Posts for June 13, 2024 (page 8)

Roberta Schultz

Category

Poem

6/13/24

Buggy

Make it up from scratch.
That mosquito bite called life
itches to persist.

Goldie

Category

Poem

6/13/24

The reason I won’t wear shorts anymore

I’d never be Lorca.

I wasn’t that sensual.

Maybe they’d hang me

in Franco’s Spain still, just

for humming a Brecht song or

something or arguing

I was a butterfly, too. A

butterfly and a human and also a

Jew somehow, god willing. Now, say, the most

sensuous I could become was

brushing off ants from ticklish shins

while roasting a bone on the stoop of a bourgeois

running shoe depot, handing out samples, saying,

with less than a restive twitch of the eye kicked

in, like Milton’s Satan wills it, pressing

his breast to the snowblind firmament

forged from the dross and dandruff of deepening

dreams that all of this birdsong shoals

and the stocks fold up into mollusk-stuffed jelly rolls,

saying, in stricken, astringent smoke

of some bone sucked into a dervishing silkworm, Hey

there, buddy, you got a light?

which spurs the sun

to redouble in blushing

beneficence, licking

my shins raw

—though I might notice it now and again

and again, a few square surds squeezed

out of my blistering ears and rolled

down ash-doused freckles and

flagstones, cheeks, slipped under the

itchy and splintered saloon-door teeth,

through the moorfowl dabbling

grumbly grubs from gums, to scud

across spit-slick surf and, clumsily

tucking their tails in, rolling the oily

mole-tacked flesh back over circuitous sinew,

shoulder some cumbrous tongue

like a scab-sopped-sponge scrunched swaddling

alice blue pinafore pancake batter, injera, or

pregnant soap-scum, trying,

and know, for the life of me, trying

to milk from that last rasped acned crackle of ash

just smashed with a sole across sinewy concrete

anything, anything scarcely dissembling

some frank feeling my half-breeched shins had

gleaned from a kidney-stoned heath of Floridian

coral and matcha-whisked salt-lick,

bristling grass blades cast all

silvery slate by a storm-choked star and the

sprite-slight jadeite burs blown plumper than

blackberries throttling nattering bramble,

urchins disturbed and everted to coddle and claw up

most any old spindly shin thrust forward, gayly

awaiting the rain and counting aloud all the countless

grass blades maybe

a nervous mind might cud

to contentiously orgying

factions of halberds and

scabbards.

Category

Poem

6/13/24

Expectations

An unblemished white frame,

clean lines, surround your portrait,

all pure and bright and soft—

floral tablecloth, gold mirror,

cream chandelier, blond waves,

pearl ruffles cascading to form

the skirt of your wedding dress,

and in the gentle pink of your hand,

the black spot of a pistol.

Such a dark thing seems out of place

in such a woman’s hand on such a day.

It should be in a classroom,

the customary home for tragedies—

no need for a special occasion.

The Sandy Hook survivors plead

for an end to thoughts and prayers.

Thankfully, I can no longer offer either.

I click through images of dead children,

dry-eyed, but for the ones entrusted

to me, I still memorize the exits,

the hiding places, the barricade materials,

preparing for the day when I will shield

other people’s children.

Other people’s children

who will be shot for the not-a-crime

of having guns, except they are not guns,

but cell phones, hammers, drivers’ licenses.

My gentlemen laugh freely in the halls,

unpunished for uncommitted acts.

Meanwhile, in the school board meeting:

These kids might have ankle monitors!

We need more school resource officers!

Can’t we deny them transportation?

White women, too, can shoot first

and ask questions later.

The difference is that no one

will check their hands for a gun.

Poem inspired by Lindsay McCrum’s portrait of Liz, San Jose. The description of her work states “biography, not advocacy… the only thing I shoot is a camera”. It also says that people will inevitably project onto portraits, especially those of women holding guns, which I wholeheartedly admit to doing here.

Ariana Alvarado

Category

Poem

6/13/24

Poem for Heather

You texted me today,

A link to an Olivia Rodrigo

song. Always think of you

when I hear this. I really hope

you’re doing well. I grew up

in your bedroom. I’m sure

you remember—playing

minecraft on your iPad at midnight,

felt tie blankets in your basement,

listening to Green Day and All

American Rejects. I remember.

Now you’re a sorority girl

and I’m a poet and somehow

these things are meaningful to us,

and out of the blue you text me

to say you think of me and you

hope I am well. I tell you

I am doing great, though that’s not

quite true, and I recall

our girlhood—the whispered

annoyances behind each other’s

backs—about what, I wouldn’t know—

taking sides in the first love, but

by then you were already gone,

weren’t you? And suddenly I’ve gone

from growing up in your bedroom

to grown up, so fast. You know

the clichés, but you remember,

I know, how this all began

in the winter of seventh grade,

writing songs and stories

about our dreams,

as if we had all the time

in the world ahead of us.

Maira Faisal

Category

Poem

6/13/24

Again

Bodies birth a nest of fibrous tissue for the linings to be shorn.

Glassfuls of ice chill espresso and milk for cups to house but a drop.

Canvases come alive with swirling color for flat hues to renew.

Carrie Elam Spillman

Category

Poem

6/13/24

Summer Eruption

The scent of honey suckle is thick
the sweetness in the air
paired with the late evening heat

intoxicates me

We are buzzing
Like the locust
Who made thier scheduled appearance

last time I heard them
I was barefoot and missing baby teeth
standing in the yard as my father pointed out

it would be seventeen years till they came back again

now here I am with you
older and far away from the place I first experienced the sound of summer erupting

I think about you
Drinking as we stand

I think about my father
all those years ago

he was drinking too

Katie Hassall

Category

Poem

6/13/24

Choices

Calm myself
or let anxiety fester?
be positive or
focus on the messy parts?
smile or
cry or
do both at the same time?
scream or
remain silent or
speak up creatively?
let someone else
affect me or put
on my armour?
put off what needs doing
or be productive?
be myself or
be who others want to see?
be strong
or stay weak?
educate myself
or remain uneducated?
stay quiet
or scream at the top of my lungs?
be patient
or jump the gun?
quit or
keep trying?

And if nothing works?
Keep making choices!

Jerielle

Category

Poem

6/13/24

Poems are like a Yard Sale

Poems are like a yard sale
Stretching down 400 miles of interstate
through quaint and crumbly grandeur

I place a pair of off white heels
next to a microwave
and a 30s magazine catches me up
and winds up several spools of my minutes

This giant bowl I set here for you
Your name is written all over it
and the stories this napkin holder has to tell
about particular conversations held long ago

I can almost see the tears, the hands that dried the plates
That pulled the beans
That repaired the fence
That hugged the children

I can’t help but hope you bring some of it home

and as I pick through each object
I silently pray I find myself
Crouching under a sun hat
in prickly heat
turning everything to dust

Leah Tenney

Category

Poem

6/13/24

kindred

i’m looking for the lichen that only grows
in the stillness between air and stone
one mind and another
delicate partnership
a gaze of knowing-
you too have both Suffered and Surrendered

given over
bent deep
by waves and storms that come standard with having a heartbeat in this world

yet, you too (I see it in the gloaming of your eyes)
have found the magic
that secret that makes us part of this nature, not just discontented tourists

given over
bent deep
with roots in rich soil
holding fast the ancient knowledge
that what decays today will be reborn tomorrow

always

ALWAYS

ALIVE
in some part of this garden

River Alsalihi

Category

Poem

6/13/24

nothing but

wipe chin with calendar page / slipping between sheets / planes /
let’s just lay here one more time
and if we don’t touch we won’t kill the hologram / just because
i’m over it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to me / every time i hear
that song / every time i have
that dream / boil myself down to the sweat on your arms /
reincarnate as July to watch my seventeenth / my best / birthday
from above / keep writing love letters / don’t track
the forks in the road / research desire / pray to want what you get /
not to get what you want /
the paper dolls
are ready for bed / go back to Saint
Louis / uninvest in “home”

Help us keep on giving.

Posts for June 13, 2024 (page 8)