THE November, 2024 30/30 PROJECT PAGEThe Haunted Slide / Phaye Poliakoff-ChenTHE November, 2024 30/30 PROJECT PAGE

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 are things I remember that no one else does.

Fiberglass icons held hope on a pier

There are things I remember that can’t be confirmed

Beggars and gulls swarm a boarded-up snack shack

The fiberglass icons are rusty and cracked

There are things I remember that no one else does

Tweakers are charming, if not clean or patient

Tourists reward them with bacon and bread

There are things I remember that can’t be confirmed

Statues of seals with maniacal grins

Still offer us hope and restless good cheer

There are things I remember that no one else does

We’re at the age now where we’re dropping like flies

We’ll leave you some boxes and hope for the best

There are things I remember that no one else does

There are things I remember that can’t be confirmed.

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

Learning to drive, the rotary

is the first true test of nerve.

Pick an arrow to follow, a sign

to miss. Guess the truck’s intentions.

Brace and grip. No one tells you

what will happen when you fail.

Metal on metal. Glass like water

over the back seat. License and registration.

No one says this will ever stop.

That every time you will spin off

into the wrong town where

you must make a new life.

Where you have to tell

your story again and again,

to no one who believes,

where you marry the fist

in your face and move over

the dry cleaners, or drive back

to the roundabout and follow

it into the night.

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

The next town over

is where I would fall

off the end of the earth,

according to my sister.

All sidewalks ended there.

All buses stopped.

It’s where she said

the Tartar Lamb lived,

a legendary plant

that grew sheep as fruit.

In our apartment,

there was old blood

on the wall near the telephone.

The Act of Contribution

scripted on attic rafters

in glow-in-the-dark paint.

A shrine to the Virgin

in the bathroom.

But it was the zoophyte

I dreamed of,

its wooly buds,

its gentle bleat,

my fingers

so deep in lanolin

not even my sister

would believe I had seen

the void and lived.

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

What she’s asking us is

If Black girls get locked up more than white girls

And the answer is yes.

Go down to Decatur Street and

See for yourself.

See how many of those girls are Black

See how many of those girls are white

Yes.

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

Dear one, I was going to call but this is faster.

You can see eyebrows between the lines

and that smudge at the bottom is rain as I went

to put the mail out.

Hold the paper at the X in the margin, as you would

hit your mark on stage or at ten and two o’clock

on the steering wheel. Choke up on the grip

so nothing shakes.

Yesterday these words were still inside the cheap

pen that skips: Teresa. Had. Her. Baby.

Car. Broke. Down. On. Route. 1. In. Clark.

The. Chairs. I. Ordered. Are. Wrong.

Now do you see? Let it go in the wind.

It will still be there tomorrow in the front

yard tangled in the arbor vitae,

your name crossed out.

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

Sex gets to be just like working in a factory or being in an assembly plant.

It’s just something you do.

You close your eyes, and you do it.

It gets to be an everyday thing

It doesn’t bother you anymore.

And if it does, after you look at the money,

It doesn’t bother you anymore.

I don’t mind blow jobs: I’m very good at them.

I just can’t stand to have somebody jumping up and down on top of me all the time.

So, every once in a while,

I might get high to go to work until I realize that

these men

They’re buying your time.

They aren’t really buying you.

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.docx

ASBURY PARK II / Arlene DeMaris

At the convention hall a man wins

Best Arm for his sleeve of bruises.

I saw the Rolling Stones here when Brian Jones was still alive,

my mother outraged that I would pay five dollars to hear

those ugly men. Now a woman with a brain inked on her bare

scalp is showing her book of designs to Best Arm

who hopes to win Best Leg next year.

A biplane flies over the boardwalk trailing its banner: you look burned.

I’ve always wanted to know what keeps them

in the air, just as what keeps us breathing despite

our slowest arc across the sky. What talisman am I wearing

that so far has turned the hand of god aside? Best Arm holds

his power in family portraits that spread across his oiled

chest. Even the baby, my son, he says, rides his muscle

with serious purpose, mouth pursed on a disembodied

breast. I tell him how Mick walked into the crowd,

took his shirt off, came within twenty feet of where

I stood with my Instamatic firing off rounds, and injected

his doleful lips between my eyes.

The Visit / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

Brisket, smoked and grilled

Resting, on the stove next to

Bacon

Greasy Greens

Sweet potato pie, heavy cream whipped

Into peaks, soft and stiff

Outside, children arrive, and it’s time to

Merge these grown-ups with their smaller selves

The summer we built a dragon on the front lawn with

12 pounds of flour, the Baltimore Sun, Adam’s rib, and aluminum foil

We created a miracle, a lumpy myth with an evil smile

Though the green skin we’d planned became instead

a massive slip-and-slide

as gallons of green paint spilled onto the sidewalk

That was the summer I learned to shrug

Now, scrub off the green paint, and there’s a lawyer and his wife standing

Where the slide used to be

Back inside, the dog has eaten well.

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 will be there

for the yard sale

to see what isn’t wanted

by this house:

Fischer Price xylophone on wheels.

Women’s blouses arms out on the lawn

Box fan labeled works!

In the kitchen cupboards,

everything is as they left it.

Plates on the table

ready for dinner,

Boxes of cereal

spilled on the counter.

In the medicine cabinet,

makeup. Still with caps off.

Smears of a hand

that crammed tubes

into a purple quilted pouch

just as the bank notice

was taped to the door.

This is how it will be

in the second coming.

Debtors turned out

of their homes in Basking Ridge.

The mortgage officer

a thief in the night.

I will wait outside

the next morning,

early bird,

with questions about stamps

and coins.

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

The way we frilled ourselves at sunset, like lizards

The way we fought in LAX,

Leaving me with two duffle bags,

a pack of your cigarettes, the stench of stale smoke

And the fear you’d disappear

There are things I remember that can’t be confirmed

The dead refuse to corroborate and the stones

refuse to give blood

My father’s last words,

The instant mashed potatoes Angel made for me

In the hours before the last dance of the semester

The way Susan’s father died in her arms

Lately, I’ve seen the reverse come true. Evidently, I taught

A writing lesson that so moved my students

They still ask me for copies

I remember devising it as I ran to the classroom,

out of breath, on the verge

of being late.

Something about a raccoon, they tell me.

I’d be happy to send it,

But the lesson has vanished.

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.docx

WATCHUNG / Arlene DeMaris

The geese are raising their woodwinds

over the reservoir this late. Their soft ships

ply the reeds on the way to sleep, fretting

and weaving what ties them together in the amber

murk they nest above. When my mother lost the right

side of herself we walked the gravel paths

here at the water’s edge. She strode

that day like she would never again,

my hand on her back, imprinting.

We took it twice around, walked all night,

shoulders touching until her remnant leg

kicked out and caught me with a hook

and a claw. She wanted to know, how else

were we supposed to find each other in the dark?

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

What they did for suicidals back then

was jail, locked in with their broken crockery

and given 30 days to reassemble. Also, music.

In the cell next to my father, harmonica.

In others, guitars, with an eye on the strings

lest they strangle. He was a percussionist.

Spoon on bars. He wrote to tell me rhythm

was all he had in the space between cuts

on his wrists. Don’t follow me, girl, he would say.

Improvise. God loves a good riff. Each time

I left he’d give me a perdiddle to remember him by.

He built it into me until at last I could tap it out

on kitchen chairs, bannisters, coffee table

even his status of Jesus next to the pile

of porn on his night stand. We didn’t want him

back. We wanted him back. And when he got off

the 22 bus at home, a collar of red lines

on his neck, he was tamed. Took my hand

like a rabbit. Carried a pile of single serving

corn flake boxes, one for every day to tape to the wall

in the attic with thirty roosters watching so I would know

who was to blame.

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

Picture these two: a 37-year-old Black man with dreads all the way down his back, and a 58-year-old white woman with long gray hair running toward the group of parents and high school students taking a college tour. “Sorry we’re late.” I said, out of breath. “Do we need to sign in?” The tour guides said that we did not. Terence had just gotten out of prison. 12 years. I’d taught him inside. God, he was smart. We were running late. Parking. The parking meter took credit cards. Not something you’d know about necessarily if you’d been in prison for more than a decade. Plus that ankle monitor weighs a ton. I didn’t know that parolees pay a monthly fee to be tracked. It takes time to unravel the past. The tour guides did not ask us to introduce ourselves, but to their credit, they tried to be friendly. Midway through the tour, we stopped in a beautiful meadow in the middle of campus, where the tour guide came to a halt. Looking up into the trees, he said, “Now parents. I know you worry about sending your children to college in – Baltimore. My parents were worried too, especially after Freddy Gray.” He paused. I suspected that the pause was there to underscore his willingness to confront this issue, safety, head on. Again, he pointed upward into the tress. “But, we assure you that this campus is safe. “ He showed us the blue light cameras nestled in the trees . He pointed to the plain clothes officers. He said, with the assurance of a 22-year-old picking up extra cash by giving campus tours: “I assure you this campus is safe.” The parents asked questions while their children cringed. I made a simple observation: “Terence’s last school had a lot of security, but I wouldn’t call it safe.” Terence asked, “Mom. Do you think I’ll be safe here?”

I said, “Sweetheart. You’re the one they’re afraid of.”

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

My teeth have come loose

like a terrible past, so it’s not a photo

I’m proud of but a quiz of your

threshold for romance. I smell

like smoke. I carry the war.

Could you learn the way

I like things? Whatever sounds

like gunfire. My favorite drug

anything that makes me feel

like nothing. Every walk

a walk over a rope bridge swaying

with the weight of soldiers.

Our first date will be your audition

for the part of my mother

who always spread a blanket under the largest

sycamore in the state¹

before pulling out sandwiches

like loaded pistols.

¹The George Washington Sycamore in the town of Hope is one of the largest trees in New Jersey.

The Feral Cats of Curacao / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

The ones with crooked tails

The ones who signed your treaty,

bloody paws on the X

They’ll kill your rats, and in return, they’ll make their living

Here at the Bouy’s on the Pier

They beg at breakfast and at lunch

These are not the fancy cats of home

They are not named Fluffy or Bella or Stripes

No one would name one Miss Whiskers

The feral cats of Curacao all miss at least one thing

An eye, a paw, a tail, an ear

A home, a warm bed, self-respect

These feral cats,

Clawing and mewling

Killing mice, demanding fish

In payment

We tell the tourists to ignore the cats

But no one can stop them from throwing

Bits of meat down to the beach

These cats are very persuasive

Without enough waiters to keep them in line

The cats swarm the breakfast buffet where they show off

Their pitted faces, crooked tails, their pawless feet

The tourists reward them with bacon and bread

Like they are watching Jerry Lewis reruns,

Tear-jerking telethons, complicit in

This gentle extortion of guilt.

Every season, the chef will trip on a lizard

Most often an iguana

You can bet on this

He will frame the cats

Those manipulative interlopers

He spikes their milk with a poison so delicious

That the feline population

Gets their comeuppance

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

It’s a short drive to the American Dream

from the place where snakes hide

where Lenni-Lenape fires burned

thirty thousand parking spaces

gift of the meadowlands

tied with a bow of highways

food court, footwear, fashion

where women gathered to plant trees

after the tornado

take the express bus to Manhattan all day long

where pigs outnumbered

humans during the war

get sprayed with perfume at a kiosk

dioxin, mercury, PCBs pock

the riverbank of the Hackensack

after we drop the kids off for a movie and nachos

we drive off satisfied, drive

off this unlikely island

with so much pressing against it.

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

Pop

Some nights I read to my children

In the voice of

A bad poet

Assuming the comforting

Monotone

Breaking up

the text

To emphasize

What might be

Important

Wet, wet

Two dogs get

Wet

Help, Yelp

They yelp

for help

The voice of

A bad poet

What a great trick!

What a useful

Soporific

Better than the voice

Of Jacques Pepin,

Jimmy Carter, or

Julia Child, her high pitch

interchangeable with that of

Mickey Mouse

All useful

In their own ways, but not for sleep

Used sparingly

This voice

Do you like my

Hat?

No, I do

not like your

Hat.

At this dog party

Remains useful long

after everyone wakes up

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

On ascension day, the last hour of which was not on my calendar

but shone like noon sun through a crack in the door beckoning,

I pressed a hand on either side to see the room

where my mother was frying chicken. Where she walked

in and out of sight, half Baptist, half Catholic, singing a song

from the war that I took to mean she was done with me

and who we were with each other, bristlecone pines

in a high wind. I wiped my feet and entered the place

between places. She had her hand on my arm, trying to lead,

done waiting, breathless. Turn around, she said, try it

another way. My embryonic curl was once tender beneath her dress,

its overwhelming head and black eye, the slit of its smile

contagious. In the sea of pre-life, I got used to her voice:

you are my sunshine, my only sunshine, and the tide, the green

and blue tide lifted us both, ascending into our own heaven

after completing our mission on earth.

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

Jack still won’t talk to us.

It started with Covid, and got worse under Biden.

First it was masks

Jack said he and Terry wouldn’t visit us, wouldn’t bring the kids over

Unless we were more careful.

We’ve had it a couple times now. It wasn’t all that bad.

I don’t know why Jack can’t get over it.

Some days Kurt doesn’t remember that we’re estranged from our oldest.

I envy him that.

Sure, there’s the others.

Molly, Steve, their two. Billy, Carey, their three.

Here they are at soccer. See?

I can’t find the ones we took at Lake Lure last summer with

Molly’s two and Billy’s three

One doesn’t replace the other. I don’t have to tell you that.

We didn’t even put up a sign this fall

That didn’t help, though.

Day after the election,

all the neighbors were just like Jack.

I let them be. Just like last time, they met outside and pretended it was the end of the world.

I gave it a couple days.

Sure enough, we started talking again,

little things at first, like cats.

Lisa’s got spayed. Joanie bought a laser.

Dani hates that mine go outside. I try, but they rush the door at night.

They do kill birds. I’ll give her that. But sometimes I wish she’d get over it.

A week later, there was a thunderstorm

We sat on our porches, Lisa, Dani, Joanie, and me,

watching the lightning and screaming at thunder, just like old times

But Jack? Nothing seems to bring him back here.

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

He learned which vitamins to take,

so he wouldn’t lose his teeth

When he smoked meth…

This line just begs for a parallel, like:

I learned which addicts to help,

so I wouldn’t lose myself

When I drove them to rehab

Of course, this parallel is too good to be true:

Vitamin A only gets you so far

You’ll still get the lesions

You’ll still lose your teeth

I’ll still lose a friend

I can’t frame this any prettier

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

No matter how evolution starts

it ends as crab. Even with unclear

instructions, even automatic, do-it-yourself,

design by committee, parthenogenesis.

Still crab. We could be next to walk sideways

across the sand waving our outsized warrior claw

once mind drops its bag of rocks. Imagine the scene

under the boardwalk in our new homes:

doll’s head, plastic bottle, used condom, unexploded

fireworks, an hourglass-shaped plastic cup inscribed

with a casino’s dying words, All in. Our mercies

and mistakes erased. We are ready for the rapture

with our hard-shelled bodies, our black

bean eyes on stalks. So looking forward.

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

This where Our Lady appeared to a busload

half-asleep, gridlocked on Route 22 west at rush hour,

wearing her usual blue flow. Miracles followed.

Strangers changed a tire in the breakdown lane.

Lovers wrestled in Echo Lake Park.

A man at Shop Rite bought roses for his wife.

The tornado skipped the hospital. The mail came.

Sure signs she passed through on her way to where

the holy will happen yet again. I heard about it all

when I was in the next town over, having a brain

attack. Called out Mary, please make here

your next manifest.

Bring your patient hand, your sacred heart.

Stop my planet shaking.

Move rain to the fires.

Make the grass grow.

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

As the township’s only asparamancer,

I cut fresh spears just above

the soil, toss and watch how

they land as my clients ask

their questions. One woman wants

to know, where is the man I will marry?

The spears never lie, I tell her.

He is underground. You missed him

by a hundred years. Another asks

when she will win the lottery.

The spears are laughing,

I say. Look, they are splitting

their sides. Listen to me,

if you want a different answer,

ask a different oracle.

I just let the spears fall

on each other and kill

free will. My advice?

Don’t worry so much

about the future. Cook lamb

with some asparagus and mint.

It’s the meat of the moment

we all want to eat.

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

I remember the same

about Pappy’s Diner

as the rest of my gang:

Open faced turkey sandwich.

Ashtrays on the tables.

Jukebox fixed to the wall.

We used to go there

for the Olympian Breakfast,

the Hungry Man’s Burger,

the Bottomless Bucket

of Onion Rings until my hip

went bad and I set my chair

out front to meet the people.

When the police came

I said they could go

take a shit.

I am in my encampment

between mountains and water.

I am fishing the river

of Union Boulevard.

I am watching myself

get old and my friends

die. Let the horns blow

for me. Let the people wave.

Let the neighbors piss

and moan. Nothing is the same

since Pappy’s closed last year.

A nickel ain’t worth

a dime anymore.

The last line is a quote from Yogi Berra, Totowa N.J. native.

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

No day shall erase you from the memory of time.

Virgil

If you were going to save souls,

that would have been the day.

You could have stood here

at the railing with the best view

of the city, smoke rising against

the skyline’s blocks and spires.

You could have reached up

and touched the feathered bellies

of office workers thrown like doves

into the air,

circling your head

with the rush of wings and prayer,

singing hosanna with the sirens

rising from across the river,

caught in the net of your breath

and carried safe to shore.

From My Mother’s Bookshelf / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

Be Glad You’re Neurotic

Perma Books, New York, 1939. 35 cents

Louis E. Bisch, MD, PhD

To be sure, a neurotic state is a

Mental state,

Simply because it concerns the mind.

That explains why I have seldom made

the diagnosis

of a neurosis

without my patient feeling either

frightened

dismayed, or

offended.

For most persons have heard something dreadful

About this condition, and fully half of those who develop it

suspect

that by using the term “neurosis”

I am trying to inform them in a polite way

That they are insane.

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

Mirror of my mother, I light

candles for the dead,

this far outpost of my faith

a church losing its bricks,

my quarters for the poor

a thin appeal to the hand

that reaches down in April

to pull buds from bare wood.

I know the heft of grief carried

like a child upstairs away

from the party. There’s nothing

ahead but sleep. She would say

don’t forget your father as the match

burned down to her fingers.

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

I look for Pete the Processor

At the top of every rollercoaster,

the last place I saw him

Next to my son, at the top of the climb

Both of them

The very picture of terrified joy

I was simply terrified

When their cart stopped long enough

At the very top with the vista of

gift shops and snow cones

before hurtling them downward toward me

Pete the Processor

took my child on every ride that I couldn’t

The log flumes, the dead drops, the towers

He may not know

Just how important it was to have that

Respite from fear

I want to remind him but,

we’ve lost touch

His name is too common

For internet searches no matter how clever you think you might be

Loss is the root of our fear.

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

Just past the Parkway Lofts where a sign

on the roof reads, If you lived here

you’d be home by now, is the state’s biggest

cemetery, where granite angels hold out

lichen-stained hands, granting their graces

to all who blur by on the highway

still breathing. My father is there, planted,

as he used to say. That day in March at Mass

the priest said, He was a good man,

and my sister dropped her prayer card.

I think of the night he opened a vein in the kitchen,

how she packed and left, too beautiful to sleep

untouched in the same house with him.

I would visit his plot, stand on his ground,

adding my weight to the soil that holds

him in place, and leave mercy if not forgiveness there,

but my car never takes the turn off the highway,

and I miss the exit every time.

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.docx

ORADELL / Arlene DeMaris

At the Hoshun Foot Spa I circle what needs

the most pressure, marking this and this

body part over their smiling woman

diagram. More than feet, says their billboard

on the turnpike, take next exit. I want to exit

my body when it’s like this, which is moonless

night, which is chilled from inside,

which is one fear from every corner meeting

in the muscle that eats and beats. I check the box

for spine and pay for soothing, for blood pushed

with the heel of a hand. Will it last as far as a step

from the perfume of this room into a jersey parking lot?

O enfolding wings of darkness that I trade for an hour

with no claws, the wait won’t be long for your side

of trembling meat. I carry fragrant hot stones in my pockets

to keep your dinner from getting cold.

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

All that collects dust has come from a distance.

The flag planted on the moon is still there, stars

and stripes pointing to earth’s night lit like

inflammation. The steamboat asleep in Arkansas

is caught in the roots of soybeans, the river’s course

having found a farm, the bedrock beneath having moved

ten clicks to the north. And here under glass

at the Geology Museum rests the priestess Iset-Ha,

her limbs the color of sand, toenails chipped red,

cobwebs collecting between chin and chest, fossil question

hanging from the rock edge of faith. Did she find her dog

headed god? I read her lips for word of our connection,

for the remains of religion wrapped in linen that binds us

on opposite ends of the desert. Even now I’m fact and fiction,

flesh and ghost. Carbon settles on my skin, every birthday

another chance for a new origin story: seed or egg, quantum

mechanics or the original rib, which is hardest to believe?

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

Mr. Reed told them all to say “Glory”

The kitchen staff, the waiters

The restaurant patrons

He was drunk, and

My brother was embarrassed.

For all of them

At the end of this road trip,

when they’d fished in the ocean for grouper and marlin

“Can you say Glory?”

They all mumbled glory

Those workers

who hoped by complying

they’d get to go home

without altercation

Who hoped by complying

This drunk academic

would find his way home

A few months later, Mr. Reed

shot himself dead

My brother wondered if he could have done anything more

That night they said Glory

But I understood; I’d been his student

Mr. Reed loved making fun of the preachers and rednecks

The small-minded cast of our small southern town

He understood Irony.

He taught us all Irony.

But there in Red Lobster, too drunk to explain

It came out all wrong

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

What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did. (Nina Simone)

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living (Mary Harris “Mother” Jones)

Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize! (Joe Hill)

It is an artist’s duty to reflect the times. (Nina Simone)

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

I curl up with Fear,

Like they are my oldest friend.

Thinking that if I believe

what they whisper

I will be safe.

Usually it’s “don’t do it, it’s not safe”

At first, it felt better to please them

than myself.

We’ve been holding hands for so long

I couldn’t feel where

I end, and they begin.

Hands that wrote poems

now numb.

Restless to stretch my legs,

I needed to open the curtains and my heart.

I make a deal with fear…

if I go for a 20-minute walk,

I’ll be right back and

we’ll watch the Wizard of Oz

flying monkeys again.

I chatted with a friend

returning from travelling.

Ten minutes late.

Fear flips out,

they know I want

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

Any firefighter will tell you

There’s no such thing as the Jaws of Life

You have your extruders, your metal snips

Your extractors and saws

But there’s no one tool called the Jaws of Life

You’ll never hear anyone on that bloody scene say:

We’re going to have to use the Jaws of Life

Did you bring the Jaws of Life

Looks like a job for the Jaws of Life

Except rubbernecked bystanders and

Tired reporters

Who will tell you with absolute certainty

They had to use the Jaws of Life

Next time I’m on the inside of

A twisted ball of metal that had once been a car

I won’t argue semantics

But I hope that whoever

wields the extruder

Understands nuance

Don’t get me wrong

You’ll still get my thanks

If you rescue me with tools unsuited for

the task at hand.

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

Nearly no words now

When its hard to breathe and stop

Fear in its tracks, walk.

Write, wail, whisk

Yourself and loved ones

Away to art, dogs.

Cats can come too, on

walk home, like hurt refugees

Holding each other.

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

Rescuing

not

helping.

Statements of fact,

She repeats twice,

Until I write it down.

She speaks with the fire

of her red-hot kiln.

Me, a lifetime student

Of small cap social work,

A diploma gained,

by degrees of failure.

A gifted emu egg, with story-

If you break the agate hard

emu egg,

Without their own

Effort.

They die.

Rescuing

Is not respecting

The path

one stumbles on, crawls,

grabs a branch

with muddy hands

to get up,

and

be born again

and again.

In honor of my daughter Izzy who walks her own difficult path, of family who are friends, friends who are family, my Alanon sponsor, astrologer, Alecs Garret, and very patient counselors, especially Lynn of the emu farm, who have born witness to walking my own path.

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

On nights when Susan couldn’t decide what to wear to whatever

bars might let us in

I’d pull Sarah T.: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic from her bookshelf

I read that book as if it were a Bible,

that is, randomly

On her deathbed, Susan told me she’d never read Sarah T.,

The gift from her mother that was clearly intended

to make us conform

Ah, that explains why she could not answer my questions

About poor Sarah T., teenage alcoholic, in love with a boy

way out of her league: Why did he blame her for killing his horse?

That 10th grade summer we had the luxury of being bored

And jobs we’d have the luxury to leave

I sorted peaches; she built bathtubs

Her job was harder than mine, and she made more money

But it took her longer to clean up

I didn’t mind

I liked lounging on her canopy bed, reading pages from Sarah T.

From what I pieced together

Sarah T. was a teenage alcoholic who started drinking as a child

On page 89 she killed a horse

It was an accident

In between high school and hospice

There were marriages, children, jobs, parents

The slow drip of chemo gives us time to fill in details

What we nurtured, who we fought with, who loved us despite our undying need to make

Light of everything

Now we can only dream of being bored

Within this new finite version of time

There’s so much to do!

Papers to sign and questions to answer

What to pack, and what to trash

The flannel robe that belonged to her father

Boxes of books, morphine, marijuana

Jewelry and jammies and unfinished journals

Who gets what and why

I got the book, some jewelry, a painting

Sarah T. got her comeuppance

Let that be a lesson for you.

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

If you are rescuing a porcupine, do not use a towel – it will stick to their quills.

If you are rescuing a bird of prey, be careful of their talons!

–Centerforwildlife.org (11/2/2024)

There’s no easy advice on rescuing raccoons

So when one showed up on my porch

With matted fur and a sweet raccoon face

And those little hands, almost human

Palms pressed against the windowpane

I brought it in, even though I’m not

A wildlife expert or a veterinarian

I had no training, but I had hubris, a spare room,

a full pantry, and an MFA in fiction writing.

When you adopt a raccoon, the first days are uneasy, but

Maybe cool, maybe edgy

A raccoon in your house

climbing drapes, painting rhymes

Your house fills with music, and

that infectious exuberance endemic to raccoons

And those little hands!

Perfect for finding inspiration

In life and in garbage

that was soon scattered in every room

Those little hands!

Perfect for drawing

Blood, it turns out.

Animal Control told me that they don’t have time for raccoons any longer

Maybe years ago, but now with budget cuts and stray dogs…

They sounded wistful

Like they understood how someone might decide to adopt a raccoon

But then, Animal Control got down to business

Sternly, with sober authority they told me

If you are rescuing a raccoon, the dumbest thing you can do is be surprised when it bites you.

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

“I’ve tried my whole life to get out of this neighborhood.

I don’t understand why you want to move in.”

I listened to you and found more acceptable squalor

I listened to you in your mother’s apartment.

Fifth floor of the walk up that went up forever

All those paintings of Jesus – on the cross, in the temple, walking a lonesome path

Were you embarrassed? Your childhood unmasked.

It was one thing to share your past untethered

on a campus where

your poverty made you cool

Tethered here, in real time, I wanted you to be

Comfortable

I liked you for your charm and your dancing, mostly your kindness

Poised, here in real time, eager and broke,

Poised for some unknown set of dreams

Sure that our paths would continue to cross

But then there was AIDS, and

You died in your mother’s apartment

You didn’t see Williamsburg turn cool, then expensive

I don’t know if your mother stayed there

She didn’t speak English and seemed not to see me

That afternoon when we reminisced about college

Under the kitchen fluorescent light, the Jesus on the crucifix staring at us

Out of proportion, paint flaking off

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?”

Day 30 / Poem 30

The Landscapes of Bodies &amp; Selves / composed by Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

Cento: A November to Reveal, Remember / Composed by Margaret Thiele

I was raised by a mother in twelve steps, now mine:

On Optimism / composed by Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

There Were So Many / Mark Simpson

Day 29 / Poem 29

What would it mean, / Rebecca Brenner

FLEMINGTON / Arlene DeMaris

Untitled / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

Leave Good Tracks / Mark Simpson

A Cento-Thanks to Joni Mitchell / Margaret Thiele

Day 28 / Poem 28

Before gratitude / Rebecca Brenner

SCOTCH PLAINS / Arlene DeMaris

a celestial (mini)logue / TaShira Iverson

Interview, part. 2 / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

Overgrown Purpose, Thick with Leaves / Mark Simpson

Gratitude Rocks Life / Margaret Thiele

Day 27 / Poem 27

He said—she’s so into transgender / Rebecca Brenner

CLARK / Arlene DeMaris

Inhala…exhala / TaShira Iverson

The Interview / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

Landscape in 3-D / Mark Simpson

A Winter Blessing / Margaret Thiele

Day 26 / Poem 26

Terrified and exhilarated / Rebecca Brenner

ASBURY PARK II / Arlene DeMaris

The Visit / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

The Black Madonna / Margaret Thiele

Day 25 / Poem 25

She asks me if I hated her, / Rebecca Brenner

BASKING RIDGE / Arlene DeMaris

i don’t have the privilege to whisper and be heard. / TaShira Iverson

There are Things I remember that No one Else Does / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

John Donne’s Flea’s Memoir, Chapter 1 / Mark Simpson

Three Sisters – Part One / Margaret Thiele

Day 24 / Poem 24

Transgress / Rebecca Brenner

WATCHUNG / Arlene DeMaris

Workshop / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

Facing the Fate that Was Always Yours / Mark Simpson

DORMANCY / Margaret Thiele

Day 23 / Poem 23

All fear gives way :: The light looks after you. / Rebecca Brenner

SOMERVILLE / Arlene DeMaris

mynd reader / TaShira Iverson

Safe / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

Sadness Like an Anchor / Mark Simpson

St Anthony Rides Again / Margaret Thiele

Day 22 / Poem 22

We kept each other company / Rebecca Brenner

HOPE / Arlene DeMaris

The Feral Cats of Curacao / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

What You See Is Not What You See / Mark Simpson

Me and The Bathroom Key (1968) / Margaret Thiele

Day 21 / Poem 21

I started as, what— / Rebecca Brenner

SECAUCUS / Arlene DeMaris

the butter pellet / TaShira Iverson

Hop On / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

We Get Up / Margaret Thiele

Day 20 / Poem 20

My Mother from beyond beyond— / Rebecca Brenner

SEA GIRT / Arlene DeMaris

fairies in the field / TaShira Iverson

Jack’s Mom / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

Horizon Vivid, Beautiful Color / Mark Simpson

When Heaven Did Speak / Margaret Thiele

Day 19 / Poem 19

To Keep Us Safe— / Rebecca Brenner

ELIZABETH / Arlene DeMaris

sanxuary / TaShira Iverson

Isn’t it Pretty to Think So? / Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

Flight / Mark Simpson

Advocacy / Margaret Thiele

Day 18 / Poem 18

When I thought of leaving you, / Rebecca Brenner

ATLANTIC CITY / Arlene DeMaris

The Landscapes of Bodies & Selves / composed by Phaye Poliakoff-Chen

Sitting Vigil / Margaret Thiele

Kath’s Elegy / Margaret Thiele

Fear Comes to Visit / Margaret Thiele