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 October are: David Burrows, Miriam Calleja, Cathy Ferrell, Dralandra Larkins, Clyde Long, Taylor Mallay, Cecille Marcato, Lizzy Polishan, Khamil Riley, and Gordon Taylor
If you would like to join our alumni group of over 1,000 poets, apply here!
Day 31 / Poem 31
LET US SPEAK DELICATELY[1] / A Cento composed by Gordon Taylor
Day 30 / Poem 30
untitled / David Burrows
Ars Poetica for when you don’t recognize yourself / Miriam Calleja
The computer is making sure it’s you
Your phone won’t unlock,
fingerprints scrubbed out from
self-soothing all night. You ask me
whether everybody else is having this life
whether it needs to be so hard.
I self-sabotage, own up to
the creation of my own anxiety.
The texts we choose
to consume, to translate,
are telling our dark tales.
There is a squeak in the wheel,
a pea under a pile of mattresses
a book that disrupts the wall.
Some of us live in two
languages, dreams, tongues,
thoughts split. Another year,
I will speak to you in Italian,
you say yes, yes let’s speak.
Let’s loosen our tongues and
our waistbands. Let’s stop
giving a shit. In one moment
I understand everything.
In the next, I rewrite the rules.
In the waiting, the day is loosened / Cathy Ferrell
In the waiting, the day is loosened
(with a line by Miriam Calleja Shaw)
You and that synthetic
floral arrangement are the only ones
in the room. Stare
just beyond. No one asks
where you’ve gone.
Think about
the month, conversations, food,
pictures sent and shared, language
we loosen tongues and waistbands.
you’ve gained
a few pounds
a few poems
a friend
You are unwound
part of
the sterile day made softer
Tuck one foot up,
swing the other,
wait to be called.
Truchas / Clyde Long
– to my mentors and friends from the
years at Tupelo Press Truchas
Tupelo’s Truchas paradise is hidden,
folded within Sangre de Cristo foothills.
Severe trout-less terrain inspired poetry
in frigid clear sunshine mornings and
sunset-painted happy hour evenings.
Milky Way’s deep dark starry nights
commanded our work for morning.
In the ruggedness and darkness
we were safe within poetry’s womb;
a put together community of many
senses and many minds. It was pure
kismet, and we wrote that way.
Thinking back to those times is a
fond memory, worth a poem or two.
Dictionary of No Crying / Cecille Marcato
Ahead in the count a batter attacks the strike zone, an aspirin tablet,
banjo hitter but BAM a Baltimore chop in a bandbox & runner on first.
Captain Hook wanting the catbird seat, not the cellar, jerks the pitcher after a can of corn;
daisy cutter after a dark one from a rookie on the mound, deuces wild, an
eephus pitch like El Duque’s ends in a bomb – extra innings, a trip to the
Fall Classic for the flamethrowers, Mr. Foot in the Bucket, all the figger filberts,
gap hitters, golfers, grand slammers, guess hitters & their GMs.
Humpback liner handcuffs the infielder who airmails the horsehide to the hapless
infielder on first just back from the IL but it ain’t over till it’s over, until a
judy or a jack or a jam jars loose the score or
knocks the cover off the ball after some
late-inning pressure & someone laces a liner to left field to load up the bases for the
masher up next hitting a meatball in the middle of the inning, a moonshot over the fence.
No room at the inn, no man’s land, no-hitter, no decision, no crying in baseball even for the
one-game wonder on the interstate.
Park a three-run homer, a piss missile, on the payoff pitch or have a
quality start or a quick win (that’s another story) & don’t let your
rabbit ears throw you when the fans razz
Swing batter, sah-wing or let the sabermetrics get you rattled.
Three true outcomes — that’s when the fat lady sings to the
upper decker Uecker seats. Fan interference unhinges the umps & the
visiting team supporters, who, outnumbered fear a
|walk-off but pray for a wallop, a walk-off, a whitewash, a win, some
X marks the spot)
yardwork. That’s what it’s all about, y’all,
zero, zero, zero – that perfect game.
Try asking the moon for grace. / Lizzy Polishan
The moon would have coughed
grace into your hands if she could have.
Her light, ropes of white, coiled
in her open mouth :: her mouth, a wound
singing :: a dithyramb designed to seduce
you. White light winds as snakes snaking
through your hands. You are bound
to this oak tree :: this oak tree a fretboard
:: a fretboard makes your body a string.
Does that make you a violin? A double
bass? Although you lack F-holes & Man
Ray is nowhere to be found. If you want them
in a painting, you must hold your body
still. Then you must soften into oil paint.
When the Protozoa squirm in the open
beam of your light, they accidentally freeze.
There is a punchline in there somewhere.
Maybe after the cop walks into the bar.
How could you put your hands up when
you are just a baby Protozoa? How could you
keep from falling in love? Falling in love with
Jenny Ortega? When that song loops in
your head? The night is a star. The night
collapses.
The night lives in your chest. Your heart keeps
you alive. The moon would have laid
an egg in this bird’s nest if she could have.
You would have had something
good to eat.
Better Days / Gordon Taylor
GTaylor-Better-Days
Day 29 / Poem 29
untitled / David Burrows
a thought unbidden spoke
Jesus loves me if you dont
Source
Universe
loves
me
if you don’t
a medicine
a thought unbidden spoke
Jesus loves me if you don’t
to cool fever
break shame
wrap itself
like a green mossy blanket
around a body of sores
a junkyard of broken glass
battered doors
parts of windows
dead cars
desires never realized
and dreams
old toys
Let’s say… / Miriam Calleja
small wonder / Cathy Ferrell
(a book title found poem)
wild
pomegranate heart–
come, tell me how you live.
I like you
undoll,
a charm of goldfinches
surprised by joy.
bird by bird,
women in sunlight
rewild
the lives of the heart.
wild
pomegranate heart–
blue rose,
small wonder.
(created with book titles by Cheryl Strayed, Miriam Calleja Shaw, Agatha Christie, Sandol Stoddard Warburg, Tanya Grae, Matt Sewell, C.S. Lewis, Anne Lamott, Frances Mayes, Meredith Stricker, Jane Hirshfield, Kait Quinn, and Barbara Kingsolver)
After Sonnet 29 / Clyde Long
When with intended ardor
I suffer in this silent state,
complaining never to others
only to me, bitter the taste —
if only I were a smiling sort,
sincere, glad handing, bright
well-met, ever reaching out,
perceptive, winner of night.
Yet most I think of you
and only then I am alive
(Vivid like a flower’s bloom,
new born) redeemed from care.
Your enduring love soothes me,
always night’s brightest star.
Lady Lawyer Explains Gravity to the Men of the Jury on a Sacrocolpoperineopexy Malpractice Case / Cecille Marcato
Minus a uterus
the pelvic floor
is a rugose desert
waiting for the dry weather
of old age to collapse
the roof of its house.
It’s about gravity,
the lady lawyer
explains to the men
of the jury
who put their belongings
on the edge
of the jury box
not believing
that the pen
the pad
the coffee cup
full of coffee
will fall to earth.
On Earth
she tells them
everything falls to earth.
Cento with Questions / Lizzy Polishan
with lines from David Burrows, Miriam Calleja, Cathy Ferrell, Dralandra Larkins, Clyde Long, Taylor Mallay, Cecille Marcato, Lizzy Polishan, Khamil Riley, & Gordon Taylor
Are you a power, a message, a connection to source? Are you naturally so tall?
Be honest with yourself—are you smart?
Can a black cat, thrown out of the belfry, land on its feet?
Can the cluster of rotting cherries wearing the skin of flies in the silver wire mesh bowl effuse its own sweet flavor?…
…Culture got ya tongue?
Do you know what they do to women like you? Drugs? Do you see what I’m saying?
Edna, did it stick in your throat, too? And, in choking down sand, how will the sand dollars
Fare? If the chasing started when she was a cat continues and she is not a cat, is the chasing still
Going on? How long has it been? How do you feel? How close is lust to loss?
How many more bullets? How do people stand it? Have you ever watched a python eat itself?
Is it easier to forgive the dead? Is this your first time? Or is it
Just tinnitus? Or is it just getting old?
Keep it together—won’t you dissolve with me?
Live and let live, you know? When you say my name, can’t you taste
My mother’s blood? If I cross out the monster—depression—what happens?
Now what? Hear that beat?
Or is it just tinnitus? Or is it just getting old? How do you
Pronounce your name? Do you know who owns this hallway? Did you know that 1 and 3
Queer people want to die? Why have we pinned our lips?
Remember when you were the largest circle & I was the smallest matter?
So what if winter comes? Sing a new song, but keep the same melody?
Tell me, do you hear the bass? Too much bass in my name like the ngoma drum? Why did daddy
Use his fists to express his emotions? Because you’ve always been a paper
Valentine? We all have fears, right? Where were you when you had your first reckoning?
Where are my toes? What would you do if you could turn back?
What on earth is a finger lime? What wisdom does it hold? Could we
Xerox the moon? Does it hurt? Do you see that matrix of angels? How do
You descend into your body? How did you find each other? Our distances approached
Zero but our points never converged.
Great, Full / Gordon Taylor
Day 28 / Poem 28
untitled / David Burrows
when the ship
hit the rocks
hull and body
opened up
smashed
when insanity
lightning
slapped
it was him
a dog
that came running
panting
licking me
with a big tongue
lifting me to soar unbridled
into the mountains
invoking the psalms
Found poetry, medical appointments / Miriam Calleja
If this is a medical emergency, hang up, and dial 9-1-1
participants are randomized
if you know the extension number
unilateral unknown
your call is important to us
I hope you are having a wonderful day
let’s get you to stand right here
ok, baby girl
I’ll just be with you in a minute
right on schedule
unknown unilateral
hello, is this ________? I’m calling about your appointment
is this
for medical appointments, dial 1
is this your first time?
your number, your emergency number your second emergency number
unknown
I have you down at DNTU
it means unknown
I hope you are having a wonderful day / Cathy Ferrell
(after a line by Miriam Calleja Shaw)
We will not give them
the grace of release
Let them choke on
their dollar signs and
red tape.
Because it makes sense
to make a woman wait.
Because it makes sense
to ignore her _____.
Meanwhile,
let’s dance,
sip cardamom lattes,
flash the world
lumps and scars
The goodbye / Clyde Long
Perched on the hillside for a
last look at my former place.
I see the roof and all around it’s
paved and painted, trees felled.
Its old gravel road gnawed knees,
my kids’ scars can prove it.
Next time we’ll gather elsewhere
to recollect our decades here.
Change can be sudden and sure.
Sitting here there is only the roof
and the highway’s always roar –
the lion’s last goodbye lullaby.
Hawk / Cecille Marcato
At the birdbath (a shock in late afternoon)
alert & alone (as all the other creatures fear her
swiveling head, her toes & talons),
the Cooper’s hawk drinks
& watches, drinks & stares, drinks.
Her glare is direct from glass orange
eyes & even though a window is between us
her look is like a conscience daring its host
to turn away. She sees me.
Sticker Sheet / Lizzy Polishan
My childhood was as holographic & jumbled as a Lisa Frank sticker sheet.
Nothing made sense & everything was beautiful.
An anthropomorphic panda waving
a paintbrush dripping rainbows
chased me forever up & down the stairs.
I was just excited someone wanted to touch my face.
I was always excited for no reason.
Everything was so pretty I wanted to lick it. The world a SpongeBob
sorbet ice-cream, two black gumball eyes.
In a recurring dream I climbed into a bottle & threw myself into the ocean.
I fell in love with a sunset-soaked sky, a turtle with a shell like Lego
hard candy. Two psychedelic dolphins, who were
my best friends, carried me through waves soaked in
swirled color like Hammond’s spun lollipops.
I kept waiting around to regenerate like my Tamagotchi.
I kept failing. I kept waking up & not being an egg.
The idea that it could end was not an idea until it happened.
Suddenly there was nothing in my hands. Suddenly I was
reaching for my sticker sheet & finding
empty space where before there had been things I used to loved.
Arson Poetica / Gordon Taylor
Day 27 / Poem 27
moon churn / David Burrows
the cup fills
to lip
with blue light
the bees
are with
their honey
the gopis
dance
about Krishna
“surrender!”
sing the birds
“I’ll carry you
to the planting ground!”
says the wind
to the seeds
“I’ll transform you,”
says the fire
crackling
the dry
leaves
to smoke
and ash
tossed
on the waterway
end over end
the little pine cone
dreams
of being
a tree
the dark one
turns his ribs
into harp
strings
and plays
his hidden songs
“I’ll lift you to the blue!”
says the breeze to the kite
“I’ll spread you as butter,”
says the moon
churning
the ocean waves
I collect some good advice / Miriam Calleja
After a line by Leonard Cohen and Cathy Ferrell
Look how the mood takes you
smacks you off your feet
And when you think about it
it’s only a chemical dance
How we are swept to extremes
despite the warning, despite the knowledge
medio tutissimus ibis
you will go safely down the middle
when some cravings have been subdued
others will come
If you don’t become the ocean,
you’ll be seasick every day
look, how disaster didn’t strike again / Cathy Ferrell
(after a line by Miriam Calleja)
After the scream
we find midnight
cloth, blue velvet
draped around
shoulders.
Lightning kisses earth
dizzy, leaves mist of
ozone. Waltz with
fingerprints of plants.
Breathe
chemical dance
Landlocked
ocean
churns inside
skull.
We circle
the night
scarves of gauze
Reset / Dralandra Larkins
You been giving out parts of your hearts that were always meant to be yours
You been feeling incomplete forcing yourself in locked doors
You ought to let go and spirit take the wheel
And i know it ain’t easy but just sit back and see what’s reveal
See how your spirit guides show you what’s fake and what’s real
You can keep seeking validation from your peers
And be surprised when inauthenticity appears
You know growth takes time
Give yourself some grace
Some days you feel like floating
Other days the heaviness weighs
Both the good and bad are valid valuable feelings
We need the ups and downs to understand the duality in healing
We need to be capable of seeing ourselves that we have the capacity to see others
If we can learn to embrace our scars we can do the same for our family friends and lovers
Believe you will achieve goodness and health
Dont let the evil of humanity stop you from loving
Don’t let your fears stop you from who you’re becoming
Learn to accept all of you, Without all the judging.
Its time to stop sprinting from the past, time to stop struggling.
Blessings of St. Boniface in San Francisco / Clyde Long
Imagine when lost souls
find solace and safe sleep
in gentle worn pews
waking lit by stained glass.
Their demons are run off –
no death knocking tonight.
(Imagine others –
imagine other nights)
Blessings here are prayers
to forgive, to help, to love.
Drawing Lesson / Cecille Marcato
Pulling
millimeters
of lead
across a page
twisting
as you go
makes a simple line,
Point A
to Point B.
Inside
its holder
the pencil must be
sharp,
its angle
constant
for a uniform
line.
It can be
ephemeral
or last
centuries –
two kinds of power,
beauty made by hand.
Abecedarian Cento: After Death / Lizzy Polishan
DAY-28-CENTO-AFTER-DEATH.docxGratitude List – Bathhouse / Gordon Taylor
Day 26 / Poem 26
untitled / David Burrows
I’ve not heard you yet
ultimate music
but I hope you’re simple
like the robin’s call
life’s fire
be not long
in coming
some groggy dawn
like any other
the cock will crow
with the advent
of the sun
and there you’ll be
as colors brighter
air more crisp
promises kept
Scream into the wind / Miriam Calleja
After a line by Cathy Ferrell
We are fine here in this hell-made
fine down here with our wet cheeks
our jeweled lashes, fine with the blue
blue sky that you can grab right off its canvas
lady luck forgets to roll, fine, she says
you go ahead anyway. We’re fine
scribbling fine frustrations, fumbling
in our fine shadows. And look,
how disaster didn’t strike again.
We are just fine.
primal / Cathy Ferrell
On the days when
you can’t see past
your own lashes,
open the window, punch
out the screen. Lean, lean,
lean scream into
the wind. She will swallow
your tears, turn them
petrichor
he lets go a sprig / Clyde Long
it floats on a
journey ending
downstream
once his
then no one’s
Nude With Cat / Cecille Marcato
The view like yesterday’s & that day’s
yesterday in this quotidian loop;
beyond the mullions, a geometry of pitching
roofs, parapets, solid limestone lintels & quoins.
The sun is a painter, colors the whole district
peach & gold at this exact moment each afternoon.
At this exact moment each afternoon
a cat claws the crest rail of the room’s only chair,
its color robbed by the sun, a greedy star
that both gives & takes away.
Squinting through bare casements, a girl avoids
her companion, an undressed poser vying
for the spotlight, languishing before the cat.
After all, the artist has failed to name her
on his title card even though she draws
the eye. Even though she speaks for you.
from La Semaine des Quatres Jeudis, Balthus, 1949, oil on canvas.
Casino / Gordon Taylor
Day 25 / Poem 25
four haiku/ David Burrows
seeds blown on the wind
seek warm and moist gentle earth
to plant their dream life
this field of roses
is choir singing skyward
universal song
the buzzing of bee
meets the wings of dragonfly
the wine flask opens
butterflies announce
hearts weigh only feather light
passage is granted
Citrus / Miriam Calleja
After my writing group in Poetry as Prayer and Writer’s Block by Cathy Ferrell
the writing makes me hungry
but especially the tears
I turn each into a want
four forkfuls of Tuesday’s risotto
eaten in an unruly fashion
sitting next to the cat
who thinks I’m all out of manners.
Tangerine peels falling in my wake
my thumb inside the next
before I’ve finished the first.
My mother suggests a tree—
thinking lemon. I dream of finding
a fork in that first persimmon¹.
I’d bend it with my useless
singular superpower. Then, bury it
like treasure, like the coin I threw
in the Fontana di Trevi, hoping
to return. And I know the shiny euro
was collected that same night.
But so what if I live with some
illusions, if tears only sometimes
make poetry, and cravings are
only sometimes justified? I think
I ought to give it a name,
sing for the biting winds. And even
when you are brave
so what if winter comes? Let it.
¹A somewhat reliable old wives’ tale in which the shape inside a persimmon seed may indicate the weather to expect the following winter. A fork shape indicates a mild winter.
Writer’s Block / Cathy Ferrell
Writer’s Block
You were proud,
all those years,
drinking only the driest red.
These days, you have embraced
an iced sauvignon blanc.
You paint your palate peach and kumquat.
What on earth is a finger lime?
You tried them once, with a friend.
She sliced one down the middle, handed you a half.
Each squeezed tiny pearls of juice .
I think you can eat the rind, you said
but it was bitter.
You both laughed
and said you’d write a poem.
What do you write when
the day has squeezed it all
and you become an unwanted rind?
Where is the pulp?
A blank page and one
blinking cursor,
puckering and tart
A friend who pours
you a glass
chilled sangria
Dirty Dishes / Dralandra Larkins
After Baking soda, white vinegar by Miriam Calleja & After Women who clean slates by Cathy FerrellDirty dishes
Dirty dishes
are left with residue
from the mouths
of people with the dirtiest secrets.
At the sink, I sink
into a pool of lies, again.
Just because someone wants
your attention,
doesn’t mean they have good intentions
or want to be your friend.
“Selfish and self-absorbed,”I say to myself.
With a sponge in hand, I began
scraping away food for too much thought.
Scrubbing away the past.
Hard scrubs manifest my thoughts into small suds.
The water runs hot, rinsing them down the drain.
Diluting memories of toxicity and shame
Rewarding myself with silver to wear
for all that I overcame.
At Dawn, I’ll chant to the ancestors,
summon the crows for rebirth
to embrace a new beginning
of a slate wiped clean.
Caresses Were Hands / Clyde Long
stowed away a jailed poet –
not that I wrote anything upsetting –
home is a solitary cell
talking with myself and my crack
below and its rhythms
back when caresses were hands
pleasures granted yours ours
sirens silent not about us –
my incarcerated mind wanders
along untraveled roads
my mouse her velvet gray fur!
Our eyes don’t meet way too much
we hide ourselves touches lost
~~~~~~
we hide ourselves touches lost
Our eyes don’t meet way too much
my mouse her velvet gray fur!
along untraveled roads
my incarcerated mind wanders
sirens silent not about us –
pleasures granted yours ours
back when caresses were hands
below and its rhythms
talking with myself and my crack –
home is a solitary cell
not that I wrote anything upsetting –
stowed away a jailed poet
Some Days: Cento / Cecille Marcato
some days you feel like
the ocean
an unabridged salt-green sea
a blue lagoon
a night lake
a river, a concrete pool
iridescent pool
vapor
some days you feel like
a woman on the edge
of an ocean swimming
all her life
some days you feel like sinking
a dish drowning in butter
under water I descend
into my body
the sea swells, a wave
comes and more waves
boiling, words tumble out
of every pocket
saved words: I found
the word for air again
and my name –
not a lullaby that thrives
without water
it lives in you like salt
some days you feel like
the smell of bitterness
is a night lake, a salt-green sea
some days you feel like
a survivor is the person who still prays
and prayed this lemon sweeter
some days I leave the ends
of my ribbons loose
centuries pass, drowning
lifeguard, I orchestrate
this moment
I am going to break your heart now
[Sources: Lizzy Polishan, Miriam Calleja, Cathy Ferrell, Clyde Long, Gordon Taylor, Dralandra Larkins, David Burrows, Khamil Riley, and Taylor Mallay]
Until We Become We / Khamil Riley
I am drawn to the bottle in moments like these
When my mind won’t quiet
And in my chest I can’t breathe
It is pretty embarrassing to be me
Everything I am pretending to be
Spills out onto the concrete
Transparent now
My tears pool into the dirt and I’m scared
Of how you see me
It’s times like these
When he starts to get handsy
And my eyes blur over cloudy
I believe
The lord is going to bless me.
For the heart I have
is big enough to
cradle even my enemies to sleep
Gently I rock them
but not the way they rock me
Shaken to my core
Even my spleen could tell stories
About wars like these
Call me sick
Or lost in love
The journey still
Befuddles me
To the point even poetry
Gets lost somewhere
Between him and me
Oh, how the pursuit
Of pleasure
Above All Else
Feels like holy convocation
Between him and the Blessed Be.
I praise and raise this glass
Until we
Become we.
EULOGY / Gordon Taylor
Day 24 / Poem 24
just north of Mumbai / David Burrows
The Deal / Miriam Calleja
“The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.” – Pablo Escobar
Even when we are not afraid
We surf on fear
We are silence, knowing looks
We are hiding what you cannot handle
Slinking in whispers, making our face
We are handling what you cannot hide
How to be the unbothered cat in a room full of people / Cathy Ferrell
If you can’t hide, sit
Choose a focal point
Aim your gaze but don’t
really look
Your feet will feel
the floor and wish
it was earth
You want to be
outside
Slink
into nothing
Dream awake, find
you can
fly
Untitled / Dralandra Larkins
My aura is the brightest in the room
This little lantern of mines
shines like a city on a hilltop
that cannot be stopped
nor hidden nor extinguished
I’m won’t conform to your corruption- your image, vision, or expectations.
I removed the veils, escaped the matrix!
This ain’t an Artificial Intelligent version of me, I’m waiting to become
This is I’m Langston Hughes rhythm and blues, Baldwin’s Native Son!
This is poetic tongue, speaking it lyrical
This is weaving words with wisdom
metaphors and syllables! Storytelling is ritual.
I Prayer up, summoned my angels
and told demons to meet me in the spiritual. This is poetic tongue, speaking it lyrical!
Dead sea detour / Clyde Long
Headed south toward Mexicali
past Indio, past Mecca
corralled in purple box canyons.
Descended to a dead sea.
Parked in a lonely seaside lot
with a graveyard seashore view
of desiccated fish and shorebirds.
Green and red feral parrots remain –
Sinatra and Beach Boys gone;
Martinis and perfect waves gone.
It’s 120 degrees at noon, sun’s
baking the dead fish and birds.
The stench to dead sea me
is salty, like gusts of death.
Origin Story With Scholia / Cecille Marcato
Origin-Story-With-Scholia-10.23_24.2024
Kindly Copy & Deliver To: @prince_of_denmark @the_real_king_of_ithaca @the_yellow_flower_by_the_lake / Lizzy Polishan
Etc.
I am going to break your heart now, says the future
from the past. The message reaches me,
faintly, on carbon copy paper. I am not afraid
of what I understand to be true. I am in the cordiform bed
in The Hemingway Suite in the iconic hotel in the capital
city in the beautiful country with the beautiful
name I can’t pronounce. I am gulping a sparkling
green aphrodisiac & you are my lover, smoking a foreign
green cigarette. Everything feels
filmy. After sex, it’s easy to stare at the ceiling & want to be remade
in the image & likeness of your lover, briefly dazzling
vermillion light. I never meant to drink all your balmy
possibilities. No one ever told me what was on the other side of all these paper
straws. I understand, I will say. Once, to say I love you, you pulled
two plane tickets from your jeans pocket & disappeared. Had you woven
me a festive intarsia sweater, we could have bought
a fuckton of eggnog & spent our first Christmas together with
this adorable black stray dog.
Cancer Cells as Pop Art / Gordon Taylor
G-Taylor-CANCER-CELLS-AS-POP-ART-
Day 23 / Poem 23
untitled / David Burrows
an orange haired fiend
The Wailer / Miriam Calleja
After Cathy Ferrell’s La Llorona Justifies Herself
The great thing about this age
is that when I find myself justifying
I stop and count to ten.
I reach a hand out, grateful for
the limits of my mind,
the consequences. So, listen to my friend:
If not us, someone worse.
You would be wise
to feel your way through a poem
count your visions
find a place to scream
and when you find yourself
in a sonnet
turn
turn
turn
The ballerina in my old jewelry box reconsiders the day / Cathy Ferrell
The earth repeats
chaine1 turns
across a pitch-black stage
loop after loop after loop
I turn to
the window. I cannot find
my spot2. I am not
enough.
You remind me,
we are all imposters.
I leave the ends of my ribbons loose,3
rest on a rusted coil.
1 A chain-like turn in which the dancer loops from one place to another
2 To avoid getting dizzy, a dancer fixes her focus on one secure spot
3 Tidiness and control are a ballet dancer’s signature. One must always be tucked in, neatly.
Five Things I Wish to Share With the World / Dralandra Larkins
1. Gratitude is free
2. Forgiveness is healing and to forgive it is to be healed
3. Save the simple things for in times of an emergency
4. Build a fort with your favorite kid. Children are medicine for imagination and healing
5. That competition was rigged
Half Life / Clyde Long
– in Patrick’s memory
I released you to the lake,
forever to cold depths
on a million-years journey —
you and water molecules.
Missing you has a half-life
over fifteen years so far.
Last night we were there
by a darkened Tahoe pier.
Too many stars to name –
we marveled at the blur.
The Way They Left It / Cecille Marcato
bruise so painful she stood
on the plane ride home
police at the corner he’d dared
her to hail but nothing
showed & he looked
respectable stolen journal,
broken china sepia girl
in a photo smiling
through shattered glass
community property community
disbelief he seems so nice
it was the times
a skull had to be fractured
a bullet lodged he could
do anything she could do
nothing but one day leave
& not put him in the poem
& even that took time.
Abecedarian Cento, in which Athena’s Mother Prays to Catholic God / Lizzy Polishan
Adrift at a dextral spiral’s galactic edge, God said I will
Break time’s heart.
Coyotes do not question.
Do not follow them to their camp pitched in
Essential shadow, moving and being, the image as its source
Fragmental as a new year.
Green is the night, green kindled
Heat, breezes, vibrations—We are never not a part of everything. Like
Icarus, I want the light to love me back, in glowing strokes of late
June, amassed in my hands like precious ore, and I with nowhere to
Keep it. Like everything else,
Lust becomes inexact. Stop sleeping with guys with
Messiah complexes. Ask
Nothing of any human.
Once when I was recovering, covering again myself, I confused the cracks of distraction between
Parted legs with his attempts to treat them like
Queens, his way of reminding me we’ve only stopped for
Rest, a short rest, under gnarled
Sour grapes. Three years of
Time travel, between him and me. Time holds us together: there is an
Urgent search for another planet just like earth.
Velvet Jesus hangs from a loose nail, today is
Water’s birthday, the moon is closing his eyes, could we
Xerox the moon?
Yes, I aimed for mercy—but came only close as building a cage around
Zeus’ forehead.
- “Study for Belief with Lines from “Star Trek: The Original Series” by Dayna Patterson
- “Questions my Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him” by Nancy Willard
- “Ode to the Tiniest Dessert Spoon in All Creation” by Karen An-Hwei Lee
- “Light and Dark” by Barbara Howes
- “The Candle A Saint” by Wallace Stevens
- “My Hair Burned Like Berenice” by Ruth Award
- “The Koan of Skin” by Dane Cervine
- “Late Shift” by Amy Woolard
- “On June Blossoming in June” by Karen An-Hwei Lee
- “Magical Thinking” by Kaitlyn Airy
- “Rick James in the Garden of Eden” by Amy Thatcher
- “I’m not a religious person but” by Chen Chen
- “Terms and Conditions” by Cindy Juyoung Ok
- “Mr. Cogito and Certain Mechanisms of Memory” by Zbigniew Herbert
- “Drinking for free” by Taneum Bambrick
- “Fist and Palm” by Carl Phillips
- “Sea Grapes” by Derek Walcott
- “moonlight” by Jinhao Xie
- “Earth-Like” by Megan Pinto
- “Mississippi Waning” by Serena Rodriguez
- “Chimeras” by Brian Sneeden
- “Questions my Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him” by Nancy Willard
- “Essay on Craft” by Ocean Vuong
It’s Hard to Hate the Dead / Gordon Taylor
Day 22 / Poem 22
untitled / David Burrows
I light a candle
for our imperfect
clasp
interlocking fingers
on a hike
into high mountains
I can’t know
your thoughts
we’re both alone
waiting
for chrysanthemum
to open
your trust
I keep
like a prayer
scribbled
on a scrap
of paper
hidden
in a small box
one day
we’ll embrace
merge
like colors
in an impressionist
garden
flowers revealing
their petals
and scents
golden like the sun
sweet like you
The Horns of Għaġuża / Haguza
After Maltese Mythology and Cathy Ferrell’s Mama ain’t happy
Ja Xbat ħabbat, ma mejjiltx il-għamuda u ma qtiltx l-għaġuża
Oh, violent February, you have not bent the tent pole
and you have not killed the crone
Maltese Mythology by Stephan D. Mifsud (Merlin Publishers, 2023)
Do you know what they do
to women like you?
In Lent, children waited
for the second Thursday
to see her “so plump”
plummeting to her death.
The old hag thrown out
of parish church belfry.
Great fun!
sexagenarios de ponte dejicere¹
On the second Wednesday
kattenstoet, the killing of creatures
associated with the witch.
Can a black cat, thrown out of the belfry,
land on its feet?
Christ is tempted in the second week.
He waits for rain, the horns of the crone²,
the old year still alive and kicking.
¹Latin; Old people should be thrown off a bridge
²The end of the year used to be associated with February and not December (the tenth month).
La Llorona Justifies Herself1 / Cathy Ferrell
Banshees2
and crying mothers
confiscate children
tuck heads under water
fill the emptiness of lungs
Who speaks for the women?
Our mouths are filled with
cotton, still.
Still. Still.
When is our turn?
Stop your ears all you like
If you will not
hear us, we will
s h r i e k
anyway. We steal
souls before yours
can quiver
If not us, someone
worse
1In Mexican folklore, La Llorona drowned her children after learning of her husband’s infidelity; harbinger of doom; haunter of water; hear her cry; weep forever
2In Gaeilic folklore, a female spirit who mourns; harbinger of death; hear her keen; someone will die
Reset / Dralandra Larkins
You been giving out parts of your hearts that were always meant to be yours
You been feeling incomplete forcing yourself in locked doors
You ought to let go and spirit take the wheel
And I know it ain’t easy but just sit back and see what’s reveal
See how your spirit guides show you what’s fake and what’s real
You can keep seeking validation from your peers, then, surprised when insecurities appears.
Always Give yourself some grace
Some days you feel like floating
Other days the heaviness weighs
Both the good and bad are valid valuable feelings
We need the ups and downs to understand the duality in healing
We need to be capable of seeing ourselves that we have the capacity to see others
If we can learn to embrace our scars we can do the same for our family friends and lovers
Believe you will achieve goodness and health
Dont let the evil of humanity stop you from loving
Don’t let your fears stop you from who you’re becoming
Learn to accept all of you, Without all the judging.
Its time to stop sprinting from the past, time to stop struggling.
Easy for Flowers / Clyde Long
– after Alicia Ostriker’s “The Moment on Stage II”,
I heal this wounded world says the tulip stretching her spine
Healing is easy for flowers; beauty is a salve.
Behold our cups of petals reaching up
seducing honey bees to collect our pollen.
A woman with her dog smiles passing
my bed of tulip brothers and sisters.
She coos over their stout stalks and variegated
purple and magenta colors, “beautiful!”
Her dog wags, a petal stuck to his nose.
She wants a world healed to be this way.
It starts with a single petal.
There Is No Language in this Country: A Cento / Cecille Marcato
i
Tonight we wish upon the darkest star.
Our end starts here but we don’t know
that now. The blackest sail ever raised,
a secret blue emptiness behind
the pleasure of the whole thing.
ii
It’s here I keep getting stuck halfway
between wonder and distance.
How dangerous it is where we sit
on the side of things that have
no language, knees touching
at times, when I had no words.
The grammar of the calendar,
time in the physical.
iii
Imagination loves
the wall of a building,
loves the floor and the square
window that looks out on it
as the beams and window glass let
go of themselves. With all
the imagination, the magic, you saw
lights so familiar they might have been
ours shining back from the future.
We’ll use anything
to find the ones who must be found.
iv
A sentence is an idea, a feeling
for the sun before it rises like
the moment just before you forgot
what it was you were about to say.
Because there are things
we have no words for, metaphors
link the known and unknown.
But when I say whether, the sentence
may be thinking, even so –
like that, only all the time.
Perhaps we’re here only to say
death in a hundred different ways.
v
Here bells are ringing (resounding),
roosters crowing and the doves’ wings
flapping. O these swallows! How they ache
supreme, exhausted chimney sweeps
of the spaces between words.
Dialects everywhere you look.
Here, the sun will return
whether you smile or cry,
clap or burn candles.
vi
It’s always the day after the day after
here. A transformer thrums without relent.
The quell night blues above.
The quell night blues: stillness
eating the absence, a kind of stopping
that will pass for peace — a knock
at the door when no one’s home.
What’s gone makes what’s left silent.
Blue, I write beneath the skylight.
vii
There are things I’ve wanted to say,
blue notes in the margins
of everything. I needed
your lips, needed your body near me.
This mattered more to me
than anything.
We didn’t get it right.
[Sources: James Agee, Tom Andrews, Joseph J. Capista, C.P. Cavafy, Linda Gregg, Marie Howe, Bill Knott, Larry Levis, Matthew Olzmann & Linda Pastan.]
Pink Cupcake / Lizzy Polishan
I am the last charm on your middle-school charm bracelet // Sometimes you take me
between your fingers & say my mom gave me this for my birthday, which I think is my name //
Once I was surrounded by beautiful things: shooting stars a sparkly horseshoe red dice a lucky
clover // I don’t know what I am 1 // I used to think about it a lot // Now I am holding my breath &
onto one rusted link // What I am seems less important now that I am all alone // When I don’t
know how much longer you will keep wearing me // How much longer I can keep holding on
THE PLEASURE OF NAMING YOURSELF / Gordon Taylor
Day 21 / Poem 21
untitled / David Burrows
the rising sun
at eye level
blinds
as I cough and shake
wishing the heat
would evaporate
the swamp
in the chest
a passerby
shuffles
past
in the park quadrangle
another walks confidently
talking as they go
and a muscled man
bounds
in full run
everyone completes
multiple laps
we watch them pass
round and round
me with wheezes
and tissues
Benny, still, in my lap
surveying other dogs
the sun moves
is blocked
by trees
I can see
any movement I make
prayers that bring
a slight gleam
meditations
with the tiny glow
of fireflies
will complete the journey
even barely pick up feet
the upper body a block
of cement
The unbearable haiku waits for the last leaf to drop / Miriam Calleja
Mama ain’t happy / Cathy Ferrell
She gathers detritus, weaves
twigs and broken pencils into her hair
(Under the roof, a rumble,)
No one looks her in the eye
(a gust down the hall)
Dust scampers into warrens
beneath the couch and lost
socks tuck their heels
(Crash! Cymbals! Flash!)
When lightning strikes
the clock on the stove, the family
freezes.
(precipitation)
In her wake, the door lists
on one hinge,
(aftermath)
a streak of lemon on the gleaming floor.
Dralandra / Dralandra Larkins
It usually goes, “How do you pronounce your name?”
I go, “Dra-lan-dra.” They go, oh, Dralawndra. I say no. They go “oh, Drelondra? No, I mean Dre,
I mean Dru, no, Drugs? Yes, Drugs. Hi, Drugs!”
I’ve been holding my breath, tightening my jaw and swallowing my tongue
for far too long, oh, what? Culture got ya tongue?
Too much bass in my name like the ngoma drum?
All this black Atlantic washed over your privilege now wading your speech?
Not able to pronounce the authenticity,
not able to pronounce anything authentic
So, you’d rather code-switch it
for a sound more convenient, more coroperable?
A sound less threatening since the D drowns the salvia that left you breathless?
A sound easy to swallow- something more lenient?
When you say my name,
can’t you taste my mothers blood? 24 hours of sweat, labor, back bent in prayer, my name is a
manifestation of my mothers love!
Been diluting my name to comply and conform, been doing this since the name Dralandra was
born.
I dilute my name not ever once correcting them when it’s mispronounced.
Trying to apparel to a country who accepts everyone history,
Everyone’s name but mine
Too ashamed
to make a big deal of labeled the Black girl that fuss the Black girl who’s name is the sound of
the bullet that was taken for love
When you have a foreign name or a name that sounds uniques
People’s tongues tickle their tonsils, lazily
and sleeps in the back of their throat.
My name is not a lullabye of sweet syllables and soft sounds, this D drowns –
These vowels come from the growl of the beast, Chicago’s gutter
and the screaming souls of Mississippi’s plantations;
this is sugarcane and plantain!
Photo Bomb / Clyde Long
He was at move up there far above me
spiraling up and down, round and round
halting then starting, pausing to look
around and check down, chattering loudly
and twitching his full bushy tail.
Farther down the trunk he appeared,
sharp beady eyes darting side to side.
Upon my move, phone camera ready
he froze then hid behind the base of
the palm tree blocking my view.
Soon I spotted him peeking my way
with a look at once wary and pissed –
he had been up there searching for a
mate all afternoon until I messed it up.
I got a photo, but didn’t get his name.
Rescue / Cecille Marcato
Frank found him working
guard duty at a salvage yard
& he became a living study
in nature versus nurture
since his owner wanted him
mean & (believing the myth)
fed him gunpowder.
For a Dobie he ain’t
no good at guardin,’
the junkman said.
Frank gave the guy
a fifty for the dog
took him home & chained him
in the yard for seven days
for seven days, sat
just beyond the chain’s reach
with bits of steak: Here!
Butch! Here, Butch!
flank filet skirt strip
porterhouse Delmonico
He did as much for me
minus the chain & I leaned
against him, too, until he
cracked; ate metaphorical meat
like this uncropped,
undocked dog, always
hating fireworks – not the booms
so much as the smell of
burnt black powder
left hanging forever in the air.
The Turtle / Lizzy Polishan
here :: the green womb
sweet :: the sequined guava
what immaculate animals
dawn caught!
those humans :: nude schooners
the disk of the sky:: a dream
velvet antlers slaughter swarming
gnats laughter in the blistering
mist dissolves
FIDELITY / Gordon Taylor
Day 20 / Poem 20
untitled / David Burrows
under the cherry tree
in autumn
a plastic owl
scares away birds
from red fruit
that hint
at the flowering
to come
a society
of leaves
quiver
in the wind
under the cherry tree
in October
I hold my hand
on your heart
hoping
we’re safe
protecting
our pink blossoms
circling fingertips
in your fur
Sent from my iPad
Puzzle / Miriam Calleja
I cross myself out
A cold spell follows false fall.
I leverage randomness in my favor
blinking luck into non-existence
a dish drowning in butter and garlic
feet floating in a warm sea.
The spell breaksI can’t find the magic wand
hours pass and I’m still trying
to put the pieces together
fortune favors the prepared.
But what of those who grieve in preparation?
Or she who spoke of her death
ten, fifteen years before the deed—
yet, when the day came, had dying wishes.
Last Leaf / Cathy Ferrell
too
tired to
turn, anew.
how long has it
been? wait
for the fall
that never comes.
suspend
from one
tenuous stem,
wait for a breath
Survivor / Dralandra Larkins
My father was physically abusive towards my mother and growing up, I used to question God. I would ask simple questions like, “why?” Why was I born in this family? Why did I live in this ghetto ass neighborhood? Why did mama have to work so hard? Why did daddy use his fist to express his emotions? Why mama, why me? We
Survivors tend to ask ourselves what did we do to deserve harm? We question our worth and our purpose. We question our lives. But there’s a quote by Andréa Dykstra who says “in order to truly love who we are we cannot hate the experiences that shape us.”I want us to switch our thoughts from what’s wrong with you to what’s right with you? What’s that light in you? That fight in you?
They tried to dim your righteousness
and take your faith. The angels had other plans for your grace. So, it’s time to bury your brokenness-that hurt,
it’s time to dust the ashes
and blossom from dirt.
You’re healed now
and the wounds from their words
can no longer hurt. You’ve
pulled yourself by the bootstraps
and out of the hole, stop
picking at your wounds,
drowning in sorrow,
so blessings can adequately flow
its time
to simply let go.
You’ve been clenching the rope
that keeps you bonded to your past, release thoughts of who wasn’t there for you
and what didn’t last- of the soul ties, word spells friends and family tried to cast.
There are tests, trials, and trauma that you’ve been faced to go through,
allow God to use your pain
as a vessel and expose you,
mold you through affliction. Your mission isn’t done.
So, except who you are and all you’ve become!
The weapon was formed, yet the battle you’ve won.
A survivor is the lotus
that blooms without sun.
A survivor- more than just a conqueror, more than just a fighter.
It’s the flower
that thrives without water.
It’s 1 in 4 women who are victims of a brutal fist fight- it’s someone’s daughter!
Its the the father
too ashamed to speak of their abuse
policies paint him as perpetrator. It’s 1 in 2
who feel alone.
It’s 1 in 4 who burn pages of their journals just to erase, just to escape.
Its 1,000 voices silenced from stigma.
Tongues sliced for honesty.
Its 1 in 4 sexually assaulted bodies
who never want to feel
Their hands,
again. Better yet,
just never feel, again.
Suicide is committed
every 11 minutes
by someone who pretends. Smiles though suffering, may it be your neighbor,
co-worker, cousin or best friend.
It’s the person fighting
to be free, to be
released from depression
that pins them
to the mattress of their bedspring.
A survivor is the mother
shot six times with a revolver
by a person they once made love to. Its Caitlin Howard, Jaden Hills, Jessica Espinoza, Marlon Faulter, Jasmine, Tyesha Davidson, Patrick, Sadiyah Ahmed, it’s Sofia.
A survivor is the person who still prays
after pain.
It’s the person who chooses love
after trauma, after trauma, a diamond
after pressure!
It’s Hajars House.
A house of hope to stand on the roof of independence. Alnaaji is the human
who chooses
forgiveness.
College class at 68 / Clyde Long
We are asynchronous
we are hybrids
we do digital self-guided learning
with weekly .ppt slides
and YouTube video clips.
So download it along with pdfs
and lecture transcripts too –
ready for open notes quizzes.
Pro tip if age 68: print out
all that mess, three-hole
punch it, and file it away in
a three-ring binder or two –
then own quizzes and tests.
Age 68’s way to an A!
Recap / Cecille Marcato
It was the year Russians invaded
but not us (as once was feared).
It was the year after
the year we nearly froze
to death — & the year that water
from the cold tap scalded
the whole summer long.
It was the year we removed our masks
& babies got Covid,
the year we had to move
& it rained twice,
just twice
& still there were mosquitoes.
It was the year of dread
even with the news turned off –
& shots of cortisone, plasma
& stem cells for pain
& crying;
the year that Michael moved
to Mexico and Jane went
to rehab as a surprise; the year
that Judy broke her arm
& it turned out to be
her shoulder & Katie’s
book came out without a tour.
It was the year I dreamed you back
(again) & because it was a dream
you didn’t stay; the same year
I froze up driving on a flyover
that was too close to Heaven
to feel safe on Earth.
It was the year the cat died
& my toe turned black & we put
our masks back on.
It was the year
we stopped struggling against
ourselves & just gave in.
It was the year that everyone
became old & just gave in.
Ghost / Lizzy Polishan
I am a real ghost I am not
made of paper or bedsheet
I don’t have any hands I am
not trying to scare you I only want
a glass of water & to be
your friend Please don’t turn off
the bathroom sink if it turns
spontaneously on I am still
drinking the water straight
from the facet because
I still have no hands I lost them
in the war I forgot
which one It was terrible
& long ago I did make it home
I did die in my bedroom which
is now our bedroom, though my bed
was much smaller than yours I won’t
bother you except for the water
I like to sit on your bed & stare
at your face I like the way you play
with all your little machines If the light
flickers you should know I’m using
my teeth to move the switch I am
saying hi You can say hi back
PLATITUDE LIST – DAY WHENEVER / Gordon Taylor
Benzo
diazepines. Can’t breathe with ‘em. Can’t sleep
without ‘em. I mean we’re drawn
to the familiar, even if the familiar hurts
us. Classic dialectic, I tell the psychiatrist.
I’ve been taking these tiny calm bombs for years.
The weening is endless. I’m a baby.
Around week three into withdrawal I noticed
a veil over my eyes, a grey cataract.
My limbs seemed a gather
of scratched skin, muscle boiled to vapor.
Something kills every body, every Dad said.
I’m grateful for platitudes. My Dad told me to, “sit quiet”
when I was anxious. He never smokedbut his lungs still turned to scar.
~
After I was therapied, I learned my childhood
wasn’t what I thought, like undressing
the truth of Santa. Or Odysseus. Or Darth
Vader. It’s all context. But that is a platitude.
You need something to believe
or you’ll die, Dad used to say. Choosea direction. Give me a hint, I begged him.
Somewhere in the odyssey, the boy
is attacked, but mistakes it for love.Remember that? He begins confusing
hurting oneself with motivation.
You’re simplifying how traumatized people re-enact neglect
the psychiatrist scolds, half looking at me.Her lids seem heavy, eyes open a slit. Her voice
reminds me of the Apple Notes font. Easy
on the senses. This font must be taught in medical schools.
She says my mistake is that I seek to acquire mental
health, like b-ball sneakers or a pearl necklace .
We’re on a zoom call. I’ve forgotten to wipe
my mouth. Spaghetti sauce smudges
the corners. I look like the Joker.
The rTMS treatments are making me superhuman
I report. It’s like small bolts of lightning
against the left prefrontal cortex. Euphoria
induced. You can’t know joy
until you have known sadness, she frowns.
I roll my eyes. Humans can’t exist without language.
We’re annoying, I explain,. We find
anything without one name frightening. Do you think
your mother loved you, she asks.
Mom is very good at english, I say.
I think you’re evading the question, she says.
I’m a poet. I’m talking about one thing
and meaning another.
~There’s been a murder. The PET scan shows
my pre-frontal cortex is dead. After
I was molested I believed my family died. My siblings
left me. Mom rolled over. Dad told me to
sit quiet and watch clouds move across the sky.
Do you think that writing is an act of rebellion?
Did speechlessness compel me to write?
I wouldn’t know, says the Psychiatrist.
We could explore those questions
in our next session. Wait, I say, holding up my hand.
I’ve thought of a better question. If I hand you a fig
and a wasp flies from it— should I fear the fig—
if I cross out the monster—depression—
what happens?—Wasn’t the Odyssey about a war
survivor —trying to travel home—
trying to breathe?
Day 19 / Poem 19
Inside the Ordinary (on Fabian Ospina’s painting “Poolside”) / David Burrows
Keep it together / Miriam Calleja
A Cento with lines from Cathy Ferrell
One hand clutches
we reach out and grasp old stars
heart yearns for all things beyond
(inside, a Banshee)
we pass through many
many lives
we hexagon ourselves
surface
we breathe wide
daring to
feel a tingle
Listen!
keep it together
Won’t you dissolve with me?
Before sun the first taste
nothing left to wipe away
we spin years. We loop.
One button with two holes
Women who dream / Cathy Ferrell
(A Golden Shovel poem)
Take me to that place some
lucky women find, between remember and forget. Time
tightropes, here. Day and night teeter at equal intervals. I see it
just within my reach. Skry and search. You will
find me perched there. We could be
stardust. Let’s wander the
tails of old comets. Heave the last
of the moons. Here we equinox, sip on time.
(some time it will / be the last time, from Miriam Calleja Shaw’s poem Remember)
Listen to / Clyde Long
Listen to quiet songs
birds sing
in intimacy.
Listen to carrion crows
caws, whispers.
Listen like chicks
to mother songs and
father songs;
Listen to songs sung
before they hatch.
Listen to songs sung
not of mates or treasure.
Listen for divine songs –
angel’s songs.
He returns from the dead / Cecille Marcato
on bits of paper
in handwriting
that stomps a footprint
on my chest
in a photo
or a keychain
in the body
of someone
working
at the half-price
bookstore
whose gait twins
his, height the same
whose face supports
like architecture
whose eyes pierce
my cornea
grow hands to clinch
my gut
in dreams
or nightmares (still
blessed visitations
because
sometimes
I pretend
to need a book
& he’s not there).
untitled creation poem / Lizzy Polishan
i have a pet cat i have to create him
every night every night i hold down
the shadow of his paw with the toe
of my boot & pull his body off
the tarmac we live in a boat, which is
made of leaves he licks the river
where we are floating & tells me it is
milk i tell him he’s mistaking starlight for
flavor & a mother he says he forgot
where he came from all he remembers is
a nameless darkness that named him
& pushed him into a triangle world of warm
light, which was soft & tasted like a pearl
of milk
More Life / Khamil Riley
Fall in love with yourself first.
With your life,
With your breath,
With the fact that you’re alive and
so on and so forth.
Let us begin with a question.
Where were you when you had your first
reckoning?
I was sat alone on bench
in what I can only describe as
the underworld. Way down under
Light started to look like dark,
Floating turned to sinking and
The ground turned to fire.
I
am getting cooked.
I can’t swallow the words fast enough to
get out of this boiling pot. I am going to burn alive
through this transformation
I think I’m supposed to enjoy the burn?
Consider change something other than
just the devil and his mind games,
though he does play those too.
I pray to God every night for rescue.
I believe He is answering
even if I don’t see it.
I believe that I am taken care of
even if I can’t pree it.
I believe He has my best interest at heart.
Someone
has my best interest at heart.
I’ll learn to praise Him in art and dance
For He gave me those gifts
and it’d be rude of me to discard them.
He told me to write this poem.
He told me to sing this song.
To celebrate this love
and this heart of mine
that so often gets me in trouble.
So,
Riffling through the rubble,
I’m not sure how this life ends.
No one does,
But I’d say
I’m more than okay
with going out with a bang
GRATITUDE LIST – DAY NINETEEN / Gordon Taylor
Day 18 / Poem 18
untitled/ David Burrows
her eyes are red
calling for the end
her seven children bombed
by a bully
who says he’s threatened
though david could
sling a thousand bullets
at him and it’d be
harmless as rain
on his iron body
he says he won’t be cut
or bleed again
he kills babies
calling them shields
of his enemy
forgetting their names
as if his blood won’t pool
stop like everybody’s
turn putrid
in time
his muscles
grow old and thin
Swallowing without bread / Miriam Calleja
After Remember by Christina Rossetti
Remember that some time it will be the last time
that I forgive the silence of falling asleep
and waking up to oversight. That even I,
to all intents and purposes, a woman
deemed pleasant will forget to mend,
to pick up, to clean off. Remember that
some time it will be the last time that an offhand
remark gets swallowed without bread, gets pushed
to the side of the bottom
of memory. Remember that some time it will
be the last time I react and the first time
I am not moved to tears. You don’t know when
that last question, that last moment
of interest will move through me. And so,
say you don’t push your luck. Say,
you should remember that some time it might
be it will be
Women who hoard: an inventory / Cathy Ferrell
(with a line from Miriam Calleja Shaw’s Pockets)
one button with two holes
one sticky candy wrapper
hand sanitizer, empty
pocket lint
old thread
the embarrassing thing said 20 years ago
a barrage of cliff-edged words
the forgotten phone call
advice from your grandmother
unopened dreams
the quickest comeback, two seconds too late
a cork
one ace, an unrolled sleeve
Degrees of Pain: A Haiku sequence / Clyde Long
I
fall leaves blush in color
calendar a grave reminder
next year death at home
II
ancient hates hug death
clouds of souls ascend en masse
dampened dirt weeps blood
Another Thanks / Cecille Marcato
after Katie Marya
Dear, oh God, your names escape me, as I’m sure everything about me does you. That’s if you are even still alive. I’m writing just in case I failed to thank you for the sheets you gave Tom and me – yes, the sheets you bought in China when you were ambassadors or missionaries or something. I honestly can’t remember what in the world you were doing over there. Missionaries doesn’t feel quite right but then again you were good friends with my then mother- and father-in-law, who were staunch Lutherans and would have befriended you on that basis alone. Maybe it was trade-related. Nixon had opened economic relations with China, so maybe people went there just to buy things. As I said, I don’t remember. I envied them their faith, my in-laws. Christmas week, it seemed we were always in church. They cut down their own tree and decorated it with real candles just like in Sweden and Germany where they were from, respectively. On Christmas morning, after church, of course, they lit them and held the curtains back so that the entire house didn’t go up. It was horrifying. The sheets, though, were the stark white of a nurse’s cap in the olden days and a bit stiff, as this was before people in Egypt began counting threads – a truly baffling standard for cotton that makes about as much sense as saying that a piece of paper is twenty-four pounds. They had pale turquoise flower appliqués, like bluish cherry blossoms, on the top sheet and the edges of the pillowcases. They were stunning. We (I) felt unworthy. I’m here to tell you that they did not end up in the garage sale I had when the marriage dissolved and we moved to different parts of the City (a whole other story), as did almost all the other wedding gifts; and, although I retained custody of them, I have never once put them on a bed. Do you see what I’m saying? I never slept on your thoughtful gift. This goes for Tom as well. They might even have hard edges where they have been folded all these decades. These sheets not once graced a guest bed, even as decoration, which they could well have been, so delicate was their beauty. Maybe everyone in the world is too flawed to sleep in such personal luxury. Maybe it’s just me. My mother said that it is important to use wedding sheets and towels or else the fabric will rot. Wouldn’t that be the least of your problems in a new union? In any case, I have never had much truck with religious missions. Live and let live, you know? The same goes for marriage. But divorce? That’s serious business.
Cento with Lines from Husserl, Hermès, & Marx’s Das Kapital / Lizzy Polishan
A dolphin joins a banana,
a billiard ball floats
towards a rocket. We decompose
them into triangles. Phantasy turns
out here in a peculiar way to be productive:
There is created, on the one hand,
a constantly extending market for
gold & silver, &, on the other hand, unlimited
emotion & the unique
expression of a personal narrative
waiting to be written. We should, in this way,
get £1,500 on one side & £1,590 on the other.
Surprise, surprise!
MATTER / Gordon Taylor
Day 17 / Poem 17
Driftwood/ David Burrows
Pockets / Miriam Calleja
Inside, she is e x a g e r a t e d :
a stage whisper. She looks like she might
be on top of things
but acts like she’s
snowed under.
Earlier, a barrage of cliff-edged
words tumbled out of every pocket.
To think she used to love
garments with pockets.
Now, every possible storage space
can contain a problem
hers
to solve.
Women who ring / Cathy Ferrell
(in response to Miriam Calleja Shaw’s Percussion)
around the rosie, pocket full of posies. We ashes. We fall down. We call. We shoot the shit. We gab, we idle. We encircle fourth finger in promises, show pale underneath when they break. We leave film of suds around tub after scalding bath. We spirograph, we core. We are one ancient tree. We spin years. We loop. We prehistoric. We crop circle. We rock and ice around Saturn. We enigma. Don’t try to understand our circus. We are masters of the show. We tame lions, walk tightropes. We box, we spar. We win. We knit. We chemistry. We chain. We benzene ring. We make you forget. We toxic, we poison, we steal, we shake. We protect. We contain. We lead. We d o m i n a t e. We outwit. We peal. We sing sing sing sing sing
Beyond lifetimes / Clyde Long
-of W.S. Merwin, “Place”
My place in Calistoga, Napa Valley came with a pair of century old Canary Island palm trees framing the front yard, fifty feet tall. I instantly became a tree collector, like hitting a triple first time at bat. Trees growing beyond lifetimes. Rains of summer dates. Looming with dozens of widow-maker fronds loosed in wind storms. Homes to squirrels and woodpeckers. Monuments to life itself full of the dead – tenuous and grand.
clouds of falling fronds
on the last day of the world
leaves are tears let go.
Rapunzel’s Mother Is Finally Asked a Question / Cecille Marcato
We still live next door so, yes, we hear
her songs. They travel cloudward then
refract down to me. She gets her voice
from her father’s side, not mine.
Each day at three the tower casts
its shadow across our garden, darkening
the herb after which she was first named.
I don’t need to see the tenebrous earth
to know the darkness. It is a sword
that stabs me through my belly
where once she lived uneasily, churning
my guts, storming my blood, swelling.
Especially when it’s warm
I hear her every note – each word
crystal – & search for something
meant just for me, but so much time
has passed we no longer know
each other: She is pulsing
ache instead of daughter.
They say you cannot feel
your heart but that simply
is not true.
After the bird in Kateryna Bilokur’s Flowers at Night – 1942 / Lizzy Polishan
It smells like petrichor & everything is
Dripping. The flowers are colored
Buttons holding closed the night.
The night is not a coat. I never learned
To sew. I have only my beak my fourteen
Feathers. If I could sew I’d clean all
The berries off this vine & use the naked
Green thread to stitch this petrichor
To this night. This garden. The earth
Grew a green nest, where amethyst
Cups of dewlight & moondrops live. I did not
Know the earth is also a bird. The striped
Petals are so pretty I could lick them.
A cricket stands on fallen rubies. The cricket
Is my friend. The sad song he plays is
The color of tomatoes. The lilacs are so
Pretty I want them on my head. The night
Smells like lilacs & I forgot where they are.
TREE HOUSE / Khamil Riley
May the leaves from my tree that still shake and tremble
fall as silently as the boy who once said he loved me.
May they land hopelessly and aimlessly scattered at his feet
as he walks hand in hand with someone who makes him feel better
Maybe someone who doesn’t.
May those trampled leaves get caked on the bottom of his feet as he walks.
May he take a piece of me with him.
May it remind him of the places he’s been
the home he found within my branches
a comfort deep within my roots.
May he find those traces of me stuck beneath his shoe not so easily removed.
or maybe he just gets a new pair.
Maybe he’s made a habit of turning girls into homes
and my tree house just wasn’t the right fit
May he leave me behind then.
Maybe he leaves me behind then.
STONE FRUIT / Gordon Taylor
Day 16 / Poem 16
for Rumi/ David Burrows
Percussion / Miriam Calleja
A response to Cathy Ferrell’s Women who self-regulate
Women who self-regulate / Cathy Ferrell
(a response to Miriam Calleja Shaw’s Baking soda, white vinegar)
How do you descend
into your body? I seek
a place to ground.
The dishes are clean, now.
Nothing left to wipe away but
my own
storm look
how I surge
tempestuous. I rainband, I cloud.
Skin is eyewall, gust and wave.
Kitchen faucet flows to river. Push
inward to eye
temporary calm
You say, this is how we resume:
Stretch from center
Grip the earth
Sink heel into soil
Corgi life with Calico / Clyde Long
-for Claudia
She’s taking up the sofa
sleeping as usual so I
have to rest on the floor,
safe away from her claws.
Oh, when the humans come by
she wakes up and meows,
then they stroke her and purr
“Kitty cat” and rub her cheeks.
Sure, I roll over so adorable
and get tummy rubs as their
“Cutie pie” – they can’t rub her
tummy without lacerations.
The cat pan rules are complex.
They clean it out all the time,
but if I perform that fun chore
on my own I get in trouble.
I’m a good girl for always eating
meals quickly, right away.
If I gobble up her food that fast
it’s yet more trouble for me.
I have to admit to envy when she
jumps on the dinner table. If I could
do that, I’d eat every crumb, not nudge
plates and spoons onto the floor.
All and all, maybe she does liven
things up a bit around here.
She keeps me busy chasing her –
but I don’t ever dare catch her.
Top Notch Burgers Ghazal / Cecille Marcato
This restaurant is a time machine
where then & now seem virtually the same,
an old diner from fifty years ago
molded seats, ceiling tiles, the same
brick walls inside, bought as “used” as was the style
brown, beige, red, black, not all the same;
knotty pine on some walls & pendant lights unmatched;
a photo booth with strips of folks – the same & not the same.
Babes in shorts & skates took food to cars before, now
guys rush in & out: Times change, the staff is not the same.
The fare could be “A Study in Brown.” A sign says You Might
Die Tomorrow. (Eat what you want, it’s all the same?)
Top Notch means unsurpassed, first-rate, or aces;
crackerjack, dynamite & fab – similar, yet not the same.
Top Notch Fine Food Fast Service the logo sign proclaims
Cecille, if this place feels different it’s because it’s still the same.
dhgate time machine / Lizzy Polishan
the good news is i did order the time machine ||
the bad news is it’s been en route for two
years & possibly
does not exist || every day the seller
dm’s me
new tracking info || every day the seller is
a purple emoji shrugging empty-handed & certain
the time machine will arrive
tomorrow || the tracking website always says
that package does not exist || the time machine does not know
its own location || the time machine is
a time machine, therefore the time machine does not think, therefore
the time machine does not know if it is || maybe it is not ||
one possibility is that the time machine is a hypothetical ||
a different possibility is that the time machine did exist & at some point lost
its way or its body
was destroyed || i’ve forgotten what
i wanted to change || tomorrow
i will dm the seller || the message i will send will say
hi, my friend, i’m sorry, i need
to cancel this order || too many
things have happened for example
i have fallen in love with
the hummingbird who swirls through the pearly air & drinks red
sugar water at my window every evening at twilight while the sun bites into
the mountains & makes of the light a bilabial
lipsticked siren red || i have also fallen in love with
the holly
leaf cat who pads every morning out
of the bush
to drink water from the roof who has a small heart
on her front paw in her coppery
fur coruscating in the sun || also i bought
a record player & eight joan
baez records || i originally imagined if i listened to the records long enough
laying down on the floor looking up at the ceiling
the floor groaning under my shifting
weight the ceiling fan spinning on the ceiling then maybe
i would fall back in time || i only fell asleep || i learned
to cook 螺蛳粉, to be called 老婆 || i can cancel this order in american
english or mandarin chinese || i am pressing several
irises inside a copy of being & time || they are gorgeous & i’m still waiting
for them to fully dry || i would love
a refund if possible yes || yes i will give you 5 stars ||
Lamentation for Blue / Gordon Taylor
Day 15 / Poem 15
poems/ David Burrows
Baking soda, white vinegar / Miriam Calleja
After Women who clean slates by Cathy Ferrell
I wake next to the river
stumbling through weekdays—
time taken from me—time I inadvertently
gave away. The water is cold
enough to accelerate this stop-motion. Or
cold enough to pause, rewind.
At the kitchen sink, I sink
my frustration into baking soda,
mixed with salt, some water, Dawn—
I am now inventing the remedy—
but circular brush strokes are pleasant
and help me bite my tongue.
It sinks in.
I lay my wooden board on its side.
Under my instruction, it waits for tomorrow’s sun,
the dawn of a new cleanse
a slate wiped clean.
Back at the river, I descend into my body.
Resume.
Women who clean slates / Cathy Ferrell
We wake to dirty kitchens . Before
sun and laptops brighten,
we suds, we sinkful . Workday
starts before workday . Wipe
clean streak into
stew and last night’s .
What would it be like to wake with sparkling
thoughts before the first taste of ?
We wield sponges like
antidepressants. The skin on our
knuckles cracks from so
much
.
kitchens
laptops
sinkful
workday
beef
conversation
with
coffee
w i e l d
The
Dawn
Tilled journeys / Clyde Long
Within the endless rows ahead
who cares about straight lines?
We trudge as they guide us,
we chant in rhythm with saved words.
During muddy days boots have weight;
on sunny days we shuffle through dust.
Rows and rows become an infinity –
nightly we count galaxies of stars.
We lie upon tilled soil as our eyes
glaze trance-like until at last
we rest into sleep, hoping dreams
can heal us by sunrise.
My Country ‘Tis of Thee / Cecille Marcato
Someone had to be the Sun.
In this case it was of course
the mother, not because of her
luminosity or the heat that light
might engender, but rather a factor
of her psychic gravitational pull out-
pacing all neighboring celestial bodies
so much so that they all fell into orbit around
her. Someone else, then, needed to be the Earth
and for this marbleized mass we had a father who
had his own gravity and therefore his own orbiting body,
a silver moon that stole the Sun’s own light and shone by night
as though lit from within. Progeny. Yes, other planets trundled by
but were deemed by the Sun inconsequential. Even now
there are those who oppose this heliocentric theory yet
it can be doubly verified by (1) peering into any tubal
devise with a parabolic mirror or (2) simply looking
up into the sky – day or night. Who would think
to oppose a theory that can be corroborated
so easily? Who basks in misinformation
televised daily while refusing to look
through a telescope or even
lift his chin to the sky?
after || birth / Lizzy Polishan
in the hospital
room the bed
side table holds
a rainbow mango
a radio playing
harry styles’ golden
on station 108
vapor floating
in an un
-opened mason jar
a copy of
plato & a bowl of sacred
rocks/ash a volcano
borrowed from an ancient
god
Wax Without Wane / Khamil Riley
There’s something about having my whole me out on the table that makes me feel more myself than I have in ages.
The comfortable silence. The warmth
of the wax. The sting left behind
when it’s over.
There’s something so lifelike
about the pain.
You can’t prepare for this.
Just gotta take it
as it comes.
Something much bigger than both she and
I orchestrated this moment.
Ordained it and made it so.
This lesson,
I hope I won’t let go
SURRENDER AT THE ARRIVAL GATE / Gordon Taylor
Day 14 / Poem 14
muse/ David Burrows
the daemon returns
pulls fingers to keyboard
murmurs of light
and the dark
nocturne
she speaks her restless
mind
and fluttering heart
she is a still lake
moving by flat rocks
thrown, skimmed
by young boys
across her
make widening
circles
to infinity
from her womb
she expells
bones
fossils
shells
a few pearls
Too good of a girl / Miriam Calleja
After Women who dissolve by Cathy Ferrell and with a quote by Thoreau
Please understand.
If you suffocate these things for long enough,
nothing really hurts.
– Dean Rhetoric
It is me
I am the one
who has become detached¹
from the upper right corner of sight.
Detached²
is the heart that roams,
that does not sit in its designated cave.
Darkness may sound like a welcome friend
but only if you have friends
that help you see the light.
¹I see you hurryscatter
compromise my pace
²The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it
Women who discoball / Cathy Ferrell
(with inspiration from Miraim Calleja Shaw and Taylor Swift)
It’s not like it was in ballet class–long limbs and controlled centers. It’s not like that at all. We shoot beams from our eyes and out our fingertips. Have you seen the way we shimmy? We rotate on the floor and light scatters. Glitter everywhere. We don’t even mind that we’ll be picking it out of the dryer for weeks to come. This is our time. At least until we open our eyes, or another email pings Urgent Urgent Now Now Now is our time.
People with detached
retinas see
floaters. They are their own
private discotheques. Tell me, do you
hear the bass? Or is it just
tinnitus? Or is it just
getting old? Ring on
the bell bottoms, the paisley prints.
Refract: to make waves; to change direction
Won’t you dissolve with me?
We can make this whole place shimmer.
Hands / Dralandra Larkins
You are holding me as I lay in your hands
You chose to take breath out of my lungs with your kiss.
The last time our lips met
Our tshirts clung to the sweat on our skin. Selfishly.
We both dived deep in one another natural.
Receiving one another
In each other
Hands.
Cartoon Hobo Bag / Clyde Long
A young lifetime of TV cartoons,
Disney and Tex Avery Saturdays
with Mom and Dad busy with chores,
uncensored cartoons for brothers and me –
they’re only cartoons, stuff for kids
so we gorged on these all morning.
At first we had to imagine color TV, but
‘toons themselves were colorized by us.
By age 6, before Dad passed away, I
as a difficult kid became disenchanted
by kindergarten and always in trouble
with Mom about fighting with my brothers.
Came to the point I decided to run away,
let them try to get by without oldest son!
I found an old broom stick and Mom’s
bandana, filled it with what I needed –
my teddy bear, a pen knife from Granddaddy,
two apples, and some of Dad’s paper money.
I disappeared down the street ready
for my new footloose life as a hobo,
my hobo bag swinging off my shoulder,
a young man free of teachers and family.
After a while under a shade tree I sat
eating my apple and counting Dad’s money.
My bear looked at me and I looked back —
we didn’t know where to go except home.
I tossed the apple core into the weeds and
tied up the hobo bag; maybe bear and I
weren’t cut out for a hobo’s life.
Back home I put Dad’s money away —
and turned on the TV.
Untitled / Cecille Marcato
Let us speak delicately
the way a robot peels
a grape, then sutures it
as though nothing profound
had happened, as though
everything were not all
of a sudden
different but none
the worse & if it is
there is a balm
or ice & the human
touch & time.
@men / Lizzy Polishan
i wrote you a poem & everyone is an apple
tree in the poem i wrote :: the black kitten fell
asleep in the open book you’d been reading
me aloud :: the other kitten sat on your shoulder
in the shadow on the stucco wall :: my shadow
on the sand seemed to wear the black bikini
i just flattened there to dry :: when it got dark
i turned & stretched as if to cup the full moon ::
you took a photo of my hair down my back &
we can crop my legs out later :: when the fire
alive in this limestone cave keels & the smoke
rolls out over the ocean :: last week we buried
our dead friend in a rainstorm :: we left the church
under the same umbrella & a million leaves like
a million tiny copper clovers stuck to the wet dark
pavement stuck to slick black soles of your shoes.
God’s Favorite / Khamil Riley
I have been tired
Depressed
Slow and low down
Sick
Grand
And all over town
I’ve been up
I’ve been fucked
Been stuck and
out of luck but
Somehow
God never seems to forget me.
ARC PART TWO / Gordon Taylor
Day 13 / Poem 13
untitled/ David Burrows
I call, a bird in spring
on the wind
day after day
till my voice cracks
Is this the wrong note
to play the chord
of your ruby breast,
beloved?
The stone floor glows
from me on my knees
with a scrub brush
Pachouli burns
in the bedroom
the scent of cinnamon
rolls fill the kitchen
roses swell from vases
still no glimpse
of the one
for whom I carry
this song
Balanceworn / Miriam Calleja
I am mousespeak
sugarspit
I am ragedissolved
the aftermath
I’ve rolled down a hill
unarmed
I am gritteeth
tonguetight
balanceworn
I fight breakspeed
cementstop
chew it with my glass tongue
I discoball my sight
into feetdissolve
I am far
I am made of only head
Women who dissolve / Cathy Ferrell
I walk through the mall with my friend
“Your fingers” she says “are purple”
My head the ceiling My chin
Lowers
look through microscope
My tiny friend
My tiny hands f l o a t
the ends of my arms Where are my toes?
Invisible anchor belly heavy floor
All I can see a blur a buzz my cheeks numb ringing
I do not even try to keep it together.
Surprise rain surprises seeds! / Clyde Long
Weatherman called for sun, not rain.
By surprise today we got rain.
My freshly detailed car is spotted —
weather guy has lots to explain.
Two dogs ran through the mud playing;
here inside their mess is insane.
Surprised seeds will begin to sprout,
Fall leaves blushing red to be seen.
Tomorrow’s weather will be sunny,
who knows if puddles will remain?
My guess is as good as anyone’s –
don’t trust the weatherman or Clyde.
An Illness Graphed / Cecille Marcato
I began to plot you
convex to concave
& back again
& back again.
Above your own tangent
you were green & below
blue; red
at the inflection point
when we called in specialists.
They made a new graph
with you as the asymptote,
me as the curve. Our distances
approached zero, but our points
never converged
& this attempt, while never
hopeful, seemed accurate.
Drive-Thru / Lizzy Polishan
I was waiting for you to get married so I could get married next The line to get married was very long and in the McDonald’s drive-through Up ahead a teenager in a red visor hung out of Order Window #2 She smiled and waved We smiled and waved Many cars idled between us It was 3 AM I was driving and you were unwrapping your presents Everything felt pink and looked like cake Your dress was black velvet to the floor I touched my hair, which was hard and smelled like Garnier Fructis My hair pricked my fingers Where did you get that tiara you said It must have been the Happy Meal Toy I was being crushed under the weight of my enormous white dress I felt like I was trapped inside a bell I feel like I’m trapped inside a bell I said The mascara that ran down your cheeks dripped on the gifts in your lap I reached inside the tissue-box and pulled out a cream-colored rose You said when we drive past the coffin drop that on her head
Held Breath / Khamil Riley
Wait wait, wait,
My restless legs only know run.
Bound by elastic,
they’re expanding enough
to just not make it.
I am being told to wait.
To sit and let
the universe do its work.
Which is something much harder
Than it seems.
It’s another day gone by
not being where you want to be.
Means knowing it’s out there
with a price to pay
and still being told you have to stay.
Scaling the walls of
this tunnel or abyss
I am clawing my way out
with bloodied fingertips.
Skinned thighs,
I
am shedding pieces
of myself along the walls
and they will still be here
as I move on.
I’ll grow new skin, and
learn to think it refreshing.
Let my new body
seep and tie its knots.
As I grow, each tug of these strings
Draws fresh breath into my lungs.
I am breathing.
Breathing.
And waiting.
For something
still yet unseen.
ARC PART 1 / Gordon Taylor
Day 12 / Poem 12
Nearer my Dog to me / David Burrows
nearer my dog to me, nearer to me
Best Actress / Miriam Calleja
After Women who lie by Cathy Ferrell
She receives a trophy and sparkling accolades for her socialized performances. Glitzy glamor in her heels silver-golden that rub, crack. Blisters on an exhausted line. She whips out her people-pleaser, only slightly bruising herself, only slightly scarring herself for life. The make up is wiped in one smooth movement, but somehow, the traces she leaves multiply during the night and don’t you know, waterproof doesn’t mean it can withstand everything she’s internalized. She’s a winner, a keeper, a go-getter, but she’d rather go to sleep. Tonight, for the grand prize, she has learned an entire speech. It is her night off, after all. Her lipstick is askew, her foundation a shade darker. As she walks up to collect this latest symbol of praise, her teeth rattle against the mic. One eyeball pops out. Her left breast becomes unhinged. There is an audible gasp as her lunch repeats on her straight into the front row, amplified. She laughs and it comes out a snort. Then she snorts and snorts and can’t stop herself from laughing, dropping the mic as she shakes. Then, in the last moment, as she leaves the stage, her catsuit gets caught in gaffer tape. Like a matador’s muleta in the final third of a bullfight, she is suddenly in the way of death. Standing tall, in granny panties, everyone can see the first genuine smile of her career.
The crowd goes wild.
Women who change / Cathy Ferrell
(inspired by Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, with a line from Miriam Calleja Shaw’s the ophthalmologist)
Peel away your old tight skin
and leave it where it falls.
Expose the underneath
It is fresh, raw
Alive Alive Alive
Listen! The wind:
There has been an explicable change
Size up, unashamed.
You are a modern-day Venus.
Unroll the belly.
The dressing room is your scallop.
Lately / Dralandra Larkins
It’s been hard not to miss you and want to kiss you
even when you leave, I can still feel you
smell you,
Mahogany Breeze, there’s so many things I wish to tell youLike When u kiss me
doubts of darkness began to fade
quicklytriggered by your kisses you plant them
gently
On palms and cheeks
legs wrapped tightly around your waist
Our bodies create
Sacred Geometry
January’s answer / Clyde Long
Seems like an answer
not a question, more like a
thought that maybe the dusty
Napa River won’t need to
handle winter storms this year:
A dry October’s fear.
Hopes are for a December
baptismal storm cleansing
dry riverbeds with fresh flows
all into a chorus of roars,
currents deep dark and cold;
a river reborn dangerous.
Baptism arrives early January.
Deluges revive her cold dangers.
Bystanders peer warily over
the eroded river banks. Her moon
and planet cousins above jeer,
“careful now, we told you so”.
A Letter to T____ on Deaccessioning / Cecille Marcato
T____, I think I am beginning to understand your choice.
Last spring my cat died & I had to move.
These two events were unrelated. Or maybe not.
A sympathetic friend, an astrologer, warned me
that I would have to reckon with, as she put it, my material culture.
Did I lose you by mentioning her profession?
While begging pardon I remind that before your religion evolved
the Tetrabiblos enjoyed a long season.
Maybe he, Ptolemy, as an early, influential music theorist
teases your interest or (dare I say?) garners your respect.
There is room, surely, for us all.
Maybe choice is not the right word.
Something involuntary like a heartbeat or a secular cosmic force
like gravity – yes, that strong – moved you.
A numinous voice that speaks directly to a human heart
bypassing the little factory that is our brain;
not bothering with ears &, in your case, circumventing
those gifted hands that might have argued their case
solely by being lifted to the keys of your Pleyel.
You would call it God, this whispering force. I mean that as a question.
You would say (&, again, pardon an assumption)
that He is not the thought behind the music or a conductor
of hands on keys but is, in fact, Himself the music.
A congregation of starlings moves in time
with Mozart’s piano concerto No. 21 in C Major,
the whole of it without hearing a note.
This I observed first-hand.
Who is behind such an event? I might ask.
I envy you your belief.
Your simple desk with its three books.
Your heatless hut.
My path is strewn with topographic maps,
family photographs & those of people I don’t even know;
blocked by boxes of books on – name the subject.
Inheritance. Shackles. I understand this.
I am moving toward you, T____,
with so little time to arrive at your door.
SICK SAM / Khamil Riley
Bleeding seedling.
Sick sonic.
Ten toes touch down.
Sick Sam, Sam slick
and lick the back
of my kneecaps. He’ll
tell me I taste lovely,
Like my grandmother before me.
Sick screaming at Cynic Sam,
“Take me to the clinic!”
Sick Sam says he’d die before
He’d ever touch me
Safe to say Slick Sam Sank
He fell stiff
Sold his soul for a dance
With mortality
I’d say we ladies
are all glad he’s dead.
ANNA / Gordon Taylor
Palindrome girl, let me write the soundtrack for the afternoon
you were named, sweet
infinity. The wind hummed carry on
over crackling cries of grounded maple
leaves, a storm’s carrion, voices carrying. A poet said
start in the middle. Beginning and ending—
the most difficult. I can’t remember
how fearlessnes feels. A glass
bangle can crack. A lung can turn
grey. My oncologist said immune systems
never forget. Cancer—a quiver
of questions. Where have you been?
When will you go? How
will you look? I have nothing
to teach, but your eyes in the baptismal
photo are clear of accumulation—
your face, backward due to refractions of light
bouncing from origin to reflection. Anna—
even your name—the same
from back to front— will change
shape like a shadow growing
long as morning shifts into noon.
Day 11 / Poem 11
filling me up with light / David Burrows
he smiled right to me
said hi
warmed me
which on the metro
was very unusual
for anyone not to be
stonefaced
or into their phone
or inscrutable
me, him, the lady
next to me
formed a circle
of care
gazed twinkling
at his two year old
daughter
listening to her babble
in her stroller
on the green line
to Greenbelt
he was slight of build
simply dressed
with brown red
dreadlocks
and freckles
there with a brood
of four children
we all communed
from Navy Yard
to Columbine Heights
the kids telling us
their ages
each in turn
four, two,
eight, six
we stood to exit
waiting for
the grey doors
to open
I motioned for him
and his family
to go first
before me
he surprised
me again
filling me up
with a fist bump
and a “be safe”
a goodbye
I hadn’t heard before
till the next night
from a bartender
at the Purple Patch
who said it again
a mantra of the city
the ophthalmologist / Miriam Calleja
spies on my little eye
after I’d insisted something’s wrong
I just don’t have the vocabulary for what’s missing
He negates as he is accustomed to do
with women. There has been an explicable
change and what’s to come
will draw a line before and after
my insistence echoes familiar
I’m afraid it is bad news
He says this as though I hadn’t said, hadn’t known, hadn’t thought of it myself.
the dictum delivered – a stitch in time – saves nine ———
the wisdom of knowing gains a voice
I go to my mother to cry
afraid to sneeze afraid
of the actual stitch
Women who lie / Cathy Ferrell
To be negated is to feel
a tingle in the fingertips
a splotch of red on the cheek, then leech
Colorless
the billow of a shroud whooshed white and high
a settling of dust on the crown of the head
a stuffing of the mouth with cotton
a throat choked on its own saliva
Swallowed words
Glazed eyes
Best Actress
They say: Be good, be quiet. Nod. Always, always admit to their mistakes. Look down, because
pupils cannot lie when they dilate wide.
Ours can shape galaxies
hungry enough to eat their egos whole.
untitled / Dralandra Larkins
U been giving out parts of your hearts that were always meant to be yours
U been feeling incomplete forcing yourself in locked doors
You ought to let go and god take the wheel
And i know it aint easy but just sit back and see whats reveal
See how your healed
See how God shows u how whats fake and whats real
From the inside out
Sometimes u got to stop to take a good look to know what ur really about
U cant keep running from your fears
You can keep seeking validation from your peers
And be surprised when inauthenticity appears
Its time to face your flaws.
Its time to go out and face it all
Our house / Clyde Long
Ours is a tidy old house
full of shedding pets
who lavish fur and love.
Ours is not a lonely house
yet harbors years of losses
always with their weight.
It’s a busy house filled with
many dreams and needs,
assuming many more years.
Windows filter light through
old glass window panes,
frames giving loose hugs.
Its vintage voice asks us,
“how long will you live here,
you mere doomed humans?”
We are blissfully defiant,
we repair and exercise
answering certain doom.
Cairn Pantoum / Cecille Marcato
& now your voice, rich, deep – a hint of gravel
an embrace like smoke, blue & grey, wafting;
one stone in a cairn assembled from scree
a guide for Memory on her to-&-fro way
an embrace like smoke, blue & grey, wafting
the scent of civet from apothecary jars
musk guide for Memory on her to-&-fro way
shards of a dream or fully formed in the room.
The scent of civet from pharmacy jars
saved for years, olfactory time machine
a shard, a dream, or fully formed in the room
blocking the trail to high Delicate Arch.
Saved for years, olfactory time machine
to be opened at will but not without risk;
blocking my trail to the high, delicate arch:
my cairns more elusive, the longer the hike.
To be turned at will but not without risk
one stone in a cairn assembled from scree;
the longer I live, the more hidden my cairns
but now your voice – deep & rich, a hint of gravel.
Palimpsest (or, Infinite Regression) / Lizzy Polishan
The1 black2 cat3 was4 chasing5 her6 shadow7 down8 the9 hall10.
1Suppose this is the first time you are seeing the cat.
2Suppose the cat is white.
3Suppose the cat* is not a cat.
4Suppose that before she was not a cat, the cat did begin chasing her shadow.
5If the chasing that started when she was a cat continues and she is not a cat, is the chasing still
going on?
6As the cat transforms, does the shadow transforming on the threadbare rug continue belonging
to her?
7Suppose she is able to catch the shadow.
8Suppose she is pinning it down.
9Do you know who owns this hallway, if you have forgotten all your French and can’t remember
any part of her name?
10Actually, the hallway goes on forever, but only in one direction.
*Suppose the cat is a pygmy hippo / a beam of moonlight / the possibility of a cat / a
shadow running down a hall
DANGER / Khamil Riley
I am not cut out for this life
so full of sorrow and goodbye.
I prayed this lemon sweeter
Than I knew it could be,
then still felt threatened by the rapture.
I’ll take matters into my own hands
killing myself with every breath I don’t take
And every drink that I do.
And oh,
I do
Take this bottle, to have and to hold
Until death or new dreams drive us apart.
Somewhere, my body screams
in objection, but I haven’t got the heart yet
to unfold that there will be no better
That comes from this union.
Only a journey half-ass embarked upon
Where we, my body and me,
Begin spiraling.
Deeper into a darker abyss
Who knows if it gets any better than this…
STRANGER / Gordon Taylor
Day 10 / Poem 10
untitled / David Burrows
I heard you as a boy on TV
Facta non verba / Miriam Calleja
After a line by Cathy Ferrell
Time is sand that slips between fingers.
Parched, it doesn’t stick,
never hangs around.
They are lucky to have us, you know
Even though they don’t pick up hints
aren’t nudged by nudges
facta non verba, we stir fragrant food
embroider specific joy
onto the inside of as many smiles as we can
and when the needle stings
we beg for more.
Women who dare / Cathy Ferrell
(a response to Miriam Calleja Shaw’s On the shore)
What is a spectacle but
a lens? Look at us,
daring to
inhabit our own
space. They are lucky
to have us, you know.
Lucky to know our tame
and unruly.
Days roll in and out.
The sea swells like
our bellies. Mine spills
over swimsuit bottoms. One day
I will peel the whole thing off and run
into frigid water,
whooping
bare as joy.
Cotton / Dralandra Larkins
This morning,
I cried at work.
Waves of exhaustion
Hit me like a hurricane.
Clear liquid drown my
Keyboard. I was underpaid.
It was the first time
I felt like my ancestors.
Shacked by the wrist
in chains of capitalism.
Trapped in a White man’s
cage of patriarchy.
I left.
It was the first time
I met slavery;
kicked its guts with my
own fist of freedom!
Signed the certificate with divine blind faith
Took the underground to tranquility in a bliss
Of fields under the sun.
Importantly
It was the first time
I learned
the significance
of saving cotton.
Recent encounters in St. Helena / Clyde Long
Orange emeralds
A patient under the hands of a
physical therapist this afternoon –
I heard about Humboldt weed
and Thailand’s orange emeralds
and stood before tall mirrors,
upright straight like a soldier
at attention without salutes
or verbal abuse. Neck was next.
Chili and fries
A room full of chairs greets me.
I pluck a not-Covid pen to sign in.
Short time to wait with my phone.
They lead me to a surgery room.
Laid down with a pillow and blanket.
Lovely doctor with confident cheer.
She eyes me like an insect specimen
then pokes and cuts and stanches.
An hour later I am free to leave,
in a week or so to be good as new.
I flee to a lunch of chili and fries;
same day beer is verboten.
Upon the Teacher Forbidding the Class To Workshop Love Poems / Cecille Marcato
First day. The teacher says
no poems about love, no exceptions.
A student reads,
the teacher shut him down.
That’s a love poem. Next.
What about grief, I ask? Grief, too,
he says. Grief is an abstraction.
No, I say, it’s open window with organdy
curtains flapping through; I say,
forty days in the desert
not even a mirage not even
a palm tree; X-ray blanket
at the dentist’s – unwieldy & hot
& carried around for the rest
of your life as in forever.
I say, it’s a subdural hematoma;
or a sudden drop in altitude,
your heart left aloft, the rest of you
falling. It is sitting with your hands
folded smelling rosemary & smiling
until you remember he is
not coming back; it is forcing your lungs
to expand & contract
for air too thick to swallow.
It’s grey. It’s beige.
The moonlight is peering down into the reeds. / Lizzy Polishan
1The moon, who wears
hands like hospital
gloves, parts the green
reeds to find the green
seashell. 2The Moon
Would Now Like to Reel
in A Real Fish: 3The Light
Will Settle for Birdsong
on an Infinite B-Side
Loop 4The seashell
is a clamshell & asleep.
5Maybe a few feathers
from another century
appear. 6Maybe a cello
-phane butterfly lands
on an exhausted net:
forgotten among the bewildered
reeds, half-submerged in
the purple water, fraying
under a labyrinth of gnats.
7Under the algae, a smell
rises from the depths. Blue
flute music in the key of B
flat… 8The night is,
young enough to swallow.
9A curtain of hummingbirds opens
& a wedge of moonlight
is glazing the green water.
10The green clamshell sleeps
among the green reeds in
the tattoo on your left ankle.
HUNGER/ Khamil Riley
Hunger never leaves the belly for long.
Only masks it in thin acid lining,
making waste of everything it touches.
I’m saying I never learned
to make space for satisfaction.
Only incessant need
to fill my stomach
with something not quite there already.
Sometimes it feels like loneliness,
others like a body begging to meet
death by way of a steady fire
so as to finally bring meaning to this
Gasoline pit of a liver.
Of a body.
As the flames consume me,
I am reminded of when my mother said
to win in someone else’s game
is to lose in one’s own
So there is no glory in falling short here
In calling it quits
With a hunger,
I come crawling back
This time for life
I’ll claw my way back for 7 feet under
Facts About Survival / Gordon Taylor
Day 9 / Poem 9
Purple Shades / David Burrows
humming as a boy
On the shore / Miriam Calleja
After Cathy Ferrell’s Women who wade
I sit with thighs wide,
body splayed,
pearls s p (l) i t t i n g down my chin.
I am tired but must go on.
Not ladylike!
The crowds rush to seagull.
And I, widening,
taking up space,
no longer hide the spectacle.
A world that gets my best
must swallow every part of me,
every extra inch of word, unruly hair,
every thought that’s tight or loose.
A world that gets my best
must swallow my scream
my e v e r y scream
Women who wade / Cathy Ferrell
We walk far enough that
the water should cool, but the burn is
inside. Why have we pinned our lips?
Lower to upper, they seal
tighter than the seam of
an oyster’s shell.
Our silent steam cannot
escape. If it did,
the world would boil.
Small waves foam around
our thighs, circle our hips, curl into
our navels. You point out
an unspent sand dollar.
We breathe wide above the waterline,
backs to shore,
spit out pearls.
Untitled / Dralandra Larkins
How toxic is it for a society
to proclaim color determines
your sexuality.
Pink is the color of love and happiness.
I don’t find that to be sexually anonymous.
As if pink were for punks-
Pink for p***
Purple for the the boy who doesn’t find
breaking a womans heart as entertainment
In my culture,
real men can’t get caught with glitter only blood.
Theyre taught that red is for warriors
and not for love.
I couldn’t imagine, possibly fathom
That the world we live is a corporation.
some agencies can’t approve of your sexual preference
Yet local news acknowledge
That queer Black boys
exude sexual aggression.
They look over the rainbow
and forget about Black.
Did you know that 1 and 3 queer people want to die?
Did you know that 1 and 3 queer people will lose their lives ?
It isn’t pride it’s problematic.
Queer pride is celebrated through parade
And celebrating love is damn gay!
Maui lanai / Clyde Long
My first night in Maui after a long
flight across four time zones.
One of my favorite places, no matter
a little jet lag on the first night.
My cure is rum on the back lanai,
Hibiscus blooms surrounding me.
Above I heard sudden flutters
and saw its night time authors –
once a myna bird couple,
twice a yellow billed cattle egret.
Clucking and fussing below,
a Hawaiian chicken family.
A midnight fingernail moon
rose over the ocean’s lullaby,
punctuated by Reggae beats
from my insomniac lanai birds.
All I imagined was rest upon
their feathers, soft as a pillow.
Sanctuary / Taylor Mallay
We perched by the window
watching the rain disappear in fog.
When the storm passed,
we walked to the park together.
The grass shimmered.
Above us, wide oaks
spread their branches in protection,
their leaves shedding cool drops
on our shoulders, our mouths.
I offered my hand and you held it.
Somewhere in the distance—
the flutter of wings.
Haiku / Cecille Marcato
Haiku | i
Cat still life with stuff
My basket my table mine.
Rescue settles in.
Haiku | ii
Modern medicine –
ah, propofol: sudden sleep.
Robot goes to work.
You’re Here :: Charles Simic Starts Narrating / Lizzy Polishan
You are an astronaut :: You’ve been going home for a very long time :: It is dark & you are hitting every red light :: The highway is made of clear glass & the supermarket didn’t even have the kind of ice cream you like, which is Cherry Garcia :: A crystal spider dangles from your rearview mirror :: On the side of the highway there is a jungle gym & thirteen kids are pretending to be pirates in the dark :: The identical triplet girls climb on the tops of the slides :: The turtle-faced boy gets stuck inside the cold blue spiral & yells somebody help! :: You’re zooming :: You shift your foot but can’t hit the next light :: A deer is catching up to you & you don’t even have your insurance information :: On the passenger’s seat, you have three cucumbers, which you are going to make into soup
an ode to black herstory/ Khamil Riley
I write as a marker
that this black woman existed
in time and her existence
brought life into this world.
She breathed it into her poetry
and sang it aloud in her song.
I write so the archivist and the children
alike remember who really
set the pace
And set the tone
Don’t want no history made up
On white and unknowing tongues
About me
And what it meant to live and breathe
As the key
To this society’s being
Selfie With Mortality / Gordon Taylor
Day 8 / Poem 8
untitled / David Burrows
here the breeze improvises
pulling the leaves, the branches
the symphony rises and falls
punctuated with the talk
of chickadees, robins,
jays and squirrels
footsteps approach and recede
the solar rays warm my ears
something’s ever new
I might pick up the smell
or jingle, the trot or yap
of another dog
so you see that’s why
I jump up on the bench
to sit, invite you to the same
why I plant my butt on your lap
and patrol every scent
or step of a two or four legged
every drop of sunlight
millions of them caress me
touch by touch
every moment of time
I’m telling you
it’s awesome!
the arrival of every chirp or bip
thwack or tap
buzz of a bicycle wheel
any bug that slithers
truck that rumbles
here I’m alive and so are you
that’s why I turn to you
and lick your nose
thankful for you
for this life
a mouth full of sand / Miriam Calleja
After Cathy Ferrell’s Women who wake
How can I speak
if speaking will untether
your image of how I should be?
And, in choking down sand,
how will the sand dollars fare?
And, will I use them
to shipwreck my way
backward, paying for silence?
And silence, how much
will that cost?
Women who wake / Cathy Ferrell
(with lines from Diane Seuss’ Threnody and Miriam Calleja Shaw’s There is no weakness; with inspiration from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening)
Edna Pontellier stepped into
an unabridged salt green sea.
Did she open her mouth there
on the sand? Did she try to shout?
They did not hear. Instead,
naked
silence in its entirety. Tongues bear the after
taste of grief. Our mouths are chock
full of it. So full
our cheeks bulge. Most of the time,
we choke
it down. Edna, did it stick
in your throat, too?
Breathing keeps us
buoyant. We float,
chest rising and resting in
the little sigh of coming to
surface, seaweed and hair clutched in our fists.
Carrying Me Back Home / Dralandra Larkins
Empathy had me feeling empty. I poured reciprocity
into the cups of others and starved myself of sweet generosity.
Forgot to dust myself from despair. Stressed about everyone’s problems caused me to overthink and create scenarios in my head that weren’t there. So, I picked myself up and carried me back home. Scribbled my sorrow on the page and turned my pain into poems. I had to summon my strength, believe in my abilities and un-become all I’ve ever known. I removed squares from my circle and learned to balance my emotions. I started to breathe with intention, got intentional with my focus.
I remember I cried so hard I drowned in my bedroom. Weary from watering my seeds with regret- looking back at the flowers of opportunities that didn’t blossom and bloom. I was tired of sprinting from my past and looking over my shoulder at relationships that didn’t last. It was time to face the flaws. Because I had given away so much, if not all.
It was time to stop adding anesthesia to the pain. Rip the bandaid and stop hiding these scars of shame. It took some realigning my health, redefining who I am and believing in myself. So, I am going where the sun rests and rise in laughter. I am carrying myself back home into the zone of a new chapter.
dog pack lament / Clyde Long
To my mentors and Tupelo Press friends in Truchas
Stacked next to me:
two boxes of ashes.
Two dogs gone, not
rising when I fetch a bottle.
My lone spaniel snores
as drugged, grieving.
Two weeks are daily
bled by falling rain.
Autumn is surrender
to waning colors.
I retreat to escape by
strong drink –
so sad I never empty
my glass.
The Jack-o’-Lantern / Taylor Mallay
In fluorescent aisles,
Autumn’s harvest waits—
pumpkins piled high at the market,
their orange skins
shining, plump and inviting.
I lift one, testing its heft
and decide right then to adopt it.
At my kitchen table, the first cut
releases stringy pulp, a rush of scent.
Here is my yearly sculpture!
Here is the cool heart
of another October, near passed.
I can’t help but laugh
at the gap-toothed grin,
the pair of wide, triangle eyes.
Not a masterpiece by any means—
but still alight, eager, and alive.
Guy from Arkansas on the Transplant List / Cecille Marcato
There was a guy on the ward whose liver had come to the same end as everyone else’s but for different reasons, not cancer or virus or debauchery. He ruined his liver by running over himself with a tractor. It’s true. Really. Farmers are so used to routines established by the sun’s journey and grinding necessity – count the cows, squeeze-chute the cows, move the cows from clover to rye grass – that they get, if not sloppy, well, prone to lapses. Maybe thinking about whether or not Germania will pay for the damage to the barn roof from a lightning bolt making contact with a wet, heavy oak. Or if the price of milk or beef will hold steady or maybe god willing rise or the co-op need to move after the hay caught fire and burned it to the ground. Maybe this man from Arkansas had such a lapse. He’d gotten down off his tractor to remove debris from his path at least hundreds of times since he was a boy. But this one time, just this once, he left the John Deere in gear, and it continued its advance. Pinned him to the tree from whence had fallen the severed limb that caused him to dismount, shredded his spleen and part of his liver. His spleen he could do without, but his liver, arguably second in command after the brain, was another matter. It’s a forgiving organ, as my husband and I certainly learned. But it can also hold a wordless but emphatic grudge.
bee / Lizzy Polishan
a bumblebee landed on the side
of my mouth i did not feel him
i could not see him i knew
he was there i was
in a motorboat
it was sunset the sun was a long
strip of gold that cracked
the sky i was inside
a fabergé egg
someone was opening that’s how it felt
look at the water
said the bee i don’t know how
to swim i said i’ll teach you
said the bee you don’t know how to
swim i said i can
fly said the bee the bee put on a tiny orange
life jacket i put on a tiny orange life jacket
someone opened the egg &
we fell out
Ramzan Kadyrov Says / Gordon Taylor
Day 7 / Poem 7
untitled / David Burrows
in early morning rehearsal
There is no weakness / Miriam Calleja
in the falling,
in the fistfuls of hair,
in being brought to the surface
tingling with pain
and the blurriness of coming to.
As you drop one stone
into water and then another
displacing and letting gaps
fill, the breath becomes
even— a chest rising and resting in
the little sigh of coming to
Women who nap / Cathy Ferrell
Bed calls at
midday, when
the eyes drowse and honey
themselves shut. Sleep curls
thick as nectar.
We hexagon ourselves,
invert. Always
a fan. Hours ripen
sweet. We seal
away. For a moment,
the unbearable buzz
subsides.
#Free Palestine, Gaza On My Mind / Dralandra Larkins
Limbs and bones
lay on the countertop of the earth.
Blood spill from chilled
bodies like wine. The dirt absorbs
the blood from the earth like bread and patiently waits
for its next plate of bones, its next spoonful of limbs.
The bodies, the flesh served cold.
A child lies amid rubble, dying alone,
taking their last breath, shearing a mothers soul.
World leaders, gather their egos
over collective conformed confusion. Raise their glass
of booze and vinegar in toast, but this is no one’s Thanksgiving!
Gather here for this genocide, for this feast of violence!
In this recipe of slaughter,
we swallow the wailing tears
of someone’s son, cousin or daughter.
Then, pat our mouths in silence with closed napkins,
devouring their execution.
In the palm of my hands,
I witnessed an air strike drop from the sky launching an erasure of human life.
I sit and do absolutely nothing.
How many more bullets? How much money would it take
to extinguish another burning cross, a broken bridge,
another burning hospital, school, or mosque?
If only their guns could kill oppression,
if only their bombs could shatter affection,
crack open compassion and explode empathy,
I wonder, then, would this country feel?
Perhaps, the world’s leaders do not want peace, but instead new resistance.
To spit their spitefulness on a region
and form the birth of a new country that does not know peace.\
But, rather
they create citizens who take their rights
in the palm of their hands and clench their fits by any many necessary!
I hope, then, this world
would wake up during war in a cold sweat!
I hope compassion,then,
rip through your body,
tears you into pieces,
and burns your flesh
alive!
Deep nightfall / Clyde Long
In blackest sky’s velvet blanket,
salt shaker seasoned with distant
suns measured in light years
my gaze turns its hope upward,
anchored here as the sun
metronomes its nights and days,
all the way until our end – a
beat that by measures scares
us or spurs antic ambition.
To relax from day I search
night sky in vain for my moon,
its lunar salve applied each day,
its Rx renewal monthly, rhythm
commanding tides and blood –
but storm clouds hide tonight.
Crickets slow their calls as deep
night falls, a blanket, a cudgel, and
I am left to dreams’ escape.
Blue / Taylor Mallay
Years after the last word between us
drifted into nothing, the memory of your room returns
in the evening, like a small boat, an invitation.
And some nights I accept—settle against that doorway
again but do not move past it.
I only come to look for a moment.
Not at the wall’s shade or the floor’s shine,
not the tossed sheets or the streaks of light across the bed,
but one half-lit corner painting
of a woman at the edge of an ocean,
dark hair down, right hand reaching out, out
to all that open blue. In my room alone, I wonder
if she was me or if she was you.
Power Outage / Cecille Marcato
The neighbor’s house
is dark as is the whole block,
the neighborhood. The upstairs
picture window of his boxy
place glows intermittently, pulses
like a candle flame.
It might be a candle
or his house could be on fire
or maybe it’s a reflection
of my room just across the street
which could be the one ablaze
as I have lit both the St. Anthony
& St. Benedict pillars.
Respectively, they help me find
what is lost, remember to study,
work & sing (the Rule of Benedict).
In the dark of my home
they are untended, something against
the laws of candle-burning.
Or it could be heat lightning
just north of the city,
a foil to the violent strikes
to the south. The whole town
where we live – & beyond it,
the world – might be burning,
sooner than we’d expected,
as I bear witness to the flashing
opaque glass, sitting on my porch
waiting for some human light.
untitled ((sartre/selfhood/closed system)) / Lizzy Polishan
once we were on a big black spacecraft //.\\ we were floating //.\\ we were headed to alpha centauri //.\\ it was getting dark because it was always getting dark //.\\ we were drinking orange tang because we ran out of guava strawberry //.\\ you were carrying around being & nothingness because you were always carrying around being & nothingness //.\\ & you never opened it up //.\\
you had a crystal tamagotchi & i had a crystal tamagotchi //.\\ your tamagotchi looked like a tiger & my tamagotchi looked like something that didn’t exist //.\\ sometimes they looked dead //.\\ both tamagotchis hatched from a pixelated icon of a speckled egg //.\\ if we bump together our tamagotchis & press a specific button one tamagotchi will disappear //.\\ after a while it will return //.\\ you said we could do this for a while in a while //.\\ i said okay //.\\ we kept on floating //.\\ you kept not opening your book //.\\
Packing a Suitcase / Gordon Taylor
Day 6 / Poem 6
untitled / David Burrows
all shapes and colors none the same
the rocks are speaking as I step
a hidden language whispered here
my boots are torn the leather frayed
I walk to water through the woods
with Keith and Benny behind ahead
the canopy of trees above
protect my skin from heat and sun
a falling tree slap claps the earth
and something heard it, it was me
a cricket sings from forest floor
as branches reach into the light
to green their leaves and sip the air
above the whooshing of the creek
to waters edge to drink and seek
stout Benny pulls me through the moss
to climb and sit atop my lap
upon a rock cut like a chair
and steady still we nestle there
Breathing too loud / Miriam Calleja
Today’s birth is stark,
the noises crisp.
I only give the sideways glances
that cannot be seen
in another room
where I have no energy
for a fight.
Some days the earth
seems to be sinking
and taking all its women
down to the water table
between what’s saturated
and unsaturated:
where spaces are full.
There’s nothing there
to boil over
to diminish with a gaze
the towels have been replaced
the glass is full
and all seem to be breathing
at a bearable breadth.
Women who tend1 / Cathy Ferrell
Everyone wants
to eat, but no one wants
to cook. Isn’t that the way
of the world? It seems I lose my
temper at the least little thing.
We’ve borne many lives. Least of all
our own. It’s a slapstick
morning, if only you could
see. I‘m glad I filled
the coffee maker,
last night. A little honey,
the last of the milk, my best
chipped smile.
1serve, incline, listen, watch over
Untitled / Dralandra Larkins
True love isn’t lustful or fast.
It’s not a flash of passion
without action;
it’s calm,
steady
like a slow burn from a candle,
the flame is meant
to burn
a lifetime.
Sleep Aids / Taylor Mallay
For a year, I took them:
melatonin, diphenhydramine,
CBD, and THC.
Four warm Coors Lights
pulled from the back of the pantry.
A sip of gin in a dark kitchen.
Sometimes I drove to a bar
and drank until my spine relaxed,
until breathing became easy.
People came up to me then:
a man in an oil-stained shirt
with the name Dave
stitched in red across the breast,
who wanted to tell me
about his tour in the Navy,
about jolting awake each night
in Afghanistan.
And a woman, Colleen,
who had just retired
from thirty years teaching,
whose sister had died
a week prior.
Three beers in,
she began to stare at me
as if I were a holy icon,
grabbed my hand and said,
Every day is a blessing,
really.
Months went by.
I traded Coors for chamomile,
pills for soft linen—
even opened the windows
at dusk to hear
the nightingales singing.
And Death,
who had been waiting
in the wings for my signal
all this time,
smiled and finally
stepped from my door
into shadow.
Exhale / Clyde Long
Last in the parking lot
turn the car key.
Ignition, exhale.
Next inhale all the
air you can, hold it,
close your eyes
curl your toes
splay your hands
into starfish –
release.
Vision clears, no more
monochrome.
Back up ready
to escape –
you grip the wheel
asking why.
As you survive to home
you exit the car
praying,
pull the parking brake.
Deadbolt your home tight –
Now what?
in the car / Lizzy Polishan
lisa frank
erasers
yellow
laffy taffy
shake shack order
receipt
vanilla shake
large fry
saint vincent
concert
tickets
louise glück
quote
tucked
inside
your shining
phone
case decorated
w glittery
stickers: teeny
totoros assorted
clocks glow-in-the-dark
orchids holographic
ghosts
seashells
you
collected
at the foot of
a lighthouse called
i forgot
A Boy Watches Movies on Sunday / Gordon Taylor
Day 5 / Poem 5
untitled / David Burrows
Your ears draw back and feet dig in
not wanting to end the walk
and so we go round again
I try to sound
authoritative
When I tell you to sit and come
and heel, steer you this way and that
I got this, I say, when a dog comes near
your space, hoping you’ll think
I’m the alpha and all’s safe.
everyone watches when you
lose it and bark, growl and lunge
In operatic baritone
as I hold you back
I’ve lost the daily game
again…and again
Inside, a furnace / Miriam Calleja
after a line by Cathy Ferrell
ceramic inverted hug
holder of morning verve
joie de vivre
heat that can be cupped
held in nascent wake
desire that I slept with
woke with
smell of bitterness
turned sweet
with the sun
with morning commotion
when everything
everyone
wants to eat
Women who write / Cathy Ferrell
On my bedside table, a stack
of stones, small and smooth.
I think of your
scholar. How he waits
stoic, serene.
We pass through many
moods. The stones remain
balanced. In this moment, I flex
my mind. Imagine.
You tap your keys. You uncap
your pen. Words flow, these days.
How moving to converse this way,
back and forth, lotused.
Lifeguard / Dralandra Larkins
We all have fears, right? My biggest fear is a failure to succeed and rats. I hate them! My mom, who’s my best friend, biggest fear is swimming. She never learned how to swim, so naturally she’s afraid of water. But she doesn’t realize she’s been swimming all her life.
When my my father used his fit as flowers
it would look like a storm hit our home.
There were no evacuations, no warnings, no safety zone. Just a telephone and faith.
As wooden furniture spirals in space.
Glass splatter and shatter like showered rain drops,
This is daddy’s sweet destruction, this is daddy’s chaos!
Remnants of his saliva, DNA on my mother’s face. Her flesh,
torn from his scorn and bloody rage.
Even then,
my mother didn’t know that she could swim.
Because she never surrendered to the current-
current circumstances in her life.
She never kept our sorrow on the shallow side.
She always deep dived
into vulnerable places. Damaged, but not easily broken or shaken.
Seamed scars stitched on her skin, yet she didn’t train her words
or sweeten the truth with promise and pretend-she was real.
On the sidelines, I’ve watched my mother
backstroke out of the gutters of guilt
when waves of addiction
almost pulled her into relapse
she recovered on her own with no help
no team, coach or counselors, without a lifeline of support
while swimming in his pool of poison
called love without a choice.
My mother
doesn’t know that she can swim.
Like when the streets, belly of the beast Madison Chicago
tried to swallow her whole. She put one elbow in front of the other
surfed through the currents and depth of depression with all her soul.
Under the pressures of poverty and insomnia of abuse,
My mother put on a life jacket of Jesus and held scripture close to her chest,
submerged herself in Romans and shouted proverbs she knew best!
Remained gracefully in butterfly position even when life was hard.
She’s been breathing underwater all her life, saving herself
as her own lifeguard.
On Corgis / Clyde Long
Mine is a red Pembroke Corgi.
A break from my packs of retrievers
and strays and mixed hero dogs.
She may be a breed that’s right for you.
Be honest with yourself – are you smart?
Because Corgis are. Talk to them
like a C+ middle schooler – they will
understand and maybe even obey.
It’s like mine has a wristwatch.
She keeps a schedule of breakfast,
play, treats, play, nap, dinner,
treats, walks – in that order or else.
Queen Elizabeth owned many of these –
but her vast staff handled the shedding.
Your humble Dyson vacuum will not
survive more than a year.
So what if they herd toddlers and cats,
barking to enforce order?
Their photogenic fetching smiles and
fluffed sploots outweigh all that.
This is surely not a purebred dog pitch
but believe me, Corgi dogs are
short legged fun to keep you active
and smiling, playing along with them.
Every Sunday Morning / Taylor Mallay
the phone rings—
my grandmother’s voice winds through static,
light as the creek curling around her back porch,
where, as a kid I’d sit, catching fish
on a thin metal pole: perch, bluegill, and trout
thrashing wild in my little tin bucket.
In the afternoon sun, I’d trudge my catch
to the kitchen, and she’d fry them up crisp,
smiling as they hit the cast iron pan,
the iridescent pool of oil.
These days, I sit with greater patience,
hoping weekly to reel even the smallest glimpses
of the porch, and the kitchen,
and my grandmother’s laughter,
before the hum of the creek fizzles out
and only the weight of the line remains.
Postcard With Pueblo Pot on Adobe Wall / Cecille Marcato
Dear J – Supping on sushi in Santa Fe. Your teenager
could run this place & it’d be an improvement. The
chefs – an Italian dude & a Pueblo man in a tie-dyed
T-shirt – speak solomente Espanol; hostess is in a
mini-skirt & top two sizes too small. A boy about 14
speaking Farsi (maybe), a 30-something mobster-
type, & a languid woman I think is Katy Jurado
reincarnated are servers. The multi-culti chefs stand
behind a circular bar, hub of 5 adjoining private rooms
separated by shoji screens & shoes parked outside.
The boy & the wise guy zoot around the dining rooms
yelling at each other & reprimanding the cooks as
though the place were empty (it’s not) & they (the
sushi-makers) weren’t brandishing Japanese knives
that mean business. Katy stonewalls her orders like a
DMV employee. It’s Keystone Kops on crack serving
landlocked raw fish to tourists from Ohio. Food’s good,
though. Wish you were here blah blah. All this adobe.
How do people stand it? xxo, h.
tiger lily / Lizzy Polishan
come summer i hum
pure color * my tepals open
umbrellal, in shades
distilled from gummy
candy * gumdrops * dum-dums * clumsy
hummingbirds circumnavigate
my stem my handsome stem / strumming
heartbeat momentum over this jumbled
kingdom: pumpkin chrysanthemum plum
* someday we’ll become
accustomed to dominion’s tumble:
the fumble of human
thumbs, the communion of common
umbras, the numb
boredom of blossoming *
becoming *
becoming some
thing
* becoming something
that means
something
to someone *
You Give Me the Blues/ Khamil Riley
Sing me a night time tune.
Something smooth,
a little sultry
So when you touch me
I’ll forget
all that there is to lose.
The music,
is so we don’t feel used.
Time is not the illusion,
I am.
To be felt through your senses,
Perceived,
but not to be put in
Some box or some cage.
Our joining together is
One most glorious transfusion.
That is, until the day breaks.
Until our bones crack and then
more than just our hearts ache.
What would you do if you could turn back?
Things like this fall far beyond me,
So I just wonder would you
Sing a new song,
but keep the same melody?
I’d be there to sing along.
So give me my something sweet
I’ll swing my hips
While you keep the beat.
The Ladder / Gordon Taylor
Day 4 / Poem 4
untitled / David Burrows
When I am
an old man
I shall let my feet
be free
to wander
where they’d like
to be
up rocky trails
of the Sangre de Christo
to wildflowers
above Denver
in the forgiving blue
sky
to let go
in lily pad lakes
into the himalayas
to walk amid the clouds
on Hermes’ winged shoes
into the halls of gods
and ‘cross the stars
into the wormhole
tunnel Of the heart
that
when you pass through
turns the universe
inside out
like a sock
The riddle is daily / Miriam Calleja
After 373 by Emily Dickinson
A scholar sits on my bedside table
cross-legged for generations
he laughs at the simplicity of his wisdom
like a tooth that’s started to move.
He tells me to pluck what isn’t working.
He rearranges his lotus pose,
cracks his fingers
(this is all a show, all for my attention,
he never gets uncomfortable).
I can’t unsee the simplicity
nor follow the instructions of a stoic,
stuck as I am—a moving tooth myself
in gums of pink-stretched desire
possession is sugar
laziness divine—
comfort the ultimate wish.
His bones don’t even groan,
despite his patience. He’ll try again,
tomorrow and tomorrow—
The World is not Conclusion
Women who sweat / Cathy Ferrell
wake tangled
damp uncovered
Inside, a furnace
Salt moisture lick
of skin half asleep sweep
away valley rivulets wick
between swollen hills.
Inside, a Banshee
Sometimes, wake with
mouth wide open.
Swallow keen of
her echo h y s t e r i c a l
Other Black Things continued / Dralandra Larkins
Mothers’ mascara-stained tears and
stitched eyes in a coma.
Trayvon Martin’s hoodie.
The sole of a jackboot’s
contact with tender flesh
pressed against black pavement.
A prison cell.
A body in confinement.
A mind in confinement.
Dark, dilated pupils
in fight, flight or freeze,
a steel baton
pinned on the nape
of neck, breath
escapes from the mouth,
floating like invisible
debris. Discarded
Breathe or sink.
When God shows no mercy.
Black
like a scab hardening
into a
protective crust.
The walk / Clyde Long
I limp sprained along a
dusty weed bordered
cattle road, its summer
seeds blown aloft,
no sign of a horizon
or forks left or right
A murder of crows
gathers with threats,
a scene I avert and
continue past careful
to venture onward ever
vigilant, a little scared.
Ancient barbed wires
snag human debris
impaled over decades
from other travelers,
almost decorations
waving in the breeze.
Arrival is not in sight.
It makes sense to heed
dark weather ahead.
I hope to reach an end
not too soon, not too late,
with just luck.
The Couple / Taylor Mallay
The Weerdinge Couple were found side-by-side in a bog in 1904. At first assumed to be a husband and wife, they were later determined to be two men, and their relationship to each other remains unknown.
Peat-clung, earth-sunk, we lay
interlaced in the bog’s arctic grasp.
Centuries pass.
They lift us into harsh light,
peer and ponder.
Before they claim us
father/son, battlefield brothers,
or perhaps victims
of an ancient custom,
they see how we lean
towards each other,
your arm at my waist,
your hand on mine;
they say—husband/wife,
clearly a couple
of lovers.
Somehow
through time
our bodies held
the life we hid:
the nights my fingers trailed
the length of your back,
muscles flushed
with sweet, wet sweat—
a look,
and more than that.
So we rose
and were known at last,
it seemed, as two true souls
in the open air,
forgetting for a moment
all that deep, cold dark
and the world of men, until
some ancient custom
rushed to cloak us—
cast to the depths
again.
Second Lockdown / Cecille Marcato
Frank wasn’t someone
who enjoyed surprises
didn’t appreciate the trickery
involved in his commitment
didn’t like being in the hospital
that second time
although a still-cogent part
of him, the part that romanticized
where he lived
might have enjoyed
that the Sheriff himself
had pocketed the key.
Because of the guns
Frank went to the top-floor
lockdown where another patient prayed
to a door much of the day. In his way
Frank prayed to the door as well
that it would open so that
with his funny gait
he could walk through
a free man.
No longer a believer
he hired a lawyer.
Orientation Video, or: everything that happened in this garden before you arrived / Lizzy Polishan
power outage => dragonflies
whirr forth from outlets & invent
language => an aguey
slow-mo
montage => ravaged
vegetables! => shadows snag
on flagella => gigantic flagella(!!)
nibble imagination’s ridged edge => offstage
=> the fragrance of lace croaks forth from unzipped luggage
into the saggy slag…
…crush this kitschy
bandage over your missing
rib
a voice counts down the looming
attoseconds
so softly even gnats
listen, whisper pink
light, sift light into pink
velvet, sibilant
twilight, soften summer
dirt…
….& this earthworm planet…lichen-kissed, viscous,
sleepy, sleepily
ripped from silky
milky sleep &
made
to listen.
i rode here on a supermassive photon
across an ocean of supermassive gravitational waves
it was almost midnight
my optical tweezers fell out of my pocket
my heart fell out of my heart
it was just
me &
my organelles
wanted to make
marzipan // invent
pickleball // paint
paint chips // name everything
everything // devour
colors // carpenter
rainstorms // unspool
the walls //
REMAINING SOFT: a sestina/ Khamil Riley
All I know of this life is love.
something beneath which mountains will fall
and crumble. holds the power to
run rampages and still make it home to kiss me
nice, and slow, and soft.
A joy no other could beat.
That’s what I thought until I lost my heartbeat.
Until I started to lose interest in the things I love.
I remember back when the world looked soft.
Now, yellow orange trees whisper of sweet fall
and it all looks like winter to me
cold, dark, and lonely too.
So what then am I to hold on to
when life starts to feel down trodden and beat?
I guess I just need to get back to me.|it’s true, all I ever knew of myself was love
and so back in love with myself I must fall.
Gift myself with a life still soft.
The most important thing is to remain soft.
Feel everything and never be afraid to
play this game of life. You might find that fall
is more than just the changing of leaves. Hear that beat?
That right there is the song that I love.
The one that reminds me of me.
I won’t ask anymore what’s wrong with me
cause I’m learning now to treat myself soft.
still learning, well, what do I know of love?
I know it has the power to turn my bitter days into
sweet ones without even skipping a beat.
The power to turn winter back into fall.
What sound is made if there’s no one around to hear when I fall?
Though the idea sounds strange and foreign to me,
I’d like to think there’d be some kind of beat.
Something a little sultry with a hint of something soft.
Maybe I’d get up and do a dance, or two.
Get back to doing the thing that I love.
That’s the beat that’ll keep me breathing as my days fall
into nights and back, a reminder of all I’ve already got in me.
Remaining soft is the thing that I will hold on to.
Appetite / Gordon Taylor
Day 3 / Poem 3
never so Close / David Burrows
she pauses
hovers at my chest
a petal away
gazes at the bright
red shirt
are you the sweet
I seek?
her wings hum so fast
they’re not visible
her ruby breast to mine
I freeze
are you a power
a message
a connection
to source?
can I with you
hummingbird
be other
than glum?
one with nature
magical
she darts away
into the pines
the ground is moist
about grand lake
Sheets are millefeuille / Miriam Calleja
scurrying in turmoil
I am hurricaned
to sleep, the weight
on my retinas, goodnight,
shut off any trouble,
it’s better that I don’t know,
unstitched from a dream
maybe, or can’t
decide. My fingers crawl
to the next body.
I uncover my eyes.
Rotary Beads / Cathy Ferrell
(Hail Mary) The cranes called to each other
this morning, brass and timbre across field.
(Our Father) called this afternoon,
but I missed it.
(Hail Mary) In September, I am forced to watch
repeats of political ads, calls to vote one way or another
(Pendant) Heart yearns for all
things beyond window, cries
(Cross) Old woman learns the hard way,
prays to a sullen rotary phone
that no one will call
Other Things, Black / Dralandra Larkin
Onyx and Jasper
sit on a slender, brown wrists
as a suit of
armor.
Pure black
like Tourmaline
in unfiltered sunlight
in the depths of a hole,
absorbing.
In ancient cultures,
felines of night symbolize
good karma and protection.
I read once,
women in Senegal
tattoo their gums
black
as the epitome
of beauty.
All that
shit the west fed us
about black being
cursed
Was A Lie!
Has any funeral ever been honest?
Endings are rebirth
like death,
a second chance.
tinnitus play-list / Clyde Long
It’s my personal Spotify, ad-free
except for my Corgi’s begging.
A gentle tinnitus that wanders
in and out, hearing aided —
bonus being I can change treble
and bass and volume by app.
On some cold rainy nights
my furnace rhymes its songs.
Heat vent sounds in each room
no matter when or why are
somehow curated just for me;
play-lists played for me alone.
Sometimes vagrant ear worms
burrow in hiding, biding their
time to overwhelm me with
their oldies and jingles or even
thrums of my old ’67 Chevelle.
They improvise inside both ears.
Yaks with myself also intrude.
That’s okay most days.
The ears are mine, so of course
I listen to what I shouldn’t say.
The Weather / Taylor Mallay
Every year, I act surprised
to see the once-green trees
freckled gold and red.
I shake my head
with a kind of ho-hum resignation,
wonder how much light
we have before season’s end
but otherwise ignore it.
The morning we meet for coffee,
I can taste the coming chill.
We embrace, smile, sit—
the usual.
But this time, I notice
the jerk and twitch
of your limbs,
the strange angles they make
and the losing force
of your will to refuse them.
You mention an increase
in your medication.
I nod, though there’s a limit
to how high you can go
and we know
you’re closing in on it.
You say,
Parkinson’s is progressive,
shrug with a kind of acceptance.
But I could only think
of the sun when it sinks
and seems to take
everything with it.
Daughter to father—
I wish there was more
I could offer,
I wish we knew
each other better,
and I wish
we could do something
about the weather.
Punnett Squares / Cecille Marcato
Muscle memory, there’s the mystery –
how it travels through the body
on little nervy runways stretching
for miles, flies between generational
landing strips, body to body bringing
instructions on trauma, for how to hold
a spoon, on the love of collecting
or whiskey – all written on a cell,
that microscopic recipe card,
not in words but electricity.
The body remembers
not just a special meal but every breakfast
& dinner your ancestors ever ate,
every drink ever drunk;
the way a grandfather stood & moved
the way his grandfather stood & moved.
Communication / Lizzy Polishan
Sometimes talking to you feels like
I am an alien & you are
an alien from a different galaxy
or maybe even
a different dimension & a sheet of tin-foil
is suspended between us & we have to keep
shouting what? what? what???? until finally
we realize we’re both
from Alpha Centauri both from Rigil
Kentaurus both from Proxima
B, all along.
It’s always been easier for me to talk to you
than other people because
I always feel
like
I never know how to finagle what I want
to say into words other people can
understand exactly in the exact way I mean
them to mean, & with you, for once, we both
had to do
the gymnastics of translation
if we wanted
to be understood.
Sometimes when you want
to tell me something but you don’t know the words, you find
a song with words you know I know & a feel
the real feel that says what you mean. You play
me the song, on the car-ride home from work. Sometimes
I get it. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I don’t.
Early Onset SAD / Khamil Riley
“Jump up!” yelled Autumn
“You’re in for a great Fall!” Still,
I didn’t care at all
Rift / Gordon Taylor
Day 2 / Poem 2
the Wooden Boy leaves the shop / David Burrows
If only he could leave
the dust of the toy shop
the little wooden cars
ships and dolls
bears with moving joints
and journey
as she did
a quark in a supernova
experience the collapse of stars
chaos
whom he thought she was
a Siva creator destroyer
and as he pondered this
the doorknob squeaked
as it turned
And there she was
to let him out
come on, she fired
he shrunk for a sec
then followed her into the night
where an owl said hoo
maybe now I will
feel, he thought
as they leapt falling
into the moon
Ritual for a lost seafarer / Miriam Calleja
After Ritual for a Traveler by Cathy Ferrell
The rotary phone is rose pink
or maybe it is crepe pink
tinted with memory infused with the grey
of nights we have
locked up. You had to lift the receiver to confirm
that no, no one was trying to call.
My mother’s fingers on a rosary,
beads of sweat stick on the dial
O, Mulej. Half sentences,
words also jammed. Prayers sent
into the salty night, who knows
they get carried on land breeze.
A litany of saints evoked to help—
St. Anthony’s on speed dial,
Madonna, omm Alla, itlob għalina,
għamel li jaslu b’wiċċ il-ġid.
Nothing wishing to ask for favors,
asking and begging all the same
to bring back safely
blood lost at sea.
Women who burn / Cathy Ferrell
(in response to Those who have sinned and repented by Miriam Calleja Shaw)
We singe the slump off our shoulders, spark the ends of our hair.
Try to tell us “Look away from the sun” and we’ll eclipse our own retinas.
We reach out and grasp old stars in a chokehold, burn the scars off our thumbs.
We cauterize regret.
We feed hot white light to words stuck midway up. If you could hear how we open our throats
we could douse you, too.
Watch ringlets of smoke curl from our nostrils. Touch us. Soft skin, armor.
We baptize ourselves alive, flame blue.
How to Wash Away Trauma / Dralandra Larkins
-
Wet your hands with humility. Look into the mirror and affirm you are not alone.
-
Apply enough compassion to cover all your scars and worries.
-
Clean the corners of your mind with a new and positive perspective about your life.
-
Lather your body with love, you are valuable.
-
Gently scrub toxic beliefs about yourself from your skin.
-
You did not deserve mistreatment.
-
Wash off their dust and the damage done to you.
-
Wipe the wear and toll from your body.
-
Cry in the shower for as long as you need.
-
Exhale.
-
Rinse your wounds thoroughly with your tears for at least 30 seconds.
-
Pat your tears dry with forgiveness.
-
Turn off the memories.
-
Squeeze the pain of your past from your towel, hang it to dry.
-
Breathe.
-
You are now safe
Pencil to paper / Clyde Long
Sphere comes first
try to draw it round but
don’t worry
scribble a moon or sun
up above, left or right
imagine
beams down below
light and shade
the endless curve
a perfect sweet spot.
Next draw a cube
dimensions on paper
lines teasing perspective
foreshorten, distort
control the vertical
the horizontal
control all you see —
make building blocks
like a wizard.
River’s End / Taylor Mallay
The store’s black roof rasps
a crackled tune—another week
of such thick heat, it swallows
our morning dew,
crisps our fresh green leaves,
silences the rain’s sweet hum
on our windows at dusk.
Still, the baby must come soon:
an autumn child on the edge of winter,
while summer clings like an angry lover.
Slowly, I shuffle past collapsible strollers,
playpens with bluetooth speakers,
a shelf of heated wipe holders
before reaching the blankets.
I press a palm to the back of my neck,
wipe the sweat collecting,
inspect each plastic-wrapped tuft
of fleece and cotton
covered in stars, stripes, squiggly hearts—
an ark’s worth of animals, too,
living their lives in a world
where lions always laugh
and bears relax
in silk’s soft folds.
I pull one package down,
unzip it to trace the linen,
pausing at the last thread of
a river stitched, blue and bright
with gleaming fish.
I hold it close, imagine years,
a life, almost—until
I overhear a nearby conversation:
They say the Colorado’s drying up,
and the Mississippi, too.
Quietly, I put it aside.
Almanac / Cecille Marcato
Our hair grew according to
the Farmers’ Almanac, rhythms
that brought one full moon
after another, which brought dreams
each night – coyotes, Egypt,
small, troubled boys vexing
their mother. A beloved cat,
missing for years, turned out to be
alive, slept standing up
& did not remember me –
a hurt that plagued the whole waking day.
Our hair grew wavy & thick
as you studied your forecasts.
How we noticed the moons
one after another!
i forget / Lizzy Polishan
i learned the word 乌龟 :: we were sitting in traffic
you said everyone is a turtle today
i learned the word 月亮 :: you said don’t point
at the moon :: the moon will come cut off your ear
i learned 星星 :: 星巴克 :: 派大星 :: you said look
at the night sky :: i’ll have a matcha frappuccino :: i watched that cartoon
spongebob too we called him hai mian bao bao
i learned 海绵 :: 宝宝 :: you said sponge :: you said baby good job!
i learned the word 身体 :: you said your body is broken
:: eat one banana :: drink jiu jiu jiu
i learned 九九九 :: you said it’s in the kitchen
in the place sorry i forget the word for where
i learned the word for drawer :: to tell you
where i found it i forgot :: where i put the word
不要忘记 :: 不要记得 :: don’t remember :: don’t forget
:: i don’t remember which means which
you said sorry :: wo bu ji de liao too
Tired / Khamil Riley
If we begin at exhaustion
and work our way back,
perhaps then life will
cut us some slack.
With sandbag eyes
tied on a rope
You’d think they rise
And give us some hope
But nope.
Our Blankets beg us be bedridden.
Sleep remains, and now without spark
I find my resolve is left hidden
My will to live is left in the dark.
Easier still to come than go
I’m learning to accept
Life’s ebbs and flows.
For however it was that night I slept
A summer breeze blows
And my soul is kept.
FAKE IT ‘TIL YOU MAKE IT, MY PSYCHIATRIST SAID/ Gordon Taylor
Day 1 / Poem 1
the Question / David Burrows
what if I could feel
said the wooden boy
if a scrape drew blood
if I could be sad or mad
or want to dance?
what do you feel now? she asked
good all the time he answered
chipper, positive
she gave him a kiss on the wrist
then reached in and pressed her lips
to his
how do you feel? she intoned
just the same he exclaimed
what am I supposed to feel? he said
I am the perfect boy, he continued
always ready to pitch in
my hair is short and neat
my clothes properly proper
all muted tones
what do you feel?
he asked the very real girl
with kaleidoscope hair
disheveled and spare
a patch on one eye
he thought he knew
because her eyes were amber fire
that she flew to the moon
when no one was looking
and adventured out
a mischievous cat
with lives he envied
from his quiet room
In his father’s shop
where all was tidy
and wood, and a clock
ticked each minute
each the same length
every toc same volume
so he wasn’t surprised
when she started to sing
Those who have sinned and repented / Miriam Calleja
Open a cap, a lid; lift the crust of the earth. Now, lower a baseball-stadium-sized antacid tablet gently.
Scaffold it down while chanting, dancing, saying a prayer, shouting. Bless it before sliding it down. Curse it.
Choose the wisest women to push it with their hearts in their throats, their hands joined. Don’t ever burn the women. Choose contortionists, shamans, and those who have sinned and repented.
Choose the fizzy cure made by hand in salt mines or the clay-covered, red-dirt dusted. Press the emergency exit button when the tablet has drowned in the earth’s core.
One dose may not be enough.
Ritual for a Traveler / Cathy Ferrell
A father, a mother, a son
A road trip
The Mother
The car
Red cliffs above
Santa Madre de Dios, las piedras
She rocks a figure
between her knees,
a statue plucked
straight from the garden.
The Mother
rocks back, forth
frozen folds and stone robes
back, forth
heirloom rosario
One hand clutches,
taps, rolls beads between
murmurs, signs
father, son,
espíritu santo
One drives on, sighs
One soothes the back
of her seat,
The Mother
small nose presses against window
True Colors of The Sun / Dralandra Larkins
My people!
We are a quilted blanket
of beautiful African hues,
A broad palette of melanin shades.
We are children of the sun,
sons and daughters of the rainbow
who seek shelter
in the rain,
absorb radiation,
anchors us
to the earth.
Like velvet petunias,
my people
still bloom even when
buried in dirt.
We are vitamins, we revitalize this earth.
Nature lives in our skin-
more than pigment,
we exist everywhere,
in water, in the heavens, galaxies,
even trees reflect
our wooly hair.
Melanin is found in
everything that breathes-
we will breathe!
Where there is melanin,
where there are true colors of the sun,
the creator is also.
We are black diamonds
shining in the
hues
of the cosmos.
Harvest time in Calistoga / Clyde Long
Across at the Farmers Market
a perfect season’s produce array,
tomatoes and new potatoes and
ripe figs so soft and precious, not
to mention fresh croissants and
piles of every shape of red pepper.
In the low angled autumn sun
Liquid Amber’s crimson leaves drop.
Yard guys will have their blowers
chasing after their impossible fall.
Those are electric now, so scents
swirl oak and walnuts, not fumes.
Gardening here is about grape vines
to be harvested on their perfect day.
Along the two winding highways
giant trucks haul the picked ripe fruit,
laboring with their shared ancient
prayer: may juice become fine wine.
The Fire in the Mirror / Taylor Mallay
In line at the gas station,
one girl leans on another,
whispers something
then laughs.
Her fingertips move
down the other’s spine
like light on the water.
Briefly, they kiss.
I turn away.
A man holding the handle
of an open cooler
glances at me,
eyes primed
for the smallest spark
coming off my body—
to him, a flare in the slow dark
of a summer evening.
Standing there, I sink
back into my 12 year-old self
cross-legged in front of
the living room TV.
How many times
did I practice
pulling the heat
from my cheeks,
train my gaze
to glass over
at the sight of a woman
on the screen,
afraid to be seen
wanting, without knowing why?
Older now,
I watch the couple leave
hand-in-hand.
I ache to ask them,
How did you find each other?
For a moment,
I imagine their response:
Somewhere in the dark,
the smallest spark.
PRISON RODEO / Cecille Marcato
Almost to Hunstville just outside Hempstead
we could buy watermelons for a dollar
but by October it was too late for that.
Daddy drove straight on to the prison
to our cheap seats facing the sun
that extra dollar spent on cushions.
Convict cowboys (a moniker I hear
they hated) there to entertain
& shock let the people enjoy
their schadenfreude — We can leave when
this is over you cannot.
Rodeos can kill even a criminal
as though their lives before weren’t dangerous enough
these ropers & riders
but many had been cowpokes even before jail
or came from prison farms (state-sanctioned slavery,
some said). They knew from cutting
horses could tie three legs
of a calf & have it stay put for six seconds on the clock
risk embarrassment or death.
Trustees wore white moving through the crowd
little books in hand & popcorn. Like cigarette girls
in noir movies on TV after school.
From Daddy I had a quarter for a program.
I read lady prisoners sewed shirts (some striped across
some up-&-down like prison bars)
that the crowds loved. Weren’t they – the inmates –
supposed to wear stripes like
cartoon jailbirds?
Mother said, Women in prison
aren’t ladies, Young Lady.
It seemed they could have seized the opportunity
to walk through the gate live again on my side
of the wall a change of clothes, amends.
Every life is like a poem the popcorn man told me
through a dangling cigarette. It has at least
one turn. You have to try
to choose the right direction.
A bull kicked a barrel, a clown rolled out.
Centrifugal / Lizzy Polishan
i was half an electron cloud & you were becoming physical :: your body was a paper valentine & i was not ready to cut you out :: i was a palimpsest & you were too primordial to be recalled :: you turned your back & i was already turning back to ether :: ions :: ionized :: are you naturally so tall, or are your pretty winged sandals, their pretty seashell-pale wings, just so happy to be seen? :: the wingbeats feel like heartbeats :: do the wingbeats feel like heartbeats because you’ve always been a paper valentine? :: do you see that matrix of angels? :: flying overhead, of course, but if you close your eyes these canals we love under us feel umbilical:: almighty :: remember when you were the largest circle & i was the smallest matter? :: you were centrifugal force & i was not flying away?