June - Poem 9

What Makes Him Human / Kristina Byas

His eyes holding hope
His lips learning to smile
His brows full of uncertainty
His lost hands searching
His voice catching on the truth
His heart bruised but open
His feet settling into unleveled ground,
still finding his balance

In All My Dream My House is the One I Grew Up In III  / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

Sometimes I wake myself up
when I scream in my sleep.
(I’m pretty sure we never lived
in the living room.)
I wake up and try to remember
my dreams
—cottonmouth vipers
that slither away.

rankings  / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

I realized that my top 3 smells are all
transitive/short/unlasting

3. hot asphalt right after the rain starts in summer
it’s not petrichor –
what a dank soil smell –
roil here in man made, radiant, 
sloughing smell, ripped with gasoline
like us fucking sloppy
2. low tide
I hope it sinks out and in forever
like the sea will salt and stink the earth
in our memories of home, our primal
columbine caverns we’ll return to
1. lilac blossoms blowing in the humid night on a breeze
they surprise, better than sex
I swear, guttural, consumptive,
bloodily violet in its violence
upon my soul. There is nothing else
surrounding. Some stars heating, slowly dying
in universe we’re bound for

Yet – my top three animals
endure/permeate/calcify too long

3. crab

how it sideways steps out of your goddamn
inquisition of its nature, of its purpose
its only use is to be crab, to dance and sift
away and fro, sewing a click and snap

2. crab

eyes stalking out, churched up
faces made for consuming
steadily the matters of earth –
eventually the black matter in this galaxy –
sifting the dark, smashing prey
opening suns, all grains down their gullet.

1. crab

we shall all carcinisify, in hope
of a simple dance, a simple
feast as the universe spaghettifies out,
hopefully I will have mismatched claws
like twin stars orbiting,
bouncing gravity
across each other
rending us apart
in what adoration

SHOULDER  / Shane Moran

Snuffing out the bad guys isn’t easy, when they look like 
Heroes or foggy mirrors of our fellow struggles
Online.   I know women like a clean look, but few things are so
Unalike: take the manosphere, the barbershop, the insides of a
Late twenty-something.  Russo cuts my hair and divulges 
Drama with his babymama, clicking off the clippers to say
Exactly my point with his face, his eyes ballooning, his gloved hands 
Resting on his belly.  Rarely does anyone try to tell him.  Know to tell him.

In the Cabin, on Prozac / Jingyu Li

Rain thrum and mosquito bites
late noon on the twin bed—
Which is scarier? an empty
mind or a full one? Did I take 
the good way out? Listening 
to these easy rhythms, thinking 
of nothing, these trees not reminding 
me of anywhere 
my father’s been. Alone
next to the shadow and not thinking
of death. Here across 
the bare furniture of my mind, writing
poems, afraid of music
becoming something less 
than necessary.

Construction Season / Stefanie Zito

I mostly don’t remember life before 
kiddos and construction
machinery, loud and heavy
and accompanying toy miniatures
rolled in around the same time
each churning their upheaval.
Diggers and backhoes and debris oh my.
Postpartum, lactation, and sleepless nights.
Kicking up dust and ample delays, I’m
stripped down to scaffolding 
my infrastructure outdated
unearthing detritus of days gone by.
Gridlocked and circling the block 
of this slow moving scene 
yielding to detours of my own.
Diverging and dodging 
bottlenecked to a halt 
yet creeping along as I
try to not bulldoze my way. 
I build, I change, I repair
I use my life to pave a path
and labor for the long haul.