October - Poem 5
Tap a Vein / Katerina Canyon
Written in response to “Inkwell”
by James Evert Jones
Your anger resides in the black hues
of your inkwell.
Your blood, your soul
your legacy of language
make me mourn the October
poems you cannot read right now,
and I grieve you before you
write goodbye to the streets of autumn.
In fall and early morning
I think of how we wrote
through prompts. You know how
to “tap a vein” to keep writing.
I imagine that right now
you are dreaming in verse.
We kept writing across
thousands of miles
through letters, lines, and
phone calls.
To be a poet is to die
one pen stroke at a time—
leaving each fault
between the lines.
When our friends ask
“What is wrong with you?”
I will say I feel a void, and
I lament.
The midnight reaper is knocking.
At Gibraltar Rock / Sam Calhoun
All morning on
the drive here,
lane lines skipping
along with the sky,
I wondered if clouds
count lines like sheep,
if the sandhill cranes
danced as if alarm clocks
with the rising sun,
the shadows of wings
growing louder
every minute.
I Did Dance With the Devil / at/om
One. The episode of Shorsey where he is asked why, at his age, and his skill level, is he still this passionate about hockey. Shorsey answers
“It’s the only place I can be me.”
Two. Sitting on my porch, smoking a cigarette, and thinking about how I’ve never played a sport but my recent life has been run by hockey shows.
Three. Wishing I was at Disney World with my mom again, where we were both care free and my worst problems was my feet hurting in a long line.
Four. Trying to get to my drug test for a new job in a rain storm and some idiot in a white jeep wouldn’t let me change lanes.
Five. The launch of the real Irina Foundation, looking at my comfort blorbo fake hockey player and asking him do you know how much you have changed the world?
Six. Listening to the Festival of The Lion King.
Eight. Listening to the Festival of The Lion King.
Nine. Headache.
Ten. Headache.
Eleven. Wondering if I ever knew a life beyond how bad this headache is.
Twelve. I am fundamentally unlovable. The reason I can never get along with anybody is because I was born with rows upon rows of teeth and I knew how to bite before I could talk. I am the center of all of my problems and I always will be. I could seek out the friends I have now but they’ll only learn to hate me too. It’s better to just curl in on myself, to let the walls collapse and bury me if they have to. I am always being buried in one way or another.
Thirteen. Overstimulated at the farm stand.
Fourteen. Nightmare. Best friend said she didn’t want to ever speak to me again, and I became a tornado of screaming and desperation. Woke up afraid to ask her if it was real.
Fifteen: Brother moved away four months ago, looked at pictures of how happy he is now. I’ll probably never see him again.
Sixteen: Wrote a poem wondering if I cry too much. Wondering if that’s why when I cry now, I only tell the page.
Sestina for the 18th / Ellen Ferguson
After lunch at Duchamp/Moma, tea at the Austen
Society! Pineapple reticule, bonnet
In hand, we made our way to Central Park
After. Leaving, Carol took care at the door
Of her car. Who makes their exit
By highway? Luckily, I found
The 6 train; it was found
Without further ado after Austen
Teatime ended, my exit
Significantly un-swift; bonnet
In hand, stuffed through the train door
After fountain time in Central Park.
In our slow crew. Central Park
Fountain time lingered, we found
Ourselves bouncers at the door
To a bookstore playlist. Austen
Forgotten for now, bonnet
Stuffed in Moma bag, beating an awkward exit
downtown. Not gowned but ruffled, exit
the train from Central Park
ruffled, sans bonnet,
turnstile found
still dressed like Austen
shoving a locking door
only to discover, beyond the door,
another locked, scaffolded exit
at 42nd. No more tea with Austen,
no more Central Park,
42nd Street egress elusive and unfound.
Just a mad, ruffled woman without her bonnet.
In retrospect, the lack of bonnet
Was lucky. Charlie Brown’s fortune teller, ever the door
To stout decisions, found
“Make a bold choice” the answer. Revisiting locked exit
Doors, trains leaving Central Park,
Crying “Help” & yes! Freed by the kindness of strangers! Goodbye, Austen.
We almost didn’t meet that day. No exit, silted Central Park, tea-drenched Austen,
Crazed bonnet, locked door. But we did, didn’t we? Not lost -- found.
After Joe Brainard’s “I Remember” / Brett Gastineau
I remember an afternoon riding a bike along the coast of
Chiloe as sheets of rain fell. I remember my water-logged
socks and the heaviness on my shoulders. I remember how the
wind was filled with the smell of mud and fish and pine
needles. I remember when I made it to a secluded beach
there was a herd of wild horses—their hair long and ratty,
covering their eyes. I remember how they sounded like
thunder upon the sand.
I remember a Greek Orthodox monk I became friends with in
San Francisco. I remember how easily I became his
confessor. I remember I have always had that gift of
putting people at ease and loosening their history. I
remember how affectionately he spoke of each of his secret
lovers and the map of their skin.
I remember the bombast of the first ABBA song I heard.
I remember the Challenger explosion; the lichen of smoke
and fire in the sky.
I remember stepping on a nest of yellow jackets and being
stung. I remember them congregating around my ears and
eyes. I remember the angry hum. I remember screaming and
stripping off my clothes as the cloud of them grew and
raged.
I remember every country road I ran along in Putnam County.
I remember the chorus of bugs and smell of grass in the
summer. I remember the cold blankness of the air in
winter.
I remember my first kiss with my wife in her car while Echo
and the Bunnymen’s “Lips like Sugar” played.
I remember my piano teacher telling me that I’d never be
able to play Beethoven’s “Pathetique.”
I remember my daughter’s first word was “good” and how I
thought she sounded like a happy toad.
I remember when a friend told me that there are more
outcomes from shuffling a deck of cards than there are
stars in the universe. And every time I remember this fact
I am giddy with awe.
I remember the first time I ate a pawpaw and how it tasted
like a banana and filled my mouth like a custard.
I remember taking dance lessons at Arthur Murray's. I
remember my partner’s full-teeth smile and how she smelled
of Dove soap and strawberries. I remember being extremely
aware of my Adam’s apple whenever I placed my hand on her
hip. I remember thinking how this must be what laughter
feels like when it flies.
I remember the first song I learned to play on the guitar
was “Every Rose has its Thorn” by Poison.
I remember going blind after a night of drinking absinthe.
I remember the dark echoing like cobblestone and the taste
of licorice that lasted for days.
I remember when I was 12 and a group of friends and I
chased each other in an open field as we shot of Roman
candles. How we didn’t manage to burn one another or start
a fire, I’m still not sure.
I remember the first time I noticed my daughter had my
father’s smile. I remember it was five years after he
passed. I remember thinking that perhaps this life still
had gifts it was willing to give.
Further More / Joy Johnson
Far be it from me to even try to reinforce or
Underscore how positively different civilisation, how
Remote and removed from now-ness, it must become
To hold any promise for continuation, perpetuation of
Humanity and a biosphere humans could still call home.
Either we leap or we die, taking great swaths of our
Reality with us. Or tomorrow I'll wake up and,
Moribund, nothing will have changed . . . for
One more day of steady march to obliteration.
Regretfully all the days of my life have been
Exactly that: lame-duck me limping to dying.
Impatience / Nicoletta LaMarca-Sacco
When are we getting there? Why the delay? What’s going on here? How could we have gotten our wires crossed? Who made the original phone call? Where the hell is my order? Ugh…
CLOSER TO HAPPY / H.T. Reynolds
a poem is a prism
unfolding flashes
with the precision
of a stonemason
bruising light
into form
shaping it like
silk bars spun
into a chrysalis—
a womb,
a wrapped cradle
hiding the dripping
sink, an overflowing
answering machine
pulsing its red dot
against bare walls
stripped of portraits
hung up like gravestones
a poem is a prison—
each cell
an air sac in my lungs
inflating
Glued Together / Gabriel Phillips
Mixing us
with wallpaper patterns.
That you’d waited for no
other reason. Than the scalpel
of release. Waiting
100,000 times a second,
a heart that blinks. Then sometimes
needs reminding. I’d be
by your side should your side
be beside me. If only
I were more sideways.
I mimic the zebra,
the white piano. Hooves
scaling the walls, the
best spot to echo
beside paintings of you sleeping.
A calm abduction of your time.
Two things can be unrelated.
And the mice
holding hands
facing one another
dying in separate mouse traps.
So the only thing you listen to
would be the sound of your own reflection.
