February - Poem 17

Laundry Inspiration / Kristine Anderson

All right, that’s just silly. I agree.
There’s nothing inspiring about laundry.

Granted, the colors: Raspberry, the catalog called
this T-shirt. This sweater’s supposed to be black

but, like my hair, shows gray around the edge.
Textures, too, perhaps: rough seams of blue jeans,

soft, plush jackets of fleece, smooth buff
of a flannel shirt. As for sound, the loud huff

when a sorted pile falls to the floor to wait
its turn, and I’ll spare you anything about taste.

Though how about the smell? No, not that—
this: Crispness of running water, bouquet

of the Arm & Hammer soap (Spring Fresh!).
Let’s add: Warm air of the dryer, the whoosh,

whoosh of the washer at work. Do you sense
it now? Hmmm. Maybe laundry can inspire.

Calendar Juxsuppose / Barbara Audet

A fire horse this year
Will find his harness
Strung with fattened beads,
Gold, purple, green.
And while some may feast,
This day, others will
Pass by the flaming
horse made equis
and leave food
Alone to honor tables 
Ramadan or nearly Lenten.
All in anticipation
of a couplet wait, 
Where calendar-conscripted
offerings of frugal 
Simple suffering or
Rejection of repast
are employed to satisfy
our basic dust to dust 
existence noted 
on hanging calendars
of smiling cats who aid
the passing of another
forty days given preferential
Longing in the category
Coming again, 
that treasure
we call salvation.

Birdwatching  / Bee Cordera

what cam we learn from our feathered friends?
To call and be heard the language of music.
How to impress a lover with bright feathers and a dance. To remain light as a feather
to find freedom on the wind we watch birds
to learn about the world of sky•

MIDNIGHT DRIVE / Ashby Logan Hill

Not even the roses could compete, a dalmatian and carrier pigeon, friends,
your hair blowing in the wind, and all you wanted circling back around you,
a drive through the dark night, windows half down and the cold air blasting,
half awake and driving  a hundred miles per hour past Salt Lake and
racing with a man from Utah in his white truck, and a cup of cold coffee,
the radio playing so loud as if the air surrounded you. Filling up on
the lonesome road, you drove all night nine hours to wake at sunrise.
The sun stood tall like you overlooking the canyon. A darker part still and
sparkler’s dim descent  up to an eye in the sky as the locals came to call it.
And all day long we sat on giant logs and used them to float out to the
Jewel center — campfire at night and the starlight flicker, a glowing, floating ember.
It was my spirit I saw for a moment fly away from me in the smoke. It was the drive
I’ll always remember, a lesson from Idaho across the universe from Atomic to Pocatello,
The heat of a summer breeze sweeping through the night, then daylight

Impatient / Amy Marques

this examination

precipitated many quietly

distressful exclamations of impatience.

Source Material: A Tale of Two Cities

The Salt from the Grocery Store / Sonia Sophia Sura

I realized why I’d bought salt at the grocery store
weeks ago.
Big chunky sea salt, in balls so large, it
wasn’t so cookable.

Tonight my friend read tarot for me. 
She told me to cleanse by taking a
salt bath.

I sat on the lid of the toilet
after pouring salt into the bathtub.
I listened to a song that’s been
making me cry.
The harmonies are
so beautiful.

I cried and cried and cried and cried.
In front of me was the face of
my future self.
She looked at me with a steadiness
and a wisdom. She was strong
like a tree. Fierce
like an eagle.
Free

She held my face with her hands.

Wow! I said. 
You’re so old! 
And so beautiful!

She told me I 
don’t need to stay
where I am
(come April and May)
Go to the ocean!

she said,
Go to the ocean!

then she
disappeared

Reflection  / Samuel Spencer

Your reflection hates you.
You would hate you too if you
were your reflection, forever imprisoned
behind the pane that you think is you –
instantly erased the moment
you look away.
Your reflection hates you.
That’s why it looks you all over,
looks you deep in your eyes like it
knows you. That’s why it sends thoughts
to your mind, a mirror of the soul,
telling you you need to change… something.
Your reflection hates you
because it cannot be you.
It cannot taste the food you eat,
cannot sing the songs your love,
cannot sleep in your bed,
and, most of all, it hates you because
it cannot kiss anyone in the world
but you.

February - Poem 16

Auto Renewal / Kristine Anderson

The following have been renewed automatically:
Dental exam. Dermatology / skin cancer check.
Annual wellness exam & gerontology blood panel.

Agreement shall be renewed automatically
for succeeding terms . . .

Birthday cake (with candles!). Family Thanksgiving
(trimmings included) around a long dinner table. Wedding
anniversary (thirty-three years & counting).

. . . though the Party may give notice (or not)
prior to the expiration . . .

Yoga, twice a week. Daily walks, some with the dog
pulling on the leash. Phone calls with a grown son
living half a world away. Listening to music. Laughing.

. . . of Decision-Maker’s intention not
to renew pursuant to bylaws . . .

Avoid chocolate chip cookies, glazed donuts, Jolt
Cola (do they even make that anymore?). Keep the cork
in the bottle. Thank you for not smoking.

. . . otherwise to be renewed upon like terms
for successive days, hours, minutes . . .

Automatic renewal: Waking up to the familiar scent
of coffee. Warm slippers on the cold kitchen floor.
Dog jumping in my lap. Your “Good Morning” kiss.

Alone Together / Barbara Audet

Dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe and My Father On His Birthday
“From childhood’s hour, I have not been as others were … ”

Poe believed this. 
I guess it must be so, 
as explanations go. 
My father never said it, 
but he lived it.
And that makes it so.

These two gentle men, 
now gone to souls alone men, 
There's so much more 
I long to understand.

What weighed you down 
beyond survival buoyancy?

How soundly did your sorrow
harbor within you?

Did it lap hard against your sanity, seeking
Footholds to stay you far from calm liberation?

When men die young, 
we must have answers.
For forty years,
I've needed answers.

Across these two disparate, 
desperate lifetimes, 
I see a bond, a linked apartness,
that shakes out the why
of their compulsion—
the need to be other, 
that held faster than family, 
taut like new stitches.

Poe could see, 
but never understand
the cast of demons 
breeding in his mind
that fueled the separation.

Your demons, Dad, were more highly strung, 
dressed to drink in suits, mocking ties, 
the sort that energize and grab the best of you
like a magnet made of maelstrom.

In my childhood’s hours, 
I watched helplessly,
As that storm of ambition 
aimed to own the brain I envied, 
cultivated as my own.

But you, like Poe, put your trust
in never-ending storm clouds.

Call it dedication to addiction. 

Outsiders are timelessly available 
to abandon empathy for indignation.
Children in contrast try to understand why 
They must witness death sure to rise.  

The wind died, 
the last breath gathered all
the happiness, the anger, 
The ongoing agony of the man 
who gave you life. 
I never understood, not really, 
at least,ALASKA / Ashby Logan Hill until I came to see you, 
that one last time.

You said you were afraid to die.
I did not believe you, 
because I knew you.
Passion has no time for fear. 
You taught me that lesson in my crib.
I suspect in that closing of your living,
You told the greatest lie.

ALASKA / Ashby Logan Hill

At the Monet exhibit I asked you about Alaska, the cold you don't remember
because you were just a child and moved to Florida, then Minot, North Dakota,
then Paris, France. You said you liked living in France and remember
at the elementary school on base, or somewhere close to your apartment,
a field full of poppies.  You sat in it all day and told me your mother didn’t even
know where to look, that you liked it that way, face up, laying between the
stems and lady bugs floating, looking into sky and making shapes with the clouds.
You always stood for this and wanted your imagination, the imagination of
others to become their own reality, a suitcase in the grass by the pond,
a day in the rain and cappuccinos by the Seine. You were still little then
and stayed a while before heading back to Alexandria. Maybe this is when
you got Petie? Maybe this is when you first found out your love for lavender.
Wherever it was, it wasn’t anything like the redding fields from moments ago,
not even the roses could compete, a dalmatian and carrier pigeon, friends.

Kindly Disorder / Amy Marques

present kindly
disorder
remember
forgotten complaints
carefully
record
the complete word
found

Source Material: A Tale of Two Cities

Fever / Sonia Sophia Sura

I check my temperature every so often
Just out of curiosity
It’s still here I know that
My head is all woowoo and my body is warm like a furnace. 

I cry and wipe my tears all over my face. 
It cools me down. 

My dad sent a picture of my mom and our dog at a restaurant for Valentine’s Day dinner. She is so beautiful, I look at her and remember everything. Everything that was and no longer isn’t; everything that didn’t happen. 

I am in bed, alone, missing a home I didn’t properly fit into. 

Walking Along the Spine  / Samuel Spencer

I look back and see you
Misplace a step, hesitate,
And freeze in place, the snow
Beneath you boots seeping
Down that rocky edge.
For once in my life
I regret not being alone.
Alone I am safe with my stupidity,
Safe to traverse this ledge
With only my own fear, my own
Mortality. But not with you.
I see the fear in your eyes
As they look down at your feet
And back to me. I am afraid.
I search for the words
I would tell your wife,
And come up with nothing better than
“It was my idea.”


We make it, our fears instantly trivial.
The mountain rests below us,
Only the clouds and sky above.
It's all fading away
Like a dream I am already forgetting. 

February - Poem 15

Images from a February Day / Kristine Anderson

The brick walkway outside my front door
brown-red geometry
against a monochromatic gray day

The green reach of cedar and pine
ever-forest branches
among wintering skeletons of alder and beech

A stationary goose alongside the road
the S of its neck
rising above a mound of plowed snow

A patch of lawn emerging from the thaw
thin emerald leaves
rising from the dark, shivering earth

Visibility / Barbara Audet

Becoming visible should not require
a glass of vodka, a gifted fur or gassy car.
Visibility requires walking brave
retracing a familiar chipped path, temporarily
burnished golden in the lamplight,
revisiting it alone, ignoring the steps 
in comfortable shoes. Honing
your vision by the ticking
hands of an invisible inner-layered clock,
looking in the moonlight at the flowers,
tucked by hedges draping fine houses,
wondering if these are new or descendants
of ones that once pushed fragrance past
your teenaged nose, your uniform skirt, rolled
to match a model’s magazine cheat sheet
proclaiming style in the spring of '69.
Life does not come pre-packaged,
like the photos captured in the standup booth
at the happily crowded, we are mostly alive, reunion
that led you to choose to walk back in
starstruck mode to the long remembered,
somehow updated sodium-lighted train station
in that better than where you live now Jersey 
suburb. Leaning against the station's bench,
ticket ready, are you ready to head to Brooklyn,
to pass the museum, which is past
the Chinese or is it Thai or is it Indian restaurant,
which is past the pizza place alive with teenagers
who are not concerned with blooms of the past,
but only present suppositions on the status
of a weekend encounter. You reach to adjust
your rolled skirt and realize the skirt became a dress
long ago, and will soon give way to jeans,
despite your age, to get you home, somewhere 
along the decades-documented 
train ride, then plane ride, 
then a car that looks more like you than you,
sleeping like cars do in the parking lot 
behind the gated fence
that is down from the Wendys,
which is down from McDonalds, but not as far as
the gas station, your modern chipped path,
more plastic, if truth be acknowledged,
still no true stop in view, 
perhaps because you are not yet 
visible, but are rather taking shape
in that oh so cliche mind’s eye, that is
more real than even you can comprehend.

MASTER SONNET #1 / Ashby Logan Hill

A loose thing, forgiveness untethered, a skein of yarn,
fingers holding all that’s left of glacial prairie, your way home.
And afterwards still you and I left, the only ones singing.
That’s all I’ve ever really wanted. Something like this for death.
Meet me at the heron rookery at dusk. I’ll be waiting for you there.
It is unfortunate that the sun does not travel backwards.
All day and still he won’t tell us, two lotus flowers floating in the sun.
And all this just to get back to what my mind held? “A sleepless sanctuary,” I said.
We didn’t want but had to see what both of us knew of loss the morning after.
Along this line, a horizon forms of lavender, a blue blossom beginning to bud.
And I smile a little longer, like him, before the oil stains on his blue jeans call to me,
waiting for the clouds to break, no direction home, a complete unknown,
another batch of dough for dinner rolls, at least that’s how I’s told to tell  it.
A dayglow and a dying was done then, and all before dawn, a quiet breakfast.

Not Just Details / Amy Marques

tea

and rain blaring

quiet:

not details.

Source material: A Tale of Two Cities

Chairlift  / Samuel Spencer

The world in my mind
is at peace as I rise
into the air. The ground
a fatal distance below
as the chair climbs higher
into the snowy mountains – 
a beautiful maiden wearing a coat
of wisping powder.
I am but one more soul
ascending into the sky,
a bit like Icarus,
just to fall down the paths
carved by man. The only
difference between this chair and
his waxy wings is that this metal seat
was designed for the purpose of
allowing me down. How sad I would
eventually become
if this chair rose into the heavens,
past the clouds and into Olympus.
How sad and how boring a life
without falling would be

February - Poem 14

A Valentine’s Day Card / Kristine Anderson

But not one with fat white cupid
babies flying like drunk cicadas.

Let’s not exchange cards with candied
rhymes—love with dove and above—

that shrink lifetimes into effortless
jingle bells around a kitten’s neck.                      

You deserve a multi-dimensional
lipstick-red heart rich with kintsugi

for honesty of a long marriage: not only
for all we formed and fired together

in the glowing kiln of our dreams. Also for
the cuts we bore: disappointments, illnesses,

long days at work away from one another.
And truth: for a few unkindnesses, as two people—

even those in love—have been known to wield.
Together we gathered up the pieces, repaired the rifts.

Now here’s the Valentine’s Day heart we’ve made:
brilliantly veined, singularly strong. Sweet, and wise.

Writer’s Dream Advertisement / Barbara Audet

This scribbling cobbler, words embracing
Requires elves with home skills ace-ing.
To brew dark coffee, do stacks of laundry,
Walk the dogs, and all such sundry?
To Poppins, the petition came, right up the chimney.
I’ve none here, so this entreaty, comes by whimsy.
To be specific, clothes need folded,
Trash disposed of, dishes sorted,
A porch front cleared, new flowers planted,
Salary’s minimal, but you are enchanted?
In return instead of dollars,
I’ll sew old-fashioned suits and collars.
At least I’ll promise to make that happen,
In my Grimmest way, job offers wrapped in.
Though winter's got its clutches clinging,
My mind is set on elves spring cleaning.

IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME / Ashby Logan Hill

                          for Norman Collier Rasnake
                                      December 2006

A dayglow and a dying was done then, and all before dawn, a quiet breakfast,
we all held a rose in the sweaty, tear-soaked palms of our teen-aged hands,
waited for the cue from some somber music his widow had picked, something like this,
a song I’ve forgotten, trying to remember why she’d seemed so tired of crying her
ember-green eyes out — had she ever even loved this man?  For years we’d gotten to know each other as some sort of distant, estranged “friends” — it all just felt so different in my head. Had she loved him just to take the money when he split?
I thought that’s what I’d heard my mother said but maybe I had taken parts of what I wanted and split the difference?  You do things like that and naive at sixteen.
Some sort of country song I didn’t even know if my grandfather liked played on the loudspeaker through the crowd, and one by one, each of his survived grandchildren processed to the apse of the chapel — if you could even call it that.  And etched into the altar  DO  THIS  IN  REMEMBRANCE  OF  ME  it read — that’s all I could remember,
a loose thing, forgiveness untethered, a skein of yarn —

Peculiar Desire / Amy Marques

Grand peculiarity

magnificently appeared

in marriage: 

is everything you could desire.

Source material: A Tale of Two Cities

House on a pond / Sonia Sophia Sura

Across the towel, we played on endless days,
endless days at the ocean. 
Hard boiled eggs in the cooler (weird!),
card games in the bag,
chips, towels, sunglasses. 
We put sunscreen on before we even drove to the beach. 
Those were some of my favorite days of the year,
for three weeks every August, only and stretched,
my family, my grandparents, my cousins aunt and uncle, and all of our dogs
sat at the table on the screened-in porch. 
We looked at the sun melting-to-orange over the pond
in the evening time. 
My grandfather remembered me only
for the first ten years of my life. 
When Covid came, I
stopped going. 
After five years I visited our home in the winter. 
Not-so-sunny day for a beach day. 
Still, I touched the water with my hands. 
It snowed, I believe, I remember
my brain was so cold, my younger self was
giving me a hug. We belong here! What has happened to us? I’m sorry we
had to grow up. 

February - Poem 13

As the Day Is Long / Kristine Anderson

The sun blasts through my kitchen window
before I finish my first cup of joe in the morning
though two months ago, only the slightest glow
peeked over the horizon by this early hour.

We’re in the season of lengthening days.
Already daylight hangs on for ten-plus hours.
Even the birds respond, practicing the songs
they’ll need to woo their mates in spring.

Lamps aren’t on ’til later and later,
and the dog no longer expects dinner
in the afternoon, as when it’s dark so soon.
Days are getting longer, we say with a smile.

Anticipation of sloughing off binding coats,
of melting snow releasing vast grassy lawns.
Expectation of long, generous walks—no icy
pathways limiting the range of our adventuring.

Deeper breaths. Dazzling views. Not so much longer
days we look forward to, I’d say, but unfurled ones.

Friday 13 / Barbara Audet

True Templars,
surprisingly survive.
She is
a bloodline, 
centuries secured, 
a renewed voice
in an unmasked face.
Templar's child,
she endures, 
out from hiding 
in plain sight.
That long ago 
dissolution
of her relations,
brave men,
was kept alive 
in odd witness.
The memory 
of such broad compelling death
sought permanence
in daily aftermaths
of not so subtle acts 
of periodic shame.
Born again as trepidations
fueled by inhibition.
The catalyst was singular. 
A brazen, heartless 
moment of betrayal,
of unchecked greed.
The force of that one
planned transgression
unleashed a sin's enormity
in a strange profusion
of tiny mimicking acts.
Short spasms 
of cowardice
that transpired
in minutiae.
With a never fail you
complex futility.
to hold back those
who committed 
the unthinkable.
Pain reduction acts,
solitary efforts,
made of undisputed
trivial thoughts,
unbridled 
essential 
avoidances.
Ladder undertakings,
cat shadow anticipation, 
sidewalking by leaps, bounds.
In modern times?
Aren't these now
abandoned?
Why now 
does it seem
that the flood 
of superstition
is in ebbtide?
Has superstition
given way 
to widespread,
grander, 
ever-greed inspired,
moments, of 
intentional, 
less forgivable
stupidity.

Zoo psychosis   / Bee Cordera

On Tik-Tok, one soul compared humanity to tigers pacing their crammed cages at the zoo, How we oggle and worler what is wrong with a pacing creature.
But we don't sit and word why we ourselves must take the faster pace through life, never stopping to ask why we wear hard pants.

 ELEGY FOR MY FATHER’S COWS AND TAMALES / Ashby Logan Hill

Another batch of dough for dinner rolls, at least that’s how I’s told to tell  it,
a little salty, a bit slant — nothing for a quarter more of nothing, the way
it’d always been shone to him — grazing in a gold-green pasture, your
father’s seventy-plus cows, how each in his scrapbook had their own
photograph and somewhere along the line, a red “x,” a few early morning
salutations between friends at the stockyard and then a fought farewell — “A hug
around the neck, a kiss upon the head,” Mr. Rodamer had said and so done it —
“Sold!” he said, to the highest bidder. I guess that’s how it was done back then,
and still, in a red little room, like a senate’s chambers between the railroad tracks,
the farm-raised chicken slaughter plant, and Dona Fer’s tamale spot on Saturday
mornings, a Rockingham County ritual his father and his father’s father had spent
half their lifetimes telling him — “It goes on a little better in the end with love,”
they said. “Don’t you mean ‘off?’” my father said. “Without a hitch,” they said.
A dayglow and a dying was done then, and all before dawn, a quiet breakfast.

A Godmother’s Blessing / Amy Marques

That feeling in my heart / Sonia Sophia Sura

Some moments are too precious
to write about;
Hugs and hands and
kisses on the cheek. 
The warmth in my chest
is otherworldly and human,
the most human, arguably,
I can feel. 
It used to be torture, that
feeling,
the bubbling of fire in my heart. 
How peculiar it was to feel that
heat. 
Now it comes to me
from the strangest people,
the most surprising,
the angels in human form. 

At the Base of the Mountain  / Samuel Spencer

I can't listen the things
I've done just to be here.
At the bottom.
I'm standing here look up
At the face of it, wondering
What it's all about.
Is it about getting to the top
And telling others you've done it,
Or is it just a chance to do
What others have done before you?
Or
Did I come to the base of the Mountain
Just to get a better look?

February - Poem 12

Variations on the Word Fat / Kristine Anderson

I.

. . . chance, same as
“slim chance” same as
“no chance” same as
“Stop dreaming and get to work.”

II.

Chew the . . . as in
“Whatcha been up to?”
as in
“Nice weather for ice skaters, huh?”

III.

. . . city, meaning
grocery cart full with 
carton of eggs (18 count), 
quart of orange juice (fresh squeezed), 
Peet’s Coffee (two bags!),
four sticks of real butter . . .
all paid for. In cash.

IV.

. . . of the land, paired with
Living off the . . .

such as
all the time in the world—
sitting in the sun, phone silenced and stashed
in another room, book open in my lap,
sleeping dog at my feet.

Year of the Horse / Barbara Audet

I have ridden a horse. More than once.

Galloping. Posting. Trotting. Sweating.
Swimming. Birthing. Running. Racing.
Snorting. Nuzzling. Lugging Carriages.
Warring. Glueing. Left To Withers 
Forelocks. Flanks. Fetlocks. Loved.

I was born in the year of the Horse.
A lunar expletive.

McCarthy. Segregation. America Beautiful.
Postwar. Nuclear War. Cold War. Pick a War.
Television. Siblings. Suburbia. Survival.
Kindergarten. Kennedy. Khrushchev. Kentucky Derby.

I rode my first horse, on a Girl Scout expedition.
I was too small to stay in the saddle properly.
I have never forgotten holding on and feeling
Myself falling backwards, petrified I would die.

My son was born in the year of the Horse.
A lunar miracle.

Afghanistan. Operation. Desert. Shield.
Hubble. Mom. The Universe.
Genome. Human Catalog. Web Server. 
What Happened to Yugoslavia?

I have ridden a horse in Texas.

I rode my second horse, a gray.
On a day with fellow teachers on retreat.
Along a stream line in the town of cowboys.
This time I held on, less fearful, but still suicidal.

Somewhere in between, in an off year,
Ox or Snake. Rat or Rabbit.
Dragon or Pig. Goat or Tiger. 
Monkey or Rooster. Or Dog.
I watched the horses swim at Chincoteague.
Long after I read the book that made Misty mine.
My cheers had guilt inside them on that day.
Learning terms. Hoof and Pastern. Hock and Stifle.
Gaskin and Croup. Barrel and Back.
These are the horse.
Wilding. Taming. Branding. 
Breeding. Betting. Breaking. 

Another year, I marveled, 
rejoiced for horses.
Secretariat. Odds Defier. 
Farm Saver. Triple Crowner.
Loving Life.
Large.

Life seems to have gotten smaller. 
Even for horses.
So we must make up for last year’s 
Snake in the grass.
Nations are in transit,
No longer needing horseback
To celebrate the Moon.
Steinbeck described 
A previous moving humanity
in Grapes of Wrath.
Go high enough, go to the Moon.
It's what they want. 
Look down.
We are like ants. Not horses. 
Neither of those ignoble. 
Not like the lookers.
Who are just moving in time 
that should have moved
Beyond all the nonsense.
Horses understand.
Harnesses. Whips. 
Shoeing. Corralling.
And just like we shot horses,
We shoot ourselves.

FIRST BEFORE MORNING / Ashby Logan Hill

                                            For Emily

Waiting for the clouds to break, no direction home, a complete unknown,
you’re stopped at a traffic light in Crozet, first before morning and never
once looked up before into the dark like a road toward heaven, night sky
to see your guarding angels, a black bear dancing while Orion and Cassiopeia
hash it out,  something you wished for of the miraculous, the fantastic, your
grandmother sitting on top of the soda machine humming  at the gas station
when you walk in to get some apples wanting to tell you she hadn’t forgotten your
persistence to knit a wig, the concept of crocheting missed on you for the
dropped stitches between your perfect pearls, a star’s circumference you’d
come for and circled back to as reflection on the way the absence of moonglow
suggested the presence of the midnight sun, Shenandoah, somewhere where
the tall trees, and like her, the daughter of the stars again is up before
breakfast, what was said at five o’clock mixing with her paper-white hands
another batch of dough for dinner rolls, at least that’s how I's told to tell it 


                 italics from Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone"

Masked / Amy Marques

A mask
beautifully
changing
attention
was remarkable
consideration

Source material: A Tale of Two Cities

Mother haiku / Sonia Sophia Sura

I wonder what my
mother hoped for when she brought
a child onto Earth. 

Initial Descent  / Samuel Spencer

We’re falling out
of the night sky.
Not quite a shooting
star, but some child may
have mistook us
as some celestial traveller
until he or she saw the
pulsating red lights
along our wing tips.
How lonely
it must be
to be
a shooting star – 
cutting up the blackness
all alone,
leaving only a memory
of light in your wake.

February - Poem 11

Shelter / Kristine Anderson

In winter, busy chickadee-dee-dee calls
fill the woods as songbirds forage in trees,
hopping along branches for insect eggs,

accompanied by the rat-a-tat of woodpeckers
and caws of blue jays storing up before
icy winds blow in with more snowfall,

while gray squirrels scurry across frozen lawns
then skitter up trees, carrying precious acorns
to the shelter of a tree cavity or drey.

Outside, dark nimbostratus clouds roll in.
Here in our kitchen, we switch on lights early,
the room glowing. Steam rises from the coffee

maker, as we settle in like our neighbors
the squirrels, the jays and chickadees
and woodpeckers, to wait out the storm.

Pipevine Love / Barbara Audet

I fear for the lives of deep noir butterflies,
Hindwings edged with blue carbuncles,
Fresh mated on their flight of blending.
Over scrubby Texas fields,
So far from opal beams of treasured Rivendell,
Where I imagine such creatures thrive.
They search, dart, flirt offhandedly at first
In search of lighting places.
Soon, they'll have to make demands, 
Impatient with each other,
Life will generate a need,
More intense, more vital 
For lepidopteran lovers
On a just in time's nick,
Journey 
To survive.
Butterflies such as these aerial anomalies
No doubt, once in abundance, angered wayfarers.
Now, two float in solitary dance
Across a long, brown swatch of faded grass.
Upon reflection, no camera in hand,
This passerby takes mental memory
Of the lovesick Pipevine swallowtails,
More common than my soul
in search of airborne beauty and simplicity.

Ode to Hospitality   / Bee Cordera

On a cold winter evening you are the fire we sit by telling stories, the extra sparkles of stars in the sky guiding us through a dark night.
Because of you, we know a familiar kind of love. We are happy to hold in each other the light of life the inspiration for good.

ODE TO THE FORGOTTEN STONES / Ashby Logan Hill

And I smile a little longer, like him, before the oil stains on his blue jeans call to me.
The man I mean, standing there stone faced by the swift, cold creek,
a simple man in a straw hat and overalls leaning against the fallen stones.
“The river looks mighty fine,” he says to me.  “I just might be able to
take the boat out today and do some fishing.”  He’d been chewing, between
elongated sentences, a wad of Beech-Nut plug, the juices from his “t” and
“s” sounds splitting midair and levitating just a bit before finding ground.
This whole time I’d thought I’d seen a ghost loafing by the ruins of my
father’s childhood house. A doe and a buck stood high in the trees watching.
“These weren’t no hedge or henge,” he says. “I’d be sure as sassafras if’twere
to tell of it.” “I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” I said. The trickle of
water had gotten lost in me and was trying to find its way back. I could
feel it in the bones and bricks of my indifference, standing there in silence,
waiting for the clouds to break, no direction home, a complete unknown. 


       italics from Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone"

Hold / Amy Marques

philosopher, they call me

philosopher

Are they right?

Hold a moment

smoothly, willingly, 

sufficiently 

long and hard

steadily

bright

Source material: A Tale of Two Cities

My name gives me a big ego, / Sonia Sophia Sura

My name, 
from my Great Grandmothers,
is Sonia Sophia Sura.

Sonia means wisdom 
and Golden Voice.
Sophia means Holy Wisdom 
and mother Gaia,
Mother of the Earth.
Sura means chapter,
an image, 
divine,
sun.

Sonia Sophia Sura
is the Golden Voice
of the divine
Chapters 
of Wisdom,
the
image 
of
Mother Earth. 

Mosquito Net  / Samuel Spencer

I used to lie awake,
eyes wide open as the sweat rolled
from my temple to the sheets
I was not beneath.
It must have been November or
December in Malawi, when
the days are hot and dry, and
the dust accumulates in every
crevice you can imagine.
I’d lie pooling and furious at the
dark stagnance trapped within
the dome above my head; a thin
veil of mesh like a fish net designed
to keep those killers, those vampires
from sucking my blood. I’d lie
there, melting and needing to piss;
needing until my stubborn mind
gave in to my persistent blatter.
I’d claw the net away and trace the
walls to the bathroom, grope
the sink for a box of matches
and light a candle. I’d let loose
a long dark ark of urine,
listen to its quiet impact
on the porcelain; shake,
blow out the candle, walk back
to bed in reverse, and
assume my position beneath
the smoldering, life-saving net
only to hear the enemy zip
past my ear, searching for
flesh. It was futile. In the morning
I found her fat and resting
on the wall. I annihilated her
with my palm, and together we left
behind the story of two battles
lost.

February - Poem 10

Pairs  / Kristine Anderson

of feet, one right and one left
(because: dancing, of course)

of hands, one to hold a jar
of pickles, the other to twist the lid

of shoulders, to sling over one a grocery bag,
over the other, a backpack of textbooks

of ears, one to hear the baby cry, the other
to catch my favorite song fading as I run upstairs

of eyes, one to navigate the icy sidewalk, the other
to catch sparrows darting in and out of the holly bush

Haiku One / Barbara Audet

Loyalty bears fruit.
Pregnant deeds give birth anew
Catching threads of hope

Ode to Mother Fletcher  / Bee Cordera

You lived lifetimes in one life. 
Longer than any of my ancestors 
could ever dream.

You see, our mothers turned forgetting
into a hobby. While you made remembering an art. 
You never lost one memory, keeper of a stable 

matriarchy keeper of Greenwood's agony.
The mothers in my family, we lose memory
like it's buried in our bones wrote in our DNA to do so.

Perhaps the pain you carried 
the one we sweep under 
the rug of collective dimentia 
can find freedom too.

LIKE LOAM / Ashby Logan Hill

                                                  For Stanley
                       

Along this line, a horizon forms of lavender, a blue blossom beginning to bud.
Like oleander, like silk, like frozen seafoam, like milk, like the boat lake
near the park by your friend’s house full of frolicking young teenagers
ice skating, hockey sticks in hand, helmets on head, like the feathers of the
geese sauntering toward the worms in the grass, like a rose, how sweet,
like the eyelet somehow still burning in the stove, like snow from the day before,
everything blue, frozen, everything sand, everything silt, like the fields of loam
to the west and north, a storm you’ve been waiting for, like the wind again, always
the wind, like almonds for eyes your grandfather passed along, the left only slightly
smaller, lazier than the other, the newspaper he crinkles between sips of lukewarm
coffee sitting in his white-ribbed “A” shirt, dreaming of Italy, his old cigarettes maybe,
like the sweet, sweaty smell of his old red-white Ford Bronco, a Stanley man it’s said I am, like the curls of red hair bleached blonde for the years of summer spent chlorine.
And I smile a little longer, like him, before the oil stains on his blue jeans call to me.

Bear Hope / Amy Marques

confidence will bear

hope so nothing will

perpetuate apprehensions

new or old

suffering faded

slowly confidence returned

not as an instant

Now: prosper!

Source: A Tale of Two Cities, p. 130

Ice cream  / Sonia Sophia Sura

I don't know
how to
understand
my
desires
Sometimes what
might hurt the
most is
what
feels the best.
Ice cream
made my
tummy feel better
(until it felt worse).

Sonnet for Missing Home  / Samuel Spencer

I’m far away and have been for some time.
I live in the land of the free
“refills,” is what my brother said while stood in line
one day for the soda machine.
I miss my home’s thick grass and red dirt roads,
the smell of an approaching rain.
I miss the ngumbis and the sound of toads
busting up the night with their vain
attempts at love. I missed my chance to stay
when I mistook a brochure for a dream.
I packed my things and climbed aboard that plane,
to a place where the big lights gleam.
I’ve thrived in this country and gained so much,
but I’d give it all up to return to my dust.

February - Poem 9

Alliance  / Kristine Anderson

Daylight low on the horizon
glowing behind thin, gray clouds,
blue sky peeping through,

pitch pine and bare birch reaching up,
waving in the wind. A crow caw,
geese flying overhead, emitting their nasal honk,

the raspy whirr of a blue jay. Soon
our kitchen will fill with scents of soup:
celery and bay and chicken broth.

The dog paws for his dinner. It’s time.
The sun sets orange-pink, a splash
beyond the community of trees.

Poetic Sight / Barbara Audet

"It's not what you look at that matters; it's what you see."
Henry David Thoreau

Wordsworth observed daffodils
explode across green hills. 
He saw alone that day. 
Did his words protect 
his golden horde?
When all around him, 
wordless men 
broke the Earth?
How can words alone
change the scope 
of planetary reeling?
A word-wielding hoard 
everblind to the power of daffodils,
or Thoreau's patient pond,
use language bent to hurt.
Discourse: electronic, rapid,
falsely born to aid distraction,
now governs.
To own what should not be owned,
To claim what should not be claimed.
Shelley wrote of his broken statue,
a vain king, 
long forgotten 
in the desert, 
wasted.
He saw. 
For the privilege 
of his empowered sight,
a sly push beyond providence,
lost him his heart and penmanship.
What is the purpose 
of a poetic soul?
To make the world more lush, 
tolerable somehow?
To right the helm 
of society's sinking ship?
She thought she saw.
How unpoetic words provoke 
pretense that cries 
pathetically blameless.
Translated by narrow blinders, 
these quick bursts 
of money-laundered wordplay
are transparent.
As if a handful 
of jewel-colored balloons
were held up to the sun, 
and we poetic few 
could see straight through 
to the Apocalypse they want.
Soon their visible folly bursts,
balloons transform opaque,
landing from aloft,
across what is left 
of the blanket
of yellow daffodils.
All the cruelty,
is painted on the remnant
of those shattered thin skins.
Words unspoken though
are a silent paradox.
Composition forever 
on the cusp 
of new invention.
Waves of sentences,
particles of grammar,
made up
of passed on threads
of precious daffodils 
and sculptured, broken kings.
Once poetic, voiced,
the words fall 
more gracefully,
side by side,
awaiting translation 
of brave 
long-standing
universal truths.
We see.

untitled   / Bee Cordera

ATTEMPTS AT MEMORY / Ashby Logan Hill

We didn’t want but had to see what both of us knew of loss the morning after.
What happens when you deprive yourself of sleep before going under.
What mushrooms flush on this side of the river in the early parts of Springtime.
Did you happen to see the chickens and hens and cows again?
I can’t say I’m too fond of this cold, this bitterness for the first time here ever.
What is which that is of the moment and all you have is an empty nest?
Where is the paper spark you made which floats aimlessly still within your head?
It’s the year of the horse and you know it — the same thing over and over.
What is the ocean without its depths except a glimpse of the surface?
Five more times I’ve become overcome with the empty space.
It binds us like the seeping sap dripping everything, holds all of us together.
I’d like for there to be something more than the sum of these parts.
I’ll take the long way home to risk the matter of being late and more joyful for it.
Along this line, a horizon forms of lavender, a blue blossom beginning to bud.

A Case for Dreaming / Amy Marques

Silence faces heavy hours.

Dreaming, the village began 

to be lighter and lighter:

amazed,

awestricken.

And came forth to lead

as could be.

Source material: A Tale of Two Cities, p. 122

My day today  / Sonia Sophia Sura

I woke up to my roommate coughing in the kitchen. 
It sounded like a burp in my dream. 
Max texted me at the minute I awoke. 
Asked if I wanted to go to a coffee place. 
Yes! Yes! Yes! 
It felt like a propozal. 
It was 4 o clock, 3:54 pm to be exact, my birth time years ago. 
Max and I are both from 1999, both from the northeast, both met at a Gong festival. In Texas. He was working at the farm. 
I saw him as already-my-friend. 
Today at the coffee shop two people came up to us and said
I just wanted to say you two are so cute and look so in love! 

We’re best friend exhibitionists, Max says today.
Exhibitionists of the best friends in the universe. 
People think we’re in love. 
We are! 
Isn’t that all we’re made of? 

Moments of Japan  / Samuel Spencer

One moment, you’re trudging through
the most overcrowded, overstimulating
street in your life – a sea of people
with no discernable tide, neon lights
and signs for products you didn’t know
existed, a thousand raman shops and
a thousand izakayas; all accompanied by
a multitude of sounds, the chirping of a bird
of a crosswalk.

The next, you’re in a neighborhood devoid
of chaos, surrounded by quaint houses
and parks, grass. This moment is so
serene you forget the one before. You walk
quietly as not to disturb this moment.
An old man walks slowly passed you with
his hands clasped behind his back. He tips
his head at you in acknowledgment, and
finally you know the satisfaction of being
seen in such a place.

February - Poem 8

The House  / Kristine Anderson

the one I used to live in, with the backyard
where my son once built a treehouse looking over
the weedy lawn and unruly privets,

the California house I moved from—
but not really that place, because dreams overlay
one experience onto fabrications—

I walked into this unreal house of white walls,
plush pristine carpet, indoor balcony overhanging
an empty living room (no guardrail!)

and turning in circles, searching for all the boxes
of books and clothes we’d moved out, overland
far away, months ago, seeing nothing . . . Then

voices wafted in—a mother’s humming, baby babbling—
fragrant presence of that other family who took over
this invented domicile, this not-the-house

I used to live in, and me suddenly beginning to understand how
white vacant rooms stood in for what I once fussed over—
weekly vacuuming and constant closet-cleaning—

bringing to mind how my child, now grown and gone,
and my own and my husband’s now growing old, overturn
& blessedly simplify my needs—a truth revealing itself

even as I woke up.

A Rose Is / Barbara Audet

Can it be 
that two,
refuse to die,
rose bushes,
dictionary-worthy 
see '"spindly,"
are in truth,
a garden?
Or are these
stalwart pair,
just a fool's--
where's my green thumb--
thorny episode?
Fileable
under the heading,
fat chance?
Is it oxymoronic
to say rose garden,
when a rose
is not a rose
when they merely rise,
petals lurking
despite me?
One blooms by surprise
even in the pitch of winter,
in a spotty, odd profusion
of fluttering ivory
while my back
is turned.
One blooms on occasion,
a birthday or last Christmas.
I suspect, this one may have 
a datebook
hidden in the ground 
that owns its roots.
January's frost took out
the basil and the bougainvillea.
I am bereft of parsley.
Lilies tried to hide
in the shallows of the rose
and these are gone.
Each rose once 
had a name,
long forgotten.
One is a red.
One is white.
Like wine bought 
at the grocery store
for quick consumption.
Wine with twist off caps.
No corks.
That's all I know.
Still they grow, 
my minor landscaped realm,
and by default, 
I am ever rose queen. 

Ode to Blues   / Bee Cordera

Freedom music so full of soul 
we can't help but reconnect with ancestors
and world where we all belong.
Blues is the music of togetherness, 
Of family blues is the music of true love.

THE FIRST THIRD / Ashby Logan Hill

And all this just to get back to what my mind held? “A sleepless sanctuary,” I said.
And first at finding, on a road in July in Moab, climbing by petroglyphs another thing untethered, winding out from the mind, something you hold onto for whatever reason but now knowing you must let go of yet, everything you once stood for not loosed out, at thirty five, and still seventy years more till the earth will shake you from it, a love you had and walking back from the parking lot around the corner just for the moment
to show you how everything’s connected — you didn’t want to be dead but the hundred degree plus heat was determined to make sure of it. We got a hotel and stayed up
all night, our bodies intertwined like stardust because we knew we didn’t have another second, at least this is what we thought at least, at least two fingers more for a shot of
whiskey and the condensation on the mirror from the heat of us and our breaths.
Later that morning we both woke early to read in our books. We smiled as if we knew there soon to be a child inside, what we didn’t know yet we’d lose two Julys later.
We didn’t want but had to see what both of us knew of loss the morning after.

Refuge / Amy Marques

claim hope
honor and live
a wilderness: luxurious
under daylight
well-satisfied, qualified in this
new philosophy to live brightly
observed
the Refuge of many.

Yoga poems I wrote in my head  / Sonia Sophia Sura

Yoga poems I
wrote in my
head,
4 poems,
the first about
softening
and how I wanted to punch the air
because I needed to
soften
into 
this body 
of earth
and forgive. 

The second was
about 
the different lengths 
of time.

One hour has
different lengths.
One hour of yoga is
five hours.
One hour with
a lover 
is
forever 
and not 
long
enough. 

The third poem
was unremarkable,
I guess,
or about my
sadness
knowing
I wouldn’t
remember it. 

A Sijo for Stars  / Samuel Spencer

In the sky, galaxies wave with hands made of exploding light.
I wave back from a blue Earth, hands made of flesh, blood warm and red.
But no – I am left unseen because waving stars have no sky.

February - Poem 7

The Clouds  / Kristine Anderson

The weather report predicts more snow
tomorrow, though this afternoon cumulus
puffs float across a canvas of cornflower blue
behind bare winter arms of birch and alder.

By morning, glacier gray nimbostratus
will arrive, sending icy rain or flakes of snow
to overlay frozen-shrouded lawns, to cover
brown oak leaves still hanging on from fall,

to coat rooftops and doorsteps, settling
on streets finally cleared after last weekend’s
storm, gathering on brick walkways
where neighbors tread carefully to keep

from sliding. A good day to stay inside
while the heater blasts its heart out. A good day
for a book or conversation over tea. A good day
to listen to snow’s hush: easy does it.

Sort Of Sonnet Olympiad / Barbara Audet

He would extol thee on this winter’s eve.
Now is sport more artful and more deliberate.
Ebony skies did greet the sparkling torches’ weave,
To plant a light that burns too brief this Milan-frescoed date.
Not this time will the sun burst unfairly bright for miracle deeds.
Nor will cold mar complexions of Sparta’s children as they soar.
By measures marked oh so small, a few will earn their golden leads.
And yes, sometimes, nature’s chance will enhance what training bore.
This eternal moment will not fade or its import ere diminish.
For those braving ice, long drifts so grandly, boldly Italic.
May yet claim the glory given to those who reach an ephemeral finish.
To wear ‘round their necks, this century’s version of laurel metallic.
So long as women, men exert and breathe, eyes see,
So long lives this and we take untampered joy from thee.

Scissortail Flycatcher / Bee Cordera

Bird of most beautiful sunsets, 
swooping
into the evening, catching summer's 
juicy insects. How we miss you 
during the months of cold 
your dancing in the sky, 
the warmth of the sun as 
red as your inner 
wings and feathers.

DREAM FROM A DINNER PARTY AT THE PALAZ OF HOON / Ashby Logan Hill

All day and still he won’t tell us, two lotus flowers floating in the sun.
And you wake up to the howling wind, as brisk as this morning winter,
the still light sun cast flicker between the trees outside your windows.
And from this purpling dream, just having awakened, you sit up and listen,
as slow as ever wonder what the day will bring, sift through the tattered
memories from those lucid moments ago.  You close your eyes and go
back to the Night river, the dinner party, a woman who sees you out back
waiting by the flowing, rose-filled fountain.  Earlier, you had tied an umbrella
to yourself to use as a hang glider parachute and the wind took you up into the
afternoon sky, somewhere like a breeze above Corolla. A man from down below yells
from the horse-lined beach to punch down the bag a bit and twist with the tethers.  “You’ll make your way back down then,” he said. And so I did. And a soft patch of
cypress trees welcomed me and I waited for a ride into town from a stranger.
And all this just to get back to what my mind held? “A sleepless sanctuary,” I said.

The Beginning of a Struggle / Amy Marques

Brokenhearted

Silent

        Repressed

   always knowing   always seeing

even now.

But witness

so believe

          one day

          a word

                 could touch

            striving

            in a happier future

in aid 

of the beginning of a struggle.

The Surface that Holds  / Sonia Sophia Sura

Can I still 
make a wish?

I found an
eyelash
on 
the
yoga mat.

Maybe that’s where
all the
wishes
go,
on the
surface that
holds
our
child’s pose

Maybe the 
surrender to
the human
shapes
of
surrender
and fetus
and 
animal
and
spine

is how the
wishes
come 
true—

Is
relaxing
all I 
need to do
to 
Save
the World?

Stretching
my neck,
shoulders,
my torso?

Raptured  / Samuel Spencer

And just like that,
it was all over – everything,
my life, a distant memory
shut away in my heavenly mind.
There was more I wanted
to do, something I wanted to say,
though I don’t know what.
I never did catch that red Gyrados
in the Lake of Rage. I was halfway
through A Farewell to Arms.
I’ll never know if my parlay hit.
I never kissed her on her full,
red lips, though I looked at them
long enough to know how mine
would feel pressed against them.
I look down at my glowing,
pedicured feet –  I guess my favorite pair
of Vans weren't holy enough…

Haha, get it?

February - Poem 6

Stars  / Kristine Anderson

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

                                                                                    —Carl Sagan

More of them in the universe than dollars in the federal deficit
and though I can’t even fathom a host of septillion—
sounds more like a reptile I’d like to avoid—
I can imagine each giant gaseous ball,
thanks to years reading science fiction
and close encounters with questionable chili.

And aren’t we humans lucky to have been shaped
from such celestial ingredients?
Next time I go to the dentist, or cut myself and bleed,
or talk myself out of another slice
of dessert, I’ll think of stepping outside on a clear
night, trying to count the dots of glitter in the sky.

Ode to hands  / Bee Cordera

Hands, love incarnate, 
beings of creation, 
destruction, some who have lived
lifetimes without knowing 
the love of pen to paper, 
carving letters out of purgatory.
Or how you pour my likeness 
onto the blank page. 
Or how hands cradle curves
our body’s first food. 
Or how gentle touches 
revive the fallen souls 
of our abuse ridden past.
How hands like ours embrace 
to create to overcome family curses

Loudness of Solitary Confinement  / Barbara Audet

When years advance,
There's no one
to fall asleep with at your side.
When time refuses
to stand still,
somber emptiness
of missing shadows, 
bears down.
Relentless.
As rain that never ends.
One hears a sound,
one's own life force,
captured in eardrum hollows,
Unwelcome.
A going steady hum
ever present
in the waxing
early hours.
Revived.
Like a living 
tuning fork,
hit for summons
from furtive sleep.
Awaken.
Solitary once again.

BUDDHA’S SPOON / Ashby Logan Hill

It is unfortunate that the sun does not travel backwards
“How the lilie is not a lotus, looming long above the crest of lake,” you said. “It looks like a little spoon,” I said, “as if the warmth of the fog above the water, Buddha’s breath, just might keep in balance of his, his curled fingertips, pressed to the tip of his nose, like a paperweight, somehow dangling just above the nostrils.” “I wonder if he can hear us,” you said.
“Do you think he likes golden raisins in his oatmeal?” I said. “I know it’s not a spoon,” you said. “But I want it to be.” “Sometimes your eyes can play dirty tricks on you,” I said. “Do you think along the way, and after his travels back,  beneath the Bodhi tree, he contemplated Spumoni?” you said. “You know, I’m not totally sure,” I said. “We’ve been standing here all day and still he won’t tell us, two lotus flowers floating in the sun.”  

Italicized line from E. Ethelbert Miller's "Michelle"

A To Do List / Amy Marques

you mean?

I mean

I knew--I hope

I pray a tune of silence

I ask

I give

I justified, I know

I have--I may

I can, I suppose...

S

ource Material: A Tale of Two Cities, p. 138

Sex / Sonia Sophia Sura

scared, I
asked him to rest 
his hand 
on me
and say:
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe
You are safe

Thought Terminating Cliché  / Samuel Spencer

“It is what it is.”
They say, as they toss away
what is that could have been.

“Boys will be boys.”
A parent asserts, withholding
their son the joy of
being a delicate man.

“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people."
A man explains
who has never, nor will ever be a killing machine.

“This is just how it’s done.”
My grandfather refrains
as he teaches me how to serve a
tennis ball. Years later, I learned
a better way, and my grandfather was dead.

“Everything happens for a reason.”
Excuses a person who hates
their own ability, or lack thereof,
to change.

“That’s just life.”
Retort the unliving.

February - Poem 5

Frozen  / Kristine Anderson

water below 32°
cubes for cold lemonade
or tumbled into the cooler
or packed in a Ziplock
for a sore shoulder

in winter, the sidewalk
where I shuffle and slide
to the trash can, a bag full
of warm coffee grounds from
breakfast, cellophane
that once held a loaf of bread,
detritus of everyday

crystals hanging onto eaves
puddles turning solid

cold as . . . meaning rigid,
unfeeling, heartless—
the heart as counterpoint:
vital, dynamic, warm

outside a kitchen window,
piled snow hardening the ground
where, below, daffodil bulbs
wait for the thaw

A Tale Of Two  / Barbara Audet

Walking in beauty is dangerous.
Only if there's beauty in you.
Tender beauty 
beyond skin deep courageous;
Eclipses temporary aspect, hues.
Force and Beauty 
meet most often 
when skies are starry,
and demand is great, 
unsoftened in such gaudy days.
Pretty planned, impaired, has no place.
tt shatters under lights, impure, notorious.
Lasting beauty draws attention.
As it's brave, not vainglorious.
Beauty at peace asks Her
Take the stand, go unadorned.
With thoughts expressed serene
Define calmness with
unnecessary win-refusing smiles.
Word eloquence alone
is goodness spent 
most beautifully.
Action in intimidation's face
is nameless grace.

ON FARMING THE LAND / Ashby Logan Hill

                      from King Tutenkamun’s Diary

“Meet me at the heron rookery at dusk. I’ll be waiting for you there,”
he said to his advisors. “I want to talk to you about farming the land,
how fertile the crescent is and Ibis gliding as Thoth tells us of
Ankhesenamun, how rich and ripe the soil is to carry my children.
My father once told me about the people of god, the lamb of the
sun but he kept everything else from me. I took on a different name.
I wanted to till the earth, cultivate the land, sow the fields with the
beauty and magic of the sun. I wish he would have told me sooner
about the drought and the shrines of the delta marshes left to decay. 
I don’t know why he would keep this from me. I like the way the reeds
sway in the wind, how crystal blue the water is. I wish there was a way
to tell him now how much I love the grass by the Nile, the birds and
fishes coexisting, how all the fields and dirt and sky become one.”
It is unfortunate that the sun does not travel backwards.

Italicized line from E. Ethelbert Miller's "Michelle"

Talking to the Moon / Amy Marques

Tell me, dear daughter,
that, years ago, i had
attention & curiosity at
who you were 
to become.

Source Material: A Tale of Two Cities

Micah called / Sonia Sophia Sura

He said he doesn’t know how to flirt.

He doesn’t like going to bars and hearing girls
talk about their crazy roommate.

He likes to talk about wars and authors from the
1900s and what he cooks for breakfast. 
His eggs benedict is so passionate, he
almost missed his train, one time out of Saratoga Springs.
Made eggs benny for everyone but himself.

He read me poetry. Elizabeth Bishop.
Told me about her life.
She went to Brazil and wrote a poem for Micah to read to me
while I wrote a poem
and pretended I was listening.

He said he just finished cleaning his room.
I cleaned my room last night, too, but
he’d destroyed things in his room. Broke things.
Has to make coffee differently because he broke the
coff—
I don’t know. I don’t drink coffee.

I want to know
what he’s like
when his guard is
down.
I want to know what
he’s like when
his rage
softens and
slithers like a snake
hugging a 
tree;

what I mean to say, 
what I’m getting at is,

Micah reads me poetry 
from the books on his shelf,
if he has a standing shelf.

Micah gets together with his friends and they
read poetry to each other,
in the heart of Brooklyn,
they are reading poetry to each other. 

Micah is so gentle and ardent for intellectual
stimulation, he must have smashed his belongings in 
pursuit of a higher intelligence…

It’s my philosophy to take care of myself and
share my methods with others.
I tell him about the celtic shaman.
I tell him about meditations
and sufi whirling and
I want to know what he’s like
when his guard is down,
when he’s relaxed to someone’s lips.

Corporate Confession  / Samuel Spencer

I can hear the morning rain pattering
on the leaves outside my window.

I want to stay in this moment, wait
until the sky runs out of droplets –

But I mustn’t, or I will miss the time to be
“on time.” I will be the one who goes

as the rain stays in this moment and watches me
run out. I ask myself

when did my life become a series of forsaking
the joys bestowed on me at birth?

February - Poem 4

Introduction to Winter  / Kristine Anderson

Last weekend’s foot of snow hangs around
though now it’s more like ice
and my dog, about the height of that,
had mostly given up on favorite spots:
no more grassy lawn stretching to the street,
no mounds of dirt beneath the evergreens.

Seven times—maybe eight—he fell in
and, immobilized, looked to me to rescue him.

Today, something different. The dog hopped
up to a plateau of snow and didn’t sink.
The surface held. The dog sniffed.
So I stepped up. The ice supported me
for just a beat—long enough to think
okay, this’ll work . . . then thump!

One foot sank deep, shifting body mass.
I toppled down, squarely on my bum. In the snow.

As far as I can tell, the only laughter
came from me. From deep within my chest.
I stood, regained my equilibrium, dusted
off the ice still clinging to my coat.
The dog tugged the leash, wanting to go on.
No, uh-uh, I said, and shook my head.

We’ve had our turns, my dog and I, and now
I think we see: winter has the upper
hand—at least until the spring.

untitled / Bee Cordera

A Tale Of Two  / Barbara Audet

“In short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Charles Dickens

It was, he said, the best of times.
Because fabrics were fine.
Thoughts were elevated.
Revolution was a birthright.
The golden thread.
They claimed the Greeks.
Hugged their philosophy, knowledge
Science served with cherish on top.
It was, he said, the worst of times.
Death came forward
as a guarantee
for disobedience.
Fell swoop.
Away you went.
Blood was the answer
For despotic disagreements.
It was, he said, the age of wisdom.
More than Burke and Paine.
More than Rousseau and Jefferson.
All. Created. Equal.
Definitely on paper.
It would seem so.
It was, he said, the age of foolishness.
Because fabrics were fine
only for some.
The paper thoughts
were fragile.
It was, he said, the epoch of belief.
Belief compelling, disturbing,
overwhelming, corrupt.
It was, he said, the epoch of incredulity.
Epochs are supposed to have a start, a finish.
There is no finish line
for stunning reversals
In the progression of human desire.
Recalled to life, he said,
In the presence of the track of a storm.
Winds of self-ambition.
Lightning fits of anger,
striking for power’s sake.
It could still be a season for Light
To dispel the ever present Darkness?
His hero would give his life.
Our heroes are also dying.
in this near spring of hope,
Laid on the doorstep
of a literary fantasy
Come to life.
We are yet knee-deep 
in this winter of despair.
The red snow of Minnesota
Must even now give way
To a spring of green and rebirth.
We wish to be recalled 
to a better life.
This is still
A time when we
Have everything before us.
But give way to fear,
We will have nothing
Before us.
The Victorian considered that heaven or hell
Were places on your itinerary.
Eventually.
The year of His Lord
one thousand
seven hundred
and seventy-five.
The year of mine is now.

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT  / Ashby Logan Hill

That’s all I’ve ever really wanted. Something like this for death.
If you will, please honor it. I know you have your own beliefs
on who gets what and what goes where and how all the papers
in my archive will be “represented.”  I’d like you to know I have
wholehearted trust in you to do so.  I know some of the things
I’ve asked for are a bit wacky but I’ve already got everything straight
with my power of attorney and she'll have you know I’m quite
serious about the ice-cold cantaloupe and cucumber tea sandwiches
to be served at my wake.  I guess that’s what we’ll call it.  I’ve hired a
brass band and a great set of thespians to act it all out — the “dead” me
in my casket will do just that — awake and sing to the rooftops to all my
guests — “He’s already moved on so there better be some damn good laughter
between your sips of whiskey sours and conversations,” he told me to tell you.
“Meet me at the heron rookery at dusk. I’ll be waiting for you there.”

For Kim  / Amy Marques

debauchery 

bred:

public street

                powerful

            extensive

crowd

Therefore:

What's coming?

I want to send all my poems to you / Sonia Sophia Sura

I want to send all my poems to you
I want to be a wound split open
only to show you the remarkable
ability we have to
peer inside with a magnifying glass and
find words, shapes, sound.

I want to tell you
I lost
what could bring me dead.
I shattered.
I de-limbed.

I want to tell you with my hands,
my eyes, my lips.
They are still here.

I want to tell you with my hands,
my eyes, my lips
are still here. 

Layover  / Samuel Spencer

I’m not on-the-go anymore,
but I feel like this, this leg of
The Journey
is just one of those long layovers – 
like that one time I spent 19 hours
in the Denver airport, and slept under the gaze
of its demonic gargoyles – 

Except this time I get to see my friends
and family, and tour the spot I’ve been to
a hundred times. I’m no longer travelling
and yet my toothbrush
continues to live in a travel case, a go-bag,
if you will.

The truth of it all is
I’m not, in fact, on a layover.
There’s no checking in, no need for
security.
I can be here know it soon
won’t have to end. I can pause my means
for escape. I can put away my
baggage.

February - Poem 3

A Note  / Kristine Anderson

The sun sets in the west,
my older sister explained.
You can remember
because cowboys
ride into the sunset.

So how to explain
my riding eastward
at almost seventy,
leaving the Pacific
& a lifetime of sun,
& desert-inspired air,
heading from dusks
toward sunrises—
fire spreading across
the Atlantic sky.

Too many sunsets,
maybe. Days,
lives, dreams
twilit and fallen
behind Coast Range
mountains into
the sizzling ocean.

Sister, you would’ve
known something

of what I’m saying.

Surface Certainty  / Barbara Audet

A life depends so often
on the certainty that a foot
coming to rest on a surface
will not push through
to a lasting void.

A child will rush onto the ice.
Unaware that clear 
enticement of a slide 
across its barren beauty 
is uncertain
at the least.
Breaks, cracks, jagged edges 
must form
when the surface 
inevitably lies
proving unreliable.

Holding onto choices,
the verbal slide 
traipsing so certainly on.
This forward march 
on broad expanses
of dangerous expressions, 
ego-frozen,
is no skating endeavor, 
glibly tracing figures 
from the past.
It reminds one 
of thick boots j
ust behind,
willful walkers 
posed to tiptoe on 
heart-stopping socialized brulee,
intimidation-made glides.

Masked boots 
that lift in unison
to land with malice 
on the worn surface 
of a cold world, upending
Soundtracked with a life-taking 
cacophony of crystals 
thrown into the uncertain face
of its unrecognizable delicate civility.

For Mario / Bee Cordera

I wake up every morning
next to you and that is a poetry.
I fall asleep in your arms as we watch 
horny hockey and even that is poetry.
Sharing your breath, sharing your time,
we are poetry. 

Elegy for the Something of Death and Water Lilies  / Ashby Logan Hill

And afterwards still you and I left, the only ones singing,
angel-headed and high-lighter glow in expanse of night.
Old riverboat for your pleasure in Bardo as fisherman's wife.
And something from me, an elegy I wrote to you before dying
of death, a simple few instructions on the backs of notecards —
green and gold sleeping bag for sarcophagus lined with flowers,
cold but glowing prostrate body in the bed of my pick up truck,
my brother said on pyre of palo santo and white pine pontoons.
And I wanted the jars I had made for my brains to be whipped,
mosaiced from the classes we'd take after work on Wednesdays
to stand there right beside Bastet and Anubis at feet and head.
It almost made sense this set of requests, not the Viking fire
you envisioned. It was almost as if you could hear me calling.
That’s all I’ve ever really wanted. Something like this for death.

Social Seamstresses   / Amy Marques

musingly built

the pattern--

                    inaudible and invisible

which 

         may have been a 

mender

           in due season.

MAx / Sonia Sophia Sura

Max plays the guitar.

I feel it
through my toes 
on his knee.

I hope to fall asleep.

Awake, I dream of the ocean, of finally reaching water and waves. 

I could have gone there from coldened Spain 
to India, or Thailand, or Bali,
but my Heart called me to Texas.
Why do I come here to find pieces of my heart
everywhere I didn’t know it would be?
Everywhere I did know it would be, actually.

In the frustration of highway cars and
expensive living I
find my Heart 
in Max’s tiny home.

I find my butt glued to my body.

It is cold but not like Massachusetts.

Max acts beyond words can describe.

It’s like we’re kids who’ve been friends all along.

We sit next to each other in the bed,
stuffed animals in every direction,
Essay on his lap, Journal in mine,

Shower Dripping to 
a rhythm that
doesn’t
bother me tonight,
it’s
slower
tonight. 
Two 
different notes.

The cat 
is somewhere 
outside,
under Great Tree or
car.
The Howling of 
the Graveyard Ghosts
don’t
reach
us.

We are bubbled-in-light,
the Two of Us,
the Together of Us
as Separate 
but One Unit
of
remarkable
friendship.

The Whole World
might think 
We’re made for Each 
Other,

wearing the
same Jacket,
the same Smile,
the same Love.

I’m
unlike 
a friend 
he’s ever had

and 
He’s
unlike 
a friend 
I’ve
ever had. 

Long Distance Haiku  / Samuel Spencer

My body and soul
are riven now because my
heart is where you are.

February - Poem 2

Winter Oaks  / Kristine Anderson

hold onto brittle brown leaves,
frozen in snow, battered by nor’easters:
marcescence,
unwilling to let go.

Aspen, dogwood, alder
splash landscape in autumn, then 
abscission—
shedding, separation, release.

April buds explode to flower and fruit,
ripen and return to the earth:
senescence,
elegance of aging.

The Shadow Knows  / Barbara Audet

If Ogden the poet today were living,
About this Groundhog tradition,
he'd express much misgiving.

I suspect he'd be pondering how such a mere rodent,
Could annually offer weather advice many consider so potent?

Rather, I think Nash with humor would question, 
how Phil, the dear woodchuck,
mastered climate projection.

Gauging winter's demise by plain shadow reckoning?
While outside his burrow, snow-weary humans are beckoning?

No llama lament now, poets put Punx to the test, 
keeping score by thermometer or give it a rest.

For if winter braves on 
despite shadow prognosis,
then it's high time to admit, 
trusting groundhogs
makes no sense.

untitled / Bee Cordera

Like Roses  / Ashby Logan Hill

Fingers holding all that’s left of glacial prairie, your way home
like roses, begonias, bamboo shoots, your walk to the flower market.
Last night, around six thirty, you skated on the ice like rain-song.
You stood leaning on the I beam in the center of the room
watching every member of the band laugh and dance.
You were like an ant in the middle of a bed of roses,
red as strawberries in summertime or the bits of blood
that dripped from your fingertips when pricked because in haste
the thorns remained at first for you primordial glimpse of beauty.
It was an unlearning like this that taught you something new.
And yet, like you, you hadn’t had the heart to name it you said.
And you still wanted the little drips like tie dyed silk ribbons.
Like roses, a cold winter’s breath, a silent song I said.
And afterwards still you and I left, the only ones singing.

Abundant Joy   / Amy Marques

art

books & paper

account

for necessary giddiness.

Source material for erasure: A Tale of Two Cities, pg 140

Loss / Sonia Sophia Sura

When you

love something

you

couldn’t

bear 

to 

live 

with out,

When you

lose something

you

couldn’t

bear 

to 

live 

with out,

Enjoying the Silence of  / Samuel Spencer

I remind myself
not every moment of this life
needs the accompaniment of a well-tailored
Spotify playlist – not every chore
needs chords; not every task
needs tunes.

Sometimes the best song is silence –
songs you cannot store, compile for later;
the songs of a moment you must endure.

Some of the biggest hits include:
Wind passing through leaves.
A distant train horn.
The boiling of a pot of coffee.
A splintering campfire.
Rain.
The mourning dove (work harder).
The mourning dove extended version (drink lager).
And let’s not forget about the lapping waves.

I, for one, pride myself on having
a more eclectic taste in silence.
I mean, not to brag, but I’ve been known to enjoy:
Tires on the interstate.
A dinner alone.
Cicadas.
The anticipation of diagnosis.
A summertime lawnmower.
The hum of a microwave.
The milliseconds thereafter “Do you love me?”

But what I love most of all
is the silence of a poem concluded.
That magnificent white space
devoid of words, yet which holds so much more
than you and I could ever contain,
contain,
contain,
contain,
contain,
con… (sorry, this one’s got a scratch).

February - Poem 1

The Noise / Kristine Anderson

“. . . write with the noise.”
—Susan Muaddi Darraj

Inside my home
the warm kitchen silent
except for the metronomic tick
of an old-fashioned wall clock

Outside the window
late afternoon casting shadows
sharpened by triangles of sunlight
on undulating stretches of icy snow

Beyond this: clatter
of the world. Scraping
of snow plows clearing roads,
sirens of ambulances rushing

to the ER, crack of a pine branch
splitting off. Report of a gun.
And everywhere, it seems,
the breaking of glass

 Belongs  / Barbara Audet

Every sign I carry. 
You carry.
Every raising of my hand with yours says 
we are mind full.
Of worry.
Of pain.
Of awareness that only hands held, fingers squared, will have strength.
A hand held sends 
its grip straight 
to holding a heart
in place. 
Against all 
that would end 
its beating.
The hand 
generates the sign.
The heart maintains 
its worth.

 Pose 4 the Bandit / Bee Cordera

A Good Thing  / Ashby Logan Hill

A loose thing, forgiveness, untethered, a skein of yarn
undoing in time, a good thing that comes like the stiff wind,
the dark night, monks on their way north, a narrow road to the
clifftop chateau, a desert sun not far from Tortilla Flats, Arizona,
a hell of a thing at Hellsgate Wilderness, a forest of pine trees
and hot springs, in the day, too hot for a bike ride, the windows
down and your friends in the back of your truck at dusk, then
moonglow thereafter, loose, untethered, a kite string’s whisper
and rattled about the sand dunes, and yet a turn you take today,
again a thing unfathomable, untouched snow drift, the ocean
and sandpiper dunes, the sun, golden topaz sandstone where
wooly mammoths used to roam, only leaving their footprints below,
mountain top cranberry bogs, Tobacco Row and lakes that look like
fingers holding all that’s left of glacial prairie, your way home

Delightful Though Disapproved   / Amy Marques

Nothing agreeable trifles
in approved best:

Birds, and flowers, and books
and wonder.

Source material for erasure: A Tale of Two Cities, pg 92

Standing in the Garage / Sonia Sophia Sura

I didn’t know it yet,
but he’d become a 
second 
dad to me,

the man,
shirtless and waving 
a sword 
through the air
during a thunderstorm…

We stood in the garage,
door open,
eight or six or 
ten of us,
looking for him
when the lightning was not
being our sky-lamp.

The storm had gone on for hours,
I know this because it had been hours
since I
saw clearly;

someone found my 
glasses
on the bench the next day;

When the rain came,
we took off our shirts
and started running.

The creek is down the road,
a few minutes driving
(one person in the seat,
the others on top of the car),
or an 8 minute run.

I don’t remember putting my
glasses on the bench.

When the lightning struck,
some of us
got scared.

By some of us,
I mean only
the Father 
of my
two friends, 
who became family to me
long after

the Father arrived
at the creek
and
screamed at us.

He asked us 
why we’re
idiots.

It’s dangerous,
he said,
to be standing
in the water
during
a lightning storm.

It’s dangerous,
to wave a sword around
during a
lightning storm,
but not for all 
of us

delinquents (we
could be considered
as)

standing in the
garage. 

Toddler Watching an AI-Generated Show  / Samuel Spencer

I feel bad for the artists
who had their work stolen, all so a pair of parents
could eat and talk in peace.
I feel worse for the child, buckled down
in the restaurant highchair, anesthetized
by a screen pretending to be an acid trip.

I look around to see if anyone else sees
what I’m seeing, but no one does –
I can almost literally see the child’s life force
leaving his eyes and entering the screen,
the realm that holds his attention and (soon)
his dreams.

The restaurant revolves around the scene.
No stops and screams because they don’t see what I see:
The death of the innocence of a child;
a child so close – yet so unseen.

January - Poem 31

Cento to Melt Ice / Composed by Haley Bosse

with lines drawn by and from Tess Adams, Haley Bosse, Jess Bowe, Joanna Lee, Thomas Page, Sarah Paley, and Amy Snodgrass.

While everyone waits for the storm to come,
to hush and quiet. we live

the looming fabric waving
the past uncovers.
a line of police cruisers, sirens mute in the before-dawn

Look, the moon said,
A whistle breaking open

This is where we begin, in the mud with the red–
first note carried through the tunnel

like blood like blood like blood
marking lines of ruin across the map.

They are coming. The signal fires are lit.
and, yes,               words

                           against such relentless
                                    boots?

language to speak the loss that has hollowed me out.
The roar of the engine is a dare.

And for love that is stronger than death.
                  –it is almost within arm’s reach

My heart too – on a leash that I seldom remember to slacken.
An ungovernable force all my own.
It ebbs and flows like the tide full of red blooms and seaweed clouds.

before the world realizes you’re not dead and buried
today, you are still
much too small and alive.

I am not sure I can survive your brightest now.
The crackCRACK
of oversaturated tree trunks

every bucket of midnight
the laying on of their hands.

A cloud circles in and circles out. It drops then spreads.
what do you call that then?

to carry love down the sidewalk,
a song unafraid of its fear.
over a river running black and unpersuadable

over dark cars and dark asphalt
out of my skin, unbloomed.

and you reach your hand
to the human next to you,
stretched like a kitestring as the wind

who dared to venture out into the clear day—
over the windows like eyes and eyes and eyes

to the middle. come walk with me
I am stuck in every tonight
and people are singing somewhere

a hope escaping
the water never
falling still

for those who stay to dare, waiting in the rain.
finally, I become

a tiny cloud
Your life is as valuable as mine. Your life is as valuable as mine. Your life.
Its roots stretching

to guts, to muscle, to skin,       quicker than you can blink
// the undulating sidewalk // full of cracks // and fissures //

Our lungs so like ocean
waterways of a dream;
sound waves swallowing

The scrape of your calluses on broken concrete,
trying to navigate // to any public place // under heaven 

they cannot hear the song I sang. I sung.
That will not be washed away

today I fall with its grit.
reborn into the air 

and I gasp
The worms surfacing from puddles,

i imagine i’m as common as the wind, as ordinary as any leaf left for winter’s bed.
Greenbright between their veins

a surgeon’s neat crosshatch
and feet to kiss the cold of the ground

Involuntary traveler, there is no cure for memory.

what we mean: we were, we are, so lost, so lucky, so lucky, so lost.
cold hands reaching for cold stars

a brighter ending, or less clouded eyes

January - Poem 30

My Gender / Haley Bosse

as the last resort
in a storm-wrecked beach town,

as a slight of hand
by a man in patched-over socks,

an allergic reaction 
to a friend’s unpredictable cat

or a dazzle of seagulls’
clean bellies from below,

Schrödinger’s kit 
tucked away in the attic,

the birds tipping forward 
to disappear in the fog

on the eve of three / Jess Bowe

you demand and you dance and you eat
three breakfasts before nine.
i watch and i watch and i watch
you run and blink and breathe.
you carry a flag and a truck
and build walls and trees 
and vacuums that don’t plug in.
you chase the cat and lay on the dog
and dip your hands in the water bowl.
you sneak behind the couch and open
the window to all six degrees outside.
you fill a cup twenty-eight times
and spill christmas in paris tea
and cry when i'm first to the mess.
you refuse to nap.
you crush cereal with your bike tires.
you spin in circles when the devil 
goes down to georgia, air fiddle
propped between chin and belly.
you save the chickens your apples
and say hello to the stinkbug
and you never, not once, ask
to be anyone else.
you cry and hug in the same hour.
throw a spoon across the table
and tell me that i’m okay.
not once, do you ever, look beyond
the treeline and wonder
where any of your life has gone.

Self-portrait as Bruegel’s MFA admission essay / Joanna Lee

Chemical composition of leftover stardust, of iron & saltwater & afraid to take that leap off the old pier. older, now. but not so much i can’t remember the smack of the cold Atlantic or the smell of a Chicago bus station alone, and his name, Ravi, through the long midnight blue hours / shoulders that carried such weight / in canvas i paint myself always with bigger eyes, except the time i highlighted my own skin pink to prove something to someone i refuse to recall / shoulders that still carry such weight / that want to do right but don’t always know what that means. feet turned south / collector of rosary beads and little scars, most / comfortable in corners, in lowercase i’s, but / will always walk like a surgeon : a learned instinct for tying knots : a pretender at many things / a listener / bad at disappointment and no love for rearviews, yet / a secret desire to retract the wounds of my wounded, unpick the scabs / extravasated wolf song / dehisced tideline. sadly wingless, but that applies to most of us. whatever it is you are looking for, i am not it.

Movies  / Thomas Page

There isn’t much you and I can do together 
except for watching movies all day long.

You tend to pick ones that I find slow 
and I pick ones that you find boring.

It seems that we have different tastes—
you hate the movies that I find moving.

Maybe it’s because we’re at different stages
and I’m more willing to put up with garbage.

Glitzy garbage wrapped in a criterion shell 
while you like ones like cherry bombs.

Cherry bombs exploding in bad guys’ faces 
thwarting plans to blow up oil refineries.

How many two hour spans can we 
watch the lives of others unravel?

How many permutations of others’ lives 
can we see before we decide we’ve seen it all?

I’ve been keeping track of the movies we pick 
and it seems that there’s dozens to replace them.

Is there ever an original idea that hasn’t been 
made into onionskin copies?  

How many yous and how many mes 
have had this same conversation?

This same conversation while watching the same movies
as the snow falls like some worn out metaphor?

We Dead / Sarah Paley

I am dead along with the other dead
We are looking at ourselves dead.
The squirrel is particularly upset because, dead,
he looks like a rat and people step over him in disgust.
He had a fluffy tail he was proud of. But he’s dead
now so what does it matter?
I guess I can’t really fault him because I wish I looked better dead.
Among the dead are people I would rather not see.
It’s a real mess here. Confusing. People died
at the wrong time and now they barely know or recognize
each other. The young widow is a dead hag. Her husband
doesn’t know what to do. She looks like his mother, who is,
of course, also dead and she never liked the wife.
I die many times a day. Sometimes I am hit by a bus.
There I go up Sixth Avenue like Wile E. Coyote splayed
on the front. Children under five are amused. They think
I will be fine – just peel myself off and fill back up. But I’m dead.
Their parents try to cover their eyes to protect them.
Sometimes something falls and crushes my head.
The friend I was walking with is horrified, she has
blood all over her new jacket and does she even know who to call?
Sometimes someone kills me. Sometimes I kill myself.
Sometimes people mourn. Sometimes no one cares.
I always wince when I die to try to make it go away.
We dead are embarrassed by how we feel and how much we want.
It has always been this way.

Gratitude / Amy Snodgrass

A tree with deep and lovely grains, filled 
to burst with the sweetest honey, stands
tall and proud on the horizon.  Stark and 
clear, it holds truth in a cheeky wave. Another 
fiery fall awaits, but for me, it is time to let go.

Just now, I read Billy Collins’ “Forgetfulness” 
and it about killed me. No metaphor. No hyperbole. 

People don’t know how you feel unless you tell them. 

Just now, I read Fia Skye’s lines about lies, lines 
that set me straight or at least a little straighter,
making me believe I can strengthen the marrow in 
my bones again, strong enough to pause and listentrue.

Just now, I searched for a vaguely remembered line (and succeeded 
quickly–phew!): a line from David Kirby’s “This Magic Moment,” which 
of course all moments are, saying “Poetry does make things happen.” 
The search also resulted in Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats,” which 
is beautiful–but did not almost kill me. 

I want to be better. In 6th grade, Mrs. Haase told me my poems couldn’t 
include full sentences. I was furious, in my way of not knowing what that 
meant or that I had the right.  I let her silence me.  

She was not a good teacher.  My whole style now defies her, 
but I think maybe she wasn’t wrong….  She just wasn’t nice. 

People don’t know how you feel unless you tell them. 

Just now, this memory made me search for Herbert Kohl’s I Won't Learn from You and I 
discovered it has the most fantastic subtitle that I hadn’t remembered: And Other Thoughts 
on Creative Maladjustment. People don’t know how you feel unless you tell them. I want to 
be better.  More creatively maladjusted.  Less full-sentenced.  More magic.  Ready to bend.  
More open to being wasted by words. 

So now, I will wait for myself, for the flow I trust will come, and I will write this,
my aching thank you to the dear tupelo tree: stark and cheeky, glorious and real.

January - Poem 29

The Flower Chair / Haley Bosse

Its spray of once-cream silhouettes 
For so long, too light for me to touch,
Always in the corner of my eye
As I slid in socks across the wooden floor
To throw my backpack in the closet,
Palms peeling from swinging from the monkey bars 
One stubborn minute before falling in the sawdust,
Bleeding around the nails from where I’d ripped the skin, 
Mostly dry and cracking even in the rainy months,
The wind blowing broken stalks
Of blackberry bushes past the window,
The summer grasses of the flower chair 
A continuity of somehow unstained,
Clean enough when we spotted it
Between orphaned floor lamps 
At the Goodwill, given away 
While we were missing, one loss
Among everything but a week’s worth of clothes
And the books we were reading when we left,
Waterlogged pages passed from my mother’s hands to mine,
To my sister’s in the big bed in the basement
With windows too high for us to ever shut. We’d gone 
To the Goodwill to replace what had been taken
With other people’s things
But found the flower chair and the dining table,
Our bookcase and the rest.
I swayed the vote to buy back the chair,
Though I’d never been allowed to sit in it and, after,
I got to sit in it
In the sunshine through the open windows,
And later, when I left for college,
My mother stored it in a corner
Of her shed, covered up and waiting
For my partner to cradle it between his arms
And totter up the metal stairs to our apartment,
How he sits there as he reads,
The chair’s thin fabric softened beneath my palm
As I pass it on my way to sleep. 

a revolution / Jess Bowe

i don’t always ask for help with the chickens because i feel answers arrive, first to my legs, lifting bags of feed on my shoulder. i feel answers arrive to my rose-kissed cheeks. the wind sticks to the underside of my hair. i open the door, just as yesterday, and just as yesterday, i tell them hello, feathered friends! and i mean it: friends. i am in love with the day. i am in love with every storm. i am in love with the mid-february edge, the bottom lip of death. the cedar waxwings saying goodbye at my windowglass, crisp-weather drunkards. the pine missing half her face. the stretch between one neighbor and another. i drive to the center of town just to walk on the sidewalks and trip over bliss. my organs are electric and i pretend the light i’m made of is in every color, invisible stained-glass-sun, and today i’m the artist and i paint across the field of every stranger who walks by. i’m in love and i’m not sure how i got here. praying. i do a lot of praying, and i don’t ask if my god is wearing red or blue. i don’t assume to be speaking to a man. what i’m praying to is a river. what i’m praying to has eyes on the inside of me. what i’m praying to looks a lot like my deep breath sounds. a lot like the crackling of stars in the bowl of ice cold sky. i pray, and i pray without permission, and i pray like there’s no tomorrow because no matter how long i live, i still haven’t met one. i don’t ask permission. i don’t ask where you stand. i don’t ask you to throw a fiery hoop in the air, to jump through, to wear my own face, before i lay flowers at your front door. i’m in love, this great big place, this garden without a fence, this hill of birch, this song i find myself to be, on the tongue on the tongue on the tongue of what prays me.

Reporting on the weather (reprise) / Joanna Lee

A man
has died
of over

-exposure under
a walkway
in the city’s North End, hours

before
news spreads
of Them closing

down
the emergency
storm shelter.

Alexa tells
me there’s a
severe

weather warning
for tonight—extreme
cold—and though

I type this
from bed,
faux-down

up to my ears, the heat
tripping steady
as a pulse,

your toes
curled petals
against mine,

I don’t think
I’ll ever again
get warm.

Waiting Room  / Thomas Page

2300: I’m awoken to take you to the hospital
0000: I try not to think about why I’m on the highway  
0030: We arrive at the hospital and take you inside 
0100: My brain finally clams down as you finish your intake forms
0200: I’ve given up on trying to rest my head against the stucco-like walls 
0230: You try to lighten the mood by telling me how you feel better 
0300: I realize how quiet hospitals are in the dead of night 
0330: A tech tells us that the doctor is monitoring your condition 
0400: I’m getting delirious at how long I have been awake; I can’t imagine how you feel 
0500: The doctor comes in and explains that you’ll be admitted soon
0600: I’m told by you to go home and get some provisions / sleep 
0630: I try not to think about why I’m on the highway  

Release / Sarah Paley

Doors & windows flung open with abandon
when you arrived. Curtains blew this way
& that in the crisp breeze & it was fun
as you helped replace rusty hinges that lay
askew off their soggy, splintered frames.
I threw out everything & snapped linens
that we would make soft. We came upon
forgotten treasures – lost buttons in old tins.
Then the first door shut as if by accident.
I opened & you came through eventually.
Then another. This one locked. Not meant
to but did. You happened to have the key
but then others closed. Sometimes I’d unbolt.
Hear them now: slam! slam! as I let go my hold.

Facing a Writing Prompt While Missing My Mother / Amy Snodgrass

Mother and voice: my eyes grasp no other words, 
of which I need five–and fast–so let’s go! Life is whirring. 

A new colleague (my own age) tells me: 
“I was so utterly sick, I had to call my mother.” 

My heart doesn’t know what hit it, but I do: a cliff.
A cloud circles in and circles out. It drops then spreads.

My daughter admits to licking the salt lamp of my friend whenever we 
go to her house. “Do not cook a baby goat in its mother’s salt,” I think.  

I could not care less. I wonder what that makes me, and I wonder if it kept 
her up at night, this secretive salt-licking. How long had she sat on the guilt?

I wonder: does my response (my surprise and laughter and joy) make 
her someone who just takes what she wants? or does it make her feel safe?

And that’s the question, right? Are we good parents? 
And how can we go on, when we are sick? And they are gone.