hover, gown, place, hidden, blatant, stone, howling, force, beneath, area, cringe, famous
I hover.
I gown my hovering in the usual soft platitudes we learn from who knows where, no
special place, from which I drag across my lips “Well, what I would do,” thinking my dark
inhibiting motives remain hidden. Nevertheless, I know this. I hover. When
my daughter jumps across a yowling breach, blatant liberation in her posture, I
like a stone stand smiling beside her, but my insides writhe in silent
howling screams, an echo of the earthworm she plucked with delicate fingers and
adopted with a child’s gracious force for her own. I stand above, she
plays beneath. The earthworm contemplates life in her soft palm. Such a small
area, perhaps, yet a furnace of joy in the afternoon. I could tell her. That I would wrap myself in
her curled fingers just to see her cringe at such ridiculous notions. But
daughters are famous for waving away mothers, and I’m not sure I’d survive the fall
—Sara Fall
I, platitudes, drag, motives, yowling, silent, plucked, stand, palm, furnace, curled, survive
A Room Full of Naked People
I forego
platitudes, banalities, and clichés
lest these awful things drag my energy down.
Keep your motives veiled. Look through their eyes,
into their souls, projecting confidently. Abscond from yowling
your silent, inner pain, as they are here
to be plucked like harp strings.
Stand relaxed,
each palm at your sides, warm from
the furnace of your adrenaline.
Still mentally curled up in a ball, not sure if you
will survive this public shaming? No one does.
—John Rickmon
forego, banalities, energy, your, projecting, inner, harp, relaxed, warm, adrenaline, sure, public
It’s difficult to forego in Fargo.
Banalities like soap
sap your energy.
But admit your opulence.
Even projecting yourself as a future stranger
plucks your inner
harp golden.
Relaxed as a cat on a counter top
as each warm image beyond the cold window
is coated in adrenaline.
Sure, it’s not
public rage; its more sinister.
—Frank Montesonti
Fargo, soap, sap, opulence, stranger, plucks, golden, cat, as, coated, not, sinister
I spot Jesus in a field outside Fargo,
the clean scent of soap and the brown face
of a sunflower, sap from the broken stalk
running down my arm, opulence dripping
from my elbow. A wind turbine, no stranger
to the Trinity, turns overhead. My sister plucks
golden petals from His crown while the sun
winks like the eye of a cat hidden in the cool
darkness under the porch, as quiet as the clouds
floating by. We’re coated in the buzz of summer
the way bees are in pollen. There’s not anything
sinister in the linking of Son, sun, and sister.
—Gwendolyn Hart
spot, face, stalk, running, wind, turns, crown, eye, darkness, floating, bees, linking
Rondeau to Make you go Crazy
Spot the crown that makes the linking, you must be mad!
The fierce, the farce, the jinking orange face
Stalk the halls with a sense of fear and lack of grace.
Running schemes, running numbers, running from history
Makes kooky statements about the wind, a constant mystery.
Then it’s Miss Teen USA’s turn to get to first base!
Spot the crown that makes the linking.
But in that eye that’s marking Russians unclad,
In the darkness of his soul’s dark place
Leaves a nation floating face-down at a fibber’s yacht race
Or stung to death by blighted bees from Leningrad
Spot the crown that makes the linking.
—Marc Janssen
mad, fierce, grace, schemes, kooky, base, spot, marking, place, race, stung, makes
Now I’ve started using them, I’m mad for shampoo bars
sold by fierce urban farmers in Ohio, New York, Florida.
Each small buff brick in my hand, handcut, feels like grace,
a kind of manna. Oh, I purl my schemes! Kombucha, sourdough,
quilts, bees. These can’t be just kooky white-lady things,
but the base of the coming day. Eggs, scraps, seeds, castings.
Can you spot the red-tailed hawk circling the cloverleaf, circling
supercommuters––her marking the sky, their marking time?
Let’s sift the old languages for alternate pronouns: there’s no place
now for the singular. Hot currents race beneath our barred wings.
A bee fails, and we are stung, feeling the system error in our antennae.
We rub the scent of lavender into our roots, and this makes our knitted need.
—Erin Redfern
bars, Florida, hand, manna, white, scraps, hawk, time, sift, now, antennae, need
42 scorpions in glass jars from Bangkok bars
Five five-gallon buckets of sunshine from Florida
The small hand on the faceless clock
A mouthful of manna mixed with mulberry
Two white doves with one black spot
Six scraps of silver from the sunken titanic
Three toenails from a hawk (human or bird alike)
Father time and his rocking chair
Sift through ashes in Salem for a sprinkle of burnt dirt
Now, the second to the last ingredient is;
a weevil’s stomach containing a snakefly antennae. Last thing to kill Cthulhu the Collector will
Need is; 42…
—Gwen Lack
glass, sunshine, clock, mulberry, spot, sunken, bird, rocking, sprinkle, ingredient, to, is
Glass-ity gloss-ity glow (she hummed)
There’s sunshine on the go,
The clock strikes one and away we—
“Make me a mulberry pie, woman!” the husband shouted,
“And spickety-spot! No dilly-dallying!”
Oh, my spirits are quite sunken,
Each bird is free, while trapped is me, on account of this durndest—
“Can’t you see I’m hungry!” he said, rocking her rolling pin with ire,
“Now sprinkle out that flour like I’ve seen you do!” he rumbled at her.
She tumbled ingredient after ingredient onto the floor.
“You do it!” she called to him over her shoulder as she headed for her coat and hat.
Glorious are the disobedient, my exit is expedient.
—Noelle Catharine Allen
glow, go, away, husband, dallying, spirits, trapped, hungry, rumble, tumble, hat, expedient
Nostalgia. Much later, a faint glow on the air, you returned to yourself.
You'd go
And come for months, never going away
Husband to your own absence
Dallying in the place you once existed
A spirit, although you still lived
Trapped, and free
Absent, but hungry. disembodied,
But your stomach rumbled. And it went on like this, impossibly,
a tumble
With nothingness, half life in an imaginary hat
Without a plan, as if it could not be
Otherwise, expedient to a mission that never began.
—Richard Cronshey
nostalgia, returned, going, absence, existed, lived, free, disembodied, impossibly, nothingness, half, otherwise
Nostalgia for the singular way,
once dreamed and twice returned for a moment.
We find ourselves simply going, moving into the province of something unforeseen, a presence,
or an absence.
As if we existed only for that interlude of expression, that potential discovery, we struggled to advance.
Like drifters, we lived in a wandering state of mind,
free either to glance back at the previous life, or to move forward,
disembodied, perhaps,
impossibly delighted by chance,
beyond nothingness,
half the wisdom of our finest elders, following us with care.
We continue by looking forward, happily, as if otherwise engaged.
—Allison Palmer
singular, dreamed, presence, or, interlude, mind, previous, perhaps, chance, beyond, wisdom, continue