April - Poem 17

The Bridge  contd/ Maureen Alsop

Bleak sun
Born sun
Subdued sun
Warrior sun
Smut mouth sun
Ancient sun’s spiel
Victory sun
Lost sun
Resistant sun
Spike sun
Sidewinder sun
Stereoscopic sun
Consummate sununfolding sun
Gambled sun of a thousand garbled dreams
I am taking the perched sun, the perfection of illumination
Ploughed sun
Shared sun
Late sun and evoked
Lofty journal documented sun, expressionist, realist, symbolic
Apple blossom sun-grenade
Blinkered sun blind

King Kong…Writing From New York  / Bob Bradshaw

After my fall
I’ve lived a quiet life
in an artist’s attic
growing orchids.

From the roof I can see
the spire of the Empire
State Building.

How grateful I am 
that before I plunged
to the ground
I managed
to set Ann down as gently
as I would an orchid
on a ledge.

Old, I keep in shape.        
Every day I go down
in my Adidas sneakers
to the basement gym 
to lift weights. 

Done, I throw a barbell down,
the floor jolting.
Recalling Ann 
still leaves me shaken.

        
I ease my way 
to the spa, 
the heated water jets
meant to nurse my pride—
my loneliness
a weight too great  
to be lifted.

Ann’s strong hold on me
refuses to let go.

How can I forget how
at first Ann swooned
like a cut flower  
when she’d see me?
I couldn’t help myself.
I stared back,

feeling the way a gardener 
must feel getting
an exotic cutting
from the other side of the world
        
holding it
—loving it—in his palm 
for the first time.

Don’t orchids
thrive everywhere today,
in Europe, the Americas,
Skull Island? 

Their gauzy
delicateness          
belies them. 
Hardy, robust
as gorillas. More so.
We can’t live anywhere.
Beauty can.

After the Breakup / Stan Galloway

Lachrymose has nothing to do with lactose.
It’s closer to lacerate or just plain lack.
Those words might bring a boy to tears:
salty percolation of grief through the eyes
heartsick blood through tissue
the hollow where you used to be, unfilled.

Comet / Ava Hu

*

What is the sound
a comet makes?

Forces of nature
we can't control:

the moon wired your heart,
planets enter each other’s dark.

The theory of everything
pulls inward

to the size of a hand
closing around an apple.

*

Wine Corks in the Trash    / Sergiy Pustogarov

Cabernet,
Next to sparkling rose.
The corks lying in a cupboard.

Give me yours,
And I’ll add it to the jar.
Each floating wooden block 
Disappearing as soon as I drop it in the glass bowl.
Where did these go?
A secret I held 
Between my fingertips 
for just two seconds.

Pick up the trash off the floor.
Gather up the papers.
Stack them in piles on the table.
A thousand moments thrown down.
Grasping at straws 
To make them into piles,
Neat and collected
For the future mind to see.

Wonder where the trash will go now.
Out the back door 
To another man’s home.
He gathers, digging,
Searching for some refuse
Just to make his home warm at night.
I cast it out 
And all along 
It was gold for another man.

A secret I let go of,
Dripping through my hand 
To hit the ground outside.
And now it’s watering the earth of another.

there is a goddess / nat raum

and she has bpd. be honest.
ebbs and flows are natural—
earthquakes and cyclones, too. 
i know we want order by design,
but what of chaos, her switch
backs in roads already winding?
something unpredictable awaits.

Two Tables Over at the Diner / Daniel Avery Weiss

I puncture the yolk, and a flurry of feathers comes
flooding the air.
Why do you think Jews move to Israel? Israel [inaudible].
Rye bread swinging seductive swirls of brown
and hurricane gray.
Hitler wanted us to be more white, now it's [inaudible].
My partner orders milk. I must confess I saw
the cow in the corner of the room.
You know, in 20 years the Dems are expected [inaudible]? It's scary.
The cook presses down, hard, and his flesh, fresh
from the deli, stirs in hissing plumes of smoke.
Have you seen the protests on the college campuses? The universities [inaudible].
It began to hail outside.
Windows that never crack.
“Can you do me a favor? I think you're depressed.” I'm not depressed, it's
just depressing. I'm not like that. I got two kids.
If they moved to Israel, I'd follow them.
“I know, but [inaudible].”
The cashier takes our cash and skewers
a copy of the receipt on a small metal pole. Flight from the premises.

falling behind / MK Zariel

you talk to your cat like a person & stay
in one of two or three places, so at peace with your
surroundings as to seem anxious to anyone
who doesn’t know you well. you talk to me like a person
too (or maybe that’s just how you relate), casual admissions
laced with nothing but good humor & unspoken pasts
you don’t talk about your feelings. your D&D characters
are exclusively loud, rude jerks. sometimes i wonder if that’s
your shadow self, if you enjoy the way that apathy
lets you take up a little space, show a little anger,
be a little real. sometimes you move like you’ve never
been told to make yourself small, yet you do it anyway—
are you scarred or just polite? closeted or just
certain that the ritual of transition is beneath you?
i never understood people who responded to my coming out
with we like you anyway—as if my existence
is cause for a referendum—you instead fill the void
with strangers’; assumptions and ignored stares—
you are, by all objective measures, cool. i don’t know
what that makes me, too earnest or similtaneously
too gay and not gay enough at the same time. it’s funny
how that’s always the problem. sometimes i dream of a world
where your peace extends a little further.