THE march 2025 30/30 PAGE

The volunteer poets for March are Jennifer Browne, John Burroughs, Brigid Cooley-Beck, Lane Falcon  Deirdre Garr Johns, Francesca Preston, Robert Shoemaker, Mobi Warren, and Nicole Zwolinski.

If you would like to join our alumni group of over 1,000 poets, apply here!

Day 15 / Poem 15

At the Worm Moon / Jennifer Browne

“and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day” Joel 2:31

1. 
He said of the eclipsing moon, going away, as if a thing could vanish that was still before his eyes. 

2. 
Having left the yard, I watch the moon from a window, curled around the cat, cheek on flank, hair eclipsing the white fur of her body, cautious of her healing suture wound, an incision named as meaty. A removed tumor, a malignancy. I imagine it as white, imagine it blood-smeared but glowing in the latex-gloved hand. Why did I not let myself imagine the appearance of my mother’s several tumors? Internal, I couldn’t touch them. They were too close. 

3. 
tumor (n.)—early 15c. (Chauliac), tumour, “act or action of morbid swelling in a living body part,” from Latin tumor “swelling, condition of being swollen, a tumor,” from tumere “to swell” (from PIE root *teue- “to swell”).

4. 
Blood moon, worm moon, itself the color of nightcrawlers. Not fresh, red blood, but a brown-madder-red, as old blood stains a damp rag, a bandage. 

5. 
Isn’t everything a kind of portent? The moon swells. Worms break open the warming earth. Colors shift in shadow. What we think we’re watching vanishes, is cut away. We lean in the same direction against the cold. 

6. 
Quiet. Soft calls of night birds, whisper of a wing. I can’t hear the voices, but surely others stand in the dark, speak their wonder: Look at the moon. 

Notes: Joel 2:31 from King James Version 
Etymology from The Online Etymology Dictionary

Quarking Up the Right Tree  / John Burroughs

Naomi Shihab Nye
says “Little things /
“Still matter most”
and of course, because
all matter consists
of atoms—protons,
electrons, neutrons,
quarks—and nothing
other can be matter
or ever matter more.

nights are harder when i am alone   / Brigid Cooley-Beck

because, one half, the bed is empty, 
leaving fresh space for insecurities 
to cuddle up against me, whisper 
sweetness into my ear, about how i’m 
nothing much more than failure
and oh, so very friendless. although, 
i know, i’m not. these are thoughts: useless yet persistent. but tonight, 
i’ve turned down the left side
of the duvet — because, at least there is warmth here. at least i’m not left cold. 

Protection / Lane Falcon

Mother and son share 
the same angles:

him sitting on the stairs 
to tell her it happened 

again, the thoughts 
he didn’t want to think 

flash pictures, bold 
in his mind. Mother 

knows the difference
between desire and despair, 

thrill and the mind’s shriek 
of agony. She says 

her truth, slides it to him, 
a worn, folded note, 

she hopes he’s old enough
to open. They walk 

upstairs together.
Him lulled, the telling 

of them detaining them 
for the next stretch

of minutes. Until 
it happens again,                     

 mama my brain.
Then she holds him

closer, knows when 
the shield is pried from her, 

or stolen from her
rising chest overnight

how they sear the skin, 
how they begin their 

inward journey. Still, 
she feigns        don’t  worry.

I No Longer Dislike the Word Like  / Deirdre Garr Johns

I was thinking about the word like –
a word with a wardrobe. 

If it’s not, like, fashionable, 
you can replace it like an old pair of jeans
(though these may come back into fashion
like flares replaced your skinny jeans 
after Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show).

Maybe it’s that old sweater
along with other like garments —
a college hoodie, a concert t-shirt, your grandfather’s Army cap —
storing their sentimental value 
in the back of your closet.
Still full of life. So lifelike.

How about when you need 
a day-to-night look 
or the like.

Come to think of it,
I like like
so much more.

Real Poetry Lies Elswhere / Francesca Preston

Q. What is the role of destruction?
A. Because there is no mercy. (But life is still beautiful)

Q. What do we do now? 
A. Because walking disturbs the roses, and awakens the birds.

Q. Why is there time? 
A. Reasons are not the only answer. There is the condition of the heart as well.

Q. Why? All of this . . . Why? 

A. The bottle is full, but we are always pouring it out.

[Questions and answers may be switched.]
Collaborative collage poem created with JB, using chance, after watching William Kentridge’s The Great Yes, The Great No

Goose Surprise / Robert Shoemaker

Wild bleats echo in V.
I cannot write pastorally.

Bleat bullets tug my leash,
“To the woods!”

When was the last wilderness,
Last icy snow globe?

“No respite,” phones bleat.
I am leashed.

Still, the geese surprise me,
Bleating “to the woods!”

As if there is still hope.

 I was shocked by their beauty. / Mobi Warren

            – Yun Chen, archeology graduate student upon
                  uncovering 9,000 year old stone needles in Tibet

For a stone, nine thousand years 
of burial is a brief nap, but I welcome 
the touch of human hands again,
the warm pulse against my hard
green merge of magma and sea water.

The first wizardry flaked a splinter
from my mother stone, scraped 
my serpentine to a sharp point,
gave me an all-seeing eye.

The second wizardry covered
me in red ochre, holy pigment
to waken stone and gave me
breath like yours but slow.

The third wizardry put me 
to work stitching a tent 
when all was ice and snow. 
The fourth set me weaving 
cords to make a fishing net.

When hands grew cold, I 
lay alongside five needle sisters, 
bladed tremolite and ornamental 
talc, animal bones for neighbors.

Today a fifth wizardry stirs me, 
pulls me up from dull sleep. 
Hands that dug with patient care
lift me to a red ochre sun 

and a voice declares 
my purpose now is beauty.

GREAT AUNT GEORGIA  / Nicole Zwolinski

The lore is her
heart left for 
war.

It never returned
and never died. 

It withered,
suspended in
time.

She continued empty
inside, a hollow 
core.

But that
is just the lore.
She cried

after he disappeared.
And decided loving
another would be a 
crime.

She lived life
alone; she built a
home.

Nobody asked
and nobody 
cared –

that a woman
could thrive and
love being alive 

without a man
at her side.
She was labeled
a spinster, but 
she made her 

life hers. 
There were no 
strings attached,

no marital servitude.
The flowers she grew
from the earth that 

she owned.
She loved herself 

Day 14 / Poem 14

On Reading a List of Terms* Prohibited in the Current Administration / Jennifer Browne

1.
The keening of a funeral was in a woman’s voice. Her wail, her weeping was the way we knew to grieve, the way we knew we needed to grieve. 

2. 
I groaned in a voice the same as my mother’s, as my grandmother’s, as your mother’s, as your grandmother’s, when I pushed a living animal from my body. The birthing bed and floor below puddled with our blood. 

3. 
I was cut, nerve damaged to scream a child into the brutal world. My mother’s body tore to let me out. She recovered under an indignity of heating lamps. I had better chemicals in perineal foam. I had worse chemicals in postpartum depression. We both had bandages and scabs and scars.

4.
And then there was the fear for what would happen to this fragile thing, this bright-eyed being. 

5. 
When any child would cry within my hearing, the milk would run, wet my sides with sticky streams. I’d leak though clothes with empathetic nutrient. Hardwired. I could have swooped any infant into my arms and let them eat. I know that changed me. 

6. 
Becoming crone, I still bleed so heavily I have to check the chairs from which I stand. I’m always soaking laundry. I want to tell you this because you may forget the bodies all around you, how messy and miraculous they are. 

7. 
A body moves through the world, holding my vast love. What song can I sing toward him that will offer any solace?

8. 
My minddóttir became my son, and I was relieved that he would not be made to break open in the same ways I had been. Still there is the fear for what will happen, this fragile animal whose first cry chorded with my own cries at his sudden distance from my body. 

9. 
There is no way for me to protect my son in this time of subtle violences, of violence. We will still say these human words, these humane words, but what already has been stripped away in the regime, in refusals of these human words? 

10
Who has clouded the stream? I hear birds, a wail in the wind, the clearing of my own voice.

11.
I’ve heard poultice as a perfect word in a woman’s mouth, heard the healing of it, the paste of herbs and clay, felt all the hands that showed her how to find and know the plants. I hear the voices that taught her how to sing. 

*including women female, breastfeed + people, pregnant person, people + uterus, and undervalued. 

A Question of Existence  / John Burroughs

What if the universe is a synthesizer,
a self-perpetuating musical instrument,
a whole band creating and playing
the ultimate record album, consisting
of a limitless number of songs, some epic,
some mere segues, some of which recur,
and most or all of which will end sooner
than later and yet remain essential components
of an endless and composerless symphony?

the conclave    / Brigid Cooley-Beck

cardinals gather 
near the sill 

their red feathers 
sharp, stark contrast 
to the march morning sky 

they perch and tweet and
sing arias, hymns

this holy ritual, conclave 

certainly called by 
my grandmother,
godfather — spirits who walk 
beside me 

they must have sensed 
my waiver of faith 
heard the catch in my breath 

and so, they congregate 

here 

to elect a new path forward 
to show me the way 

Carriage / Lane Falcon

What you took with you 
was not what I wanted, 
the breathing through 
a sliver of space between 
your locked vocal cords, 
the epitome of strength, 
living without the freedom 
of breath, surviving,
 through spells of blue-red 
flushed your face 
when you cried, before 
we knew you lived beside \
the panel of death, 
my ignorance applied in defense 
of the truth, the swamp 
that writhe beneath the bridge
where I stood.  But what 
you took with you was 
the women who held you, 
me, the nurse, the mother 
who had been mine,  
at all times, cradled you 
close to our collective breast, 
a pillow you thought eternal.
And what you took 
with you was that little kingdom, 
me carrying you to the elevator 
of the apartment building, 
my mother behind me
carrying the suction machine 
and Kauser, the nurse,  
behind her carrying 
the oxygen tank. How we carried 
you everywhere, a caravan
of women, as if delivering
you for some royal baptism, 
for the coronation
of your tiny head. Now you want 
some body to warm you 
at all times, though 
you’re nine and your friends 
have begun to peel themselves 
from their mothers. 
You cling closer, wanting 
me to hold you when you cry,  
and me balancing the need 
to callous you before 
the world rips the curtain 
from your eyes, with the comfort 
you desire—we all desire. 

What’s in a Name   / Deirdre Garr Johns

Distant from my days 
of Britney, Beyoncé, and the Backstreet Boys,
I turn on 60s Gold.

I think about the women I know —
Judy, Cindy, Paula, Denise, Diane, Mary —
and the songs that preserve them in time. 

I consider Sweet Pea’s line of dance partners,

Sherry’s red dress under the moonlight,
Paula’s high school sweetheart,
Valleri’s bloom

but I would feel like Georgy Girl 
with another version 
of myself 
stuck inside,

though I’m not one for a false face.

I don’t want another turn to cry 
and I am ok with walking away.

I work my name into “The Name Game”
but “Bo-beir-dre” isn’t pleasant. 

The Beach Boys wrote a love song called “Deirdre”
about a red-haired girl who ran away

and I have to admit
I’m a little obsessed with Windy’s stormy eyes —
if only I could fly.

C U T  F L O W E R S / Francesca Preston

Wild Beauty” Mothers (2) / Robert Shoemaker

This poem was created with Gabrielle Civil’s book The Deja Vu, which includes a quote by Audre Lorde. THANK YOU, Gabrielle, for your loving mojo!

Erasure process: I used a tarot deck to determine, randomly, the pages and poems I selected from books by my “literary mothers.” I photocopied these repeatedly, then I manipulated the copies and erased them until I found a poem.

Prayer / Mobi Warren

Blessed Dark Mother of the Mountain
and Mother of a Thousand Arms,
comfort the scientists who weep,
the ones who count only to find 
absence, the ones who hold 
melting starfish in their hands and 
scan the empty sky for grey parrots, 
who walk meadows to seek missing 
silverspots and blues, who mourn 
the maple leaf oak. Console the counters 
whose work is a constant subtraction, 
holy witnesses to Gaia’s starvation.
They are calling to us, calling, calling. 
Blessed Mothers, break our hearts, 
make bold our bodies, bind us to 
the necessary task. Allow our scientists 
new days without loss.

MINNEAPOLIS BEFORE SUMMER ENDED  / Nicole Zwolinski

We’d walk from my grandparents,
in matching pink dresses, 
and skip to the city bus stop.

We sang Petula’s song as 
we watched summer run 
through the maples

and oaks that lined the 
streets planted in the
1950s. Birches

(or were they aspens?)
sprouted near doorsteps
of cookie cutter ramblers

on wide roads that shared
space with bicycles, cars,
and no fear.

We thought her song was 
about our city. We left 
the lyrics on the curb

as we made our way to
the bench seat at the back of 
the bus.

Humming quietly for
our adventure downtown.
We’d weave through big 

buildings and skyways. 
Throwing pennies 
in fountains and dining 

on top floors of skyscrapers.
Window shopping through
stores and selecting one

prized possession for 
the new school year. 
Umbrella or backpack.

We’d watch the city lights
as we were serenaded by
the city noise.

Even with the angst of 
school encroaching on 
summer, when we went

downtown we forgot all 
our troubles and we forgot 
all our cares, just like 

Petula piped.

Day 13 / Poem 13

[untitled haiku]  / Jennifer Browne

In lake ice, channels 
an aluminum canoe, 
nearing worm moon. 

Patience, Kafka  / John Burroughs

on gratitude    / Brigid Cooley-Beck

when there is no shoe to drop 
rather, contended silence 
in its stead 

i find myself, surprised 

by the stillness 
holding my breath, even 
so as not to diturb it 

then i remember the birds 

their songs at the genesis, 
break of dawn 
their frivolity and how it is beautiful 

they do not sit, waiting
for the thunder crack 

rather, go about their 
work and play, equally held 
in high regard 

because they are both important 

and suddenly, i remember:
there is so much life to be lived 
though, sometimes, we have to 
find it, carve it, build it 
protect it

such as the woodpecker 
with its cavity 
the robin and her nest 

for this, i am so grateful 
from them, i learn the way

Possession / Lane Falcon

After Tingo* (For Divorce) 
—Jennifer Givhan

When you lived in my house, you ate
candy in bed, metallic wrappers

littering the antique table at your side. 
You came upstairs to lay behind me 

on the couch, saying I miss you
when I had a double pneumonia 

and lived in the ghost of another 
house that somehow fit into mine. 

You smoked weed on my front porch 
then dragged the smell into my kitchen, 

and the bedroom always smelled 
from the grinding, turning the little lever 

clockwise until the bud was spread 
enough to smoke. You were a languid 

king who entered one day at a time 
and drove from my rooms their essence. 

You had no followers, just yoursel 
and the ghosts of your desires, 

which sometimes materialized how  
a picture emerges from a swarm of dots.  

Counting Planes   / Deirdre Garr Johns

If only I could reach into the sky 
and lasso these white streaks, 

but I am poolside,
and we have just eaten lunch.

I watch as geometric shapes fade 
into feathered ends
loose, like ribbons
falling from the sky.

Leaves from the neighbor’s 
maple ride the ripples. We all skim, 
but leave the wayward ones 
in the middle.

Let them have their fun. 
Glass jars filled with my grandmother’s mint
and tea bags — water turning
amber in sunlight — leave a ring
on the patio table. 

Another plane flies overhead, 
and this one we watch, squinting. 

That’s one, somebody says. 
An outbound flight, 
I follow its trail

before diving in — 
my sister at my heels.

R E V I E W / Francesca Preston

I put my pile of books in a little free library.
Every time I walk by I glance to see the status of my books.
This one time all the books were gone except one 
which stuck around for weeks.
It was an obscure novel about a cross-dressing thief
and her apothecary girlfriend, based on a true story
from the 17th century. I loved it. 
It had a terrible 1980s cover and a weird,unappealing title. But I could not abide
that it was still there. So one day I took the book
out of the library and brought it home with me.
I got a piece of scrap paper, and I wrote 
THIS BOOK IS REALLY GREAT, TRUST ME.
I taped the note to the front of the book
and walked around the corner to put it back 
in the box. It was gone within 24 hours.

Mothers / Robert Shoemaker

This poem was generated based on a prompt: “mothers.” I took the prompter’s support to “have fun with it” pretty seriously and decided to follow my immediate impulse, which was to gather books by people I consider my literary mothers and to divine poems from them. This poem was created with Jessica Savitz’s book Hunting is Painting.

I used a tarot deck to determine, randomly, the pages and poems I selected to photocopy repeatedly, then I manipulated the copies and erased them until I found a poem. To me, this felt evocative of learning from mothers who bring their children into a lineage and teach them to find their way with support and love. I found connecting with these mothers’ words to be a way of finding wisdom from these people so important to me.

Thank you, Jessica Rigney, for the prompt! And thank you Jessica Savitz for your wisdom! I hope to keep making these.

Logos / Mobi Warren

Her first word 
was button,
babbled at my breast 
as she clutched my shirt 
in a starfish hand 
and cooed like Galileo 
when he first netted 
the moons of Jupiter.

Brave man to unbutton 
the night sky; 
paths that bound 
planets to the sun
became the church’s 
undressing.

But what genius,
peasant or dressmaker,
invented the buttonhole,
shifted flair to function, 
changed button’s
very nature?
Medallions once pinned 
to silks and furs
became practical tools
that could open and close
the intimate chambers
of vest or bodice.

Buttonhole and telescope,
tools to seduce 
the coins in an old purse
to twinkle new.

But her first word 
was button
not buttonhole 
and I have wobbled. 
Think nacre cut 
from mollusks
and abalone’s little 
mothers of pearl,
sea-fished planets
sized to an infant’s fist.

THE BABY TOOTH SPIRAL   / Nicole Zwolinski

Day 12 / Poem 12

Lullaby  / Jennifer Browne

1.
When it was clear we had not kept our neighbors from their terrible choice, you said the truth was lost. We did not sleep. We have not slept at all or well, a need for keeping watch. 

2.
We brace and hold our breath, let insufficient words catch in our insufficient throats. 

3. 
There has to be a time at which to sleep. What else can we give each other but a pair of watchful eyes, a quiet, empty place made safe for rest? 

4.

Childhood marked by ear infections, I’d rest my head in mother’s lap, let the drops fall in my ears. They were cold, and I would cry. She must have stroked my hair. She surely sang. And when I fell asleep and woke again to the pattern of the fabric of the couch, I’d find the space between the flowers, trace those lines. 

5.
lull(v.)—early 14c., lullen “to calm or hush to sleep,” probably imitative of lu-lu sound used to lull a child to sleep (compare Swedish lulla “to hum a lullaby,” German lullen “to rock,” Sanskrit lolati “moves to and fro,” Middle Dutch lollen “to mutter”).…Meaning “temporary period of quiet or rest amid turmoil or activity” is from 1815.

6. 
Where, now, is the solace and the balm? Whose soothing hands could smooth the creasing lines between my eyebrows? 

7. 
Your voice singing the room into quiet.

8. 
Sway between despair and hope, between futility and faith. It can be hard to hear, to hear clearly. Although so much already has been lost, there are still truths. Self-evident. We hold. 

9. 
Rest. Let me sing a song into your ears. Even the night is bringing you milk, cupped in the moon’s full hands. 

When the Bat Signal Goes Dark / John Burroughs

for Brian Fugett, dead 10 March at age 53

I never did try your infamous vodka
and soda concoction and we never
did publish that anthology of Snoetry
participants and I won’t see any new
comic panels or whiteboard poems
of yours or hear you riff hysterically again
on the condition of the outdoor latrine
at Elyria’s 100 Thousand Poets for Change
event and I will never again get to marvel
at your somewhat erratic and brave self-
haircuts. But I will always remember
your tainted coffee, your Zygote in My City,
the Batman emblem tattooed on the side
of your shaved head, your mad and biting
silly cheer, your kind no-bullshit irreverence,
and if you could hear us talk now
about the hole you’ve left behind,
I suspect you’d make a butt joke.

i worry to prepare   / Brigid Cooley-Beck

what if there’s traffic? 
and what about my tires – are they running out of air? 

i won’t need to stress in an emergency 
because it’s something i always do.  

and sure, i may have a tummy ache 
probably a migraine, too 
but i promise you my worrying 
could maybe also one day save you 

i mean, just think of the super volcanoes! 
don’t you want to know what to do? 
well, so do i
& so i try 
to find 
solutions (of which there are slim few) 

our problems are certainly sticky 
seriously — i mean, they’re huge 
so i strive to be proactive 
instead of sitting and letting them stew 

so what, my search engine thinks i’m neurotic? 
well, likely, that is true
but at least i know how to survive a tsunami

could you say the same for you? 

Supermarket, 1985 / Lane Falcon

A couple of nickels, some pennies
for the rainbow of unwapped gumballs—
we coveted the stickers In cardboard sleeves 
you’d crank a metal mouth, or the great claw 
of chance that couldn’t catch shit, 
it’s legs always only clipping the bear’s 
back. fished for some gem—nevertheless
my sister and I raced to this shrine 
of novelty while our mother waited in line 
with twenty minutes worth of groceries, 
nickels warm in our palms 
for the gummy rubber toys that littered 
our closet floors, a penny for the rainbow 
of unwrapped gumballs or those hot-red bombs 
we clenched between my teeth, daring 
them to break. We ran not thinking 
of the length of time That lay between now 
and the walk back to the car we’d endure 
after our hearts had ejected their arc 
of joy, while we’d chew the gum grey 
in our mouths and the toy had been removed 
from its tantalizing capsule. We ran 
like dogs after squirrels. And didn’t it seem 
like we were the only children in the world, 
standing there, choosing, our choice, 
still uncurled. 

The 7 O’Clock Hour /  Deirdre Garr Johns

Neighbors with hands in their pockets
stroll and dogs without leashes
lead or follow, for the side street 
sees only the locals
taking a detour 
during rush hour.  

They stop at our grandparents’ half-double. 

We sit on the concrete steps
with our elbows bent behind us
while the adults repeat stories they’ve collected 
like coins heads up
as they lap the block
that is South Green Street.

We weave together a patchwork of mismatched pieces,
coming up with a story about how the neighbor Mary 
escaped with her two cats from a convent, 
which is why we never see her outside.

Always drifting
through the screen door, 
we hear “Who is” or “What is” —
our countdown to head inside
to watch Wheel of Fortune.

Dusk calls the neighbors home.

Now, I wish I had listened more carefully.

H E L L S T R I P / Francesca Preston

I am hot & in limbo

raw stretch of earth
between sidewalk & curb.

Dogs pee on me, or worse,
& people put baskets 
of free things on my back.

I have no choice but to sleep
under these free objects –
lemons, aerobics DVDs, 

used books on being in the now.

I am usually thirsty.

Sometimes tree roots lift me up
& make me lumpy, 

dangerous.
I do not want to be dangerous.

I should be worth a lot of $
because I am in the best neighborhoods.
But I am also in the worst.

You could make me into a garden.
You could cover me in rocks.
But anyone must be able 
to walk on me.

Oddly, I am owned by the gov’t
but you are responsible
for taking care of me.

You who go through the gate
& hardly ever say hello.

Necessary Praise / Robert Shoemaker

More than One Way to Pour the Sky / Mobi Warren

When the bloom of sunset fades, I locate Venus, bright 
goblet, press eyes to binoculars and scan the adjacent sky

but the once-in-my-lifetime comet is obscured by city light.
In Big Bend I was gobsmacked by the stars and have longed 

to sink my teeth again into the galaxy’s flesh and drink milky
pails of light. In the morning I water pots of anise hyssop

in whose soil straggle a few volunteer weeds and whose 
flower cones summon carpenter bees that flash like meteors.

And there! a bow-legged bug, mere ant-sized nymph, dips 
ki’s* face into the tiny white pail of a spurge flower and drinks

the starless sky.

*Adopting Robin Wall Kimmerer’s suggestion to use “ki” as a pronoun
for other-than-humans rather than the demeaning “it”.

Cigarette Butts Bobbing in the Sea   / Nicole Zwolinski

Day 11 / Poem 11

On the Difficulty of Saying: Translations of the Same Poem  / Jennifer Browne

1. 
Imagine a decorative wall, a vacant space of window meant to frame a branch, a cluster of blooms. What is the shade of the bark, the petals? What will you see in a year? Tomorrow? How does it change in the light? 

2. 
Is your beauty or my love of you the just-budding cherry tree, the ice storm, the wind that brings the crown of branches crashing to the ground, rot uncovered in the trunk? Is your beauty or my love of you the blooms that were before, that would have been again, the woodpecker that comes, the squirrels?

3. 
There is so much to say, so much to leave unsaid. 

4. 
I know that I am losing words, pass well enough with synonyms. I build a garden wall in which to hold my meaning. On any day, I’ve forgotten where I stored most of the bricks.

5. 
I think defense of beauty. I think defiance of beauty.

6. 
Why must I tell you about your eyes? Everything I do describes you to yourself. 

7. 
I wish that I could footnote every sentence. I say cherry blossom and want to say that I am not thinking of the Tidal Basin, but I see the deep pink clustered flowers and wonder when my grandmother planted the tree in her front yard. What was the distance between Tokyo and Washington, between Yukio Ozaki and Helen Taft? What was the distance from DC to my grandmother, between the sale of seedlings and her yard? The only tree that I could climb. What was the distance between my body and the ground? I feel the scrape of lenticels against my legs. I think pores. What is the distance between your skin and my skin? I think porous. Even sitting next to you, the distances between us are different distances. 

8. 
The white flower is never only white.

Keep Rollin’ / John Burroughs

Have you ever had to push, push, push, push?
                                —Adam Ant, “Car Trouble”

Welcome, friends, to my annual poem
about not being able to write a poem.
Yes, I know, tell you something you didn’t know.
(Although for some of my newer friends I may
have done just that.) This has been ongoing
for quite some time, obviously, as this is
an annual tradition. But it’s not because I’m
one to stand on tradition. No. This time,
except for a few exceptional, inexplicable
moments, it’s been ongoing since America
(sorry, I couldn’t resist a line break there)
decided to re-elect a D’ump to the highest
office in the land and that dump teamed up
with as many authoritarian-minded sycophants,
opportunistic oligarch wannabes, tech bros,
pseudo-Christians, and sexist, racist, fear-fed
fellows as he could beg, borrow, steal, bully, cajole,
bribe, cudgel, and/or (Steele yourself) piss on.  
That’s in addition to my work, family, volunteer
commitments, health issues, stacks of to-do lists,
Post-It notes, manuscripts to blurb, contest entries
to read, a past-deadline book to finish, and Nazis
to rage against, for starters. So yes. For now, I am
incapable of writing the poem I feel we deserve.
But at least today ex-Twitter has been crashing
like Tesla’s stock and the latest SpaceX rocket
while Spring is nearly here and as sure as love
and Rick Astley live, I’m never gonna give you up….

laundry day  / Brigid Cooley-Beck

socks, mismatched 
sweaters, inside out 

i’m not sure how we got here 

when the tectonic plates of domestic life decided to 
crash up against one another, forming 

mountains of laundry 

piled high, youngest of the ranges 
colorful and soft 
beautiful to look at, in the right light 

but oh, the smell 
of gym clothes and over-worn jeans 

how it wafts toward the bed 
like a springtime breeze 

except — terrible 

calling out to me 
beckoning me 
to hike my way to the top 

sort it all out 

and muster the strength
to walk down the hall, just 20 feet of 
treachery 

to simply start a load 

Untitled / Lane Falcon

The other poem blabbed too loud 
so this is the one after, 

the one with buckled 
knees and windless hair who holds 

her kneecaps when she scooches 
into the pew and chews 

on her hair all mass. This is the girl 
who sucks on the collar 

of her coat, same as the thermal blanket 
her mother finally coaxed 

from her when she was new 
in this world and still mesmerized—

well, that isn’t true, she was mesmerized 
still wasn’t she? didn’t the Saint Francis 

statue bare fangs that one night 
she and Jeff McCarthy ran 

around outside the school while 
the parents drank at the “art auction.” 

And wasn’t the haunted house 
some manic maze an eighth-grade girl

ushered her quickly through, then ejected 
her from as if she was a cannon ball? 

And weren’t there those too, or what 
were they called, those red hot bombs 

she’d clench between her teeth, 
daring them to break? 

Don’t Dismiss My Thinness   / Deirdre Garr Johns

Fine as I am, 
you misjudge my ability 
and sigh when you find me
left in the arsenal. 

Feedback in black 
is just that. 
No pizzazz. 
How can I compete with Raspberry Fizz?
Perhaps constructive criticism earns more acclaim when written in Orchid Lei.

You covet them,
bleed them dry,
misplace them,
or — heaven forbid —
lend them out. 

You hesitate 
to replace them —
their weight mighty 
and ready for battle.

True — I am no Excalibur.

But I can be just as bold, 
even with less flair
if you just give me a chance
to make my mark.

Yours truly, the fine point pen

H A T E  P I E C E / Francesca Preston

Think about who you hate.
Write them down.
Kiss the words all over,
then tear them up
and feed them to the plants.
Do it again if you need to.

inspired by Yoko Ono’s Mess Piece, 1964

Encaustic: an Ekphrastic poem  / Mobi Warren

          Artist: Ashe juniper tree/Medium: Resin on Rock

from a wound                                                 
high up on the trunk
the Ashe juniper 
is weeping 
resin tears
that drip onto 
the chalk-white face
of a limestone clint
a canvas speckled 
with topaz 

slide a fingertip 
over an amber 
teardrop smooth 
as glass 
and a transparent 
sheath of adhesive 
clings to skin 
the way collagen
repairs a wound

drops harden
into waxy circles 
like dabs of pale 
butter on bread
one bead
shaped like a slug
slips into a rain 
hollowed hole
the eye wants
to pause to
read this 
unusual clock

here is a wound
encaustic 
one tree’s cry 
turned glinting 
gem and
time-slowed 
enamel

REHOMING BUGS   / Nicole Zwolinski

I watched two women
kill something. 

And I am horrified
at my inability to 
move.

I sat paralyzed
as they threw
paper towels
over
something
creepy crawly
(I assume.)

And stomp over and over
and over again. 

In awe, they were 
shocked
that the creature
was still living. 

In awe, I was
shocked
that I was still
glued to my bench.

And I hate myself.
for not intervening
and scooping up
the bug and releasing
it outdoors.

Fear, kept me stapled
in place. 

I am terrified of 
dead things and
the spillage of guts.

And if I didn’t see it,
I could pretend it
never happened.

Day 10 / Poem 10

Nauset Light  / Jennifer Browne

Browne-Nauset-Light-Tupelo-30_30-3_9_25

Which Cut Is the Deepest? / John Burroughs

Could anybody love him / Or is it just a crazy dream?
—Roger Waters, “The Final Cut

In the Recruit Casual platoon for two weeks while they processed my entry-level separation from the Corps, Steve Scott and I became fast friends after learning we were both from Ohio and lovers of Pink Floyd. He too was there for a suicide attempt. But he wanted to die, while I felt I was dying against my will.My favorite album was The Wall, but his was The Final Cut and he couldn’t believe I’d never heard it, or at least the song “Not Now John.” I promised I’d listen when I got home and, believing him my one true friend, vowed to stay in touch. Eventually, I scored the cassette and fell in love and eagerly wrote him a letter or two.

He never answered. Maybe like me, he wanted to leave the Corps in the past. Maybe unlike me, he wanted to leave it all behind. Maybe the final cut came for him after all. Maybe it was a crazy dream.

once a month / Brigid Cooley-Beck

i prefer products labeled “super, overnight,” and with no wings if we have to go that route. 

mom used to call them “protection,” and i always thought it unfair: spending my pubescence learning to safeguard from the monster within. 

i am jealous of the girls who are “light.” who use liners. who go running to “alleviate symptoms.” 

once a month, i am a train thrown off its track. 

i have spent the greater half of eight days in bed, praying to every deity for some sort of relief. one time: emergency room visit. 

pain does not discriminate.

sometimes, dad would ask what was wrong, and i’d say it was my stomach to avoid taboo. i saw red whenever he said “my tummy’s bothering me too.” 

it’s gotten easier with time, thanks to heating pads and yoga and sometimes overdosing on tylenol. not a drug problem, just desperation. 

trade off: i stay away from medicine when get migraines. attempt to keep safe my liver. 

is the pink tax still a thing? have we not moved past stupidity? am i surprised? 

i wave the white flag of “protection” proudly every 26 days. which is to say i do not carry what i need discretely, in colorful, sparkly pouches tucked in side pockets of purses. 

joke it’s better for everyone to know when i am afflicted. 

also, lately, i lean on silicone anyway. tool to keep cramps at bay. plus, less trips to the powder room. 

at least that’s something. 

Running – 4 a.m. / Lane Falcon

What it does for me—no one outside 
except the street I stamp me feet 

on, the shadows I run toward, daring 
myself to run all the way, to not break 

when I lose concentration, to focus 
on that small future, then again, 

every time a new bar of shadows invites 
itself into my view—             Let me 

 hold the trees, their doors, guide me 
into the shape-shifting hollow 

 where a cold darkness embraces 
me, and let me find another door 

 to walk through, the creature who
curls wounded there—                        

 the up the hill then turn around, 
the run all the way back down.

There’s a certain way you know a place, 
the trees that wag their leafy arms 

along the way, when you run that ground, 
feel it hard beneath your feet, engrave 

in it the path you took, the prayers
your body said.

Uncovered   / Deirdre Garr Johns

Pencil and pen marks 
scar me —
a rite of passage.

Those who value crisp pages
disdain my dog-eared edges, 
palm-softened.

Pressed open for some deep investigation,
a gentle hand is careful not to bend 
or break 
my binding —
contents held whole
like a final gift to the world.

I don’t mind the exposure —
it is impossible to judge a book with no cover.

Yours truly, the well-loved book

F A R E W E L L  T O  C A T S / Francesca Preston

Now that I have a dog
I will never look at you in the same way, cat.
I will never experience your tail sweeping between 
my crossed legs like a quill, delicate,
or feel an electric shock when you dab
your nose to my outstretched finger. Never again
will I sleep with you docked on my chest.
You are cat
and now I am dog, a different citizen.
I am unsubtle, loping, maniacal. 
I yell. My dog does not understand me,
but you would.
You could decipher my dreams before
breakfast, cat, and then crack a bird’s skull
by noon. I will miss your
telepathic ways, but I am going 
all dog. All slobber and ridiculous love.
It makes no sense, 
I know.

Couplets on The Big Lebowski / Robert Shoemaker

I still haven’t seen The Big Lebowski,
but I have a sweater just like his.

No one should have to watch Intolerance;
It is white, and…white. Fuck it.

In defense of pop fiction; no need.
In defense of art film; no need!

I’m tired of awards shows, and first places.
Streaming killed “film,” but we still make films.

I learned what Brat means, sort of,
and I’m okay being old.

You will never convince me Spirited Away
isn’t a work of cultural theory.

Horror films still don’t win Oscars,
and are still remembered by more people than Best Pictures.

My students told me I’d love Rango, shocked I hadn’t seen it.
We watched Unforgiven that week, and they loved it.

I will never rewatch The Godfather. 
Maybe.

There will be a time when none of us are impostors,
When we can all teach film history with our canons.

If a movie needs to be 3 hours to tell its story,
Its story isn’t worth watching. Fight me, and give me a tight 90.

I only want to read poems about The Witch,
and that’s okay. Maybe also about Taylor Swift.

It’s not that I don’t like high-mindedness.
The Babadook reads like Kristeva.

Sometimes I wonder how many Spanish-language movies
would be my favorite movie of all time.

Before the last century, 
no artists had MFAs.

The actors aren’t white, but the movie is.
It thinks in whiteness. Learn plot spirals.

Sometimes it’s hard to write funny poems
because I was never taught how.

You know who you are, who shamed me;
there’s a circle of hell for you.

The Simplest Rule is Love  / Mobi Warren

Fear not, little one, hatched from 
            your mother’s purse of eggs,  I 
                        am without my kind’s prejudice 
                                    against your kind. I watch you 
scurry-explore the kitchen 
            counter, pause as miniscule 
                        taste hairs brush invisible 
                                    crumb or a sliced apple’s seep, 
fire signals to your brain 
            to report bitter or sweet.
                        Your zeal to survive sends a 
                                    tremor to convert my heart.

And what of star-flecked starlings,
            invasives is the charge?
                        Their mind entrancing pixels,
                                    murmuration in the sky?
No telepathic hive mind, 
            no maestro or panoptic 
                        plan, only now’s attention 
                                    to the seven closest birds,      
small cohort always shifting, 
            and by such a simple rule
                        the entire flock becomes 
                                    a synchronous shape-shifting 
                                                god.

THE CONTINUOUS UNRAVELING   / Nicole Zwolinski

Day 9 / Poem 9

Let there be No Scarcity of Beauty [Day 46]   / Jennifer Browne

“Modern economics has a particular view of scarcity, in which human beings have infinite desires, and society must therefore facilitate endless growth and consumption, irrespective of nature’s limits.” —Wennerlind and Jonsson

1.
Of infinite desire, I see only one: 
only one desire, which is infinite.

2. 
Open your bright eyes. 
Whatever we might want, 
the same end comes 
for the fierce and the tender. 

3. 
What is there to say of beauty 
but that it has sat so near to me 
I have shivered from its breath.

4. 
“Pick…any other word you like, as long as it is one syllable. Fasten it to your heart. Fix your mind on it permanently, so nothing can dislodge it. This word will protect you. It will be your shield and spear, whether you ride out into peace or conflict. Use it to beat on the dark cloud of unknowing above you. With it, knock down every thought and they’ll lie down under the cloud of forgetting below you. Whenever an idea interrupts, you ask, ‘What do you want?’ answer with this one word.” —The Cloud of Unknowing 

5. 
Too casually, I say I am afraid
that a time is coming when 
there will be a dearth of beauty, 
a time when concrete dust will 
clot blood running in the street. 

6. 
We beat ourselves against 
our own imperfect work 
at capturing some beauty. 
We come bleeding, needing 
to be held to tenderness.

7. 
And when our neighbors 
sew their jewels into the lining 
of their coats, what will we do, 
we who are without jewels? 
Step into the ruin of a street, 
sing what songs you have into 
broken windows, into a few 
shell-shocked ears. No one 
would name that frivolous
or call those breaths wasted. 

8. 
There is no scarcity of beauty. 
There is no scarcity of wonder. 
Sweetling, you are its deepest 
well; you are its clearest water. 

9. 
desire (v.)—”to wish or long for, express a wish to obtain,” c. 1200, desiren, from Old French desirrer (12c.) “wish, desire, long for,” from Latin desiderare “long for, wish for; demand, expect,” the original sense perhaps being “await what the stars will bring,” from the phrase de sidere “from the stars,” from sidus (genitive sideris) “heavenly body, star, constellation”

10. 
Think of desire, think of stars, and beauty appears, kissing your hair. 

11. 
When I woke in confusion
from deep sleep, I couldn’t 
be certain I had seen a blur 
of wing, an owl snatching 
a bat out of the air. Still, 
I feel a shimmer of wing, 
can almost hear the startled 
squeak. Whatever we might
feel, there is so much we 
can’t know. Walk out 
into this cloudless night. 
Whose is the name you 
whisper unto the dark? 

Notes: 
Wennerlind, Carl and Fredrik Albritton Jonsson. “Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism and the Climate Crisis” 
The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 6
Etymologies from The Online Etymology Dictionary

Matter Waves  / John Burroughs

Mom told the story of how
during the first year of my life
my hair was curly and wild
before the fellow she married,
who became my dad, took me
to my first barber and ordered
a crew cut. To his relief and her
disappointment, it grew back
straight, like his, a reflection
of Dad’s quest to shape me.
Nearly sixty years later, as I grow
it out again, an irrepressible wave
betrays the truth that I never would
be as tame and straight as he.

husband sets the morning alarm(s)  / Brigid Cooley-Beck

7:00 a.m. 
7:05 a.m. 
7:10 a.m. 
7:15 a.m. 
he says he doesn’t want to miss 
7:20 a.m. 
any of life’s precious moments 
7:25 a.m. 
7:30 a.m. 
and the way you miss out 
is by keeping your eyes 
7:35 a.m. 
7:40 a.m. 
closed for too long 
7:45 a.m. 
and i say
7:50 a.m. 
the way you miss out 
is by setting a million alarms 
and making your wife 
7:55 a.m. 
angry, first thing, 
on a sunday morning 
before 
8:00 a.m. 

Censored Poem / Lane Falcon

What happened happened once 
a club in Barcelona, 
“Beautiful” by Snoop Dog then
some random bathroom 
on the sink, then the next morning,
walking back to the hostel 
I turned around, was followed, 
wrapped my legs in the lobby 
of the building, the walk up 
five flights of stairs, then that night, 
the return, the note, Te amo, 
because there was no nicer way 
to want. I travelled those streets 
imperiously, lonely, my face 
clammy with sweat, eyes 
half dead, half embarked 
on their own dark walk toward 
the conclusion that awaited 
me back in the states: the death 
of a dear friend, conclusionless 
loves,  I didn’t know how much 
I had to lose, or I did
and the words were lost.

My Son Surprises Me / Deirdre Garr Johns

The park has been our place —
the paved loop a witness 
to finished — and unfinished — miles. 

We stop to pet pooches who give us a long glance,
snap photos of alligators sunning on the lake’s bank,
observe butterflies sampling the wildflowers in the garden, 
listen to the birds’ ensemble — those grounded among holly or elevated in live oaks.

Sometimes he stops to tie a shoelace —
a task of mine lost to time. 

We share airpods and a playlist 
featuring The Rollings Stones, Green Day, and Justin Bieber,
and he slows down or turns around 
when I can no longer keep up 
with his strides.  

I hold the distance between us 
somewhere in my heart, 
knowing he will disappear 

but not before we meet 
at the end of the foot bridge — 
when he asks if I want to hear 
his new favorite song. 

N I C E / Francesca Preston

I once choked on an ice cube
from our broken freezer. 
Broken = nonstop ice.
My mother tried to give me the Heimlich
over our sink, grasping me
in terror, as I sang
the silent song. 
The oxymoronic round cube
stuck there, like a wet, double-paned
window in which my larynx
could see herself wilting.
On one side all the words I had
already said, too many in valley girl slang.
And all the other words
waiting, like, really, this is it??
The Heimlich is no longer called that,
but it is still the Heimlich my mother
could not do. And no wonder.
It is a maneuver meant to break things.
We stood there in the sunlight,
and finally I drank warm dishwater. 
In an instant the ice cube shrank
and I was free. A poem is not
required to have a takeaway lesson
but this one has two.
Learn to break your children’s ribs.
And never suck on ice.

Cultivating us / Robert Shoemaker

The Moon’s Dark Side  / Mobi Warren

The same year American astronauts first walked on the moon
my father bought a marble-topped chest at a Brussels flea market,

its dark bulk out of style with locals anxious to trade heirlooms 
for mid-century lean. After my father’s death last year, I found

half a torn photo stashed in the chest’s bottom drawer. My father, 
shock of black hair and wide-set eyes, sits with his fellow third

graders after they have performed a puppet show.  I have never 
seen this photo, taken in Duluth during the Great Depression,

and it’s too late to ask for a story. Two girls in dark dresses with 
starched white collars, half-smiles and decorum, sit beside him 

dangling marionettes. He wears a checkered wool sweater and his
calm face is so like my youngest brother’s who died during Covid 

that time seems a trick. These children do not know a man will walk 
on the moon, or my father that he will work with the first astronauts, 

or that one day I will find this half photo, find my brother in 
my father.  A dark wing passes over me.

The Motivation of Betsy Lucille  / Nicole Zwolinski

Day 8 / Poem 8

Imperative [Day 45]   / Jennifer Browne

Browne-Imperative-Day-45-

Women of Appalachia  / John Burroughs

ode to timing  / Brigid Cooley-Beck

so often scorned 
for being yourself 
all along — dutifully moving us 
even as we protest 

you are the mom friend
taking care despite 
our rolled eyes, because 
don’t you know we know what’s best? 

except for when we don’t
and thus, you set to work 
jumbling paths and promises 
leading us to crossroads 

look, how lovely
those two ships in the night
and how they pass one another
quietly — with such a subtle grace 

Reminiscence / Lane Falcon

After Kim Addonizio’s “Stolen Moments”

What happened, happened once. 
So now it’s best to let go the memory, 

tied to the wind like a handkerchief 
skipping elsewhere, dropping 

with sudden weight as the wind 
releases, then resuming to skim 

the street, indecisive passage. 
Its best to let go of the worry-crown 

that weighs down on my head, 
dim echo of crucifixion, the obsession 

that blows through the holes in my mind—
so many holes where a face, a touch 

lived I have yet to fill with the present.
It lay before me, a blank white sheet, 

waiting for my face to touch its surface, 
lift the veil. 

I Bring Myself Closer / Deirdre Garr Johns

I page through my grandmother’s recipe books  
and choose those with splatters long dried
and words smudged under 
fingerprints coated in some confection.

We used to sit around her kitchen table,
the bowl of dough between us 
and our cookie sheets to the side. 

She would roll dough into a ball 
and hold it up before dropping it
into a bowl of sugar
and then nod for me
to take my turn. 

Most of her recipes 
I scrawled on scraps of paper, 
jotting down adjustments and secret ingredients.

I try to loosen them from my memory 
like a thin silk ribbon.

Some dough we chilled overnight.
Some temperatures we dropped. 
Some flour we sifted. 

I use her cups and bowls and spoons
as I blend recipe with memory, 
waiting for them to rise, 
golden.  

green / Francesca Preston

The woods have
                           water chestnut  ripples

My thoughts        are
                        wicker         strangeness

                                      the source
                                                  not the same

How could I 

               ask
                                         the tall forest

                        I fear
                     I will

                                 continue

when blossoms are
         green 
                               in all directions.

{erasure poem culled from Zen Poems, Knopf, 1999, all words from translations of the poet Wang Wei 699-751 AD}

Sycamore” (with instructions for the form I wrote in) / Robert Shoemaker

Taproot to core, let me in, spill. Every
warm drop soaks. Teach my rhizome your
story. Count the rings as you sink, decades
passing, shade and seed. Millions of blades
of grass, skin cells, wishes. I am every
moment here, it is written in me. Here is
a mother losing her child; she leaves for college
and never returns. Here is a guru and
wide-eyed pupils; he dies drunk. Among
the dozens, here you are, insignificant and
glorious. Give me your pain, give it up. I am
wise, for I am not; I am all. Give my rhizome
your pain. Spill. A pity you must unlearn
yourself, like the others, when my roots would
die severed. If you’d hold onto this pain, each
ring defining, please come back to me.
Please come, I wait. Take this telepathy to
your grave—we all wait for you, warm. We
watch over you with millions of eyes.

A Ghost Box after David LeGault
With inspiration from Book of Shadows by Alexander Arce and Emiland Kray

The Ghost Box form, which I learned from David LeGault and will not do justice to in this description, is inspired by the ghost hunting device of the same name. This form puts you in touch with a specific location through a combination of constraints. While being specific with your location, you draw a 5×5 box centered on the page. Randomly generate a word to begin your piece and write from it. You must fill the whole box. Your piece will pick up signals from the location you chose and, through the randomness of your word, will bring ghosts to you.

Mutual Attraction  / Mobi Warren

old man cactus
when I walked by
your snowy hairs
leaned my direction
then
a few white strands
of my old woman hair
escaped their clip
and waved back

note: in response to Robert’s old man cactus Day 7 poem 

HOW TO MAKE A FRIEND AS AN ADULT   / Nicole Zwolinski

Twirling office phone cords
while talking legal stuff –
like TPS reports and billable
hours and paying law firms – 
was when we built
a friendship.

When there was silence
and breaths we had to 
take… we’d fill the gaps
with stories and let a
garden grow.

The words we weaved 
through time zones and 
in emails planted with P.S.
were rooted deep before
our children.

States between us and we
forged on. Staying in our
orbit, we were the sun,
the moon, and stars.

My heart bloomed
and I learned what it 
meant to love 
a friend.

Day 7 / Poem 7

On the Difficulty of Saying: Clear  / Jennifer Browne

1.
Scattered in the plow grit,
glowing chunks of road salt.
I think, Herkimer diamonds. 

2.
A diamond is just a carbon 
lattice. Herkimer diamond
is quartz with an address. 
Dilution of salt will bleach 
dark asphalt in blooms
until forecasted rain.

3.
clear (adj.)—c. 1300, “giving light, shining, luminous;” also “not turbid; transparent, allowing light to pass through; free from impurities; morally pure, guiltless, innocent;”…of the eyes or vision, “clear, keen;” of the voice or sound, “plainly audible, distinct, resonant;” of the mind, “keen-witted, perspicacious;” of words or speech, “readily understood, manifest to the mind, lucid” (an Old English word for this was sweotol “distinct, clear, evident”)

4.
Say a thing is crystal clear, 
and I think about inclusions,
occlusions. Water in enhydro 
quartz may, itself, be clear 
but veiled by other minerals. 

5.
After a certain point, I stop 
trying to step around clear
cubes of salt on the road. 

6.
Consider the Mohs scale. 
Test a thing by scratching 
with another. Where am I 
abraided by what I brush 
against? Let the hard hurt 
of it be a label on a chart.
Let it be a form of naming.

7.
Here, again, remind myself:
what’s soft is useful as it is. 
Not everything with facets
must be stuck, bezel set. 
There are benefits to melt. 

8.
There are different types of clarity. 

9. 
On the Mohs scale, fingernail 
is a common object of hardness. 

10.

clear (adj.), cont.—from Old French cler “clear” (of sight and hearing), “light, bright, shining; sparse” (12c., Modern French clair), from Latin clarus “clear, loud,” of sounds; figuratively “manifest, plain, evident,”… (source of Italian chiaro, Spanish claro), from PIE *kle-ro-, from root *kele- (2) “to shout.”

11. 
I am learning to see a thing
and name it by its name. 
Halite. Road salt. 
I am learning to feel 
the scratching and say 
this is what I am. I am 
learning to say 
this is what I need. 

Note: Etymologies from The Online Etymology Dictionary, etymonline.com

Aim High / John Burroughs

Two of my fathers found
harm in Vietnam. And now
the government they served,
the one they rely on for health
care, plans to gut Veterans
Affairs by 80,000 workers.

Could this mean no more
hearing aids, loss of treatment
for Agent Orange-related
Parkinsonism, loss of life-saving
mental health counseling?

I lost them both as a result
of their service, one more
severely than the other,
and now they may lose
vital services because billionaires
with bulging waists claim
to want to cut waste.

These so-called cost-savers
fly jets to golf, pay millions
of taxpayer dollars to attend
a Super Bowl and Daytona 500.
They launch a Tesla into orbit
while receiving more in subsidies
than my fathers together have
received for their lifetimes of work.

If there’s fat, trim it off.
But start at the top
and let it trickle down.

the artful skill of making do  / Brigid Cooley-Beck

replaced egg with applesauce 
the pancakes turned out just fine 

and how lucky are we, really 
with our paper plates & dollar store spoons 

this mattress of air & empty room 
box of cheap red wine 

we crafted lemon meringue pie 
from the fruits Life’s dealt us 

isn’t it worth saying: 
this world is still beautiful, simply 

we are going to be 
just fine. 

Draping / Lane Falcon

Ceci walking downstairs yesterday after attempting 
to straighten her hair, her hair a frizzy halo 
around her face, “It didn’t work.” Ceci on my phone, 
Amazon, ordering a hair mask later, “Mom, you’re spending 
so much money,” elated. Iggy yesterday asking me while 
he showered, “Is this excluding?” Iggy cuddling my arm 
and holding my hand when I lay in bed with him to tuck him in. 

They fight and they fight the resistance of this world, 
they relish in their pauses, when the drapes fall down 
and they can exhale in the dark behind the stage, 
they are loved they are wanted, they walk through 
this world holding a hand that isn’t mine, that guides 
them, they are held, they walk through this world, 
some part of me, some phantom organ removed 
and walking away, me clinging to the tingling it has left. 

Meeting / Deirdre Garr Johns

The air still carries its coldness 
when a honeybee lands
on the ledge 
of my side-view mirror—
a front-row show.

Some brave bloom’s first customer,
he is cloaked like a king 
in gold-dust
and (I imagine) 
admires himself—

his song and strength
returned.

I have now forgotten why 
I was sitting in my car
when this lonely bee made its way— 
to me.

L O G I C  / Francesca Preston

my friend says
     Now that i have accepted
i’m not going to be eaten
      by a mountain
         lion

i realize i do not need 
     to eat. 

she references gandhi. 
                she says
   that when we are old
 we do not eat before
        we die
                   so we 
can start training now.

         i am not making 
                   fun of her. 
    this is not
                  a disease. 

  i am just trying to
        understand her logic.
i say     so        before    when you
     wanted to die by mountain 
   lion           you ate.

                  yes         she says. 
               yes.

Old Man Cactus / Robert Shoemaker

I’m fuzzy already, you know—
Don’t rub too hard.
Tufts of white stuff 
Blow like a dandelion.
Wish your wish,
Float with me.
Rub the right way or get pricked—
Sorry.
Every spine is a kiss.
I love you when I’m angry.
I crave you craving touching me.
Sometimes, I make it harder to touch me
So you crave me more—
Sorry.
I wonder how succulent I can be,
How much love I can hold
To outlast drought, to last.
If you knew what I’d do for you,
The organs I’d lose,
How much you could take—
I’d scare you.
I wish my wish,
Run my spines silently
Up your spine.
I dream our roots grow together
And merge,
Grow juicy and old, interlocked…
Sorry.
I’m learning to be watered
Just enough.
Not thirsty;
Sated.
After being raised to crave indulgence,
The beauty of the desert
And its precision,
The mauve rose rising sun on striped sands,
Cacti raising arms perpetually,
Just so…
An almost purgatorial heaven,
The beauty of this solace,
The calm capaciousness of this bed…
Is so much to bear.
So much to calm to.
I’m fuzzy already, as you know.
Rub me patiently
And just right.

Grain, Butter, Salt  / Mobi Warren

Roshi lifts her face, “Inhale.”
Smell of fresh baked bread fills the zendo.
In a time of great disruption,
our breath rounds golden fields
of rustling grass.
“For wheat people, this is the smell of care.”
Someone sighs, “Buttered toast.”

I, wheat-born, fall into memory
of another Teacher, during 
broken days of war,
scraping cơm cháy, golden crust 
from the bottom of the rice pot,
handing us each a piece.
“This is the best part.”
Sometimes we spread salted
butter from a can on it.

Grain, butter, salt.
How alike the elements of care,
fire’s ferocity made tender.
The Vietnamese have a saying:
Only the Rice Loves You.

Remain resolute 
on the path of compassion.

Red Lacy Lines   / Nicole Zwolinski

Day 6 / Poem 6

On the Difficulty of Saying: Storm   / Jennifer Browne

On the Difficulty of Saying: Storm 

1. 
In the mountains, storms can stall, dumping rain, streaking lightning. Follow the curve of a road and see it: same storm, different angle.

2. 
Every time I try to take a photograph of lighting, I can’t anticipate the flash, wait too long to press the shutter button. Fifty versions of the sky, a record only of the movement of the clouds, darkening light, my own slow response. 

3. 
storm (n.)—Old English storm “tempest, violent disturbance of the atmosphere,” often accompanied by high winds, rain, etc.; also “onrush, attack; tumult; disturbance,” from Proto-Germanic *sturmaz “storm” (source also of Old Norse stormr, Old Saxon, Middle Low German, Middle Dutch, Dutch storm, Old High German sturm, German Sturm).

4. 
Together we are squall and bluster seen from different angles. Why do I believe I have to show you every storm?

5. 
Sea-grey cloud. I think I want to stand within the threatening and the charge, feel the way your hairs stand up on end. Wave of wind. Lightning like a tear through which what wrath might come. Yellow light. An omen.

6. 
storm (n.), cont.—This is considered to be from PIE *stur-mo-, from root *(s)twer- (1) “to turn, whirl.” Old French estour “onset, tumult,” Italian stormo “a fight” are Germanic loan-words. Also compare stour (n.).

7. 
When the lake dried up last summer, old cans with churchkey punches. Afterward, my reading on the types of closure. Mud-cracks dried until they lost their stink, mercurial sediment, echo of a wind that brought rain laced with cadmium, with zinc.

8. 
After all this time, I don’t know what to say, how to make it plain.

9. 
Nickel rainclouds at the coast. Quicksand near the tide pool. You feel your feet sink out from under, into what seemed solid. I think about the fisherman who fell through ice, bait bucket still suspended at the surface of the reservoir, crusted-over hole he left a little larger than his body, his body pulled under by a weakness not his own. 

10.
storm (n.), cont.—The figurative senses begin in late Old English: “disturbance, convulsion” in civil, political, social, or domestic life. Also in late Old English as “tumultuous flight or descent of hurled objects.” The figurative meaning “tumultuous onrush” (of tears, indignation, etc.) is from c. 1600.

11.
Frozen minnows in galvanized steel. On a warming day, evaporation. Birds will come to eat until the bucket sinks. What is buried at the bottoms of the lakes? Swamped snowmobiles. Emptied bottles filled as they dropped. Boots kicked off in struggling back through that narrow broken line between breath and drowning. 

12. 
It all feels thin. In the wisps of mist, air currents made visible. See them in the snow and rain, see them in the scouring earth. At any time, what else is lifting something into clarity; what else comes into shape in the movement of another?

Burn Your Bed / John Burroughs

The President
proclaims America
will be woke no longer.

Nightmares close in
and this is no time
to fall asleep.

i can hear the birds again   / Brigid Cooley-Beck

singing their song of spring 
in the morning, waking me
persistent sound of hope 

Fear No Evil / Lane Falcon

Don’t fear the sadness 
that lowers itself 

onto your body, 
unwanted, it’s breath 

in your ear, electronic 
church bells at 4 pm 

on a Sunday, the bike 
you rode along 

the man-made lake, 
praying God to stir 

that deep, suburban 
quiet—back when 

the words passed, 
single-file, in your mind, 

before the onslaught, 
though it was gaining 

momentum, even then, 
when the words 

paused to let gravity 
catch up.

Offering / Deirdre Garr Johns

This pale perfume 
must be inhaled 
like one following a trail. 

A dab here and a dab
there. Directly to skin, 
not mist. 

Start with the wrist. 

An inhale wide 
as the cavern 
that has consumed your warmth
and now wears your coldness. 

Leftover scent followed 
to my neck, tilted —

pulse point dissolves you
into an abyss.

T H I S  I S  W H Y / Francesca Preston

Your poetry is required here / Robert Shoemaker

after Wave of Blood by Ariana Reines

I am part of the war

The War is part of me

I, too, was born in a time of war, war-without-time, war-without-sense

I was taught to see enemies everywhere

9/11 was instructional

Terrorism was instructional

We did not read the history textbook, we read headlines

The war is part of me

I write in a time of war, eternal war

The War That Has No Name

I am told there are enemies everywhere

Zionism is instructional

Wokeness is instructional

We do not read the histories, we read short videos

I, too, am part of the war, its greatest instrument

My senselessness is instrumental to the war mentality

I last felt at peace when I had no cell phone

I last felt at peace when I had no computer

I said, as I fled to the woods with my father and no cell phone for the weekend, “I haven’t felt this peaceful in a while—“ I meant years, I meant my whole life

Vacation has come to mean “a time with no devices”

We are the War’s greatest and senseless instrument

Nonviolence is passé, only insanity is sensible

The war is part of us, the War That Has No Name, and we are its instrument

We do not have bodies, we are programmed to lose ourselves

We do not have minds, we are programmed to obey

We do not have voices, we have posts

We do not have discussions, we have replies

We do not have selves, we have profiles

We do not have friends, we have followers

We do not have love, we have follows

We have left our bodies for machines

We have given our souls to power the machines, and we think it wonderful

We think of progress, we do not wonder

We think of tomorrow, we do not live

We are the War, and the War is with

Us, The War That Need Not Be Named, it is eternal

The dust will not settle until there are no bodies left

The machines will not mourn

The machines will celebrate 

Progress, like us

Regarding a Phobia of Knives  / Mobi Warren

Some dark kernel is held in my body
like a winter-curled marmot
feral and enigmatic, infected with 
some echo from another life,

the nameless regret of some warrior
who thrust his blade into innocents.

I have confessed this restless hurt
to a certain tree steadfast and serene
that has stood sentry outside the 
window of all the houses I have lived in.

I’ve banished knives from my kitchen 
save for a small paring knife with a red 
handle, toothed for bread and orange 
peel, that I use to slice vegetables 

on a cutting board’s honest grain. 
It was a friend’s gift, knife sharpener 
and  tree pruner by trade, man solid 
as an oak. He told me he has given 
the same knife to three other poets. 
Perhaps he liked a certain poem,
or sensed a darkness needing comfort, 
or simply imagined how a poet might 

slice a pear with such a sweet and 
useful blade, happy in the hand.

WATER, COFFEE, TEA   / Nicole Zwolinski

I didn’t hear the alarm
at 5 am, but it’s
not unusual…

with two heated,
weighted blankets
anchoring me 

to the mattress with 
limbs heavier than 
my own and filled

with sleep and dreams
and utter exhaustion.
The frantic start to a

day that would stretch 
beyond a dozen hours.
Trapped in recycled 

and regurgitated
oxygen and left to 
the mercy of the 

weather gods and 
airline computers.
As a mother 

you account for 
everything, but 
sometimes you

forget about 
time lost. Time
that you cannot

control. So, while 
juggling the bags
and precious 

cargo, you forget 
snacks which
you think may 

be okay, until 
you are held
hostage on 

the plane by
bitter, winter 
winds

and coats of
snow that 
would illustrate 

the winter wonderland and 
white Christmas carols
perfectly.

Except that it is
March. And I didn’t 
eat lunch because 

of the delay and 
while rejoicing that
we are finally on a connecting 

flight, I realize the downside 
is – service is only
water, coffee, and tea.

Day 5 / Poem 5

Invocation to the Self [Day 43]   / Jennifer Browne

Even when they use terms 
like forcing, endeavor to be
as the pussy willow: soft 
one, guard an inflorescence, 
let the broken-seeming parts
of you push into the ground, 
rise up a battalion of branch, 
sprout new roots at the cut.

Running New / John Burroughs

for monica lewinsky   / Brigid Cooley-Beck

i think we would have been friends,
you and i 

for i, too, had a scarlet letter
stitched to my collar 

back when i was 
young and bright eyed and lost 

which is exactly what you’re 
supposed to be when you’re 22 

someone once told me
there is a difference between 

lonely and alone 
and, although i’ve yet to find it, 

i am attempting to keep 
the light of hope blazing 

to keep oil in its lamp 
it’s disposable 

how unkind they were 
i know there are apologies

yet to be uttered 
for both of us 

oh, and also, 
i promise you were beautiful 

all along 

On Inspiration / Lane Falcon

Sometimes, without the image 
to follow into the dark of unknowing, 

without the lantern of music, 
some cadence played in my mind, some string 

of sound that rhymes with the heart’s 
utterance, I spill myself 

onto the white, let the words sit there 
though they remind me of dust 

lined by a broom, crumbs on the kitchen floor, 
I want to whisk away so no remnant 

of their brief life remains. Sometimes, 
without protection from what 

I’m about to say, what my brain releases 
in drips and drabs, each word 

a milliliter, a measure of the break, 
I say it anyways. 

Hanging the Sheets on a Summer Day / Deirdre Garr Johns

We push open the Bilco doors and emerge 
with arms in the air —
a “V” for victory as we hook the doors 
with their makeshift latches.

The morning has not yet turned itself 
over.

We retreat.

The machine slows its spin
and we huddle around
and wait for the click of the lid. 

My grandmother hands the sheets
over and we shake them loose 
from their tangle. 

We pinch together the edges —
not to disturb the dust 
on the cellar floor —
and drop them into the laundry basket,
clothespins on top.

She carries the basket on her hip
and we follow her up the steps
like loyal servants 
to a great queen. 

We hand the clothespins 
over and she marks the line — exact
measurements learned over time —
and we lift and she drapes 
and we smooth our hands 
over the sheets, 
their scent released 
like open petals
turning toward the sun.

CLEAVE TO THE PLEASURE / Francesca Preston

From a podium in the library basement a semi-successful poet tells us about submitting. We have brought our computers. There are balloons; it is going to be a submitting party! I know a little about submitting. You dig a hundred holes and you carefully bury 3, 4, or 5 of your best poems in each hole. Then you wait. 

The poet seems tired. She tells us to ask ourselves, Why are we doing this? If the answer is ego, forget it. She tells us this whole thing can be very painful. There are charts of her own submissions to prove it. The old people listen. They already know a lot about pain. They just want someone to see their poetry. Is that so wrong? 

Cleave to the pleasure, the poet says. Which sounds like a good line. She tells us to protect our poems. Now I imagine fleckled fawns nibbling at the side of the road. I want so badly for them to make it. They’re yours, she says. I write down, cleave to the pleasure, and months later I find the note, but it’s too late.

I often daydream / Robert Shoemaker

I often daydream about being able to experience salt for the first time, or black pepper. These are exotic imports in my daydream. Coffee is unheard of, and the first time I taste it in the streets of Venice, I immediately think it’s sorcery. I know there’s danger and distrust in this daydream, but there is also wonder. Not wonder for exploration—my days of admiring explorers are long gone. What I admired then, and what I crave now, is the curiosity and the connection. Imagine, or remember, if you can, not knowing something existed, finding it for yourself for the first time, and sharing it. Imagine a life where you couldn’t know everything that exists on this planet. This is why Ancient Aliens or Alien Empires or whatever is so successful. This is why the anglerfish captivated us. We long to imagine, and we are defeated by what imagines for us. If we had to physically go to the library, maybe we would look closely at the ants beneath the bushes beneath our bedroom windows again. It’s just a daydream, but I can’t get away from it. I long to know less, and to discover something. Everything. To hear, again for the first time, how big an octopus brain is. Or to see a manatee for the first time beneath my kayak, and what if I’d never heard of a manatee? I’d touch a sea monster right beneath my boat. To be wondrous, a child. There’s nothing I long for more than this connection with everything—with you, too. Imagine us touching for the first time. Imagine really looking at one another, and imagine us both thinking, I’ve never seen something so wondrous in all my life.

Poikilotherm  / Mobi Warren

At a hot spring 
watched a green basilisk
plumed jesusito 
sprint across water 

That night 
saw a lamp-lit gecko
skin a glowing rose 
nip moths on glass

Nothing in their pursuit
suggested cold-blooded

Consider instead this beautiful word:
                 poikilothermic 
         variable or painted heat

Animals who align 
to the ardor 
of where they are
who dial their
body temperature 
to sun or shade 

a magic humans cannot know,
tucked in our safe tents of 98.6

THE PROCESSION   / Nicole Zwolinski

Day 4 / Poem 4

On the Problem of Defining  / Jennifer Browne

A new moon encourages the dark. 
In this empty country, I can only tell 
the ridgelines by the vanishing stars. 

Just Found the Scream / John Burroughs

tulips, free for picking  / Brigid Cooley-Beck

standing tip toe on their stems
colorfully resembling 
my own two lips, free for tricking 
into sin so sharp, it singes 
cupid’s bow and my skin 
smudged colorful 
like flowers dancing in the wind 

Deception / Lane Falcon

…sometimes you can feel how porous you are…
–       Kim Addonizio, “Quantum”

And sometimes you feel the sky 
soak your skin—how it stretches 

across itself, a reflection of nothing. 
You can want those other things: 

the weightlessness of people who 
release the images as they enter, 

let life chiffon around them. 
You don’t understand how they move 

so blithely through the shadows 
that inhabit you, and want to back 

away from what you know, 
what makes you think you know 

anything at all, leave it standing 
there until it topples over. 

Mothering / Deirdre Garr Johns

Catastrophe — one that drove me to 
tears — when I could not find 
my Sylvia Plath books 
(the ones with my heart recorded
in the margins).

The thought of loss.

After a particularly difficult evening 
with my just-turned 14-year-old 
whose voice has lost its 
softness, replaced with a raspy blend of
notes — music 
I no longer recognize.

The clear vowels of  “Mama” and “Mommy” 
now a treasure buried 
without an X.
The hand-grip — slipped.

A goodnight from across the hall, muffled 
or not at all.
Lean muscles that leave 
no traces of baby fat.

Nights without interruption. 

Moth-breath.
That far sea no longer in my ear. 
I have stepped off the train
and desperately need to reboard —
a journey backwards

when I was the closest to mothering
that I would ever be

before I misplaced time 
and my books whose lines 
give me something like solace
when things are too much to bear.

IN THE OLD DAYS, IT WAS CALLED BUTTER / Francesca Preston

He looks as big as a guinea pig.
Gross.
Could you rock that dress?
Skirt.
Skirt.
What’s her favorite animal?
Well she’s a baby, so I don’t know.
It’s a yoga thing for sure.
Or maybe it’s an age thing.
Do you like nativity scenes?
Thank you for your understanding
of my tomorrow.

Golden in the morning / Robert Shoemaker

        When I wake crying murder, heart on fire,
        Each daily dissection of the soul unbearable,
        Sun-sacrifice, or worse, each other’s hot breath invective,
You forge the English language into a spear and shove it into my heart:
        Every gasp perfects our longing,
        Endoscopoem crystals hunt like receptors in my gut,
        Microbiome wakes electricities for us;
        The Sun refracts these sacrifices too much, unbearably hot,
        The Sun refracts now-desert families,
        The hot-breath invectives spit grateful for guns
        Bow kingward, 
        And every muscle must be relaxed into being.
These other’s creative hours perfect killer drones,
        A dreaming I cannot undo alone.
        I pray remind me language can heal. 
        Spears can be light-shafts,
        The Sun is not all burning,
        Every tongue is a reactor;
        I pray for ecstatic longing again,
        For gasping release, crystallized understanding
        Of our simplicity—our animal nature.
        Every crying heart aflame, all our bones
        Alike, every scream, every dissection, every gasp
        (You remind me) is our language’s perfect longing
        For prayer, together, that, just like anger, reshapes.
        You hear me, clasp me, kiss me, pray with me:
Golden in the morning crane our necks
        We whoop silence, silence,
        Bend to the sun, bow, unfurl,
        Silence blesséd in the morning—
        Both after radiant death and waiting in shaded sun-spots
        On Earth for all to join the dance.
        It is painful, this longing for language,
        For the unbearable. It is simple, being. We gasp, we are.
        We pray for you—every one of us listening in silence—every golden one sun god.
We are waiting for you in the no-kill zone.

        With lines and love shared by CAConrad

Diminuendo  / Mobi Warren

sky curls over bark
thumbprints
the oak’s 
moss sleeve 

three seeds blow 
in on skirts 
of ethereal thread 
on tiptoe stipple
the emerald rug 
await the next 
billowed breath
to lift 
in whispered spin

I want to know 
what the sleeping 
moss feels 
when a weightless 
seed lands
lower my ear 
to the chatter 
of moss teeth 
when they spit
out spores

bathe my cells
in chlorophyll
float in the wisp 
of a windblown
seed, tunnel softly
into rhizoid
become again
a plant 

THE MUFFLED AND BURIED EMOTIONS OF LONDON JUNE  / Nicole Zwolinski

Day 3 / Poem 3

On the Difficulty of Saying: Dread  / Jennifer Browne

1.

Skunk cabbage spathes melt snow 
in circles. They rise, size of a heart, 
size of a fist, hooding their flowers. 
I know the spring is nearing, ewes’ 
milk coming in, and still I am afraid. 

2.
Birth tears open a body. 
Birth brings blood and salt. 

3.

Like holding rail-steel track to feel 
the far-off train, flat a palm against 
a surface, tremors of what comes: 
Sap rising in the warming morning, 
birds, a saw, a sturdily-built floor. 
Frost heave, earthworms, a rumble,
marching boots across the ground. 

4.

dread(n.)—from c. 1200, “great fear or apprehension; cause or object of apprehension.” As a past-participle adjective…, “dreaded, frightful,” c.1400; later “held in awe” (early 15c.).

5.

I’ll go to anyplace but mass to 
smell the incense of a sacrament. 

6.

Imagine the uses of my hands. 
Stroke foreheads, bandage wounds.
Toss a shattering jar, lit wick flaming. 
I have swung a hammer at a nail. 
I have swung a hammer at a living 
thing, a spit-flecked mouth. Love, 
I have held my open palm against 
the plane of your low belly, have 
felt the perfect warmth of you. 

7. 

What are the words I haven’t said? 
Could I speak them to the corners
of the rooms in which you rest,
small protection for what comes? 

8.

On any day, there is so little
we can do, so much to do. 

9. 

Hold your palm toward what you love, 
and see what comes, quiet for its size. 
Steady yourself through the first breaths, 
brush of whisker / lip, scrape of teeth. 
When you’ve given what you can, broken
it in half and offered everything you carried
there in your abundant pockets, shiver 
at the drying juice, the echo of the apple.

Note: Etymologies from The Online Etymology Dictionary, etymonline.com

A Kiss for David Johansen / John Burroughs

You’re not my only friend
dead this week, just the one
I hear singing in my head
while I wear the world news
like a hairshirt, feel I need to
repent on my father’s behalf,
not because he burned your
records (I still hadn’t found you
then), but because he would’ve,
like he torched my Unmasked
and voted for that red-tied cad
you called scoundrel in a calypso
cover of “Sinking Ship.” But
I digress and that’s not the Kiss
you were looking for and this poem
is drowning in its own conflagration.
But I imagine you prefer your kisses
flaming, wet and on their way down,
so here it is.

scout / Brigid Cooley-Beck

four legged friend 
all feline and curious 
she prowls about the living room 
seeking the perfect patch of sun 

every day, Scout dreams of places 
higher than she can reach 
perches on shoulders — blue eyes 
fixed to the ceiling 

the stairs are
her very own Everest 
beckoning her nearer the sky 

and she tries
and tries 
and tries 

to reach it: prancing 
across countertops 
dancing atop kitchen tables

attempts to time it just right 
so that the two peculiar beings 
who share her hardwood floors 
won’t try, again, to ground her 

reach for that 
wretched water bottle 
scold her in a language 
she can’t quite understand 

yes, it is a tricky life indeed 
to long for clouds 
but belong to land 

Conduit / Lane Falcon

“…who prowl around the world for the ruin of souls”
–              Protection prayer to St. Michael 

See them peak from behind the corner in wafts 
of smoke that curl to greet you

with suffocating scent. Watch with me 
for a while, stand 

in their path and let them pass through us. 
Hold my hand while the ground 
beneath us trembles, how I tremble at night, 
my body a conduit 
for their passage? I jump out of my skin, 
some part of me falling, the other 

pushing it off the cliff, and wake when you tell 
me it happened again. 

I know sickness is coming for me—it always has—
to inhabit me to manifest 

its magic, to shadow me before lowering 
itself into my bones.

Rock Step / Deirdre Garr Johns

Fall into the rock step, I hear her say
as Alabama’s “Dancin’, Shaggin’ on the Boulevard” plays
and we one-and-two, three-and-four, five-six.

Our instructor uses her fairy-dust fix
when the beat gets the better of us.

Just slide and shuffle, she says. 

We mimic her feet 
and follow the count
until it eases
into our muscles
like second nature. 

I am along for the ride 
with my friend who started shagging—
a hobby of her own— 
after years of marriage, 
the down-beat of life.

But I can feel my own blue and black
shadows shake off

and we become thieves in the night,
taking back 
what we’ve lost
with each step. 

A T  T H E  W U  W E I  T E A  T E M P L E / Francesca Preston

This is my first open mic.
I am late in the game. 
Rick the host tells me to keep it family friendly.
My dog is in the car eating a bone.
Two friends have come to witness me making audible
bits of things called poems. I wish sometimes there was another name. 
Writing poems is frugal but extravagant,
like dumpster diving in a dictionary. 
Sculpting roses out of lettuce. 
How do I read my old lettuce sculptures?
How do I put enough pause between my words
to let you know that I am not Mary Oliver,
or Rumi, or what’s his name that everybody loves.
I am not him. And bless you, Mary, but the yogis
are going to ruin your poems. Poems. 
This is an unusual poem, because I am typing it,
after getting home from the Wu Wei Tea Temple, 
where people drank kava and ate cordycep muffins. Cool place.
I was the only poet. Poet. Everyone else sang with something
made of wood, or metal, an instrument like a car
that could be worked on, body hoisted up to show all its 
intricate parts. I just had my voice, which no singer
would accept. I used it as best I could, 
and afterwards my skin 
felt hot underneath, like there were coals in my bones.

Inflation / Robert Shoemaker

Six whole eggs. Creamy and bulbous yolks jiggling in albumen jolted into the bowl. Decadent! White miasma.

Eggs like eye whites, rolled in the palm, safe shells cracked. 

Breakfast is an expensive habit. Simple quiche? I’m unemployed. Six golden eggs, mother’s milk—a fiscal downturn.

Frothed, each half dollar swirls in the toilet, ready to eat.

My mismatched forks now silver spoons, my cabinet running raw—and quiche. Every guilt compounds, interest on the dog’s indigestion, my medication, annual visits to family members out-of-state, the stray cheapest floral bouquet—each whisper of living a thinning.

Six eggs mock me. Should I get the blender, scream them homogenous, those bleating sheep bad, bad? I cannot cook with fury or taste it, too. They cannot be wasted.

The flour on the counter mocks me. Every crumb multiplies, a drownage of loss, loss. Ashes in my mouth. The day ends fast.

apotheosis  / Mobi Warren

he said you cannot know what will happen even in the next second 
one second you’re floating in an inflatable craft near your father 

bobbing on choppy waters and the next something huge, blue 
or white envelopes you, something slimy brushes against your face 

and you think I am in someone’s cavernous mouth, I am eaten,
and the very next second you are spit out and your father

in his own inflatable craft is staring at you in shocked amazement
and though I have not (yet) myself been swallowed by a whale

I can’t explain why knowing this gives me such peace, this not
ever knowing what is travelling towards you, like the second a 

scientist, amazed, finds hummingbirds nesting together in a cave
against all previous knowledge that hummingbirds are solitary

warriors who never share, and though some say whatever 
happened in the first three seconds of the big bang set in 

unalterable motion every detail that would happen after, here 
nesting in the moist channels of earth bodies, in the myelinated 

layers of our brains, in the toothless maw of a humpback whale, 
we travel in blessed ignorance, cannot parse the trillions of 

causes and effects, and so every second is an astonishment,
a birth, a close call, a love at first sight, a flash of wing 

and neurons snapping, every second a startled apotheosis
untethered to before or after, the only time to be alive

Leaving at midnight…  / Nicole Zwolinski

Day 2 / Poem 2

On the Difficulty of Saying: Pause, Resound  / Jennifer Browne

1. 
Pastel sunrise. Still there is the quarter-crescent of a waning moon. 

2. 
I try to feel the turning of this season as a pause toward other things that grow. The ice that coats the ground will melt and fill the aquifer. Soil darkens under snow.

3. 
pause (n.)—early 15c., “a delay, a temporary rest in singing or speaking,” from Old French pausee “a pause, interruption” (14c.) and directly from Latin pausa “a halt, stop, cessation,”
        …Later also “a hesitation proceeding from doubt or uncertainty;” hence to give (one) pause

4.
Across the frozen lake, drumming of a woodpecker, then quiet. In the afterward, a shadow of the drumming. Do I hear the echo from the ice, the mountain, or only my own ears? 

5. 
What is it I hear, imagine hearing? Your voice, wind over open water.

6. 
A sixth of the year.  Look at the moon. How thin it is this morning. Thinner tonight, tomorrow. There will come the darkness. There will come more light. 

7. 
If I count and time the beats, I could name this woodpecker drumming out a song toward mates, toward territory. I could see his dark beak striking, resonance of hollow trunk. 

8. 
Do I imagine the echo of that beating beak within my body? Lovely one, you are so far away. I see without seeing your flash of red, your flash of black. I am singing back to you. 

9. 
Give pause: a hollow song, a hollow song resounding. 

10. 
resound (v.)—late 14c., resownen, resounen, of a place, “re-echo, sound back, return an echo; reverberate with,” from Anglo-French resuner, Old French resoner “reverberate” (12c., Modern French résonner), from Latin resonare “sound again, resound, echo” (source also of Spanish resonar, Italian risonare), from re- “back, again” (see re-) + sonare “to sound, make a noise” (from PIE root *swen– “to sound”).

11. 
I try to hear the notes between the notes. Your voice, wind over open water.

12. 
The drumming stops. I think, he must have flown.

13. 
I spend so much time talking to myself, time the words to match my steps—crack of ice and salt-scrape, grit-soled boots on the road. 

Note: Etymologies from The Online Etymology Dictionary, etymonline.com

17 September 1966 / John Burroughs

I debuted the same Saturday as Mission:
Impossible, the same month as Star Trek,
the same day as beat boxer Doug E. Fresh.

“You Can’t Hurry Love” was the number one
song the week I was born, when Mom and I
could not wait for my Halloween due date.

My last name was different then, no father
on my birth certificate. He was off, in a galaxy
called Vietnam. She was fresh out of high school.

Trick or Treat arrived in Richwood, West Virginia,
six weeks and two days too soon. And I began
looking for a costume.

from the plane window / Brigid Cooley-Beck

as oceans of lilac 
stretch the horizon below 
i take the opportunity 
to put into perspective 

my own existence 
its silly realities 
constant worries 
both colossal and minuscule 
sometimes at the same time 

as the skies streak peachy 
i relive moments of pain, so deep, 
the heart’s still bruised 

contemplate my victories 
and many shortcomings 
the frustrating way 
i go about this and that 

and what about 
the women who raised me?
the men whose rough edges 
snagged the knit of my 
skin, lodged themselves
in the grooves of my brain? 

and what’s it really matter, anyway? 
when i’m just another passenger 
drifting between alert and snoozing 
while cruising these friendly skies? 

Fragment 2 / Lane Falcon

Crushed by what wasn’t even love
but it’s evil doppelganger, oceans in April,
too cold to wade through ankle-deep and still
calling, the boats in the distance unremarkable
except that they carry some cargo I didn’t know
of, some industrial, metal contraptions in the dark
basement of the hull. 
Because I barely know what I’m saying, just cast 
the net and hope it drags something silvery back 
with it, you shouldn’t take any of this too seriously. 
Because because because. There is no enlightenment 
other than plunges into the dark, eyes closed, 
the whoosh of fish swimming by, 
the underwater light. 

Picking Up the Pieces / Deirdre Garr Johns

Pain like a paper cut— 
blood under 
thin-skin,
barely holding back 
the pulse-throb.

Shards with scarred edges
should be discarded,
but nothing holds them together
except the palm of my hand.

Each one a memory severed 
like some malignant growth 
to save the self.

I have saved them 
like a fool 
without a blueprint.

Fragile castle—
the shards repel themselves, 
falling in despair.

Edges unfit, 
delicate skin—
natural disaster.

in / verse / Francesca Preston

Maybe poems
will become
like facts

trusted

and facts
like poems
which nobody

wants 
to hear.

Pothos / Robert Shoemaker

The pothos swells in peak
Growth periods:
Massive leaves on the tree trunk he climbs
Indicate ideal conditions.
Miniature growths nearer the ground
Pepper the snaking vine.

I’ve never been “strong,”
Though, physically, I have been stronger—
Skinnier, leaner, though not lean.
Periods of growth I’ve endured, and shrinkage,
Ballooning and withering.

I wrap my hand around my bicep.
This is no measure, surely,
I tell myself, unsure.
Strong leaves are not always large.

Perrault’s Diamonds and Toads Revised for the Sixth Extinction  / Mobi Warren

What if the kind offer of well water
to salve an old woman’s thirst 

was rewarded by toads slipping from 
the daughter’s mouth instead of jewels,

not diamonds to bend the heart to hoard,
but toads with irises of hammered copper?

One daughter may choose to spit hard carbon 
at the world’s end, but I choose the toad,

wart-chinned hag to resurrect the rain.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A 1950s HOUSEWIFE / Nicole Zwolinski

Day 1 / Poem 1

On the Difficulty of Saying: Oracle  / Jennifer Browne

1.
To one who is lost, any flash of color seems a blaze.

2.
Ask the river flowing around a stone. What is it that I should feel?

3.
oracle (n.)—late 14c., “a message from a god expressed by divine inspiration through a priest or priestess,” in answer to a human inquiry, usually respecting some future event, from Old French oracle “temple, house of prayer; oracle” (12c.) and directly from Latin oraculum, oraclum “divine announcement, oracle; place where oracles are given,” from ōrare “to pray to, plead to, beseech” (see orator).

In antiquity, “the agency or medium of a god,” also “the place where such divine utterances were given.”

4.
In the tall grass near the reservoir, scattered remiges of a blue jay, portion of its body, an intact wing. I smooth a feather to give you its impossibilities, but—this one so clearly ripped apart—doesn’t it feel like bad luck?

5.
Ask the stone eroded by the river. What is it that I should feel?

6.
What do I mean to say when I return to put the pieces of the jay into some semblance of its shape? Bring the wing closer to the body. On the other side, what feathers I can find.

7.
Is a river only water? The stone, the silted bed, snails, stream bugs, fish. A heron’s yellow eye? 

8.
orator (n.)—late 14c., oratour, “an eloquent or skilled speaker; one who pleads or argues for a cause,” from Anglo-French oratour (Modern French orateur) and directly from Latin orator “speaker,” from ōrare “to speak, speak before a court or assembly, pray to, plead.”

…according to de Vaan, the Latin word is rather from Proto-Italic *ōs- “mouth,” from PIE *os- “mouth” (see oral). He writes:…’to plead, speak openly’ is the original meaning of orare.

9. 
Ask the blood-flecked down blowing through the grass. What is it that I should feel?

10. 
On the way home, six blue jays flit the wires. One feeds another something from its beak. I think: bad luck and hope. Which and whose?

11.
Have you heard nothing I’ve said? You are the stone and the river. You are the jay, the mouth that ate the jay. You are
the heron’s beak, the oblivious crayfish. You are the feathers. You are the silt. 

Note: Etymologies from The Online Etymology Dictionary, etymonline.com

Bully for You / John Burroughs

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
                                                                —Jesus (Mark 12:17)

President Golden Toilet and his Musky Welfare Spleen
want our attention, assets, mineral deposits, gullibility,
credibility, inability to think critically, our performative,
hypocritical so-called Christianity. They want us to buy
their inanity, feed their vanity, forget our humanity,
dispense with the Beatitudes as they demand our gratitude
and deplore our attitudes. They want to collect our “waste”
with haste, replace liberty with bigotry, justice with just “us,”
and stipulate that we capitulate to them, each God and Caesar.

pinocchio’s gift / Brigid Cooley-Beck

were i so lucky to possess
the gift of knowing oneself 
so quickly, assuredly

i would carry 
a measuring tape 
with me 

keep a mirror 
in my pocket 
always 

proclaim loudly 

i still love him
  i am the problem 
    i miss her, always 
      i’m over it, for real 
       it was my fault all along

and recognize in an instant 
whether it were true 

Fragment / Lane Falcon

He says at night she twitches, shivers, tremors, 
words follow some brazen directive 
out of her mouth and into the world, marching 
as if she were only a conduit, just the tunnel 
they pass through to present themselves to him 

in their garish clothing, words like pretzel, hotdog, 
do whatever you want, words she didn’t know she had, 
sentences inverted and estranged, dangling from corners, 

nothing makes sense anymore in her body, not the bladed images, the sighs that seem to come from elsewhere, 
the petals sinking, the breath unravelling in streams.

What Becomes / Deirdre Garr Johns

The saplings that once 
lined this yard
like a skinny gate 
now create a barrier—
overgrown and tangled
like aged hands, 
gnarled. 

This backyard that once 
entertained a youthful display—
the skin-glisten of Hawaiian Tropic, 
its fragrance mingling with lilies-of-the-valley and lilacs—  
seeks no audience. 

Wind-and-wing carried,
dandelions populate my this
backyard.

They blow unbothered among the onion grass.

So many used things 
now crumbled—

the washline slack against a rusted pole 

the grapevine dried to dust

the stone path I walk along by memory.

I envision tables under picnic tents,
swing sets and dents from feet leaping again and again,
bikes and balls and a basketball net. 

I did not know this was a race against time—

C L O S E T P I E C E / Francesca Preston

after yoko ono

This is how our family works.
We girls have moved out.

We are in our 20s, 30s –
we are living in Brooklyn, India, 

dark basement apartments, bamboo huts. 
We are still young. 

We have left boxes and photographs
in our closet at home. They are on

high shelves, the boxes talk to each
other and pay no rent. A good life.

Then our parents decide
it is enough. They want their space back.

First they ask politely, Can you come get your
boxes? No response. Later they get serious.

Take your stuff. But the stuff is insurmountable. 
It must be “gone through.” Young people

do not have time for this delicate
sorting of their own layers.

The pleading stops.
Our parents do the only thing left to do.

They remove the closet.
Poof, no more high shelves. Just a wall. 

We come home and the space is rearranged 
like a face on mushrooms. 

There, they say, pointing to the hallway. 
There are your boxes.

Fore I will considere my cat Buffy / Robert Shoemaker

Fore she is a slayer of the undead (fore sure)
Fore her coate is luminous and does matcheth all things
Fore she lurks atop her cat perche watching, waiting
Fore she waits fore belly rubs (not too many, for she wille bite)
Fore that my Love introduced me to her and I am most grateful
Fore she is striped and lithe and pantheresque
Fore she is feline, and I am a feline fellowe (sorry Dog)
(Fore I also love my Dog)
Fore my Dog is looking o’er her shoulder at me, upsetteth
Fore Buffy is glaring me downe fore second-guessing my praise
Fore my foot will be et twixt 2 and 3 tomorrow night fore this transgression
Fore Buffy is most exacting and most foregiving, assuming belly rubs
Fore my other cat is lurking neath the bed waiting fore his pome
Fore all our reptiles and plants woulde also like pomes
Fore my Lover wants a new pome, too
Foresooth! I foregot, there is no more time fore poetry today
Fore I must do chores, emails, et, et cetera
Fore both my feet will be et twixt 2 and 3 tonight, fore all are irked and want pomes
Fore my loves are exacting in the most loving way
Fore I am dramatick, as well
Fore my animals take after me in this fashione
Fore we are a house of dramaticks
Fore this we are loving, fore this we are lovable (methinks, mehopes)
Fore Buffy rubs her head on me, as to say, “Forestop and pet me, you fool.”
Fore I do.

Quiet the Power  / Mobi Warren

                 “The country is shattered, but hills and rivers remain.
                  Spring is in the city, grasses and trees are thick.”     Du Fu, 757AD                                    

quiet 
the snail who crawls 
on the decomposing
shim of a fallen branch 

quiet 
the wood softening 
to humus,        quiet
the humerus bone
in a human arm

quiet 
the spiraling shell
as the snail slowly
slides in and out

quiet
the arms embracing 
the tree’s
silent bole

quiet 
the mucus trail
that oozes on cambium 
darkened by rain

quiet 
the lichen that 
scallops and wrinkles
in shades of grey-green

quiet 
the heart pressed
to the moss shawled tree

Quiet 
the power that
connects
and never breaks

WORKING SONGS FOR BEES / Nicole Zwolinski

She left her shoes on Haversham
to feel the ground hug her archs. 
To coat the bottom of her feet
in nature with crusted and powdered
leaves.

Smelling the flowers
and singing to bum
le bees,
she kissed their humming wings
and whispered have fun making
honey.

Weaving her fingers
through the wind, she hung her keys
on a telephone poll and
little by little she lightened her
load.