August 26 - Poem 26
NO GOING BACK TO THE VILLAGE / Zoe Berger
We try, man. Throwing clouds upwards hoping they won’t come back down. Siphoning water from the moon, storing it in black tanks to cook and shower with, irrigating our moon gardens with our runoff. Selling our moon vegetables for the small suns of coins, which we use to buy horses, not because they can take us farther but because they can carry the people we love too. Tying horses to trees on the beach, their weathered hooves pawing the ground. We are all asking for more. All of us standing in the bed of your truck. More riders. No going back to the village. No going back to the village now.
retrograde|retrograde / Ashley Howell
appears moving backwards|backwards moving appears
uncover: apocalypse of definition | definition of apocalypse: uncover
only way I can recover is leaving| leaving is recover can I way only
moving the definition way I can recover|recover can I way definition the moving
apocalypse is leaving|leaving is apocalypse
uncover backwards appears|appears backwards uncover
to leave|leave to
Gadfly / Dahhee Chung
It’s getting dark!
It looks like the moon destroyed the day!”
Young Pharaoh,
Same as the gadfly and pupil
Asking questions,
Writing his thesis like Socrates,
With questions,
Through my fingers.
“But what will destroy the night?”
“Bad dreams.”
“And good dreams?”
“I ate them.”
From a phantom plate of whimsy and
hemlock
His mouth opens wide,
Eyes turn to crescents,
Mumbling sky.
Subway Poem / Hannah Page
Your emergence back into
life has been an unfurling
and tonight you rode into Brooklyn
with me to my writing group at the fair
trade coffee shop with all the ugly
art on the walls in all the colors
I have dyed my hair before. I used to
belong to collectives as a second
thought; Now, I bring you
with me into places once navigable
through loneliness. This space
is blistering and luminous
and smacking of a home everywhere
you come with me.
Lingering Question / PF Potvin
I can understand
swaddling a pig
in banana leaves
after slathering it
in orange and spice
burying it in coals
underground for hours
before pulling it out
to dress a tortilla
but admit to knowing
nothing about why someone
in the adjacent campsite
started a perfectly good
fire and wasted it on trying
to grill a watermelon
Just Across the Creek / Janette Schafer
A cento using lines from “Poems of the Mad Hunter
and Other Tales” by Byron Hoot
There is nothing like the stillness of the woods.
What will I dream about?
The low ground wind sound,
the difference between the deer and me.
We do not miss the grace of first light,
the soul needs a broad expanse of country.
I know something of art and what is true of it—
heaven and earth created for us.
Each knows the value of going our own way,
where the possible is limitless,
the promised land just across the creek.
WE DON'T KNOW WHAT OYSTERS ARE / Kate Thuma
Oyster (adjective):
unknowable; alien;
the "other" paradigm
Ex: I held your
oyster heart in limitless
hands -- it filled them up.
