September - Poem 7
Priest Collar, Nun Habit / Laura Bandy
Signs are key. How else can we decipher
the freaky world around us? Is this it?
Is this semiotics? Never paid attention
in class, Joe and I, although we liked
the prof… Oh, that’s a lie. I paid attention
like my very life rested on outcome: on whether
or not this literary theory made sense.
I don’t know about Joe, he slid into
my life and out so seamlessly, like
a baby born to a woman in the Mesozoic
squatting on the cave floor. That was
another class I liked until the professor’s
test struck us all as unfair, the too-minute
questions not signified by the study sheet,
not signed. Or do I mean Paleolithic? It
was Saussure who said, “ A linguistic sign
is not a link between a thing and a name,
but between a concept and a sound pattern.”
What does unknowing sound like? I know
what fear sounds like, tastes like, although
the bad ones can be hard to spot with mere
tongue. It feels like I failed that particular exam
every year. Probably should have prayed
about it, maybe thrown body against
cathedral’s barred front door, carved marble,
deep and wide, until someone shouted down
from Jesus Wept Red stained-glass windows
that organized religion won’t be invented for
another 100 years (it’s the Neolithic, stupid).
You can see why we are up in arms. How those
nuns thread their sometime thick limbs
through tight habits is a miracle, I guess.
It must be hot under all that black wool,
real hairshirt stuff. And don’t even get me
started on dog collars. I’m no animal doctor
and not remotely Catholic, but even I know
a trap when I see one. What’s another word
for hunger, for I thirst? Okay. You got me.
I’ll kneel.
Micro Love / Alicia Boemi
Isn’t it all so odd—
and beautiful—
to be a human?
My eyes staring
into your blue eyes.
Your eyes staring
into my brown eyes.
Thinking different thoughts
in one moment of connection.
Oh, the humanity of it.
Moments and decisions shape what’s next.
Will we walk away broken in pieces,
or fully whole?
Time.
It tells the story of our human
cruelty,
or delight.
The Best Burger in the World was Cooked in 1992 at a Pool Party Sorry You Missed It / Jesse DeLong
But then that guy no one
claimed to invite launched off the railing
while holding a lit “4” candle from the cake—
I swear to you I saw it lit—
and of course he missed
the water
and the blood of his knee was in the water
and when he came up, face folded
so he looked like a pug,
a yappy little mutt off leash,
someone concerned into the crowd
that he had AIDS
and he wouldn’t respond, he wouldn’t
say whether or not he did,
he just took one of the host’s towels
and lay it over his head and left
and later a man who wasn’t so good
at magic waved his hand around
as a Queen of Hearts floated there
above the pool where he bled,
the heart wafting, sort of like the blood in water.
I can see it now. The fishing line.
The way it tricked out the sun.
close, closer / Shelly Krehbiel
Cover art by Jack Kirby, / rob mclennan
Pencils, a window. One can look into. Look out. A layering of buildings. Swings, an arm. Stand, firm and tall. Proclaims! Any technique, to be useful. Kurtzberg, the Lower East Side. Rewrite history, story. How the gods died, reborn. Punching out Nazis. Widescreen energy and motion. King, always. Young Romance, New Gods. I can’t keep them separate. Slippery, Providence. To leap off the page. Soon, soon. Not soon enough. Dynamic. This architect of the imagination. What we talk about Selkirk. Put a post on a website. Unfollow.
Shrink / Piper Rasmussen
I have a wool sweater that is just the right size
and has never been dried. Never gone through
that felting -- that journey
of becoming too small and stretching and itching
and wriggling out and being left in the armoire
and that regret.
It's the same with the things which could separate
us haven't happened yet -- the deaths and failures
of body parts -- the art
that you or I may never learn to master. The faith &
the untroublement is troubling. But don't worry, I'm
anxious, so I'm working on it.
a climate crisis tank / Connor Simons
lay your naked chest
on my stomach’s open length
the world is burning
and cardinals moan a song
for the nests they’ll never build
Measuring Closeness / Veronica Vo
Someone I met uses fish. One fish
attached to each of us, two fish
meeting in the middle. If there is a
large distance, there are bigger fish
between us. If there is comfort,
smaller fish. Another person I know
uses time. Specifically, time in line,
which feels different, as we all know.
If there is discomfort, that is a person
to join in a short line or no line at all.
Otherwise, join them in a long line.
I would have waited in a line of any
length with you. I never saw the fish
between us. Why didn’t you tell me
you did? That you saw an ocean, one
I spent a decade swimming across?
Ask Me about My Multiple Sclerosis / Melinda Wilson
And I’ll tell you I have brine shrimp swimming in my spinal
canal. I keep high resolution images of them on my laptop,
like a child poring over her colony of magnificent sea monkeys.
I’ll tell you I have intricate cobwebs collecting in the corners
of my eyeballs. Their spiders skitter in my field of vision, and
my hands fly up to swat them away from the front of my face.
I’ll say that my body hosts nocturnal insect crawls on the surface
of my skin—parades of ants, ground beetles, crickets,
and katydids strutting their carapaces through my lucid dreams.
I’ll explain that tiny earthquakes rumble through my nervous system,
make my bones quiver, disengage from their sockets. I bounce
like a marionette hung from rubber bands rather than strings.
I’ll try to say each day that passes without a new symptom
to join the litany of pests is a mercy or godsend, but truly
each ailment is holy, more fellowship, more friend.
