October - Poem 4

While Sitting in the Minneapolis Airport Waiting for My Flight to Incheon, I think of Mary Tyler Moore

/ Katerina Canyon

Everything I know about Minneapolis
I learned from Mary Tyler Moore
who brighten the city
with a toothy grin that chased
off winter and left our memories
living in eternal spring.

I learned Minneapolis was a place
where hats lived midair
in permanent twilight.

Mary’s city was childlike,
a place where she played in the streets
with a spin and a smile.

She must have been dead three years
when George Floyd was murdered.

I learned from George Floyd.
He died on the sidewalk—
childlike with pleas to spare his life.

I learned the Twin Cities were split
as sharply as Jacob and Esau.
George Floyd may have had a toothy grin
but I never saw it.

The officer who killed him
pushed the city into an eternal winter
which has the power to snap out
a life with a sustaining pressure to the neck.

An Open Road  /  Sam Calhoun

So thin a life

an open road,

the only music

rumble strips, 

the world

a low cloud,

the dreamers 

so small

we squint,

sun at our backs,

collect like

fogbows

across the long

arch of sky, 

colorless, 

so small 

we shine as one, 

so heavy every 

foot shuffles

the ground.

I Did Dance With the Devil   /  at/om

I did dance with the devil, 

and not in the fun way I learned to years later, the way where I have had a couple drinks, and I’m laughing with my friends. 

but in the way where the devil tells me, 

he is my only friend. 

I danced with the devil with claws in my skin, 

with his teeth tearing my ear as he whispered that he can tear me 

apart at any minute. 

(and I know it is not a threat, I know because he has done it) 

I know the feeling of holding your heart in your hands, I know how ugly the organ is when you look at it in the light. 

I know so because the Devil told me 

it would not help me dance, I know so 

because he took my heartstrings 

and tied them around my wrists, a 

marionette for his desires. 

Puppetmaster made me dance for him, 

it was the only time he said I was any good at it. 

I danced for the devil, 

he called himself God. 

Bookstore  /  Ellen Ferguson

Past lives /  Brett Gastineau

Such a simple mistake—a dress folded and put on a shelf
instead of hung on a hanger. But my days were marked by so
many small missteps, a tally you kept—a dish left in the
sink, the keys you couldn’t find, two library books
overdue, the house too clean, our daughter’s naps that went
too long and kept her from you when you got home, a tomato
plant from your aunt that failed to grow, the Thanksgiving
dinner I cooked without needing your help. I thought (I
hoped) I could manage the chaos of your moods. Not be
scared as your eyes grew black.
Perhaps you found a sweetness in your hatred. For you,
there was a release each time you called me garbage, each
time you struck my face or punched my arms. Each slight
and insult I held close to my skin. I gave you the leash.
I gave you the knife. Maybe I believed that fear was
another face of love, a necessary leap into madness. No
longer did you touch my name like a kiss. No longer was my
body a home. You told me I had taken your life. You would
leave a room and I would slap myself.
And then that frantic search for the dress. How you
screamed. Charging from our daughter’s room, you slammed me
into a door frame. My head, my shoulder connecting. I
wish I could say next came a brief interlude of pain. I
can’t. I wish I could say that I have left that moment.
There is a thought, a personifying of the door and its
desire for a past life as a bird. This body moves on, cross
town, cross years spent sleeping poorly. There is no
flight through white, white clouds. Rage and love are
stories that have no end.

biome pome:  dirt  /  Joy Johnson

comes a point when inside worm and out are 

hard to tell apart, but time:  it imparts

a juice to my seeming inevitable 

existence in this few teaspoons edible —

or so the plant roots insist as they dine

on what worm, wood, and fungus leave behind.

i like to feel the wet that clings me to 

my mates, though dust bowls have happened too,

and sent me to new places to re-home.

soon enough old’s forgot in new biome

where in-and-out-of-worm and root-the-plants 

become my raisons d’être again and

i’m happy when feet of ants and sleeves

of larvae are what i feel morn and eve. 

Love unlimited  /  Nicoletta LaMarca-Sacco

How did welcoming children complicate our lives? Firstly we thought our love for each other had no bounds. Then we found out we loved our firstborn more fiercely than a bear with her cubs, a fox with her kits, a mythological creature and her wiggly baby monsters. Second we expanded that love for our second born, and life changed again, for the better. It was man-on-man defense; still ok for our fortyish faculties. And we had sleepless nights, the pediatrician visits, the matching outfits, the enrollment in school, the lost teeth, the new puppy, the birthday cupcakes the high school dances. Whoosh! Fast-forward. Our children are adults making their way. We love them like cats love their kittens, like mantises love their mini-mantises, like ducks love their ducklings, and they don’t seem to need us anymore. In reality,  I believe they do. And I am always so happy when we see them. That’s love unlimited.

SLEEP WITHOUT GHOSTS  /  H.T. Reynolds

you taught me not to

grieve the things we never had

so I won’t

I shall imagine you a stranger,

mother—telling everyone

how I was born from ashes

how my closet never hid

bruises beneath turtlenecks

or brittle bones—

            it’s easier that way

while I teach my children

how there’s no such thing

as monsters—but that isn’t true

is it      it’d be easier

if monsters had claws,

had fangs,

had glowing eyes

but they smile—

they buy you toys

and new clothes

and keep

little secrets

then devour you

in your sleep

it’s easier that way

but this day,

heavy with your ghost,

I rest in bed

Laws About Love But Underwater /  Gabriel Phillips

Back up the brains, poet. Walls have backed up

against you as you yourself said you were warm.

It is fortunate we all look through the same hole,

every quarter. That undressed around exposed lips

prevents waste from hatching. But do lovers

climb together even though they share two

different mirrors, one each above each sink.

Luckily, copy cats start in nature, her lover

told you. But yet you aren’t wasted! You

catacomb the sound like a cove of dove

bones, when wedding season is near. The candles

pastel with broods of soggy cake, of which

none is tasted. Tongues were divorced.

That breeds are tied to wax, that wax should

should choose to celebrate. As a hot of reptile.

Double invertebrates mate with their clones.

Laws for sea creatures never evolved

to the laws of land walkers.

Do you wonder then, if the sea

is truly a better place for me

and for me?

psalter's song of serpents  / Colin Sturdevant

I poured oats from my mouth
as a gift unto the earth.

For I had trod with gluttony
satiating each thread of my body

& made a den of my bed.
Each body had a name

that sought warmth
& my forked tongue

sang each cunning note
to praise legs apart.

& they go forth at dawn
& I lament that they aren't the one.

How I dispirit their bodies
as a curved bottle emptied:

[I] make their tongues
as sharp as a serpent’s;

the poison of vipers 
is on their lips.