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 November are: Rebecca Brenner, Arlene DeMaris, TaShira Iverson, Phaye Poliakoff-Chen, Mark Simpson, and Margaret Thiele.
If you would like to join our alumni group of over 1,000 poets, apply here!
Day 30 / Poem 30
The Landscapes of Bodies & Selves / composed by Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
TUPELO-Cento-for-November-2024-11-29.docx
Cento: A November to Reveal, Remember / Composed by Margaret Thiele
with lines from Rebecca Brenner, Arlene DeMaris, TaShira Iverson, Phaye Poliakoff-Chen, Mark Simpson, and Margaret Thiele
Dreaming of portals unprotected
Like we had all the time in the world.
Layered with haughtiness, you
Trust the me that resides in you
That brilliant smile is for excellent
Soul like tendencies, it takes time
To unravel the past, there’s a door
And when your number gets called
Thoughts sputter in the
Cosmos, minds twirl in the void
The last hour of which was not
On my calendar; am i dying?
Before the last dance imagine
The rocks, they’re buying your time.
It seems endless this leaving
Something behind, that binds us
Wish i had the privilege to have mercies
and mistakes break down the binary.
The sky reminds me-nobody
owns it but it’s everywhere.
The sky reminds me-What Angel made
for me -that God is a woman
God is the Black Madonna
Gender Queer, gender creative
Revealing themselves, on a haughty note
A redwing note of celebration.
I was raised by a mother in twelve steps, now mine:
One day at a time.
Let go and let God.
Progress, not perfection.
Her clear seeing, now mine:
You think you know everything.
You want it wrapped in a brown package and delivered yesterday.
I think he was your soulmate.
Her own worries, now mine:
You must always make your own money
Someday, when I’m gone, you’ll miss me.
You have to suffer to be beautiful.
What she tried to forget, now mine:
I sometimes get sick, thinking how it used to be.
My parents, they tried.
There was love—always at the center.
Always fading into body, now mine:
The memory, the memory
gentle sweep of her fingers, brushing hair from my eyes,
the pulse of her lips on my cheek.
And how do I say this, now mine:
Even in the chaos, even in the unbearable loss—
she was right.
There was love at the center.
A small, steady light, now mine:
alive in the vastness of body,
showing me how to raise my children well.
On Optimism / composed by Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
There Were So Many / Mark Simpson
They took everything—someone pushed a lawnmower; another pulled a golf cart, the clubs replaced by a broom, mop, umbrellas, a map rolled into a tube. A father carried a child. A mother carried a penny-colored dog. I did not have a ticket, but they let me on, there were so many of us. As the ferry left, the authorities began counting. The one with the list said, “Name?” as he came to each person, then checked them off. When he came to me I said my name. He flipped through pages, said finally, “Perhaps you registered with another name?” I could see the list, the checked-off names, the unchecked-off—I said the first name I saw. “Ah,” he said, checking the name and then moving on. I hoped we would arrive before it mattered.
Day 29 / Poem 29
What would it mean, / Rebecca Brenner
to give it all to praise?
Would I be all thank yous and yes please—
or more holy, holy, holy everywhere I looked?
Would I be curly-leaf mahoganies turning feathers,
waxy Gamble Oaks waving green,
or hands chasing armpits for children’s laughs?
Would I praise the hard, too?
My mother telling me I’ve been a good daughter,
even though I know I could have been better.
And how she was right—
we rely on others—
a hand placed on shoulders,
a berry put to a mouth.
Defend, defend—it’s just entanglement.
Life is relational, fundamentally.
Individual is illusion.
FLEMINGTON / Arlene DeMaris
Untitled / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
What would you do if Mr. Minyarmin asked you for a cup of coffee?
Of course you’d say you’d buy him a cup.
I’d go so far as to say I’d make a fresh pot for him.
But what if he showed up on your doorstep
Unannounced and unshaven
Stains on his trousers
Blood on his hands
So unlike him.
You might hesitate.
I, on the other hand,
I would recite to him
the poem my mother wrote when she was ten years old,
when the air raid sirens woke her up
It was in a black, black out,
I was eating sauerkraut
Flung my spoon upon the table,
Put the lights out. Hurry, Mabel.
This tack is not intuitive
I pour the coffee into broken mugs
Minyarmin’s meaty hands circle his twice
Between sips, he recites my mother’s poem
In his mouth, the words sound wise
The house goes dark, nearby
a sorghum field explodes, rains fiery brambles
Explicable, but not intuitive.
Leave Good Tracks / Mark Simpson
Phil Hey said to me in the faculty
lounge over tea and cookies
and in the note he left
on my desk, and once again,
stopping by my office one Monday
morning, another note, as if a half-,
formed koan, as if koan had morphed
from question to imperative, tracks that go
only one way, that don’t fade, that lead
in, not out.
I wonder if he knew
I didn’t know what he meant.
That was forty years ago, time
enough to figure out
what direction I was going,
like a traveler leaving, walking
unnoticed on an avenue.
I think of the tracks deer left
in last week’s snow, deliberate
and measured, and the slight whisps
of rabbit tracks like words placed
one, and then another.
A Cento-Thanks to Joni Mitchell / Margaret Thiele
Songs are like tattoos
A portrait of the days
Songs to aging children come
Walk into my door
Trying to be a good friend
Stoking the star maker machine
I deal in dreamers
Lost and changing
As if fairytales come true
You’re in my blood like holy wine
Wrapping up like pipes and drums
I really don’t know life at all
There is a song for you
You gotta keep thinking you can make it through
The days come down to you
I wish i had a river
We could skate away on.
For my aging children…with big love.
Day 28 / Poem 28
Before gratitude / Rebecca Brenner
is collision
is pattern
is abandonment
Before gratitude
is a deep knowing
is a memory
is an ancestor
Before gratitude
is separation
is loneliness
is isolation
Before gratitude
is a thinker
is a concept
is an old worn-out narrative
Before gratitude
is a feeling
is an expression
is an energy
Before gratitude
is a constant dance
is a noticing
is an interrupting
Before gratitude
is rest
is nourishment
is compassion
Before gratitude
is presence
SCOTCH PLAINS / Arlene DeMaris
a celestial (mini)logue / TaShira Iverson
i crave a home with wings with, the breathe of a thousand stars uh paradise o planets however deep i seek
a bravado that tickles the ivory crater that be but neighbor friend and foil for all one creator
creator! creator! how heavenly sent
brightener! brighter! how heavenly lit
Interview, part. 2 / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Overgrown Purpose, Thick with Leaves / Mark Simpson
Some things can’t help it, what’s mistaken
for showing off like a phone ringing
with a ringtone anyone would mistake
for a word, perfect for that moment.
Wherever the body goes, I come back here.
Wherever the mind goes, this is its return
with a thought like the native plum’s, can’t
stop showing up its thickness of green.
What I promised once—I wish it were like that.
I have to refer to my notes, cribbed hand
of yesterday.
Seems like someone else’s dream, green shading
out green, complicated as promises sometimes are.
Gratitude Rocks Life / Margaret Thiele
Gratitude Rocks Life
Like a banded agate
And double pointed crystals
Like shiny mica,
And fossilized fern leaf,
Gratitude softens life
From prickly pear cactus
To a succulent savory sauce
A dessert of appreciation,
Like slow melting Cherry Garcia.
Gratitude swells life
A hot air balloon
Carrying us over its ugly
And the vain.
When we dwell in pain.
Appreciation for the caring
That floats us.
And, if everyday
Had one float
Of the the thank you day parade
What happiness
We note.
Possibly mailing it off
On a red-wing of appreciation.
Even when
The gutters are plugged
The furnace is out
And fridge near empty
We have the key
To the home of knowing,
with a mirror
to look ourselves
Gently in the eye.
Each thank you
A bowl of appreciation
Sitting down
to drink its encouragement
Like hot tomato soup.
Gratitude for ‘other’
Helps each feel
Like a mother
Of courage and change.
We can do this,
Together.
And when the layers
Of anger and guilt
Sadness and pain
Are tough and crusty
We take the shiny mica
To scrape them off
Waving goodbye
With fossilized fern leaf
And double pointing crystal
To the banded agate below-
Where gratitude rocks life.
Day 27 / Poem 27
He said—she’s so into transgender / Rebecca Brenner
as if it were an insult as if my transgender and nonbinary and gender-fluid and gender-creative friends and family are not the most beautiful the most kind the most creative the most true as if the times were still a changing and not already changed as if anyone worth knowing knows that all of us belong that no one should ever be pushed out or politicized as if the gig isn’t already up and we all see through you and you and you and you as if the battle hasn’t already been won as in if you were confused and thought that was an insult let me be clear
I am so into transgender—
so into nonbinary so into gender-fluid so into gender-creative
so into letting people reveal themselves
so into allowing others to tell me who they are
so into learning, into curiosity, into breaking down the binary that binds us all
I am so into transgender like I am into true love like unconditional love like we are never going back, love.
CLARK / Arlene DeMaris
Inhala…exhala / TaShira Iverson
eye quote mulan lyrics to serve her hot ina bowl of stew see you Fa Mulan held in you the secrets and severity of s/puh/rashun how nation state yet for the girls you were how yin and yang rang through your bones without him!
she reaches cross the lightly marbled table in ever so Frostian fashion to ration to her and her womb of womb in a disciplined passion.
eeeeeeeeemagine the many possibilities if you just
unclench your jaw.
The Interview / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Landscape in 3-D / Mark Simpson
Like rainwater braiding through the mash
of last year’s leaves, the fir needles and
their impossible clinging, sap-stuck, wind-
loosened, a mutable presence
which seems to bend with the half-
labored landscape.
I’m waiting for it to shadow-forth its secret.
The currant’s red, the plum’s white blossoms—
I’d put my money on their promise.
The branches of the apple trees,
left in the grass after this year’s pruning,
look skyward; curve toward this morning’s rain.
I want the depth of whatever’s going on,
season-ward song and dance, happy
for its moment, watching.
A Winter Blessing / Margaret Thiele
May the snow fall softly on your sweet heads
And the cold stay far from your beds.
May your short days be joyful
And long nights peaceful.
May your animals be healthy and sweet
And smiles be on the faces you greet.
May your travels have no yelping
And may you know gladness in your helping.
May we never too long be apart
And may you grow evergreen trees in your heart.
Day 26 / Poem 26
Terrified and exhilarated / Rebecca Brenner
Terrified-and-exhilarated.docxASBURY PARK II / Arlene DeMaris
The Visit / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
The Black Madonna / Margaret Thiele
Embarking through
Edelweiss
Our Lady of Einsiedeln
Even snowy-white
Switzerland
Is blessed with
The Black Madonna.
Through the fauna
Of Indi
She shows Herself
As Tara
Who cries for our suffering,
The Black Madonna.
She visits
Dos Juans and a donkey
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Planting roses in his shawl
Healing fragrance, a gift of
The Black Madonna
Our Lady of Częstochowa
Visits Poland
from the end of Luke’s brush
Midnight blue with stardust
Reminds us of the strength
Of Black Mothers.
Of Red Mothers,
Brown Mothers, Yellow, and White Mothers.
In powerlessness
We invoke her name
And walk our feet
Toward peace.
In mindfulness
We breathe in
Her fragrant peace,
And exhale
A new stardust.
Day 25 / Poem 25
She asks me if I hated her, / Rebecca Brenner
as a mom.
In my dream,
I hug her.
I say, I’m angry.
That my anger is like an old run-down structure that I keep finding myself caught in.
I tell her I know that structure has been
cleaned
cleared
opened
remolded and knocked down—at times.
I assure her that I am certain, beyond the confines of my anger is a deep, nourishing current, a welcoming abyss an endless ocean.
I tell her I know it’s there that my love for her is—where my heart is free.
I’m just not sure yet how to not get caught.
But I will stay with it. I promise her I promise myself.
She asks, “Can your anger be transformed through these dreams?”
I reply, “Only time will tell.”
BASKING RIDGE / Arlene DeMaris
i don’t have the privilege to whisper and be heard. / TaShira Iverson
The words that pass these lips have no permission for mishaps or mis takes
Don’t mistake my fervor for anger because see
it is imperative to vocalize.to scream. And to do so with gusto.
see
you must go on a walk with me to fully understand.
mama Audre taught me that When i dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether i am afraid. I must use my erotic energy in my walk and on my page.
ive saved my strength to only be used toward the enactment of safety and locked away my rage and unknowingly participated in my own elimination or rather
••••••••••••••••
[mini]mization of another Black woman
how does one accomplish fitting into a mail slot when they’re always a heavy fragile labeled package?
or how does one dismembertheir identity when they were never the one lacking?
how does one blend when they were never built to be a shelf or countertop measured for tight corners?
how many times have you tried to do all three in no particular order?
this is no shade to my sisters and aunties and mothers and teachers because there was no one present to teach her
i wish i had the privilege of softness.
to whisper.
to be as small as a church mouse with a bullhorns impact.
but mice get eaten.
killed.
irradiated.
and yet even for being small, humans see themselves being attacked.
trapped
ive fought all my life to be…bigger.
greater even.
more in focus.
to the point of being like a locust.
pest like in the reverberations of my thoughts across rooms.
There are Things I remember that No one Else Does / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
John Donne’s Flea’s Memoir, Chapter 1 / Mark Simpson
That I suck was made evident
by the example of my mother
who had little time for me
or anyone in her brood, of which
I was number 11 out of 20, a no-where
place in my cohort, all of us urged
from birth to go forth, find a warm
and sheltered spot and do what we
were born to do. A scramble
for someone who’s in the middle
of the pack, forgotten in the array
of hungry brothers and sisters.
We never saw each other again, not
that I would recognize them or care to.
Dispersal is the golden rule of our species.
Some found dogs,
some humans, others died because
it was January of a cold year,
no one out, not even rats
or beggars, always an easy mark.
I was shrewd and lucky,
timed my leaving well, found
a home, and so took lodgings
in the armpit of a lady.
Three Sisters – Part One / Margaret Thiele
The neighborhood play
A circus starring three sisters
Me their gleeful audience
Of course others watched
But not with same adoration.
Mary warmed my feet
And guarded my soul
When ice crept up
And in the window
Hard to keep up with first chair flute,
and national grand champion sewing suit.
Em’s quilts and watercolors
the tree of life stitched
Through chakra’s colors
Threaded healing light
Making life fuller
Fuller with dogs and kids.
Stories around their table
Golden and fabled.
Steph is gone
But the bells of her laugh
Ring on.
Hospitality was her hallmark.
We can still taste her clam chowder
And her laughter.
A spring break trip
Carved stop at Pilots Butte
And framed Three Sisters view.
Inspired move
Away but towards iconic Three Sisters.
In loving, adoring honor of my Three Sisters
Day 24 / Poem 24
Transgress / Rebecca Brenner
Day-24.docxWATCHUNG / Arlene DeMaris
Workshop / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Four wavy fat gold lines bisect
my broken bowl
Fake gold dust spreads
inside the cracks, and
also outside the lines
I could not follow the directions
A fingerprint of gold and glue smears
down the side
Mine wins ugliest, funniest, messiest, most unlike
Kintsugi
that popular metaphor for
Repair, you know, bringing beauty and strength to what is broken and so on.
Shards of pottery, lumpy glue, gold powder
I ruined my shirt and my self-esteem
Learning how to repair
Facing the Fate that Was Always Yours / Mark Simpson
and on that particular day, no wind to speak of,
no bird-song in trees, the red tractor in the field
below immutable and silent, everything so
still that you feel the feather floating down
to its own silence in an expected world.
Soft thing on warm cement, and the sense
of it, your surprise as it grazed your ear, falling.
(cf “She is facing the fate she always faced,”
C.D. Wright, Rising, Falling, Hovering)
DORMANCY / Margaret Thiele
A psy-sci note to self—
Dormancy
Is not dull
It is dark, deep, delicate.
Dormancy
Is not deaf
It hears your deliberations.
Dormancy
Is not dangerous,
Except for the impatient.
Dormancy
Can be distrusting.
Of the hurried and the harried.
Dormancy
Said to Patience…
“What are you waiting for?”
Patience said…
“Damn, I’m waiting for you!”
Patience knew Dormancy
Was getting ready,
A very long time,
Of getting ready.
For all us who struggle with patience, and trusting.
Day 23 / Poem 23
All fear gives way :: The light looks after you. / Rebecca Brenner
Talking with Ruth today over sweet potatoes and hummus,
I shared what I may have shared here—
that for years I sat with a Buddhist Lama,
and he said all the teachings could be boiled down to one:
relax and open, relax and open more, relax and open even more.
I took this to heart, brought it to everything—
my mind, my body, my heart,
my parenting, my marriage.
What I’m only now realizing is that this practice
just leads to more release,
more expansion, more letting go.
I naively thought, ten years ago,
that the practice would lead to a place,
maybe within, where I could finally rest.
And in some ways that’s true—
but more so, it’s led me to an opening
that feels like clear seeing, like grieving,
because there’s nothing to hold onto
and it’s all going.
I mean, what I’m finding is—
there’s no going back now to solid ground.
And yet, this is starting to feel joyful,
I keep dreaming of openings,
portals unprotected, and I wake up feeling glad,
full of possibility,
with a deepening trust
in the aliveness and the dying.
SOMERVILLE / Arlene DeMaris
mynd reader / TaShira Iverson
i saw another melanated girl in the locker room
Eyes: brown
Hair: black
Expression: embarrassed
we locked eyes for no longer than a second
chill running down our spines
looking at her
her reaction mirrored mine
i saw another mel•anated girl in the locker room
interaction: brief
smile: subtle
message: crystalline
you too huh?
imsorryfortakingupspace
thankyou.
Safe / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Sadness Like an Anchor / Mark Simpson
Polished by an afternoon of trees, far past midlife, imagining themselves as ash—
or fare for a handyman stuck on YouTube
videos about fixing the broken, things that best be left alone because if the handyman gets at them, sadness goes from sweet to piquant, a lasting feeling of its sting.
Sadness is an anchor when you need an anchor, an anchor trailing a small boat in coastal waters.
Meanwhile, the trees are concerned by the skyward push that makes them inch up every year,
makes them broad and full and more ambitious than the person who planted them.
Sometimes sadness is ambitious, too, becomes an entanglement, drags its anchor on
a seafloor that doesn’t hold, the boat drifting like sadness does.
St Anthony Rides Again / Margaret Thiele
Strayed and gone
Lost and done.
Sinking feels
Mind on reels
Oh wait, reminded
Of help to find ‘em
St Anthony
Full on ‘Boss of the Lost’.
With me and Izzy
He’s been busy.
Cats vanished
weeks on end.
Dog ran away,
In city park to play.
Phone nearly flushes
Landing in the bushes.
Kids in the woods
No warmth, no goods.
Two wallets strayed
With cash to play.
All found with the help of
‘Old Tony’.
Searching for places
I’d lost my way
Stranger reminds me
“Its good you have to look for it”
The sweetness of finding
After his humble reminding.
Poster child for his grace
Long past saving face.
Cats and cash
Hope and phones
Kids and keys-
Old Tony rides again!
So chat him up
When you are down.
St Anthony, St Anthony
Please come around
I’ve lost my keys, my courage
And they need to be found!
Dedicated to fellow ‘losers’ who know the dread of losing, and the joy of help in finding.
Day 22 / Poem 22
We kept each other company / Rebecca Brenner
in those first lonely days of mothering
neither natural, nor true
we gave birth to entire cosmos, then ourselves
0ur prior identities, decorative composite.
We stayed close on compassionate couches
watching the other pick up the mess of their mother
place them just so, small pieces in a pattern
a tesserae of hormones barely there,
a new mosaic of who’d we become taking shape.
I dream of you often,
I told you after our falling out
and it’s still true—we are kinder there
more forgiving of how it ended.
always loving each other’s children, as if they were our own.
HOPE / Arlene DeMaris
The Feral Cats of Curacao / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
What You See Is Not What You See / Mark Simpson
It seems to rain
but it is the trees that rain,
drop by drop
in a certain way.
The lock has rusted
and will not move,
making a prison
in what seems the sound
of rain.
It conspires.
as if it wants a body
because it needs the flesh.
From a window
framed by trees
light darkens as light must
in rain.
There once was beauty here.
It remains. I am
lost in the thought of rain.
Me and The Bathroom Key (1968) / Margaret Thiele
Coming from opposite sides of town, we walked our mutual mile to the high school basketball game, we were nine. I’d slicked back my hair and wore my favorite puffy coat. She wore her blue pea coat, shiny shoes, and beautiful smile. We went to the top of the bleachers, nearly alone, facing the home town crowd, we practically sat on each other’s laps in the name of warming up. The temperature was heading toward the minuses, so it wasn’t hard to pretend. Early in the game, I’d asked, “can you call me Mark, and could I put my arm around you, and can I be your boyfriend?” Her smile bright, as she pulled my arm around her waist… the couple sitting nearby stared, glared and moved away, leaving us facing the crowd. I was practiced being invisible, to evade being hit by those who wanted me to know they were the boss of me (but weren’t). I was confused the couple had noticed and hurt they were bothered, face red-hot with shame. People thought I was a boy all the time. What was the big deal if I called myself Mark and had my arm around the most beautiful girl who made me my stomach full of wonderful things besides food.
The next summer my family traveled three days to visit fun cousins—setting off fireworks, racing bikes around town. The freedom was so fun, I’d concocted a story of being the pitcher for the Little League team —four states away. How would they know I wanted this so bad I ached with desire of it to be true. Saying goodbye, my cousin leaned into his dad and said “she’s lying”. I ran with red-hot shame to our green Ford station wagon. On our long trip home, a Phillips gas station attendant wouldn’t give me the key to the girls bathroom – “why not, please, I really need to go”…. “Because you’re not a girl” “yes, I am” “I don’t believe you, go out and have your dad come in and tell me you are.. more red-hot shame, I ran to the car, “Dad, he won’t give me the key to the bathroom until you tell him I’m a girl”…His jaw set, “Oh for cripe sakes” he says striding towards the station…”Please give her the key to the girls bathroom.” Glaring at me, he tossed the key onto the scratched up counter. The attendant didn’t know I had failed miserably trying to pee standing up, and how badly I wished I was a boy that got to play all the sports I wanted, didn’t have painful breasts, and monthly blood, and got to wear cool clothes, not stupid dresses, where my knees froze walking to school. For a few minutes, I was the pitcher on the Little League team. And, I was Mark, in my favorite puffy coat, with my arm around the most beautiful girl. I had forgotten those things too.
In celebration of Trans and Non-binary folx who live with uncommon courage, and make the world a much better place. And shame on Congress for their cruel bathroom bill.
Day 21 / Poem 21
I started as, what— / Rebecca Brenner
I was going to say one,
but I was two—
my mother and me.
But really, I must have been three—
my dad, too.
But really, I was six, no, seven—
Josephine and Fred,
Isabelle and Mac.
I can easily make myself
nine, then eleven, then thirteen—
one hundred, one thousand, one million.
First spark, then cell, now movement.
A big bang, a meteor burning, strings dancing.
Emerson tells me his theory –
There’s a small room with a yellow table and chairs, you wait there with friends. Get to pick
your body, your hair.
I ask – did you pick me?
Yes.
I tell him I could hear him knocking on the edges.
He says, yes, there’s a door and when your number gets called it’s time to go.
SECAUCUS / Arlene DeMaris
the butter pellet / TaShira Iverson
Bursting!
giving life to the lifeless
all life’s stress you can
hand it over and I’ll wield it
holding and ready to alchemize
do you realize the energy you’re touching
deeply feminine and layered with haughtiness
Sasha Fierce and Shakira like hips embodiment
Bursting!
giving color to the colorless
turning dorothys world from
flat to fruitful
transmuting sad days into sashays
growing, manifesting, + turning into
a garden of Edens most gorgeous
bloom and all that was left to get
your bouquet? trust the me that resides in you.
Hop On / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
We Get Up / Margaret Thiele
The “what if’s”
Turn to “now
what”
We know what’s next.
It’s not paranoia.
Survival shifting-
Sociocratic art.
Participation-
Our super power,
Connection radiates
Loving, struggling
Aurora.
Redolent.
It’s midnight,
Our’s a non-violent
waking of hope and heart,
I hope for courage.
When asked what our
Last name meant
Dad cringed, a little,
It means ‘strong woman’.
Niece’s goodbye note
Said she was strong
She had climbed El Capitan.
But couldn’t take
Cops not believing her.
Then what-
We share stories.
Fire or no fire-
We cry, we laugh,
We believe,
We write.
We get up
Again and again.
In loving memory of Tiff Thiele, and Jon Supplee.
Day 20 / Poem 20
My Mother from beyond beyond— / Rebecca Brenner
The longer I am gone, the deeper I feel my understanding and insight for my grandmother my mother my daughters I am filled with them—their guilt laughter respect and tears for opportunities lost I wonder if absence has glamorized or exaggerated my feelings somehow I don’t think so Catherine Isabelle Patricia Rebecca Katie and now you B—one hundred and twenty-four years of women My death and your birth, precipices thinning the veil.
I remember an old black and white photo of a white-haired smiling lady in a wheelchair—very dim memories of sitting on Grandmother Catherine’s lap Confusion concerning the tales passed down to me by my mother Was it the gas running on the stove or her head in the oven My mother bared stories of her childhood and her own mother But I wanted to know more You will always want to know more B Always want to restore the living connection with me your mother your aunt those to come.
You should know this will be hard for her—
That the very act of becoming your mother will continually awaken these family stories in her body The memories we collectively meticulously packed away in cell and sinew will flood her hot—waking her in the middle of the night undershirt soaked heart throbbing She will have to turn towards them vibrating her body awake for herself but also for you and all the children after All of us in her body your body now.
I could never do this I always wanted to numb my panic my pain I lived alienated from my life Now finding myself beyond beyond yet still able to see you Rebecca and Katie—it’s a mystery And even if I couldn’t in life I’m determined to embrace it to surrender to wherever I am Follow the root all the way back Your body a revelation.
SEA GIRT / Arlene DeMaris
fairies in the field / TaShira Iverson
E is for every room you touch has a little extra fairy dust
T is for the thankful souls that got to encounter your luster and trust.
H is for the hallelujahs that must have gone through ya to make such a brilliant smile.
E is for everyone wishes they understood the trials that you’ve seen and all the while
R is for the real fairy dust that emanates from that brilliant smile
E is for excellent soul like tendencies
A for attitudes that are close to that of a deity
L is for the love that you bring always leaves a bit of levity.
Jack’s Mom / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Horizon Vivid, Beautiful Color / Mark Simpson
My psychoanalyst calls it intention which
takes attention, in short supply these days:
bills unpaid, messages unanswered, garbage
piling up in every room, all of which seem made
for accumulation. You’d think me a hoarder or a slob
if I invited you here, which, in a sense, I have.1
I try to pay attention and to therefore
have intention, but I can’t see for the mess.2
Which doesn’t matter; attention’s not about unpaid
bills, unanswered messages. It’s about what
comes to a life sifting to a close—
the usual: vision fading, hearing gone, brittle bones. 3
My intention is to see it to a close, settle in with
what I have,4 which is mostly what a person would expect.
Lean into it5 , a friend says.
I’m well past that; I’m in it.6 Every day, a fanfare
of promise, a muted light on the horizon that grows,
for a moment, into a vivid color.
1Hoarder, slob— I assure you neither is true. Anyway, you’re welcome here.
2Attention seems a ghost haunting these rooms, invisible therefore unhelpful. Perhaps more a doppelganger,
taunting me. Thanks!
3And all the rest.
4If I really had a psychoanalyst, I’d tell them I’m looking forward to it.
5Trite, I know.
6And it has my attention. Finally.
When Heaven Did Speak / Margaret Thiele
If Heaven did speak, they would sing,
Reading is flying
Writing—-
skydiving
To places feared, fabled, found, and foraged,
Long lines, short lines
infinitesimal wait times.
Grade school haiku;
We scarf up books now taboo.
Historical fiction, and the travel edition.
At the last chapters behest,
we’re elevated to Everest.
Who quickly knows Kathmandu.
Then zips quickly to Corfu.
Prose of Gray lifts one to Carry the Sky
Ravens spinning rapturous winged wonder,
Hers, his, theirs —
shapeshift paragraphs and epitaphs.
JP unites justice-seeking pedagogy,
With yoga mastery,
Earns award for disguising grand poetics as newslettery.
Harjo’s voluptuous skylines,
With knee-bending high lines.
Memoir dives, delves, divulges,
Residue Years, and God is on the wing too.
Triple back flip and twist,
With each new chapter,
Cursive air flows words faster,
Their fonts in perpetua, and opera.
Another high note, Doyle’s proems excite wings fluttering,
Muttering long sentences from a life too short
But still wondering.
When Heavens can speak, they rejoice in Christi’s words,
Kestrels carve tunnels to saber tooth tigers
Ready to pounce,
And, bounce letters and litanies of laughing relief.
Find words wind-hovering; semicolons new thoughts.
Oliver’s flock of poems formation’s piercing sight
Winging through dark night
To morning, the mourning, and hearts delight
Angelou’s Heaven speaks with lightning and thunder,
Flight of written words without blunder.
Angels chant celebration
Of human iteration.
Day 19 / Poem 19
To Keep Us Safe— / Rebecca Brenner
To-Keep-Us-Safe—.docx
ELIZABETH / Arlene DeMaris
I forgot his name but remembered
the shine of his shoes, the curled boar
bristle on his ankles crossed.
The way his tusk and tail stood
at attention in the interview.
His company. His corner office.
His building on Third Avenue.
His hand on my shoulder
as he came around from behind.
He was going to have an effect
on my future, he promised,
just touch him right and salute
as women have always saluted,
looking at the ground.
sanxuary / TaShira Iverson
my church has no steeple, Pew, or indulgences to pay
no pulpit or preacher with a sermon to say
a congregation both beaten and victorious
my church has a spirit that refuses to ignore one of us
beige walls and antiquated carpet
each testimony mirrors me and her
the strong start on Sunday yet my will comes to me on Monday.
my church honors wisdom from the formerly shackled
its love and vibrancy showing rest
my church shows me comfort in the dark and shimmers slivers of sunshine under duress
i smile
i joke
i weep
i dance
i mourn
from my church i can find myself forever reborn.
My church has no steeple, pew, or indulgences to pay
for once I think I may stay
to exist
to retry
to finally banish the demons that live inside
I’ve got two on my shoulders that have been with me through every burden I’ve shouldered but as I grow older I’m ready to release
And cast them into the sea where tethered to me they no longer can be.
Isn’t it Pretty to Think So? / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Flight / Mark Simpson
There’s nothing like a small metal airplane,
aluminum skin a mirror of earth and sky, the rivets
small prayers for the flight out, the return
or a small airplane of wood and wire
and fabric, the linen skin drawn
taught by varnish and coats of basic
airplane colors, white, red, yellow, that also make
the airplane a prayer of sorts or simply
a thing released of bewilderment, a narrative
disappearing into its particularities.
It’s not the same for you as it is for me.
The days have become more open-ended, although
somewhere a commonplace ending, the details
unavoidable.
But nothing is decided. It’s miraculous, the way
a small airplane lifts off, becomes entirely of the sky,
earth no longer a lingering regret, the sound of it
disappearing in an envelope of air.
Advocacy / Margaret Thiele
Pelicans walked pier,
in peace, purpose. Carried
Good news of adoption
To be heard in Salt Lake
Not Southeastern Utah. Judge
Threatened removal,
But not today, “balls
To the wall” he said. I said
We must, she is ours.
In memory of A. Howard ‘our Hero’ Lundgren JD, who nullified one judge’s homophobia in our Utah adoption.
Day 18 / Poem 18
When I thought of leaving you, / Rebecca Brenner
I took counsel with the moon.
Asked a forest of pines, aspens, and sagebrush to love us.
My elders already gone—I sat on the edge of the endless pink and sandstone mesas, waiting for her to rise.
Remembered, when I had my children, how I went looking for an extended family in meadows bursting with lakes choked in lily pads.
They agreed to tickle my babies’ soft bodies strong, showed me silence was our oldest ancestor.
Slowly, steady in her wholeness, she came—and in her arrival, she was already teaching me.
I slid my hands through cool red sand, asking her to return all of my scattered pieces.
Tenderly, she kissed my skin, pushed plasma and platelets full of light into the pump behind my breastbone, a buzzing and humming I couldn’t deny.
Her, illuminating the fragility that covers us—
Your parents may be gone, but look—the mesas, the dirt and stone you’ll return to.
The wild juniper between two rocks knows the depth of love life has for itself.
ATLANTIC CITY / Arlene DeMaris
Buoy / TaShira Iverson
I write for the drowned and the drowning almost always including myself wise words from deceased poet Reginald Sheppard peppered in his words of wisdom is a truth we all must face in the ocean that surrounds us in a clausterphobic fashion we dash into this world with little connectedness to the baby in the bassinet next to us but what a rush we had in adolescence when we sent a note professing puppy love feelings to that first crush.
I write for the drowned and the drowning almost always including myself is a mantra to live by no less as we all float as buoyant blood bags in an existence far too vast for our individualistic minds but we try forever to signal to the boats and ships and schooners that pass us by to hand us a warm blanket and warmer meal to fill us with the old sentiment here I have a role to fill.
I write for the drowned and the drowning almost always including myself is a call to action to all of us who hold a pen. We hold a responsibility as a buoy for the beings that gasp in the vast ocean we’ve been asked to endure
I write for the drowned and the drowning almost always including myself and the ones that i choose to love over time a rhyme could be the very spark of another’s soul and that is what we do.
Susan Explains What Happens at the End / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
I’ll turn into a giant balloon, so
They’ll tap me like a maple tree
Tap tap tap
Like sugaring?
Yes! They’ll use a spile-
maple-speak for needle –
to drain the fluid
which means I will feel better
Initially
But, there will come a time when they can’t keep up
And you’ll get that call in the middle of the night
The one from Kelly, asking you if her mom
Had chosen a specific crematorium
Susan picks up her cancer card
The one that gets us inside museums at closing time
The one that lets us park for free
The one that landed on her desk so randomly
And says, “Too bad I didn’t get the kind of cancer that makes you skinny.”
I laughed, which is why, I guess, she chose me
To bear witness
Rewriting / Margaret Thiele
Rewriting, redefining
Retiring-
A word.
Defined
By inaction,
Stopping,
Quitting.
Retiring?
No.
I’m calling it rewriting.
Rewriting, rewritten
A single word
For a big phase
Of life,
Before death.
A meaningful, potent
Phase.
Renaming it
Rewriting.
An active word,
Full of energy.
Full of purpose.
True thing-
The power of naming
Helpers know
Words matter.
They help dreams go far,
Forgive,
Or can hit hard,
Sure, i’m tired
Tired of long hour days
And corporate politics.
But not people,
And, never tired
Of stories.
The stories that make
You cry and laugh out loud
Or brought you to your knees
to hear the whisper.
And the co-workers
Oh my God
The endurance and courage folks have.
It’s humbling
A privilege, a blessing, an honor.
Heart expanding, mind blowing
Ever growing people.
Why
Would i say,
I’m re-tired?
Like redoing tired.
I’m not retiring.
I’m thinking,
Preparing
For rewriting.
Not stopping,
Only Changing,
Preparing to work-play
Or play-work.
More deep-breathing.
Pot-throwing, hot-spring
Soaking, collage making,
Friend visiting, Reiki loving,
Dog walking, photo-making,
Bird watching, hand-holding,
Story-listening, rock hounding,
Stone carving, home cooking
poem writing, bike riding,
Highway driving, airplane flying,
Path walking, people serving,
Saint searching, budget watching,
card sending….Rewriting.
Day 17 / Poem 17
Warm and wet, it dances you / Rebecca Brenner
vibrating through your cells,
up through your veins and nerve endings,
orchestrating the rhythm of your heart and lungs.
Nobody owns it—yet it’s everywhere.
These mountains.
This sky—this wide deep blue sky
with the grey storm clouds swelling in politician’s mouths.
Any story I try to tell you about this aliveness
is not at all like yourself feeling it
buzzing and humming through your bones.
How it flushes your skin warm and pink
or draws the hairs on your neck up,
sweeping you into the current of community.
We can’t pin any part of it down,
our bodies intimate
with life unfolding.
It’s a mystery,
Let’s rise by entering our bodies once again.
MOUNTAINSIDE / Arlene DeMaris
Irish Mike is Impatient / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
He dreamed that he was required to trick-or-treat
But with his bad hip and his old man legs
So skinny and bowed
He can’t.
He tried to explain
n the dream, to no avail
And even now, he’s awake but it’s like
the dream followed him so
he’s still trying to explain
Who would have thought he’d be
Spend the last few years of his life
in a long-term sober homeless shelter?
He’d go back to Galway
if he could
But there’s no money for that
And no way to bring the walker or the cane
Perhaps he’ll be deported
This so very old man, with his walker and his cane
Who found his footing in Baltimore
Before the walker or the cane became larger than life
Larger than his life, at least
Every night was a
He had a wife,
A job in a bar which meant
Every night was a night out
But wives die and jobs dry up
Legs and backs balk
So Irish Mike was on his ear
Homeless! At his age?
This impatience is new.
He’s not Irish Mike right now.
He’s Michael Fitzpatrick, with no visa, no money
And no one understands that he cannot walk from house to house
Asking for candy
Non-Representational / Mark Simpson
Seems endless, this leaving something behind,
something unnameable.
Somewhere something gets tense, lengthens, then turns.
The flesh makes up anything it wants, just as an eye
wants colors,
wants an ecology, a trapeze swinging
through the perpetual.
There are things you can’t control that make
a salad of intellect.
A Poetry Pilgrimage / Margaret Thiele
poetry pilgrimage
Seeking out the
People of the pen
Along Galways vibrant rim.
In search of word songs
Placed in bronze
and carved in stone
My favorite-a watery, wonderful
Story of swimming women
Plunging daily in the bay.
Stumbled on preemptive view
What Seamus Heaney knew.
Young bare-breasted
women galloped on
For splash and swim.
While the older sauntered surely in.
Plunging in for sheer delight
Sunset’s golden-silver light
emblazoned on their joy
An epic poem is written here
In real life today,
in ones, twos and threes
Ruddy cheeks make the plunge
Bobbing through watery blue-cold
At the Girl’s Bathhouse
They come out bright and bold.
They swear
With pink and pruny fingers
That their 50 degree shoreline
Is their
must-do
everyday
joy-line.
Seamus Heaney wrote Girls Bathing, Galway 1965.
I happily found the daily enactment from which his poem is taken.
In joyful solidarity with swimmers who love the open water.
Day 16 / Poem 16
The Lama is teaching me about thoughts. / Rebecca Brenner
Thoughts I don’t want—but that keep coming, looping visceral in my body.
Thoughts are just thoughts.
Thoughts are just thoughts.
Thoughts are.
There is more than just my thinking.
Let’s go back.
I want to tell my mom this—that she wasn’t broken.
Tell her there is a way.
Let’s start with how attention keeps flying open—in my dreams and in my waking life.
A thought and then swoosh!
Attention lands right where there is space and openness, potential, light—electric.
Free. Like a game of Chutes and Ladders—
I land back in my body, alive, awake and raw.
Is this an awakening or am I losing it, just like my mother?
I remember she didn’t go crazy.
She made choices, cause and effect—and maybe I can start to trust what I’m feeling.
I tell the Lama I feel like I’m losing my mind.
He laughs. Says, “You are.”
I laugh too, because I know what I’m losing is my unconscious fusion with every thought that comes through.
Let’s go back.
Thinking is a training ground.
The more absurd, the easier to see they are just thoughts, most days.
Let’s start with where I was fused and identified, where self was once home
is nothing and
no one
— just potential.
Spiraling Out of Control, and / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
We turn now
to those wh
are spinning in their graves
They must be so dizzy
I feel their pain
All of those spinning fools:
My parents, and
Margaret Sanger.
Emma Goldman, and
Adlai Stevenson, and
Friends lost, to aging and AIDS
JFK, penning his new book
Portraits of Rage
Underground, under your radar
Will they just spin their wheel
Or organize
Spin into control
We need all the help we can get.
Fifty Degrees / Mark Simpson
and wind coming up sharp now—in winds like this I worry
about the giant firs falling on the house, but the arborist says
relax, they will outlast me.
***
Like them I’m waiting, inching forward as they inch up.
The Coleman lantern swings in the breeze.
***
Good view of the Olympics’ west flank this morning,
through trees, leafless;
to the north, on the sudden rise, things still green—
huckleberry, insistent brambles, and underneath them
other plants, and deadfall from past storms, pith
and cambium egged on by rot.
******
When the trees fall, they break into pieces, decay becoming dirt.
Of course, I don’t see the endpoint, although I’m thinking about it.
Things cycle through, each with its own mind, destiny fixed, like mine.
***
Along a deer trail I found a deer’s skull—a buck, one antler still
attached. I’ve attached the skull-with-antler to a corner post
of the summerhouse, one vacant eye socket looking in, the other
looking out—like me, wind still rising, temperature falling.
Imagination / Margaret Thiele
Picture this
Sensate rich
Hot springs
Hypothesis
When meditation
Becomes
Imagination.
Taken aback
Soaking in beauty
To leap forward
To the doing
Later,
After.
Dreaming in
The beauty.
Lithium
Seeps in
Empowering
For days on end.
When meditation
Becomes
Imagination
Becomes
Reality.
Old growth
Forest
Up through
Toes, to knees
Becoming
Towering trees.
With love for the many hot springs of the West, especially Breitenbush as it recovers from a deadly wildfire.
Day 15 / Poem 15
I slipped into the mystery / Rebecca Brenner
left the part of myself
that always has to know.
The me you knew
would have hated this
all mouth and tongue out wide
not now.
I’m allowing everything
arise
to move
fall
away.
PITTSGROVE / Arlene DeMaris
Making Light / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
At the bank,
My aunt and I
Signed papers
She became old and
lost ground, lost sight
As I signed, I told her,
“You know you are in bad shape when
I am in charge of your finances.”
This alarmed our teller
I saw her reach a hand to the document
And pull it back the moment
My aunt laughed
We had to make light of
The reversal
The shift in powers
Now, I make light of
Our Descent into Fascism
That line also
gets a laugh
Not my best work, but it’s all I have
It occurs to me that all this time,
I could have been working on
Better jokes
The Cave and the Problem of Real-World Advice and Direction / Mark Simpson
The caves of darkness in the green
of stems and leaves, the caves themselves
an opening, an invitation.
Small light in morning comes down,
descending, settling in, brother
of the darkness
in the caves and how darkness is
alive in what it hides, in what
it offers to an eye
that wants to make sense of it,
as if the small light among the caves
had sense to make
unlike mind and its mindfulness,
a wheel turning,
always gray as mind is
and must be. Dear friend, disarm
yourself, leave mindfulness to its
ceaseless wandering
the stumbling
of a mind given to mindfulness
is unlike a cave
that discerns thought before it’s
thought but speaks nothing,
the small light remaining small.
Delightful the dark does
not speak and is always there,
unlike the light
that crouches among stems
and leaves and easily, in time,
becomes the dark
which matters here.
Go by feel, not
thought and its noise of drums.
But what will lead us,
the light gone, if the dark
is not remembered?
Going leads us, finds
a way and takes
us without deception,
deep-voiced, calling for our
return. The path winds and
winds upon itself.
We The People / Margaret Thiele
We the People
Wanted to be like her,
For the People.
For All the People
But We the People
Are really more like him
Voting “whats in it for me”
Over justice and liberty.
And We the People
Forgot about “For All”
Considered only the white
And the wealthy.
We the People
Consumers of choice
Have eaten our freedom
No checks to be had
No weights to be balanced.
What will the People
Do with the war
On Immigrants of Color,
Women and Girls,
Trans and Queers?
Will We?
Only if each ‘me’
Becomes We.
We the People.
Day 14 / Poem 14
My child, just six, pours— / Rebecca Brenner
My-child-just-six-pours—
TOTOWA / Arlene DeMaris
The Carlsbad Tweakers Den / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Soft ice cream, and chlorine,
Sunscreen, and methamphetamine
North of Sea World, West of Disney
Where Lego Land and
The Carlsbad Tweakers Den
Quietly coexist
Tweakers are charming, if not clean or patient
So many ideas, such rapid succession
You might conflate
their mania with brilliance
You might conflate
the lazy river with salvation
North of Sea World,
West of Disney
When You Lose / Mark Simpson
a child, you never forget the feeling.
You know that,
but some try to make it
go away, a hocus-pocus not
comfort to anyone, shallow,
the context tortured.
S. lost two sons.
K’s daughter has cancer
“possibly controllable,” even
after three surgeries and the chemo.
I wade into tall grass,
kneel on the earth
not to pray but to hold
a handful of the not-
disappearing threading through
the time left.
One Veteran / Margaret Thiele
Fifty days home from war
He hits the dirt at work
Hand on his hard hat
Like war helmet
Jack hammer turned machine gun
War zone to work zone
Lost without his band of brothers
Back home he felt like “other”
Odd and out of sorts-
High-school ball player
To army radio operator
He heard it all
The crackle of war snuffing hope.
He sought connectedness
In his band of mining brothers
Tough fellows,
Strong women too.
Fifty years long, another tour of duty,
Rotating 12 hour shifts
At the mine, the mill, the crusher.
It stopped the noise in his head.
Half a million miles commuted
His purpose to provide for family
His a sticky endurance
His purpose radiated resilience.
PTSD and politics
Make him prone to grouchy,
Preventing a celebrated
Pride in his work, his service,
To family and country.
But we are, will be, still be,
Proud of one veteran.
Day 13 / Poem 13
Energy my first language— / Rebecca Brenner
I am flint match sparks
a tacit knowing passed down from the lightning.
My heart mostly earth,
ears soft, damp dirt,
filled with wet mud and moss.
I won’t ever have to listen, then,
to the disinformation,
the echoing, quoting, reposting.
Even as the newscaster says,
if you can help it, don’t go outside
my child and I can hear goats chewing cheat and bunch grass
see thimble berries plump on green leaves
taste sage on our lips.
We watch a storm build on the horizon,
a wildfire burns on the mountain.
I kiss them, take their small hand,
twist their curls around my finger.
Look at how the wind and flames
touch everything just the same.
WEEHAWKEN / Arlene DeMaris
From My Mother’s Bookshelf / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Why We Are Here / Mark Simpson
In the time of loss
there is loss
and it is the time of loss.
We look among the trees,
among buildings once beautiful
and useful but do not
see them in a truthful way.
Loss and its terrible
hammer pound tin into
a cup.
Of course we drink because
we are thirsty,
and loss is the only thing.
In the spell of loss,
need and want are
not memories,
and light trembles
like an obliterated star,
the remains useless
as a scar.
We’d like to go but loss
wants us here.
A broken broom becomes
the dust. A rake rusts
in an untended filed.
And so we stay.
Loss is not kind to us.
Ode to the Sandhill Crane / Margaret Thiele
Sandhill Cranes
Teach discourse
On the letters
V R
A
n
d
Victorious, a swoop, a sedge,
Crowned red.
A mosaic of sound and flight.
Ancient delight
Seeking hope
And peace.
Like pilgrims.
To their Refuge
in Ridgefield.
At their place
On Plas Newydd.
Their sanctuary
In solidarity with
Vultures and vireos
Red wings and rails
Alchemy glows
piercing fire and rain
Preparing to paint
exquisite muck
as makeup.
Birding drag-queens
Give nod and sass
For fancy fun dancing,
And happy whoops
For muddy stoops
For prancing.
Fermentation of flight
undulating
To purple-gray light.
Theirs is a ripe comfort,
They know no loneliness.
Theirs is a feathered respect.
A grounded nest.
Day 12 / Poem 12
It began sitting around a table, listening. / Rebecca Brenner
A slowness settling bones down to earth. Imagining roots and dirt, worms and mushrooms anchoring attention in time.
No big deal, she said—just aliveness sensing itself—pulsing, warm, the sun unable to keep up with the snow.
No big deal—slow all the way down, search this body once and for all for its soul. My mouth tasting all it wants. My feet marching up muddy mountains.
No big deal narratives of conflict abound but so do those of resolution.
You sat down head falling back laughing the black coffee in your mug sloshing out onto you White Zombie t-shirt your belly peeking out—Do you see that ghost?
Patterned light through closed lids is its own intelligence, No big deal.
The foundation is listening—this is how we learned to speak. Mom and Dad pushing air from their lungs, vibrating cords in their throats. Their own sandcastled perspectives given to us through tone, inflection, rhythm.
This is how it works. No big deal.
We shape each other’s soft, fleshy bodies with our words.
SOUTH PLAINFIELD / Arlene DeMaris
Conversations with Virgil / TaShira Iverson
in.
one.
what have eye done.
in
three.
eye fear the fault is all on me.
in
five.
it’s what keeps me alive.
in
seven.
what if hells collided with heaven?
in.
nine.
please. play the victim and whine.
in.
eleven.
what if mye hell happens to be my heaven?
The Search for Pete the Processor / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
The Pleasures of Discourse / Mark Simpson
First peel away the adjectives
to see it. Then feel its edge or easiness
or ease of edginess.
And wetness, the moisture like
dew heavy in the grass.
Its weight: not artifice, exactly.
It lengthens mood.
Don’t peel away the punctuation;
you’ll need it soon.
At some point stand back to
see what your inspection reveals.
Stand further back. Stand
beyond its shadow and feel
the tone, the whisper of what
you’ve made.
A flattered sense of hum.
A sympathy unshattered
like a mirror.
Scorpios / Margaret Thiele
Fixed sign, bright minds
Mystery loving,
What does your secrecy savor?
Silly for asking.
As you swim
to warmer waters.
Before winter sets in.
You return with treasures
From whence you’ve come
Antares and Graffias
Bright stars all.
Day 11 / Poem 11
Your hand on my face. / Rebecca Brenner
Each touch an act on life’s behalf.
We can’t help it, we’re shrines to our ancestors,
a journey we all make together, this
becoming the world. With you, I’ve forgotten the
way to think, life floods through, washes
its body, cares for the children, writes a poem, continues.
Look, is that shadow us? The answer—much larger
than bright red threads, now a tangled,
thicket. I name them—brown eyes in sunlight, black lashes
blinking. Vigilance its own weight. My allegiance to my
aliveness, now. Whatever is vibrating, the wound the entrance.
There’s been no great advance, no coherent meanings.
Return to our beginnings.
I didn’t expect this to be a part of becoming a mother.
BLOOMFIELD / Arlene DeMaris
stiff feathers / TaShira Iverson
did
it
go.
gone
are you
the days
of
your sweet embrace
in case you were wondering
why yes I am listening to the
bridgerton version of Miley’s
wrecking ball because how
could you a juggernaut of
sorts have my best interest
at heart when still the
macbethian dagger
stings deep and scarily
in the recesses of my
stomachs and psyches
it might be that I
I
I
I
I
I held a baby chick smothered
in dirt and sludge too close in
my palms and now it’s time
to embalm because of the
crushing
crushed
crushéd weight
of the
desire to nurture.
The Poet In the Purple Shoes / Margaret Thiele
The poet in the purple shoes
Prints of Plath
And puts her pain
soundly in the ground.
And raises her from the ashes
Near bright blue forget-me-nots.
Happy to be remembered,
But relieved of her living
When she’d trade a rainbow of tulips
For hurtful-white hospital halls.
So gently and kindly
Sylvia is remembered
By the poet
In the purple shoes.
Happiness is hers once more
As if by chance
She came out to dance
On gracious grass
To the music of kind remembering.
Each sweet turn the poet led,
broke the jar,
and freed her from the talons.
For the poet in the purple shoes
Its been a long hello
And a sweet goodbye
With the muse of muses
To the song of kind remembering.
In honor of Kate Gray, writing coach, salon facilitator, and encourager of women to free ourselves and each other through the power of the pen, and who wore her purple shoes and plush pants to read her poems at Broadway Book.
Day 10 / Poem 10
I scrambled up a dusty trail— / Rebecca Brenner
Day-10_Brenner_I-Scrambled.docxORADELL / Arlene DeMaris
Scolding Chickadees / Margaret Thiele
One ounce Einstein
Tutors tabby cat.
Sentient being spends
A spring afternoon’s
social capital
demanding new deal.
Black-capped chickadee
Perched purple on patio chair
Peers at cat on couch
Chatters “how dare you”
Hurt song sparrow
Who will sing you
a morning mosaic?
You don’t want
My chick-a-dee-dee-dee
In your dreams.
Cat wakes and takes it,
Takes frothy scolding.
Human does too.
Song sparrow
Praises chickadee,
Sings of recovery.
Day 9 / Poem 9
Outside the algorithm, / Rebecca Brenner.
Day9_Brenner_Outside-the-algorithm.docx
NEW BRUNSWICK / Arlene DeMaris
nobody’s coming. / TaShira Iverson
no paul revere like figure to announce your next depressive episode it has no clock I fear
no town crier to inform you that he’s probably gonna ghost you too as fling 1-14 from this years potential roster did
nobody’s coming
no amber alert for the lost aortic battles spilled over in your pitch black solitude
not a damn flashing light to inform others what you’ve been through.
kintsugi translates to gold seams and is a Japanese art form of repair
this beautiful expression looks at a shattered plate and says “don’t you despair”
each crack receives an oxygenated kiss
bliss over each imperfection for in this artistic expression new life proliferates.
nobody’s coming but that five year old with a smile worth its weight in gold at the sound of Frank Sinatra’s Jingle Bells is still there.
nobody’s coming but that 14 year old whose pyrrhic voice set hundreds ablaze similar to Salem never left your inner home.
it’s true that nobody’s coming yet that 20 year old with Shakira like hips and shoulders as soft as butter still mutters in your ear that shit is going to be okay.
nobody’s coming. maybe that’s because your inner story already has its own cape.
I am an Open Book / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
The question always begins with a compliment
Your babies are so cute
I know what’s next.
Where did you get them?
Korea? China? Vietnam? A real life quiz show!
Will they guess the answer before these gorgeous children fling themselves upon the aisles, desperate for the sugar-laden, toxic part of your nutritious breakfast?
They know that because I am white, these Asian children – the one on my hip and the one crawling between my legs – must have been adopted.
I understand that it is impossible to believe that such gorgeous beings came out of my womb.
I believed the same thing
when I was in tenth grade, those Saturday nights, watching MASH with my parents, while the rest of the world went dancing without me. During the commercial breaks, I would have told you that no cute boy would ever find me beautiful enough to create a child using my genes.
Therefore, I answer patiently. In this cereal aisle, I’m not simply a mother
I’m an ambassador for mixed race children everywhere.
I use the patient voice of nap time, the one borne of impatience
I got them from the Chinese Jew Store.
Bargains galore
Why Persephone Deserves Her Fate / Mark Simpson
Fate is relative, like pain:
pleasure to someone else.
Fate, a whole pie served in slices,
containing everything,
some for everyone and some
happy to eat their portion
like Persephone on her carefree
walk through the countryside,
eating her pie, an ambrosia
of fruit and perfect crust, god-given,
it seemed to her.
On a pleasant walk,
anyone might not watch
where they’re going, miss
the “Don’t Walk” sign
flashing red or objects
falling from the sky or that person
dressed in black just around
the corner.
On her pleasant walk,
Persephone ate, didn’t look,
dangerous in a country of myth
and fable, didn’t realize the occasion
was meant for her.
Poor Persephone, Athena’s pride
and joy, lost to the earth’s dark hole, her
pie half-eaten, left above.
Sitting Vigil / Margaret Thiele
Death defying
Dying
Ease envelopes edgy energy
Frank, furtive, faith
Note its time,
Time opens to forever
Hours to halos
Halos to hallways
Not yet
Frothy memories
Make soupy meaning
Last bit soaked
With buttered bread.
An apology,
and appreciation.
not yet
Until deep okay
Comes to stay.
And breath gives way
To sunlit darkness.
Sitting vigil
With ease
And edgy energy.
Day 8 / Poem 8
Name the wildflowers, gather them gently for her / Rebecca Brenner
Stickseeds sing violet—
know each other by touch,
Sulphur cinquefoil, pale yellow, delicate
find one another in an embrace
Sticky geranium—what are you, fuchsia? Checkerblooms?
Molecules bond, electrons share,
Chicory, sun-washed in purple and green
how strange we were taught the universe is sterile,
Showy goldeneye, like miniature sunflowers
certainly nothing exists in isolation
Pass by the paintbrushes—too explosive to pick
the imagined secular vessel broken
Common yarrow, Prairie sunflowers—soon taller than me
a terrible lie, this separation—
Leave the glacier lily—too soft to hold
ordered within narrow rules, is sky, is wind, is rain.
HACKENSACK / Arlene DeMaris
Women pinned to home
like butterflies kept
your photo, Wally Schirra,
in secret scented drawers.
Followed their hometown man
in the news, your brave
rendezvous in the thin blue
band above the planet.
Lying under their husbands,
they dreamed of zero gravity,
how water would gather
its membranes
in front of their astronaut’s lips.
O Wally, you stirred
the women of Hackensack
flying over nimbus
that moved like their desire,
knotting into storms
and carrying them out to sea.
she could be found by fountains of fun and rivers of reverie remember me? / TaShira Iverson
dear old solitude a solid dude or dudette rather who made silence from chaos especially matter its cool blue tones against the walls just splatter
somewhat like a serenade these lines speak of the cool lemonade like peace I’ve known with thee it becomes that much more important that I speak of this peace.
she knows the right pressure points in the ever tensed shoulder and with little effort moves Sisyphus’ boulder
now that im older I cherish her company and invite her more and more.
with calm, I can find center and experience the blossoming of being reborn.
Can You Say Glory? / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Dissolving Gods Range Freely, Coming and Going / Mark Simpson
Clangorous exhalation, chant-like,
deep voiced, calling for the their return.
I’d better look up; someone has summoned the gods
who appear as overtones, drifting over the lake,
a floating sound, or a disembodied sound like the echo
of someone on another shore chopping wood.
How shall the drums be tuned?
We are looking at the water, waiting. Someone
has thrown a rope; the lifeboats have been launched.
But the gods range freely, coming and going,
finally dissolving into a wind on water.
That is the nature of gods.
This pastiche assembles phrases from August Kleinzahler, “(McPHee’s Gamelon),” in A History of Western Music with my own.
Kath’s Elegy / Margaret Thiele
Applepie, Acceptance, Appreciation, And peacefully Agnostic.
Breaths of music Brought Bright green, to tiny Bookgroup. And Beverley and ‘Beat’.
Centering Clay, after morning Coffee, her Clear voice, Cancer Couldn’t kill her Charisma or music Camp. Community Centered around them like Clay on her wheel. And Carol.
Deep even when Dancing, she Dared to Delight, her Dobro was her Diamond. And she- her Dad’s. And Dolores.
Ellen her Everything, Everything is possible… And Ellen and Izetta. Each day on the
Farm–Family, Friends, and Fired pots were Fallon’s Flash cards of Faith.
Gratitude Graced Glazes of Gay in celadon Green, Grounding her Grief in Graciousness. And Gail, Gad, and Gwenlyn.
Hummingbirds honored her humor, she Hummed over the Hayfield. Home was her throne.
Inclusion—she and El’s super power, Invite, Include, Inspire.
J is for her sweetheart Jumping with Joy and for Justice, always Justice. And Janet.
Kathleen and her Kiln, she was part-King, Kamala would have loved her.
Laughing Letters Lifted Lullabies of what Lessons she Left, what Lessons did we Learn about Loving. And Linda.
Making Music even when Miserable…her Motherlode Means Magic. And Marie.
We thought ‘Now’ would Never come, she stayed past Noon, into Night, and Nan.
Over Only On the Outside, Obstructive Ovaries attempt to make her Obsolete, Over and Over.
Pride Parade marched, Playful, Powerful, with Ellie’s Purple dahlias.
Kath was Queen of us Queer girls.
Reverie Rang with Righteousness, her Reign Rings on. Remembering. And Rene’.
on Stage, at School, in Sangha, her Seventy years lit by Sensational Seven-year-old Smile,
Our Teacher, her Truth, her Talents, Teasing Tender, she Treasured Time, her Time, shared Thoughtfully.
Her keen Understanding of Universal melodies,
Valuing Others, her Vivacious Viva.
We Watched her Work and Wander with purpose, Wielding Wisdom and then Watch the Wave of time Whisk her away.
Seventy Years, yearning, saying Yes over and over
Kath’s Zest, and Zeal Zoom to the horiZon- like melody notes on sailing boats.
In memory of Kathleen Fallon, and in honor of her wife Ellen who said “I miss her for every letter of the alphabet”
Day 7 / Poem 7
You cracked the moment open like a nut— / Rebecca Brenner
stated, “The stars are ghosts.” Stood outside
of the screen door, barely an outline,
a shadow between the porch light and the dark.
I asked if dying was hard. “Yes,” you said, “at first.”
I wanted to know more, but you told me to stop—
the night, holding its breath, glorious, expansive,
and silent. I asked, “What is the meaning of life?”
You told me with a voice like insects, “To delight.”
Then, emptiness with a deep darkness came
through the back door. “Evil counts on you
not believing in it.” This is the original transgression—
we’re dismissive of devils and arrogant of angels.
HOBOKEN / Arlene DeMaris
The starlings have set up
their line drawings in the blue
over Hoboken, sketching what
they know from flight:
the river and its capillaries,
black touch of the next bird’s
wing, their fold and return
banking into the sun’s last burn
before they drop
from their world into ours,
pouring coins of whistle and whirr
into the highway’s begging cup
of concrete overpass.
Psyche of a Psyurvivor / TaShira Iverson
I suppose it doesn’t matter
Well they unequivocally have me fucked up
Keep the peace, Nani
As a matter of fact, it does piss me off
Smile and waving id wager
Will keep you from danger
I’d rather bet on me putting some proverbial belt to ass.
—-—————————————————————
why
why
Why
Why WHY IS HE HERE
Maybe you wanted it and your mind doesn’t remember
Who
Who
Who
WHO LET HIM IN
maybe you wanted him here and you just don’t
remember
no.
no
No
NO
NOOOOOO
Maybe you didn’t want him there but so what you
taunted him with haughty lips and hips. Why.
Wouldn’t. He. Want. This.
A Cento for November 6, 2024 / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Timelessness and the Problem of Now / Mark Simpson
Unlike you, I do not live in time.
I grew tired of ceaseless comings doings;
the entire realms of things, in fact.
But the trip here was awful—portage after
portage, carrying all the broken clocks
I could find.
An entrance fee, of sorts, homage
to the large, humming absence
of the hour.
Friend, aren’t you the ticking time bomb’s
timer set to a random hour keeping
perfect time . It’s tuned into
the atomic clock, satisfying to those
in time:
the clock’s click-click-click and then
the time-keeper’s voice (is it computer generated?)
generous in tone and completely believable:
Four hours fifteen minutes and 30 seconds.
We don’t get that channel here.
I want to tell you not to come.
Timelessness grows into
the monotony of now, the only
moment allowed.
Once someone smuggled in a clock.
Those who saw the seconds spin,
the minutes creep, had tears in their eyes.
They were wistful for a clock that
told them when.
The clock vanished—
the monotony of now grew deeper.
That was before I came
Fear Comes to Visit / Margaret Thiele
Day 6 / Poem 6
One hopes for a clear view / Rebecca Brenner
after climbing a mix of deciduous fir and pine.
Little lumps of earth left looking
cold air filling clay lungs
our wet skin glistening the dying and living.
At the end of the trail
“Only suckers get married,” she said.
Roots stretch down, refusing to depart
Whispered: thank you, thank you
in the open space where a view could be.
Smooth white bark
sparked fire in our bellies.
We, a mix of the elements
ephemeral while golden hearts
leapt at our feet.
We won’t be in our bodies forever
a mystery, a generous presence.
Magpie home in her black and blue grandeur
flies off, elemental,
an appropriate way to be in this shocking world.
Somehow still a last sun flower wild
what other choice do we have?
learning to not cower at the edge
we grow aware, brave even
and reach to the largest place we can inhabit.
PARAMUS / Arlene DeMaris
I was born
empty, doll’s head
on the beach
waiting for the tide
to rush in
with shards of ship
wreck. I shop
the mall
to patchwork nerves
like anyone else
on this escalator.
Even the youngest
girls are here
with their tiny clutches,
searching for their heart’s
desire, learning how to
have, hold, wrap in tissue
and forget
all in one afternoon.
Odyssey for Color / TaShira Iverson
have you ever asked a rain droplet when she’s ready to visit with earth?
maybe she missed the concrete kisses he gave her after their last evaporation taken away from each other after 48 hours
sour evenings ending with the sun intervening broke up their last meeting in the dead of winter where her body froze upon impact with his but the sun competed for her love with compassion
imagine her shock and sadness and pity when a city’s grass blade bade her adieu all the same but
upon her arrival he could only muster disgust and shame
share share i must share my surface
area with the likes of YOU PFT
you don’t even live here go back to where you belong
and with a saccharine tongue and song mother sky with her windfull nieces, thunderous nephews,
and brightest neighbor beckoned her daughter to the silver lining and told the blade to quit his insipid wining.
crying she said aren’t I but a drop like my sisters a whisper of the clouds from whence we came
Shame child shame the mother cried with slight readiness to her daughter Rainn
without you hunger spreads
without you there shan’t be bread
without you there will surely be drought
without you, there’s no life, have no doubt.
with a kiss from the sun and one from the earth
they three made new spectacles for which life was lost for words
through prismatic lenses, light Rainn, and huggings from the grass and concrete below
the droplet once longing for earth transcended into a rainbow.
The Jaws of Life / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Uncertain Maps / Mark Simpson
The maps were useless, so
we gave them up at 40 or was it 42,
word expunged, a sentence
we wouldn’t say and in its place
the mirth of 41 or was it 43,
which opined for us, for we were busy.
We gave up busy then.
We reflected. Every day from
breakfast through an early supper
an echo of ourselves.
Thought turned red then turned blue,
a cold blue in which we shivered
and then the lies, lies like calliopes
at carnivals and they were fun until
they turned a truth,
bleached by all our expunging
but still that sordidness we wanted—
tears and tears and rents and silences
so pure, so very pure we thought
them pretty. We were holding
hands then on the avenue where
civil twilight settled.
We looked it up. We wrote it down.
Our anger was a cleaned-up room
and we were unflappable and shrewd
and knew the way.
untitled / Margaret Thiele
Day 5 / Poem 5
I will not hurry although the path ahead is unclear— / Rebecca Brenner
I will love what needs loved.
Help grow what can grow.
Let die what must die.
Alone or together, we can still close our eyes and see god.
WESTFIELD / Arlene DeMaris
She left him early, before the house
exploded. He was upstairs writing
the note later found blocks away,
I’m lost without you, his pale face
or was it a fold in the curtain pressed
against the fog of an attic window.
From inside, his heart was a mallet
pounding as if the work song of rowers.
I will never, he wrote, I will always.
The universe rotates on a grand scale,
she had told him more than once.
How can we find love in the churn?
Out in space the reflecting telescope
unfolded its wings and turned to shoot
galaxies dead since the beginning.
Beside the cellar door a click, a flare,
and the propane tank took a grievous turn.
I left the living room light on, he wrote.
The dishes are clean. No danger to the public
except that a boy on his way uptown
was thrown clear, and the bodies of termites
nesting in the sills fell like rain.
requiem for romance / TaShira Iverson
what happened?
to the dance cards and the hands with white glove extended a Readiness to revisit one’s psyche over tea because the dazzling dance floor performance made them swoon too soon
are we to pursue the inner most powerful energy found with those of opposite attraction but so far are we from its delicate enunciation my patience has worn thin at the thought of yet another dalliance not unless with those broad shoulders comes a bit of valiance.
what. happened?
the song has ended and lights are on.
last call was 15 minutes ago and
after sweaty shoulders and sweet ear laced nothings.
you’re gone.
The Haunted Slide / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
If I never go back to Hawaii,
I’ll never have to go down that slide
It’s two stories high, with seven twists, and two tunnels
I might be exaggerating
Regardless, it’s a terrifying prospect
Once you get started, there’s no traction
Plus the children in line behind you get impatient if you hesitate
Susan vowed to haunt me if I don’t
But I think I found a loophole in our contract
The one she printed on a napkin with a felt tip pen
The one I signed, once she stamped her foot and said,
“I have cancer.”
She doesn’t understand how I can be afraid
when we once stripped down on a winter hike to Sliding Rock and
let gravity and algae send us swiftly down into a pool of frigid water
If I never go back to Hawaii, I won’t have to risk
speeding down that highway of slippery plastic
I can live without the birds of paradise, the warm Pacific sands,
The sweet air, leis, and lanais
I can live without a skyful of stars I’ll never see in Baltimore
I can live without ever learning to play the ukelele
Susan knew I’d find that loophole
She haunts me now in earnest
At first it was generic
Cardinals and butterflies, that sort of thing
She’s upped her game, and I find books she loved,
memories I lost, photographs that never existed
I might be exaggerating
I should probably book a flight before she goes harder
But once I go down that seven-story water coaster
I’ll miss her presence
Her weird reminders that she was once my friend on earth
A Continuing Endeavor / Mark Simpson
like the joy of an animal
that has learned a new trick—
a perpetual passion taught to you by a dog
or any thoughtful beast.
To have a framework
articulate with joy and its
ceaseless passion!
Sad how discovery ends with
the thing discovered.
(Some language borrowed from Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p173.)
Rescuing / Margaret Thiele
Day 4 / Poem 4
Make Life A Ritual / Rebecca Brenner
Address
the landscape directly—
Rough-fruited fairybells
Chicories, then endives
Showy Goldeneye dusting golden hips.
Make offerings
to the dead who keep changing.
Taste their lineage on a pricked finger.
A direct script from a life already
gone blue to red.
Become the world
fan fingers out through the grasses—
Lungs mirroring the lightning,
braiding into the bronchi what they know—
the earth is a giant electrical circuit, us, its weak conductors.
Remember
there is no private salvation.
The winds may worsen. Confusion total—
but there are shapes,
structures knit close to the bones to ease the flow.
Bring the ritual to a close
attending to all that’s left.
Life carries its own body,
washes its skin once home.
Cares for the children, continuing on.
Lay down
intimacy is slow, but our reverence can be deep.
PLAINFIELD / Arlene DeMaris
I asked how her son had grown
so dark and far away, sovereign
exotic of his own chaotic state.
His daughters afraid of their own
bodies. His desire burning a hole
in the bedroom wall. His hour
of knife and rope and no rescue
spelled out in blood on the attic stairs.
My grandmother said the elevator
in their building on Front Street
had doors that opened and closed
from inside an iron cage, and the car
would drop into the basement
before it went anywhere else.
It was all he wanted to do,
to ride hour after hour, his face cut
by the shadows of his favorite floor,
his hand touching the shaft wall
with its red-painted plummet of numbers.
My mistake, she told me, was handing him
sandwiches and blowing kisses as he passed by
on the way into his night.
three letters filled with worlds of possibilities. could it be a readiness to apologize? perhaps he misses the autumnal sparkle from looking in her eyes. / TaShira Iverson
Five letters rang in her ears from the vibrations of his larynx. But of course my dear sir, you didn’t mean it my dear sir, you won’t do it again my dear sir. She flinched at the possibility of its reverberation again.
four.
little.
letters.
threatened to occupy the sonic space.
she’d first prefer cutting blades of grass
with her niece’s safety scissors before
become weighed down by the proverbial
bricks. of. Loving.
Him.
Sarah T., Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
At a Certain Point / Mark Simpson
abstractions like mind, thought, world, cosmos do not serve you well, although end is certainly not an abstraction, its close, hot breath on your neck as if on an elevator someone were standing in back of you. Of course you want to turn around—whose breath is that?—but obviously you can’t.
Prepare yourself for the time when the abstractions appear like caterpillars on broccoli—unnoticed until paired with a mouthful partly chewed. Are they poisonous, I asked. I’ve forgotten the reply.
Meanwhile, minds twirl in the void, thoughts sputter in the cosmos where you’ve decided to spend your last days.
At a certain point, a deck of cards, hand dealt, nothing worth betting on.
A Presence / Margaret Thiele
What does it mean,
To own my own body,
To possess a presence,
Treat it like the present,
It is, I am.
To call it my own matter,
That I matter.
Tissue, fiber, woven bones,
A kidney stone.
Love to sweat, to move,
Nothing to prove,
Heads turn,
A man or a woman?
Who cares, I’m me
Both she and he.
Blue eyes flash,
Gaze up for distant diamonds,
That I am, you are,
All the Queens are,
The Black and Brown Queens,
Who brought us Pride,
And made us proud.
This is what it means
To own my very own body
To possess a presence
That is like the present
It is,
I am,
You are,
We are.
Day 3 / Poem 3
In the beginning, there was darkness— / Rebecca Brenner
I looked for you there.
Feet fire in the reservoir
pushing the smallest of waves
I wanted you, then
to settle and rest beside me.
But you’re always so worried—
pacing the shore.
Even the dog, panting,
catches every stick tossed
now crane wings spread
breath rises over the sun.
She began—
milk and milkway.
in the upper regions of sky
art was a woman
poetry was a woman
music was a woman.
I loved her son deeply—
when woman owned fire.
So why am I here?
Interrupt the pattern—
Beasts and plants were women
never wired for this oppression
OCEAN GROVE / Arlene DeMaris
Arrived late, told by a man in a boat
off the pier I should have been here
yesterday when a whale twisted
out of the water dressed in plumes
of bait fish sailing their silver.
What else can I miss?
It’s only when I look away then back
that anything moves—the wedding
cake layers of a container ship,
church women on the boardwalk
with Bibles open against the wind,
a girl at the end of her father’s arm,
wading into the surf pressed against
the kite of his summer shirt,
dark cloud of his face carrying
weather about to change.
if I’m the bully you claim i am where’s my lunch money???! / TaShira Iverson
my bigger than you restitution
my David versus Goliath resolution
If I’m the bully in your story where’s the toilet for the swirly
Surely you must mean someone else but
just in case you need some clarity because its clear for you commonplace sense may be a rarity
allow.
me.
to.
articulate.
I intimidate the pieces of you that don’t see the light of day
withering away in the recesses of your psyche it might be she’s starving
Let down by you the driver of decisions
She envisioned a life of blooming flames
And saying fuck you when asked
Why can’t you be tamed?
don’t come into my home with feces and label it a present just because it came with your presence.
The essence of your argument is tired.
It seems to me care in this relationship was never required.
so allow me to remove the gloves and with it the remnants of love left.
I would wish you the best but that doesn’t fit
my prescribed character, does it?
Signed,
Maleficent to the Kingdom
I Adopted a Raccoon / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Synesthesia / Margaret Thiele
You can hear it-
The blend of sage and rain, its freshness soothing the skin of land.
You can see it-
Meadowlark’s early morning song sliding blue sky wide open.
You can smell it-
Friends fingers reaching for the warmth of each other’s hand.
You can taste it-
The blue ink resurrected on lost letters signed with love.
You can feel it-
Winter solstice sun sips, lingering light of warm stories.
You can see it-
The trombone’s slide, sax’s swayed notes of flesh and bone.
You can hear it-
Hope dancing on wafting fresh baked bread, and slathered butter.
Sensory reverberations,
All of it,
Diving into the love of life.
What was, is and is to come.
Day 2 / Poem 2
Call me what I am the watery folds of cortex— / Rebecca Brenner
weaving through skull, shaping neurons, dendrites and axons into clear pathways of hypervigilance.
Call me what I am a body that grew so complex throughout evolutionary history that it had to create a nervous system and brain—a type of command center—No. I’m not a brain that has life but rather life that created a brain.
Call me what I am an electro-chemical reaction—searching through the possibilities of all matter. Folding in the information gathered from experience throughout the timeline of existence, encoded on each amygdala. No. No.
Call me what I am a river running who keeps trying to dam her own shores.
All pulse and flow and push this life a beneficiary of all who came before.
Call me what I am the phenomena world.
Vigilance a solid grey rock, life slips around, even under.
Call me what I am particles and atoms of the first galaxies and stars.
Lineage an energy signature reminding me to act my age.
Call me what I am the world my body.
Love eddies, then floods the shrine of cells bundled tight against the lungs.
Call me what I am a mystery.
A never-ending surrendering where I enter again and again.
MATAWAN / Arlene DeMaris
A boy is wading the river
for teeth. He comes up with a beauty
and I am the only one here
to show it to. His shirt is printed
with the fins of his favorite animal.
His hair is still baby fine, his mouth
gapped with missing incisors.
What I know about sharks I don’t say.
How they swam far inland in 1916
for Lester Stillwell, eleven, playing
on the banks, his blood beckoning,
his torn shirt all the surrender
they wanted. Only time will hunt
this child, strip him to the bone
and, once its insatiable gut is filled,
head for open water.
Ursa Major / TaShira Iverson
striated like stretch marks
the sky reminds me that god is a woman
painted by the stories her children so willing to be elastic its past being perfect or plastic
and yet in her form she illustrates a modeling of wisdom grace and poise
with her contrast of light to dark I continuously find joy
boy what a gift to be known and learn her love
for I present my offerings with humility to the diety embedded above.
feed her acidless rain
feed her gases sans methane
hell, look at her!
and hopefully through connection you find your divine terrain.
Shopping for Hospice / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
We stopped for socks on the way
Like we had all the time in the world
The tours were designed to put you at ease
But they just made us giddy
We took notes:
hard beds, nice staff, popcorn, morphine
We choose the one with the
stone walls and soft beds
Farther from home, but plenty of sunlight
Farther from home, but excellent pastry
Farther from home, but not understaffed
Farther from home, but aren’t we all
Checker’s Son Walked Daily in the Forest / Mark Simpson
The wind arrives, splintering trees into giant toothpicks, the wood of split trunks left standing, sharp points jutting upward, pith and cambium pale against dark trunks. Everyone gets the jitters, warning flags up, supermarket packed—cars circle in the lot, drivers looking for backup lights, waiting for parked cars to leave. At the checkout lines cashiers have lost that dedicated ebullience promoted by management—they’re feeling frangible, too—the leer of the beyond facing everyone, wary of trees bending, breaking, houses smashed, cars caught, streets impassible, littered with what’s left. The checker in lane three worries about his son walking among the big trees, and the boy, quickened by wind, delighted by the craziness of trees in it, is stayed by a tree falling, every inch of its 100 years dedicated to an end as if it were a hereditary right, the scene as crazy as a picture by Ferdinand Léger (e.g. “The part of Chart”), French painter, 1881-1955.
All Saints Day / Margaret Thiele
Dawn’s first light points pink
Heaven knows
A storm’s coming.
Saints of the airwaves,
Assist Saints of the landforms.
One prepares his shield,
The other-her bus,
Another his microphone.
Each with rainbow arm bands,
And their marching band,
Saints are marching
The band of angels coming after her,
Coming for to carry her home,
Home to the White House.
Rosa of Montgomery
her green hat, feathers flying
revs her bus engine
ready to motor voter upon voter.
Martin of Atlanta
Shines his shield
Its brilliance –
Justice rolls down like water.
John of Alabama
His microphone
The perfect decibel
Words of encouragement.
Exercising our voting rights.
Saints of the landforms-
Election workers,
Postal carriers,
Postcard partiers,
Sign waving sisters.
Removing fears, barrier upon barrier
Imagine
Breathe
Believe
Ye Voting Saints of Glory.
Day 1 / Poem 1
Your mother was young— / Rebecca Brenner
barely over the shock of you.
A daughter with wounds
stitched over creation.
She fumbled breasts
into your small, searching mouth
unsure what they would give—
her mind a menace.
A tattered cloth heirloom handed down,
tangled threads from her mother,
and her mother before.
She loved you with quaking bones,
hoping you would know.
And you—small and wise—
felt it seep through her skin,
understood the weight of things
before you knew the words for them.
And you drank that love,
terrestrial waters, sweet and bitter both,
embracing the weight of this life,
unable to destroy the world’s origins
set deep into your marrow,
silent and true.
CAMDEN / Arlene DeMaris
Look how morning has come back larger than yesterday,
more birds, more clouds, more room under the Walt Whitman
bridge for boats crossing in fog. More road for my commute
across the water, raising my metal cup to daybreak over
New Jersey, my body barely electric at this hour. I am a brown
trout in a six-lane river, swimming with the swimmers.
Alive to a fault, I merge lanes, turn my wheels toward
the guardrail where the armies of those I have lost line up
to flank me on the way to Philadelphia, faces hidden under
their unearthly arms. I lure them into my car with the scent
of coffee, with radio news and weather, with stripes of sunrise
cutting the dashboard where Our Virgin is adhered,
holding her hands out to the world. I say, tell me
you still love me, and they roll the windows down, laughing,
tongues flapping, full of words I’ve never heard.
I’ve recently fallen in love with venom. / TaShira Iverson
not the one coursing through a snakes bite no instead the machination from the mind of one stan lee taught me to reckon with my symbiotic tendencies.
I’ve recently fallen in love with Venom. not the one that makes its round at the holiday table all so quickly because you chose career over some pyrtic marriage but instead the roller coaster that occurs from jack Daniels greeting the Colgate.
I’ve recently fallen in love with Venom. Not the sleepy time draught that would put Ron Weasly into a coma but the temporary attitudes and aromas that come from the most distant of lovers.
I guess venom was always there.
Gentrification: Williamsburg, Brooklyn 1982 / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen
Tense, Present / Mark Simpson
Notice how a moment cleaves past
and future, arranges the pieces haphazardly
so that when you look for them,
you can’t see beyond their camouflage—
trailing blackberries; fescues, pasture grass
headed out. No help in the ordinary, no
relief from the daily slice and wrench.
In the Japanese maple one branch
sways as if a singular breeze had stirred it
or a bird leaving, unseen.
That’s what I mean—the mechanics
of up and down plain enough, but not
the unexpected presence of movement
that finally wears itself out, the branch still.
In the first light, sun just over the hill,
dozens of insects jostling for something,
lives held for this particular moment,
buoyed in intense light, their lifetime
a day that to them seems eternity,
the beginning and end concentrated;
in between what I’m waiting for.
Ode to the Paramedic / Margaret Thiele
Pausing with each patient
The paramedic
during the pandemic
Peering into fearful pupils
“Am I dying”
“No precious person you’re not”
Pausing for numbers
Pulses racing
While percentages plummet,
Needle pricks and O2 masks
Post trauma
strips prayers
To “Help”
Providing care
Your palpable presence
During the pandemic
Pausing with each patient
Oh dear Paramedic,
“how are you?”