“No Need to Knock”
I.Imagine dark woods and all the starssnuffed out. Imagine you, alone on the road,following a seam of restless thought. Where will this lead?No moon. No coat. Icicle bones.Not lost, exactly, though some might sayyou’ve taken all wrong turns. Right and wrong are heavystones you droppedin a blue rain barrelback in your hometown, at the old house,watched the wrung skyslosh over the edges. You, too,have edges, havebrimmed with troubled water,have weighed those stonesin your gut. Not another soulon the road tonight.II.Tug of porch lightahead. Ease closer till you smell woodsmoke, cinnamon and cloves, spya cottage, a window, a room full of womenwith steaming mugs […]
“Cephalanthera austiniae”
First Place Poet, “Road Not Taken” ContestQuiet trumpet of moonlight, soft gramophone of forest sun. Snow orchid. Phantom bloom. Ghost of a flower, no chlorophyll to green you. We lean in to smell your smell. Surprise: vanilla, like your common cousin. If wonder had a face, a name, would it be your petals that aren’t petals, but bracts, sheer and shimmery, even under fir trees’ shade. Lobed labellum. Yellow tongue. When a friend leads us to your growing place, we don’t know what we expected. Not this: someone’s backyard fence edging a trail of city greenery, your white flames in […]
“Take me back to her tomato-faced shriek”
First Place Poet, “Road Not Taken” Contestvernix-smeared kick take me back to the sear of severing my thighs quivering harnessed wide apart like two mountains two ranges two tectonic plates diverging spewing magma take me to her round red gasp blood-streaked rage whisked away to a first feast of sugar water in a bottle and not-my-breast but how could I complain my body volcanic my womb a hurricane my brain a wildfire my limbs a flood this was an act of body charged give me that lightning again I’d save the placenta this time an island oasis I grew for […]
“Lightwork”
LIGHTWORK I didn’t know until after Grandma died that daisies were her favorite flower. Daisies on her coffin. Daisies in the pallbearers’ boutonnieres. Daisies arranged with Hershey kisses, another of her favorites.Daisies belong to the Asteraceae or sunflower family. What looks like a single flower at the end of a stem is actually manifold individual flowers, sometimes ray flowers, sometimes disc flowers, sometimes both. Asteraceae, I learn, is the largest plant family in the world. There are so many varieties, Grandma — Oxeye, English, Subalpine, Arctic, Blue — which one, in particular, or is the answer: all of them? Grandma’s Daisy FloretsMANY […]
“Our Lady of Cancellation / Consolation”
Another mandate to shelter in place. I will have to call Mom, un-invite her to come to the Thanksgiving feast we’d planned. No key lime for Kim, no sleepover, no hotel pool. How could I forgive myself, Lady of Lonely Holidays, if I were the cause of her falling ill? Her cancer-battled body, her oxygen tanks and inhalers. O Lady, give me guilt. Give me guts. I texted her weeks ago about the 20-something friends — Nerem and Norem — their 36-hour hug that broke the Guinness World Record. Let’s do this, I said. Okay, she said. We were going […]
