December - Poem 31

We cannot afford to remember only the bitter-breath / A Cento

with lines drawn from Kate Bowers, Katie Collins, Ellen Ferguson, Chris Fong Chew, Davis Hicks, Victor Barnuevo Velasco, Jen Wagner, and Stacy Walker.

aliveness is                                                                                                       the trade value.

the scent always                                                                                               paired with coyote promises

In words and worlds                                                                                     not meant for me

and the stillness

can tell                                                                                                             a story

how malleable light is

I find myself lost

                                                                                                                          in waiting,

the question becomes

another

Can you find me here? 

Lingering in the shade                                                                                      between two and three

The gnawing that knots

Already the house begins to split open, 

like a crackerjack or pomegranate scattering

The stars I claim are misaligned
I know no                                                              constellations

If you were to ask. And I were to answer 

The worst thing you could have in this world is a biology

Do whatever you have to do to make it                                                             back to the air

Decant your spirits with abandon, knowing this:
                                                                                                                      I was the sign

I can bring lifeboats                                             and landing gear

and pen paper and pen paper                                                              and pen began began

Imagine the world outside your lens

                                                                         Because someday

December - Poem 30

James Joyce’s Eyesight Improves Markedly, and He Gets a Job Writing Catalogue Descriptions for a Window Manufacturer in Pennsylvania  / Kate Bowers

For Val

“I have met with you, bird, too late, or if not, too worm and early” said Jim Joyce as he entered my office.

“Thanks for coming in mate. Now about this recent set of drafts you turned in for the catalogue:”

If the home improvement store is a nightmare from which you are trying to awake, then look no further than Finnegan’s Windows where the supreme work of the life of a windower is to make the aperture dance like a cork upon a tide. Take for example our latest window—

The Bloom NB-20 Double-Hung: 

Constructed from cellular PVC, the Bloom NB series utilizes a block and tackle balance system for ease in opening. AAMA Certified and NFRC rated, the NB series with its super warm edge technology provides outstanding energy efficiency and transsubstantiation of the host when lifted up. Compression balance window units, compression primed wood sash units, and fixed units are available —every one of them inviting you to lean out.

Leave your book.
Leave your room.
Come and see us very soon.

“We’re all good with that. It’s quite striking, actually. It’s this next bit.”

So weenybeenyveenyteeny is our dissatisfaction rate that it is practically nil.

“Jim, lad, some days are Wordle and some days are not. Most days for builders are pretty wordless entirely. So this bit is going to have to go. Also, now that I look at it again, that transsubstantiation bit if you please must go as well. This is an ecumenical workplace. Also, what about these prepositions at the ends of these sentences?”

“Mistakes are the portals of discovery,” said Jim.

“Haha. Very cheeky. Quite good then. Now moving on to this next bit.”

Extrusions forced to meet the die requirements, all the enclosed voids party to same make the Ultra Thermal 4445 series a clear choice for fixed, double-hung, or sliding with optional dual interior/exterior finishes. To wit, unparalleled or grammed is the Ultra Thermal sang Buck Mulligan having commandeered the Fort Pitt stockade for rented rooms free of charge. The Pointe being baptismalb’nthat.

“I know Buck trained you and letting him go was unfortunate. But so is jumping on the company president’s desk while wearing a Statue of Liberty hat and reading our specs for those windows in the observation tower in French at the top of one’s lungs, Christmas Party or no. So there is no saving him. And a catalogue of window specs is not the place for speeches of praise, unless they’re speeches about windows, which this is but kinda sorta more obviously is not. Think of your future, man.”

“Glints in glints out,” said Jim.

“Exactly right. Now get back out there and show us what you’re made of.”

Our administrative assistant saunters in after he leaves. “I think we all know what he’s made of—pure palaver.” She hands me the note he left on her desk.

“I heard you singing 
Through the gloom. 

Singing and singing 
A merry air, 
Lean out of the window, 
                                             Goldenhair.”

Face palm. I sigh and look up. “Ask the H.R. director to call me please.”

Thinking silently as she leaves “He’s such a good writer.”

And also, “Why am I speaking to myself in rhyme of a sudden here?”

Then calling out after her “And what have I told you about singing in the office!”

The Bachelors / Katie Collins

Drown in the waves of uncertainty
Curse fate when it casts you aside
Dig deep in each bout of the unknown
Meet me here
Here we will build our lives
In an ever-changing world
Side by side
Because whatever fears you have
Are mine

3 pm Tickets to the Rockettes / Ellen Ferguson

"Stella for Star," I said to the girl
In the row past the very last one
"Stella for Star," she looked at the wall
"What's your dream?  Share your dream, it's your turn!"
She looked round at me
Thick glasses, odd jaw
She looked rabid, I feared she might bite
"To be a Rockette," Stella said with a slur
A small kick to her shin from the right.

It's a dream for a song
Not your dream
Not your song
Blur the edges a little for me.

Think of Stella the Star before you say no
Every kick to the sky should be seen.

Somewhere in the world   / Chris Fong Chew

The falling of a ball rings in something new 
as the sound of horns and confetti fly 

And in a room in a building somewhere 
a man is crying tears. 
A drop for a loved one 
who did not make it to the new year.

In the room next door, a woman 
surrounded by raucous noise,
of confetti and champagne 
in the company of those held dear. 

Up a floor a family sits 
together around a table. 
In prayer hoping for peace, 
And happiness, maybe even some cheer.

Outside someone huddles 
wrapped in blankets to keep in heat 
some passersby gives coins 
hoping they may find something to eat.

Across the way, a couple is arguing 
over something trivial in the world 
perhaps they will find resolution 
as the conversation unfurls. 

And across an ocean a child awakens 
in a year reset anew 
his journey in life is short thus far 
with many years to grow.

And on another continent, somewhere in the world 
An elderly couple walks slowly 
Counting the days they know. 

Somewhere, somewhere out in the world, 
someone is feeling joy feeling sadness, 
feeling cheer, and more. 
Someone is feeling all the emotions 
bringing in a new year. 

What we see in the moss-mirror / Davis Hicks

The thrum of beating wings
thrashes their threshing-floor tempo
lighter than any thought we could find.
The many making themselves known,
each part of the flock-flight
as vital as any other- 
only interchangeable to the outsider,
only unnoticed by the blindness of the public.
It does not haunt as the sounds of the Coyotes,
that gaunt-grunt of the adaptable,
the genuine struggle of the least concerned.
Those sounds do not get called song,
though their lyrics are often sharper and more real
to us than the bird-beaked melodies.
There’s an honesty in barking, 
a truth in opportunistic scavenge-scrounging
and with it,
perhaps between the mud-scraped clawmarks
and the barred canine teeth 
stuck with sinew and marrow,
we can remember how close
they really are
to our best friends

At Last / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

In time, we will meet again. Perhaps on
a wintry night, along the highway cutting
the Badlands, when the ground is a cathedral
of darkness, and distant cities glow fainter
than stars. Your hand will linger on the back
of my hand. Your fingers will trace my knuckles
as if they were spires and ravines. I will make
a fist. You will enclose it in your palm. We
will grasp the speed of tumbleweeds, at last.
Or perhaps you will be fixed on crossing time.
You will read the sharp-knife ridges as exit
signs. I am decoding the layers of silt and clay
and ash, compacted by epochs of silence.
We will meet -- yes, briefly --and miss each other,
again.

The End  / Jen Wagner

A third cup of coffee.
And endless longing.
I don’t know who I am right now. 
This woman in a swinging chair. 
Breathing deep. 
The cool, balmy air. 
I can hear traffic in the distance and crickets beneath my bare feet. 
I smell honeysuckle and rot. 
I don’t say what I want because I don’t like this place anymore. 
I promised myself to move forward.
Only forward. 
I think this time when I head east once again. 
I will leave her here. 
To sit. 
And swing. 
And fret. 
And long. 
And rot. 
No more balancing on the knife’s edge. 
No more hanging on by a thread. 
Swan dives in the hope that I can learn to grow wings. 
And begin to live again. 

Things I Say to My Daughter That I'm Trying to Hear for Myself / Stacy Walker

I hear you, sweet girl,
This is hard.
You’re allowed to have those feelings,
They are real.
I love you no matter what,
You are safe here.
It’s ok to make mistakes,
I believe in you.
Do you need a big hug?
I’ll hold you.
We can take the day off,

You can always listen to your body.
It doesn’t have to make sense,
You can trust yourself.
You don’t have to have the answers,
Just breathe.
You are not responsible for everyone else,
Care for yourself.
Whatever you have to give is enough,
There is no such thing as perfect.
I love you more than you can imagine,
Just because you’re you.

December - Poem 29

The Ladies Speak French  / Kate Bowers

There are six of them, white-haired
Reading aloud handwritten letters in French they have found somewhere then translating them aloud into English as well today. 

The flowing, pale blue cursive writing on the fragile, transparent paper is beautiful even at a distance.

They practice every Monday morning from inside the bookstore’s coffee shop and are delighted with themselves.

They are not loud when they are aloud. 

They are chic and elegant in their movements, even the two with canes.
They wear scarves and open collared shirts and rings on their hands.

They greet each other with kissing noises cheek to cheek—faire la bise.

They are not themselves French.

The cafe manager, heavily pregnant with twin girls to be named Genevieve, which means belonging to the tribe or race of women, and Simone, which means to be heard, knows all the ladies by name and has their usual orders waiting.

I do not know the café manager’s name.

The ladies ask after the babies as if they are their own.

So pleasant are their interactions one wonders
If they are related.

They are not.
They just want to become fluent in French.

Because someday.

Anonymous / Katie Collins

Lip gloss, bath bomb
Do you even know me?
I wonder if we’ve met before
Because I can’t tell
Half forgotten memories
I once held dear
Fade with the distance in your eyes
In my mind,
We laugh at the wrong moment
Delighting in missteps
We make together
French yogurt and panty hose
Do you still know our inside jokes
Or am I all alone?

Free Bombas Socks / Ellen Ferguson

How delightful! A man with a plan buys Bombas for his gal.
If she listened to her toes, we’d all be hugging now. Instead,
We three fuzzy pairs land on Swapcandy, free to make magic on some stranger’s soles.

Did you say Bombas?
Won’t those socks match three donated pairs?
Could socks be the new, improved fruitcake?

We are socks, not cake.
Perhaps you misunderstood, should return
To your hovel now.

Hear me out, socks. That guy with the wife who popped you on Swapcandy,
Three needy kids still got excellent socks. Let’s say Claudia over in Math now calls Bombas.
They respond again, Sure! On the house, sending socks to three more poorly shod.  

Oh, that’s what he means about cake. Pass
It forward. Yes,
Twelve feet much warmer and happier now.

Just when you thought we all lived in one bleak house
A landscape bereft of everything good. Yes, even we socks know
An idea with legs. Carry on, Bombas: the Santa of socks.

Global Broadcast  / Chris Fong Chew

To all the children of the world:

As bombs fall, a child is born 
As gunshots ring, a child is born 
As mines explode, a child is born

Into a world where metal tears into flesh 
and violence is the gift bestowed 
by generations previous and their 
hopes and dreams twisted 

Televised for global audiences
what kind of world are we
Crafting, passing along 
Constructing and tying 
neatly with a bow, labeled 
From: the current stewards of this world. 

where beginnings live / Davis Hicks

On the cusp of night
crickets tune their sawblades
to the sound of swaying grass
as the dew has settled
it’s gentle blanket down,
that quilt of shimmering cool
draped across the 
bed of everything alive.
From before the dawn comes the fickle-trickle
of rain romping through
its draining drizzle only just enough
to wet the world,
just as the faint feeling of it
purifies the mind 
and minds the pure.
Barefoot steps were made for such a time,
just as the sky is matching
stars and droplets both,
wish-giving as morning breath turns to 
gasp and tears are blinked away.
Only then, 
only in the interim
does all there is 
shimmer.

I want to love you like you love your freedom / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

What language must I speak so you understand
What freedom means, brother – if I call you that?

I see you always on television. At my doctor’s waiting
Room, you are on mute. You are staring directly at me.

Your arms stretch forward. Is it a hug you want to give?
Do you like to shake my hands or my shoulders?

I am reading your lips. Over and over. If only
I have the words you have yet to find.

I look at the number on my palm. How much
Longer must I wait before I am informed

Of the illness to treat? While you are free to march
Around. Brandishing freedom. As prayers and flags.

As guns. As blank pages of history on which you
Write. Over and over. As if healing words find us.

Grey Sweatpants Diva / Jen Wagner

According to my daughter,
divas also exist
in grey sweatpants
with mismatched slippers,
three-day unwashed hair,
and a face mask
desperately trying
to evict chin acne.

My superhero cape
is a men’s white T-shirt
with coffee stains down the front.
It smells like I haven’t showered in days—
though that’s far from the truth.

I tend to do this
with things I love.
I crawl inside them
until I can’t stand the smell.
Until I forget myself.
Until we merge.
Morph.
Mold into one.

But I’m grateful
she still sees
a beautiful human.

For her—
I will remember myself.
I will try to see myself
the way she sees me.
I will be the woman
she already believes I am.

I will still morph
and mold—
but only into things
worthy of the metamorphosis.

I will still wear great sweatpants
and face masks,
because we are worthy
of care.
Of rest.

And I will become
the thing that I love.

She is the one
who showed me how.
And I will follow her lead—
so when her daughter arrives,
she won’t need
to be reminded.

Ambition Isn't Allowed  / Stacy Walker

A cage
Where good girls go
To become successful women,

Where the achievements
Of childhood
Snowball into more
In a flash,

The top student,
Team captain,
Becomes the young leader,
Up-and-comer,
Who can get things done,

Proves herself
By going the extra mile,
Just as her teachers
Reported.

The extra
always earns approval,
comes with accolades
and affirmation,
but leads to
blazing a trail
ridden with hidden weeds
and thorns,

easy to justify
on an untouched path,
convinced it’s only this way
for a pioneer,
not because I’m off track,
lost.

The trek and its sacrifices
Sold as part of the plan,
Worth it for 
A paycheck, a bonus, a title,
The price to pay to get
Where I’m going,

But the further down the path,
The more scrapes and bruises,
Heartache and break,
I see the carrots dangling,
Become a mirage,

My sacrifices were made
For them,
Their approval never served me –
I was its prisoner –
Providing all they needed,
Perfectly packaged up
With a pretty bow.

But once my vision is clear,
The cage can no longer contain me,
Clawing, breaking out,
Beaten and bruised,
In a body that was built
For their approval, too,

Once out,
Freedom,
Searching for a path of ease and care,
Where I seek no one’s approval
But my own,
My body, too,
Is free,
Refusing to be boxed in
To what anyone wants
It to be.

December - Poem 28

Sciatica 3- The Version Grimm  / Kate Bowers

For Mae and Lane

This back of mine I think I know
Until it brings me very low
A right-angle drooping sheer as fear
Looking like a horse at plow

My neighbors indeed look askance
Each time I take a forward stance
No longer high and lofty like my cakes
They bought each year for every dance

They give their hatted heads a shake
Attempt to foreswear a similar fate
As if that is their promise not to keep
No osteoporosis, no joints replaced

Sadly,

Every Gretel and Hansel will come to weep
Against the witch’s promise reaped
That all but the sacrum burns to a heap
Of ashen promises we never intend to keep
Those winds we bend to, the debt still deep.

That sacrum though?
It still will beat.

Grief / Katie Collins

Cold bath water
Shivering flesh
Popcorn ceilings staring down
The walls are distant memories
You cannot stand
You cannot leave
There's a familiar weight
Pressing down on you
Holding you in this moment
You flesh raises into goosebumps
But even the towel
One arm's reach away
Is too far
When you're suffocating

For Christmas My Father Sent Me a Man / Ellen Ferguson

I asked my father for a man like him.
A mysterious message landed.
"Your package will be delivered January 27," it said.
I hadn't ordered anything, except that guy from my Dad.
On January 27 another message came.
"We're sorry, there are weather-related delivery changes. May 9 is your new delivery date."
On May 9, my birthday, I looked on my porch.
There you were.
"January 27?" I said.
"Yes, May 9," you said.
Package delivered,
Mission accomplished,
We went inside.

The Legend of the Red Thread / Chris Fong Chew

Do you see it? If you look hard enough you can see it. 
Twisting, turning, wrapping around trees, around plants,
a thin thread that follows along the path 
of life, your journey throughout the world. 

It is said that fate tied a knot 
the moment you were born. A red thread 
connecting you to another person in this world. 
Do you see it? Do you believe in this tale? 

Along the way this thread may tangle
trap other people in its long fibers 
wrap around trees and plants and animals 
create a journey that weaves and spins 
across this earth. 

Some may follow it, few will ever find its end. 
But if you see a red thread, bowed neatly 
to your hand, follow it, and perhaps you will uncover 
something wondrous on the other end.

When the heat goes out, remember how we are to love / Davis Hicks

The morning will be draped over you like a shroud,
as the subtle blue of still frosted air
sucks all the wind from your pipes
and removes all the blood from your lips,
Leaving only the husk of dried fruit 
that is your dry shiver-shriveled fingers
searching for the blankets.
You will have a mild growl 
from inside
your gullet, 
well aware you were
a potato or two short
of full.
Your head will pound with the knocks
of worry and ache rapping at your chamber door.
Your tongue will feel swollen,
saturated with the only water 
your body 
can hold.
Remember the bodies 
which must travel 
across the grounds, away
from the warmth and the quiet 
in search of the quenching.
Know the bodies whose nightly sleep-serenade 
is the gnawing in their gut,
is the well known meal 
of sleep.
Know your suffering is only a flicker compared
to the lives of the hundreds
of thousands
of millions
who have and will continue to live lives
entirely in what you think
is pain.
There, 
after bedside cup or sink water has met needs,
after warm blankets melt away the chill
of the frosting season
and headache’s end is only a pill away,
be grateful.
When partner’s patterned breath
becomes the tide pulling
you back to the land of the dreaming,
be grateful
and know
you are blessed.

Almost/Not Quite a Canto/a Cento / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

An enemy among spies: moving gingerly.
A landscape of superbloom. Sudden sprays
Of shrapnel: Red poppies everywhere.

From Florida to California, I-10 stretches:
A belt of sunshine: A border within a border.
Trucks and vans piled: Walls keep moving.

Across the panhandle, the power surges. Lights
Exploding. No distinction among shadows.
Some stalk; some hide: All darkness.

Nothing matters but: the quality of: love/mercy:
Is not strained: In the end. Don’t you – too -- find
This commingling of wisdom injudicious? Injurious?

Anyway, let us now price/praise Paradise/Famous Men:
A way out/a way in. The Barbarians are at the gates:
On both sides. The gates are wide shut/wide open.

Little deaths. / Jen Wagner

I am not afraid of death
I die a bit every day
Although they are little deaths
It mars me all the same. 

I am not afraid of death
It comes with every choice I make
In these deaths I leave behind
The parts of me I cannot take. 

I am not afraid of death
I welcome her with open arms
I know where we are going
I know its worth the scars

I am not afraid of death
At times I seek her out
I revel in her wisdom
I surrender all my doubt. 

I am not afraid of death
But sometimes I try to hide 
In the darkness, It’s odd to think
but those little deaths are my light. 

I am not afraid of death
She will burn it all for me
To illuminate the paths 
I myself cannot see. 

I am not afraid of death
Until it’s you she wants
You can’t see what is waiting
But I do. 
Just hold on. 

These little deaths…
They are a gift
And someday you will see. 
You too will welcome her
and rise again. Like me. 

I am not afraid of death. 
But it’s her sister for whom I fight. . 
Because every little death I suffer
Takes me closer to my light. 

I have died so many times.
And always I’m reborn
With every little death I grow stronger
Than I ever was before. 

So no. I am not afraid of death. 
She is my closest friend. 
And with every little death I thank her
Until we meet again. 

Nothing Lasts  / Stacy Walker

If I’m being honest,
I’m tired of writing poems.
Every time my pen hits the page,
It feels silly,
Pointless,
Like it’s already been said
Or I don’t want to say it.

I don’t want to write about the depths,
My words don’t seem like enough,
A few scribbles on a page
In smooth, black ink,
Drawn into shapes that are letters,
Can’t possibly  contain all
That’s inside.

It would take so many scribbles
Of words on pages,
Filling notebook after notebook,
And quite frankly,
I don’t have the energy
Or the time.

I think I’ve plowed through
Enough darkness,
Maybe I can stay in the light,
On the surface
For a while,

I could write about the simple things,
Ya, maybe I’ll simply observe
My daughter’s little body
Curled up under the dusty, pink comforter,
Nestled into the pile of pillows
And my side,
As she reads,
Enthralled in the story
Inside a little chapter book
With a purple cover.

She’s only just started it
As we lay down for the night,

And I know I’m in for it
Because once she’s begun
And found herself in another world,
Imagination running free,
I’ve lost her for a while,
Pleading for one more chapter,
One more page.

But tonight,
We have time,
It’s the weekend,
It’s the holidays,
And we’re so snuggled up,
And I wonder how long
It will take her to finish –
I could just stay here
Until then.

And I see that the surface of my life
Takes me to the depths daily,
Delivering moments
That threaten to destroy me
If I think too hard.
So yes, I’ll stay here on the surface
For a while,
Because I know it won’t last
Forever.

December - Poem 27

Stay Where Your Body Sleeps  / Kate Bowers

For Nena

Once more, she walked the forest of the night,
Jumping out of her body when she heard the wolf cry 
Thinking it was her baby tangled again somehow
Against his crib and anxious to reach him
Before he slid away.

It was always the same, snapping back
To Rip Van Winkle face down on the chair
Spine cracked open 
And the window opaque with winter mist.

She looked out of long habit through the curtained pane,
Never mind that tedious list in the kitchen,
The appointment book schedule filled
for busy

Then she called me to share her plans.

Defragmentation. 

At first, I thought I had heard her incorrectly, 
That instead she had said decompression, but no.
I was not confused.

She had always chosen her words well.
In fact, she was filled with words and sentence fragments,
Whole paragraphs, entire chapters that were not her own
And really had no option but to flee her form
when and as they wished to speak.

Until she could get back to the trees,
The sound of birdsong through sunlight opening pores
Across their surface, the trees breathing 
More deeply as they felt her there,
Pulling
The smoke of pain from her, then stirring
Their branches,          
rushing back into her butterfly-winged lungs pure air
From their sighs, their quiet wind, until then and then,
Her body would not be her own.

I authorized her leave to H.R. as compassionate care.

Yes to the village, but sometimes 
It only takes a forest to save you.

Frankenbite / Katie Collins

Stolen words
Reshaped
Strangled
Contextless
Egged on by the unseen
With a jilted mouth
I spoke my own doom
Long hours
Hot cameras
Was this in the terms and conditions?
Who did you turn me into?

You are Manhattan / Ellen Ferguson

Cherished repulsion
Turtle Bay, Hell’s Kitchen
Bad pantry night
Bad attic sounds
You are Manhattan
Lifted from a stoop
Sideways, like a taxi shaking
Dark cherries in a cocktail swerver
East of Eden, canals ruminate near gardens,
Lahmajun rolls its eyes at a cat
You are not Brooklyn
But she’s not safe either.

Digital Waters  / Chris Fong Chew

1010110011101010100100100110A wave of ones and zeroes washes up on the shore
101110010101100111010101Displaced by broken and frayed wires101110010101101
10111001010110011Circuits that end in oblivion 010010110100010010100101010101
10111001010Sparking at the end of a torn terminal1011001110101010010010011011
0101001When scientist dig into the layers of rock and earth 01010000101010001011
10They categorize periods entombed in01010001001001001001000010010010101011
1001010Fossil records, carbon dating the rocks 0100100100010010101010001001010
0101001010101Posturing why carbon increased a million years ago 10101001010101
01001000010100101010And dropped in the last ice age 1010101000100100100100100
101010010010001010100101010What will they say about our digital age 0101001000
00101010010100101010Broken wires rusted containing decaying 0101001010101010
0101001010010Ones and zeros of a digitalized era 01001001011010110101001010010
10101010Seen as the future of humanity 1010100101010101001010101010101010101
01Quietly powered by coal and pressurized fossils 01010111010101001010101010101
10110001Quietly burning away the plants and trees 101001010100101010101000101
0101010101101Quietly replacing the atmosphere 10010101010101010101010101010
010100010101010101011With unbreathable air, quietly 100100010101010100100010 
101010101010101010101010101The technology created consumes the creators01010
101010100100010101010And opposers, quietly destroying us all 01010101001010101
10101010101010bzbzbzzbbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzzz….1010101010101001010101010

It can’t all be concrete / Davis Hicks

In between the groupings of life,
Nowhere close to the homes none can afford
pay attention.
In the limbo of the overcast sky
between 6 and 10 o’clock,
pay attention.
This is where life is lived, between the parking lots.
Notice the small hands fiddling
with the handlebars of bikes
not yet marred by time or crashes,
and the big hands that fix their helmets.
See the bodies on courts,
in their distance-dance
of dashes across half-vanished 
painted lines, darting
as a fish might with the purity of clarity 
chasing flying balls crashing across, 
the color that  lives in eggyolks, 
encircled with infinities.
Their shoes or shirts or any detail
lives between the colors of lemons and limes,
all the citrus life.
See how fresh they feel,
unmarred by anything resembling 
strife, even if only when choosing
to chase each other.
There,
between rides and games,
know we are still
a community.

Sol Invictus / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

O the orange sun!
The ecliptic – nay, epileptic – orbit.

Behold the earth crackle along its path:
The stuporous trances. The gnawing
Desiccation – the desiccated skull.
The rapid heaving. The strained contraction.
The wounding of compacted ground.
The widening wound gushing water.
And wine -- water into wine.
Watered-down wine.

Woe that we cannot walk backwards into the future.
Woe the shifting horizon our gazes cannot fix upon.
Woe the widening peripheries littered with bodies.
Pile upon pile upon pile. Upon pile.

Where is Quintus Curtius Rufus
Laid to rest by restive powers?

Behold the governors and generals:
The burning highways -- the emptied alleys.
The troops marching on graveyards.
The dead armored and marching.
Right arms stretched heavenward. Saluting

The Misbegotten Son -- Unconquered Sun --
cupiditates factae deus --
Spare us.

We Will Build a Home. / Jen Wagner

We will build a home. 
Not with a hammer. 
Or nails. 
We will not need them. 
We will use love. 
And our walls will be the witnesses. 
Infused with the energy that brought it to life. 
Immortalizing our stories. 
Long after the ability to put pen to paper ceases to exist. 

We will build a home. 
It may not be brick. 
And it may not be stone. 
That idea of home will exist in our bones. 
But our walls will be the witnesses. 
Of peace 
And joy. 
Of calm. 
And celebration. 

We will build a home. 
It will be a garden. 
Inside and out. 
Inside we will grow. 
together. 
apart. 
But the love. 
The love will fill the cracks in the walls. 
And flow through the spaces in the floor boards. 

We will build a home. 
Forever safe. 
Forever filled
With laughter. 
And with music. 
And we will dance. 
And the walls will be our witnesses. 
And they will hold our love. 
The way it holds a familiar smell. 
And sometimes we will catch the scent. 
And smiles will form on our lips. 
And tears will fill our eyes. 
And everyone who enters will know. 
This is not a house. 

This is a home. 

Reflection  / Stacy Walker

I’ve almost reached the end of my
Notebook,
It’s almost the end of the
Year,
Sometimes I think I’m at the end of
My rope,
The road,
The line. 

It’s the end of a
Chapter,
Things change –
They always do –
As we turn
To the next.

Looking back,
I feel every
Poem,
Thought,
Reminder,
And note;
Each month, week, day,
And moment
Of a life-changing year,
Because aren’t they all?

December - Poem 26

From My Left Nostril, A Thought  / Kate Bowers

For Kitty

“Really? This is your response?”

“Look, I’m saying I am needed.
I dropped the paper in a hurry,
And there it was.”

“You’re an intuitive sneezer then? 
Is that how you’re billing yourself?”

“Absolutely, yes.”

I blow my nose again and point at the list.

Pennsylvania drops a lot of balls from time to time, but on New Year’s Eve it excels consistently
across the board, dropping:

o   A   4 -foot, 9 -inch tall 400-pound marshmallow peep that glows, yellow I think, in Bethlehem

o   A 1,000-pound orb of recycled materials in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District

o   An 85-pound galvanized wrench in Mechanicsburg

o   A 16-foot cylinder of Pennsylvania Dutch bologna in Lebanon will be lowered rather than dropped for obvious reasons. Is bologna a middle eastern food originally tho? Hmmm.

o   Gettysburg, a contrarian, raises a replica of Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hat into the sky.

o   Hallam drops a replica of an entire house—the Shoe House, though so far, no witches have been crushed from the doing of this deed.

o   A gigantic bag of Hartley’s Potato Chips in Lewistown

o   A white rose in York, and a red rose in Lancaster. Because you can never escape the Plantagenets, not even in the New World.

o   A strawberry in Harrisburg in recognition of a nearby shopping center. It is unclear as to whether this berry is unusual in size or consists of anything other than a regular berry in nature.

o   Unlike a stainless steel, 700-pound glowing mushroom that is dropped in Kenneth Square, the “Mushroom Capital of the World.” Does Worthington know this? 

o   A Hershey’s Chocolate Kiss, still wrapped in foil in, of course, Hershey

o   A dill pickle known as Mr. Pickle in Dillsburg

o   A 5-foot-tall pair of yellow breeches in Lower Allen Township in recognition of the Yellow Breeches Creek—-Wow no pun intended, but wow, there it is, and what a good reminder to add Borax to the wash, but never at the same time as white vinegar, no.

o   An anchor in Shippensburg

In the streets, in the square, in a park, it’s all going down. Well except for Gettysburg—those guys.

“It’s my favorite holiday! We should go,” say I.
“Pick one, maybe two if you’ll let me drive. We can make it!”

“I’ll start with that used Kleenex you’re still hanging onto,” say you,
holding out a trash can. 

“Drop it.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/DSbGW0bj3BT/?img_index=9&igsh=MWdnZmdmYXlkMzRwZA==

Take Care / Katie Collins

I’ll make the breakfast
And wash the dishes
Fix you a cold wash cloth
Soothe whatever inside you is screaming
No one should be sick on Christmas

Be a fountain, not a drain / Ellen Ferguson

Driving out past the Russian math place
Miles after the Russian piano school
West of Westfield,
There’s a curve in the road and a church with a sign:

“Be a fountain, not a drain,”
It reads.

Like a Grecian urn who says,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”
A good sign points flailing trees towards the light.

J. Alfred Prufrock sighed, “It is impossible to say
Just what I mean,” but J. Alfred should have talked
Less, listened more. Not only to the voices in the wind, cradling
Birches, not only to signs and urns, but to
Things we give away: Chobanis whisper their goodbyes, Bluey houses murmur.
When the burning bush burned, who knows how many passed it by --
Moses was the first who stopped, that’s all.

What crashes against Outer Banks / Davis Hicks

Upon the green of greater shores
where waves are more emerald than water,
I witness the turning of the tide.
Witness the growth of so many packs of wrung rough rot, drifting in the dark.
Witness the floating imposters of plastic bags
posing as jellyfish.
How many shelled things have shoved their gullet with the fake,
which will outlive the memory of all of us 
and haunt the horizons of our descendants.
I witness the way anonymous-apathy
ravage-wreaks across the highways and the byways of the world,
scenic and cutting both,
between the ranges of every standing mountain.
I have witnessed the terror delivered upon the world
by those who think it’s “just one time”
as if the knife delivered to the neck
did not count
if raked across flesh
just the once.
Bleeding is bleeding,
dead is dead,
and our endlings are the cadavres
we must learn to doctor from.
Witness the cry with braces shoulders,
as I have witnessed the drowning of the living,
There is no time for tears,
no spare breath or water
inside the furnace-fires never meant for brush.
Ears more open than mine have heard 
the melodies of birds which will not sing for long,
Carolina parakeet spreading neotropical wings 
if only for the dreaming.
They have much to do before they sleep,
Yet we have contracts to keep.
Yet we have contracts to keep.
Soon there will be no witnesses.

In time, the magic hour / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

with a line from James Agee

Against persistent rumors of storm --
polished and calculated, if incomplete,
arranged to wield the maximum damage
                  to body and brain,
I collect the levies of a dreadful summer.

Another enemy is headlined each day --
the older asylees, the newer arrivals,
those with dialects yet to be identified --
                  grasping for words that approximate
misery and terror from where they came.

Turn your skin into night – at day, the sun
burns white. Will I understand
the Morse Code of your footsteps? Will they
                  mark the timbre against concrete
and asphalt, gravel and mud?

You long for the magic hour -- tender and kind.
But now is still the season of armored beasts
and restless battalions. In warehouses still,
                  armies keep forming. In his palace,  
still captive the old wild king.

Self care / Jen Wagner

Sometimes self care is lying in bed and bleeding all over the white duvet

How long will I be here?
How long would it take for someone to notice?

Pillows are soaked with tears and rage. 
Grief so cutting there’s a hollow where my heart should be. 

Sometimes self care is cutting off your arm for that taste of freedom. 

How far will I go?
Is there anyone out there?

Let me run 
Not to find you
But to find myself. 
in the places I’ve always wanted to be. 

Sometimes self care is obliterating thought and drowning in emotion. 

Is there a way out?
Or do I have to go through?

But I already know the answer to that. 

The hardest decisions to make will always be the ones that birth the butterfly. 

Once Upon a Time  / Stacy Walker

It’s easy to get caught up
In a wish
For what happens
At the end of a story,

A wish for the fortune,
The happy ending,
All the wishes
Come true.

But when the ending becomes
Just another beginning
And nothing sticks
And the wishes come and go,

I wonder
What to long for
Along the way.

The peace, the ease,
Time to breathe,

The wherewithal
To wonder and wait,

The willingness
To soak in the pain
As wholeheartedly
As the joy,

But the joy –
To find the joy
In the mundane –
To laugh
Til I cry
Over nothing,
To feel the warmth
Of my body
On cold sheets
On a morning
When the sun
Is higher in the sky
Than it should be,
But I’m still
Wrapped up
In letting the day become
What it will.

I wish
For the story.

December - Poem 25

No Speech After Sundown  / Kate Bowers

For Roseann

“These are called helicopters” you said smiling
When I brought my latest treasure to you,
Tiny green boomerangs found
in the grass of the side yard

Near the woods and so curvy against my small hand.
“They are seeds and grow into big trees—maples or elms
—if you plant them.”

I too have grown big enough now to admire how they fall,
Spinning silently to the earth in a pinwheel shape,
Unlike the sudden plummeting of the acorn,
  the echo of its vertical bounce.

No speech after sundown, you taught me.
Let the night birds take up singing then.
Wait for their pause
just before dawn,

The quiet cast at the 3 a.m. hour
On the edge of grey light seeping forward,
Like the dampness of the grass
now around the cuffs of your shoes.

Rise then and cover your hair before walking the corridor 

Quietly to the front of the house, the east wing,

And sing the Gayatri once there, all the mudras,

and again 

Until the light breaks fully, not just the bright clouds

Among the fingers of the sun
through the trees.

Let the day-birds join in, the hole nesters with their news.

Walk out across the porch as their song rises
above your own.

Look up through the maples and the pines,

The Hickory counting its days full of nests.
Open your eyes

To the Hawthorne against the garage,

The Holly sentineled
| to the left of the front door.

Let the day’s light fall about you where you stand.
Lean against my oak.

Dining on my Discontent / Katie Collins

The sky is falling
Can you feel the clouds?
Wading through the water system
Hoping the Milky Way is still intact
Will space hurl itself down on top of me?
Swallowing small disasters,
Child’s play.
Swallowing galaxies?
I still count the calories at communion.

Stopping by the bookstore that closed fourteen years ago / Ellen Ferguson

Stopping by the bookstore that closed fourteen years ago
There wasn’t much of a selection
Pathetic excuse for an excuse
That it’s not there any more

Meeting you at grand central
Where the clock used to be
Happened forty years ago
Over hugs over now

Serving the seven fishes
Last night to a rather small crowd
They still added up to seven
While the empty chairs numbered eight

Nothing really matters
Meaning, nothing: it really matters
Everyone reads it all wrong
Everything’s found in what’s gone

Christmas Mouse   / Chris Fong Chew

Pine needles pile onto the forest floor
As a mouse comes running right through the door
The warmth by the fireplace too tempting a chance 
The family gathered by the flames all in a trance 

As the flame settle to embers the soft glow warms
The mouse is sneaking around the furniture arms
The heat of the house warms up it’s bones 
An escape from the outside, the great unknown 

It is on this fateful Christmas night 
That the mouse came running just out of sight 
The family distracted by the glowing logs  
Tonight  the mouse could stay out of the bogs

Away from the hawks that preyed from the sky 
Away from the wolves who always came by 
Away from the chill of the winter snow 
Away from the dangers that winter sews 

And so it settled under the sofas legs 
The warmth of the fire, as tonight begs 
For a new beginning, away from the cold 
This field mouse turned house mouse, a story untold. 

The Guest of Honor / Davis Hicks

Amid the little lights shining,
between tinsel and so many plastic placements,
see the way the sun
still rose through reaching arms.
Beyond the snowmen and santa statues
cans overflow with the evidence of the boxed-binged,
just next to the still-blooming mums.
Celebration bleeds into purchase,
red into green,
even as the gatherings
of the scarlet-songs develop 
their slow and sweeping melodies
through the halls
of the holy homes.

Witness the gentle silence
in the odd and the off-center,
wild winter weeds swaying in the chilled breeze,
the opposite of palm leaves.
They remind me of us.
In houses acting as homes, bodies huddle
around the glowing tree,
that pyre surrounded
with the wild and the color-wrapped.
And yet, as we do,
I remember the purple of wine,
the pale starchy yellows of the bread,
And know as I know the date
that He
is here.

5 / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

I’d rather not leave
behind words
but those you will

find useful: kneecaps
and leg bones you
can turn into canes

for walking. Fingers
to dig roots to boil
for fever and cold.

Hair to weave
into blankets
for stormy nights.

Skin to stretch
as roof to keep
you safe and well.

I give you all
these as gifts
not because they

are precious but
because they are real.
They are mine.

Everything I Need / Jen Wagner

In my small town. 
In the middle of nowhere. 
In the middle of a hill. 
Halfway between my home and everything I need. 
There is a street sign
And it bears your last name. 

I drive past it at least once per week.
Yesterday, I drove past it twice in a single afternoon. 
The universe won’t let me forget you. 
How strange. 
Your name. 
And the street sign that carries it. 

Going to the grocery store?
I pass your sign. 
When I need gas?
I see your name.
You follow me through every single
Mundane task. 
And I know it’s there. 
I don’t avoid it. 
And still after all this time
My heart flutters as I approach. 
Much the same way it would 
If you came toward me. 
In anything other than a daydream. 

So I think of you.
Often.
Or…
At least twice a week.
For no reason,
Other than a simple street sign
That exists between me 
And 
Everything. 
I.
need. 

Pretending / Stacy Walker

She pretends to be patient,
Driven by her values,
Strong in her boundaries,
Soft in her love.

She acts as if
She’s calm and collected,
Able to take the heat
And keep cool.

She imitates someone
Clear in her convictions,
Measured and fair,
Honest above all else.

I watch her and wonder,
How long
She can keep up the charade
Before the truth comes out.

But then I see her
Through the eyes of her child,
And know this version of me
Is the best I have
And who I’m longing to be.

December - Poem 24

A Snow Day for the Ancients / Kate Bowers

I just can’t stop when my spark gets hot”

—The Trammps, Disco Inferno, (Original Long Version), 1976

For Jenna

What if Pompeii were to reverse itself,
The land no longer ashen but instead becoming very cold,
Snow filled like a cream horn or cannoli,
And every citizen no longer a hollowed shape within pumice
But instead forever fully embodied and frozen
In a moment of joy, of tender companionship,
Or just plain fun?

The fascination tour groups of the future would have
Wandering through the dazzling light,
The figures caught in play, men talking together
Handing mundane things back and forth to one another purposefully
While in that convo—as men often do regardless of the topic—
Is unprecedented.

For surely that glint from ancient snow would sparkle new eyes,
Raise the edges of new lips even slightly,
And new mothers would, without exception or pause, say
“Where are their hats in such weather?”
Cold ears being clearly visible.

A museum of joy weathering it side-by-side,
Master and pupil shoulder to shoulder with a museum of fury.
Which is fire, which is ice?

“I’m not talking about burning down a building.
 It’s coming from the soul,” sang Jimmy Ellis,
Years before Kristin Bell called us to “Let It Go,” 

—6-7, 6 of these, a half a dozen of the other, this or that—
—this lingering on the threshold agonizing on which door hides
behind it the proper prize, the price that is right —
—any dab will do ya, yabba dabba do, slicked back or flyaway—

In the meantime, all SOME people can seem to do is sing! Right?!?!

Up above my head 
I hear music in the air
That makes me know
There’s a party somewhere 

Whether you’re in the head OR the heart, dear reader, be assured

it’s still the breath in,
the butterfly opening its wings and folding them again on the exhale,
the accordion sound,
the dance,
the shimmer left shining through the ether
despite threatened imminent and actual destruction.
 

Don’t you rescue me.

Let my spirit burn free.

So much joy flaring through the sky
So many shapes vanishing or memorializing themselves
Now you see them, now you don’t.

And outside of Robert, do we care if we end in ice or fire?

Is that really what we’re really talking about here?

Men Plan / Katie Collins

I learned love
At the feet of reality television
What matters most is not how you feel
But how it looks to an audience you may never meet
Before I give myself time to consider
How I feel
I’m making a decision
Based off what the best story will be
I hope God is entertained

A muse is a muse is a muse / Ellen Ferguson

While not technically found on Swapcandy
There’s white chocolate gingerbread bark from the lounge,
Resting comfortably in the front seat
While we wait for the truck in the sleet

You found Me?
Pet adoption, foster kids on the couch,
My old friends the Chobanis --
You excuse, you placeholder, you throwaway
A muse is a muse is a muse.

Just saying thanks!
Now there’s a tip for those sweet trash collectors
Slick in the sleet. Without cash,
Now there’s something to give, despite being white chocolate
last choice, not chocolate, sugared tree facsimile.

If you don’t have thirty bucks in your pocket
That’s about you, not me.
We amuse bouche found objects, we Jane Birkins,
We guys shining buckles at the bar:
A muse is a muse is a muse.

At the Airport Gate  / Chris Fong Chew

I'll be home for Christmas

Plays on the airport radio through staticky speakers while a loudspeaker announces the final boarding call for a flight to Dallas. 

You can plan on me

Staring at the clock as the time to boarding counts down. Staring at the family across the way wearing Christmas hats while matching luggage rolls behind them.  

Please have snow and mistletoe

Watching the snowfall on the runway, salt trucks rush out to melt the snow, de-icing machines spray each plane before takeoff. Orange chemicals glaze the wings. 

And presents on the tree

There is a wreath hung on the front of the runway vehicles, festive warmth, as workers in thick coats plow through the wind and snow. 

Christmas Eve will find me

Flashing lights, red and green on the planes as they await takeoff. Through the windows a traveler stares out at the stormy sky, while another's face is illuminated by the light of a screen. 

Where the lovelight gleams

This year 122 million people will be headed home for the holidays, transiting through airport hubs, trains, cars, and buses. 

I'll be home for Christmas

And movement is in the air, and I move with it, one of the millions heading home for Christmas

If only in my dreams

I love you as you love the world / Davis Hicks

You do not announce yourself
with porcelain-promises and proclaimed good.
There is no campaign cruising out of your kindness.
You simply are, and simply do
as the barn owl does, with gentle and silent wings
searching within the silence.
Your eyes are willing to see
what I cannot, what many would squint at
if only in annoyance. 
Willing to notice the orange of the trees
and the kind softness-smiles of older men
you know are
still human.

I have seen you claw your way
away from the warm and the quiet,
reversing hibernation to cover the shifts of those who
budget their work ethic.
You’re willing to crack your wrists,
whirlpooling while refusing to stop
the life-giving of chest compressions,
refusing to let death grasp at anyone
in your charge.
You take up the banner of bearing witness
even as the eyes
begin to close.

You do not forget injustice,
do not callous your heart, 
do not bow at the throne of spinelessness
even as kissing the ring would provide 
that which you have chased before.
You keep no ledger, no nice list,
and do not withhold 
your shift-gifts
even from those who do not 
give back. 

Yet you keep your wonder, 
witness of the sweetness of small children
and the simple pleasure of wonderful things.
You are a perfect noticer.
I pray I can be as
human 
as you.
You have always respected
those usually seen through glances,
have not considered doing 
anything less than the life-saving,
being anything less 
than my hero.

4 / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

There are always
two mirrors before
my face -- mine

and my father’s.
I smile and I see
his smirk. I furrow

my brows and he
stares back at me
through the glasses

on the tip of his nose.
I pick up a pen
and his hand moves

through the pages.
Driving I-90, I see
him in the rearview --

snaking in the sands
of Al-Bayda. I wish he
overtakes and stops

me. Maybe then I will
have answers to questions
he never asked.

And questions
to answers he never
offered.

Mostly Me / Jen Wagner

Watching kids. 
Learn to surf. 
Practice splits in the sand. 
Build towers and duck under waves. 
I pick seashells from between my toes. 
And chase my sun hat
That gets blown away by the breeze. 
Over and 
Over
Again.
A game I like to play with the wind. 
Since she can’t  pick up a ball. 
Gulls dive. 
Men stare.
We’re all pretty out here. 
Red knees. 
Salty curls. 
This is where I am mostly me. 

Recipe for a Memory / Stacy Walker

December - Poem 23

Sam Shephard  / Kate Bowers

This morning I am reading about Sam Shephard,
How he once had a father-in-law named Johnny Dark
And loved Patti Smith who remained                                    a long part of his life
after they broke up.

She remembered him as a quiet cowboy,
and quiet he often was, always with a notebook at the ready,
like any true gunslinger, which poets always are.

That quiet.

Sam himself said he preferred driving to flying,
even though he had done a helluva job playing
Chuck Yeager on film.

He liked to throw his things in the back of a pickup and go,
driving for hours alone, always alone,
across the flat states
where you could see cars hundreds of miles away running
parallel or straight at you knowing
it would be hours until you would
meet under the same sky if ever.

Knowing this from his own lane on a road more often empty
than not—wide and rivered,
that time there in green.

Can you see him even now pulled off onto the berm, angled
and scribbling against the steering wheel,
looking up to gaze across the land
through a windshield                         
                         brimful of insects splashed
into thick dust,

 
the engine still running,

that sound of his pen.

Writer’s Block / Katie Collins

Miles I have traveled
Through dark woods on snowy nights
Along the roads less traveled
I find myself lost
In words and worlds not meant for me
Can you find me here?
I’m hiding in the thoughts others dared to think.
Praying no one pulls me back to the blank draft on my home screen.

Mr. Coffee 45 cup percolating coffee urn / Ellen Ferguson

Don’t you want me, Baby?
                                    the year was 1981                    The Human League released the question
and we all listened to it on the radio                            because that was how we listened at the time.
you brought me home that night                                 restless                     a little excited
                                              planning parties into the night  

          high school graduation and even then, you knew a good thing:         

                        me       ,           that is               :           a coffee you had to call Mr.

years passed & it was 2004 when you slid me in your luggage --
                                                                                    a huge duffle suitable for moving overseas --
                          off we flew to Bozeman, Montana, serving coffee
to the good entomologists       who remembered her well,     what she did for the littlest of us.

It’s hard to imagine that every 25 years you won’t need me, want me:

                                          Won’t anyone give you a grandchild?
                                                You’ll ache for a cup of joe then.
                                                                  Forgive me:
                                                      I’m part of the grindset
                                                    fading like the parchment
                                                   you made with my remains.

1492 (History Began)  / Chris Fong Chew

History began when it began when it began when it
began when it began because a man with a paper and
pen, paper and pen, paper and pen history began it
began it began history began it began it began history
began when the shores of land history began when shores
of the land were crossed by man with paper and pen
history began it began it began it began when history
began when it began when it began when it began paper
and pen paper and pen paper and pen began began
paper and pen history began crossing shores of man of
man of man history began it began with with with began
with 1492 

History | Began | Paper and Pen | History Began | When
shores of the land | Crossed by man | Paper and pen |
history began | 1492

When lost in the brush / Davis Hicks

What you can do was decided
well before you arrived,
before the slip that sloped away from the living,
before the blunder that thundered you
beyond the ridges of route-running
and off the paths of the boot-bound and pack-bearing.
Fire and water are now, as they always were,
the primordial pleasures
only preparation can summon.

Silhouettes bleed across the dark,
their self-held edges fuzzy at best,
the sound of loosely drifting leaves carrying
 the subtle-supple songs of larks,
when sun and all the rest
have decided to hide,
or otherwise tarrying.
It will be terrible as things used to be,
Abstract and endless forest
staring back 
as the library of Babel would-
there is no balcony to jump from.
Your tongue will time you,
your gut will remember the last time
you watered 
your ever-wilting garden.

Worse than that,
in the terrible and the endless,
there will still be the beautiful and the still.
Your horror will not be noticed
by the hollow eyes of squirrels
too involved in their own pantry,
the dry-goods hiding place
of well-dug treasure.
The warblers will still sing their western song,
the voices will still carry just the same.
The oaks will not notice you.
the copperheads pale head will only glance,
even as you scream.
the loblolly unwitnessed will not witness you.

We’re all thumb-twiddlers and toe-tappers,
this time of almost-night
when subsistence-seizing tasks are either finished
or will zombie themselves at sunrise..
Either way we will all find
resting places below the cover.
We must,
hiding as the birds do
in the dark and silent
outside the view
of surviving starving eyes.

Wind will move as constant as the tide
you may never see again,
same as anything beyond the treeline.
Bitting, harder than the thorns 
running rabid-rampant and tearing in deeper than the bones.
Get against anything solid and slick 
and impossible to blow away,
unlike your body with 
its cooling blood and chattering teeth.
unlike your body and the way the smell of it
can vanish in the gentleness of a breeze,
can return to the earth
as quietly
as you got lost.

Hear the whippoorwill, learn its consistent cry
and memorize all that might be
your final siren song.
Do not sleep too deep
and keep an ear unfolded
for the crunch of leaf or twig
or for anything at all.
When it, or you, cracks,
hear the sound of wings beating into the wind
and do not take it personally
when nature does not notice
that you thought
you were special.

3 / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

I am packing
America in pieces.
Count the dented

ribs of my chest.
Here is a ball
of snow hurled

at my bedroom window.
Here are glass jars 
storing heat for winter.

Here are shoes
with soles
that became tongues.

They lapped the heat
of summer asphalt.
You have asked many times

how I stayed alive.
Count the dreams
I am sending back.

Unpack them with care.
May they become
your lasting courage.

The one. / Jen Wagner

You
         Are
Are
        You
The
         The
One
         One?

Within / Stacy Walker

Find the part
Amidst the chaos,
The one that holds
It all together.

In the spiral,
The endless questions,
The one that knows
All it can weather.

In the moments
Things start to crumble,
A knowing prevails,
It holds on tight.

There’s a part
That knows your strength
Will get you through
The darkest night.

December - Poem 22

Snowy Owls Delight Birders on Chicago’s Lakefront  / Kate Bowers

For Abigail

He loved her and married her there in Positano above the sea. The only thing she had packed was her gauzy white dress, which she almost forgot on the plane rushing down the aisle to meet him on the runway after she landed.

And when they left their Brooklyn loft several years later for another city in the States, they left it all—every fork and pan, the leather couch, half their clothing, taking only the dog, really, and what could fit in their carry-on luggage.

Did I mention neither of them was Italian? That she was extraordinarily beautiful and had been wooed properly across New England over two fall seasons, not unlike those old Gilmore Girl stories we had grown up watching so assiduously? That he was from money and tech savvy?

For several years, they were together. She gave up performing for reporting and strangely went back to graduate school in the middle of everything —the game nights, the new dog, the whimsical jaunts to cities in South America since they presently lived so closely to it.

We grew used to their peripatetic life. After all, they lived along the horizon now, and as we aged, we lost patience with squinting.

Still, his birthday reminders came up regularly on the calendar, this last one arriving with baby news. However, the photo wasn’t of her. She had the same long, luscious hair, but this was a new girl, a new city. He had married this one on a mountaintop above the desert in a town where they purchased new forks.

And we didn’t know what had happened to Maria.

A couple of years later, I saw Maria’s work online. She was a full-time reporter now in Chicago with news about the rare sighting of two Snowy Owls—mates who had flown south from their native Arctic Tundra and were resting on the Montrose Pier along Lake Michigan’s shoreline.

“These birds have an interruptive pattern of migration; sometimes we see them, sometimes we don’t,” she reported and then explained this particular species of bird prefers open spaces like the Chicago shoreline over treed areas and that they nest along the ground in bowl shapes they carve into the earth over a few days’ time.

She went on to note the owls feed four rodents a day to their chicks, known as owlets, their preferred food is the lemming, and the size of the available lemming population dictated the number of eggs the birds would lay each year. Possibly, this was a slow lemming year in the Arctic, and the birds were seeking a better food supply flying so close to this heavily populated area along the lake.

Her footage included a clip of a male owl swooping down upon a lemming having a meal of grass and twigs on the tundra and lifting it up into the sky dangling almost tenderly from the bird’s talons, like a small and well-loved teddy bear dragging from the hand of a toddler.

Presumably, the owl had broken the back of the lemming at once when he grabbed it, and the rodent felt nothing as it was pecked apart still inexpertly by the owlets in the nest.

This happened more than once in the clip without any coyness. The lemmings never seemed to try to escape, just followed one after the other through the air to be eaten.

A local birder named John who had been keeping vigil on shore over four days came on screen next, talking about the rarity of seeing two Snowy Owls so close to his home. “I’ve been waiting for this for twelve years,” he said, “It’s one of the greatest lifers ever.” (A lower third ran across the bottom of the screen informing the viewer the term “lifer” is birder talk for a first, in-person sighting of a species as he spoke.). This was a first sighting for him. You never forget your first.

It was December 22 when I saw the segment, three days before Christmas. None of us were ready. The birds were white beautiful and were the talk of the cocktail parties now, a pleasant switch from holiday tropes and the ridiculous obsession among our circle with that novel Playworld that had been so popular last year, though none of our friends seemed to have actually read it, certainly not I.

My Universe / Katie Collins

My feet are cold
My heart is heavy
The sky is empty
Any stars that once lived there 
Have found a new space to occupy
Can you see them wherever you ended up?
Or is your sky as empty as mine?

7 oz. Odense Marzipan Almond Candy Dough / Ellen Ferguson

We walked to the corner
            Clinking candy canes with Caprice,
                        Former Miss Teen Australia,   
Catching bright windowed studios midtown.

            You offered me  
she declined,

Leaving me on the F train,                  my new home for now.

            We three
                        former beauties:

You, your marzipan, that yawning studio in Midtown East.

  Miss Teen Australia broke the marzipan mold:
still the almond joy of her youth                      tiny waist pasted on lush hips.

Odense, birthing both Hans Christian Anderson &
            Earth’s densest ingredient: malleable beyond buttercream, rarely igniting passion.

Understanding   / Chris Fong Chew

1. This text is to be read by your eyes only, no one else shall read this text 
2. The you referred to in the first statement is the plural type, meaning anyone can read this text 
3. Anyone by that I mean, those that can read english, that can read the language I am typing in 
4. perhaps not that I intend for those that cannot read english to not be able to read this text 
5. But I think it important to acknowledge the limitations of my writing and audience 
6. 如果我用中文，你不能讀
7. 但是你可以讀英文
8. 你明白嗎？
9. What is language except prescribed meanings to strings of lines on a page 
10. What about lines on a screen, etched into a rock, carved into a stone
11. What is language when you can understand me
12. What is language when you can't understand me
13. Who are you to say I am not understandable, perhaps you are not educated enough 
14. But who am I to say that one is educated or not educated
15. When people live their whole lives in another language, another script
16. A whole world existing with another set of sounds and lines on pages, screens, etched in rocks 
17. (some language don't even have a written form) 
18. sound waves )))))))))))))))))) pushing )))))))))))) through the air 
19. If I cannot write you then how can you understand me 
20. 
21. did you understand me?
22. perhaps without the written language I must accept that you can only understand when you are close
23. (likethisclose) 
24. (orthatclose)
25. what is a space but a condensation of meaning in emptiness 
26. space has meaning becuase without it how would you know 
27. ifiamwritingasentenceoraword
28. america or am erica?
29. language is an identity crisis 
30. do you understand?

Nostalgia is not scurvy / Davis Hicks

Don’t do as the body demands,
remembering all but
rest
holding accountable only the
exhale, 
but not the intaken, 
honest breath.
Forgetting can be a blessing for those
who wrong
including
against themselves.
Yesterdays can raisin, 
shriveled from the season-sun of so many droughted days.

Or worse, be distilled 
with clarity 
only good 
for burning.

Flickers, those half-twitch hieroglyphics 
love to convince us in top-down fashion
the vitality of building,
forgetting that even something 
so sharply beautiful
is still
a tomb.

Don’t forget the cocoons,
the sleds resting in 
the slain snow.
We cannot afford
to remember only the
bitter-breath, 
to abandon the watermelon and split-lips,
to pretend 
we can hold
anything
other
than hands.

2 / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

Is there time
to gather the gardenias
I tended for three

summers -- from which
brown anoles drank
rain and hatched

their eggs? The same
flowers I arranged
in a blue glass

and placed next
to your bed -- until
a lizard crawled out.

You said, sweep
it fast -- it belongs
outside. I scooped it

with my hands, gently.
It sprang and crowned
your head.

Beautiful things / Jen Wagner

I write of the violence
of beautiful things. 
The dark. 
And the lovely. 
And the desire it brings. 
The gentle and soft 
With the claws and the teeth.
The sweet smelling roses
With thorns underneath. 
The danger that calls me
To the edge of my fears.
As i dive into love 
And risk drowning in tears. 
Chasing blue eyes
That see deep to my soul. 
Hands that grip firmly 
Yet so softly they hold. 
It is longing and loathing. 
And beautifully brave. 
As I hand myself over
To both pleasure and pain
So deeply I’m rooted
In the knowledge I keep 
Without violence , no beauty. 
No dreams without sleep.

Holding On / Stacy Walker

I want to believe…
But flying reindeer?
Some people say
It’s our moms and dads. 
I think it could be,
But could it? 
They couldn’t have given
My gecko
A new cage
In the middle of the night.
I don’t think he’s real,
But he knew
I tried to stay up late
To see him last year. 
It doesn’t make
Any sense at all
But I wrote my letter,
Made my list,
And can’t wait
To leave cookies,
Carrots,
And candy canes,
Because did you know,
That’s what elves like to eat?
There’s a Santa Tracker,
You know,
And I wonder
How that works.
I want to believe. 

December - Poem 21

Let Darkness Be Darkness / Kate Bowers

For Kurt

The next thing that happened was astonishing.
All light left the room.

This was unnoticed for some time,
As we were already asleep. 

The sun had become handbag smol, now 
carried by the woman who strings stars
Across her antlers.

The cat was disturbed, not
By the now smolness of the big, big sun, nor
By the antlered woman strewn with stars.

But by no moon for shadows, no
Shapes on the wall moving.
Did I mention that the cat itself was black?

Otherwise, all would have passed unknown,
Uncovered still. 

What was seen could not be visualized or heard.
The stars insensible to us then.

Let darkness be darkness.

Patchwork / Katie Collins

I’m a rough-made quilt
Patched together from the scraps of everything and everyone
I’ve ever known
Sewn in intricate
Trying desperately to keep everything together
Never knowing when to let a piece go
Wrap yourself in my warmth
In the winter months
I’ll keep you safe and satisfied
You won’t even notice
As a small piece of you
Is sewn into my flesh
As you leave
In the spring

A Doomsday Prepper's Quantity of Red Vines and a Beautifully Made Candle with a Holiday Scent / Ellen Ferguson

You used to believe in romance:
a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, red licorice by the fire
            Now  there's no bread, no wine,
            No fire --
            Just a holiday candle &
            Too much red licorice.
You'd rather give us away
As if someone else        had a better chance.

You lit some twigs,       saying:    you light the fire

I'll pick the kids up from the train

But   you weren't speaking to anyone
There    was no one 

You could pick them up              or
They could freeze walking

        No one could check on the brisket
                No one could run to the store, picking up that extra thing besides the thing --

Sometimes you talk to the cat, who is gone
        As if to say, 
        I'll light the fire    You circle round the kids' legs
When they walk from the train                    If they're cold.

Buried Metaphor  / Chris Fong Chew

I buried meaning in metaphor 
six feet under, here it lies, meaning 
died yesterday while writing 
a cheeky stanza 

Remembered as a:
Straight shooter 
Tell it like it is 
Cut to the chase 
Don’t sugarcoat 
Don’t mash your words 

Metaphor and simile 
were damned when 
meaning was demanded 
and clerical words
minced for clarity 
code switch my syntax 
so you can understand. 

It is here meaning died 
between the words 
like and as 
as you are 
digging up definitions 
in my metaphorical 
graveyard.

When nothing of meaning 
was buried here. 

The topography of our life / Davis Hicks

Leaning on leaning on lean on,
your head balancing 
out the chip on my shoulder,
the way compass needle
ever points
past where we’re
going 
to the top
of all there is.

Cascading curls find purchase on my shoulder, 
where I hope you’ll find a home.
Cheeks kind-cushion and marshmallow out when
your grin can handle being itself,
and you being yourself.
Collarbones, drifting downward with relief,
are carved as the riverbeds are,
directing everything gravity calls to
with rushing consistency.
The contours of your face
are the valleys I wish to live in,
are the planting-places
for an ever-growing garden.
Unspoken consensus 
means your hand, or my hand,
finding their holds 
with patient gentleness.
Unafraid that the brush of ourselves 
unmasked is too tender for
hands and lives with callouses,
or eyes too watery
to witness the testimony
tenderness brings
in hands too small
to hold such a world
as you.

1 / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

If they come
knocking, tell
them I left --

a long time ago.
On the very same
day I arrived.

I am not here.
I  am a boy
whose head

is on
his mother’s lap,
as she hums --

trying to remember
the words of a song
he loves.

In Darkness/ Jen Wagner

My goodness. 
How much deeper can I go?
As I thought  was approaching an end.
I find a twist. 
And a turn.
And a cavern that (I swear) wasn’t there before. 
I’ve wandered past 
The blood and the bone. 
To discover the infinate dark. 
A place I must discover…
Alone. 
Even the light that I carry
Is being swallowed whole. 
And my dark whispers to me…
“No, my love…
You may not have light to see. 
Here you must feel,
With fingers and toes.
Your heart,
And your soul. 
But do not be afraid. 
Your light waits for you in the end.”
Until then. 
I keep moving ahead. 
Slow as I must. 
Until the black turns to grey. 
And the grey turns to green. 
And I’ve learned that some things..
Only in darkness…
Can they be seen. 

Winter / Stacy Walker

Daylight disappears,
Darkness takes hold, the moon high,
This is when we heal.

December - Poem 20

The Horse / Kate Bowers

That time on the tour bus
Coming through Galway
And all the tea shops and paperies 
While every citizen, including you,
Scowled our way at our photo taking and pointing. 

“Ijits” you muttered under breath you were loathe to let go.

Still, I saw your hand on the ear of that draft horse, nothing else.

Unsaddled it was, and you without even a stick
Walking alongside, tipping your fingers 
Slightly to turn her at the corner,
Steadying her gait.

Imagine, I thought, the feel of it, running through, 

The surge.

Opportunity / Katie Collins

It’s easy to fly off
With a new wind
Soaring
Through your sails
It’s harder to stay

When the breeze
Drops you back
down again
On solid ground
Will anything have really changed?

Will the jade green
Grass of days passed
Shine brighter
As they live
In your memory

On Looking into the Central Park Performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night Through the Eyes of a Twelve-Year-Old / Ellen Ferguson

When we do this for English class does a boy have to do that?
When we memorize this play do I need to say that?
Will I get a better grade if I do that dance with my hips?
Did Shakespeare have cell phones?
Double Entendre means sex but not saying it so much.
If we are all getting A's this class is too easy because we are not supposed to all get A's.
This is not like Gilmore Girls when they did Romeo and Juliet.

Icarus and Caramel  / Chris Fong Chew

Replace wax laden feathers 

With a sweet sugary concoction, 
a golden brown elixir made by the gods.

When Icarus jumped from that tower 
he began to rise
as the wind 
flowed 
beneath his wings. Powered by sugary 
flight, he soared ever so high. 

But as he flew 
too close to the sun the 
brown and gold 
dripping into the sea
turning the waters sweet 
with sugar and margarine. 

Saccharine feathers falling one by one
then all at once as Icarus lands
in a sweet and salty soup 
swallowed by flavors 
in a gentle 
plop.

Window watching / Davis Hicks

Drizzle-drowning, the constant 
straight-down torrent of the toothpick 
in its trumpetting trickle tacked on top
of doubling drowsy days.
All birds are silhouettes,
all forms of life flashes
glinting only for necessity,
ground-graveling away
from the grovel-gushing that turns 
all bowed things 
to creekbed.

Branches build the tempo in their nervous two-step,
Swaying to the tune
of billowing winds
with an ear
to its musical tenor.
Windows have stars of their own,
reminders that the dry and warm
have different skies
than the wild lives lived
beneath
unlying constellations.
Would wings be clipped if they built
walls instead of nests?
Maybe, somewhere between
mortar and drywall
something akin to wisdom 
is forgotten 
in the skin.
Do we ever wonder 
if we really aren’t
waterproof?
On the other side of the glass,
between bushes and the lurking bodies of trees,
all life could have been lives
even warmer than the one
hidden 
from the rain.

Light / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

and darkness. And how they keep
dancing in a ring of Fire. She takes
in everything. How the flashes
of the kindling become tongues

of flame. How the fire levitates
the clay pot, as if an offering
in a temple. This is not a kitchen.
She is not stirring a porridge

or counting the cups of rice left.
Today she is a cosmic dancer.
Today she becomes Shiva who
has become Nataraja. She is a god

who protects and destroys. Today
is Creation. She dusts off what weighs
down her hands. She raises her right
palm for joy, not supplication. Her hair

is Ganga, on which floats the moon.  
She raises her foot and sounds the Om.
Today she comprehends why she keeps
returning to the same gathering ground.

Rainbows and Ruins/ Jen Wagner

Your wounds. 

They’re so, very romantic to me. 
Even more than the rainbow that chased me down the highway today. 
As I flew down roads slick as a snakes back. 

I could see it in my rear view. 
It reminded me of all the times I chased the proverbial “pot of gold.”
The one that is supposed to be at the end. 
(Or so they say.)

But I digress…

I prefer the beauty of things 
My fingers can touch. 
Scars that run the length of your spine—
They speak to me,
Telling me that you are real. 

I know there’s a story behind each one. 
And I want to know them all. 
One at a time. 

I will ask you about all of them. 
Even scars want to be seen. 
To be held. 
They, too have stories that need to be told. 

I prefer the ruin to the rainbow. 
The texture of flesh
Over the vibrance of arches that my fingers can never reach. 

So please…
Lay with me here. 
Now. 

Let me trace the curve of your vestiges. 
So they are not forgotten. 

It is here 
That I chase my blessings. 

Full of Emptiness / Stacy Walker

Last year, it was a blur,
This time flying by
Only half aware
Of the world around me.

I thought it was the first
But now I see
The truth of the matter
Hadn’t even been born,

Still developing inside
Growing into
Its own being
Of the after.

So this year,
Is the first,
The first time
Feeling this empty space

Like I couldn’t before,
The emptiness
Filling up
What’s inside and out,

And I can clearly see
This space
And time
Without him.

December - Poem 19

We Walk Back to the Wide House / Kate Bowers

Here south of the Bear Camps but north of the trailers, we walk.
The wide house we seek lies against the mountain on a narrow lane.
Already the house begins to split open, like a crackerjack or pomegranate scattering.
A barred owl dreaming there high and large atop your cedar tree opens its eyes.

The wide house we seek lies against the mountain on a narrow lane.
Unfindable under summer skies but through blood beating inside the ear.
Before the barred owl dreaming there opened its eyes high and large.
We knew the cedar as a fellow sapling, its brothers planks, roof shingles for the making.

Unfindable under summer skies but through blood beating inside the ear.
We remember it from the touch reddened fingers made hewing its wide shape.
The barred owl now casts a veil warning off would-be Aladdins from its walls as we come closer.
Bears give it wide berth, the trailers remain, unconscious in the face of splendor.

We remember it from the touch reddened fingers made hewing its wide shape.
Already the house begins to split open, like a crackerjack or pomegranate scattering.
Bears give it wide berth, the trailers remain, unconscious in the face of splendor.
Here south of the Bear Camps but north of the trailers, we walk.

Wisteria / Katie Collins

Flowers grow around me
Covering me in beauty
Little purple petals
Fall with every
Breeze

If trees are meant to be strong,
I am a bush in tree’s clothing
Bowing to the pressure
Of the delicate I can’t quite
reach

As their vines suffocate slowly
I now know what it means to be lovely
Little green arms
Closing rank
Choke

Ugly Sweater / EllenFerguson

Held fast, the sweater with the cat in the snow
Drapes nonchalant crunch like an invalid invalid
Passing it to you I acknowledge:
She's really gone.

How to “Discover” a land inhabited by people, declare it empty and make it yours    / Chris Fong Chew

Land on another land far away from yours, declare yourself explorers in search of something more 

1. Begin trading with the locals, offering your goods for theirs. 

2. Being setting up beneficial alliances with the locals, try to befriend them 

3. After befriending them, find out who is the most powerful group, begin to build an alliance with them 

4. While building those alliances, find other groups that dislike the most powerful group, begin building alliances with them as well

5. As you build trust with the most powerful group, begin drawing up unfair agreements, tip the scales in your favor 

6. When the most powerful group begins to call you out on it, begin threatening violence and war 

7. When the most powerful group refuses to back down, declare war, arbitrarily, and use your other alliances to take the most powerful group down

8. Once they are out of power, turn on your other alliances with the less powerful groups 

9. Once you have defeated the groups as well, any survivors, make sign an unfair treaty for “peace” 

10. Once this is done, declare the land empty and untouched, pristine to build upon 

11. Lay claim to this land and continue to expand

12. When the tide of history turns against you, erect statues honoring those you slaughtered and call them heroes 

13. Rinse, and repeat

14. Rinse, and repeat

15. Rinse, and repeat. 

Embody what survivors teach, with anything but promises / Davis Hicks

Listen with the ears of squirrels-
with their twitchy consistency,
with hearing unfazed by cars
but aware
of every drying leaf,
witnesses of the trembling.

Be fluid as the flox,
that water walker whose presence
is not louder than the mist,
diligent and clever 
in all the ways that keep 
hearts beating-
protectors of kits even 
while hunting the small
and wet-nosed.

Drift as crane feet in winter
On skid-ice,
the only walker willing to take
the light steps of faith
over the abysmal.
Determined with long beak and beady eyes,
those looking glasses full of fortunes
and not a single ripple,
all the focus of the 
far-fisher, 
willing to dive.

Swim upstream, salmon 
and ignore the bears-
ignore the clawed, ignore
any looming shadow.
Your body will warp
as breath loses its salt 
and open water is closed 
In by so many stone-smoothed sliding walls.
Take this proof as permission,
vain-veining as valor.
Do not mind the bodies-
the current 
will honor them
with return to sea,
with a true sailor’s burial
even as you 
return to the home, 
to the bedding grounds 
in the clear crispness
atop the riverway.

Primal purpose arrives just,
ragged and discolored with the bruises of the 
completion of every endocrine impulse
Answers.
There’s no secret to the upstream soul-search,
only diligence outswims the stream of luck.
We all deserve the honor
of giving the entirety 
to a single solitary sanction,
of providing our battered bodies as the oasis 
of a whale fall.

Ash / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

for Amy Haworth

Waiting for the universe to become a grain,
he watches a cloud of starlings condense,
grow tendrils in six directions -- only to retreat
into a teardrop before exploding into dandelions.

Galaxies within galaxies cluster and break
apart unceasingly. Stars seem still. Right now,
as he rests his hand on a passage of a medical
book, invisible galaxies pulse through his veins.

They swirl inside his organs -- brightness
sweeps across his body, scours dregs,
and shines through his pores.  What silhouette
does his brilliance make? What hole  

will it leave behind? A long time ago, he watched
a blank screen as a man infuses a dye in his
bloodstream. He saw how his body became
tendrils and fronds in an instant. He was black

ink that explodes and swirls. This must be
how the universe begins -- over and over.   
It is not dust and ash that make him -- but light
and darkness. And how they keep dancing.

Keeper / Jen Wagner

I am a keeper.
of secrets
And wishes.
Of skeletons you keep hidden from existence.
From dark dreary pasts
Where you lack self forgiveness. 
I hold stories close.
I’m here to bear witness. 

I am an enabler.
Of your wildest dreams. 
Here to usher in all your hopes 
and your schemes. 
To lay a red carpet 
That connects the inbetween
Of this everyday life
To the road rarely seen.

I am the wilderness
Where you shed all your skins.
Remove all the bindings
We label as sin.
Here you roam free
No fear of the hidden.
Dive deep my love,
To the bounty within. 

I am the calm
You seek from the storms.
Blue skies with blue eyes.
Skin soft and warm.
Sun dappled waters.
Come lay in my arms. 
I will love you
And keep you
Protected from harm.

I am the mother
Who’s love knows no condition
I am the wife
Who serves in her mission
I am the lover
count all your blessings 
I am the conjurer 
Of all of our happiness 

Priorities / Stacy Walker

I’m going as fast as I can
And as I want
And I don’t see
The reason
To hurry.

When you rush me
And speak to me
That way,
I feel scared
And sad
And can’t understand
What I’ve done
That’s so wrong.

When you ask me
What else
Needs to be done
Before we go,
I hurry on my scooter
To fill my water,
Get my shoes,
And along the way,
There are other things
To do.

The dogs need snuggles,
My ball needs bouncing,
It isn’t my fault,
These things are true.

And anyway,
I still don’t understand
The reason
To rush.

Whenever we get there,
Whatever we do,
It’ll all be fine,
Right? 
You worry a lot,
Mama. 

December - Poem 18

I’ve never been to the bardo / Kate Bowers

Someone said the other day
And I thought that is a helluva way
To use a contraction, leaving
That space hanging like a reservation
You know you will want someday 
Once the kids are out of college
And the house is paid for, when
You turn around and find that space
You have been longing for just waiting, waiting . . .
All the magazines on the table,
Empty chairs everywhere and you with
Your Bardo River Cruise LinesTravel Planner
On your lap patiently waiting like the peach you are 
For customer service to process your call.
 

Throw away your HA today if you like,
Or better yet donate it to the HA Bank
For those who never wait and consequently run low
On HAs too early according to the map of the world
And could use a few to warm up the crowd
Of their thoughts while they race 
From the refreshment stand to their front row seats,
Spilling popcorn and slopping soda, their hair flying wildly
In every direction underneath their always askew hats,
Making it in the nick of time for the next curtain to part,
The real talent to appear.

None of those Highlights for Children or HGTV reruns for them,
Nor Father Knows Best in black and white film
Spooling and re-spooling in a windowless room
While the receptionist struggles to confirm
Their appointment is not next Tuesday instead of
Now, right now, this very moment now.

They are long past it all, laughing
All the way to the bank, multiple
Windows in every room wherever they go,
(A condition stipulated in their contract rider)

And believe me when I tell you

All of their windows are open

                                                                        All of the time

Every single step of the way.

Mary Shelley Teaches Romanticism at PS #30 in Yonkers, New York, 2025 / Ellen Ferguson

(after Philip Levine)

She threw a tack at Chester and said, “Do you get my point?”

“Is it your fascination with the supernatural or strange?” Chester asked.

Outside, the snow fell on the new parking lot, where the woods used to be.

“No, you idiot,” Mary Shelley said.

“Is it your elevation of the role of the poet?” Bailey said.

“No,” Mary Shelley said and threw him out the window.

“I know,” Sandy said, “it must be your elevation of the Moment, you are having a Moment, just like Keats in that trailer for ‘Bright Star.’”

Mary Shelley thought back to the good times at PS #30.

                        When they performed “The Odd Couple,” starring she and Percy Bysshe.

                                                “Of what strange nature is knowledge,”

Mary said. “It clings to the mind                                             like a lichen on a rock.”

Chester, chastened, looked out the window, where Bailey’s body bathed the parking lot like lichen.

Unfamiliar home   / Chris Fong Chew

“Here a tree swings east, towards the heart
drawn towards something in its veins
a land once called home.”

The root of the tree digs deeper into the soil 
burrowing into the ground, grasping at the bedrock 
moving towards the center of Mother Earth. 

With every new root, every new path, 
the tree becomes more embedded
in the soil of the land
joining an ecosystem of its fellow green. 

And as the roots burrow down, branches climb up high 
reaching and grasping for the canopy light. 

But even as its roots burrow deeper each day
the branches continue to climb towards the rising sun 
grasping for something familiar 
in the great unknown. 

What’s next? / Davis Hicks

Do you think they’d notice?
Does drift-work get seen,
even as the dunes undo the detail?
Do you think there’s anything worth more
than a year: more than Thanksgiving round-table and 
4th of July boiled peanuts? What could be that savory, 
could be generated and thrust with anything 
resembling a life?
Is any given date built for something
unlike the last? What’s originality worth?
Do you think we’d get away with it, drifting out the 
distant drive towards 
nothing 
but the horizon?
Would we remember
to leave our phone behind,
to make our soul
untrackable?
Would we return our library books first,
give back to a public
who would not feel
how we’ll never return
to the stacks?
Do you think we’d be able to work?
At a bowling alley or burger bar,
wherever there’s low lighting and 
the smell of mozzarella sticks? 
Could we stay where the sweet tea is,
hold lonely ground and 
refuse to develop a taste
for the unflavored in unwarmed places?
Maybe we could learn-
but if we did,
change would never really stop 
the ongoing argument 
we have 
with
ourselves.

Rapture / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

Tomorrow the past will change once again.
Hour after hour, day after day – the years
advance in minute disintegrations.
Plums rain the ground. The flesh breaks

on contact, rots in the blaze of the sun,
and bleeds on stones. A stone heart
is revealed to circling crows. The surface
it rests on is severe and in constant motion.

It does not distinguish between what it
catches and what falls. There’s no difference
between marching combat boots and running
bare feet. In the core of the earth, gravity

is a patient gardener. It waits for all in equal
affection. I press my ears to the ground,
hoping to hear the pulse of the fossils.
It gives me back the silence of understanding.

Light years away, another star dies. A crow,
built by civilizations by linking stars, loses
an eye. The fate of its people changes.  We spin,
waiting for the universe to become a grain.

How a Star is Born / Jen Wagner

In the midst of cold, inky black space.
Where dark clouds hover.
Gravity shows up.
With a weight so unfamiliar.
I spin away.
But it hangs on.
And warmth spreads.
And then..
The crash out
and the collapse.
I give up to what is pulling me under.
I surrender.
And let myself implode.
Only to discover.
The beauty comes only after the fall.
The destruction is a necessary part of how a star is born.

ownership / Stacy Walker

I ponder the process
I could partake in
To join the parties
Around me,

The gatherings
Of groups
That seem
To so naturally
Get along.

I never quite feel
Like I fit
Or belong,
Sure I’m somehow
Different.

Always a little uneasy,
My smile a bit
Too tight,
Fidgeting my fingers,
Adjusting my stance,
Sure I’ve done something
Misplacing.

I’ve so recently
Learned to love
What’s inside me,
What sometimes sets
Me apart,
What feels so foreign
Elsewhere,

And when I bully myself
Into belonging,
Into being
A proper part
              Of something,
And
Owned by someone
Else,
Everything in my body
Screams no.

I’ve been proper,
Correct,
Appropriate,
And for the first time,
I insist
On belonging,
Being owned by
Me.

December - Poem 17

Great Balls of Fire / Kate Bowers

For Kalliopy ABRACADABRA

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain /Too much love drives a man insane/You broke my will but what a thrill/goodness, gracious…—Jerry Lee Lewis, 1961

Incandesce Fannie Longfellow’s gauze overlay ignited when she brushed against a candle flame while sealing locks of her children’s hair in wax, July, 9, 1861. She died the next day. Henry, her husband lived but suffered severe burns from attempting to save her. He never remarried.

Glow with heat.

There is a burden on women to think about their bodies in space in a way that men don’t have to. The only fire I found for men really was a guy who left a lit pipe in his suit because woolen suits were pretty flameproof.”

—Alison Mathew David, author of Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present, quoted in Racked. 2017

Radiant Marie Taglione dancing a ballet in 1832 while wearing white tulle erupted into a ball of flame before her audience, a full house, after dancing too close to the footlights. Ballerinas were considered loose women.

Sending out light; shining or glowing brightly 

 “It’s not a build-up like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re smoking, let me tamp that out.’ It’s like, ‘Ahh!’ Your girlfriend beside you is a ball of fire, and you’re now a ball of fire, and boom boom boom boom boom boom boom, they’re all balls of fire.”

— Deirdre Kelly, Ballerina: Sex, Scandal, and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection, Quoted in Racked, 2017

Aflame Oscar Wilde’s half sisters Mary and Emily attended a Halloween party in 1871. While dancing, one sister’s dress caught fire. The other rushed to help. Both perished after weeks of suffering from third degree burns. Oscar never spoke publicly about this loss.

In flames burning 

So long as gentlemen admire small waists and praise those figures the most which approach the nearest to the shape of a wasp, or an hour-glass, it is in vain to tell young ladies that the practice is destructive of health, and that there is no real beauty in the small dimensions at which they are aiming. . . .  

—Mrs. John Farrar in The Young Ladies Friend (1853)

Glowing Archduchess Mathilde of Austria, age 18, put on a gauze dress to attend the theater on June 6, 1867, then erupted into a ball of flame when her father came to get her, and she tried to hide her lit cigarette from him behind her back. She died before her father’s eyes.

Giving out steady light without flame

“The appeal of the large skirt was that it made you look more slender from the waist up”— Colleen Hill, a curator at the Museum at FIT commenting on the popular bell-shaped skirt of the 1850s which created a perfect cone for fire to escalate. Quoted in Racked, 2017

Brilliant In 1860, the British medical journal Lancet documented 3,000 women perished by fire. 165 years later, women still get burned from the choices they and others make around appearance more so than the fabric or design of their clothing. Love, attraction, sex, rules of relationships continue to be a factor. And love’s language.

Very bright , radiant 

This bed is on fire with passionate love, The neighbors complain about the noises above. . . Dressed me up in women’s clothes, Messed around with gender roles, Line my eyes and call me pretty. . . . You’re driving me crazy, when are you coming home?

—James, Lyrics to Laid, 1993

Sleep / Katie Collins

I want to close my eyes
But the work is piling up
How can I sleep with the laundry undone?
How can I sleep with dishes in the sink?
How can I sleep with databases to compile?
So I keep going.
If I collapse,
Will that feel like rest?

Upgrade / Ellen Ferguson

We've decided you qualify for an upgrade
See you upstairs in the lounge
New terms take effect immediately
Alternate side street parking rules are suspended

Pack light
Carry it on
Let's go
Sky's the limit

First she loved Let's Go books
Then, The Best Places to Kiss
Then, AARP Recommends. Now,
Family plots ignite Duraflames.

Tenderness Theory  / Chris Fong Chew

Theorize the soft flesh of the human
bending to the harshness of the world.
Like the tree that bends in the wind
is the one that weathers the storm 

Theorize that in the collapse of humanity 
that some remnant of our humanity 
will continue to exist. 
The animals that coexist 
survive longer than those alone

Theorize tenderness, imagine 
a better world where kindness 
is at the center of all things. 

Theorize peaceful coexistence 
thriving abundance 
and prosperity for us all. 

Theorize tenderness
believe in the goodness of the heart
it may be our only way forward in this world. 

The Pop Quiz that lives on my bed / Davis Hicks

Swelter / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

Swelters our labor and tears our grief --
Tattoo water on my arms as if it is
a covenant for fourteen generations.
The fires are everywhere, the bushes

are ashes. The streets are landmines
where once barrels of milk and jars
of honey were traded for passage.
Everywhere, someone is mourning.

You ask of my origin. I have no
certainty of ancestors before me.
They did not map deserts or name
oceans, as if every day was the Third Day

of creation. But I crossed waters.
Carrying neither my father nor his
father on my back, I became my own
nation -- my people dwell inside me.

We are here now and always, somewhere
else. My mother the hurricane whispers,
Anything that can be observed is temporary.
Tomorrow the past will change once again. 

The Inbetween / Jen Wagner

In the midst of midlife
in the inbetween
Contemplating What’s to come
Reminiscing on What has been

I watched an old man
Quietly Sitting in his chair.
Watching children running freely
Without a single care.

His eyes were wise with age.
His body thin and frail.
But I can only imagine
The stories he could tell.

I knew he sat there dreaming.
I could see in his eyes.
Remembering himself as a boy
Hopes to the skies.

My gaze shifted as his did
To the boys in the street.
Carrying no thoughts with any weight
And nimble on their feet.

Careless and agile
Their futures untold
But someday if they’re lucky
They too will grow old.

In that chair they will sit
Only memories to share
Energy expended
Who around them will care?

As I observe this beginning
And I witness this end.
I sit here In The inbetween
Of what’s to come and what has been Sent from my iPhone

Word Games / Stacy Walker

Trauma,
Pain,
And suffering
Have taken up
Enough space
In my notebook
And my heart.

Ever-present,
Ready to be called upon
To feel deeply
Or fill a page,

But for today,
I’ll dig deeper
To find what’s harder
To garner,
To see what else
Can fill the space.

What if

JOY

HOPE

CONTENTEDNESS

Yes,

CONTENTEDNESS

Could take up the space.

The word feels
Too long,
Made up,
Like the letters
Are jumbled,
Just trying to string
The word along,

But for today,
I’ll let the letters
Do as they please,
As they fill space
With something other than
Grief.

SUFFICIENT

RELAXATION

ACCEPTANCE

FULFILLMENT

EASE

Words that summon
Something more
Than what I’m used to.

Today,
Despite all
That’s happening
In the background,
I will let

EASE

Fill my space.

December - Poem 16

Hail To the Jewel In the Lotus  / Kate Bowers

Om Mani Padme Hom

For Jeffrey

A young lama at the mouth of a cave
Meets a marmot sheltering there from snow.
“You are the jewel in the lotus,” says he.

The marmot whistles first with bravado,
Because he has fear and no human speech 
For this lama kneeling at the cave’s mouth.

The young lama bows to the marmot’s heart
Opens his own heart light forward, a red thread
Connecting two jewels from the same flower.

Now one, illusion falls away between them.
The marmot reaches beyond the mouth, paw
Tender in the jeweled hand of the lama.

Marmots are not loved by those who have lawns 
And fruit trees wild creatures do love to eat.
Lotus Eaters do not see them as jewels.

Lotus Eaters are not lamas on a mountain
But could be across well-kept lawns if they

Listened at the their own cave’s mouth, the lama
Heart there singing “You are the same jewel.”

Sick Bed / Katie Collins

My stomach is empty,
But even water finds a ways
To eject itself from my system
My only hope is to keep all the mess in my spare trash can
Because if I have to smell bleach right now
It’s over
I’ve been biting my tongue
And swallowing every unkind thought
For far too long
It all had to come back up eventually.

Train of Pain / Ellen Ferguson

You filmed me talking
You asked if you could
I misunderstood
A train of pain
Passed through this town.
Nothing to see here, folks.

Words: that’s the problem.
Not the record,
The words.

Record of an artist’s mind at work  / Chris Fong Chew

A record spins / crackling to life / 
through tube amplifiers / sound radiates / 
as pencil to paper / grinds at the tip / 
marks filling / the blank sheet / 
inscribing meaning / onto the page / 
both truth / and lies / crafted worlds / 
deconstructed phrases / this record / 
recorded / recoded / imagined / 
re-imagined / a world / where / 
there is / dystopia / utopia / fictional / 
creation / a different / reality / recording / 
the artist’s mind / recording the artist’s / 
work / truth be told / lies be told / 
only the world itself / will know. 

Growth-grabbing / Davis Hicks

Ivy- sprawling, that grabbing
reach for something warmer, 
something higher.
I can understand that.
Who wouldn’t want to reach, to develop
a sense of presence 
in such a kind place as gardens?
Or, perhaps more honestly,
grasping at the edges of supermarkets and movie theaters,
bread and circuses.
Clawing up the billboard’s unmanned post, snagging at skinless torso,
grabbing all 
unused space.
Either way,
everything is green, the tired
and forgotten both-
all things compostable.
Vines grope with arcane fingers, 
ever searching for anything resembling
themselves.

Bedrock / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

If blasting bedrock were a metaphor,
I would argue for rain. Not the gentle
drizzle that accumulates into tiny
streams and then into mirrors

of clouds on the ground, when
the sky clears. No, not that.
I wish for a sudden cloudburst --
the sky surging: birds descending

as fishes, fishes landing as humans
with arms stretched wide, mouth open,
tongue out for a sacred communion
with what once was beneath them.

This is the foundation of our being --
we are made of water. Water
does not understand borders. Not
the lines on paper, the invisible

divide in mountains, or what is
under our feet. It tracks its own
paths: leaps off cliffs, tunnels bedrock.
Swelters our labor and tears our grief. 

Too many hats (and a juggling act. ) / Jen Wagner

I got home and walked through my front door. 
I removed my shoes and placed them on the floor. 
I took off my hat
And my hat
And my hat. 
Hung now. 
So my head is free. 
(Though my hair is flat)

All the balls I used to juggle 
are now in my pocket. 
I removed those too and placed them next to me in a basket. 
I never realized how many there were before. 
As I kept them effortlessly
(Or so it seemed)
Flying through the air. 

The full plate that I carried with me that day was stacked neatly. 
Now in a pile. 
And for once I could see
How many full plates
I kept spinning. 
Recklessly. 
You don’t know 
what you don’t know. 
Until you can see. 
And what I see so plainly now…
Is that most of those things didn’t even belong 
To
Me. 

Say it Like You Mean It / Stacy Walker

There is a difference
Between caring
About your feelings,
And managing –
Feeling –
Them for you.

I can’t always find it.

I try to teach
My daughter
Kindness
Without losing
Her sense of self,
Of who she is,

Empathy,
Without merging
Into others.

The thing is,
She already knows,
Mostly living
In a space of love
And boundaries,
My reminders
Only seldom
Supporting her stance.

Still, I see moments,
Where she pauses,
Considers choosing
Them.

Then my words,
Catch in my throat,
Knowing I’m teaching
What I haven’t learned,
Giving sound advice,
That’s hollow in my belief,

A part of me
Still afraid
Of letting your feelings free,
Taking them for myself,
Wrapping my hands around the reins
Of your life,
Sure that not only your safety
Is at stake,
But my own.

The little girl inside
Still believes
This is the way
And I wonder
If my child
Feels the same,

My hopes and fears
Passed from my bones
To hers,
And now in how we live, too.

So I know,
I have to let go;
Choose me
So she can choose her.

December - Poem 15

The Number Of Times I Have Sat In My Car Thinking Why Can’t I Just Stay In My Car Because In 8 Hours Or 3 Minutes I Am Just Going To Be Sitting In My Car Anyway.  / Kate Bowers

For Jeffrey

Independence / Katie Collins

Blue vomit coats the bottom of a small pink trash can
The unnatural hue matches the sugar cookies my new neighbor just dropped off.
So much for a house warming present.
The freedom of being alone
Is cleaning up your vomit
Even as you still feel like heaving.
I'm shivering on the bathroom floor

Lotz and Lotz of Fun / Ellen Ferguson

light up the Maybelline eyeliner with a match
The Lotz twins are coming to the bathroom
And they have Marlborough lights
Get out your bonne bell lip smackers 
And your love's baby soft perfume
Because you can try hard, or you can try soft.
Yer mom wears enjoli because she can bring
home the bacon/fry it up in a pan
This year for Christmas Eve 
Go alone to Lincoln center at 1
See a movie about family and
Remember when

What’s hidden  / Chris Fong Chew

In the archive / Memories / are stored / Under lock / and key / Anti-narrative to / National narrative / A forgotten record / Dangerous / to the sovereignty / Of the land. / The archive holds / Secrets protected / By bureaucracy / By systems / and processes / Holding information / hostage / To those / who do not dare / Uncover / what is hidden inside.   

Do you dare to enter? 

Loblollies / Davis Hicks

They don’t lurk or lounge as the roses do.
They’re too strong for that, unrampant and unwilling to sprawl.
Bark-bound, as the books are,
built to last by no one but themselves.
Roots half-invisible, the grafter
self-hugged by its own fallen needles,
recolored in pleasant aging to match
the grapple-grounded.

Changing only as the day drifting into night,
only as the tomorrow becomes the today,
becomes the forever-was.
Still here, still here, still here.
Green and solid and pointed
in sun and snow alike, the opposite of 
adrift. 

Witnessed as the crowd is, 
ever a part and apart and refusing to
compartment-compromise
or commit to any other sever-slickness.

There is no show to stop-
no need for neon
from the level-headed, 
from the tall standing, even when
they are not the linear.
Such strong backs will 
always have their knots.

Artists, active in arch-ache,
ever-reaching for the warmth of the untouchable. 
Workers of needlepoint, knitters
of fresh forest floor refuse who refuse not to reuse
all within
their reach.

Burnt / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

There’s more to fire than burning.
If only fire were a metaphor,
as with glancing at the mirror
and seeing a stranger who has

neither answers nor questions.
How he likes to confront the young
man who stares at clouds with feet
crossed on the windowsill, palms

clasped at the back of his head.
He will tell him that there’s more
to sand and gravel, sand and cement,
sand and water. Sand and sand.

He will burrow his head when he dares.
He will breathe through the silt,
and listen to the sand shifting. He will
run miles with pebbles in his shoes.

But he refuses to weather before
the sun is snuffed out by the horizon.
As if plunging six feet were a sport, as
if blasting bedrock were a metaphor.

In Dreams / Jen Wagner

I think you were in my dream last night. 
But I can’t really be sure. 
I Couldn’t make out your face. 
Only the blue eyes. 
The rest was a blur. 
There was the smell of whiskey on your breath. 
Not the cheap kind either. 
The good stuff. 
You keep reserved for long conversations. 
And remembering back through the years. 
it stung and made my eyes water. 
Or perhaps I was crying. 
Because somehow,
 I knew,
It was 
only 
a 
dream. 
So I squeeze my eyes tighter. 
Bury my face in the pillow. 
Inhale that burn from the whiskey  
And say my prayers
That soon…
Maybe,
It will be the real thing. 

Ashes / Stacy Walker

Make way,
she says,
the phoenix
who burns
our troubles
to the ground.

Holding on,
not ready to let go,
although
the troubles
devour us
whole.

She sets fire
to destroy
the broken,
ripping it
from our grasp,
surrender,
the only option.

Without death,
the dissolving
of the known,
the new cannot exist.

Rise
cannot come
without ashes. 

Transformation
requires
a sacrifice.

December - Poem 14

I can bring lifeboats and landing gear / Kate Bowers

What can I do disabled with love
Calabashless on a shore
Unrecognizable to me.

Though a swimmer, 
I hesitate.
To dive is to immerse,

And am I not already drowning
Breathless on the precipice
Above this strip mine?

Scuba students nearby tell me tales
Of sunken school busses they have found
In the mine’s flooded depths

Old cars filled with back seats
That once held one close
To another 

And the echolocation they feel
Through their wetsuits,
The pulse from the unknown

As they sink

Ballroom / Katie Collins

One, two, three, four
I count my steps
As we circle each other
Dancing around the room
The extra effort is to keep from stepping on your toes
If only you felt the same

Who Brings a Dozen Doughnuts to a Funeral?  / Ellen Ferguson

Who doesn't?
Normal folks, not stars in every show
Calm angels, not those who toast themselves
True friends.
When you brought a dozen doughnuts to mine,
I blanched like a hot cruller
Embarrassed for you, even
After I was gone.
Like after you brought that leftover rye toast
From the diner                        To our first date
I should have known:           You would bring 
Doughnuts to my funeral    Back in Jersey, riding
Like a golden calf          On a false deity's shoulder

Memory’s Archive / Chris Fong Chew

Buried in memory’s archive 
is a tale of leaving 
and arriving in a land 
foreign to the self 
and a foreigner to others. 

This land of mystic words 
confused phrases, 
backwards syntax, and 
misunderstood praises. 

This land of exclusion
inclusion, diverse, reclusion, 
contortion, extortion, 
important information 
is hidden from those who 
did not originate from here. 

Refugee and perpetual 
foreigner, learning the ways 
of the host. Did you ever find 
out about the secrets hidden
under the soil?

The bodies, of people, of animals 
of forests, plants, trees. Riches 
at the cost of the richness of 
this land before it was 
taken, stolen, broken, destroyed. 

In memory’s archive is a story of the place 
of riches. Was it truly as rich as it was 
set out to be? 

Hear, Oh Lonely / Davis Hicks

The world, our bounty-broken world, is many.
When dry wildflower blossoms dance across dunes,
the closest to mermaiding they’ll ever get, 
pray.
Pray for them, and for rain. For the beautiful and the damned,
the drop-tested
 and the stop-gapped, for the sweat faces of the attempted
and the falsetto findings of the sugar-dancer. 
Pray for them. 
Pray through squinting eyes
pray with water filled words
falling from split-lips.

Be unafraid to stutter,
unmasked and unabashed in your voice
even when it traitors. Remove the callouses from your
ears, the habits from your steps
and then begin. In the peaceful embrace 
of the wild places- in nook and cranny, in notches
and creeks, those unwilling
to slingshot. If they do swallow you
it is only
with 
wonder.

Pray with upturned palms
ready to embrace 
whoever is willing
to grab hold.
Let prayers be as full as blossoms
and believe there is such
an honest act
as listening.

Let the act be familiar, as visiting the stream is, 
but the words as fresh as each day’s new rush
of silent clarity. Yesterday’s rain
distilled 
by time and roughness into 
something smooth, 
something kind in its chill-settled softness.
Let your prayers 
be prayers
be prayers 
as the water
is the water
is the water
but never once claims
 to be 
all of it 

at 

once.

Kindling / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

She keeps returning to the same
gathering ground. In summer,
dry twigs fall before the leaves.
They save the fire. No, they
save more than fire. They give
her time to collect what she
has lost since she moved out
of her mother’s house. Before
the pot of porridge that never
seems to get emptied. Before
the bottles and baby clothes.

They are more than kindling.
In her mind, she picks up
a brush for her once shiny hair.
A pocket mirror. A lipstick
she wipes before her husband
comes home. She tells him she
goes to the forest to keep the fire
alive. To save matches and kerosene.
Not once does he suspect
there’s more to fire than burning.

A Modest House / Jen Wagner

A modest house
Small and plain.
Tucked away 
Down a hidden lane.
A magic place
Where we all came, 
To gather in love
And celebrate.  

Filled with love,
Magic and lore.
Stories shared
As we sit on the floor.
Eyes are wide
Waiting for more. 
Always anticipating 
What’s in store.

These halls are filled
With shadows we cast.
The Ancestors walk
The grounds that are vast.
The trees they whisper
The names of our past.
Here I seek solace
Life moves too fast.

Here life slows
To the pace that of a crawl.
I breathe in deeply 
Feeling so small.
Accepting the energy
She shares with us all.
Living in memories
Of spaces long gone. 

A simple house 
In stature and size. 
You cannot deny
The magic inside. 
Energy teeming
Ancient and wise. 
Grounded in love 
Disguised in plain sight. 

Out with the Old / Stacy Walker

Out with the old, 
We often say, 
Decluttering stuff 
Along the way. 

Purging the junk 
We no longer need, 
We give it away  
To perform a good deed. 

With empty space, 
A different view, 
Wondering what 
To put in there new. 

Hurry along, 
Replace and refill, 
Desperately hoping 
To settle in still. 

But what if I sat 
With the vast emptiness, 
Wondered a while 
What to do with less. 

And what if I did 
The same inside, 
Peeked around corners, 
Saw what I tried to hide. 

Got rid of the stuff 
That no longer serves, 
Removing all 
That unsettles my nerves. 

Without that junk 
Interfering each day, 
A bit more space 
As I find my way. 

Room to choose 
What truly uplifts, 
Redecorate my space 
With life’s true gifts.

December - Poem 13

The Lifeguard Talks to Me About Meat / Kate Bowers

Terri the lifeguard is 57. Her husband Tom is 71. Part of their love language is a full course dinner, home cooked, each night.

Teri is telling me this as I float at her feet in the warm pool. Technically, she is on the pool deck, dry as a bone, while I marinate in chlorine.

The price of meat is high, and Terri is trying to lose 20 lbs and is mad as hell that her husband can eat anything and not gain an ounce. She makes him an antipasto small plate every night to graze on while she is still cooking. “A small plate” she calls it.

Tom does not cook. But he requires a meat, potatoes, gravy, salad, applesauce, a veg, and a dessert for him to consider dinner to be a real dinner. Every night.

There is pizza, too, and pasta on occasion, according to Terri. But none of these are going to take you down two dress sizes within a month’s time for a beloved nephew’s wedding.

Terri, as you have surmised, is now eating very tiny meals in comparison to her husband.

“You know who has gorgeous meat?” she says. “This new place up the street—Henry’s Meat Market.” 

“Really? I haven’t tried it.”

“Well, I’m telling you. Their meat is GORGEOUS!”

Then she rotates off her shift and heads over to the steam room to make sure no one has passed out in there. Again. So I climb out and make my way past all the NO JUMPING signs that all the kids and most of the guards ignore. I walk over to the whirlpool (also NO RUNNING, but I think you know that already) and step right into a conversation about meatloaf. 

“I really can’t stay more than a minute or two,” says an older woman with the kind of hair requiring a weekly salon set. Luckily, she is seated right next to the steps braced for her forthcoming anxious and I guess rapid exit. 

“I made a meatloaf for dinner tonight, but my husband ate half of it for lunch. I told him it was for dinner, but he just kept eating. Now I don’t know what I’m going to do for dinner. I don’t even know if I have any meat left in the house.” She is talking to no one and everyone but mostly to herself. I feel like she might be suffering from PTSD.

The men in the hot tub are uninterested. Instead, they are still talking about how the unions have ruined the automobile industry. I guess they already know the true price of steak.

Feeling a little too parboiled at this point, I trade the whirlpool for the locker room where I hear on the other side of a row of lockers two of the high school swim team girls talking as they fluff and comb.

“You know who has good meat? ALDI’s.”

“What about their chicken?”

“So fresh! But their meat! CHEF’S KISS!”

As I finish dressing, I run my tongue across my teeth just to make sure. After all, when I had scanned in today, Tony behind the counter had called out “Well, hello gorgeous!” And was that a chef’s kiss gesture he had made as well with his right hand? Or was the stylus just tangled? Again?

Security Blanket / Katie Collins

The night 
Laundry in the washer
Halfway through the cycle
Sleep eludes you 
Because your comforter is in that load
If only the night lasted longer
Or the wash shorter
By the time it's washed, and then dried, 
You'll have shivered away half the night.
Blankets are no substitute no matter how many you try.
You won't take another bed
You'd rather only sleep half the night
Than break in a stranger

Lost in the Shuffle  / Ellen Ferguson

Pawned: flute, good camera, pearls
Given foolishly: fifty Snoopy paperbacks
Spent: savings
Lost: hope
Pawned: hope
Given foolishly: savings
Spent: fifty Snoopy paperbacks
Lost: flute, good camera, pearls
You asked where the money went, whence
sprang the lime tree, wherefore bloomed the bower
What is sacrifice? A lamb on a branch trying 
To disappear at the arboretum

Origin Story as Arbitrary Narrative / Chris Fong Chew

In the space of the narrative 
there exists a beginning 
and an ending. 
Arbitrarily chosen 
in between the space of the 
previous and ending period. 

Words written onto the page 
begin arbitrarily, entering 
a conversation with other
writers, speakers, thinkers 
because the words on the page 
are spelled, arbitrarily. 

The space of the narrative 
is written in the space of the page.
The space of the page is contained in
the volume of the book.
The volume of the book is contained 
in the shelf of the collection. 
The shelf of the collection lost in the 
dust of the archive. 

Between arbitrary beginnings and endings 
Are discoveries and (re)discoveries, 
dust being blown off the covers of the 
arbitrary beginnings and endings 
and clearing the space between the 
previous period and the ending period
of arbitrary time. 

Nostalgia is blood-poison in the letting / Davis Hicks

Not for the unhinging, or to drag reaction from the unbluffed. 
Daydream drips, that saline only a breadcrumb, 
only any rise-reminder
of the leaving-behind. Felt as children feel, with searching, unwavering fingers. 
Trained out as empathy is, scrapped out from under the fingernail, 
coated over with so many base-coat callouses,
unscabbable. Convinced as cows are into curve-callings that
honesty has no heroics,
that the past is meant to lava lamp in its curling cascade.
Blush and stammer won’t help,
though the feeling of that echo-etching exhale might. 
Those signs
of shock or hesitance in the blink-blinding, floating as the flocks do, 
are all power proof of blood and something breakable. 
Only the sticking plaster,
that wrap of guarding-gauze
offers what you are willing
to call
the truth.

My grandfather’s shotgun / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

As first target, the tin can was the hardest.
It shifts without warning or reason -- now
to the right of the front sight, then to the left.

Father said his father was a great
shot. Never missed a sparrow in flight.
The key was focus. Lock the forearm

between the thumb and the pointing
finger. It directs the pellet, not the barrel.
Hold the breath, an exhale throws a curve.

Birds are easy targets. Once they became
still as a canister, they were swift to fall.
Light as a feather, heaviest win to recall.

(My Road) / Jen Wagner

I found myself sitting at the edge of my bed. 
Trying to write a poem. 
For a project you know nothing about. 
But as in most moments of stillness, 
I find myself thinking of you. 
Rumination still weighs heavy.
In these moments, I let myself collapse into the memories. 
(All these years later.)
Today I found myself on the back roads that I once travelled so many times.
To make my way to you.
I wanted to close my eyes to see how well I still remembered. 
The curves as familiar as the bend of my wrist as it drapes over the steering wheel. 
The way I remember the exact place where my belly would start to feel the excitement. 
What I once thought of as anticipation. 
(My favorite)
Now I realize, it was always just the dips in the road. 
(My road)
Because I feel them now. 
And it still makes me happy. 
Even if we passed one another
You wouldn’t know me.
Perhaps to see me. 
(Perhaps.)
But very little is the same. 
The music is at full volume.
(As usual)
But, songs I never sent you.
Little loves I’ll never share. 
My coat is the same. 
But the heart it conceals is harder now. 
More protected from calloused hands. 
I have business here today.
Nothing to do with you.
And that makes me smile. 
I find joy only in this road. 
(My road).

Favor / Stacy Walker

Always balancing
What is given
And received,
Tallying
The back and forth.

An inability
To be gifted,
Indebted,
To another,
An immediate impulse
To even the score.

A constant calculating
Of the investment
And return
Of time,
Money,
Love,
In my direction,

Ensuring
I never
Let the scales tip
My way,
The weight of gravity
Pulling me down,
Taking me under,
Burying me alive,
Drowned by the imposition
Of me,

The bother
I’ve become,
My greed now clear,
As I subtract more
Than I add,
My presence no longer
Justified
If I fall behind,
No longer atoning
For the favor
I’ve been given –
My existence.

December - Poem 12

God Will Hear / Kate Bowers

For Mae and Lane

M - any fear the reporter, the latency of words captured

O – thers fear the singer, the wide audiences compelled by rhythm, the dance of it, every illusion fragile

U – tterances seem definitive, archival, images beyond argument, proof of fault versus what is true

S - tillness the very last thing imagined bringing solace, or capable of opening a way to the 

E -ar of God, so big as to be small, fully awake among all creatures, the tiniest of whispering sounds, their wind tracing thin tracks like whiskers in snow, listening, listening

No Dial Tone / Katie Collins

The landline’s not connected to the phone jack
The calls don’t go in or out
Spectrum says to reboot it
When that fails, someone will be by Monday
To plug in the cord you’d plug in
if you knew where the hell the phone jack was
But that ancient knowledge has been locked away
With the real estate agent you’re too scared to call

For a Friend in Mourning on His Birthday  / Ellen Ferguson

You gave away this:
Everything

 
Your heart       his heart
Your birthday              his memorial

The ceremony on Saturday
His,     not yours.        And yet,

Yours, too       since
“Everything I have is yours”

Billie Holiday sang
Every holiday  -- shared

No matter who’s there
There they are.

Origin Story as Haibun / Chris Fong Chew

The son found himself on a plane crossing the ocean vast. This magical machine taking to the skies without hesitation, launching the son ten thousand feet into the clouds. High above, the world became small, and vast at the same time. Traveling at speeds beyond the technologies of his father’s and grandfather's age, the son would arrive on the other shore within a day's journey. The son would marvel at the blue of the ocean, the green of the land, the white of the clouds, the brightness of the sun, and the darkness of the night. His world would start to grow larger and larger as the land on the opposite side of the ocean began to emerge in the distance. As it grew closer, to be able to land, the magical flying machine transformed itself into a dragon, with the passengers secured safely, they descended from the heavens as peasants turned gods, welcomed into the foreign land. 

It was only in 
myth to be welcome to the 
new land openly 

I can still see blueberries on their naked bushes / Davis Hicks

Across the orange looseness of acres between their seasons,

between the brambles loving the edges of formal growth

there’s only a handful of them. Hidden, not gems but shimmering

with dark near-bursting skin, the opposite of orange.

There’s a glimmer, the semi-shadow of memory recorded over memory recorded over memory

over knowing what will come in a swipe 

of cruelty when the seasons run 

their route-race. That ball, the blue-bounce of berries born 

of white, uncurling blooms. Slow growing, darkened branches, 

those naked arms unafraid to raise in worship, in search of a shrinking 

sun. Grief-grown, having to develop

during the embodied dark. Throughout mulch’s shards, 

those well-thrown pots, scatter-shattered

across that untiled floor, they live. In pale snow-death and colorful kudzu-suffocation,

they keep their slow, long crawl into the sky,

and remember what happens 

when we just 

leave life alone.

What we say when we really mean to say love / Victor Barnuevo Velasco

Mother says, take the umbrella, my knees are hurting again. I cannot recall when she turned into a crow. On a bright humid day, she rubs her palms and declares her joints foretell a coming storm. Weigh down the roof, she says. Check on your brother. Ask if they have enough rice and water.

She has not spoken to him in months. She has forgotten how to pronounce his name.  Tell your brother to brace their fence. My brother has forgotten how to say her name. Tell your mother we are fine, he says. After he left my mother’s house, my brother turned into an owl. He turns his head backward to check on his children. They are sparrows, pecking rice from the stalks.

There are days when I, too, forget to name them: mother, father, and brother; grandfather and grandmother. Aunties, uncles, and cousins who have soared into the sky. They drop by every now and then, often during the dry season. They arrive as woodpeckers and swallows, herons and egrets. They bring flowers and field mice. They pile feathers, twigs, and pinecones. Store these on good days, they say.  The months of monsoon are coming.

I ask about the trade winds they traveled, about meteor showers we may have watched from opposite horizons. I ask about wild boars and pythons, the elegant chorus of frogs in the evening. We talk about burrowed nests and treetops. Cumulus and contrails.

Isn’t it amazing, I say, how air becomes visible? The crow replies, you can always see what you love, though it is absent. I feel the breeze shuffle my hair as it beats its wings.  

Holy Ghost / Jen Wagner

Intrusive thoughts. 
Ask me…
What if?
What if I ghosted you?
Disappeared. 
A shadow against a wall
In a room where the light suddenly flicked on. 
So fast you wonder…
Was I even real?
I don’t even know if I was real. 
I always remind people of someone else. 
Like a shapeshifter against my own will. 
Reconfiguring myself 
To be what she needs.
What he wants. 
I’m not what you think I am. 
You are…
What you think I am.
Because I
Am a mirror. 
A reflection. 
A Holy Ghost at your service. 
You will love me…
Or maybe you will loathe me. 
But you’ll never be the one to ghost me. 

Magic / Stacy Walker

The magic still lives
Inside her heart,
A true believer,
She claims from the start.

A letter written
With love and care,
She doesn’t question,
She wouldn’t dare.

In a note she wishes
The helpers well,
A test presented,
Dear Santa, please tell,

Begging to know
What the elves like to eat,
With carrots and cookies,
She’d leave them a treat.

But it isn’t just
Information to gather,
It’s proof in writing,
Evidence, rather.

She tells me she’ll know
If it’s me who replies,
Only wanting to see
How Santa’d advise.

And while the question
Puts it all on the line
Her hope is to keep
The story divine.

The magic still lives
Inside her heart,
A true believer,
She claims from the start.