturates
the hard crust of airwaves & no more. Communal meals and slight sipping slippage

roto-till the conscience. -age. -ence. The French did these suffixes to us, the eliteness
(-ness!) brought to shore by conquerors! Before that, the Anglos were all guttural

nouns. More fun that way -- suck, etc. But let's be inclusive. How does Swahili work?
Igbo? Has anybody checked lately? Google it. Water, water, everywhere -- sink in.

a climate crisis tanka #5  / Connor Simons

no sweat like the sweat
that pours from your crooked nose
onto my breastbone –
a wave, thousands of miles long,
hurtling toward the shoreline

Job application / Veronica Vo

The Mother God   /  Melinda Wilson

I’m watching a documentary  
about a cult from the early 
aughts and I suddenly  
remember that the poinsettia 
flower is native to Mexico.  
It is tempting this season,  
but poison to my dogs, so I  
go without. The Mother God 
can’t go without her colloidal 
silver, her vodka, just as Father 
God can’t go without his meth.  
And there it is, the things 
we cannot go with / out, we kneel 
before them or we let them 
drive us out.