Welcome to the 30/30 Project, an extraordinary challenge and fundraiser for Tupelo Press, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary press. Each month, volunteer poets run the equivalent of a “poetry marathon,” writing 30 poems in 30 days, while the rest of us “sponsor” and encourage them every step of the way.
The volunteer poets for February 2023 are Hank Blackwell, Kevin Dubin, Lexi Eagles, Kimberly Ellingson, Mike Hackney, Ava M. Hu, Christi Krug, and Judy McAmis.! Read their full bios here.
If you’d like to volunteer for a 30/30 Project month, please fill out our application here and warm up your pen!
Day 28 / Poem 28
We are cobalt and made of chalk / A Cento
Lines by and from Hank Blackwell, Kevin Dubin, Lexi Eagles, Kimberly Ellingson, Mike Hackney, Ava M. Hu, Christi Krug, and Judy McAmis.
A small flower you sense like
a woodwind in your chest.
We tease the dead magpie’s
heart-bones for clues
This flock of birds
black lightning
with no storm
Clouds
stretch thin across sky,
swiftly pull themselves together
& darken like flowers bloom
the color of bloodrot.
Colors will save you
but salvation is
terrifying.
Darkness is a ghost
memorizing scripture
Behind birdsong,
tones of soft storied
urgency: Straightaway.
hoarfrost
a silent souls’
hallelujah.
unprepared to
witness the amulet rise
from time’s rubble.
The earth, a deer running for her mate.
the silent current
flowing between our electric animal
Mouths.
A passing
haunt clots
the air.
we meet
in life’s saline
or in the delta
of our own
reluctance
across hum of air,
the maw of wasps as they feast
on soggy meat of fruit,
threaten stinger: feign
justice
I won’t call it an omen.
texture of
gravel and malice
dances oceanic—
It’s the wind curling
a whisper in the ear
of a dying tree.
It’s a tender act
reimagining infinity.
We take in as much starlight
as we can bear.
Wishing / Hank Blackwell
overcast,
bloody eclipse
curtained.
celeste’s visit
starry sky
clouded
to the east
I wait for me
as tenaciously
as I did for you,
hope a weightless
memory-
starlight
wishings
sky veiled,
memory clear
of one night
that one night
when we would wake
to the east
before you were gone…
In The Beginning / Lexi Eagles
Begin the poem with a word,
The saddest one you’ve ever heard,
And know for certain as you write,
Some truth within your heart has stirred.
The wisdom in that word takes flight
In lines of sorrow and delight,
Revealing what you’ve never known,
Like Homer’s guide, providing sight.
They take you places yet unknown,
And show you how the seeds are sown;
Sing now, they beg, their melody,
Weave wisdom with enchanted tone.
The primal word’s seductive plea
Begins your lyric elegy,
And yearning lines require you be
Mindful of their destiny.
The Mother / Kimberly Ellingson
She slept in a wrought iron bed
suspended above the town center
and bolted to a brick wall.
She silently worked alone, building
a son inside her body. I climbed
the long stairway and laid down
next to her to rest. When I awoke,
my womb was empty. Peering through
the iron bars, I panicked at the height.
Last Lines / Ava M. Hu
*
The very last of pink sky.
Last of the sea pines darkening green.
Tell me, how long can heaven hold you?
Can you touch fire without getting burned?
I hold my breath a very long time.
Only the sound of my heart,
it beats so loud can anyone hear it?
We are one arrow of flowers,
previously thought to be two.
Attention to form and detail,
conscious placement.
This soft space we float in,
big atmosphere. We are pulled
by things we cannot explain.
We are skylarks who hold back
for a moment, song.
The way maps are drawn
of the old world.
Stories about Houdini,
your white doves.
As if the nodding
of your own head,
is the very rhythm
of the universe.
*
Light / Christi Krug
snatches and twists
like a magician’s
gloved hands.
Shore pines
rustledance in a line
of bewildering
west-bluster. Work-
aday clouds
shake out wool
coverlets from which
satin bluebird
sheets peek,
ready for royalty—
I’m the only
would-be guest.
Thirty-seven things
to do
but I don’t
move. Four
thousand seventy-
two trees and three
Canada
geese, that eagle
skimming, six crows.
New scotch
broom blabbing
yellow, too early
in the morning
and year.
Beginning to do
what dunes do
better: wait, glow,
rise in one’s own time
while dawn, valley,
and tree-spire
conspire. Hills
turn on pale
heels, there’s a hush
of lavender rain
and just that quick
the stage darkens.
Look south: ruffles,
white pomp, berry
bombe, clementine
embarrassingly overripe.
Clatter of drops
on window pane.
Watching all this
beneath a
prism prophesy
against slant of hail.
Almost I hear feet
on tiptoe
off to wrap and
tie my gift—whose bow
has no ends, can’t
be measured
twice, cut once.
The end
of doing.
The fire was unexpected, what a wild blaze… / Judy McAmis
She arrived singed, dirty straight from the blazing fields
unannounced and unexpected nonetheless, welcome.
A child of the earth she bears its scars,
knows the anguish of every soul lost in the great
destruction. The water is poison, the fish are dying.
The forest is shrinking, burning, giving up, and so is the air.
Did you know you increase your risk of cancer by 33%
just by breathing? Don’t bother with the internet, it won’t
confirm that as fact. We are all the whale beached with a belly
full of plastic. Petroleum starts fires, wars, pollutes oceans,
and makes lipsticks so we can feel pretty as we die
slowly too. She is the last pure seed trying to grow
in earth barren of nutrients, poisoned and starving
like the bees we put on t-shirts. She is the passion
in the eyes of every child who fears what their tomorrow
will look like and if it will come. She is our Mother
and she has had enough. I cradle her, use my tears
to heal her wounds, shelter her from the constant
LED light killing our fireflies, and no, don’t blame them
they didn’t start anything. We must ask ourselves
is our hunger for faster more than our hunger
for food? We watch the West burn every summer
but nothing changes. The Earth will recover feeding
off the ashes of progress and greed. A war over petroleum
garners far more headlines and strangely, sympathy
than hunger, starving children in countries
where the brown people are, where war is so common
and never-ending that we have become desensitized.
She is burning, the world is burning
and you have to offer her is a Coke.
Day 27 / Poem 27
Origins / Hank Blackwell
lifeboat survivor
floating on
saliva,
titanic secrets
slipping below
surface
questions,
answers
appearing
in the
empty bouys
of silent
secrets
Moral Mercury / Lexi Eagles
Decades ago, I loved to
slide the small silver ball
of mercury out of a broken
thermometer and swirl it
in the bowl of my hand.
My parents can be forgiven for
allowing this customary fun;
they could not have known its
toxic potential.
Somehow, however, they did know
that the customary naming of a
black youth for a murder in our town
was the result of toxic chemistry.
Back then, in a fever pitch
to name the criminal,
folks fell back on practiced ways.
The local paper laid it out.
The youth confessed
after he was beaten (reporters said).
The officers who roughed up the suspect
won’t be charged (police chief said).
A cap found at the crime scene
was not his, did not fit.
He was at the football game,
witnesses affirmed.
Will the truth set you free?
Our home was hot with it:
mother on the phone, outraged,
finding an voice for the wrongly
accused. Our kitchen filled with
the smoke of her cigarettes.
Sixty years have passed.
What have we learned?
What have we learned?
How do we read the
moral mercury of our lives?
untitled / Kimberly Ellingson
about butter churning in the big machine
at the dairy plant where your father worked,
how it shut down, stood abandoned.
Years later, when it became a high-rise
apartment building, you dated a man
who lived in one of the sprawling
industrial lofts, didn’t tell him about playing
there as a child, or anything. One night,
you took off your gold rings and left
them on the bathroom sink. In the morning,
you found they had moved.
Repetitions / Ava M. Hu
The nodding of your own head is the very rhythm of the universe.
By clutching close, in a sudden rain-
We are minus the myth of light.
It was a long day and night we reached for one another.
By clutching close, in a sudden rain-
Let them have the most beautiful darkness.
It was a long day and night we reached for one another.
A small flower you sense like a woodwind in your chest.
Let them have the most beautiful darkness.
We are swans lifting ourselves, heavy, looking for the light.
A small flower you sense like a woodwind in your chest.
A white cloud moving over water.
We are swans lifting ourselves, heavy, looking for the light.
Mind is a candle, a yellow flower lit.
A white cloud moving over water.
The way maps are drawn of the old world.
Mind is a candle, a yellow flower lit.
We are minus the myth of light.
The way maps are drawn of the old world.
The nodding of your own head is the very rhythm of the universe.
Snug / Christi Krug
Creaking hinges,
shuddering frames.
Rush of prim-
rose frost
and sea
salt just before
the slam, then puff
of warmth, oated
breakfast, woolen
socks, teakettle.
Closed
windows.
Safe again-
st the world.
Closing the door
to people,
freedom, being
loved less
than I like.
Creeping
missteps
room to room,
sins of o-
mission only
I know. A passing
haunt clots
the air.
On the other
side, no one hides
wide gull-strewn
shores. Undoored
places are seen
for what they are.
The doors of my heart
close one hundred
times a day.
Uncurious, un-
peopling the peephole.
I’m not
waiting
behind the lock,
drawing the dead-
bolt.
Maiden Song / Judy McAmis
She sang a song of curses and riddles, incantations trapped in the night sky.
Swirling melodies and memories left trails of light like will o’ the wisps,
trapped in lanterns with wide open doors.
Fireflies! The hill children cried out, but the maiden never paused to speak.
Children, she thought, were the stuff of nightmares.
She had long since lost her mind, her innocence a directionless traveling companion.
She was too you to have seen what she had seen.
All children are too young to witness life’s tragedies.
It was said she was found in the stables with the young calves.
The world had left her catatonic for years.
After the last sighting, a handkerchief was found
stuck to the end of a willow branch,
dragging the side of the moat trapping shadows left by a lingering sun.
The crows caw from the branches dropping runes from their waste
a message for any sorrowful creature. She is the heart of the tree.
The sweeping branches carry the scent of her hair.
Roots drawn down, the willow is the tree of immortality.
Day 26 / Poem 26
Life Changes / Hank Blackwell
amoeba
wiggling
in trillions;
two intersect-
life changes.
in deep cold sea,
high in mare’s tail
cirrus,
in dark alveoli
microscopic exchange,
life changes.
tyrants, heroes
angels, despots-
confluence avails
in translucent bow,
life changes.
no permission, no
divine hand,
claw, cilia-
opportunity’s
nod
life changes
human hearts
atrium, ventrical
node
each impulse
no greater than
single cells
serendipity
in carbon and salt
life changes…
Wedding Joint / Lexi Eagles
Up in our hotel room
I opened the gift bag,
explored its contents.
A small card offered
thanks for coming to the
wedding. A water bottle,
Tylenol, chips, a map.
What is this? I held up
the slim brown tube for
my husband to see.
A quick twist & out slid . . .
a cigarette? Just the slightest
moment of hesitation, the
exchanged looks, and the
lovely denouement laughter.
What will we do with it?
Later, ready to leave our hotel
for the airport (where our bags
would be thoroughly checked)
we explained our predicament
to a clerk. He was so kind –
understood completely – and
was glad to help.
Pipes / Kimberly Ellingson
The car in the shop again,
$350 for more exhaust repairs –
all the money we have left.
The mechanic said the metal
rusted away where it met
the catalytic converter.
I think of driving for miles,
the pipes disintegrating
beneath us.
Double Fantasy / Ava M. Hu
*
There is no difference between
the worshipper and worshipped.
Mind is transferred to other mind.
Take a photo of water
and see who it reflects. We disappear
into the pages of a book
in a second-hand store
with this scene underlined:
the dialog emphasized
by not what was said,
but by the breath taken
in between, by the moment
the two actors held
the stage captive
by clutching close,
in a sudden rain-
A stone thrown into a water
sinks fast.
I was so centered after the experience
at sea that I was tuned in to the cosmos.
If two people picture the same image
at the same time, can they have
a double fantasy?
*
Landscape: A Body without Voice / Judy McAmis
I am standing in the doorway of retribution waiting
To be finely redressed for a pain and suffering
without limits, a list of grievances days long.
For I am a woman
and have lived too long stripped of my bird song.
Day 25 / Poem 25
Tides / Hank Blackwell
wave
upon wave
rises from
shallow sand
leans forward
surrenders
falls
wave upon
wave rises
from shallow
sand
leans
forward
surrenders,
falls wave
upon
wave
rises
from shallow
sand leans
forward
surrenders
falls
Ode for East Palestine / Lexi Eagles
No stranger to derailments,
East Palestine. Its stories are
written into the Ohio hills,
nestled in the farms, carved
into cemetery headstones.
Here are Anna and James Atchison,
side by side. A forbidden marriage,
then their young son’s death,
and then his.
Anna lived a century, grieving.
Farther up the hill find Fanny and Ellen,
twins dead at four months. Diphtheria.
Next to them, their father, killed when
the startled horse turned the wagon –
throwing him under the train.
Lives too early derailed.
Young Eddie miraculously lived through
a burst appendix. (The local doctor assured them
the pain came from eating green apples).
William, though, did not.
He was just twenty-eight.
Do not imagine East Palestine a stranger
to tragedy. But know, too, it is no stranger
to the love and hope and resilience that move beyond.
Its hills are grass-covered and rolling,
and they are lovely beyond any singing of it.
With thanks to my sister for helping me remember,
and to Alan Paton (Cry,the Beloved Country) for the final lines.
Untitled / Kimberly Ellingson
Overnight winds knocked down trees
in the cemetery across the street.
Something about old roots growing
around graves rather than digging
into solid earth. All morning,
we watch workers clear debris
into flatbed trucks, trim jagged
tree stumps into neat columns.
Poem of First Lines / Ava M. Hu
*
We are minus the myth of light,
my sorcerer, my winter king.
I sink beneath water.
The earth in between you and heaven.
Dervishes whirl like pink ribbons
from this life to the next.
A woodwind in your chest.
I pour water out of the boat.
We are flower sutras.
Invocation and evocation.
The earth, a deer running for her mate.
Egyptians wrap their dead with such precision.
Oil of death. Your metal of honor.
We take in as much starlight as we can bear.
No desire opens me I am full.
You would be the target
the love arrows of the gods hit.
What’s in between your shoulder and mine,
Erasing continents from maps
we find spinning on light-up globes.
A seed must become
it’s root, and leaf.
It was a long day and night
we reached for one another.
*
Being Thirteen / Christi Krug
Thirteen Words to Hand Within a Thirteen-Inch Radius
Withdrawn
How the camp
counselor de-
scribed
me in her letter.
Granna chewed
on the word.
“Why weren’t you
friendly?” Granna
wore reading
glasses steeped in
White Shoulders perfume.
Peered at me as if
the letter were a
report card, which
it wasn’t,
merely a concerned adult
noting a child
who was quiet—
too quiet.
Please pay attention.
Dear
How Mother began
every letter from the
hospital. Also a term
of endear-
ment I never heard from
anyone real but her.
June and Ward
Cleaver used
it for each other.
Foams
at the mouth. How you
know to stay
away from the loping
bloodhound behind the chain
link fence next to
the trailer park.
Air
tunneled through
slitted window
opened by hand
crank
as I sat in the back,
dizzy on a drive
with my new
foster parents,
hoping
just this once
I didn’t get sick.
Conditioning
Habitual and weightless
as the white sluggish
liquid tipped into
my fingers after
every shampoo. Acts
performed for parents,
teachers. Seeking
sleek belonging, tangle-free
C
ollecting, creating
something new which is
calling out to me.
Lettered for me.
Nevermind my whole
name; a slim stiletto
profile will do. Let
identity shorten,
coil.
Do not cover
your past with grinning
obedience.
Transmission
went out of my ‘69
Corona six years
later, but my friend
the mechanic poured
jug after jug of
fluid under the hood,
into a tinny, airy engine
so light you could see
the street underneath.
Daring Blush
When I
did the sinful thing
of sitting on Nick’s lap
in the elevator. Yes,
I was blushing
but daring
too. Pastor
Stan said a girl
should never let
herself get
that close
to a boy.
Aspire
I handed in my
Language Arts
essay, my Spanish
quiz, my Social
Studies homework.
Sweat dampened the
fingers in my
lap at church service
guested by the dashing
traveling minister. If
I couldn’t be him, then his wife.
Do not cover
your past with grinning
glib photographs in
gummy albums before
acid-free paper was invented.
Do not cover bare ground with
rototilled, chemically-
enriched refinements.
Do not say things
everyone would much
rather hear.
Do not cover your eyes.
Dead Beat / Judy McAmis
I bought a record of Allen Ginsberg reading the Kaddish
I love to read his works in his voice –
I want to possess the cadence of kool.
I want to love Blake the way he did
I want to understand the obsessions that infect
all good artists.
So far I’m hooked on death (how tragic),
dead things like dying flowers (already done)
the little death I’m afraid to write about.
I have faeries, the real ones,
I have feminism, the intersectional kind,
I have hauntings, more dead things.
In death and fairies we have something in common,
and art, and flowers, spiritualism, and the other worlds.
I am no visionary. Though I’d love to be.
I offer few social commentaries outside of conversation.
I do not have the rhythms of jazz,
but I do love a good, dead Beat.
Day 24 / Poem 24
Jocasta’s Sacrifice / Hank Blackwell
thin veil
distracting
your breeze
does not
camouflage
wisps of
slowing pace
or masked
wince
harbinger
of your
heroes’
choice,
forward
with
your
children
Catastrophic / Lexi Eagles
He left this morning.
Out the front door,
no questions asked.
We both understood,
given the circumstances we
found ourselves in.
It was no one’s fault, really.
Habits change.
A third party was involved—
does that surprise you?
We both loved him—
our mutual friend.
Does that seem strange?
So dear to us both
he has been –
all these years.
But today,
tangled emotional bonds
and the difficult situation we faced
demanded immediate decision.
Resigned to what must be,
no reasons given,
no regrets,
we accepted
the unavoidable
choice.
Our dear friend,
You see,
was sleeping
at his food bowls
so close to the back door
that exit there
was impossible.
Cyclones / Kimberly Ellingson
Even though it is -30 degrees outside, I turn the thermostat down to 62 degrees, per an urgent email from the energy company warning of a natural gas shortage, on account of a major equipment failure on one of the interstate pipelines. I open the cabinets under each sink, sleep with an electric heating pad and all the blankets I could find piled over me.
In the morning, I go outside to start the car and let it run for 20 minutes or so, to keep the battery from dying. Sitting there watching my breath, smelling the cold oil and listening to mechanical, dull sounds and metal grinding metal. I watch the snow whip veiled cyclones across the lawn through a partially covered windshield.
Mirror / Ava M. Hu
*
It was a long day and night
we reached for one another.
Being moved beyond being.
We reach into the secret universe.
Dichotomy of forms,
beautiful paradoxes,
halved and forbidden
to become one.
Mirrors reflect
the vanishing point
that makes two one.
Light to form an image
of an object placed in front of it.
What if we turn off the lights?
Let Juliet, not be the east,
the sun, the moon,
unplug the stars.
Reckless playwright
longing for God.
Let them have the most beautiful
darkness. Tell them
darkness is the answer.
Tell them
I am you.
*
Mixed States, Fort Worden / Christi Krug
The microphone
worked intermittently
and rambling seams of my
journaled walk are couched
in the elemental—
ragged port town breeze,
panting garbage truck. Ferry’s
moving out—it creeps away.
Xylophone zip of backpack pocket.
I like improvising.
The voice thinks it’s pro-
found. Writing a poem
bright with red berries.
The boots crinkle, creak as
shout of truck
driver shimmies.
A crow scolds.
Pinched off,
Average Joe,
a candy wrapper
in the wind.
Behind birdsong,
tones of soft storied
urgency: Straightaway.
Crunching of gravel
and twig. Some people
renting bikes. Clank of
garbage cans.
Tightening
conflict.
Deafening leaf-rustle
of gately branches.
Changing maples.
A jay makes a demand.
Three shunting electronic
snaps, picture-taking.
A utility truck’s back-up
alarm, high and insistent.
There’s something grand
about deciduous trees.
Against water.
Wind, murmurs, brush.
What if I don’t deserve it?
Musical notes—café down the lane?
Clomps, then soundless feet, wheel-rumble.
A new crow, perhaps returnee.
So much I never heard while
scheming what to say.
How about that!
—a sand pile.
wearing grief / Judy McAmis
picking out the right outfit
morning black or evening black
mid-day drab gray
I do not mourn friendships the same
the cord-cutting kind.
Snip, tuck, remove, good day.
I chose to analyze a ransom note
sent to the Lindberg family
re: their kidnapped child.
I used to tell the story
that you grew up in the Lindberg family
house. I was not true.
Your mother dressed you up once
like the Lindberg baby
at a Halloween party.
Rather disturbing if you ask me.
The handwriting didn’t provide much,|and the note was quite short —
like our last conversation.
Day 23 / Poem 23
Wood Ducks / Hank Blackwell
bookcase balsa
floating flock
waiting upon
dusty lake,
young man
long since
gone.
decoys
now
for an aging
son
Improbabilities / Lexi Eagles
While he is studying logarithms
(a dead end in my world of rhyme
and metaphor, though I am comforted
to hear they express relationships),
I am thinking of metaphors,
working backwards,
starting with what it’s like,
or is, then searching for it,
in order to make a poem,
which you could say is
an equation of sorts,
X + metaphor = poem.
It is improbable a poem will
be born out of logarithms — as
improbable as Athena springing
from the head of Zeus. (I hope
you see how I have worked
the waiting Athena myth
into this poem).
However, the best poets are all about
using improbables, leading readers along
to the big surprise. Not to be outdone,
mathematicians have purloined the idea,
called it the improbability principle,
and provided their own big surprise:
extremely improbable events happen frequently.
Do you see how the numbers folk have
gone poetical? For thousands of years
poets have championed life’s ironies, while
mathematicians have aimed to make
both sides match.
What is the use of studying logarithms, anyway,
I shall ask my friend. If he asks the same
about poetry, I shall show him this.
The House on Wilson Street / Kimberly Ellingson
Or, what is left of it, is now a black-and-steel construction site. A puzzle piece of my life made into a high-rise. A decade later, I can still recall the details: The carbara floor in the bathroom where I so often thought of death.The ivy-covered lead windows and built-in cabinets in the dining room. The green mosaic tiles around the brass fireplace (oh, the fireplace!) The kitchen, with the mice scratching behind its yellow walls. The cracked porcelain farmhouse sink, with the old, empty pill bottle underneath, discarded by a previous tenant who suffered from migraines in 1972. The tall, roman columns in the living room. My mother stopping over for lunch with salads picked up from the restaurant down the street. The dust of a century’s worth of dwellers. All of it bulldozed into erasure. But there is not really such a thing as gone.
Woodwind / Ava M. Hu
A seed must become
it’s root, and leaf.
Bright lanterns lit. Rooms
made of rising water.
I hear the wind bending
the tops of trees.
The river, a silk scarf
wrapped around my neck.
Black-winged birds circle
the sky long past sunset.
These images, meaningless
in their ideology, take form.
We are pulled by things
we cannot explain.
A small flower, you sense
like a woodwind in your chest.
Forecast / Christi Krug
A flurry of pleasing,
a slant hard rain of isn’t-
that-something. Please
be moved by my
gusts of try, sheets of
unusual, a weather to
squeeze and delight,
ice you in, freeze
your attention.
Blizzard of pretty words
blanketing your
whims with white,
sifting whirling softnesses.
Hushed hope-shapes
melting upon
your outstretched
warm, pink, good
opinion.
My geology,
my atmosphere:
your praises.
My world: how
you respond right now.
(Unseasonable:
the bright
burnish of my own
heart zenith
in the topaz day.)
The Groundskeeper / Judy McAmis
once tall stalks proudly toppling under the weight of
cosmo blooms and bees
topple under the weight of decay.
A bleak reminder that every tall thing
at some point
returns to the earth.
The groundskeeper kept the dying flower stalks to feed the birds, provide safety for the butterflies
and the other burrowing insects,
no doubt, realizing the remainders would start to play tricks
with the landscape.
Bent stalks
now look like skeletons
trying to break free
from their tombs.
Nature has a funny way of turning
to the avant-garde.
Instead of a light filled snowy tunnel of trim stalks
balancing against one another,
they resemble more the dark hedges where the mischief lives.
The groundskeeper has created a place for the nightmares to twist and turn and the crawlies to creep out from under.
Day 22 / Poem 22
Hermit’s Fire / Hank Blackwell
columns boil,
climb, skyward
with red screams
and the ashy smoke:
human ignorance…
endless appetites
lust of surface
and mass,
hungry dog
pushing earth’s
empty bowl
across scarred
linoleum
no gentle flow,
red tsumami
covering our last
breaths
In the Backyard / Lexi Eagles
the daffodils
have ascended,
pushing through
winter sterility,
writing their
stories
in full color.
The figs
begin with
slender
paintbrush tips
in green.
The cat
waits patiently,
secure in
his pinestraw
cave,
for the birds
who will
come to the
feeder
planted
on the hill.
Bridge Coda / Kimberly Ellingson
Years later, I return and settle in a house next to a Victorian cemetery on the west side of the city. The bridge is now encrusted with thousands of lights, which change color on somebody’s (I don’t know whose) whim for holidays, sports events, and other dates of significance. I can no longer see the bridge from my new home, yet on a clear day the lofty tombstones blend seamlessly with the buildings in the distant city skyline.
untitled / Ava M. Hu
Listener / Christi Krug
“i like your playing very much,
signed
a sick old lady”
—Robert Lax, “Alley Violinist”
Together with the poor family dancing,
the sick old lady likes my song—
these few do
so I play while other
violinists’ notes flood concert
halls and burnished wingtips tap
marble terraces.
I look down and tie the
loose laces of my sneakers.
None of this matters.
What can it matter?
If I count gleaming vinyl LPs
or masters on digital, or obsess over
what has been done, I’ll lose the tune
and shuffle off.
Papa is twirling Mama, and there’s a
fourth-story corner window cameo
of Mrs. Beasley drawing an old blue
quilt around her shoulders, smiling a gap-
toothed smile.
I hunch against the chilly wind
stepping over a carton gasping
a last drop of curdled milk;
a weeks-old newspaper somersaults past.
Wherever you come from,
I’ll take you in and give you
music in this brick-
walled valley of shadows,
the street, my heart.
Chew Your Words / Judy McAmis
Sometimes it’s involuntary
opening my jaw and moving my tongue
instead it should be an act as deliberate
as holding my tongue is proverbial.
This structure of musculature
at times immature, at times
wildly uncontained and thus, regrettable.
I wish the words that make it into the universe
the words said “out loud”
Were as selective as my discernment for foods taken in.
I can’t eat barbecued ribs
because I think of my ribs,
close to my heart
beat, rhythm.
I’d rather play the xylophone instead
or listen to the accordion breathing,
keeping time with my mind.
Perhaps the phrase ‘choose your words wisely’
would be better stated:
chew your words and swallow before your mouth opens.
Day 21 / Poem 21
Quill / Hank Blackwell
Silver feather
falls to
the one
most in need
gratitude rises,
for the wounded;
souls’ yeast
filling the glass heart.
Direction,
lift
delicate
power
anchored in the quill;
life force
pointing the way
within
arm’s reach
now flightless, nested
on shaded earth
Hobo / Lexi Eagles
Memories persist: A warm, sunny
summer Sunday and me outdoors, galloping
barefoot across our clover-rich lawn,
avoiding bees. The kitchen windows
were cranked open, and I could hear
mother fixing dinner. It would be bountiful –
roast beef, mashed potatoes, beans,
bread, and her incomparable gravy.
Meals were a family observance.
I don’t remember the moment I first saw him –
the strange man. I must have come into our
breezeway connecting the front and back yards,
and suddenly, there he was, laboring up our gravel driveway,
opening the breezeway door and stepping in.
What did he want? His face was dirty. His clothes hung.
His eyes dropped on seeing me.
I had not yet reached double-digits;
imagination primarily guided my days.
I determined he was a hobo. We did have
train tracks and a station in our small town.
As my story took shape, dinner’s aroma
filled the breezeway. Enter mother –
and apprehension. The what-will-happen-next
part of the story, mother being a spirited soul,
and it being, well, dinnertime. Here, memory
turns the pages quickly. I don’t remember the stranger
asking for anything (though he may have). I don’t remember
mother saying “of course,” (though she may have).
The persistent memory, distilled to its essence
over these years, is the image of the plate she brought him,
heaped with roast beef, mashed potatoes, beans, bread,
and gravy to top it all.
Brief History of a Bridge to Nowhere: Part II / Kimberly Ellingson
Finally opening in 1977, the bridge
precedes its reputation by becoming a prevalent site
for suicides. Nothing but a four-foot concrete wall stands
between a flesh-and-blood human on the ledge
and a 120-foot drop into frigid, dissolute breakwaters.
In such a redlined, fragmented city, the jumpers
are diverse. People from all neighborhoods,
ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
An official, yet conservative estimate:
over the past 15 years, 30 people have jumped
from the bridge; however, it is widely acknowledged
that this number is far from accurate.
Easy to assume some people jump when they are unlikely
to be seen –-in the middle of the night, for instance. Bodies
are swept into the immense waters, lost forever. Surely,
there are people for whom nobody is searching.
untitled / Ava M. Hu
My Ocean of Tears / Christi Krug
began as a man-made channel
barely wide enough
for my little canoe
and I kept getting stuck
running into rock walls
high and hard.
I stroked and strove
but my hands shattered
one finger at a time. My wrists
tinkled to the ground; arms
were blown glass, tong-teased;
biceps slimmed
to shards like sucked
candy sticks; I couldn’t
paddle anymore.
My feet crumbled
beginning with the ankle-
bones; the shins split
clear down the middle
lengthwise. Femurs were fiddle-
strings, fraying and snapping,
and my head deflated, crooked
as an old football, leaving me
slant-eyed, more wobble than
sport.
A scrap of human
abandoned to my craft on
a low waterway to which
my tears had been tributary.
Puddles and shudders,
tidepools and sandy sobs;
I wasn’t going anywhere.
Until: billows billowed, wavelets
peaked, pitched and rolled.
Capsized! Sucked by currents
violent and vast, submerged—
glory!
I had cried my way to the high seas!
Sailing deep blue in salt and joy,
tourmaline and tangerine,
summer-within-winter. Sunlight
refracted in each tear and seventy-two
percent of earth’s surface was covered
with the stuff and nothing
was dammed.
My tears had known all along
what they were doing.
UNFINISHED / Judy McAmis
I saw him standing on the side of highway 85
just outside of Atlanta. It was dark and he was
dressed in all black, arms outstretched as if waiting
for the messiah to come and take him away. Maybe
he was the Messiah I was waiting for?
The scene looked like the middle of music video.
Back when music videos were a thing.
His car was pulled into the breakdown lane
face dripping with rain and I imagined fire hot
tears. It was summer, but rain is usually cold.
I thought for a flash that he might need help,
But what kind of help could I offer? I am no AAA.
I don’t know my way around a tire iron,
and he could be a killer waiting for some dumb
blonde to pull over and offer up condolences
or a hug, but nothing useful. Nothing really useful.
Day 20 / Poem 20
Keep / Hank Blackwell
twenty
billion
miles
satellites deep
in near
space
Mars,
distant moons,
billion-year light
arrives upon
human retina.
we able
to look further
into our origins,
stardust, we are
too small
to know
what we are
not
and
you are here…
bright
illuminative
…star
Ohio Reverie / Lexi Eagles
In the fall, leaves blanketed our yard
in color – scarlet, orange, yellow,
looking like Joseph’s coat,
my personal autumn birthright.
School mornings I rustled through them
on the way to meet the bus,
my saddle oxfords marking the path
of my crossing.
When winter chill arrived
and the first frost powdered the leaves,
it looked to me like sugar on a bowl of cornflakes.
I hated to disturb them, and I thought of
my father inside, eating his.
Brief History of a Bridge to Nowhere / Kimberly Ellingson
Part I
As if to keep myself from jumping
off the bridge, I instead dive
into hours of research on its history.
Death was there even in the beginning,
when three men plummeted into the river’s
inky mouth after a faulty set of scaffolding
collapsed during construction. The structure
stood idle for years afterward, amidst
an unfinished freeway system, unable to open
to travelers until the connecting roadways
were completed. This is when it received
its name: The Bridge to Nowhere.
SkyLarks / Ava M. Hu
On the Coldest Morning of the Year / Christi Krug
I’ve seen you
in many a hunting ground—
creek, wetland,
riverbank, estuary—
high stepping,
wading, waiting, eyes and
feathers and long toes trained
toward hint of prey until comes
the stab of bill as you
feed your head:
your S-curved throat
a delicate chain of gulps,
pearls, once-minnow.
But I’ve never before seen
you sprawl into the sky at
dawn, wings opening
with slow pulsings, lifting
you to tops of trees
far above your wetland
prowls, where you fasten
like a silver pin holding together
the long low green
cushion of coastal forest.
You have put yourself away,
afterthought, apostrophe
with spear-white head and stick neck
gray as the winter trunks of spruce
below, and all around: an evergreen
velvet theatre where you
have taken an unaccustomed box seat.
You do not blend or stalk but survey
the valley between us, your sharp
pointed bill the brightest
stroke in all that green, and only the
suggestion of your storm-gray back
as you sit patient and erect.
Strange to me, your devotion
to stillness when there is nothing to catch.
Your transformation into an unsung
treetop hero, a quiet sky-bird.
Your greatest task has arrived:
being warmth, making home
for what has not yet
come to be.
Stubborn Child / Judy McAmis
I want you to tell me
what the orange peel tasted like
after you ate it and I said you shouldn’t.
You said it was good,
but we knew it wasn’t.
I want you to tell me
what it felt like
when you walked into the bright snowlight
without glasses when I said
it wasn’t a good idea.
You said it felt fine,
but we knew it didn’t.
I want you to tell me
what happened to your foot
when I told you to wear shoes on the jetty.
You said it was smooth and warm,
but we knew it wasn’t.
I want you to tell me
about your descent from the stars,
but the trip made you weary
and we know you won’t.
Day 19 / Poem 19
Congress of Ravens / Hank Blackwell
Purple-black
droplets, shiny.
wet paint
off morning’s palette.
Blue jays,
pain in the ass
as they are
now scattered
like dandelions,
bowing to some
great shamanic
power…
air-mailing
myth and
archetype,
corvid congress in
iridescent caucus;
desert monks chanting
in black robes.
Crows In The Churchyard / Lexi Eagles
To argue with a person who renounces the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead. Thomas Paine
bring bad luck, they say. And please
speak of Macbeth as that Scottish play.
666 is the mark of the Beast.
Walk under a ladder – your peril’s increased.
Unless, that is, you’ve a lucky charm,
and have never let ladybugs come to harm.
Beware of black cats crossing your path
And when strolling on sidewalks, of stepping on cracks.
You’ll find devil’s blood on the magpie’s tongue –
But knock on wood – you might not get stung.
Yet another means of being redeemed –
Toss salt over your shoulder and blind the fiend.
Hang a lucky horseshoe above your door,
Keep your fingers crossed, rabbit’s foot in store,
Remember, bad luck runs in threes, and worse,
When a mirror that’s broke brings a seven year curse.
Indoors, you must keep umbrellas closed.
Those who know charms have also proposed
That finding and keeping a four-leaf clover
Will help to ensure much lower exposure
To most of the ghastly and frightening fates
That humans for eons have hoped to escape.
Providentially, some say that now is the season
To eschew fabrication and give way to reason.
Where We Used to Live / Kimberly Ellingson
Surely some of our
skin still resides in the dust
floating in the air
Untitled / Mike Hackney
In the slices of silence
between bird songs
can I find a space for pondering.
The stoic trees stand, like soldiers,
along the mighty riverbank,
defending flowers and beasts.
Gold and silver I lay
at the feet of the muse, now,
to buy my freedom
and return again to fields
of native moonlight,
to enter rivers of my beginning,
without any sense of loss,
without the naked envy
I might have harbored
at a differing time.
With a mind of poetry, muse,
and moon, comes the peace
of a lifetime,
if one dare own it.
Effigy / Ava M. Hu
Clutches / Christi Krug
The moon has me; not
the other way around—
I have no choice of orbits.
Moon: cat with mouse,
toying, batting,
whiskers electrified, tail
kinked, eyes slitted.
To be the moon’s prize is
to be paralyzed.
What can I hope for?
I am so small under the stars.
Moon-caught, shy.
Prey that I may not choke
on the owl-thick air.
Who among my grinning
predators will
guide me from naked
meadow to
sheltering wood?
I mince through hypnotic
night-haunt; cover
my tracks, unsheath my claws,
scratch out a throaty devouring song
lest I be pounced upon.
For the Love of Bees / Judy McAmis
Careful not to tear the skin when you pull the pappus away.
Protect what is encased within. Unburden the dandelion seedlings.
When the wind blows and the yellow leaves the flower
the seeds will spread on the wings of the wind.
The bees will come dancing during daylight. Love the yellowing.
All things yellow over time, just look at the smile of an old dog.
The deeper the yellow, the longer the root. Turn the soil,
fertilize it, add lime to keep it fertile. If nothing else,
love the yellow for the love of bees.
Day 18 / Poem 18
Poets May/ Hank Blackwell
be
alchemists,
(gifted
ones)
me, a shade-tree
poet
silver taping
one used part
to another
hoping for
breath on a page
or a thought’s
fermata
pruning errant
articles
new
sap, oozing
words,
in amber
suspended.
A Morning Meditation /Kevin Dublin
The song of beauty brings motivation. It brings motivation while sleeping. It brings motivation while awake. It brings motivation while eating and drinking and dancing and singing. One step forward. Always forward. It even brings motivation while breathing. Motivation as hearts beat like a healthy drum.
The motivation is like warm rain. Like walking through it. One step forward. Ever forward. The motivation is much-needed rain. And that rain was once a part of a cloud, and before that just vapors in evaporation. And before that a part of a slow moving river, and before that it was a rain puddle at the edge of a creek that filled and was pulled into the creek until it made it to that river just as it was once ocean, and now, right now as it is rain, splashing off of shoulder during sunshower, it will soon be a rain puddle again. One step forward. Ever forward.
This is what peace is like. Actually, this is peace. Walking through this humid drizzle toward shelter. This is peace. And so is the distant thunder. And so is the chance of lightning. And so are the clouds from which they come. And so is birdsong. Birdsong sang and Birdsong unsung. Birdsong seeping into the mud. Songs that say nothing of fear, nothing of death, only change. Walk into the day. Another step forward. Ever forward.
Requiem / Lexi Eagles
In the morning, the nest seemed nothing more than an anachronism,
half-fallen as it was, debris scattered across the porch, twigs and strings
dangling from the cross-bracing, marking the trajectory of its fall.
Murderous weather last night, the sky opening like the gates of hell.
Here now, the mother bird fluttering from porch fan to brace to table,
conducting what life remains for her. Tending, as she must.
What is left in the wreckage? Where is her brood? One left? Two?
She finds open mouths, serves them holy communion – my life for yours.
Wind-scattered, sorrow-saturated lives, and a mother holding on.
Invisible / Kimberly Ellingson
When the worry gets so big that I can feel it pulsing through my veins, I do what any contemporary person would do–I download an app.
An invisible doctor writes a prescription for a 90-day supply of Sertraline via text message, emails a shipping confirmation.
Days later, a pill bottle arrives in the mail, and I marvel at the tiny-ness of each sky-colored capsule. They almost look like sprinkles, or plastic garnish for a doll-sized cake.
I place the quarter-full bottle back inside the compact shipping box and stow it on a shelf in the hallway closet.
Parachute / Mike Hackney
and signal’s playtime’s end.
untitled / Ava M. Hu
Trinkets / Christi Krug
After Elizabeth Willis
on the boulevard / a coffee shop
in the coffee shop / a steaming
in the steaming / a mountain
on the lake / a loon
in the loon / my mother
in the mother / a mirror
in the mirror / a jingle bell
in the jingle bell / ice
in the ice storm / cocoa
in the cocoa / a map
on the map / a bus stop
at the bus stop / a confusion
in the confusion / my sister
for my sister / a dandelion
with the dandelion / midsummer
at summer’s end / the circus
at the circus / my family
in my family / uptown pharmacy
at uptown pharmacy / a soda fountain
at the soda fountain / long ago
in the long ago / our whispers
in our whispers / skin on the surface of cream
in the cream / a blindness
after the blindness /a harpist
in the song / your blessing
for your sea shells / silver dollars
untitled / Judy McAmis
The pain is buried
in his body
in the gray suit
in the mint green shirt I chose.
I forgot blue was his favorite
He looks nice in green.
If his eyes were open,
blue would have been
the obvious choice.
The pain is buried in the casket.
In the satin walls
The pain is buried in me.
Pain is meant to be buried.
Mother is covered in fear,
anger, and a quiet I will treasure.
A rare quiet
louder than the noise of together.
It is the quiet I will miss.
The quiet that lived
in his blue-green eyes.
Day 17 / Poem 17
Gap / Hank Blackwell
many years
ago, detained.
A refugee
of fear.
steel fences,
door
bolted,
distraction
while tending
other
wounded souls.
Later,
chasms
widen-
a geology
of moments
fossilized
in the strata
of memory.
you
on one edge
me
on another
which of us
saved?
Encounter of the Fifth Kind /Kevin Dublin
A fragile hand waters red snapdragon in the moonlight.
Spills a drop into a shadow’s footprint.
POV: The hanging plant watches clouds fly low.
POV: Something hovers like drone to another window.
INT. APARTMENT – NIGHT
JOE (14), sits on his bed in the dark. Stares at a phone screen like Issa’s orphaned sparrow waiting for someone to play.
An unearthly insect WHINES behind the blinds. Joe climbs out of bed and peeps a pink glow.
JOE
Are you speaking to me?
TIMELAPSE: Hours pass between first contact after twilight and dew thaw in the courtyard morning. Glow retreats like a shy bud, promises in cicada-like-screech that it will return as it leaves.
Smoke from incense swells out and thins. The boy’s breath is stiff at his desk chair, eyes wide:
JOE
I just spoke with an alien.
Heart DRUMS louder as the sun lifts as the extraterrestrial torchlight it is.
JOE
How strange. I’ve always thought that intergalactic beings would be hostile with a plan to conquer and enslave us. Who knew they’d flee sad and ashamed they couldn’t do anything to save us from us.
Dreamstate / Lexi Eagles
My life plays out in dreams
misty images gathering –
words floating free in my mind
like dandelion down
carried by the wind
to the distant corners of my life
Soundlessly they reel before me
threading a story
spinning a familiar scene
knit from the fibers of my life
and now unraveling
to be woven anew
Images coalesce
a distant tale begins
a moment from long ago
familiar
but fragmentary
black and white
before and after lose their lines
move on, move on
Someone I have known is there
unexpectedly cast
from the darkling waters of memory
a place I’ve been
I know it, too
I sense the knowing
and yet
out of sync, out of time
(no matter)
A gathering of several
and we begin
a piece of what we’ve done before
continuing as ever somehow
a seeming purpose
doing, doing
a fog of knowing why
now blurred
The dreamcloth shifts again
the images drift and diffuse
all slips away
beyond reason
beyond memory’s grasp
dissolving deep in the inescapable
moorland of my mind
The Cost of Everything Coda / Kimberly Ellingson
Later, we sat in the car, waiting for warm air,
our sparsely-filled brown bags placed dutifully
in the backseat. After a very long time, She said,
I’m so glad we don’t have to be poor alone.
Daily Morning Caper / Mike Hackney
I’m under the hot, dust-bustling lamps
in the provincial laboratory of my mind,
embracing fluidity of thought, creating alchemies,
humbling the buzz of the eccentric,
and orchestrating quite divinely.
I’m up the ramp of repeated mornings—
gouged apple, fish-eye soup, my cold hands
carrying the splotched notebook satchel,
or ringing the rusty bike bell.
The work I do glares back at me, rattles
and stirs my heart, even guides my baser instincts…
No other poet runs the precinct; latches are unlocked
at the boathouse; I swim in the cold,
ebbing waters before me like a drive-hunted porpoise.
Believing His Story / Christi Krug
A Cento from e.e. cummings, Billy Collins, Margaret Atwood, W.S. Merwin
A man who had fallen among thieves
lay by the roadside on his back
Now see: they’ve found a man in a glacier
Here then is where the wolf of summer lay.
Are worlds collapsing? Any was a glove
suggest that certain ideas gestures
The words boil out of me
My audience is owls.
Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger
corrupts absolutely,
I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book.
Unpoets do cry
Their prayers still swarm on me like lost bees.
I went away and fetched newspaper
And wrapped it in dead events, days and days.
Something is always missing—
swans, a glint on the surface of a lake
a ghost in his ghost car
I consider the globe, the lights of its cities.
Believe a man, but not believe his story?
he will bow,
There with his hands in his pockets in the end
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Now it is time to say what you have to say
Travel anywhere in a year, five years
before the stars fall
—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned.
Collecting Light Puddles / Judy McAmis
Day 16 / Poem 16
Far Away / Hank Blackwell
You are near.
This magic
a
gentle
calming
voice
held in my
palm.
Snow
falling
crystals delicate.
Nestling in
old boughs
survivors of many
winters.
Small, I
bow to
short-needled
choreography.
untitled anti-capitalist poem on the occasion of Jay Z /Kevin Dublin
I press play with fingers that are too long for the skin that covers them. Much like my mother before she died with scleroderma. I press play on my Android phone’s Spotify player. My cheap phone that is scratched from drops onto gravel, made thousands of miles away across ocean waves and at least six long bird migrations in a nation where six hours of work may be a meal from one or two, yet there are easily three or four and hunger doesn’t crumble like plastic does. I press play to listen to Jay Z. Shawn Carter. Brooklyn’s self-proclaimed finest who is likely somewhere eating dinner by candlelight with a Basquiat painting behind him. I press play as his shadow shifts on a wall as he laughs with his head tilted back to catch flameglow between his teeth like Bruce Leroy at the end of The Last Dragon. I press play, and I hear “Is he Blood? Is he Crip? Is he that? Is he this? Did he do it?” It’s true. If he “shoots you,” he’s brainless. Sheds it like his first set of worries after selling his first crack batch gotten on consignment. This mix of “Streets is Talking” is remastered into a bark. These days, Jay reflects on bars of “God Did” like a type of lightning that would strike salt flats. I press play and wonder, “when will I die? And will this be the death of me?” Jay Z bars, the light of a cigarette, they really aren’t that different. Each day brings us closer to decay whether under ultraviolet rays or sunshade. The first call of morning comes like the beat drops. These cops of knowledge may not Musk, and by musk, I mean appreciate much more than the fractured mind of Elon as he launches his own crypto ccurreny named Jiggle + Glitter. I hear there are more surprises too. I press play.
Goliath’s Ghost / Lexi Eagles
So clever, the simple boy. So, shall we say, innocent?
He had them all believing. Even I was gulled
By his seeming. Even I. His crafty ways – I can’t deny
How easily gulled we were.
He will pay.
O, the King’s daughter was his, to be sure.
And after her – how many others?
There’s Uriah, sleeping outside the palace gate.
He knows what bully King David did.
He knows. And now he’s dead for it.
Even his own son despised him –
Oh Absalom Absalom he cries.
Pathetic.
Slept with all the concubines in full view.
Disgusting.
Do you see how he is paying?
Old, decrepit David. Raise a toast
To old decrepit David. Ha!
Look at him abed with that beauty –
Keeping him warm, eh?
Nothing happening there. Ha!
The Cost of Everything / Kimberly Ellingson
We are cobalt and made of chalk, disoriented
as we gather groceries for the week in a single cart,
under fluorescent lights.
Do we need apples?
One of those trips where you count the cost
of everything under your breath. Still,
we want fresh, new things, even now,
when so much is expensive, out of stock, or broken.
The nearly-bare shelves hold bags of chopped kale
that are beginning to brown, the “Sell By” date gone.
My mind is the same dull blue ache as yours,
the same ax between the eyes, as we move
through the line, thinking of the same thing.
Smack the Moon with a Brick / Mike Hackney
I desired the day-old cake,
the grace was swept away,
the logic was its own circle—
easy living, the sweet life
of limited mind,
but we want a no gate view.
we want the mountain stream,
to chop wood and carry
that water,
here, now,
at the keyboard
I found the answer-
not drunk, not
wandering.
Yellow Flower / Ava M. Hu
Hunched / Christi Krug
“if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.” – Charles Bukowski
All right then.
I’ll dash, I’ll scramble, I’ll lurch
and gasp in heartbeats
of blab, and snatch
the words however small
and plain without buttons or snaps
or stripes or spring gala colors.
Doing because I choose, and
not feeding the gleaming machine
of try-harder, be-better;
not smothering the
hunch of what wants to be said
in its soft whirring
tumble forward, like the gulls in
tonight’s storm that skitter
across our valley
recovering from this gust,
that blast, righting themselves,
wheeling gray wings while
pelting howls and patter threaten to shatter
the thin, old glass of these windows
out of which I’m simply looking,
not fashioning the world, not demanding
nature appear in majesty for an audience.
Anyway, I’m the audience.
My stare is not of glowering demand
or word exasperation, but a gaze of
wonder, seeing what is, finding
myself absorbed or rather, not
finding myself at all.
Seeking something much truer
than the perfect word, something
already here, mute as the wind.