January - Poem 12
Why do you think it’s okay— / Haley Bosse
The snow half-obscuring
Your face, red glow
From some car’s taillight
Left running with the door open,
Pulled a foot into the road,
The smoke from the tailpipe
Whisked away like someone
Cares about us pausing here
Halfway up the hill
In the nearly deadly dark, like
If there was anything
But the cold
And the snow
And your unknowing smile,
We might not make it
From this moment
To our bed, six years
From now and far
From Boston,
Further north and somehow
Wetter, at least a thousand
Drops of rain
Having slid from your skin
And to the earth by now,
Taking with it the aftertaste
Of sweat,
From fear,
Climbing, fear again
A morning lost
Underneath the covers
Birdsong and the drum
Of water on the carport
Beyond the foggy window
Sometimes I wake
Slick with salt
And worried
I’m standing in that snowstorm
The wind spiraling
Around us, unsure
If the flakes are falling
Or rising back toward
The clouds and
Whether the next moment
Will drive what’s frozen here
To breaking or
If it’s not enough.
the pause between / Jess Bowe
i stop asking my children to save the world.
i ask them to bring strawberry tops
to the chickens. i seat them at the table
with the old stories. i turn off the tv
and wonder out loud what the trees
in the corner of the yard might be dreaming.
i bring them tea and good news and forest-floor
trinkets and apologies to their bedside.
i invite them to the show
of birds and gift them orchestra tickets
made of sunrise and wet dirt and we listen
and cry at what we almost missed.
i recite mother teresa with my hands in the soap,
we wash the dish
because we love
the one who uses it next.
i stop asking my children to save the world.
i ask them to notice the sky. to say hello.
to offer the presence of their eyes. to give
attention to what moves them. to stay
a moment longer in the room
between inhale and exhale, to give
to the day what lives there.
In this picture / Joanna Lee
we see the backs of three figures, their shadows long against the leaffall and the setting sun. there seems a heaviness to their footsteps, a purpose in the way they hold their bodies, leaning slightly forward, not turning to look at the camera. it is a cold day, or so one supposes from the hoods thrown over their ears, the pale cast to the fast-sinking sun. what we don’t know is where they’re headed, other than a general westward direction. we don’t know their names. why they walk. why the camera has captured them, as if there were something important to this sunset, this grouping. the bareness of the trees is unremarkable; almost, to the framing of this shot, an afterthought. there is no Icarus falling. what, then? we can only suppose they mean something to the shot-taker, the unknown fourth who follows. that this is a family outing, perhaps, or a fistful of friends. some shared resolution in the solidarity of their tread. as if they are on their way to a new chapter that surely will end better than the last one. as if they can get close enough to the dying sun to grab its violet skin like a cape to wrap round their chilled fingers. as if they must reach Valhalla before nightfall. something intimate and ordinary. as if they’ll never have this moment, this precise, unfiltered moment, again. as if that were something worth remembering.
Saganaki / Thomas Page
we would always go to that greek res-
taurant by your house overlooking
the bay and arroyos and jacaran-
das people would overwater with ber-
muda grass and english bushes trimmed with
roses. our server would place by the
window looking over the chinese bu-
ffet that’s not as good as back then. you’d be
facing the window with a big drink dark
as homer’s seas as your finger pointed
to your preferred appetizer sa-
ganaki served with pita wedges no-
dding as you pointed with certainty
that they served it best here with the special
liquor they doused it with before flam-
béing it. the fire like a column of sun-
light brightening your face in a warm glow.
What If Cheetah Forgot How to Tie Vines Together? / Sarah Paley
Tarzan would sink. He’d scramble and flail. Everyone knows
that’s the worst thing to do if you’re caught in quicksand. Of course,
he knows that too, but he’d still reach out and there’d be nothing
to grab on to. He’d sink and the bubbling quicksand would smooth
and calm over his head after it had swallowed him completely.
Oh! What a terrible way to end.
Jane would swing home from the waterfall with her wet perfect
thighs and damp tussled hair and wait. Eventually she’d worry.
She’d do their special call – yodeling into the forest canopy
but there’d be no reply. There’d be no sign of him –only squawking
birds rising into the sky, alarmed at her alarm. Sooner or later Cheetah
would come home but Cheetah wouldn’t be able to explain.
All that jumping up and down, shrieking, running in circles, and slapping
his head could never make clear what had transpired. Cheetah couldn’t
tell her how sorry sorry sorry he was that he forgot how to tie a knot. After
a while he’d hang his head in shame, sit in the corner, and refuse the bananas
she offered. While Tarzan, petrified, reaches for heaven forever.
Oh! What a terrible way to end.
Why You Shouldn’t Buy a Motorcycle / Amy Snodgrass
Because in Spain, there is a walled city, with a tiny store
sort of hidden behind a series of milky stone pillars.
You will find it someday as you
wander the narrow cobblestone
streets with someone you love
and you will buy a miniature clock–
gold with black inlays– for your father,
like I did for my father so many years ago.
The inlays will look like flowers, but later
–after eating tapas at Siglodoce and kissing your
love under the vaulted arches of the cathedral–
you will gently unwrap it and set it on your
hotel nightstand, and you will do a double take.
You will see there are skeletons etched into the mix,
peeking out from behind the golden flowering
vines: skeletons so tiny you will almost miss them,
but suddenly they will be all you see, those sneaky bones.
While your love hops in the shower, you will
call me and say, “Hi mom, so, funny story–
I accidentally bought Dad a skeleton clock,”
and we will laugh long and hard about it: then, and again, and
from time to time, over the course of our long and beautiful lives.
