Category: Poetry

Jennifer Mace

I am writing to tell you

that the apple blossoms have opened

and, for a moment, made clouds

out of the trees. rain has swept

the cherry’s petals 

into great muddy drifts

where they will linger, for now,

in a deficit of brooms—or rather

of hands and arms to sweep them.

 

we are become molluscs, in a way,

curled up soft and moist

within our shells. sound

reverberates a little differently

through homes turned castles;

I press my cheek against the wall

when the twins cry, learn to recognize

their parents’ footsteps.

a world away. connected.

 

I try to think of us as coral.

the city, that is—a thing

of shell and rebar, concrete,

glass and grass and promises.

even as polyps retreat

against the coming storm,

we breathe and breathe and

breathe. creatures, for once,

made flesh; and in that, unified.

 

but you have to understand:

 

I try to think of us as coral

because the alternative

is to wake in the night

as red blood cells, as marrow,

as the dna-test scrapings

off the inside of a crime scene

while the skeleton of Seattle

struggles on without us—because

if there is anything to learn

from the rot and rent of centuries,

it is that even bones can crumble,

given time.

 

fear is a nebulous companion.

I did not invite it in. and yet

we are none of us hermetic, none

immutable under strain. I fear

this is a chrysalis. I fear

what might emerge. I fear

more than anything

that it will not

be enough.

I fear

 

that the deaths

and the wounded

will dissipate

from our memory

as atrocity so

often does, and

leave us frozen

by a future we

cannot prevent.

 

I fear it will

happen again.

 

but I

am not

my fear.

 

I will not be my fear.

 

and so:

 

I am writing to tell you that

today, I saw a robin. it clung

to the corner of the sidewalk

and pecked at leaf mulch

caught in the unswept gutter.

worms, I would imagine, had emerged

after the rain, and the bird,

appropriately, would eat its fill.

 

today, the sky was blue and chill

over the white and pink of flowers,

and the streets, new-washed, stood empty

as at dawn.

 

in the quarrelling gulls and crow mobs

where our footsteps used to tread,

I must see courage: I must take of this

a caring, a patience, a love

for one another, in this organism city,

that faces the gaping unknown future

& says: together. we will wait, and watch,

and see what comes, and tomorrow, perhaps,

the maple may bud, and perhaps

we will see it

with you.

Hope Joseph

When I was younger,

say twelve or thirteen.

 

I asked my preacher Dad

“How does God sound when he speaks to a mortal man like you?”

 

He said “Try to talk with water in your mouth,

multiply the rumble you make by infinity.

 

Try to read a message of inverted alphabets

arranged backwards and italized like birds standing on a rope.

 

Imagine the mighty sound of mega large trumpets or a line of horning cars,

a falling bridge, the squash sound as you step on a fat Roach.

 

As clear as mystery, his voice is the loudest

silence you can ever hear.”

 

It’s been ten years since then.

More bridges has collapsed.

 

And more cars are horning than ever

with the drivers more keen on moving in random.

 

Our troubles are multipled by infinity.

 

People have an inverted reasons for doing things that isn’t right.

What a vile scene!

 

Last night rain made the reception bad,

my brother from the other end of the phone sounds like someone

 

whose head was under water

with mouth full of water.

 

The rumbling noise everywhere—

What is God saying?

D. Dina Friedman

Already, the sunlight is shrinking like an old shirt

that barely covers the belly, even while it glows

gilding the dried up cattails, the snapped branches

that pierce the cloudless sky like a severed bone.

 

Only smudges of light left on the slick leaves

languishing in icy mud, and on the rushing squirrels,

newly fattened for their long, incredible fast.

Fewer acorns endure under the detritus

 

to trip our balance. The sky is less blue,

the slippery light distant, when it isn’t daring us

with glare. All the garden vegetables remaining

taste like old, cold dirt.

 

Soon my jaw will forget how to release from its clench

against the elements, and soon we’ll crave the elements,

predictable days of final growth—the hardening

stems racing to ripen before turning to rot.

 

The air will sizzle, and some far away bed

of ice will implode, or simply drip. Death

by a thousand small cuts. But tonight, like every night,

the sun will set in its predictable pattern, cutting off

 

another sliver of our lives. And we might crawl

into bed with a cup of tea, a fantasy

story while fat squirrels scutter up snags

of what once upon a time were trees.

Jennifer Mace

come, sit on the mountain, and

watch us speak to the stars.

 

their language is

morse code and phasic shifts;

we paint in roads and villages

and the hum of high-voltage

transformers, we murmur

in street lamps and stadiums

and the ill-mannered leak

of a window.

 

like shouting through high wind,

we are veiled

by clouds and magnetic storms and

the jealous glare of our sun

 

but the earth is

a glimmering bauble, and

our hands will bedeck her

with light.

Ashley Bao

bleach blonde was the look of the summer: 

colorless skeleton of polyps and aging fish spines.

rocks smoothly slate gray as salt water

grinds it down; it had no algal coat to protect and

nourish, no obsidian shelled mussels hanging off

the edges, beating themselves to the rhythm of the tide.

 

the moon rises and so the tide flows, warming waves

crashed, blue hypoxic seafoam gurgled a last 

lament. when the seagull cried out for the last time,

it took the flock with it. once upon a time,

if you cupped blue with spread out fingers, either sky

or sea, you could observe life teeming in between your knuckles.

 

you can’t help but paint old histories in pink watercolors:

take the brush, cover the blemishes, brighten the hues,

you don’t know what parts are real and which parts you wish were.

 

a truth: bleach blonde did not stay after summer. girls found their hair

was too crackly, brittle from constant treatment. we started

thinking maroon silk was better than sulphureous wires stuck

to scalps with elmer’s glue. life breeds life, their hair was already dead

but the reef still clung like a damsel in distress. if it was rapunzel,

it would’ve let down its hair for anyone, if only they’d climb the tower.

 

you replant a polyp, a seedling you nurtured to life, it is its

time to fledge. you lace your fingers together and

cautiously peer into the snowglobe you have shaken back to life:

 

tangs so bright they turn chartreuse

at noon, cinnabar anemones with squirming tentacles,

emerald seagrass plush to the touch. tilt your head, 

and see the terns circling, wide white wings casting shade

as a warning. they are the most polite predators

 

you think you have ever seen; when smog clogged 

city streets and winter air turned tepid, we sent

no heads-up: perhaps this might be your last century;

best prepare your trembling lungs, your hummingbird hearts, bleached

platinum is our new gold. painting the color back into

coral’s white skeleton is our apology. we try so the message we 

never sent will not come 

true.

Catherine Rockwood

We are sorry for the way this will arrive,

damp and damagesome. No doubt

the peculiar constitutions of our nations,

catastrophically susceptible to each other,

account for the long gap in correspondence

though here we find no record of any sort

to suggest a former, well-established channel.

That is, however, the way of our state;

we operate, as you can see, impromptu,

with agents very liable to defect.

Many have lived for a long time among you,

on a favorite shirt or as a way of thought

that landed on you suddenly and stayed.

 

Staying, as we hear, is something rare

within your fissured borders. Much tips out,

much topples. Much is built and clutches up

from treble-bound foundations, tenoned, splitting.

In your case, pride defers, takes second place

to the almighty fall. And how you love it!

The moment brickwork tears like rotten curtains;

the sound of earth exhaling after thunder

as brightness rushes back over downed walls.

For generations we’ve exploited this,

have learned both how to enter and to cling

to what you’re always opening. We stuck

and slurred your symmetries. It was enough.

 

But recent changes, so oppressive for

both you and us, have forced this Embassy

to use newfangledness. To be overt.

We’ll spell it in black mold, with feeling: PLEASE,

please tell us what would tempt you. Gasoline?

Redcurrant jam? A shattered whisky fifth,

muddled with builder’s earth? Take them. Take these.

Make it official; all we have, we’ll share.

Unerring knowledge of the passage through

is given us, which we will give to you

for love, and just one fractured future sight

of years to come. Friends, what we’re saying is,

please tell us everything we shouldn’t know.

Maya Chhabra

My fiancée’s aunt takes us to look for owls.

We wear ice cleats. New family, new ways,

but I’m an indoor cat (cats are another thing

I’ve had to learn). I am new at this, new

as the ring on my finger, but my love

puts on earmuffs and glows in the full moon.

I pull up my hood. We stand in a circle

and strain for owl calls. Who-cooks-for-you?

Who-cooks-for-you? my new aunt calls, but no,

no owls come. Stillness. I hear the highway

and people shifting their weight, the ice cracking.

I’m an indoor cat, bundled up, impatient, but

I won’t ruin this pristine moment, not with

my love standing eager in the pale light.

I brace myself for a long and frozen watch.

 

But the wind dies down and the quiet trees

shield us as best they can. In my borrowed boots,

I stamp up and downhill, crushing crystals,

making the path safe. The night dilates our eyes.

as we wait in the cold, in the bright forest hush,

standing next to each other, facing out.

No owls come. And after all, it’s not so terrible.

Christy Jones

maybe ground is meant to ripple

and sag like skin showing

 

her age. the wisdom

of roots aching to surface

 

maybe we’re meant to stumble

and break blades made for vain

 

manicuring to steep amazement

in unpredictable growth

 

you downed nana cottonwood onto

teenaged limbs, too young

 

to hold weighted life, a shock

of white, stripped bark and sodden

 

leaves. the birds stand on it all, ever

resilient, flexible. these will be new

 

nests. there is no pride here, only

adjustment, as there always is

 

when the flightless impose

their ground on the sky