April - Poem 14
The Bridge contd/ Maureen Alsop
Where are the illuminate horses? The young men in hunting costumes?
Shasta daisies collapse into bells under the sun’s tripod gaze.
An Idle lone pine lurches against a sunlit cliff face, a deep chasm where
Monastery monks
guide the lost ones in their journey
But what was it, the sacred travel, the fractious nature
Delphiniums rinsed of insects the lighthouse turning its need
The old vision? A memory of darkness—I'm thin & clear. Birds stitch
through waves whilst my dray overflows this abundance & peace
A Housefly Recalls Emily Dickinson / Bob Bradshaw
At first Miss Emily
would pass by me silently
in her simple, pique
white dress.
Still, I had the sense
our lives would always
be linked
in ways unpredictable.
I wasn’t like
the green bottle flies
or the bluebottles,
their iridescence
like a dragonfly’s wings
in a sunlit mist.
I wore a laborer’s
dull gray clothes
and moved
from room to room
like a domestic servant
humming Irish tunes.
Soon I could just whisper,
Pst! Pst!
and Emily would read me
her latest poem.
We were both introverts,
unlike "perty" Vinnie
who loved
crowds,
especially when Father
would throw
yet another college
commencement party.
All those young men, Em!
Their small talk
diminished them
in your eyes!
I didn’t impress anyone
with grandiose plans
and yet Em loved me -
she swore it -
more than Vinnie
loved either flattery
--or her cats!
"Are we so different?" Em asked.
"Me a poet, you a fly?
Aren’t we a pair ?
I’m a Nobody!
Aren’t you too?
If only we could hitch
Our carriage
To Immortality,
And ride out of Amherst
Together!"
Eating / Stan Galloway
Gluttonous death / will make a meal of me. --D.S. Martin*
We all die from something.
Eating is as good a way to go as any other.
I’m not too proud to fall asleep conjuring smorgasbords.
But I refuse to seek some Dahmer wannabe.
I’ll eat my way out on my own terms.
Martin, D.S. “My Final Credits.” The Role of the Moon. Iron Pen/Paraclete Press, 2025. 34-35.
Channel / Ava Hu
*
Pouring from the lips
of a god,
soil interior,
broad strait,
water to water,
your trace
in bolts
of lavender,
are we floating
restless, reaching
for one another
in a hurricane
of stings and breath?
I see where they light fires
on the river
for the dead.
A looking glass,
ritual object,
mirror, transmission,
you.
Mother { } Dowager / Sergiy Pustogarov
Requiem of the AIDS Crisis
bleached hair
on
the sidewalk
party busses
cheering
squeals
clapping
dark rooms
silent death
Mother
{ }
screaming cries
lonely
beds
kisses
forgotten
newer fruit
trailing ever
behind
{ }
barren funeral
empty coffin
ashes
burned
and
burned
burned
yet again
maybe now
safe
to handle
with twenty
layers of latex
{ }
Dowager
kinky
hands touching
ass
warped
into gray particles
still not enough
purify
more
never holy enough
blissfull
{ }
Mother
now honored
speeches
books
songs
musicals
nothing
for them
back then
now safe
and careless
no fear
of
silent
death
thank you
Mother
{ }
Dowager
Plum Vase with Cloud-and-Crane Motif (Goryeo dynasty, late 12th or early 13th century) / Daniel Avery Weiss
O, ye with the perfect neck,
swinging yourself as a thin rope
in gentle waves—flies
as black as eyes envy
the ginger likes of your
petty pace. Reinvigorate the
meanings in a cloud,
see to it that the clay watches
history slip into a humbling,
childlike
slumber.
perceive me like your surroundings / MK Zariel
a stranger downtown says she loves
my lesbian haircut, and i feel affirmed for two seconds
until she shouts out—“and your body, girlie”
and i thank her and i hurtle toward the void
Madison is a collection of lukewarm neon lights
and very cis opinions, nonprofits metastasizing
like invasive plants. everyone’s supportive
until you catch them on a bad day. i read a zine
in middle school claiming the butch lesbian body
is the only kind that can’t be commodified
under capitalism. how i wish that were true.
people can commodify anything
if you catch them in bad lighting on State Street
somehow both caffeinated and tired.
i try not to think about it. my gender is what
people see when they feel judgy. does that mean
my gender is high maintenance
and my pronouns are sit down / shut up?
my body is not a temple; it is a college campus
growing trashier by the day. it is a downtown
with one anarchist gathering and ten overpriced
restaurants for nobody. it was getting a little
too gentrified, then i transitioned. i go for a walk.
a stranger finds out what it’s like to judge thin air.
