September - Poem 10

Marriage / Yael Aldana

There is a picture of us. In your parents’ front yard in St. Albans, Vermont, in bathing suits. Yours shorts, yours blue, mine black. You are sitting on a metal folding chair, feet in a blue kiddie pool, me sitting in the kiddie pool. I am getting fat. This is what I do in relationships. I thicken like albumin.

Explain this picture to me.
Why the fuck are we sitting
in your parents’ front yard
in a kiddie pool? Not even
a regular-sized pool
But one of those extra
small ones with orange
goldfish.

Your hand is on me protectively.
I look vaguely annoyed. Are
we happy?
                                                Yes.
Relationship goals.

In Love  / Catherine Bai

You touched my brain stem
the day you kissed me
when I watched Patty Chang making out
with her parents I thought it was
breathtaking. Ewwww,
you said, when you realized they were
eating an onion. It was raw
nerve that made me cut my neck
open to you. Why did you
sew me back in reverse
and suck up all my tears
when all I asked you to do
was share an onion with me.

Walking Home / Danielle Boodoo Fortune

After he drove off
the road unravelled
wet and empty before me
each house shut against slanting rain
Shoes bloomed with mud,
each footstep an ache for home
Notebooks bled through
backpack, through white shirt,
down the insides of wrists
into clenched palms
Still the road unspooled
step by step, its silence
urging me to keep walking
through the chill
still, not cold as the fear
of his return, that next time
he wouldn’t take no
for an answer.

X: Dithyramb for Sylvia Plath  / Kendra Brooks

It’s hard to listen
when none of the voices
telling you
what to do is your own.
You hear yourself
being described 
but not as the self you know.
You don’t recognize yourself 
in the shadows that you cast.

–Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas

The creases of nuance and wrinkles of time
evade you in photos.
Under the generic shades of grey, 
your hair dulls 
to match the color of your eyes.
It’s like there’s distant music playing
but the words are muffled 
and the song escapes you.
Or maybe you have escaped 
–off to dance with Ella Mason
and her eleven cats: 
finical, stentorian, wild-cats.

Coincidentally / Kimberly Gibson-Tran

In grad school I shared a house, and one 
of my housemates was named Moken. 
When he learned I spent winter break 
in Thailand he asked if I had ever met 
a people called the Moken. He’d learned  
about them on Wikipedia, Googling. 
“That’s a crazy question,” I said. It was 
like asking, knowing I’d lived in Texas, 
if I ever ran into Chuck Norris—which, no, 
I didn’t, though I did pass near his ranch 
in Navasota on the way to golf tournaments.   
“There’s no way I should know this,” I said,  
“but, yeah, in fact, we visited a friend 
who does wellness checks on the Moken.” 
I told him about mopedding the sandy edge  
of a southern island. Across spanned 
a rope-pulley drawn raft which took us 
to a tiny village on the Andaman.  
The Moken kids swarmed us, shook our 
hands, toured us around their bamboo cabins.  
They dive so often that they’ve learned  
how to see underwater with precision. 
I hadn’t known before that Christmas 
of the Moken’s existence. I think of this 
stranger I lived with, the coincidence 
of a name, the arbitrariness of caring. 

Misunderstanding / Yvette Perry

For the longest 
I thought she said  
I was the apple
in her eye.
How painful
that must have been
to have a whole
piece of fruit 
blocking your vision
rubbing against
your inner eyelid
irritating your 
cornea. So I stayed
as still as I could to
cause as little
discomfort as possible,
as small as I could
to alleviate agony.
Then later when 
I learned it was of not in
I’d been too still and too small 
for too long
to make the adjustment.

Origins / Amber Wei

Where was the time unsheltered
find home it yearned
and brightness became a
blaze of measure
daylight

Seeping water from the river
bringing gleam to the glen
And where was it
the dream
of a breath
where the sun always shone
and color curves like
the befriended light

Come closer, the whisper
became a voice
and the mountain heard and the
larks responded
For angelic song
was the muse that made
the birds sing
and the glen calls
for the day to be new
as the mountains part for
gushing waters to flow

The Two Ladies of Provence, Part 1  / Abigail Ardelle Zammit

Still-dawn on Rue Frédéric Mistral.  A black dog emerges from the near-light.  Followed by nine
men playing flutes and tambourines.  They walk past the bakery and the tiny corner café whose
name is a diminutive of the town’s – Le Petite Moustieraine.  A disconsolate music is drawing
open the wooden shutters, the half-naked forms of disturbed sleepers peeking from behind blinds
and balconies and open windows.

At the very heart of the village, a cascade disgorges its water in a persistent ush and
rumble,  blending with the notes from the réveil and lingering further than the ten shadows who
climb higher and higher into the skies, up the two-hundred and sixty-two steps where the chapel
of Notre-Dame de Beauvoir is perched between the open jaws of the canyon, the fourteen
stations of the cross succumbing to the grandeur of three giant cypresses, like portals to the in-
between.  All these years they’ve been engaged in a contest with the steeple and the rockface
where the golden star hangs precariously against cloud and storm, chained to the cliffs by a faith
stronger than myth or martyrdom.  Every night, a spotlight from the clock tower in the village
square washes its ten points so that even from afar, as you cast your gaze across the crested
valley, you’ll catch the faint twinkle of an omen. 

Every day at the stroke of five, from late August until the eighth of September, feast of the
nativity of the Virgin,  the dianaïres, or musicians, awake the disconsolate tourists, watched by a
rusty harvest moon, the same moon that would have cast its light on that early morning hunt
when the goddess, armed with bow, quiver, and an invincible beauty, would have vanquished the
starlight with her ravenous hound, teetering between this world and the sanctuary of the dead

Diana, moon-goddess, protectress of childbirth,
dressed in blue and a constellation of stars.

September - Poem 9

Almost Closed Curtains / Yael Aldana

after Didi Jackson

sometime after the last rain
after the red headed woodpecker
dips out of my sight, after he reappears
flashing here, then there. I imagine the foamy
thin now wet—now dry line at the beach
two miles away from the corner gas station
where I see the man who’s always there
with his fishing hat run through by two hooks.
He holds up his cardboard sign. scrawled
on one side: I need a blessing
scrawled on the other:
Why lie I need a beer.
when he needs a blessing
I hand him a grubby dollar
from the sanctity of  my car’s window
nothing
when he needs a beer. Bless you, he says.
his hands reaching, his eyes unfocused
like he’s never seen me before.

he could be me.

a woodpecker maybe the same one, maybe
a different one, appears in my plumeria tree.
he doesn’t stay, not good for pecking. I make
it to my door before the steady drumming
of a summer shower. daily, the sky shadows
darkens with rain. I see a strip of gray-black sky
through my almost closed curtains.
where is the woodpecker?
where is the man?
are they dry?

Summer Fling / Catherine Bai

I don’t think I’ll ever write anything as beautiful
as a pear tree. Don’t blow kisses if you’re not
ready to make love. Better yet, don’t blow kisses
at all, just grab your lover and dig your fingers
into the pit of their shoulder blade. Knead
the knot that you find there. The inflammation
will go down if you put it on ice. We’re always
going around and around in our poems, but don’t worry—
it’s like a spiral. We may never be any closer
to the center, but we end up somewhere different
from where we started, the distance more like
the depth of a root system than a flight path
that loses its signal the moment we touch off.

Archipelago / Danielle Boodoo Fortune

home
is language

islands
of light

on humming
thread

spun from
fault and fire

steady
pulse

soil and
tide

everything
arrives

on the
sea

we’ve been
here before

drifting again
rooting again

IX: Dithyramb for Stevie Smith  / Kendra Brooks

Apposite-doodles-of

The Case for Drinking / Kimberly Gibson-Tran

It never ends, there’s always another chase— 
hair of a dog, a shaded blade of turf. 
I like to pretend that this is not the case. 

Time moves slowly, slow as to obliterate 
the newest sunrise, the juicer’s orange surf. 
It never ends, there’s always another place 

to make amends to, a slog of hour to waste. 
Tell your sister to rest before she’s hurt 
again. We’ll pretend a way for grace. 

Don’t hesitate, strike up the band, embrace 
the sway of fate. Admit, it can’t get any worse.
Bitter at the end, but always another chaser. 

I trace the starlings like a broken necklace. 
They dive all day, belie the sky’s inertia. 
The judge pretends it isn’t about race. 

Watch out for goons, masks that take the place 
of faces. How much is news? How much rehearsed? 
After its end, this country’s always chasing. 
No one left pretends we have a case. 

6:23 am September / Yvette Perry

Just a week or so ago by this time
birds would’ve already been busy
on their branches singing each other
where to get the tastiest grubs and bugs
and whether the Delmans had new 
seed mix in their feeders
light would’ve already begun
tinting the edges of sky and
warmth would’ve already begun
hinting at 87, 88 degrees 
Earth, Wind and Fire
must’ve been singing about
a different Septembernot this dark, silent, cold thing

Mangroves / Amber Wei

Wei-Day-9-Mangroves.docx

Ode to eclipse, another, un-splendid—  / Abigail Ardelle Zammit

ZAMMIT-Day-9-Ode-to-ecplise-another-un-splendid.docx

September - Poem 8

Still / Yael Aldana

The small brown bat is still caught the kitchen window
My mother sweeping him out the with her straw broom.

The black cat is still mewing on the forgotten porch
I am still sneaking him some milk.

I am still climbing on my grandmother’s bed
showing her my navy-blue school uniform.

Granny is still mixing me sugar water
Mum still yelling at both of us.

Mum’s hair is still mid back length
coiled in her corkscrew bun.

Mum’s still arguing with Miss Joan
the hairdresser to cut her mid-back hair.

I’m still in the garage still making a doll
swing out of a paper receipt and crimson thread

I’m still ruining my sister’s doll face with eyeliner

Granny is still making a straw from a pawpaw stalk
We are still blowing bubbles through it.

My mother still claps when she come upon us
Mum’s still telling me she did the same when
She was young.

I am still believing Mum was never little
I am still believing she was never like me.

Let the mummies rest  / Catherine Bai

No one said you needed to make art
for consumption. Why take a photo of a mandala?
When you were born, you weren’t even allowed
to remember it.

Why did the ancient
Egyptians make the inside casings so
goddamn beautiful? 

Well,
why not.

Why have one coffin when you could have 
three? Why not put the loveliest one
at the center, and make the outermost layer
just lovely enough.

Time and space are overrated anyway.
Why not create something 
devotional, for no one but the dead
to take home—

The Daughter is Nothing But Dust / Danielle Boodoo Fortune

This is how you lose yourself:

You are standing in the field
dressed in the same ragged hunger
your mother threatened to burn.

Never talk to strangers, she warned
but the taps have been dry for weeks now
and heat has loosened your prodigal’s tongue.

Her back is turned. She has been gathering bulbs
in the bright billow of her skirt since morning.
Even your mother, with her golden tegu’s eye
does not see him coming.

She doesn’t see your face when
he tears the fruit open with both hands,
holds it up to your lips like an offering.

In an instant, you are trapped
between the fire and the flood
then the ground swallows you
whole, seeds and all.

Oh mother, the truth is
I was curious about the inside
of the fruit.

It is so easy for you,
with your mouth full of flowers

but what was I to do with my thirst?
The land was so dry, and I have never been rain.

Now when we speak about water,
it is only a word. My name is that
which perpetually burns
a fissure in the earth
where all girls might fall.

I wish I had known then
what I know now:

There is no mercy among gods
for the thirsty.

The daughter
is nothing but dust.

VIII: Dithyramb for Dorianne Laux (cento)  / Kendra Brooks

It took me years to grow a heart
Tonight I am in love with poetry
On the street outside the window
The moon is backing away from us
When the final piece is lifted and set into place
What if the ashes came down on us?
The pines rub their great noise
Such dumb luck. To stumble
It took me years to grow a heart

December 31, 1999  / Kimberly Gibson-Tran

There’s a gaggle in our living room. Light 
buzzes in pixels from the square TV.  
I am nine and have heard nothing about 
an impending apocalypse as we watch, 
gripped by the theatrical remake of one 
from 1912. I think I’m on the floor, sculpt 
of Persian carpet stamping my hands. Jack 
and Rose slide from a broken stern into 
the churn of ice-water. Sometimes a door  
can serve a different purpose. Sometimes 
a fiction of invented tragedy is worth 
singing through. It was a legendary night. 
Afterwards, we wrote our names in sparklers, 
which, if you close your eyes right after, 
can still imprint their trails behind your eyes. 

This Poem Is ASMR  / Yvette Perry

This-Poem-Is-ASMR

Existence / Amber Wei

What is art when I am
parched with paint
when turtles on the beachside of my creation
Come alive
And suddenly,
Art grows on me
To where it becomes not an entity at all
But a passion consumed by grief
Knowing that art is the yonder friend
Invisible
An invisible cloak
To where you are known by your paintings
And the artist doesn’t exist at all

I Asked Gemini about Skywriting – Conclusion  / Abigail Ardelle Zammit

ZAMMIT-DAY-8-I-Asked-Gemini-about-Skywriting-Conclusion

September - Poem 7

Running From Rain / Yael Aldana

for Sammi

An old fawn dog is snoozing, ear cocked
hears the silent clattering in her dream
her leg flails, hurried, rapid, rhythmic,
is she running to smack her lips on fallen
peanut butter? galloping after interlopers?
looping around the moss-laden
imitation Venus de Milo in the garden?
the leg pauses. does she smell
the pillow white clouds going
dark gray, the heaviness of moisture,
foreboding? She does not have to worry
about the late light bill, driving the car
without ac to save gas. the leg goes again.
perhaps she runs for cover, beats
the droplets, and retreats just
in time under the pine-beamed porch.

Well, you really did it this time  / Catherine Bai

You said something so
sincere, you made the moon look
this goddamn jaded.

Beginner’s Guide to Parenting / Danielle Boodoo Fortune

First of all, admit that you know nothing.
The world is on fire. Your uterus is full
of microplastics. Chemicals build small
boats in your blood. Your heart is adrift
In a sea of unknowing.

They grow from one season to the next,
small hurts lodging here and there
like fishhooks, gathering questions
you will never hold the answers for.

But beloved, the orependola will not
build its nest in short format, nor
will the unkillable dasheen succumb to rot.

Children will grow whether you worry
or not, whether you know the answers or not.
Their need for you becomes tidal,
each day a new ebb and flow.
You will learn when to hold tight and when to let go.

VII: Dithyramb for Diane Seuss   / Kendra Brooks

In revising the syntax of rumination,
she puts on the words, wears them
like a suit of colors mixing with sound. 
Not just the sounds that ring in her & through her
but the scattering of the words as they speak
arranging and rearranging them like musical notes
to tell and re-tell; some singing, some whispering
or others shouting like how you imagine
the sound sensation of a sun rising in words.
A memory weaves itself like a heavy fabric
to be cut & sewn on a machine,
each warp thread passes through 
the heddle of remembrance
and each strand is an utterance fitting tightly
into the waistband of the suit of lamentation;
the many colored threads form a celebration
of language loud enough even the dead might hear.

Commute  / Kimberly Gibson-Tran

Last night I showered early because a storm 
might’ve come. It would have been hard, 
slicked with lather, to light a candle.  

Something about lights going out stings 
and electric twinge, scent of a cave 
in firelight, a snapping haze that’s almost 

irresistible. The storm didn’t come to us. 
It lashed the lives and roofs to the north, 
downed other power lines. This morning 

baptizes the drive to work. The wipers stick 
when I flick them. Hardly anything steady 
these days—only the barista who knows  

my order. Funny, I never thought my face 
memorable. On a podcast the host details 
a murder last year in Colorado. I chose  

the show—full of warnings and disclaimers,  
a moral mask that amps anticipation. A poem 
I read chastises for thinking fondly of a CEO’s 

killer. Pencils that wag are disappointing. 
Place the product, ink the 3D gun, bleach 
the knives. Each of us shocks the silence quiet. 

Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky  / Yvette Perry

Because I loved both science and music
I’d think for a long time about the line,
listening on black headphones
clunky on my head,
(hand-me-downs from my Daddy, likely),
about the impossibility 
of it all, about how a rainbow
is sunlight refracted through 
water falling down from the sky,
but “falling” and “down” 
are not scientifically accurate,
as inaccurate as saying
“the sun rises” or “the sun sets”
because the sun is the sun
and we on earth 
are the ones moving round 
it, and this visible spectrum of colors
is what we call “rainbow,” but the spectrum 
itself cannot heat anything, let alone 
incinerate other solar systems’ suns.
The awe I felt thinking of this, 
to be loved until such an 
impossible thing. 
To be loved like that.

*from “As” by Stevie Wonder 

Oxidation / Amber Wei

Were you listening
when the bell rang
a bit too loud

When the rain rusted its edges
so that I could hear it
reverberate in tension

So not even air
can calm its motion

Is the bell afraid to be heard

For if it is, the wind is holding its breath
The rings can travel farther
to where rust cannot oxidize further

And the bell can tell that the battle has begun
And the warriors can all aggregate around the rust

So that boundaries become dissolved

And all that is left is the bell’s dust

I asked Gemini about Skywriting Part 6  / Abigail Ardelle Zammit

ZAMMIT-DAY-7-I-asked-Gemini-about-Skywriting-Part-6.docx

September - Poem 6

Ginger Cat / Yael Aldana

ginger cat pads along my childhood
back wall smelling of spices and curry
from some unknown
kitchen.
I haven’t thought of you,
cat,
till I started writing about
my hair braided with navy ribbons
about my white ribbed knee socks
about my brown scuffed Mary Janes.
you return to me thirty years later
as an orange kitten
with circled fur
born in August
a Leo
who smells like underneath
the vending machine
where he was found.

I’m not a poet but  / Catherine Bai

the moon does turn me into 
     a werewolf
and being in water does feel like being
     a whale
and I read poems looking for turns
     to steal
and I write horoscopes, because I love when words
     make dreams come true.

And every so often I’ll think about the time 
     you picked me a flower from your own bouquet 
     and didn’t even 
     leave your number.

And the rose withered within days, but the red poem you made 
     seeped into my skin

like aconite.

Trying to Tame a Feral Cat at Midnight / Danielle Boodoo Fortune

I come to you as myself
pretending to be nothing but this animal

beneath the moon’s face
we are but wandering kin

I shed the skins I have worn
fold them and leave them at the door

it doesn’t matter anymore,
whether I have been good

I have walked this road
as many different creatures

I do not know what they say
when they speak my name

in their airtight rooms
with bars on the windows

nor do I care. I come to you
as animal, as bone and need

the night holds its breath
stilled by heavy nets of stars

you step closer, soundless
my ribs creak open

fragile cage of trust, both of us knowing
what it is to yearn alone

I am here in the dark
luminous and hungry as you

blinking slowly, hand outstretched
beneath the streetlight’s glow

rest here with me. I swear
to ask for nothing in return

VI: Dithyramb for May Sarton  / Kendra Brooks

Day-6-Brooks-VI_-Dithyramb-for-May-Sarton.docx

When There Are Signs  / Kimberly Gibson-Tran

Browsing the poetry of Half Price Books 
I find a former teacher’s collection. 
Incredible, it’s full of love notes penned 
in every margin. Slanted loops from 
a precise and feeling hand. You’ll like this, 
next to an underlined image. By another poem— 
Remember when? Later—One day we can… 
The book was signed at a reading. Could  
I have been there, known the reader? Who  
but a fellow student would be so clued in, 
so absolutely thorough. And who is this to?
An ex-lover at this point, offloading unread, 
uncared-for gifts. Have I ever read one book 
gifted to me? Even that one in which my friend 
wrote out a Shakespeare sonnet? And what 
about the time I gave a volume to a boyfriend, 
inscribed, In this is the heart of a woman. 
These abandoned letters embarrass me  
with their intimacy, urgency, their not being 
for me and my not being able to unsee. 
The swirls bend, blend so much that in the end  
I can’t tell if the last written words are
I’ve had a lovely or I’ve had a lonely time. 

Holes  / Yvette Perry

I’m thinking of all the things that have holes. 
Donuts. Car tires. Slices of Swiss cheese. 
Sponges. Honeycombs that are home to bees.
Round wafers of metal that twirl onto
screws to stop them from vibrating. Also:
bagels and Bundt cakes and pineapple rings.
(So many foodstuffs are hole-having things.)
Buttons and small eyes of sewing needles
like you used to use to turn cloth to clothes.
45 spinning on the turntable,
playing Kool and the Gang that we’d dance to.
A hole in my heart as I’m missing you.
A hole in my heart as I’m missing you.
A hole in my heart as I’m missing you.

Pixie Dust / Amber Wei

Why does the rotary accelerator
require movement
defined by a cyclical axis
requiring mechanical synchroneity
to enable growth

for turning is not a vision
of the simple machine
executing
progress
and rather it is imagination
that the unknown can be happening
as you look at the immediate

and things happen
because of belief
so magic finds movement
and movement finds measure
to understand that all gasp is protected
by creative audacity

knowing that mind limits the ability of the world to know 
that the rotary turns
for a reason

I Asked Gemini About Skywriting Part 5  / Abigail Ardelle Zammit

ZAMMIT-DAY-6-I-asked-Gemini-aboug-SkyWriting-Part-5

September - Poem 5

The Ripple of Cats / Yael Aldana

after Margaret Atwood

There is a ripple,
a movement,
unseen cats?       Leaves?
It’s as if              
the leaves are moving
moving
by themselves.

There is also a smell 
pungent,           
also      rancid
a smell               of           things,
old
dense,                heavy,
a smell                               of
the forgotten.

It’s impossible to live  / Catherine Bai

     That’s it.

It’s impossible to live.

We might as well do other impossible things
like make the clichés new again and fall in love.
Not with each other, I mean
but with the whole, stupid world.

Lucid Dreaming / Danielle Boodoo Fortune

The moon is a single brushstroke
of titanium, a flick of God’s wrist.
The dog howls herself into thinning silver,
neck stretching toward the sky like
an unravelling thread of light.
Because I cannot howl, I am trapped
between the rooftop and the lower
atmosphere, fingers stretching
toward long lost sisters in the stars.

V: Dithyramb for Adrienne Rich / Kendra Brooks

in another change of world:
We the people, those of us suffering
the slings and arrows of outrageous
misfortune; we poor and huddled masses
enduring the injustices of fate and inflation,
thrust upon us like unwelcome greatness.
The damage is done, what treasures will prevail?
Persisting in this era of high speed tech
we no longer use an atlas for a difficult world.
The voice we heed is still that of a woman 
(generated by AI).  She tells us where to go 
and how to get there as well as how long
it might take, and if we stray or change course
on the fly, she commands us to “return to the route”
Good thing some few of us can still find our own way
through Corralitos under rolls of cloud.

Poetry as Hazard  / Kimberly Gibson-Tran

Prof told us to have a handout and a metaphor for a poem. 
I forgot we were presenting, but on cue took up the chalk 
and drew wobbled loops on the deep green board. This is golf,  
I said. There are 18 end-stopped lines that wind, a meter of pars, 
rhymes of 4s, 3s, and 5s. Even, I beamed, a mid-course turn. 

You should really learn the etiquette, but no need to be good. 
So many ways to get into the woods, gritty sand, loss in a lake.  
Make no mistake, I said, everything’s a choice—voices let in the head,  
aim, an endless maze of counting, strokes of luck and duffs. Isn’t life? 
I got an 80. Not bad for golf, but sort of sad in a class of poetry. 

Criminal Order   / Yvette Perry

I’m waiting out the final days
of our species bingeing procedural crime dramas
on premium cable channels.

I’m comforted by their theme songs,
opening credits list of actors,
cheesy dialog, and the way the team 
knits together all the clues by the final act.

I’m soothed by the eight-by-ten photos of 
raped women, missing children, mutilated bodies, and
arson- or terrorbomb-destroyed buildings
that the team pins to bulletin boards.

I eat my organic snacks and yell 
warnings to the lady about to go investigate 
the sound coming from her basement.
I verbally chastise the little boy on the playground
agreeing to help the man from the white panel van
find his lost puppy.  

I joke/worry about the ads airing between 
show segments for dozens of
different drugs with too-many-vowel names. If 
I’m being accurately targeted, I am 
depressed and overweight 
with arrested bowels, 
suffering from some species of mites 
nesting in my eyelids 
that I didn’t know existed.

Sometimes, 
if I watch too many episodes too close to bedtime
I’m visited overnight by unsettling dreams where 
I’m relentlessly pursued by 
human-sized Demodex folliculorum 
wielding axes in their eight pincers
and reeking of laundry scent booster.

In the morning after these nights,
my brain is fogged
and my reactions slowed.
I self-medicate with strong coffee and
worry what this diet
of mayhem and cruelty
is doing to me.

I wonder: 
Is my viewing of these 
shows a symptom 
or side effect?

I wonder:
Am I escaping from
the age of the end of humanity,
or helping to usher it in?

Layers of Reality / Amber Wei

Is the Mariana Trench deeper
than your dream
for if it is the irreconcilable bout that
beats waves only to be met by the
calamity of the sea,
be frugal in the way you replace
the windowless plane with
a feat of engineering

Let turbulence be a refuge before
which you know not which eyes will
open from the sleep,
dreaming that someday the morrow will
bring a lifetime of irrevocable
hope

So let those days drown which cannot sustain
to the next day’s venture –
the floating plane

Gravity sunken by the
breath that immovable becomes the
airway’s trauma
Spindles form from the comet’s dream
of space,
cloistered by trajectory

Let the plane fly higher than innovation
so flight itself is smothered by depth

and the Mariana Trench breathes of
deep hydrothermal vents

Only to know that magma
drips from its depths

I Asked Gemini About Skywriting- Part 4  / Abigail Ardelle Zammit

ZAMMIT-DAY-5-I-asked-Gemini-about-Skywriting-Part-4

September - Poem 4

More / Yael Aldana

ingest in
my lifetime, this lifetime, more than could
fill a lake, more than endless sprouting
and shedding of leaves. more than can be
imagined, more than I can imagine. you
cannot imagine much. you tell me to contract,
remain compact, contained. what is on
the other side of more? you think it might
destroy us, might take the breath from our
bodies. you want me on this side with you.
I am afraid. more than you know, but I want
more. more than I could imagine. more than
I could bathe in, more than I could taste, touch,
hold. my mother taught me to expand, to expect
everything, to take everything in. I used to sanctify,
safety, and sameness. til I broke open, felt death
in mediocrity and ritual, as much as I love
the curve of your back, the dip of your cheek.
I cannot stay, as much as I love the crease in
your neck, as much as I love the coil of your thigh,
as much as I love the rough skin of your palm.

I write poems the way you read them  / Catherine Bai

It’s a privilege to think about breaking up with you.
Not that there were red flags, just
no flags at all. If we’re all gonna be dead soon,
why cry about endings?

There’s still time for a million movie scenes.
They don’t have to be in order, just think back
to the past five days—

Did you always eat breakfast before dinner?
I did, but that’s not the point.

So then what’s the point?

Really,
it’s just that we’re still here
and maybe we’ll always be, unless
we’re actually, really

still there—

Apparition / Danielle Boodoo Fortune

There is a woman’s face in that tr ee
gathering moss along the jawline,
paper nest of wasps in her hair.
From the half-open back door,
everything is more magical than me.
Ti Mari folds itself in two,
trembling with sunlight. never once
considering what it might mean
to be shut.

Someone once asked, “Will you still write
after the baby is born?” I think about this often,
about the doorway, its rusted hinges,
the one broken latch that rattles,
wrenched daily by small, insistent hands.
I have been doorway, latch and hinge
all the things that exist for no purpose
but to open for others.

It’s always the smallest things
that take up the most space,
seed under leaf, hiding its medicine,
bachac treading back and forth
in overgrown grass until
eventually the path appears.

I carry it all with me, the right words clenched
between jaws like bitten leaves, wearing
beaten paths from room to room.
We make space for what we must become
in tightly woven nests of spit and paper,
in termite mounds, secret underground chambers
where we can grow into ourselves unseen.

The woman in the tree appears
to no one but me. Her body rises from the earth
in broad plank roots, winding in ridges beneath
cracked concrete. Her arms keep the earth together.

IV:  Dithyramb for Lucille Clifton   / Kendra Brooks

Who among us can
imagine ourselves
unimagined? Who
if this was her
only poem
would be enough.
Try for just one lost
moment to imagine
the monster
you might let yourself
become.

Generations  / Kimberly Gibson-Tran

I’m always picturing missionary kids on starships.  
They hurtle through the outer distance, a vessel  
of generations, a nebulous line of interference.  

Imagine the initial separation—years between  
grandparent visits, belated birthday cards, Poptarts  
and marshmallows mailed at great expense. But then, the expanse,  

so many adopted uncles and aunts—the coworkers  
of parents co-opted into family. We were few,  
but somehow many in this tenuous drift. I think it was a gift.

How-to Raku   / Yvette Perry

An erupting volcano, inside
glowing center-of-the-sun-like 
bright yellow-orange
flames leap out the top
gas feeds fire and whispers
to the vessel within, heat
prompts painted-on skin to melt 
and flow, coaxes paint’s metals to
dance a dance of ancient alchemy
lines on the digital display 
shift and rearrange:
                                    936…1005…over 1800…time 
for the volcano to give birth.

Pilot long metal tongs into 
the volcano’s mouth, deliver the 
vessel from the volcano’s belly
into the metal trash can 
it goes, onto a bed
of newspaper strips, immediately 
setting strips to flame.

Quick! Quick! Cover the can with its lid!
Starve the vessel of air, smell the
acrid bouquet of burning carbon.

Lift the lid.
Cradle the vessel with hands clad 
in thick insulated gloves.
Set gently on the pavement 
allow to cool.
Feast on the galaxy of iridescent red
and black and gold and blue—
And that is how you do raku.

Myth of Er / Amber Wei

If you were Er
why did the distance become too
large for you to make a choice
based on physiological perception

Perhaps my hands were too dry
for yours to be holden with empathy

Let the fishing line that connects my soul
with yours
be based on a heliocentric
model of the universe

For if not, you would choose wrong
the fates unassuming your destiny

passion precludes fear
so do not be afraid of the
unknown when your soul
wasn’t enough
but fulfilled

So live each day as the
cup of water that
half-filled is the virtue that you
seek but never becomes
enough for you to know that
to know joy is to live well

I asked Gemini about Skywriting – Cont.  / Abigail Ardelle Zammit

September - Poem 3

Kitchen Towel dress / Yael Aldana

I bought a dress that looks like
my mother’s kitchen towel.
On sale for $12.99 at Macy’s
with twirled pasta, fake red tomatoes,
a green flower burst of basil.

reminds me of her pasta salad with dill
torn from page 38 of Good Housekeeping.

reminds me her of 7-UP sponge cake
recipe milk splashed and copied
from her best friend.

reminds me of her Palella from page 24 of
The Rita Springer Cookbook.

reminds me of her black fruit cake
that shouldn’t go with cheese, but does.

reminds me of her black pudding
which I refused to eat.

reminds me of her mac and cheese
where Velveeta is the secret ingredient.

reminds me of making ice cream in
an ancient machine in the garage.

my mother would say it’s nay nay dress
that it looks like it was $12.99
that it should have stayed at Macy’s.
|reminds me of the cream colored
kitchen towel slung over her shoulder
her back to me, humming a song I
never learned.

I write poems the way you read them  / Catherine Bai

No one told me it would be so easy
letting someone push me out of the street.
I didn’t even see the collision, I didn’t even
know it happened.

Their existence, I mean.

My eyes were closed when you showed me the wound
they were closed when you blew me a kiss
the kiss landed on my wrist like a slap, the skin
was a color I hadn’t seen before.

I looked beneath my fingernails and found it there
it was there all along, I never knew
you could live your whole life 
without touching every bit of flesh

that was made from theirs.

Guava / Danielle Boodoo Fortune

For Kevin

seventeen was a bush fire

and you turned up like rain

I’d grown accustomed to being left

in unlit rooms, to not being asked

what do you want

what keeps you awake

what do you fear

what do you yearn for

in one of our letters, I asked for guava

to call my spirit back home

after seventeen years of wandering

after fleeing through floorboards

in the spaces between my parents

after clawing my way through

my grandmother’s mirror

to name the awful fear

of recognizing my own face

you squeezed guava pulp

with your hands, brought me

nectar in a blue bottle

still frozen in your backpack

despite the midday heat

all these years later, our house

is still filled with its fragrance

beloved, know I am still returning

through half-shut windows, through fear

through floorboards and

even now, in this guava season

you still call me back to myself

III: Dithyramb for Mary Oliver   / Kendra Brooks

There’s a an otter in every poem:
brave at birth, boldness grows
in a sleek surrender to the cold,
a graceful strength beneath the water,
prowling with tiny paws
sniffing with a smaller nose
exploring life from well below,
waterproof fur that insulates,
and a sleek tail
to steer smoothly upstream.

Oh Fanny! / Kimberly Gibson-Tran

Oh Fanny of Mansfield Park, 
how I used to overlook you, 
wish you’d stretch into some 
other fetching Austen heroine, 
the ones with wit and shining 
eyes. But you of all of them 
were fully realized, secret love 
so deep no flattering Henry could 
entreat you. This time, re-reading, 
you enchant me—your needle 
eye into false pride, the play-act 
of sincerity. Who, dipped in your 
clarity, could want to Marry Mary? 
You the hinge of a brilliantly 
laid irony, the key to that locked  
gate, the unmade performance 
we’re ever practicing and failing, 
flailing always into the wrong arms. 

Revival   / Yvette Perry

The Poet asks me:
What will you do
when the drums begin to beat?
I know how I should answer.
I know I should say that I’ll be moved to dance, 
to sing, to tap my feat in time.
I know my heartbeat should synch 
with that of the drummers…
that my pulse should find 
the pulse of ancestors 
who once felt this same rhythm.
The Poet asks me:
What plantation 
do you need to get up and walk away from?
I know she means a metaphor.
I know I should scribe a line from plantation living to
any living that is not fully free.
I know I should say I’ll leave thoughts
and rituals that no longer serve, 
peel away versions of old-me so 
new-me can be revealed.
The Poet asks me:
Are you breathing?
I realize at that moment
that I had not been.

(Response to prompts from Salaam Green, The Good Listening Project Community of Practice, 9/2/2025)

Technē / Amber Wei

The riviera was as glacial as the time
time froze itself
for all we saw to be the sunken village
mythical in its ability to float
above our baseline of perception
feeling that there is a pulse only
when intentional learning of
involuntary movement,
valves,
makes itself real

So the coastal riviera is a learned belief
for what is lost amongst the times
I floated above the plane of the
three-dimensional axis
to be able to relish the grapes of the vineyard
for the Mediterranean salt to tell me
it was not the location that embodied me

Rather, I fell into its arms
and time became frozen
because what was real
was the photograph that was taken
when the riviera became the myth
only my own years can tell

I asked Gemini about Skywriting – Cont.  / Abigail Ardelle Zammit

September - Poem 2

Coffee / Yael Aldana

Should I have coffee now?
I can’t sleep,
4:43 a.m.
Computer’s blue glow
should I have coffee now?
I put on Rupaul’s All Stars.
should I have coffee now?
my bearded son will wake up in 4 hours.
should I have coffee now?

My relative with dementia
is probably already awake.
I’ll take him to his ultrasound
appointment later.

Morning brings his body’s
remembered practice
too hot tea,
insipid morning shows

It’s the here and now

that’s a problem
slips out of his hand
disappears before it hits
the floor.
He resets, starts again.
and again, and again.

The stray cats in the spare
room are probably awake.
should I have coffee now?

I get up. He’s sitting on
the leather couch
behind too hot tea.

The cats are barking, he says
I’ll get them, I say
I’ll have my coffee now.

I never said I was good  / Catherine Bai

Every version of me that has died is a child
my parents loved more than I did.
I threw up in their mouths and they swallowed
I threw darts at their legs and they caught them with their chest
I curled my fingers into a fist and they simply held it, a stone
they cast into the river knowing every current will sink.

Still, they dive headlong—
through their bubbles they tell me to stay on the banks.
They’ll go first, the river says.

They’ll go first.

Tearing Down the Monument / Danielle Boodoo Fortune

If you ask the island,
it will tell you its name
in a thousand different ways
until you no longer need to hear it
because it has already taken root in you

like red mangrove, like vetivier
like your own bones. The island
has named itself over and over again
ever since the beginning, when
limestone first leaned toward the sea

The island still names itself
anew each morning, just like
when the ships came, in tongues
that man could never truly understand.
You cannot discover what you have hurt,
what you have stolen, what you have
never really seen to begin with.

For the swamp sees itself in the heron,
and the oilbird in the mountain’s face.
You do not need to name something
to see it, to walk through it without
leaving loss and rot in your footsteps.

The island belongs to itself.
If you ask, it will tell you that they
only named the shape of a thing
they wanted to believe.

While we learn to see again,
tearing down that which erases us,
the land breathes its own true name
in the chest of each screaming bird
and the language of each crashing wave.  

II: Dithyramb for Billy Collins   / Kendra Brooks

(in response to his poem Marijuana)

I too swallowed the moon!
Gazing up one lonely night,
I opened wide and took it in,
like a lozenge meant to soothe 
the dryness in my throat.
In amazement & comfort
I soon lost track of it on my tongue
And the moon slid right down.
Half choke/half panic
I caught my breath mid-slide
as its roundness almost blocked
my trachea like a lid.
In knowing it was too late
I convinced myself, and those 
maybe watching, it was wholly 
what I meant to do -swallow the moon!
Thank goodness for the reflux
of a poem fully chewed.

The Joy of Painting  / Kimberly Gibson-Tran

I come home to my husband streaming 
Bob Ross’ old show. It’s the beginning 
of the episode. Bob lifts a giant brush 
and swabs the background into painted woods. 
Then he steps through. We watch him shape 
a seascape. The hues of greens and blues 
curdle fantastically into waves. He squiggles 
foam into existence. Isn’t it simple? I say, 
Couldn’t we do it? Somehow the scene falls  
together. Did you know Bob Ross was 
a drill sergeant? Khiem asks me. Imagine. 
No mistakes, says Bob, his reddish afro blurring  
in unremastered history. And the rest of the line— 
only happy accidents. Bob tells us to be brave, 
drags two black trails down our perfect storm 
for palm trees. He’s right. Something was missing. 
We didn’t know. How could we know until it was there. 

Prism  / Yvette Perry

I try my best to be a pane of glass,
transparent, clean of streaks, dust, and smudges.
I try to just be something you look through
to see sky and trees outside your walls, see
people you know—alive, dead, remembered—
make their way to your front door, ring your bell.
I try to keep myself out of your tale.
I tell myself I have two ears and two
eyes but only one mouth for good reason. 
I am what you look through to understand,
to think then say aloud that which makes you
confused, or ashamed, or full of fear. But
I can’t be see-through. I’m here, you see. I
absorb your dark, then create a rainbow.

The Evergreen Changes / Amber Wei

Love is not mine
to be bemused
radicals drop
and circadian silence becomes
the reservoir for those atomic nuclei
to be withholden
from nuclear fusion

Forget this silence who I am
to become the boreal forest
who the winter was
because evergreen remained
when snow crept and exited

And titanium is
not unbreakable
but in another universe,
it was isolated

So find me
past the influence of the changing seasons
away from the silence
railway hammers find as
the void

Build towards the directory of habits
so that my voice finds the utopian grove
too heavy and the bird songs
say that patterns are chatter,
blending towards a void too heavy

Beauty becomes magnified
and burdened beyond will
so titanium rust becomes profitable
as all likelihood is lost in the void

Love, what was, is what
the boreal forest becomes
driven from the winter’s change to what
the summer said
every breath it breathed was

I asked Gemini about Skywriting:1   / Abigail Ardelle Zammit

September - Poem 1

We Went Back / Yael Aldana

she went back there to the side garden
with the too-short coconut trees that wouldn’t grow
She found my gold bracelet, lost for forty years.

she sips her tea from the cup with
the pink roses, places
it in the matching saucer

I bring her a croton leaf. I found
it, present it in all its glossy yellow
gold waxy iridescence

my stomach sticks out too much with
too much roundness still acceptable for
a child, the rest of me matchstick
skinny.

It’s still years before people start
commenting on that too thick belly
those too skinny legs.

section off my body parts.

dissect me petal by petal.

Granny reaches for the orange brown
Leaf, coos her approval

she still in her pink pastel housecoat
that only I liked.

after Granny died, we all returned
to this morning. after
Mum died, we all stayed
there
together.

The City  / Catherine Bai

Charles Simic wrote, “I tell you, I was afraid.”
I wrote it, too, every day
a flock of birds slipped across the sky and the pale blue light 
continued to vanish as if nothing had happened.
Did I ever tell you about the time a friend picked me up from the airport?

Not my friend but someone’s. 
In my teeth were nibs of wild raspberries I picked along the trails of Michigan.
He gave me a bottle of water, the friend
I was afraid I’d never see him again
Don’t go, I said, don’t go, as his fingers touched mine without a glance.

 Summoning / Danielle Boodoo Fortune

Summoning

I: Dithyramb for Linda Pastan  / Kendra Brooks

When I think of Linda Pastan as I do
often after reading one of her poems
or when I’m not thinking about anything
in particular a line of hers will come to me.
Hers is a familiar and comforting voice,
one of the things I did not know I loved.
Hers is a music of departure which brings me
to the poets who came before, not the old
white men who take up most of the shelf
space in the library, but the lesser female poets,
the ones who pried open the windows 
they wanted to jump from. The cigarette 
smoking lady poets, smoking to stay 
steady on their feet, pretending not to care 
too much, unknown poets petrified with fear, 
weighed down in their disgrace of attempting not
to leap and soar, typing hard on keys that stuck,
bleeding hope into their ink wells, penning
their souls like addresses on letters never sent.
Toiling daily in their craft, as if their inner lives
both depended upon and were afflicted by
poetry. Staying up all hours jotting down 
the shapes of open wounds then laying bare 
the scars that form from hiding them. 
Girl poets –writing out of necessity and unaware 
that poetry might be a panacea, a home remedy, 
best served with a woman’s touch.

Part tribute, part celebration dithyrambic poetry is an imitation aimed to inspire and inform poetic experience. Dithyrambs were an ancient Greek form of poetry dedicated to the worship of Dionysis the Greek god associated with fruitfulness, theater, and ritual madness. My goal is to celebrate 30 poets who have inspired me on my poetic journey. Ritual madness here goes:

I’m so deep into Thai soap operas that I understand their references to other soap operas   / Kimberly Gibson-Tran

and this is a sort of victory. I devour hours 
of the actors, their porcelain skins reincarnating 
across genres and temporal dimensions. On Instagram 
I track both halves of the world’s most beautiful couple.  
They exchange rings, replay their on-screen fling 
as princess and princess’ bodyguard. Millions of followers. 
I have learned ancient pronouns, about monarchy, religion, 
astral planes, demons that lick you with whips to hell 
and back again. I always up my Channel 3+ subscription. 
Just $12.99 for six months of access, a portal to the fantasies 
of the country I used to live in as a kid. I am wickedly 
in love with senseless romantic plots, bitchy subterfuge, 
even the funky audio boings and laugh cues, three back-to- 
back instant replays of an accidental brush of lips. This 
my Roman Empire, this my addict fix. This is how I exist, 
pupils glued to the black tube in my grip as I slide 
into unreality, delicious tragedy promised in dropped petals 
of frangipani. 

Dot  / Yvette Perry

A little dot
between my middle and ring fingers
on my left hand.
First black,
then dark gray,
then light,
then recently—
sometime in the last several years—
gone. I hadn’t even noticed when
it disappeared.

Standing in line, obedient.
I wait for the teacher
to lead our class to the 
Library.
I don’t hear what the
Boy says.
He’s looking as me.
His friends look at me.
They laugh.

I ignore them, my
mind alight with visions of all the books
I will check out.

The Boy points at me
with his pencil.
I shield my chest
with my folder 
like battle armor.
The Boy pokes my armor
with his pencil.

He pokes, and he pokes, and he pokes.
His pencil, tip freshly cranked 
with the tumbler of sharp steel blades 
nailed to the classroom wall, pierces

my left hand between 
my middle and ring fingers.

I’m sent to the nurse.
I miss our library period.
The nurse pulls the 
pencil lead tip from between my fingers
with tweezers, then cleans the
wound with some liquid that
stinks and stings.
I tell her what happened.
She tells me, “Oh, that’s just how
Boys tell you they like you.”

I have the scar, a dot, like the name
(“Spot”) the Boy and his friends sometimes
called me, for decades.  
First the dot was black 
(sometimes the Boy would say “Black Spot”),
then dark gray, then light. Then gone.

I used to look at the dot
and imagine lead slowly releasing
deadly poison into my bloodstream.

I look at the space where the dot used to be
and wonder if the poison has been 
completely absorbed.

Allegory of the Cave / Amber Wei

The voyage, itself, is the unmatched treasure
burdened by the voyager borne
upon times salt burned,
tasteless was the freedom
an unfazed muse

Abruptly standing at the helm
he put the compass in my hand, clutched
my fingers so that time was an intractable volume
surrounded by man’s integrity

Do not be lost though the wayward journey
is unbecoming of the lark you are
that sings in the cave of silence
the shadows you see are projections of
youth that lost you

Find winter, only to let the shortened days be
a cycle of dark mornings that find evenings
let darkness consume so
you no longer see silhouettes

In total coverings the world is more simple
because shadows are not real when
there is blinding light
or when the darkness of the night descends
so that no light can trick you into seeing entities
that require a pursuit of truth
to believe as real

Desert Notes  / Abigail Ardelle Zammit

1: I asked Gemini about Sky

1. It is a truth unacknowledged but irrefutable that every desert is in search of its sky.  After twilight, once the temperature drops, or the cacti resign themselves to another blackout of punishing heat, the skies flee in search of an elsewhere, leaving stars all a-quiver, Andromeda’s ebullience outshining the Milky Way, and the Milky way lost, jaw-logged, pretending it holds the same night-sky. 

2. Every night, the palette is gigantic, a coalescence of indigo and lapis blending into darkness always and already unrecognizable.  Was there yesterday, or the day before, or a year from now any real chance of verisimilitude?

3. Perhaps you’ll shake your head, looking up, lacing your eye to a sky that blooms with the same (you assume) unmistakable candour.  But sky isn’t one. And never is it the same. Which is why the desert it looks on, is never the same desert.  

4. Of the flightiness of stars, you’ve already heard.  Bring back to life the pyramid builders, the giants that heaved dolmen and menhir on shoulders that almost touched the heavens.  They’ll most certainly lose their bearings. In vain they forage for the treacherous Pleiades, their long-dead flares travelling surely but imperceptibly against ancient firmaments—

5. From ‘firmus’, meaning ‘strong’, ‘steadfast’, ‘enduring’. 

6. Imagine, then, if they were to discover that firmus is plural, restless, ephemeral, always and already moving.   Perhaps then they’d start to understand what it’s like to be a desert.

7. Or a dune, morphing with the wind. 

8. Not the eye, but the memory of sight. 

9. Desert as yearning. As desire.  As inexorable want.

10. And its skies, always and already                                     

                                                                                                                     lost——