Poetry | June 2023

On Writing Poetry

To bring something of value out of the dark
is a good and terrible, exacting work.
—Christopher Porpora

Daughter

If you wish to clip her wings,
deprive her of her restless joy,
then you should want the kind of things
that leave a girl like her destroyed.
But if you toss her to the air,
for all the world to see in flight,
you will have found the strength to share
with all the world your heart’s delight.
—John Duvall

Dust

The government was handing out 160-acre parcels.
Determined, Samuel insisted we head west after hearing a real estate agent brag on the guarantee of the rain following the plow. By pushing the farrowed soil deep, moisture was created. It was a scientific fact.

We hoarded every precious penny for a fresh start.

Plenty of land was just waitin’ to be conquered with dig and seed. One of those Oklahoma plots had his name right on it.
His name

My husband often opined how the vast expanse of grain took on a purple hue at dawn. That’s the closest that man ever came to being poetic.
About wheat!

I birthed babies.
Four died at childbirth.
Franny made it to five before the consumption took her.
Nearly killed me, burying my little ones.
The ground demanded everything, even the entombment of hope.

All this was the before times, not the after.

Then came hell on earth.
The heavens did not, would not, offer one drop of rain.
Samuel took to staring at cloud patterns, citing to no one, except maybe the emaciated horse, that he was sure that the vault of heaven was just about to open.

During a two-day dust storm, the barn disintegrated as it was plummeted by the tempest.
Millions of pounds of earth we had so toiled upon blew from our aspirations to as far away as Chicago.

Then like the tale of Job, our suffering only increased.

The earth heaved and thrashed.
I could not see my husband, though we stood only feet apart.
An enduring hunger left us empty with longing.

Samuel put salt on his boot and shoved it greedily into his parched mouth.
They killed him, those farm shoes.

Dirt coursed through the papers ma had sent me. As I read those recipes, my fingers traced aside the fine particles of blowing turmoil, imagining satisfying tastes like that of a baked potato.
I ate them papers, chewing them slowly.

Uselessly I worked my broom in a dreamish frenzy, resolved to conquer the warrior terrain. Finally, one corner of the house was left standing, along with a chair, my broom, and the good book.

The land was as barren as I was.
From dust, we all return.

—Lucinda Abra

Clocks

As the windows
of the house

tell me the
time of day

in light

her vase set
on the dining
room table

tells me the
time of
season

in flower

—Ryan Brennan

Necessary Things

She said, if you need
a glass in a corner,
then I’m your girl,

the one waiting for you
under the bright cup
of wind bending

around the moon’s wrist,
braceleting the moon
as you bracelet me,

filling and filling
the cup, the glass, me
and all that I hold.

—Robert Harlow

Blue Sky
for Sylvie Degiez Lopes

Walk the mountain
Everyday
Blue Sky
New snow
On branches
Don’t have to go
We stay
Life happens
Everything is
Surprise
—Stacy Fine-Hager

To the Eyes Drawn by Piper Levine

These eyes have sipped the light out of the moon.
These eyes have chosen an eye shadow the color of dawn.
These eyes have answered the thousand tiny eyes of the birds singing the dawn chorus
with a silence never before heard by the birds or by anyone else,
a silence learned on the dark side of the moon,
where silence has been preserved across the unbroken eons of time,
where one word spoken aloud would be an earthquake.
Two, forget about it.
Two words like, Hi Mom
Or three like, See you later.

It’s true, these eyes have never spoken a word, but they are not silent.
They make a sound like the molten core of the earth boiling but muffled beneath our feet,
A sound like sunlight ping ponging through the atmosphere to give us a blue sky,
A sound like our minds in that rare moment we don’t know what to say next.
Then we do.
We say, Quit staring, please, it’s not polite.

These eyes are too large, they know too much, they’ve seen everything we do:
Our first kiss & our last, our weddings & divorces, our forgotten passwords,
Our cross-eyed lives that haven’t turned out as we planned.
Maybe you’ve seen these eyes in cartoons or on marble statues,
But you haven’t. These eyes are unique.
Angry, intrepid, unblinking.
They won’t stop until the sun burns out.
& they can finally see everything in darkness.
Then they’ll be free to find a new home in the universe.

—Will Nixon

Lent in Late Capitalism

I’ve gone and sold the space between my cortex and my skull,
the tulips in my garden—and my soul is damned to hell—
the marrow from my tibia, the gate guarding my grass.
Heaven help, me even pawned a portion of my ass!
The dust out of my wallet, for I’ll forfeit every speck
and donate to Him tendons where my body intersects.
And even though I’m married, I’ll abstain from having sex!
I haven’t had the time for much except the holy text.
But if it pleases God to watch me give him even more,
I’ll fast for forty days and nights as Jesus did before,
and once I’ve went and bartered with the devil on my own,
then God will surely help repay the interest on my loan.
—Matt Moment

While I Meditate I Write This Haiku

the insides of my
   hips trembling
                    where you said you
wanted to kiss them

—chelsea rae

You Know

This is about, you know, those times
you’re listening to the, you know, radio
and someone is being interviewed who,

you know, says “you know” so often
during the interview, you know, you start
noticing it and, you know, you get so

distracted by it you start, you know,
counting the “you knows” and, you know,
you have no idea what they’re saying

because, you know, it’s become all about,
you know, how often they say “you know,”
and, well, you know, you know what I mean.

—Matthew J. Spireng

Spring break. I crack open the window for fresh air.
Facing the north. Wind carries off all the tears.
Butterflies on a limb. Gathering for a photo shoot.

—Frances Greenhut

Quarry

Magnificent hungry mouths
to feed. The prey
and ours, two parents,
five daughters.
I think of nature
roasted and stewed.
My father used red nail polish
to paint the sights of his rifles.
Their gunstocks he spent hours
checkering, the grip and forearm,
with cutters and fine files.
He would finish the stocks
with linseed oil and wax.
I was a kid. All I knew was
this was his craft and he loved
deer hunting.

—Cathryn Shea

Correction

My friend Ralph
always complains
about life’s routine

vexation.
“It never ends,”
he whines.

But he’s wrong.
It does.
It ends.

—George J. Searles

I Don’t Know How Many Times

I Have to Tell You I Don’t Want Kids
now that i am older
i feel the emptiness brewing
at the soft, fleshy bit below
my navel and -
it does not bother me.
i think i prefer
the heat and dew
that travel south
for pure recreation
rather than a chance
at motherhood.

—Fiona Emmi

Pleasure

Like good sex,
poetry should not
have to be explained,
just enjoyed.

—Thomas Bonville