Posts for June 29, 2024

Category

Poem

Saturday

I’ll hold late June
on my tongue,
flee mid-shift from work
to find you waiting,
and pass the evening
in perfect company.

Today, let’s find meaning
in the frivolous.

Order in,
search for the nameless song
that lives on repeat
from our upstairs neighbors
and come back empty-handed.

Find that there’s enough daylight
to last a lifetime,
so today won’t be the first nap
I’ll say no to.

Struggle to make our attention
span long enough to finish
the book we’ve had a month to read
but have waited until the last moment
to commit to.

Spin sugar cookies from scratch,
whiskless and clumsy,
knead the dough by hand,
pull them hot from the oven,
crystalline mistakes that are a beauty
to behold (though maybe not to taste)
and swear that next time
we’ll make them right.

The calendar always looks so blank
from a distance.

Katrina Rolfsen

Category

Poem

6/29/24

Memory Wipe

Parse old things to dec-
ide which memories deserve
to be forgotten

K. Nicole Wilson

Category

Poem

6/29/24

Silly Cakes

i.

poet writes:

in the eight
o’clock hour
we will flower.

ii.

baker doesn’t:

in the ate
o’clock hour
we will flour.

Jennifer Burchett

Category

Poem

6/29/24

Losses and Gains

graduations
weddings
lives
concerts
live theatre
dinner inside a restaurant
more lives
squeezing avocadoes
daycare
smelling canteloupes
in-person learning
going to the office
movies in cinemas
meeting for coffee
still more lives

pulse oximeters
snow day attitudes
sore butt, worn couch cushions
thermometer checks
zooms
birding
banana bread
curbside takeout
telehealth
nti
zoom happy hour
kroger clicklist
pajama pants with dress shirts
sourdough
more frickin’ zooms

Christina Joy

Category

Poem

6/29/24

worry stones

My worries are stones, falling from

lips

*so much better that & there,

than via tear ducts

– the catharsis only coming

with painful expulsion & petechiae aftermath*

Yes worries are stones, tipped and tumbling

out of mouth. The newest ones, jagged

as freshly chipped teeth, force cautious

clear enunciation

to avoid splitting skin you’ve so recently kissed.

Some though, tempest-tossed so long inside me
arrive smoothed as sea-glass;
as the palm-stones in pocket

I carry for… comfort? for routine? and this: the

routine that is

how it is

to love me – you accept

the stones will always be, always come. You

help me catch them; you remind me

they can fall away.

And when all my capabilities collapse

to holding one aloft – seeking

whatever light
that can shine through? You stay.

T.C. Phillips

Category

Poem

6/29/24

butterfly effect

the day before setting the timer
on the detonator
he remembered the last time
he really, truly felt normal
and the joy and despair of knowing
that this would be the very last time
getting to enjoy this
to enjoy anything at all
to be loved unconditionally
and the thought of losing that happiness
his family
was enough to push him to the edge of
sanity

so even if the details are removed here
please understand how
these kind of things can change a man
into a shell or a husk of his former self
who has reached a point beyond reproach or help
and given the choice between build and destroy
he chose to create a bomb
and spray his shrapnel on everyone as a form of
Revenge
and when it inevitably explodes, wounding and
maiming foes, rivals, family and friends
in the aftermath asking where should it end
and this is the point in the poem where i would
include something positive or uplifting
if i could
but the pain was too great to ignore
and so
he set the the bomb down on the floor
in his empty house he closed the door
wrote BISD on the top of the page
slid it under the door and pressed detonate

when the police came they found his note
and even though the words he wrote
explained the pain that he was in
the pain they thought he’d spread to them
contained to the thoughts he had in his brain
where he specifically said in his letter
that he spared them the pain
of being a lost loved one and being the next
link in a chain of the butterfly effect
and the last letters he wrote at the top of the page
“before i self destruct”-a self-contained rage

In hindsight, this was a day of self-reckoning
Where if you change one thing,

You change

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Amy Le Ann Richardson

Category

Poem

6/29/24

Wield

Thunder like a bomb
rides clouds into this dark day —
cracks open the sky.

Emily Withenbury

Category

Poem

6/29/24

The Mess & The Miles

Forty like you mean it!

And I do. The last six weeks, a whirlwind
tour of love. On the road & back again so many
times. I have seen
so many people, a weaving

together of all these parts of myself,
in ways both healing &
affirming. I would not be
the person I am today without every minute
of the last forty years. This milestone

a celebration of the threads,
long, tangled & multi-colored,

that connect me to each of you.

Let’s sit together this time,
                                                 in space
& say
        “so, who are we now?” The answer,
invariably both everything & ever-changing,

like a poem.
To be known through grief & loss,

that constant evolution of self, is to be
truly known. When I lost my mom,

my step-mom, when I ended
my long-term partnership, closed off

a new & deeply profound love—all this alongside
the joys. Yes, always too the joys.
The stitch of grief

runs deep, just like all my relationships do—
scattered now in space & time.

So, happy birthday to me. But, really, to you
for making it all the more meaningful,
mile-filled, & messy!

—dedicated, with love, to all my friends & family who have made the last few weeks (and years) so sweet—