October - Poem 2

Mirror / Katerina Canyon

Echo is the flesh
that lives in each child
who follows me.

Hunger reverberates
through the mouth’s tunnel
to the womb.

The body imitates my flaws
as if reflection is a gift.
It turns itself over in the
curves of your body.

Are these my hands or yours?
It is hard to recall the exact
moment the first wrinkle
betrayed me.

I am an imperfect copy of Eve—
duplicated over and over.
Eve did not have a spare digit.

Mine was chopped off
at birth.
I can still feel
its echo.

Dust  /  Sam Calhoun

at Field of Dreams Park

What else is here but dust?
I can wander the field,
count corn kernels 
like talismans, 
dust
stalks winding up
to the dark blue sky,
long cirrus streaking above
like dust across the diamond, 
hold the chaff in my hands
from some distant harvest,
pretend this all goes on
to some end, cup
dust 
like time here, 
like a cold drink 
with an old friend, 
like corn sweat in summer.

Ilya Fights the Loon   /  at/om

for Jess Tønseth Gleason 

Inspired by Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid

i am small, i have fallen from my mother’s back 

and i am drowning.

i know how to swim but the storm brings waves 

over my head and i can only see her when

i fall under the water. 

and the only sound i hear is not mother’s sweet song 

but the distant cries of wolves and i have loved enough

now to know the difference between the loon song and a 

predator licking its lips 

but the giant black bird that bobs over the wake 

does not call anything kind. 

it sings out

“He will never really love you. 

Nobody has ever 

really loved you.” 

nobody but the bones at the bottom of the lake 

has ever held me like he has. 

the man i love has loved enough to try to teach me 

how to sing to the birds but when i open my mouth 

the wolves howl, the waves pick up, i am pulled back under. 

i call for him in the sound hunters make when trying to attract prey 

and the dark bird grows bigger. 

the grown bird knows which little ones are tainted 

by the hands of someone who means well. 

they know when something is to be left behind. 

the dark bird tells me creatures who can’t fight 

their way above the waves deserve to become 

the rocks at the bottom of the water. 

i know how to swim and i know how to fight 

and i know the dark bird is not the only thing 

here with teeth. i reach out for the loon 

and grab its neck in my teeth, i can climb onto its back 

to stay afloat but i still hear all around me. 

“He will never love you.

Nothing can ever love you”

even when the bird is limp 

the wolves are howling. 

telling me to come home.

the bird was never the monster 

in this story, nor was the body 

at the bottom of the lake. 

it was the wolf who thought singing 

like a bird could turn him into one, it is 

my bloody reflection staring back at me

from the edge of the water, it is the sun 

coming out through the clouds and the 

feathers floating on the surface of the lake,

it is knowing that when he comes out 

and finds this slaughter scene he will tell me 

he loves me. he will understand. he will hold me, 

and remind me of the differences 

between birds and wolves. 

and i will love him enough to believe 

the water won’t swallow me.

Bench  /  Ellen Ferguson

Come curve with me and be my bench
And we shall all the benches prove
Like curves on benches benches curve
And benches curving benches curved
And we will all a broken pencil
A pencil breaking in two pencils
If pencils break and broken pencils
With pencils, pencils, pencils, pencils
If after all the rulers rule
And all the rulers also rule 
Then curve with me and be my bench
Like benches curve and benches curve.

In Conversation with Goethe  /  Brett Gastineau

To hope that those who follow would not have to travel
the same roads of love is not wise.
That is just a shunning of the constellations
of need that fill the sky and
the nameless avenues that lengthen in shadows.
Is there a happiness older than water
to be found here and a love that can
be taught to gentle? Yes.
But what of the parts of you in these night-years
that are most alive?
Those that have teeth!
The world breaks upon this wild flesh
and we become guardians of the bloody
in a life as endless and narrow as an hour.
Desires that have no names carry us, lead us
from the time we inhabit and leave us to
paint in past tense.
There are those that wish to carve their name
into your skin and drag you into their wilderness of
hunger—Perhaps it is you who are culpable. Perhaps you both
harden and are no longer each other’s delicious friend.
Left asking for things no human can give.
Peace does not come in a nest of arms or moments
where cheek meets chest and mouths part to vow tenderness.
A lover’s nature is as fleeting as mist.
Give your song to the wind, after the hollowing made by
loss...to be empty is to know.
You will find yourself nude in a divine rain. Returned to
the skin of the earth.

Earth's Prayer  /  Joy Johnson

He tills the ground from which he was taken;
the thistle-borne seed he too plants;
he eats the bread with his sweaty face. 
It's from my wound that he lives. 

I rejoice in his feasting, undertaking 
the give-and-taking that's meet, life
upholding -- my pledge to support as much!
But then Adam incipient 

comes to believe it is he who owns
what's I, instead of properly reversed. 
And for said presumption, he will drop bombs,
not seeds!, and I am astonished,

dumbfounded:  who might I approach for redress
of the wrongs, the throngs of alchemy 
he has unleashed?  O poetry, my
prayer, become song of my deliverance. 

Sunny  /  Nicoletta LaMarca-Sacco

thank you, Tracy

sun glimmers off rooftops across the water
buildings of glass, slate, steel

sunny today and an arc of light reflects
landing in my eyes as I look

love to read on a sunny day
warm my skin outdoors

the sun sails behind cloud cover
reappearing till sunset pulls my gaze

to the west where it sets
and rests

AN INERT OBJECT  /  H.T. Reynolds

running away from fear is fear; fighting pain is pain;
trying to be brave is being scared
—Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

I imagine inviting my blood
to fresh air
my skin
to some time apart

picturing myself
barefoot—
toes gripping the concrete
edge of a rooftop

arms an outstretched cross
head tilted against the rain
open palms praising the sky
holding its water like a font

an unkindness—
a revolving black halo
placing their bets

how long I’ll stay

standing

falling

alive

The winner gets its pick—
my tongue
the ligaments
of a thigh
the meat of my heel…

when their litany falls silent,

I open my eyes—
my mouth,
and defy them
to speak 

The Bellow of Lugosi /  Gabriel Phillips

Do flowers cover up the impenetrable
wrinkle? Do they drift apart when the oil
misses the water? For there are many
stacked ways to spill a mess, there
are kittens touching the steps. Alone,
barricaded but comfortable. The vision
of white and baby peppers saunter
over the horizon, into coffins
for baby birds. Mama makes the worm!
Mama is the worm! Her tendrils reached
every predator with trepidation. Predators
wash themselves unevenly, askew. Cooking
with dimes of wet breeze. They don’t
salt, they pay bills. Many bills. Then
another bill after that bill was paid.
The vampire wakes up, surely his car
payment is due. It’s the detonation
above the clouds that seeds the people.
Cauterize their shelves of hot china
and drifts with a limp across the Baltic sea
into the base of a conch shell.
That a rather dull child has crushed
with a metal toy truck.

apocrypha (& demi-cento)  / Colin Sturdevant

from each loosened nail bed, I pull a chapter
In full velvet
& all you can make out from my lips are simple words:
There, There
Your consciousness stirs into dawn as you look up at me
Saying your name three times underwater

(3 lines are book titles belonging to Jenny Johnson, Tommy Orange, and Sam Roxas-Chua)