Welcome to the 30/30 Project, an extraordinary challenge and fundraiser for Tupelo Press, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary press. Each month, volunteer poets run the equivalent of a “poetry marathon,” writing 30 poems in 30 days, while the rest of us “sponsor” and encourage them every step of the way.
The volunteer poets for May are: Colton Babladelis, Caroliena Cabada, Victoria James, Jonna Kihlman, Katie King, Micah Mackert, Jacqueline Henry Moloney, and S. Salazar.
If you’d like to volunteer for a 30/30 Project month, please fill out our application here and warm up your pen!
Day 31 / Poem 31
Turn me into a Sanctuary | A Cento / composed by S. Salazar
With lines selected by and from Colton Babladelis, Caroliena Cabada, Micah Mackert, Victoria James, Jonna Kihlman, Katie King, Jacqueline Henry Moloney, and S. Salazar
It takes a hurricane in all kinds of weather. It takes the wind
out of you. [Definitely takes] magazine skies chasing
picture perfect weeds. My sandstone soft heart never stood a chance.
it was yesterday and centuries ago, [our] lips red of strawberries,
scrapes on [the] knees. I imagine the tomb. I imagine the womb—
walls of rock and tissue, each made for rising and falling and
weaving in and out of this form. [We] either outgrow [our] vessels
or die. Wilting in [the] sun, I love you. Another star-crossed story
reflected back to me in my rearview mirror. I wonder about
[the] thick skin on my butter bones. I was nakeder than naked,
my nerves leaking out, bare skinned. I was hoping this poem
wasn’t about me, but it is, [and] I need to nap for ten thousand years.
Everybody [told me] to not be a doormat, but nobody [warned me]
against being a door everybody walks through to get to [something] else.
I’m already not doing all the right things, so let’s do the wrong things
on purpose. Climb with me from the ground, [be] a siren
for a laugh, [mock the] path in the sand and [draw] new grooves
for [us] to follow. Transformations are chirruping all around us,
this folk song singing hope and despair in the same meter.
Day 30 / Poem 30
The Reader as told by The Writer: An Autobiography / Colton Babladelis
Fancied myself an adventurer
As a young boy
Verne at the helm of the
Nautilus, seven seas be
Damned! My favorite color is
Still the tone of blue when
You open your eyes under
Saltwater
It’s a short trip from now
To then to there once
You have a time machine
Once you learn that some
Destinies are immutable
Once you are driven to
Invention by love
It’s been 20 years since
Stoker invited me onto
The Demeter, still overdo it
On garlic – precaution
Never hurt anyone, after all
Learned that revenge is a
Gold minted currency and
Redemption is a means unto
Its own end while sipping
Coffee and wine with Dumas
And Hugo, I still want to
Learn French
Ate of ambrosia and drank
Of nectar before I could walk
While imagining I could run
Like Achilles, pretty sure
Somewhere in my ancestry
You’ll find Odysseus
Same place I found
Verses written by Cavafy
Prose poem in which I understand why my mother / Caroliena Cabada
goes to church in the middle of the night: you can’t get that kind of quiet anywhere else. The kind of quiet where a candle is the loudest sound, the brightest light. I don’t even mind the uncanny Jesus in front of me, the statuesque Mary. I don’t mind staying awake. It’s the one thing I know I can do. Imagine me in that garden, Jesus, they never would have taken you. That’s the kind of quiet: tongues of flame whispering a devotion that would be drowned out in daylight. What do you pray for, Mom? I pray that all might have a quiet night and don’t lose sleep because I apostle this, but succeed.
Waiting Ghost / Victoria James
I beg for you to hear me
throat raw, damaged, scarred
I plead for you to see me
without a reminder, song and dance —
just to see me, because you want to
Who I Am / Jonna Kihlman
Who I am is not who I could be.
There’s not another secluded version of me.
I’m not future potential, this is who I am.
It’s taken me all this time to learn to stand.
All the pieces that builds my core.
I’ve learned now its enough, I don’t need to be more.
thirty pole pull-ups just m&y get your attention / Katie King
The best part of the pole dance video
was my child’s thumb’s up
gracing the middle of it
Good job they said
Executive Resource Group / Micah Mackert
Here I am.
I know you’ve done boy-time before,
who’s sifting between view,
subsisting on chips’n’dips
discouragingly many sorries
in the air for a simple meal.
But I vow never to live
in that country any more.
I get a . . . palpitation
that makes me go 60s in the head about it all.
You picked those nylon strings
and the acoustic hammer of justice
peeled out and wove into my wavelength
all those long trips in our
mobile Avalon, venturing
blind and hopeful into
uncertain territories,
scattering the cardinals. How many
waitresses’ hands you’ve cradled
at the table while I’ve been away.
I dream about the evolution of your
suiting, the mindful waltz you waged,
tophatted in a townful
of granite biters.
Sleeping on water, walking the
rosebeds with the kick of The Boot
still in your muscle memory.
There’s a room in my building
where you and I are sipping
clear broth with carrot. hothot.
I see dozens of darkened pianos
in the store next door
and the tempered din of tires
through slush outside.
It’s really happening.
On the best of days!
On the best of days!
Thirty Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
My sister and I are talking about grief
and creation.
About how painting her beloved is
helping her find a way to peace.
In my journal, I ask God:
were you grieving when
you made Man?
Who were you painting, Lord?
My sister paints for herself.
Not selfishly. But from a need
to transmute the intensity of
feeling into something beautiful,
something beyond the scope of feeling.
The spikes of her heart animate her fingers,
enlivening them, intention moving into brush
and paint and canvas and into the fibers
form holds. The gift is not for her husband,
but for her Love. Who were you grieving, Lord?
Who did you hold in your fingers?
I imagine in them the slip and grog of clay,
I imagine You molding us, as you stood upon
the shore gazing into that Virgin Point of
dawn, how it opened like an eye
inviting you to fill it—There—
your Beloved in your breath as you breathed
Love into the whole of Creation
all of it pulsing—Who, Lord?
Who were you Loving?
Who were you already grieving?
Was it Me?
Toxic / S. Salazar
Some people think slapping
a label on a thing will protect us
from what’s in the bottle.
That knowing the word is the antidote
while the roots continue to ail us.
Some things are Round Up
and Red Dye 40, while others
are MSG. Simply unhealthy,
a blurred line.
Day 29 / Poem 29
A reversal of roles was in order for at least the afternoon / Colton Babladelis
Big fuzzy bee plods along barely
noticing the honey like smell of phlox
so I sting it and dance
in thanks for companionship
the hive will be happy about this
Why can’t dog days be in the spring
before Sirius climbs his dark northern
ladder, why can’t it symbolize flowers
and frost instead of humidity and floods
even the stars will change, eventually
No bugs today, and my hip is
killing me, you pull weeds and transplant
peonies in the garden, I retire inside
and make coffee and snacks, your hands
be dirty, I’ll clean them for you
Threw everything in a pile
organized books on the shelf by
color of spine instead of author
or title, I’m beginning to think appearance
matters more than content in this world
Gloomy and windy outside, I am
a small tortoiseshell cat, sit quiet and
watch squirrels in the trees rather than
greet the mailman with wagging tail, I
will sharpen my claws rather than roll over
Spider in my attic
scoop me into a glass before
relocation, what panic I
feel to be trapped in a web
not of my own machinations
Mid-Spring Morning / Caroliena Cabada
At sunrise, the buildings cast shadows
on each other’s windows.
When I walk the streets, I can’t tell from
where light and shade come.
Looking up, the only thing I trust
are the flying starlings.
Undeveloped Picture You Won’t Find / Victoria James
Freeze frame a mother
guardian of her young,
protector of their youth.
A beacon of warmth, love
speaks through eyes,
actions hopeful at her
future before her. Search
for it — she’ll find it here.
A father leans around her,
supporting her, no matter
the secrets swimming
in her eyes. He’ll stay.
The puzzle pieces — sticky
from baby fingers —
make the end clear for him.
It’s this moment.
Three kids: dirty faces,
chunky giggles, innocent
eyes searching for forever.
Baby on dad’s lap clinging
to the moment, two toddlers
sharing between sounds, toys,
and a complete family here.
A New Shade of Blue / Jonna Kihlman
A new shade of blue hides in your eyes.
A color never seen, an ocean of skies.
I saw a shape there that I’ve never seen before.
Something shifted and took a new form.
Like jumping over stones on a clear summer day,
The sun shines upon me as you lead the way.
It touches the water’s surface, a million diamonds on display.
Your reflection smiles at me from the light of the sea.
The wind pushes me forward in the evening breeze.
You reach out your hand to help me through.
A lightness in my chest as I follow you.
Red Spring / Katie King
mountain of Flat sand in wheelbarrow alley
Should I make this mean something
Oh god no I have done too much of that. A lifetime of making somethings out of nothings like some sort of invisible seamstress of would-be. This weaving never turned into stars, only receptionist desks & the great unlove that I speak of often which haunts me, dutifully. I do respect its constancy, I guess.
It doesn’t mean much
only sand
Actual rock ground down
by time &
water, which is basically liquid air
Water Feel plastic to me, like a solid, the texture is why I don’t like drinking it – it has too much..Form for me
my body lived in a desert for 25 years & now it thinks it is one. I have a drinking problem in the sense that I do not drink water, which is bad the memes tell me so)
The only word I hear in songs is “dreams”
Why are they always repeating the same thing in different rhythms all the time it all becomes a dream
a dream of dreams & why
are these songs always sung on streets or Flat pavements instead of out of voids or garden tunnels that could lead you to one – maybe it’s just to say, hey your vertical street life is a dream for someone, and it is it sure is
I post a gorgeous cicada cake that I’ve scrolled to. Some cake artist beckons the incoming trillion insects with sugar & lace frosting. I remember a Blockbuster with my mom teeming with cockroaches in Austin, overspilling like bubble tar liquid. It was then that I knew plagues like in the Bible were real but not that DVD’s would be the next one. This was before we would wait in cars for hours to spit in tubes.
High winds soon
says the lower left notification of My computer, the winds will come before the cicadas & the tinnitus will come when it finds empty spaces to fill in between plastic containers holding You’ve Got Mail & The Matrix.
What does it matter? My own heart’s in its own doghouse.
Palestine is having a red spring this year. No universities. No anything. Nothing will come of this.
No Palestine Mountain Gazelle
No Palestine Sunbird
The Nextdoor email says coyote alert
The dog bottom barrel growls at any noise at all
Thermogram m&y warn if warnings m&y arise
No one says beware of Tinseltown
Here, wear this cone
Don’t lick Your wounds
In the morning, smoke. Aquaphor for the perimenopause. A warning: Forty is Four years away, where then you m&y be motherless & grand motherless, in between a mother and a grandmother, and here, thinking about how Flat the sand is
how soft & touchable it looks in Wheelbarrow Alley
Creation Scientist / Micah Mackert
When I was little, I filled a book
with looping connected lines
like I’m doing now. It took
nearly a whole day and when Noah
got back from school, I begged him
to check if any of the bits
had formed a cursive word.
Since then, I feel a lot like
life is that to the real god.
God’s seen life. God’s seen older
gods sit and page through life for hours
in a chair with a drink and a light.
Burning to have stumbled into
meaning, meaning meaning had
become legible. A miracle!
It’s more likely that god
is that to us, a jealousy
of knowledge we suspect exists.
It makes us fury to ape it out
and we do. But really,
it’s the gnosis trying to make us real
by guessing. Knocking on the far side
of the wall of language,
scraping out a wary hello in there?
I’m really not sure. It’s
one of my little roulettes.
But what is true is here we are again!
You are always the brother
with loose ink in your hands
being asked
where is the meaning?
And then the waters in you rise
because the secret is to teach
means as much as to learn.
So?
Hurry up with it then.
I can see the cloud already
on the next town over.
Twenty-Nine Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
How do I know how I feel if
I don’t ask myself how I am?
“How are you, Hands? “
My fingers flex in response, sharp crystalline
pebbles loosening their grip around the knuckles, the
phalanges stretching beyond their length testing how far they can
reach for me.
“Toes? And how are you this morning?”
They wiggle on their own, just in my recognition that they exist.
Like a bugler tapping out morning Reveille, the song activating a
causal wave of flexion and extension from nerve and muscle and bone—
Rising and circling back again and my mind in its lists stopping to make
certain no one has been missed: “How are you?
Good morning, good morning!”—
Up through the ankles and the calves and the thighs and the hips and the
back and the belly and the chest and it’s rise and it’s fall and its
sadness and its loneliness and me wanting to skip the lists because
I get tired of asking and checking in—
but how do I know how I feel if I don’t explore what feeling is?
Deeply
Breathing
Deeply
Sighing
“How are you heart? How are you throat? Did I tell you this morning, I love you?”
And the Face, it cuts the line—
it musters the whole of itself,
all of its textures and complications calling upon the cheeks to widen—
and the whole of the body responds, pouring out of itself:
“Here we are! Good Morning, Good Morning!”
To Three Day Old Hatchlings / S. Salazar
To find you tucked beneath blue bells
Was a blessing, and to find your nest
Empty and littered with Momma’s feathers
Was a curse. Actually, it was a murder
Of crows. How can a fellow bird
Pull a baby out of its crib and eat it alive?
How can a fellow bird experience
budding life and see a cure to their boredom?
How can humanity, in all its supposed
Empathy and brain size, see life
As something to steal away?
Day 28 / Poem 28
Do you still hear? / Colton Babladelis
For Patrick & Gerard
Do you still
Hear the crowd cheer
When you close your eyes
Talk that talk
And whisper in my ear
All the sweet nothings
Platinum promises of forever
If you just stay near
Do you still
Hear the crowd cheer
Now that things are slower
Somehow you’re able
To hold my heart hostage, dear
Let’s paint the town red
Oh, they’ll remember our names
Don’t worry love, you’ve nothing to fear
Do you still hear
That drumming in my chest
Or is it just me
That still hears the crowd cheer
Mosquito Motherhood / Caroliena Cabada
I’m out for blood—
looking for exposed skin,
a line to a venule
or arteriole.
I’m out of good ideas,
only take milliliters
of yours. So little
you won’t miss it,
just left with
remnants of an
allergic reaction.
This tiny drop,
this little taste,
will be enough to
sustain me and my
offspring. I thank
you for your arm,
for your open flank,
the back of your neck—
this meal.
This World is Yours / Victoria James
I play a film of the world
before you and think
what a better world.
Maybe the world
we’re in just isn’t finished
writing itself. Unfinished,
raw, bare for us — ugly.
Maybe if the shooting star
shot a little higher,
waves rolled a little stronger,
lava ran a little hotter,
wind blew more fierce,
rain drenched more pure,
voices packed more punch,
Then this world
world be good enough
for you to thrive here.
Web of Words / Jonna Kihlman
Your web of words tied me to you,
Weaving threads so thick I couldn’t break through.
Like tiny daggers that circled my arms,
Continued on the other side and bound my heart.
Whispering sweet nothings in my ear,
When all I really wanted was to see you clearly.
‘Cause what are promises spilled in the sand?
I’m bound to sail the oceans with no sight of land.
Web of Words / Jonna Kihlman
Your web of words tied me to you,
Weaving threads so thick I couldn’t break through.
Like tiny daggers that circled my arms,
Continued on the other side and bound my heart.
Whispering sweet nothings in my ear,
When all I really wanted was to see you clearly.
‘Cause what are promises spilled in the sand?
I’m bound to sail the oceans with no sight of land.
ampersand poem / Katie King
at night the wind, big
& next inside,
your breathing, small.
I listen in the middle
of the sound of you
against the world
[Hiatus] / Micah Mackert
I feel bad writing
words that are or aren’t about Rafah tonight.
So, that’s that.
Twenty-Eight Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
I.
A reporter asks the mother of a fallen hero:
“what does closure mean to you?”
She says, “Truth.”
Truth says: “Open me.”
II.
When I think of closure, I think
of a button closure, a clasp
or a loop that surrounds
something else. A hook and
an eye.
In the dictionary, it’s a noun
that feels like a verb:
a) the act of closing;
b) the state of being closed;
c) something that can be shut,
like a door, or a chapter, or a life.
All of which first need to be opened.
Seen.
III.
I can say, I’m closing myself off—
to love, to feeling, to living; I am
buttoning myself up from the cold
of this life.
But there are attachments—something attaches
to something else—there is no button without
a hole and no hole without fabric to puncture.
The “closure” always holds two things together—
I hold myself together.
So I can open myself up again.
To closure, Truth says, open me.
Layers / S. Salazar
I don’t like the feeling of decay, the dead
wetness of it all. The bright orange cedar strands
now brown, even older layers marshed black.
Now, as I pluck the past from damp earth,
I’m reminded of the way your arms felt
enveloping my small body, growing ever smaller,
under the weight of everything stacked on top me.
Day 27 / Poem 27
Backyard blackjack, I’m all in / Colton Babladelis
Some things are worth hard work
Worth the ripped calluses and
Raw dirt under nail bed sting
Things that are best learned
By motion, over and over
Deal me in a hand
I’m not much of a gambler
But I’ll be your huckleberry
Sure to be all aces and eights
If you’re playing
Infrastructure is best built once
Done right – something like
The Golden Gate Bridge, I’m
Sure it’s meant to be a narrative
Forged steel against rock island
Love is a molotov cocktail
Of chance and choices
Windswept blue and white
Pieces of my heart
Some things are worth hard work
Silent Mother, Martyr Mother, Young Mother, Gentle Mother / Caroliena Cabada
found text from Obasan (1981) by Joy Kogawa
Silent Mother: do not speak or write.
Remain in the voice
the only sound a
wordless word.
You are tide water
on the raft begging
to draw me away
from this blood-drugged
country.
Martyr Mother
across the sugar-beet field:
Protect us with your
pain, the red flames.
Young Mother at Nagasaki,
am I not also there?
Gentle Mother: we were lost
in our mutual destruction.
Fear is a Thief / Victoria James
Cotton balls in my mouth
soak the fear quickly.
Quickly expanding,
suffocating, numbing.
Play the ace against
a brain fit for a Type A
host it feeds off of,
thrives on. Pop
a silencer on it, silence it.
Hours begging for silence,
safety, and ease plays front
while life, real life, plays
behind the scenes —
easily looked over.
Dance of the Fireflies / Jonna Kihlman
The dance of the fireflies will take you across words and seas,
Through hidden doors and closed-off realms.
You’ll spread out your wings to join them in flight,
Diving into the ocean, flying to the mountain’s height.
Let the wind flow through you and catch the sunset’s flare,
As millions of stars catch in your hair.
that will b all (an Ekphrastic poem) / Katie King
Tupperware, Lasagna / Micah Mackert
It’s popular to take drugs so you can work more.
I think about it when I practice for the grave, or, “meditate.”
There’s so much to be ashamed of. If you don’t know that
is the greatest shame of all. But it’s not that sad.
People are going to kiss also. You wonder how many times.
In cartoons the kiss would butterfly off the screen to you.
In cartoons, you’d have to do what the writer made you.
In fact, you’d have to be only the skin that walks
the writer’s thoughts around. But the writer would feel
through you. Sharing a nerve during a stimulation,
a spaghetti string of pleasure or pain
momently spanning two muzzles,
the dog of your nonexistent body
and the dog of my overhearing this
now, as I jerkily peck it to life.
You’ll never know how good this feels—
drawing myself into the poem
into our skin. It’s prenatal,
parietal. Gone.
It’s why they make posters of paintings.
It’s why we can dance and converse at once.
It’s why our species shades its lamps.
And if you don’t already hate mondays
it’s why now you will.
Twenty-Seven Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
We
keep
looking
for
the
center
of
the
universe
In
hopes
of
finding
the
center
of
ourselves.
But
here’s
the
thing—
If
there’s no centerThere are no edgesTo fall offOr butt up againstNo center to run towardOr away
fromNo time to get Tangled up inNo looping thoughtsNo sharp edges to exploreNo walls to fall
from or dive from Or scaleNo way out No way inNo reason to pushOr be pushedNo
reason to spinOr danceNo reason for seasonsNo birthsNo birthsNo reason to love again and
again and again……………………………………………
Smoldering Heart / S. Salazar
It’s always fire season.
Above smoldering roots,
snow pads the ground, now infused
with smoky cedar and douglas fir,
some fancy restaurant entrée
nobody ordered. Zombie fires
are named after a creature so gone
it’s lost its spirit. So gone that
no amount of digging deep
can cure what ails it.
Day 26 / Poem 26
And so I wage war on carpenter ants in my roof / Colton Babladelis
Golden light breaks jagged
Bitten by shining black mandibles
The sun can be so deceiving
At this time of day
Scorched earth policy feels
So permanent, maybe I want
Some solutions to
Last forever, sawdust falling
In piles that blow away in
The wind, I burrow into the wood
And chew tunnels to the heart
Of things, to the meaty point
Of it all
I don’t have many enemies
These ones I’ll take to my
Grave or theirs, one of us
Won’t make it out alive
Feather and tar the roof
Something has to work eventually
Curses, maybe, will take hold
It’s so much responsibility
To own things, important
Things, like houses and
Roofs, so much responsibility
To wage war over things
Like shingles and rafters
Overfull, Overripe / Caroliena Cabada
As sunset deepens, I eat my fill of
all the fruits of early springtime. My teeth ache
from how cold the berries that hang low above
the ground—overripening. I will take
more than I can take. I am this way with love,
too—waiting so long that the flesh bruises mauve.
Everything is precious at golden hour:
jeweled berries, sunlight, and this love of ours.
Sign I’ve Made It / Victoria James
A small sweet ohhhh
dances on the leaves,
crunches with the rocks.
A little mouth opens wide
for a slimy wriggly worm.
Sure thinking quickly
overshadowed by pure
excitement and wonder.
A sweaty hand holds tight
to my finger. Wobbly legs attempt
to navigate bumps and gravel.
A splotchy red face,
wet sticky hair matted
to his cheeks from sweat.
His eyes wander, taking inventory
of all the people who are his.
Gossamer Clouds / Jonna Kihlman
I laid in a field of grass,
watching the gossamer clouds pass me by.
The sun warmed my eyelids and tickled my cheek.
I sensed the scent of water lilies, hiding by the creek.
I felt a sense of longing aching in my chest.
A quest to find a home, a place to rest.
But the clouds didn’t care about my woes.
They just sailed on by, watching the earth below.
Seeing all our moments come and go.
Everything beginning and passing through.
Soon evaporating into a mist.
Like the final light of summer or the first time we kissed.
booger’s basebull ghazal / Katie King
what other sport must you don a belt and hat – My graduation you surprised me
stand around in the dirt like time is an open casket
because my brother loved the game
\what other sport is theatre in the round – My baptism you surrounded me
hear the coach saying good swing you got this like his words matter
because my brother loved the game
what other sport has food pairings hot dogs popcorn bubble gum – My home, run
get a stack when you catch a type of ball I don’t understand the glove, fruit
because my brother loved the game
what other love do you gape without – Your love, safe. Brother, make contact.
open mouth like food could feed it
because my brother loved the game
wish I was there to bat away the bullets – Your presence, out
fuck those blue clueless cowards
because my brother loved the game
m&ybe Booger can bat a ball, Your fate, foul
just when we need you back & justice for all
because my brother loved the game
Continental Breakneck / Micah Mackert
I came down here to criticize these herons
for how they parent, but fell asleep. And now—
the bank is dissolving, the baseball diamond
sliding into the Mississippi, water is already
mudding my third bases. This year’s
unfixed nests bob by like mail
in a mail system, urging their hard, white
envelopes into the arms of certain destiny
in Galena, IL; Viroqua, WI, Elko/New Market, MN;
Shipshewana, IN; Cut and Shoot, TX; Chugwater, WY;
Bucksnort TN; and Hungry Horse, MT; all towns
I woke up and ate eggs in. And I’ll eat eggs in yours too.
My long blue legs are running there now.
Twenty-Six Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
”Planetes”—Ancient Greek for planet,
meaning: the wanderer.
How lonely the planet
that can no longer wander.
To stay in one place and circle,
unable to see beyond your, own
limited sphere.
Per second:
The earth travels 18.5 miles
Light: 186,000 miles
A blink: .4 seconds (can a blink travel?)
II
We’ve heard: when we look at the stars
we see the past.
Our nearest galaxy, the Andromeda,
is a slide show from back 2.5 million years.
We have no idea what it has become.
The same would be true for anyone
peering up at our Earth today:
They would see only who we once were.
Not how we have changed.
III
How long does it take someone
to see you when you wander by?
When the light from you reflects
on my eyes
you are already gone
and I have wandered away from you.
Dead End Road / S. Salazar
My friend told me not to move to these quiet highways and gusty straits.
I settled there anyway, one stubborn chica refusing to be told
what she can and can’t do, picking a road and sticking to it.
I cruised leisurely before popping gravel faster than bullets.
Once I saw white picket fences, I followed them for miles,
not a symbol for keeping in or keeping out, not a symbol for
a marriage and a farmhouse and 2.3 children, but fences as blinders.
I spent evenings by my bedside praying for a sign, but didn’t see one
until the road before me simply could not go on. Before I had to say it
out loud: I’ve gotta turn around. Doesn’t matter if it’s a 3-point turn
or a 50-point turn, I’ve got to buckle up again, eyes on what’s in front of me,
above me. Embrace the blinking in the stars, embrace the stardust blinking in me.
Day 25 / Poem 25
We make this backyard our haven / Colton Babladelis
Sugar sweet and charcoal burned
Sparkle-sparkle-shine
Sprinkler coats the back yard
Slick and shiny, my thirst be quenched
When we met I spoke a mile a minute
Mouth moving faster than my heart
Was beating
Fingertips shyly reaching out
Branches in the crowns of two
Hardwood trees
Rustling in the wind, hoping
For some contact
Block of clay cut from the hillside
Mold my heart into a terra cotta
Pot, my skin pliable and ready
For your fingers, press divots
And fill me with wild flowers
And lavender that the bees
Turn me into a sanctuary
Rough in the frame of 2x4s we
Swing from the silver maple
Hammock hung haphazardly
From octopus like branches
Hand of Buddha, names are funny
Things with a lot of power
And no short amount of prophecy
I knew I loved you when I
First heard your name, when
It first crossed my tongue
Bats in the dusk swoop
Low, open your mouth
Greedily kiss me full and true
Wishing well open to the sky
With purple borealis irises and
Yellow noonshine Haarlem tulips
Only a limited view of
The sky from down here,
Fairy lights and bedazzled trees
Pollen in my throat
That flowers may grow
To cut and to decorate the kitchen
Frogs in the Stomach: A Burning Haibun / Caroliena Cabada
from the text of The Archaeology of Mothering by Laurie A. Wilkie
How to Savor this Moment in More than a Polaroid / Victoria James
Duh-Dum — kick start a metronome
to memorize how our souls
came to life. Direct a symphony
with our beats — sway side to side.
Record it. Play it on vinyl.
Two-sided love story:
one for their eyes,
one for us only.
Feel the melody on your
tongue, through your skin,
everywhere a whisper.
Intoxicate me by words,
keep me twirling
in each second of you.
The Goddess of Destiny / Jonna Kihlman
She stood unwavering in all her might,
The goddess of destiny, weaving threads across time.
She knows hidden passages and spellbound signs,
With a steadfast hand, she rolls the dice.
MARCHING ONTO WAR IN COTTAGECORE / Katie King
FETCH THE VAGNUS NERVE BATH OIL
THE EARTH NEEDS THE HIMLECK
MICROSCOPE ON SIMPICITY
LET IT A NEW PHILOSOPHY
I LIKE YOUR HAT YOUR DRESS LOOKS SWELL
YOU PLANT CABBAGE & THRIFT
THESE ARE RESPONSIBLE THINGS
COMMUNITY SERVICE IN MACREM&Y
MEADOWS & PHONE-FREE SOLITUDE YOUR WISH
DAFFODIL SPILL
BUTTERMILK SWAY
THIS WAY THAT WAY
LEFT LEFT RIGHT LEFT
CLOTHE CONSCIOUSLY THE SPARROW
WALK THE SIMPLE NO CAMARO
Kosmos / Micah Mackert
(Order or adornment)
Sarco means flesh in old Greek.
Like sarcoma, a sort of tulip of skin.
Or sarcasm, which is to rip its
petals with thorns. And we all
have our pet phagias—
Zoo-. Copro-. Oo-.
(animal). (shit). (egg).
If words could be ingrown
zoo would be. From zōion, animal,
to the place I saw those snow monkeys
catch a big goose, the meander
of its black velvet neck among
their many silver hands. Prisoners
breaking into the asylum.
And,
in the zoo of the human form,
or sarcophagus, or flesh-eating, we now see,
from the common phrase
“flesh-eating-stone”
the nickname, in toga-times,
for a special brand
of limestone
that made decomposition
easy peasy.
As facts, this homely wreath
I’ve been weaving simply isn’t meaningful.
That flesh-eating-stone is the oldest
ad slogan
isn’t either.
Twenty-Four Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
We spend a long time waiting.
Waiting to arrive
Into ourselves–
Waiting to leave
From ourselves–
And yet, always coming back
Around again–
Unlike the child on a carousel,
Already wizened,
Who just wants to stay on the ride.
She knows once she steps off
We spend a long time waiting.
Waiting to arrive
Into ourselves–
Waiting to leave
From ourselves–
And yet, always coming back
Around again–
Unlike the child on a carousel,
Already wizened,
Who just wants to stay on the ride.
She knows once she steps off
She’ll have to wait on a long line
Just to get back on again.
And the white-winged horse with the crown
The one she’s been longing to ride
Will be lost to her.
We spend a long time waiting.
Waiting to arrive
Into ourselves–
Waiting to leave
From ourselves–
And yet, always coming back
Around again–
Unlike the child on a carousel,
Already wizened,
Who just wants to stay on the ride.
She knows once she steps off
We spend a long time waiting.
Waiting to arrive
Into ourselves–
Waiting to leave
From ourselves–
And yet, always coming back
Around again–
Unlike the child on a carousel,
Already wizened,
Who just wants to stay on the ride.
She knows once she steps off
She’ll have to wait on a long line
Just to get back on again.
And the white-winged horse with the crown
The one she’s been longing to ride
Will be lost to her.
And so she hides.
Feeling a slight movement under the prancing legs,
Her heart already in wings
As the gate opens and the children rush in looking
For the horse she now sits upon–
Waiting for this ride to nowhere
but in her dreaming mind
Begin again.
Bonfire Offerings / S. Salazar
Courtyard colored paint for unfinished bedroom
Dandelions and horse radish pulled from your flower beds
Take me as I am rolled like a blunt
Menthol vapor
Vapor through your nose a whisper
Empty tequila bottles stowed overtop cupboards
The women in your phone
You, a back pocket
The back pocket of the wrong woman
Unlocked doors of your house a metaphor
A metaphor for everyone but me
One-day efforts to re-link
a
bro- ken
chain
A different ending
Day 24 / Poem 24
Haiku for Thursday with the boys / Colton Babladelis
We gather with such
Great hope to drink beer and lose
Weekly trivia
I’m taking you with me / Caroliena Cabada
Body Map of an Inked Lifetime / Victoria James
Elephant
Ears, face, and body spell Joy
a coincidence noticed after
the memory of grandma joy
was placed there with all
her wisdom and grace.
Adventure Arrow
because why not —
it may face the wrong direction
it may hide under a watch
but it pierces my soul,
adventure — bullseye.
Starfish
A little too big, yes,
but it carries ink and lead
belonging to me — a doodle,
a daydream of a place I reach
for when life is too real.
Sunflower
No color — it’s implied.
Pick up one life to build
another in a new place.
Sunflowers surround me
lay me to sleep, to pick
me up to thrive again.
Flowers
Lily of the valley weaves
daisies and leaves — pop
of color, pop of scent,
little surprise every time
a door is opened up again.
Flowers II
Numerous petals of Dahlias,
twists, turns, flips, of peony petals
all mixed into a bouquet of gray stippling,
because the mind paints
my picture, colors in the book.
Stegosaurus
You read that right.
There’s a matching one
on the inner ankle of
a best friend in another state.
Journey through life,
trees, no extinction here.
Smoky Mountains
Framed in pinecones,
trees and limbs — ours
intertwined — warmed
from sunshine and closeness.
Freeze frame us here,
let’s always escape here,
sing home, here.
Lost in the Waves / Jonna Kihlman
Your eyes held a question I couldn’t answer.
Your hands reached for me, but I ran away like a trickster.
I swam in the ocean, my arms wide and strong.
You watched from the beach, wondering what had gone wrong.
I turned back to the shore, trying to find you,
But all I could see was the ocean behind me.
I swam and swam to get back to dry land.
When I finally arrived, you were nowhere to be found.
Now I travel the world in search of you again,
Hoping one day to see my long-lost friend.
Reasons your cortisol levels m&y be high inspired by four mystics / Katie King
A Parting Duet with Harry Belafonte / Micah Mackert
Judgment is a skill, it takes
the wind out of you.
What’s not right is not wrong
it’s not right.
Left to right is the tempo
Between little Lulu and Susan Lucci,
hoist those skirts a little higher.
A wisecracker and a Venetian spritz.
Between curler and crossword
a Sunday of games
goes all day.
Between the squat TV and the lacquer cabinet
a dry ponytail
in a red vessel.
Between robe and gown,
she goes up in the air to nap on wide lace;
she comes down in slow motion
with drama, and a clue.
Between barley and boiling,
add the sour cream.
We’ll be back from the courthouse
in time to nab Santa,
next year.
Between a screwdriver and a winston
a dance with no title
to overrule the shadow
of a doubt.
Between exhale
and exhale . . .
Hulls in ash.
Forgotten Farsi.
Purple satin scarf
full of brooches and Dukakis swag.
It takes a hurricane in all kinds of weather.
It takes the wind out of you.
And between?
A woman on a bench, in black and white.
Ok, I believe you.
Twenty-Four Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
We spend a long time waiting.
Waiting to arrive
Into ourselves–
Waiting to leave
From ourselves–
And yet, always coming back
Around again–
Unlike the child on a carousel,
Already wizened,
Who just wants to stay on the ride.
She knows once she steps off
She’ll have to wait on a long line
Just to get back on again.
And the white-winged horse with the crown
The one she’s been longing to ride
Will be lost to her.
And so she hides.
Feeling a slight movement under the prancing legs,
Her heart already in wings
As the gate opens and the children rush in looking
For the horse she now sits upon–
Waiting for this ride to nowhere
but in her dreaming mind
Begin again.
Ya Girl? / S. Salazar
Not anymore. Nah,
she became an atlas,
not that guy holding the entire world
on his shoulders, but a book of maps.
Bound and boundless,
an endless combination
of where to go with vibrant illustrations and
photographs directing her toward her best life.
Maybe she shoulda been
a damn almanac instead,
intricate predictions of life’s important pulses,
filled with important info, dates, phenomena—
things her body’s void of.
Or maybe she should still
be an atlas, the tiptop vertebra one.
She’s been shouting at her amygdala
to extinguish the sirens
blaring against taking
chances and trusting people with her heart
when the inner atlas shoulda whispered
to its cerebellum neighbor,
balance, balance, balance.
Day 23 / Poem 23
I come of age in the Age of Plastics / Colton Babladelis
Awash in a sea of crude
foam and waves of polymers
it’s been too many years
where once beach rocks
rolled, rubbish lay in speckled
heaps, walk on the surface
of the oil slicked water, we
are this roiling mass, endless
depths of the coal dark earth
our skin and bones cast aside
greed fills my stomach, blood
and sinew brittle and plastic
this love affair we have
Soft Falling / Caroliena Cabada
Cherry tree branches heavy with flourishing
and blossoms shaded tongue-pink, so
fragrant spring breeze like blushing but
brighter than blood, less ruddy. Rusted
ball-socket and hinge joints scraping,
sound cicada-like screaming in the trees.
At least the petals soft-fall in montage.
I want to love slow, more than fine parts
sublimating ice so melting into rain.
Pirate Ships Shoot the Soul / Victoria James
I need an escape from the noise
from the devil in my soul,
pushing intrusive thoughts,
pulling imposter syndrome.
Escape what I should’ve said,
should’ve done, should’ve wanted.
Escape where the constant unraveling
of my identity magically calmed.
It could be mountains surrounded
by gravel, path deep into hiding,
concealment of the devil.
White stone cliffs plummet,
murky water below
blurring an unknown identity.
I could shoot a bullet through the noise
force silence to rest on slimy river rocks
in the abyss. A lone canoe floats, isolated in the middle, anchored to the world.
Pirate flag waving in the breeze
daring me to let it all go, to steal
my own treasure amongst
the nothingness here.
Life on the twenty-third of May / Katie King
(a note from a rainbow baby on her birthday* to her over the rainbow mom)
It’s beautiful here mom
Thanks for bringing me.
*written at age 36, the year before she birthed me at 37
Geolocution / Micah Mackert
When you are asked
to sing me into being
I don’t blame you that you
got freaked and bolted.
I’ll just tell them I was born wrong bone wrong—well
I’ll just tell them whatever I want.
My beard of nerves
reaches to your static, your tableau,
like screeching owlets
forking their hollow
throats at you, it’s time to shave
my feelings off.
Waking to rain on small leaves.
Walking to then break into sprint.
Running on the sopping world.
Overshooting the stoplight a hair.
Arms full of cell phones like the dreams
god uses to track you down and
connect to your personal hotspot.
Twenty-Three Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
I have trouble with the word inhabit.
Like to inhabit a body or a planet
or occupy a people.
The word implies ownership and yet
cannot help showing how unsure
of itself it is—the transient nature
of its inhabiting, dwelling
here and there, never fixed,
never really owning what
was never given to it to own.
But, sometimes inhabiting a word
gives me great pleasure.
Especially a word like: Smile.
Both a verb and a noun it always belongs
to its face.
Smile cannot help but be cast as flesh,
flesh in its entirety turning up into itself,
so the whole of the body reacts in response
and too whoever the body in the flesh
of its experience touches.
As we manifest the word the word reveals itself.
I can inhabit it, yes. I can occupy it, yes.
But it was given to me to share. And spread.
One-Way Street / S. Salazar
I’ve come to like the quiet life: the orchestra of crickets and tree frogs
bouncing between the rows of raspberries and garlics in the garden,
the rumbles of dog paws sprinting through otherwise silent acres,
the hush of single lane highways for single car traffic.
I don’t do city driving, with its spaghetti noodle streets
and Picasso-painted grids. Inevitably, a right lane
becomes right turn only, and I’d have to take it
to avoid creating my own collision course.
Without fail, this right turn will lead down
The wrong street. A one-way street. Our street.
Not what I expected, but still
a collision course. One I can’t fix.
Day 22 / Poem 22
May in Four Acts / Colton Babladelis
Act 1: Old growth
Wind on rock, the month breaks apart
I use tricks, diversion of ice cold water
to slow things down, cross section of
my thigh, I’ve added another ring
of growth this spring.
Act 2: Foundational beliefs
Dig a hole right here and pile field
stones, one day we’ll have a view,
once I left the country right around
this time, a suitcase filled with hope
honeysuckle sprig pinned to my shirt.
Act 3: Ursus lotor
New neighbor moved into my backyard
bandit in the night, I leave the hickory
nuts for her while I visit on the back patio
one evening the whole family will come
down from the tree for a feast.
Act 4: Unexpected heat
Creatures of light and motion, my feet
finally come alive just as bees gather
in the garden, cottonwood fluff floats
on the lake in the park still as glass
motes of dreams suspended in the heat.
Wild Onion / Caroliena Cabada
This morning is my favorite morning so far:
an east wind rustling through wild onion blossoms
just coming up, pale purple and thin. I wake
up from another
morning after, warm light—warm skin. Everything
west-facing: witness the end of another
era, another life, another inside
whispering to me:
I don’t smell sweet, but I flavor this soft green.
Every dish lately is savory—I want
sweet melody echoes, a karaoke
tongue: sing another’s
final praise song for a lover, bittersweet
tasting with all of your mouth. This morning is
my favorite morning so far: a little
taste of tomorrow.
to curate a life / Victoria James
maybe my mind stays quick,
ever jumping, check lists,
reaching far ahead too soon,
to curate life that my son
looks back on and clings to
greengold inspidered web / Katie King
After S. Salazar
Did we touch the same texture of sadness, in rhythm & in doing so, are we starfish? Are we purple?
underwater bruises any closer to love’s boundary the orange stone the orange stone
Did you stand & hear Your mother’s whisper under the rocks, opening the blinds, strumming the guitar strings, glowing in the dark, I told you so.
But in the best way, the way a cloud asks if its years of shade wove enough relief
to shield you from despair on the hottest days she didn’t know of COVID of climate change.
You are left with sand sifting through Your hands, wind for a mother, wind who used to loop shoelaces
What is left but a sheet cake of utter hesitancy?
The uniqueness she encouraged just another candle to be blown out by his bland breath they cut the rainforest by this erasure
Her maternal view of Me once a shield against the world now invisible sword in stone
can a single man pull it out?
Isolation & lack of social network are mother problems no one will do anything about did you
Did you taste what is already on My tongue? Is that togetherness? Can it amount to that at least on paper?Move on, wait a minute. That water looks clear like at the eye doctor. He is younger than me now.
Sicilian Citrus / Micah Mackert
Of course we pucker at both ends.
But it starts with a lemon in the mouth.
With a cheerful name for expensive wax.
Of course your tooth will loosen and bleed.
Old scars opening to new life. Scales.
Blood mutinied against a failing vessel.
Of course the sea reaches around us.
Fronds terminating in poniard tips.
We’re firm of pith and pricked with pores.
Of course you need no yellow acid.
A pill like limestone, a pesky superstition.
A zesty plume from an ancient crater.
Of course, the pretense is the point.
Refusing to understand the racket.
Car-bombing a lawyer; placating a child.
A long passeggiata off a historic pier.
It always finishes stiff in the drink.
Of course we pucker at both ends.
Twenty-two Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
Sometimes, when the day is humid
And I am walking Henry near the pier,
He hugs the sea wall as he trots
Looking down into the brackish water
And I wonder with his black and white vision
What he sees in those depths.
He hugs boundaries, sniffing at the sea
like he knows something is beneath it;
he can hear the multitudes singing
with their sound bowls, a symphony
you can only appreciate during red tide
when the fish are belly up and bloated.
On their backs, splayed, offering themselves up
to the sun. Stingrays and eels and sharks and
flying fish– No, no longer flying. And not dolphins or
manatees. Somehow they knew to stay away–
Or I didn’t see them. Or didn’t see enough.
I looked away from the depths
of this world and its sadness. Paralyzed and
powerless, wanting to undo everything, And then,
the tide cleansed itself. And here,
Henry pulls me forward when I need to stop and see.
The Long Road Home / S. Salazar
I’ve clambered into my car again / so different than two years ago / so same / race car red paint a confident glow in the sun as I head to the grocery store / the office / the forest / the beach / away from your house / no longer home / another star-crossed story reflected back to me in my rearview mirror / I’m not confident about how to move on from this / the destination was supposed to be the remedy / remedy the repair / I filled the potholes with asphalt / avoided rush hour traffic / rerouted at every closure / delay / toll / your house in the rearview mirror fades / vague house shapes and colors / my eyes come into focus now / it hits me then / the road matters, but it doesn’t make / I’m in the same car / body / mind / no trade ins / just diagnostics and parts / only what needs to be replaced / and what needs to be replaced.
Day 21 / Poem 21
In today’s economy, what value hath your word / Colton Babladelis
Weigh for me your words
and promises, the oaths you’ve
sworn to yourself and to
me, how much are those
truths worth, two sides of
a coin, flip it and find out
Biting sting of aristocratic
betrayal, poison words and
poison tongue, keep no honor
in your wine glass, hold your
facade of graffitied marble
in high esteem, these are your
own corrupt gallows
By royal decree and local ordinance
or by divine intervention and impious
action, my word be a rainstorm
we really needed that water, by virtue of
this old heart, weigh for me my promises
in gemstones and my word in gold
Grief and Sweet Memory / Caroliena Cabada
Bones Remain Steady / Victoria James
After Frank Herbert
Anxiety is silent killer
that brings painful psychosis
I will steady my bones.
I will whisper to my brain —
let it weave in and out
of my soul — to escape.
When it skates out, carefree,
I felt the grooves of the blade
carve the ice, frozen inside.
When it’s gone, warmth remains,
melting the hard surface —
allowing flowers to remain steady.
Time Moves in Circles / Jonna Kihlman
church gossip / Katie King
this is spring
:
yesterday lemonade
today drama, wind & sh
untitled / Micah Mackert
If it’s a little game, why does it feel so bad?
Why do I laugh and laugh a grease
ring into this chair from just
how much thinking I have
to do?
II.
+
It doesn’t have to be complicated:
Do you remember,
we saw those gnats
come up from inside that root
that time?
Those bushels of reject apples?
I remember going there at noon
and just kickin’ ‘em around.
Just kicking those fucking rotten apples around.
+
It doesn’t have to be complicated:
do you remember when I spoke
with certainty? It was
a lie. I was nervous.
I was coursing with DNA.
I brought you here to show you
this pretty blue water tower and these lights.
There are so many ways to apologize
you can forget the whole thing.
Anyways, you get it, right?
+
I snuck up here to be alone
and worry about money.
To own your mistakes
is to make laborers of those whose properties
you admire most.
Do you remember feeling
engraved on the earth?
How good sliding down
the long divots of your name
must have felt to the drops of rain?
Twenty-One Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
I imagine the tomb.
I imagine the womb.
Walls of rock and tissue
each made for rising and falling and
weaving in and out of this form.
Each layer made of the same elements,
give or take a charge; each a
gate with timed entry opening
to a place we have no choice but to
trust, and the truth is this:
We have no idea where we are going.
All we know is we were made to go.
The problem is one of stopping.
Stopping the dance, stopping too long to think,
stopping thought, stopping feeling. Stopping
compassion and trust and forgiveness and love.
Midway in the womb, grasping.
Holding on
Midway in the tomb, gasping.
Holding on
to a moment made for opening.
Dreaming / S. Salazar
When I’m sleeping, I’m studying
maps on the back of eyelids.
My body, more often than my mind
knows the possibilities of what I’ll find.
Day 20 / Poem 20
We work against the drumming monotony / Colton Babladelis
Bouquet of bones and roses
Hands gripping tight to shovel and shears
Ground to dust under the millstone
Back sore in all the same places
I need to nap for ten thousand years
Or so
Calloused and rough like cracked granite
Nimble as a falling helicopter seed
For what do I rise today?
To build, to destroy –
Oily and electric creation side by side
With a mound of sawdust and rubble
To where do we march next?
Perhaps tomorrow it will rain
And we can take a break
While the thunder croons and
Throws a pail of water on our
Well built little sandcastles
Today I write in vain, that I may
Bring semblance of life to these
Sheer, shattered, and sodden words
Tomorrow I turn soil with spade
Coaxing growth from small things
Like seeds, upended and rich media
We work against the stagnant sense of
Entropy I think all of us feel, we work
For foolish reasons, like hope
Tracklist Waking Up in Lincoln / Caroliena Cabada
Intermission / Victoria James
Rinse me in a deep
pause. Hold steady
the noise bounces
each curve – water slide.
Spray over me in gold
cut from shards spit
from mouths in dirt.
Cover me in ashes,
burn it all away, burn.
Kaleidoscope shimmers
set me against you.
Wait here. This
is just my brief
intermission
The Silent Echo / Jonna Kihlman
I can’t silence the echo of your voice in my head.
It’s spellbinding me, whispering words never said.
Deep in the caves where I go to rest,
Where I sleepwalk at night, trying to find a bed,
You haunt my dreams, binding my arms to your chest.
Sunbeams are breaking through the cracks in the stone,
But I can’t see where they’re coming from.
our first time separated at Lizard Bridge / Katie King
My first lizard in years I see
at the crosswalk waiting for me I say ooh out loud and
then wonder about its thick skin on my butter bones
The hard grossness of its yanking cusp-mooned-tail I think of the lizard in the laundry room
my mother found stone crisp dead in 91
but could not bring herself to remove
It lay between us. Our first obstacle
Jump over it, she said from the staircase, while I wobbled, werewolf of a meltdown shaking My wavering ankles, milkbone Just jump over it. I
froze instead. Letting this betrayal become
a bridge only I could ever burn
This was not to be repeated again
Till death
The lanky lizard
Her blue eyes jumping
My first lizard in years I see at the crosswalk waiting for me I say ooh out loud
At the corner of walk and don’t walk
This was my first monologue
The geckos in Guam lined the walls
They, wet, did not dry, wait
Like southwest Lizards
seen stone crisp in 91
It was only in My mind the separation. The lizard bridge is just invisible ink. Bridges are only meant to bring us together. I feel you are still
on the staircase wanting me
It seemed like the soles of my feet were sinking out of themselves. I was nakeder than naked, my nerves were leaking out, bare skinned
& that dry lizard sure was sure thirsty for a
Long-awaited bead of sweat. We
fed the puppies born in that basement with a bottle dropper, whole milk till we buried them under the house in a large matchbox My mother used to light the stove one brown one white there were supposed to be more My brother said it reeked he was admonished for speaking ill of birth’s stench My mother advocating for the work of a vagina she lit a fire every night it cracked & popped much like the keyboard when one writes slowly in crackled spurts. I only ever write quickly like a frog leg boil
But the snake, the live snake on the outside step I had no problem jumping over in 92 & no real reason to. That one was very very becoming on me, they spoke of it for a while.
My father took a shovel to those things
I can only imagine
Two-Lane Blacktop / Micah Mackert
I.
+
Personae, I’ve been them
less different, less alike.
Like coats for any weather
they still go home at night
into their own black bags.
Bending at the hip
and at the knee
holding my wardrobe
trying to cross the line
and consummate myself
with my little personae.
+
I don’t drive, but in my dreams
I do and a chance lapse
flings us out into the river.
And I have groceries in the trunk.
I remember eating
honeycomb with you.
And those watery green peaches.
You forget
the tides are also at work
on the shores within.
+
It doesn’t have to be complicated:
Twenty days
I’ve been trying to tell you something
and I still can’t decide what
for.
Twenty Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
I
Some mornings, when I open the blinds,
I am so excited to see the gray clouds
And the weight they carry.
I can stay inside and not do, just be–z
sit with my own weight
And acknowledge what I hold.
I can be the lightning that cracks open
the darkened sky, and travel deep into those
fissures.
Or. I can rain.
II
Some nights, naked and free
of covering, I ride the waxing and
waning moon, shapeshifting
in the dark, any shape I want to be—
free of night pains and teeth clenching
and the tortuous retreat into
my own marrow–
I am free to form whatever
calls to me, and free to erase
that call and start again.
How we get There / S. Salazar
We can travel down freeways,
over beaches at low tide,
down switchback logging roads.
I’ve told you before
I can’t hit the brakes,
but I can. I have to.
The corners are coming up fast,
and overturning can’t be
the destination.
Day 19 / Poem 19
Like butterflies we too have summer skin / Colton Babladelis
Summer is almost here now, time
To shed our gray and cracked winter skin
See you somewhere green, the path
From then to now coils and blooms
Heavy handed with water and soil
I have good credit in the wild places
Climb with me from the ground, scale trees
Until we make cocoons and metamorphosis
The night grows loud with cicadas
And tree frogs and our thumping hearts
Something cosmic once came this way
I think we grew from spilled starlight
Scent of sand and heat lingers on your
Cheeks, a ward against the chill of night
Solar lights flick on dimly, no need to be
afraid of the dark around these parts
Faces in the trees cut and log them, today’s
Consequences are a field of daisies blooming tomorrow
The whole house is covered in webs and
We are both trapped predators and prey
Spring is almost over now, time
To come alive with cherry blossom skin
The Longer I Live / Caroliena Cabada
The sun breaks through the clouds before rain,
rain falls down and darkens the ground before I wake up.
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to make,
make of this morning that brightens before it shadows.
The longer I live, the longer I,
I realize the days aren’t a single forecast.
I’ve lived in places known for their cruel,
cruel summer heat and cold winter lake snow in April.
Where do I go for what I am used,
used to expect and used to remember? Remember,
things weren’t always sunshower clouds.
Clouds, when they’re right, aren’t always around. It will soon rain.
It will soon feel like another time.
Time plays tricks and terrifies us with its speed and its slowing.
The fringe tree on campus is growing,
growing and shedding its blossoms every new springtime.
I will walk by it when the sky clears.
Clear, but the day still holds the scent of rain. Rain again.
D an Index of my Purpose as a Woman / Victoria James
In response to Butker
Degree: I completed credit hours faster than my forty-hour work week.
Before, during, and after having a child I swallowed and spoke education.
I’ll flaunt those hours and that work — it wasn’t useless — I’ll use it.
Dedication: this family of three with a dog keeps my world spinning, yes — but my career, writing, and goals spins the colors of the wind, creating one solid shade of perfect.
Direction: to be whole as a collective couple or family, one must be whole as an individual. Yes, I’m his wife and his mom, but I’m also me — my own person.
To be enough for them, I have to be enough for me.
Dynamic (see also dynamite; explosive): constantly changing, reflecting, bettering, growing, dreaming — I won’t be stagnant — forever flowing.
Disdyakis triacontahedron (see also 120-sided die): largest life full of complex sides — don’t put me in a box. We can do it all, be praised for all 120-sides of us.
Dauntless: fifty shades of fearless — that faction chose me. A lioness protecting hers, ready to tear flesh from bone — dare me.
Denial (see also forgetful, see also busy): cooking, cleaning, or any sort of making at home folds to the bottom of the to-do list:
gets dropped in the junk draw
gets left for years
gets thrown out in the yearly purge
gets put back on a new to-do list.
Distraught (see also infertility, see also loss): in agreement many follow the yellow-brick road to motherhood to only find a tornado ripped through their dreams.
Should they not have dreams then?
Should they not be praised then?
Should they not be successful then?
Salted Breath / Jonna Kihlman
I lingered on your salted breath, your voice ringning through the hollows of my chest.
Ashes floated gently to the ground,
burning comets came crashing down.
Black clouds with lilac hues were floating in the sky.
We heard thunder moving closer with a menacing sound.
Stay still and hold me, close your eyes.
Feel my heartbeat through the end of time.
Your text My meta (enneagram) 4 / Katie King
It’s deep
& went all the way
through
No more trampoline
for awhile
The Farmland / Micah Mackert
In the farmland
the ochre putty we put on fish
that themselves have caught
the current disease
is the paste we lay a blob of
at the bottom of
the community cauldron
where the summer feast
is to be boiled to standard
and from whose skimmings
we will take our free pint
in praise of this form of work
and the ways it disrobes reality,
learns to turn to yellow and fall and fall
down corn crib down granary tower
down a mouthful of suds
and a sorry bubble
lifting toward Rockville.
In open land there is no shelter
for an emotion. It simply
isn’t significant.
Construction Season / S. Salazar
Slow down, my grandma yipes,
tossing her hand over my shoulder
like caution tape at the scene
of a crime. Wasn’t the point of being
here to get from point A to point B?
To leave the bumpy road for a smooth one?
It’s criminal how healed I’m not—
I traveled hundreds of miles
through potholes and construction zones
to get to something more concrete,
functional, only to wind my way
down gravel. I can’t hit the brakes now.
I did once, when the stop sign
was unmissable, when I thought
I’d reached my destination.
But there’s no destination,
only people and the journey
and what needs to be replaced.
What needs to be replaced?
Day 18 / Poem 18
How to be a poet in 10 steps / Colton Babladelis
1) Try desperately to become a doctor,
accountant, engineer, or really anything
else that makes rational sense (and fail).
2) Think about how you could sum up
all human emotion and experience into
one great poem (but you can’t find the
right words).
3) Talk about poetry feverishly (but only
while drinking coffee, red wine, or whiskey).
4) Avoid telling anyone that you’re a poet
(lest you are asked yet again to recite your
favorite poem).
5) Develop uniquely terrible handwriting
and a handful of overused metaphors
(attribute it to genius if at all possible).
6) Make yourself sick with nostalgia
(preferable if you do this daily and/or
on command).
7) Put on a playlist so sad that your
spouse cries (I swear this is a crucial
part of the process).
8) Find a favorite pen, refuse to write
if you don’t have it, and guard it like
a dragon guards its gold (bonus if you
have a favorite notebook too, but this
is less important).
9) Start a running note on your phone
to keep all of your ideas in one place
until you get home and have time to
finish writing them (not one of these
will ever turn into a complete poem).
10) Write the things long and short that
define your place on the earth and put a
spark in your soul (this is the only one
that really matters in the end).
I lost the Battle of Productivity but win the war / Caroliena Cabada
Let’s lose the day. I’m already
not doing all the right things.
So let’s do the wrong things
on purpose: eat everything
that clogs your arteries,
make something out of nothing,
write everything
except all the things
you’re supposed to be writing.
We’re already sad: let’s lose
productivity, too. Let’s make
bad decisions, remake
our to-do lists to make
room for sadness, a move
I don’t advise you to make
normally. But this day was made
to be lost. This day makes
me so crazy, so I choose
otherwise. I choose my time.
Silence them in Brass / Victoria James
A masked face reflects
in the shiny sticky sap falling
from the cavity of the tree.
Cap it in brass, protect it
from softening and rotting.
Let it bite down — teeth indentations
tear the flesh of those abusing
life they steal under their
dirty, lifeless feet. A flower
smashed by a heavy tongue,
with butterfly wings stuck on
the forceful sole — soulless.
Butterfly effect: the reflected
face sees the future of a breathless
world — desolation and hardness.
Lost in Your Hopeless Desire / Jonna Kihlman
Lost in your hopeless desire,
I roam the realms below.
Trying to find a sapphire,
That once enchanted me so.
I move rocks in underground chambers,
Searching for my gem of blue.
But it is hidden beneath a waterfall,
In a room I cannot breach.
from a college tutor re: arrests for mass lawn lounging / Katie King
Macular Regeneration / Micah Mackert
“For Greenland is a dreadful place
that’s never, ever green.”
—Traditional, West Indies
Out there in Willmar
is the hole your ankle broke in,
strapping in the immobile
till your thumb split.
Out there in Hollywood
is your lineage
unaccountably blonde,
unaccountably hitting
bed-time without a hitch,
your song on their pillow.
Out there, out here, and out near here
are the boys you’ve got left,
awake
in the flunder of night at sea.
Like Robert, like you down there
in the moveable darkroom,
the black velvet between you and
the worldsworth
of things looking—momently—immaculate
between the ugly smear
of time.
We have it too,
the knowledge of a crow
too proud to be or mean
more than a crow.
Out here in the real world
four of us will fly back to you
no matter how far
we’re driven from home.
Eighteen Lines at 11:38 pm, 22 minutes before deadline… / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
I find myself in the tiny holes
of an over-soaked sponge
Holding more moisture
than this form will allow–
liquid thoughts seeping
out of dimpled skin, all my words
fat, emulsified and lying in pools
on the kitchen counter– and dripping.
The energy of the night takes me
where it chooses and not where
I choose to live– I am drenched and drown in
what I cannot explain.
If only I can take in understanding
one drop at a time, like a slow-motion
rain, or in a bead of dew I have all morning
to embody–
the way a sea sponge absorbs the
whole of the sea while it too is held.
Everybody Talks / S. Salazar
about taking the high road, the one less taken,
he one to recovery. Sometimes broken ones. These roads were supposed
to lead to destinations, journeys with beginnings and endings mapped out with miles
and minutes, detours and speed traps. I tapped the path that yielded the fastest arrival time.
I took this road after you, after living in a house with footpad shingles and eggshell siding,
echo my only company. I expected my journey to resound with life. at the very least,
I hoped my car’s rolled down windows would wind tunnel harder, the warble
of movement startling me faster toward future peace. The cacophony
before the siphoning of spiral thoughts.
Bare minimum, I believed
I would boom
with self.
Day 17 / Poem 17
In a mad, mad world do that which makes you sane / Colton Babladelis
Charge it up, store the gigabytes and
Electricity and stormlight and performance
Reviews, put them squarely in my veins
We check the boxes and do these
tasks, day in and day out –
For Progress! For Patria!
For Industry!
Never meant to be caged, complacent
With hands tied to cubicles by
Electric handcuffs
I commit myself
To these little acts of
Rebellion
That which keeps me sane
In a mad, mad world
Coffee at midnight sleep be
Damned, acrylic still life of
A photo of some flowers with
The colors all wrong, diving
Headfirst into Lake Michigan
In May when the water is barely
Knee deep, it’s Thursday and I
Wanted to read by the fire, to
The woods I would go to stare
At the sky and have a smoke
The whole world must be a
Little mad, and so I do these
Little acts of rebellion
That I may remain sane
Rebecca at the Well / Caroliena Cabada
These are a familiar sight:
yellow-bodied ceramics
earing
mottled brown glaze.
Many different versions of
Rebecca manufactured:
a woman bending over a well,
drawing water.
Rebecca of the Old Testament,
the woman chosen based
upon her offer:
enough water.
The story fit well the view
of women as spiritual
household, the ceramic
embodiment of the sanctity
of the home. Rebecca
of the Well remained popular
through the 1930s, shifted
to nostalgia, a potent symbol.
seventeen m&y teach, but should they? / Katie King
You tell me a student must love
to write
and that if they love
to write
they will
every day
I am angry
at your educational violence
there are no rules in the game of love
to write
have you
ever played?
students, never let anyone tell you what
loving writing looks, functions or feels like
it is different for everyone
m&ybe you write on m&y 17th
& love it
& then you hate it every day for the next eight
years trying to find what was once there
& then one day again, the love – wow-
& another 8 years of nothing. of pitstop.
this is no less love than anything else
if “love” means feeling good, screw that
if “love” means daily forced actions, screw that also
take your pencils
& grind them up till they are the sand beneath your heels kick up the dust of tradition
& hate writing
but, if I m&y
hate it hotly
sweating like a child who got stuck in a concert their parents went to see but escaped outside to play
the bicycle wheel with a stick instead
Halfwitted Kinneret / Micah Mackert
Kinneret Pudding
More sleep would hide these ferrous patterns from me
Ungirdled I would fall atop the mat.
Most people shift too swiftly when out boating,
Upending beers and tipping cans of ash.
I bend to bow my heart below my kneebone
In honor of the mysteries revealed.
Lie back, go limp, your strip is showing ketones,
The danger of a snack before a meal.
Ungirdled I would topple like a daisy
Once ravaged winter deer sniff out our stash.
Ungluing from the iris into jelly
Scared of the strict confinement of the lash.
Seventeen Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
I write with my eyes closed
feeling the letters emerge from
my finger pads, letters with edges,
that kinetically cut through the skin and
slip into each faded key.
We pause. index fingers in rigor on the
braille-like bumps below F & J,
placeholders for the day when I will
no longer see, or that dark night when
I will open my eyes in wonder.
Sometimes my hands have to wait
awhile, the knuckles bent and brooding.
But, I’ve learned how to be an able
stenographer to my thoughts, taught
to type swiftly and feel for the keys sticking–
and that backspace of thinking, that still
finds its way to the page.
Self-Worth / S. Salazar
After Katie King
The shingles are a patchwork quilt
of metal and asphalt, of nature and nurture.
The foundation was laid down cracked.
No amount of effort, no to-do list,
no pre-paid materials can fix
what no one had the intention
of working on in the first place.
Now, each morning, beneath a new
roof, I write this reminder
in permanent marker
on the bathroom sink mirror
of my heart. Every intention,
first place, not just some
item to be crossed off a list.
Day 16 / Poem 16
Rewritten, recolored / Colton Babladelis
Look back at me
With all that history in
Your eyes, the austere and
Blue memories of those first
Few winters, smokey gray
Like the edge of a burnt
Page, incomplete and charred
Pale green of new growth
On the dead dry wood
Of the white hydrangeas
Flecks of orange sunsets
And bursts of phosphorescent
Fireworks on the fourth of July,
Look at me with honey
And whiskey in your eyes
All that history poured out
And rewritten
Advice / Caroliena Cabada
They’ll say you must feel some way about this:
joyful or scared, or both with equal weight.
I’ll say it’s no different from your first kiss—
something yearned for, lamented the long way,
and yet, when it happened, it was not bliss,
but something more concrete than that. This is not fate,
not inevitability, not your
end, nor your destiny. You are more than
what you were made into. I can assure
you of this: in that room is a human
who will make mistakes. Remember you’re more
than mistakes. They’ll say you’ll find peace within
you. That’s not true: peace is something others
can disrupt. Peace is another cover.
Hope Abandoned / Victoria James
Nothing was the same,
not that it had been before.
Time like muscles
pulled taut over bone.
Gray memories walk the satin plank
as if thread were to rip the last stitch.
Canceled minds in the abandoned
boat seemed lost forever.
Love is to open sky as
loathing is a locked prison.
If I should wake before I die
let me know the time has come.
The Blank Paper / Jonna Kihlman
The moon is out tonight,
Twirling under the violet twilight.
A ballerina dancing the performance of her life,
Like a star flying free beneath the sky.
The clouds conceal her like a jealous lover’s eyes.
I open the window; it is too hot inside.
A gust of fresh air flows through my hair.
I sit down to write some words about you,
But the paper stays blank beneath my unmoving hand.
So instead, I just stare out into the night,
Watching my memories sail away and take flight.
Phone Light/ Katie King
Tell me I am the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen since Monday
Tell me I’m candid, like candy & you want some
Tell me the way I speak moves you like a river & you can’t contain your floodtide
Tell me you actually want to hang out IRL. On a front porch. With rum and stroopwaffles. That you’re fluent in old timey friendship. –
–
Tell me I make this world joyful
Tell me your tastebuds outgrew me five years ago but you held on because I was a size two and you liked it that way.
Tell me you wish you were like me when I’m so unsure
Tell me you’re hurting, that the day is a dove you won’t ever catch. The dove is molting. Hairless and hell-shaven it darts its eyes like Orbeez – glazing under and over, such yolked eggs in a watry spool of woe
Tell me that grief is in your left foot but that joy, joy so sexual so taken over weakens your right also since the weight is too uneven
Tell me my lips are full like my dentist used to
Tell me I’m a catch. And worth knowing. That I smell sweet potato. That you love me. That it is m&y, and you love me! Tell me this and get pork roast rosy when you do
Tell me no one is worth loving more than me. And then do it – daily – do it. Say it with a daisy on my pillow when the wind sheaths inside the swarthy hearth
Tell me my legs turn you on. That my fire laughter is a hope-faucet for your daily soil grind, that it’s better than coffee
–
Tell me you have no truth only guilty phrases from your taciturn parents
Tell me you like texting me more than talking because you only want me as fingertip-entertainment for your boredom, that I make you laugh nine times a day, but you won’t carry me over a single mountain let alone molehill
Tell me the color of my eyes is an endless prayer because you wish her eyes were darker green, like mine are. It is everso Linkletter spring but Oh do you ever need a deep majestic-kneed midsummer
Tell me you’re broke. That viagra doesn’t work for you. That you hit her. That your mom knows. That your dog bites. You’re married. You take the ring off when she is not around and then again when I am.
Tell me that life with you tastes like cherry melon lard squalor
–
But don’t – ever – tell me that my phone light is on. I’ll figure that one out on my own.
Pillage Village II. / Micah Mackert
II.
I set the prophets aside, but
their rage catches in you,
loiters between your inner noons.
A man’s rage is a tumult, you might say.
A righteous man’s rage
shatters the reliquary of your
heart’s thin bone. Must we burn
the oil that smells so sweet?
If you ever
see the high star turn to face you
open your voice and sing
of coming destruction, the shame
of the people, your welcoming arms
will rise like blood past the breakers
of your singed lips. The prophet’s
offense is a hard knock to all.
There, dashing a crook against
a crone, a retired preacher is
secreting milk in the ossuary,
mortifying his brethren.
The place of the book
is writing in shadows, having run out of soot.
The chalk look of the moon is turned.
o hear! o hear!
cleave into chasms
houses of treason.
who deals in furious acts
will dwell in the local event
horizon of the serpent.
—A Shedding of All!
—A Shedding of All!
—A scattering of stones as of the paper of its skin!
16 Lines: Rise & Shine / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
in that gentle pause between breaths
two cells percolate—jumping
beans of matter titillated by
what dances between them:
glue forming
form forming
molecules fusing and splitting and
multiplying; a simmering
evolutionary stew…
Amoeba to jellyfish to a fish with a spine, and a spine with limbs—
a frog or lizard that makes that first leap to land, growing weirdly—
gargantuan—and shrinking again and growing wings and two legs and
two arms and a giant head and a hand holding a kiln-fired mug
patiently waiting with these percolating thoughts for, oh yes:
morning coffee.
Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente / S. Salazar
After Yasmine Seale
Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente
Eyes that don’t see— heart that doesn’t feel. If we don’t see it,
we forget it— Visionless, heartless— Memory an empty
chamber, heart its echo. Broken eyes lead
to absent heart. The forgotten heart
leads blindly. Does it hurt
if we don’t know
we’ve lost it?
Day 15 / Poem 15
And thus a sample of my soul was taken / Colton Babladelis
Paper thin cellulose membrane
Barely protecting my vinyl soul
Dust on the wind, love in the air
Voice crackles to the beat of Leon Bridges
Hands move busy and fast, sometimes
Too much coffee, sometimes nerves
Let’s dance a little bit longer, the night
Is still young, do you want to go upstairs?
Burnt espresso and red wine dripped on the page
Mixed with ink and spilled with such ambition
A ream of love poems half finished either
Too contrived or not grand enough
Cut herbs, the kind that tug on your memories
And smell like the last days of summer
Pile of flowers from my garden, lilacs
And peonies and really anything optimistic
Notes of blackberry, wild and thorny
Bouquet of aching muscles and fresh cut grass
More books than I could ever read
Paving a mud and gravel road
In Anticipation of Sleep / Caroliena Cabada
My innermost cave / Victoria James
Guilt hangs over me:
sweats out through half marathon training,
fights through pages for focus when I’m dipping,
no throwing, myself into a new world
mutes the TV and plays a little louder
coats my throat with a 9pm coffee
stares into my soul through a baby monitor
guilt hangs onto me when I’m thankful
for a silent alone cave.
Who I Was / Jonna Kihlman
When you look at me, what do you see?
A reflection of a woman I can no longer be.
She is but an echo of days long gone.
A soft whisper on your lips going through locked and sealed doors.
Her form has shifted from the ebbs and flows of time.
Like a stone shaped by the ocean and a thousand storms.
You have to let me rest and be still in my arms.
A windsheild that secludes me from the weather outside.
Forget who I was and embrace who I am.
Be calm beside me all through the night.
Together we’ll watch the first sunbeams tender light.
now discuss the fruit of silence all at once (a cento of writers that I think are hot) / Katie King
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
This m&y be me at My best. 1
I think it better that in times like these
a poet’s mouth be silent,
for 2nothing builds community like complaining 3
& My armor is flesh & spirit.4
It seemed a nice neighborhood
to have bad habits in, 5
but I am done with apple-picking now 6
to watch his woods fill up with snow.7
Pillage Village / Micah Mackert
I.
Days of the earth I love you.
Wilting in your sun I love you.
Grillin’ franks with a brew I love you.
Infant scorched at the beach
I love you and your corduroy hat.
Infant scorched in white phosphorous
I love you burning four days and nights.
Rivulets of clothed families
sputtering green and black I love you
are the soundtrack to all life, of the 80s
90s and today I love you. It is a form
of penance, we say. Doing my Sunday
chore, rigid with guilt, shallot, and oil,
almost mincing
my mind, firm guidance
of repression, I pray,
steady my slicing arm. Emotional
mummy-wrap, the desire to blend
oneself into the foundation
this time, to beam redder and redder
the more and more powder
you apply, to mean
enough for your betrayal
to warrant a curse and your organs
worthy of a clay dish I love you and my
solemn observations, nauseous
and a cop out in their cautious variety, transform
me into batting in your cured body, I love you
depository of remains, unrecorded atrocity.
Sour dead lodged in the earth your
meat and bones I love you, sawing
you off out of love I love you
And the no trace of you I love you,
no trace of what happened here at all.
Blue shapes taloned in the branches,
a vein of coal under your mother’s
home, and the aloneness I love you
I love you I love you indubitably,
as nonna said. The grief
of this exercise, I haven’t seen
the sun all day. When it became time
to make money, I set the prophets aside.
Fifteen Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
I hear the wind.
The day is mild
reminding me
I should be mild
with myself.
Today, I can
be a gentle
breeze freely
moving in and
out of this Self.
The way, You
Lord, move
so gently
in and out
of me.
Reeling / S. Salazar
i think of myself as a cycle breaker
but really,
i’m cycle broken
Saturn’s rings,
unending collisions
dust to dust
Day 14 / Poem 14
Paella vegetariana en Malagueta / Colton Babladelis
She’s my kind of sunrise
palms swaying dancing into
the night to covers of
English rock broken glass
and spilled drinks – ZZ Pub
dancing over hot black sand
apricot juice on my mustache
on you. Careful now this sort
of happiness is fragile and
sweet and it’s so ripe right
now – did you go to the
market? Figs are in season
I want to eat them while I
watch the waves and
marvel at the constellations
strewn through your freckles.
Polaroids on the beach
this little bit of umbrella shade
is just for me and you
high noon and cool
seawater some things are
older than we can count.
My heart swells and outgrows
this bottle of rioja, outgrows
and intakes the night
moon on the bay kiss
me on the balcony
just before sunrise.
Hide / Caroliena Cabada
I imagine your mother
closed her eyes and said
you have five seconds to hide,
started counting, sing-song, before
you were ready.
I imagine you found
a place you were always
safe and sound, but
the war—the war
finds everyone, even
under the floorboards
where your brother could never
fit, or behind the cabinet
where your sister never looked.
I imagine your surprise
when your mother played
a game, unprompted,
the delight that cut
through the terror. I
imagine you are still hiding.
Void Reflection / Victoria James
I look into your eyes to find me
reflected there, only to find
empty space never meant for me.
One Evening in June / Jonna Kihlman
I remember when we met a late evening in June.
You had a voice like silk through a summer dune.
You told me all your secrets and I told you mine.
As we walked on the boardwalk you reached for my hand.
A promise was given, but not said outloud.
I put all my trust in you through the noises of the crowd.
We were nineteen, not yet weighed down by the burdens of life.
We believed in tomorrow on that warm summer night.
curved & stainless scoops meaty orange-flesh / Katie King
Cantaloupe slice moon bird
nest 45 degrees white snow trail
why do I care so much about being
cherished? My mother used a melon baller
I became fascinated with kitchen utensils and
anything that could surgically organize what so
wasn’t Your inside of a soft fruit warns
me You m&y cherish My cantaloupe slope
& belvedere taste but Your love
I can only turn to toxic waste
III.III / Micah Mackert
Quiet. There is a vermin
writing me.
Every stroke
its claw
taps my thought,
I’m puppeted
subsuming
a one-way freaky-friday.
Get me out!
Get me out of the poem!
Fourteen Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
In Yin, I hang my head
surrendering to the way gravity
forces me to bow and leads
me into this space
where I can exist free
of form and yet embraced
by it. I am not just a letter “C”
curved into myself, but fully nobody.
It feels good not to look
up into my own eyes, Lord, to release
myself from reason, and ease
into a pose where I can bend to
your will, and be so utterly
complete and empty.
Growing Up / S. Salazar
Every time my parents blew up a kiddie pool for us in our yard,
someone moseyed through, dragging a knife down the sides
until the basin was nothing more than a pale plastic carcass.
Every time my parents were called to work, I barricaded my siblings
into our living room, plushies, Legos, and door locks expected to keep us
safe under my protection. Then one time, after a weekend away
at our grandparents’ house, us kids lulling our sleepy heads
on the back seats of the pickup truck, I barely made out
what the headlights beamed at. Against midnight sky
stood tall cedar beams, bound together by metal brackets
and the desire for a childhood. We dashed from the car,
across the yard, to explore our new world, to finally play
as if we weren’t surrounded by total darkness.
Day 13 / Poem 13
way back on memory lane / Colton Babladelis
devil in the details
forget me not
forget me not
forget me not
left hand out of sync with the right
mouth no longer speaks for the mind
ceramic mug, tan and decorated with
pressed leaves and pine needles
lined by herringbone thin cracks
fingers of golden fate flaking razor
sharp arrowheads, mercurial
memories slip past
one-by-one
something once important leaves
on the wings of a cardinal
something less important
leaves after breakfast
independence, once
ironclad and infallible,
a memory now
unto itself
memory-
now
Listen Up, Columbia! Portraits from a campus is crisis / Caroliena Cabada
Loving him is Blue / Victoria James
as in the way the cool
color wraps around me,
calming my eyes,
quieting my mind.
He’s blue like an Oceanwater
blast, blasting off into a quick crawl,
Not an Eiffel 65 blue,
but a party like a Rockstar
blue. Blueberry pop rocks,
pop excitement in the sky
on the Fourth of July.
Blue planets swirl with shining
stars — lighting up my life
pulling me into an indescribable
experience meant for me only.
The Shadows of the Sunset / Jonna Kihlman
Through the shadows of the sunset, I whispered your name.
As the seagulls gathered at dusk, yelping my pain.
I was not sure if I would hear from you again.
Eleven days had passed with no sound from your lips.
I waited for your call and tried to be brave,
Though my heart was shattered by every message unread.
Were you off on an adventure and couldn’t be found?
Had you decided to leave me and sneak away into the night?
The summer breeze was warm, but I felt cold,
Simmering through memories and words never told.
twelve m&y tire / Katie King
being made of stars.
we can recognize hunger, thirst
Tiredness.
I think he is asking me
If stars have feelings
If they suffer. I know he is asking me If suffering is natural
worthwhile
We blow bubbles in the backseat. Try to snake the gum over our tongues &Aerate it
Meanwhile, the core of the star collapses under gravity’s pull. seems that stars, too, tire
Once there is no fuel left, the star collapse
You blow your first bubblegum bubble
You are angry that I didn’t see
We cuddle while we can, making time capsules of ourselves, knowing
In a trillion years
Any two points, no matter how close, will be ripped infinitely far away from each other.
&
By 1014 (100 trillion) years from now, star formation itself will end.
Last night
Auroras could be seen as far south as Alabama, as long as skies are clear.
I sleep through purples & pinks, saw dark at 10, called dark dark
& turned in
Italicized lines pulled from the following websites:
*What is the big rip, and can we stop it? – Space.com
How do stars die? – BBC Science Focus Magazine
Future of an expanding universe – Wikipedia
https://www.nbcnews.com/
Tangerine Dream / Micah Mackert
I’m thinking—
write as though
breakfast was almost
ready. Life will roll
back to you
like butter on a puffy
belly of pancake.
I’ll hear—
your voice. It’s time.
The magnetic
laptop clasp will click
as I rise and javelin
down the stairs
I will die on
one day like ghostdad.
We’ll sit—
ready to smile, but I’ll
be remembering—see how
quick I can reclaim
the narrative—I’ll
be remembering
that ghostdad is
bill cosby—
you see: those medieval
peasants were right.
There are spirits
among us, lying
in wait for a careless
invocation.
Those peasants—
I see them hunkered
with their baskets
of mugwort and ramps,
time falling through
their loose-woven
tunics like scotch
through a ghost
through ghostdad.
When I reappear you’ll be asleep.
Extra pulp hardening on my unwashed cup.
Security / S. Salazar
I don’t get it, you say as if I’ve just told you
the stars are made of God. Your whole posture is a rolled eye.
Are you really going to leave me for just any man
who will marry you? For a stupid piece of paper
that legally allows you to screw me over?
Is this what ants feel like as our colossal feet
create craters all around them as they try
to construct the lives of their dreams?
Grandma’s got dreams. She spent a month
in Alaska with her brother and never saw
Aurora Borealis. I get spending so much time wishing
on crossed stars, so when I heard the lights were gracing
the lower forty-eight, I packed us into my car with four flashlights
and a fleece blanket for our hike down the beach. From a sun-bleached log,
we tilt our heads skyward to witness nature’s magic. While we wait
for our show to begin, I think of Dad, who spent his life
touring the galaxies with me, of Mom, who creates stars
with her laughter, of Grandma, who’s a star beaming me home.
Look over your head, she says, her voice trapped in her throat.
Above us, a starburst blooms, fuchsia and teal waves pulsing
like curtains that protect us from our realities. As I gaze,
I realize the curtains are the ends of an angel’s robes, wings,
their hands placed over heart. The tears come as I witness how even lights
get the power of protection, safety, how Grandma has given me that gift,
especially when you wouldn’t. Without even asking.
Day 12 / Poem 12
Earth mover / Colton Babladelis
Maker of things, like
Places that feel home and
Games out in the snow and
Long grass, stories read
At bedtime like the midnight
Song of the whip-poor-will
Foundation carved from the
Mountain side, follow the water
Downhill, flow of gravity and logic
Carrying the sun in one hand and
A storm cloud in the other
Tenacious dreams buck the wind
Blowing straw blonde hair
Such great strength, tectonic
Breath that grinds to the bone
Split this world in two
And make something better
Western Nebraska / Caroliena Cabada
I want to be drunk / Victoria James
In the sense that my mind
floats on little waves
in the bayou — ripples kiss
the boat edge — droplets on my lips.
Drunk in the sense that I finally
found a serene acceptance
of what I can’t control — liters
I carry everyday transcend
into starlight — the stars swallow it.
Drunk in the sense that I hear
my overstimulated thoughts get lost
in the whistles of cordgrass and leaves
whisper sweet lullabies in my ears.
A Story Untold / Jonna Kihlman
Within her lies a story untold,
Of secret chambers and travels forlorn.
Across secluded mountains and brisk spring streams,
Through morning mist and forests of green,
All hidden beneath an unlived dream.
mother m&y I / Katie King
Who Dares / Micah Mackert
The real Atlantis, which I don’t care about, wasn’t.
The real Moses wasn’t, but I do.
The real self-care is a nationalism of one.
Its flag is the skin of the front of your head
so fuckably soft all alien knees hit the dirt
convulsing astride the gush. It’s not my fault.
You don’t need to love yourself
and you don’t need to love me.
There is no future where the body is good.
There is no past to resume
and no past where the body was good.
The robed Atlanteans
were rubbing themselves absently,
as we do,
used their pre-christian monstrances
(or tridents, I guess, who cares?)
to bash each other’s heads in,
gather a fistful of silver hair
and lug the form to the altar,
depositing their sacrifice directly,
as we do, in the ebbing warmth. It’s not my fault.
You’ll see you’ll sink
same as I do.
We part waters
on a fool’s axis,
borrowed kohl pens and beard adornments
trending downward in the drowning out sky.
Are they looking up laughing
at our crude sandal-bottoms?
The sin every day can be made evident.
The real sin—not to be bad, to be confused
about who your god is. Or, that’s to say,
about who your god would be,
if you ever learn
to use your existent body to speak
the real language
before I do.
Twelve Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
Upon reading of the death decree
of the Iranian rapper, jailed
for “Corrupting the Earth” to the nth degree:
The Earth, well-versed in corruption, quakes
with laughter at the irony of such assumption
and whips up a sandstorm to add a little grit
to song, a little bit of disruption for a nation’s
wrongs, grit that gets down under the skin
and into the mouths of those who claim to
speak for Him, when the Earth knows, deep
down in its core, hymns of love and peace
always settle the score.
Boats / S. Salazar
I’ve talked about carnage before,
and it doesn’t care if I shit-talk the vessel
or criticize the ship’s inability to hold the load.
The pieces will fall, sometimes into breakings
and sometimes into place. Even trash, given time,
becomes beach glass, with the right journey.
Day 11 / Poem 11
Together in the wilderness / Colton Babladelis
Would that it were so easy
I drink from your conversations
Silver vial of silken ink
Hand-in-hand through
Knee deep river water
Bridge is somewhere downstream
We’ll make our own crossing
When the time is right
I think I hear music in the hills
You must hear it, too, grand
And sweeping, side of a mountain
Slid away in symphony, little
Black cat hunting mice in the
Edelweiss, massif amphitheater – the
Stars sing to us in an alpine hymn
Share with me this tinged bronze cup
Of soft red wine, this cold and well
Earned beer, petrified coral kicked
Along on the trail, sharks teeth and
Granite stones rubbed smooth in the surf
And vaulted into the sky by angry farther earth
Hide in this cabin with me, net and stone
For a hundred years, I listen to your heartbeat
Wind running down the mountain
Should it be so easy
Dimeter / Demeter / Caroliena Cabada
Thunderless rain
crackling against
east-facing glass.
I’m never sure
what season is
coming, or where
things are going.
Hollow echoes,
embracing eye-
catching blankets—
everything warm.
I’m here, you’re still
over the clouds
falling quickly
into puddles,
as in, over
it, over rain,
over wonder.
Morning gloom and
glory opens
a door beyond
my closing hand.
Siren Lullabye / Victoria James
I dreamt of mermaid scales,
perfect hips, seashell breasts,
long seaweed hair
cascades down a shiny tale.
I wanted the cool magic
to rush into my veins.
I should’ve dreamt of a sea witch,
bright red lipstick, talkative body language,
loud opinions, the world at my
fingertips ready to take the crown.
A siren sharp enough to
flood voodoo into blood —
inflict her own revenge —
no questions to follow.
The Veil of Sadness / Jonna Kihlman
Sometimes when twilight settles over the sky,
a veil of sadness lands on the lids of my eyes
It makes my body heavy, not letting me rise.
I try to get up, but it pushes me back down.
I take a deep breath and watch the clouds.
The mist is spreading on the water’s edge,
the birds are flying by.
I tell myself that I will soon be free.
The night will pass through me,
and the dawn will let me breathe.
eleven texts my mother m&y have sent before we knew / Katie King
Plz b sure I see ivan a day u b 4 I go
—————-
I am coming over are u home
————————————————
whats up any reason you dont respond cordially?
———-
you will have to relinquish your totally obsessive
controlling nature, before you can ever enjoy what God gives Freely and is just waiting for you to accept, which is far more loving and genuine than you could ev er maintain, manipulatie or devise.
mom said that.
—————
don’t take things out on him let him know he has a safe place to go
I wanted to go on cruise
Be sure to lock upstairs door
Our side-by-side cabins / Micah Mackert
are dilapidating, zoned in kind in
the township of camaraderie, wadded
obviously in the outskirts, tall blonde grain
across the nation
turn at the T for the famous bread from here
the store so far we settle for what’s
about us. Our last acts of commerce
hardened in the shell of the grocer’s stall—
shame launches fleets of behaviors,
ingrown avoidances
pimpling the flat sea,
hunting a quest into a conquest,
an egg bound buzzard glugging rum
and becoming too depleted to preen,
a failure to lay, blight stalks the land
My tired cloaca.
Yours.
This pathological journeying
This fakeout performance
This country retirement and
This town with its details,
literally rural, distant. Distanced.
Turning our face so hard you can’t
get through it to look in the sky, that
unkind hope for a second story, a plot
more real than an actual acre
spattered with light, a single
entendre of illumination where
nothing is changed and spelt
germs pickle in the gush of honey.
The sun, parched ovum, your lid
glides down it in the final transformation
of your tract into a segment of orbit, your inside
a China noon your outside
your half of the night.
What you say you saw now cannot be shown.
What can be digested is an option.
Another day langoring inside you.
A failure to lay. An addiction to brine.
A saltbox shack. A hallucinated zoning.
A knock at the roost rough enough to
burst a fertilized yolk,
yellow as me when I moved away.
Eleven Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
Somehow, the sun rises
from beneath the trees,
shimmering from the ground up,
as if it had slipped in with
the morning dew and lay hidden,
waiting for the sky to lighten.
Over the course of the day,
it will play with all angles and shades
and the leaves on the cold side
will patiently wait for their turn
in brightness.
I Thought I’d Found a Love Poem / S. Salazar
On my place at the kitchen table.
This poem was actually a series,
a collection, of literal love poems.
The intention behind it.
Grandpa, with his 8th grade education,
doesn’t get poetry, can’t comprehend
why I prefer getting lost in words
over getting lost in the woods.
When I asked him about the books,
he said he’d gone to the thrift store
to find something for Grandma
but found something for me instead.
I dunno if they’re any good,
but you love poetry, and it’s love
poetry. I smile, gushing over
the poem gushing before me.
Then, I overanalyze, fixating on the stanzas
of Grandpa’s life, how there’s maybe
a few more left before the poem ends,
how the lines continue to deepen
with meaning. Even this poem
is a breakup poem.
Day 10 / Poem 10
Today was just right / Colton Babladelis
Dark and strong beer
Six years old, more
Expensive than I would usually buy
Today I feel is a good occasion
The oaks are budding
And birds visited my yard
While I stood outside
My old dogs
Had a lot of energy
And played for a while
Like puppies again
Yard was a mud pit
But I got my hands dirty
And now maybe some grass
Or clover will grow
If I’m lucky, flowers next year
It was a good day
And that feels like all the
Occasion needed, sometimes
Which Is / Caroliena Cabada
On the occasion of commencement, I
won’t say the obvious thing, which is
ceremony is just ceremony:
You already did the work, sacrificed
stability, did something hard, which is
still not as hard as perpetuity
of protest, of pushing for what is right,
of surviving from moment ot moment.
On the occasion of this day, which is
as any other day, except the night
brings curfew that you know must be broken.
When I look back on us / Victoria James
I won’t see
The dog hair all over the floors
Crumbs in every corner
Toys in every room
Dishes piled high
Laundry piles, some dirty — some clean
Long to-do lists
Shoes missing their soulmate
Plants dying of thirst
Layers of dust glittery
A house with everything wrong
When I look back on us
I’ll only see
Little pitter patters of feet running across the floors
Little hands feeding the dog with happy screeches
Late night cleaning sessions with you
Finally sitting down as a family of three for dinner
7:00am good mornings with you two
Putting down work to pick up my baby
Tiny shoes inside dad’s much larger shoe
Birds making safe nests out of plant pots
Little fingerprints grabbing at new things
A home that held us until we outgrew it
Web of Words / Jonna Kihlman
Your web of words tied me to you,
Weaving threads so thick I couldn’t break through.
Like tiny daggers that circled my arms,
Continued on the other side and bound my heart.
Whispering sweet nothings in my ear,
When all I really wanted was to see you clearly.
‘Cause what are promises spilled in the sand?
I’m bound to sail the oceans with no sight of land.
ten m&y protect / Katie King
Little Ones / Micah Mackert
+++
The heavy EV charges
into my dream, collapsing the bridge
back out.
+++
Many of us live like wading birds:
faces designed to snatch the pickle of our sweetest desire
from the brine of our tolerance.
+++
live feed
it takes as long as a snake
til the light comes back.
Clock up tonight, friend.
+++
Multiple intensities inhering in a single body.
Troubled hubble.
Interference and inference.
+++
ideas.
+++
a forlorn messiah grudging early Isaac his loopy intervention
+++
The fear of being a button-masher, a nullity.
+++
Honk If You’re Harkonnen
For I have read the signs
of a late stage circumcision.
Capitulations on your achievement—.
+++
His hand was bleeding red his scalp was crusted black
his muffin business was in the red and his new
SPF face lotion is stinging his lips. He was on tv.
+++
—thank you all.
Ten Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
Walking the beach,
skeletons
piercing my calloused
feet, shells who’ve shed
shiny souls, waves returning
to knead and mold
the entirety of me—
all I am, all I’m yet to be—
into this soft sand I stand upon,
this living breathing sea.
Self Portrait as Imprints in my Front Yard / S. Salazar
I scan my front yard with bruised eyes, exhausted from the first evening I spent alone
beneath my quilt, knowing I’d never feel another night beneath it with you.
Beside my porch, I manage to notice two imprints weighing down the grass,
depriving it of its usual morning dew. These depressions may remnants of deer,
or maybe a coyote couple, or maybe us, snuggled together like crochet patterns,
made with love tag stitched tightly to it, one warm body entangled with another.
I search for prints, for hints at their story, a hint at mine, because at some point,
one of these creatures steps away. I wonder if they took their journey together,
or if one chose not to follow. Which one? Did one awake in the night to gaze at the other
only to find the warmth snuffed out? Did one wake because its instinct murmured
your compass is off? We’re all animals, seeking the next great plain, the next clean stream,
the next best thing.
Day 9 / Poem 9
We go for tapas and then walk La Rambla / Colton Babladelis
Sticky and humid
My wine cup sweats
Rivulets of vino de verano
Truth or dare, these
Lines bend and blur
A pickpocket reaches for my
Wallet as I eat gelato
But jokes on him
I’ve spent all I have
Just to be here
To wander the Gothic Quarter
Towering medieval walls, a
Piece of art as a keepsake,
To drink on rooftops and
Marvel at Casa Batlló
I get now why summer lightning
Dances over Gaudí’s work
We walk to the sea, the
Mediterranean really is
Melancholy at this time of year
As linden and orange blossoms fall
One day the Sagrada Familia
Will be completed
And I’ll come see it again
Not Great, Actually / Caroliena Cabada
I’m having a time, like, I’m having
breakfast, right? And I think
the bread is warm and the yolk
is so yellow, and that’s nice,
but then I don’t have the time
to enjoy it. I have to leave
immediately for work, eat
on the go. I’m having a time,
but don’t have time, and isn’t
that terrible? I’m having
to prioritize, and I’ve never
been good with numbers
on a list, never been good
with order. The only thing I
remember from chemistry
is entropy: the tendency
of the universe towards dis-
order, and that’s what I mean
when I say, “Not great,
actually,” because most days,
I’m breakfast: sunny side up,
or over easy. Lately I’m
scrambled instead, an omelet.
I’m having a time, and I’m
not great, but I will be.
Manipulation of Antheia / Victoria James
Ulmus Rubra sways in the club
taking up space that she deserves.
Her drink sloshes down her arm
while she sashays side to side.
Liquid courage hydrating
her sappy sticky skin —
Keeping those who don’t belong
away from her. Passing off
sharp words, sharper actions
that would leave wounds
for years that maybe
she could grow out of — maybe.
A scar would remain for each carving.
Emerald green sequins flutter
in the breeze of human traffic,
little pieces snagged and ripped off
exposing imperfections underneath.
She needs room, room to dance,
dance to let go, go to be free,
free to breathe, breathe to grow,
grow to shake off the scars,
shake to make space for her.
The Speed of the Tide / Jonna Kihlman
Over my shoulder, I see the child I used to be.
She is trotting along, kicking stones by her feet.
Eyes wide with wonder, arms dangling free.
Lips red of strawberries, scrapes on her knees.
Should I tell her about the speed of the tide?
How the waves will erode her castle of sand?
I turn around to start but stop in my stride.
Closing my mouth, I step away with a smile.
nine m&y find / Katie King
What’s m is y
could be anyone’s.
Shrimp Cobbler / Micah Mackert
in his brain has passed away (elevated
levels of mercury — all fish diet).
A sea in mind and mud in mouth:
we’d noted distinctly
subterranean ideation
breaking out across
his speech. A majority
of such creatures
Are concerned southern neighbors Are
encroaching
Peacefully into his home.
Ancestral hunting grounds.
Tourists and refugees
exchanging autographs. Documentation
of movement in relation
to boundaries.
Tallied waves.
Hand drawn ratios.
Hatchery marks—
—vulnerable grooves healing and reopening.
Succumbing to a bloom of bacteria
bedecked crevasse in my heel unhealing
Pulsing. Almost Squamous.
I stepped out of the shower
and digressed, my garments
rent in lamentation.
My guilty eyes
treading in hot sweat.
Nine Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
Does the earth know it has aged? Does it remember its 18 billion birthdays?
Its bris? First pimple? First dance? First union?
Does it have its name on a ruler nailed next to a door, where it can reflect on how far it has come
—from the fires the storms the explosion of creation—and the ice and the waters and winds—
to this stage of relative peace and the quiet descending upon its evening shores?
Relative. Yes. It has its moments. Its loneliness. Its tantrums. Its sufferings.
It seethes, and it breathes—deep belly breaths into its hot molten core— and as it settles
into itself, it comes back to the day and the dawn, and the seagulls banking over its waves,
and the morning twinkle of rosy light. And smiles.
The Road / S. Salazar
that leads to Rome, all of them,
an empire can’t maintain
during construction season
isn’t a road at all
is Swiss-cheesed
with potholes
to Olympic National Park
to Craters of the Moon
to the Santa Monica Pier
with dips so deep it’s an ocean
I thought would take
me places
that’s actually the path more taken,
to salvation, standing ovation
away from the cul-de-sac
I was living
I drove on
a back seat full of before
not always linear
not always one-directional
never a home out
to some a coward’s highway
without your bright orange blockades
to find myself.
Day 8 / Poem 8
Birdwatching / Colton Babladelis
Almost sunset, doves below
My feeder, plump and content
Mourning coo sounds so much
Like an aftershock of love
At this time of day
One bushel of berries from the
Tree out back – no more, no less
I’ll let them go sour, go to rot
Pretend they’re champagne as
I devour them on greedy wings
When I was 20 I saw
A Quetzal, and I knew then
That I was destined to watch
For ghosts in the shadows, retrograde
Memories sprawled across the grass
Scatter seeds and suet
Songbirds are always welcome here
Birdbath overfull of rainwater
An echo of things to come, the
Dry season is just around the corner
If I Wanted / Caroliena Cabada
Seventeen Venomous Reasons for Dipsa / Victoria James
to kill you before she dies:
you silenced her every hissing request,
you plucked scales from her when she had none to give,
you broke vertebrae pieces off as a means of discipline,
you mocked her path in the sand and
drew new grooves for her to follow.
You spit burning insults as a means of control,
but hide as you might, she’s now on a roll —
you rattled her,
chased her tail,
asked for more than offered,
played with her like a worn out teddy
until she stopped trusting herself.
Stuck her with venomous words,
stunning her into silence and submission,
chopped her to pieces,
forcing her to grow a new body,
leaving her lifeless when you were done.
But she’ll be gracious — you won’t feel her venom —
you’ll be dead before you’ve realized your mistakes.
The Fox / Jonna Kihlman
One day as I walked, I saw a fox right next to me.
Her fur was soft as silk, and her yellow eyes gleamed.
The storm rolled in with heavy clouds, yet she stayed by my side.
I tried to get her to leave, but she ignored my pleas.
“Won’t you rather walk estwards where the skies are blue,
Where you can find shelter, lick your wounds andå worn-out feet?”
She looked at me calmly and replied like so:
“This is the road you must travel, and I’ll follow you through.
I’ll walk with you every mile of the way,
For I am your courage, and you need to be brave.”
eight m&y breathe (to be read aloud in one breath) / Katie King
Shetellsmetheartist’
f l o a t
Scholasticide Monthly / Micah Mackert
—After Ben Lerner
A kind of blind gouging
Yes, I still get nerves
into tomorrow, a bomb in time
Hitting the blacktop. The tears of the lord
and the joys of the people
are our best payment, could you
eleven-year-old violinist
There’s not much I won’t watch
Not a tungsten filament
no mercury no gas ionization no light
So real it’s eerie
now. Looking at its naked
About sixty and change
I don’t play that one,
not anymore
I promise I’ll get there
Bookshelf’s weight fractured her
or bad press I don’t need
but deserve
for gouging my name
in my dream self.
Please wake up. A grenade
in the comments. Burn to bone
and dissolve in fat
Bound in leather, even breathing
on it starts the sun to stop
Open nerve-string sing soprano.
Eight Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
One day, science will measure emotion in things.
We’ll be shown how a table feels joy or gratitude for the dinner plates
or the 5-year Life Journal set upon it; or we’ll learn how a road scarred
with potholes feels angst and sadness, and this is why it sinks.
We’ll measure everything we think doesn’t think, and find in our things
something of ourselves. We’ll lay down our hands and heads and hearts,
trying to feel the feels, and do our best at listening. And then,
we’ll go looking for evidence of something more.
Golden Shovel “They Don’t Love You Like I Do” / S. Salazar
After Natalie Diaz
I don’t believe in maps—
human illustrations, errors, are
masterpieces masked destinations mapped ghosts.
What’s then and what’s now are layered
like dust crusting ciudades y barrios with
wishful thinking, patinaing people
with woulda, coulda, shoulda, and
using graves synonymous with places.
Moss covered stones ahead, I
can’t chart unseen,
can’t chart through.
Day 7 / Poem 7
Upon the Docks of the River Styx / Colton Babladelis
Come now ferry man, I’m ready
To pay your aberrant toll
A tattered black shirt
Reflected in the jagged cracks
Of a shameful and foggy mirror
To blend into my base and sinful nightmares
A few copper coins, only a slight
Greenish-blue patina on the
Faces of long dead monarchs
To celebrate what wealth we once had in each other
A fresh cluster of red grapes
One day from overripe
And begging to be eaten
To quell the bittersweet nostalgia in my throat
A blank piece of paper rolled
Creaseless and guileless
Around a golden fountain pen
To write shining love letters from the abyss
A handful of soil, humus
Flecked with obsidian memories
And scent of pine and glacial loam
To remember the smell of my homeland upon my hands
Come now Charon, I’m ready
To ride your tenebrous raft
Aubade Still Waking / Caroliena Cabada
Even with no sleep, I greet
a cloudy dawn with my mouth
wide open, still drooling
from last night’s dream house:
I moved through halls
only imagined, not seen
by astigmatic eyes, which means
every light is curved
at an angle. I can’t tell
the difference of distances.
In the morning I’ll make
my little breakfast, crack
eggs into omelets, eat
everything that makes me
feel full. Even with no sleep,
I think that my eyes are still
the most reliable thing
about me, consistently
skewed, accounted for.
Flowers in Her Hair / Victoria James
She hid her deadly secrets
in the petals blooming from her hair.
Golden tears stained her nightmares
leaving trails in the depths of the ocean.
Her amber words like a vice
weighing you down, breaking the surface,
whispering petals float on waves.
Fleeting Grasp / Jonna Kihlman
To liquid you turned when I tried to linger.
Like clay from the lake, you slipped through my fingers.
Dissolving into dust as I tightened my grip,
falling to the ground with a thudlike sound.
Carried away by the evening breeze, drifting to the ocean after dancing through the sea.
I shouldn’t have clung on so tight.
I just didn’t want to lose you to the waterfall’s might.
seven m&y smell like honey / Katie King
Ned Won / Micah Mackert
Ned once had me
in Havana for honoring his life
I do and know why
the old parlor trick — ones like shells
circuiting chirping twos
faces of a page, coinjoined dyads
a horizontal dadhood of socks and tennies
mustachioed and astraddle
divisions grinning apart
lusts and vices, ancient rivers
grown wholesome from earliness
air racing toward union around a surfacing hunk
the boy who mowed and mowed
road and road, gas in
a workhorse sonata, because of loving music
green and easy growing sappy in harvest maple
habitating in the winter cellar
that black drain grim and lidless
pins in eggs
sims in showers
stimming with a pickaxe and camcorder for the funnies
sweeping big daddy’s bar for heggie’s barq’s and pull-tabs
do you see the broom?
a P-funk and a bud lime and a soak
a chain of water back to the woods
back to hardee’s
back to back eye to eye
boy to boy
have you ever been in trouble?
because
I am
not the moon, I’m an American.
Seven Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
The minute it blooms
the flower becomes aware
of its death and begins an all-out push
to shine as luminously as it can muster
bursting from inside out, a dying star
blinking light billions of years
after its passing.
Adios, no mi amor / S. Salazar
I’m not fierce yet, with my adios,
but with every falling apart,
I find a way to fix my shoulders
a little straighter. Since every poem is,
in fact, a breakup poem,
and most poems are paper,
I’m gonna call this one glass.
Shards, actually. It’s easier that way.
I can scoot the shrapnel away
with the scuffed toe of my boot
because I’ve been down this road before.
Because I’m dangerous with pieces.
Maybe, if I don’t caress the cold
breakings of your words to my chest,
I’ll find a whole lot more power
beneath the strides of my departure.
Day 6 / Poem 6
Playing dress up / Colton Babladelis
Gunslinger, young cowboy with
A horse named Quicksilver, tadpole
Sprouts legs, now I am a sword fighter
Learning to drive fast and be quick with
Wit, books lay in a pile banned or burned,
Tongue twisted around old arguments
Fingers stained and sore, splinters under
My nails, currently masquerading as a poet
But words fall like dry petals from a bouquet
When the grass is long and gone to seed
I think I’ll have another dream, pick out
Something else to play dress up as
Unnatural Instinct / Caroliena Cabada
Where does your kindness
come from? I have never been
quick to give myself away,
prefer stealth acts of gratitude—
a generous rumor, your name
at a table, nothing but
good things. How can I
earnestly praise earnestness?
I want to give flowers—
I never do. I want to walk
in a storm to deliver food
to you—I don’t. We stay
dry-eyed and staring at
eclipse-clipped shadows of
eastern redbud leaves. Here
is the kindness of cherry blossom
petals. Here, too, is the promise
of lilacs, the tender scent
lifting from opening pinpoint blossoms.
My instinct is to close
around my closeness,
dismiss my delight, slip
past wonder. How unnatural:
the impulse to suppress
innocent laughter. What
happened to you? What happened
to me?
Rapunzel, Put up your Hair / Victoria James
She loved too easily, loved too fiercely, loved too much.
She was weak, was glass, was delicate.
Rapunzel, put up your hair.
wrap it tight — elastic
cage for the secrets you
keep, hearts you keep,
don’t let them steal it.
She trusted too easily, she dreamt unrealistically,
She was fragile, relentless, was small.
Rapunzel, cut up your hair.
Chop it short — blunt
barrier to keep them
out of your mind, out
of your heart, don’t
let them feel it.
She found the color in a gray world,
she became resilient, ambitious, a rock hard force
throwing bricks at those who buried her inside the tower.
Rapunzel, brush your hair.
Smooth it out — a strand
Against the grain —
speak out, breathe out,
push out, break out.
Welcome in,
what you choose,
who you choose.
The tower is yours.
The Hollows of My Mind / Jonna Kihlman
In the hollows of my mind, there are rainforests at dawn.
Birds spread their wings, flying out into the night.
The waterfall shimmers in purple and blue.
The sky is lit up in a summery hue.
Sunbeams break through treetops high above,
I bathe in the ocean as the rain pours down.
I wish that you could join me here,
In this timeless land that no one has seen.
six m&y question / Katie King
N o o n e t e l l s t h e w i l l o w t r e e
To gogetahaircut
T h e h o o k u p t h i n g i s a m y t h . T h e a p p s a r e
Night of Rooks / Micah Mackert
Outlasting another day.
With the chill, hanging around
till lights out to start
checking off to-dos.
Going 480p on life to conserve
information for an eon.
A Nova in the ditch.
A Nova bursts to light
when a gun blows
its atmosphere all over
interstellar space. A fun
car to die in is a life
long pursuit. To own a car
from a land you always wanted to live in?
Che bello.
To be struck
by a truck
buying gas
fly up
land in the bed.
A heron was observed
in a drive-thru line.
They’re recorded to be drawn
to sierra mist. I too prefer
lemon with fish. And though my beak
wearies of opening tins
it relishes closing lines—.
Six Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
On Floor 3, they get to ask the deep questions.
At the elevator, in their wheelchairs, pushing random
buttons to another story, the deep pang of longing
to leave banked against longing to stay in this body
dark gates offering just seconds to slip through.
—“Have the gates of death been revealed to you…?” Job 38.17
High Tide / S. Salazar
The sand and the sea still exist in harmony
even when the waves seek to smooth out the sand’s debris-littered bumps.
The nature of a thing isn’t always the right thing,
so I long for my next wave to hold me tenderly despite my shards and divots,
not flattening my edges—an error.
Day 5 / Poem 5
Glaciers once came this way / Colton Babladelis
Carve this land up
Nothing but sand and bugs and
Savages and fools, none of them
Knows what it’s worth, these
Trees are green gold
Cut
Cut
Cut
Birch bark canoe on root beer
River, fresh water pure of form
Something I think I want to be
One day, keep within the lines
Of these lapping shores, polish
My soul with 100 grit, I
Once knew things
Like the histories of rocks
Drip
Drip
Drip
My sandstone soft heart never
Stood a chance,
Do you think we fell in love
Like a rock breaking free from
The cliff and dropping into the
Water below, calamitous and clumsy
Or like the hardwood forest
Blanketed by orchids and learnt
To be endlessly soft
Over a hundred hard years
From Mouths / Caroliena Cabada
Using words from David George Haskell’s The Forest Unseen and Hozier’s “Wildflower and Barley”
Sweet-smelling fields,
crying laughter, women and men
so deeply cleft:
illusion empty again.
Ephemeral flowers
to the next generation:
harvest from the wind
everything in my vision.
Hermaphroditic design:
geometry differs markedly.
I feel useful as knowledge that
buried the city.
Less obvious,
this year, I swear it will
offer nectarless energy,
use pollen and stigma.
Each time, I’m shocked,
risking all for the kiss of a bee.
Pallid petals sheath
you apart from me.
Coastline Laid Bare / Victoria James
magazine skies
chasing picture perfect weeds
whispering fields
telling secrets of our past
mysterious marshes
exposing truth on our tongues
The Forest Nymph / Jonna Kihlman
The forest nymph came to steal you one day.
She was too beautiful, made it too hard to stay.
Skin like the mist over the sea at dawn.
Eyes like silky water where you cannot drown.
She took your hand and led you away.
Her red hair flowed freely in the wind from the bay.
Not one footprint in the sand revealed where you went.
I spent months and years searching for hidden trails.
Did you go through the reeds that grow by the lake?
Or by the forest stream and secluded mountain fields?
I think of you sometimes as I close my eyes to sleep,
Wondering how she rocks you in her arms in your land of dreams.
five m&y sidepass / Katie King
Missed the on A on people as the millions If
your map, Somehow, nondescript way leading desert of love
love lake to to to attracts tourists is
on nowhere nowhere nowhere a a linear,
the thing year year it is
Missed as as If If an
your if if love love arch
map, that that is is I
Somehow, is is linear an wander
A a a I arch under
nondescript bad bad wander Aimlessly,
lake thing thing under without
on meanwhile Aimlessly, knowing,
the the without only
way desert knowing, moving,
to attracts only forward
nowhere millions moving, with
Safeful of Traveller’s Checks / Micah Mackert
mind-made meaning is a type of advertisement
for yourself, a tickle in the head,
like, “You Can Create Anything
the World Can From Your Own
Self. You Can and Will Discover
the Value of Your Life Before
I Will Allow You to Change.” It is identity
as trap door, a darkened
Marriott ballroom where the carpet’s
tousled by the trouser catalogue of
conference-goers exchanging pamphlets
and forgetting where it was they
knew me from.
Five Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
A man and his wife wait to be baptized in the river,
their skins seared and scoured by hot suns, skin
to be sloughed off and shed now in the sands. Watch:
up they come—smooth and tangled and undulating—
ready for the garden
Expectations / S. Salazar
After glazed ceramic “Plant Eyes” by Klara Kristalova
I guess it’s not a matter of if,
it’s how. Will you sweep out
toward the sun like an Allium,
Not content to be a flower
but a firework? Or will you stretch
like a succulent, dying to finally feel
the sun’s rays even if it leaves you
permanently changed?
Or will you fracture from what contains you?
You’ll either outgrow your vessel or die.
How will you burst?
Roots thistle out of your eyes.
Will they cloud your vision,
or free you of it?
Day 4 / Poem 4
Dry spring ghazal / Colton Babladelis
The sun is just right this afternoon
To go dancing on a match tip
Firepit sits in the wind looking hungry
But it’s been too dry of a year for that
Ants make their ancient wonders
Cities encroaching on the apple trees
First time in ages the pond dried up
Silt left of leaves and grass and tadpoles
I think the pine trees are moving backwards
Or maybe I just forgot how to sit and listen
Only thing in my bag a book of Jim Harrison’s ghazals
And a bottle of whiskey that’s somehow empty now
Everywhere around here spring peeling old bark
With urgency from the way things were
Remember to walk softly at this time of day
I promise the mud daubers won’t sting
Expectation | Reality / Caroliena Cabada
Abecedarian for Navigating a Busy Mind / Victoria James
Almost to the end of the line,
back to the thought from earlier
captivating you one more time
during a moment of
extreme importance.
Gathering nuts like a starving squirrel,
hibernation of the brain, wouldn’t
it be great to s l o w,
just slow down,
Almost to the end of the line,
back to the thought from earlier
captivating you one more time
during a moment of
extreme importance.
Gathering nuts like a starving squirrel,
hibernation of the brain, wouldn’t
it be great to s l o w,
just slow down,
Almost to the end of the line,
back to the thought from earlier
captivating you one more time
during a moment of
extreme importance.
Gathering nuts like a starving squirrel,
hibernation of the brain, wouldn’t
it be great to s l o w,
just slow down,
keep a steady pace, steady
linger on it forever.
More thoughts, more questions,
Now this, now that, no more, no — right now.
Over the edge an overworking mind,
power past the words from the mouth:
quit this task,
right to the next, like right now.
S I L E N C E
That could happen later, too
Ultimately, you pick
vacant niche forever. It’s true,
when the world is your oyster
xerox the dreams for later, but instead
you just once want to feel rocked by a gentl
zephyr, just once.
**Unclose Me** / Jonna Kihlman
Unclose me, though dust and forlorn stars.
Let my being light up and beam in the dark.
Unclose me, crack open the doors.
Let me come out of the shadows and live once more.
Unclose me, evaporate my fears
That have caged me so long with uncried tears.
Unclose me, I am not afraid of life.
Follow me outside, across the divide.
Unclose me, let my soul shine through.
Watch the waterfall thrust forward with all its force.
four m&y ride / Katie King
a bike lane next to My car reminding me hey,
I am a healthy option m&ybe ditch Your fast
moving shell
a bike lane next to My car reminding me hey,
I am a healthy option m&ybe ditch Your fast
moving shell
a bike lane next to My car reminding me hey,
I am a healthy option m&ybe ditch Your fast
moving shell
a bike lane next to My car reminding me hey,
I am a healthy option m&ybe ditch Your fast
moving shell
a bike lane next to My car reminding me hey,
I am a healthy option m&ybe ditch Your fast
moving shell
a bike lane next to My car reminding me hey,
I am a healthy option m&ybe ditch Your fast
moving shell
Pazzi and Edema / Micah Mackert
I found where they’re accelerating light
for weathering ingredients of products, beautiful
gestations of products that do science, passively.
Possibly there’s a lab here using gas lasers to peel
skins off microsuns like long tweezers swipe irises
from cadavers. All daylights scent out entrances in
the body, no matter how fast they’ve been
trained to shine, so long as you’re nude in any region,
you’re weathering andante. Look at blobby clouds
of you receding at the flat horizon, the globe’s own
skin, the falseness of rhymes, I mean rinds — how
sexy it feels to believe no one can get in. No one can
get in is what I’ll be spewing when I finally drink
the wrong water.
Four Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
Hemorrhaging, hiding; shredded cloths between
her thighs soaked beyond holding
she watches from the acacia’s long piercing thorns
women lining the shore waiting to be cleansed.
The Ocean / S. Salazar
She calls to me,
sometimes an eelgrass whisper,
and other times a thunder’s drum.
It’s a fifty-fifty shot whether my eyes skim
for little treasures to pocket or lock
with the shoreline, a decade’s old dare.
Mi Abuelita had always believed
the Sea to be a dangerous thing,
what with Her raging currents
and high body count.
Of course, She’s a threat—
a mother grizzly fighting humans
to save Her cubs—
the Coho, the reefs,
Her peace of mind.
Maybe that’s why I find myself here,
not for the jasper, or agates or shells
not for the ever-present winds,
but because She shows me
how to be a powerhouse
while breaking. She models
how to handle tides
high and low. How to
embrace the salt
instead of wiping it away.
Day 3 / Poem 3
US 2 after dark / Colton Babladelis
Northern moon
scandalously clad and skeptically
late, howl now with the coyotes
wolves will come later and
clean up the scraps, get dressed
we’ll go out on the town, it’s
darker here than usual but no
less dangerous, I’ll lead
the way with lungs
full of smoke and water,
breathe now or
forever hold me, or at
least until the chill of
night stops biting,
I think I have too much
electricity in my heart
to stop at this place of rest
Epoufette, once we get to the
big lake we can have a beach fire,
burn the driftwood and
jetsam, any trash we find
that belongs here as much
as we do, only one of us can stay
in the end, make it look like it did
a thousand years ago
under a similar moon
Thoughts On Cruel Optimism / Caroliena Cabada
Sonnet for a Little Fox in Big Woods / Victoria James
Little fox perks up over the fallen log,
paws drape gently over the buckling bark,
His fuzzy ears twitch at the sounds
of flying wonder and shining magic around him.
Left, at echoing chirps and buzzes of swift hummingbirds —
right, at the pop of droplets from sprinkles on fat leaves.
Drops drip between his eyes weighing down the fur
on his snout. He’s a glowing illusion — water delicately
coats the edges of his fur. Treetops sway in the whispering
breeze — a lullabye — gently rocking him back and forth.
Cradle him, keep him safe in the wild wood around him.
Let him only see iridescent reflections of his dreams
in the dark spiderwebs lurking in the corners of his nightmares.
Encourage him to be the curious and clever little fox he is.
I Mourn that First Kiss / Jonna Kihlman
I mourn that first kiss,
When we were sitting on the beach.
You took my head in your hands and secluded me.
It was a warm evening in June,
I could still hear
The traffic and voices from further up the street.
You promised so much, as you whispered in my ear.
Words of love that were stolen by the breeze.
I wish I could go back to that moment in time,
With everything unbroken,
The pain undone.
three m&y die / Katie King
War Alive
War Alive
War Alive
War Alive
War Alive
War Alive
War Alive
War Alive
War Alive
War Alive
Zygotopia / Micah Mackert
I’m the hell that you’re the devil of.
Two discreant brains seethed in our own
alternative milks, the newest issue, the latest
entry in the listicle of known glands.
I was never really one for priorities.
What was is of concern, what is is why.
Befores and afters like Freds and Gingers,
sweaty vortices coming onto then
slapping off of the lacquered boards.
//step-ball-pivot//
And lazy as flecks of ash, the freeheel toe
swims bashfully down through humming limelights.
A dramatic shift in the body—
a quick torsion or rigid judder
can shatter the cobweb of fascia famous for inhering between
rather than bloating with self, pecking for feed.
With a rustle and squeak arrives a steamy two-yolks egg.
Nodule, meet Node. Node, Nodule’s slated to converge
with your ecliptic in what promises to be a chilling vision:
like twin silver coins flashing in tandem and tarnishing
in real time from the still oxygen between them.
Three Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
I am not broken.
These smashed shards glued golden
Filled empty with Light.
Diagnosis / S. Salazar
You cup my sweet qualities
to your mouth ‘til they’re sweet nothings,
until they bitter our tongues.
A spoon full of sugar doesn’t help
the medicine go down.
No measurement of medicine
will cure what ails us.
Day 2 / Poem 2
Progress digs its own shallow grave / Colton Babladelis
Graceless and lumbering thing
And not sweet or nice at all,
Go westward, or at least forward
Young man.
Streets paved boldly by manifest destiny
Sidewalks mortared with brick and blood
Don’t walk this hallowed ground
If you don’t have a strong stomach.
By day, my dreams go to work
Making machines of ruin,
Sometimes I wish I could be
More like Woody Guthrie
And wield machines that kill things
Like facism and greed
Instead of the dreams of others
In faraway places.
When something grows without
Cease or limits or empathy,
For that matter,
We call it cancer.
If we are to excise this grand
Idea of ours, we must dig
A hole, shovel with a scalpel’s edge
Through dirt and sand and mind
My pen will have to do for now.
Spring Storm Mornings / Caroliena Cabada
Breathless stillness before brief
cyclonic motion in the clouds.
The danger has passed this time.
The danger always passes, and
isn’t that something to write
home about? Dear Mom—
I made it through another day
safe as the safe under Dad’s desk.
Safe as the pin holding closed
the skirt with a zipper I broke
in my haste to change. The sun
came out quickly after
the tornado warning. Weather
reminds me all things
are capricious. Incredible,
how much light a cloud blocks,
how patchy cover creates
pockets of bright. Dear Mom—
the radio DJs here say to stay
safe, so I’m safe as one can be
in Nebraska. I’m grateful for
this rain, grateful, too, for
the warning. That’s the best
we could ask for: a warning
that comes to nothing.
She’s a Blue Butter Dish / Victoria James
Light blue porcelain whale perched
on the dining room table holding room temp butter –
hiding so much more under its glossy humpback.
Resting on the handmade table, like her own butter dish did, for years. This way, she’s a part of it all. She’s still here, feeding us memories:
traveling breakfast,
tailgate lunch,
dinner traditions.
It looks different now:
two tables, a highchair,
but a butter dish remains
in the middle where Grandma’s
chair would sit, where her memory remains.
At the Edge of Midnight / Jonna Kihlman
Feel the breeze touch your lips like a kiss left unsaid.
The cards has been laid out, there are no more left to play.
Let me simmer in your thoughts for just one more day.
Bathe in the pond of your heart until the stream has run past.
Be still in the moonlight with me until dawn.
When the veils of the night passes slowly through.
Wake me up with a soft touch so I can watch you leave.
two m&y grow / Katie King
april snow
brings m&y beau
butterscotch yellow
need a springtime fellow
there is one lone tulip
at the rock climbing place,
that’s what we called
the pile of rocks you
used to climb that
now you can step
over, like the
donkey who
turned
into
Steig’s
rock I wait
for you there,
the pastel-lipped tulip
in the crisp of motherhood’s
thin air. Who needs
a spring fling
when, oh if I
could carry
you
Over
these
Long Hot Walk / Micah Mackert
Windmills on the rise like garter clasps
yank the world up
over this shameful sky. Plugging
you in. Leaving you on. Walking away
from meat on a plate, the indica
style of rage propelling those posts
about the trouble of the bats. No
matter how pretty, all parks must
be gone home from—the out-of-doors
as innuendo, the doors more of a
data security policy, you could
osmote straight through if
the friend was to ever offer up a dare.
Weaving between wholesome salespersons,
waving my rights accidentally,
making a mummy of Lucy with snickers wraps
and stirring the nubs into pudding.
Transformations are chirruping all
around us. But it is a primal law that:
Any ask of attention
makes a spike in the juice.
Two Lines / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
I was a vessel, but he didn’t know what I held.
The sacredness of my story. My imprint on air.
Disappointment / S. Salazar
You finally see it, the monumental task
to mask the fixation in my brain about your tone
leaving the grocery store, about impressing
your mom, about whether the throb
in my chest is anxiety again or a heart
attack gone ignored like my dad’s.
I see my whirlpool mind
drain into silent mouth. A closing
you wish to make an opening,
wishing to fishhook into a smile.
The pit in my stomach—
It’s written all over your face.
Day 1 / Poem 1
Little to be sure of / Colton Babladelis
What few things I know
I’ve stumbled into
Equal parts careless and lucky.
Like how eating outside
Makes food taste better,
Fare of sun and wind
Or a weary traveler
To get the last room at the inn.
Blanton’s, on the rocks,
But only if I can watch
The prairie grass divide.
It’s good when your hands
Are coated in grime
And dirt, and holding mine
The day to day sterility
Of this world
Bores me to drink and dance.
We rose up from sand
And muck,
Constitutions carved from bedrock.
Whether or not there is music
Dance, fast or slow
Soles of my feet ache, legs
Pump steady like nodding donkeys
In the scrub and heat of the plains.
Work the life back into these things
I’m not ready
To leave here yet.
Seasons pass, and I feel older
Despite my best attempts otherwise
The weight of imagining myself
As the hero of all the
Books I’ve ever read
Is wearisome business.
The rain washes the dust
And withers the pages
But not the weight of
Having to grow up.
For This Season / Caroliena Cabada
Rain released lilacs’ soft scents to hang in humid air. Sunlight struck at angles through oak leaves. Is this spring? Soon, I’ll taste rebellious summer—watermelon slices dripping juice down my wrists, pale pastel sherbet push pops sticking to lips. The only thing cool about me is my mouth. Let me sunburn soon, let magnolias bloom, let spring spiral quickly into some new season always in between. I want this feeling forever—this fervor against climate fever, this heat wave of human kindness, this folk song singing hope and despair in the same meter. It’s summer break soon and I’ll have nothing better to do except make the world better. Split this fruit of our valuable labor. Drink this milk tea. Hear this singing.
Gallery Walk of HER / Victoria James
HER dice dropped off the edge
of her glowy hands and hot pink nails.
She flipped the cards, played her ace.
Shiny sequins sashayed side to side,
reflecting the neon lights of the Vegas strip.
She didn’t gamble, but the facade was easy.
HER sweat dripped down her temples.
Jazz music vibrating her muscles,
The cajun life was loud around her,
Cher, pshaw, boo: deep lullabies.
She manipulated her tastebuds to dance
when they experienced something new.
HER heels shot needles up her feet.
Click, clack echoed through the white walls.
Splashes of colors swirled through the gray
monotony of her past: vibrancy, her revenge,
blinded others. Slithered it’s way in,
as beauty grew wings and flew out.
HER words bounced in and out
of fingers, her brain flowering around
planting new seeds. Ink, permeated
words left on her soul. She takes names,
she whispers them into the stars,
swallows them deep into the ocean.
HER skin caked in dirt and salt.
Hiking boots worn from treacherous miles,
Trekking further away from normality,
familiarity out the windows of the red
dusted RV. He rests on the steps,
raised a lifestraw pack up to her lips.
Fire and Glas / Jonna Kihlman
I loved you like fire, when you where made of glas.
Fragile was your being, like sand running through an hourglas
I should have listened more carefully to the wind through the grass.
But I carried on, pouring your cup.
Until the water spilled over and you couldn’t drink up.
one m&y dream / Katie King
My
handy
man in
vites me
to a m&y
pole dance
My ex boy
friend wants
to sleep with
him which wasn’t
helpful once he
brought us the top
of a Christmas tree,
on the house left to
the side of the living
room where my mind goes
blank we didn’t have much
but delighted in pine-gene
rosity he is handsome with
muscular flower tattoos a fa
ther & miner circling as he
m&y on the house left to the
side of the living room where
my mind goes blank we didn’t
have much but delighted in pine-
generosity wasn’t helpful left
to the side of the living room
where my mind goes blank we
didn’t have much but delighted
in pine My handyman invites me
to a m&ypole dance My ex boy
friend wants to sleep My mind
goes blank we didn’t have much
a m&ypole dance flower tattoos
a father My muscular man your
dream
Helping a Friend Lay a Concrete Slab / Micah Mackert
Over the tracks where the Bedlam used to be,
the old Medusa, where as a young guy I
used to play someone sounding
the depth of a genuine vocation—Braying Prophet—
over by there I
squeaked to a standstill in the smudged
city clover along the fresh bike path.
One man was telling one woman to stop yelling
at the woman who was trying to lift the wounded man.
A black scarf fell
where his scalp collapsed a black bellows—out of air—.
Like rain in the sun the sirens pattered and I
was yelling now she was forcing
him to his feet, still as stone.
She was just so scared. She knew his brother.
Scales of dry concrete spangling my legs
from the job of the day—fancy
details, forensic little thrills, really making the story mine.
I was filled with canned water.
I was holding it for the cop.
Maybe there is a new prophecy of stone.
I was hoping this poem wasn’t about me, but it is.
One Line / Jaqueline Henry Moloney
Of course the moon breathes.
Perception I / S. Salazar
You’re a sneaker wave at low tide, a siren for a laugh.
You’re venom, bleeding cuticles, chest pain—a pathway,
a rest stop, an antiquitous dusty town on Route 66.
Everybody tells you to not be a doormat,
but nobody warns you against being a door
everybody walks through to get
to somebody else.
Anybody else.
Anybody easier
to share air with.
To look at.
To talk to.