Sunny Side Up (Alix)

Sunny Side Up

The sun shone too strong and too brightly

for me to walk through the town rightly.

So I finished my shopping,

and found myself dropping!

My dress was tied up much too tightly!

Around me there was so much chatter

The people asked what was the matter!

I said “Don’t you see

what’s the matter with me?

I’ve spilled all the milk for my batter!”

My milk had been spilt on the sidewalk

My eggs all mixed up with the chalk!

Their yolks were all running

Because of some sunning!

All due to a tightly wound frock!

Paradise, Awakening (Meghan)

Paradise,  Awakening

They shoot the white girl first.

I look for her—the white girl—

try to understand if her whiteness made her die

or if she stupidly stood in the live-fire hall

or if she’s first because she’s close.

I look for her because in Morrison’s world

I am the white girl, whether I like the girl or not.

She’s got some notion in her head

concerning the eternal rights of women.

Some. Notion. And I’m concerned because

these are my rights, but the boys before me

aren’t convinced.  Why should Edna

wake from a dream where wiggled fingers

are covered with rings, where homecoming

means chocolates in pretty boxes?

The girls seethe quietly until I let them roar.

Quiet.  Quiet.  There will be time to scream.

Now is the time to listen, read.

Now is the time to stare down reflections

in this distorted funhouse while the platform

shakes the floor.

If it all falls out, we’ll have to find a way

to stand.  If that white girl makes me

her human shield, if Edna plunges your head

into the bay, scrambles up your shoulders,

and tries to float on your flailing fat

we’ll have to find a way

to understand.

Would I Dare (Davina)

To be a tree
planted once,
not thrice, not rooted
unsteady across
two oceans;
to be a dandelion
unscattered,
a trail of crumbs
leading only one way?

To learn that
a house is home and
believe it,
or else

set my home inside

your heart, assuming

you will always

stay?
To have never
thought of empty chairs
and wept,

to have never - !

To climb no mountains,
to yearn for nothing and
for nobody—
would I?
Would I?

Invisible (Alix)

Invisible

Trip, skip over shoelaces destined to hang from telephone lines

dangling, banging in our wind-tunnel city.

What a waste is the mantra carried high on the breeze.

We’re wasting our lives and our soles.

Snickering, bickering we forge our adolescence through this adult world,

carelessly we plunge: irreverent and irrelevant.

Our bare feet beat, blister against the pavement,

charcoal roadways and sun-heated concrete.

We run and race, tracing painful veins through a town with us hot in its blood.

A miscreant plague rebelling against hypocrisy

really only trying so hard we’re dying to find where we fit in.

If you could walk in our strung-up shoes

down the tar capillaries of our neighborhoods

you would see why we’re wasting our time, wasting our souls

in an antiseptic adult world that doesn’t trust us or care about justice

that leaves our blisters drying in the summertime sunshine

trying to find more meaning than being stuffing for plywood boxes, close and toxic.

Nobody sees the times we bleed, the love we need in our ramshackle city.

We’re poison in the veins of this town and we’re to blame,

and as long as we’re young, confused, and alone

our bare feet will tear through the streets and beat out our lamentations.

Tell and Tell (Meghan)

Tell and Tell

We cannot ask for secrets; they will tell

their tales in dawn or twilight in their time--

calm captives with the keys to their own cells.

And furthermore we hold them close, like spells

which once misused might ruin the sublime.

We cannot ask for secrets. (They will tell

their monstrous history in images from Hell,

in seafoam shades of punishment and crime,

calm captives with the keys to their own cells.)

You’re drinking gin and tonics from the well

and thinking sin and phonics laced with lime:

(She hasn’t asked for secrets, but you’ll tell

the way your body floated on the swell

of drowning waves engorged with killing slime

and calmly captured keys to your own cell.)

And will your naked words in me impel

the catalytic honesty enzyme?

We cannot ask for secrets; they will tell—

Calm. Captive. Copying keys to their own cells.

Love (Alix)

Love

You led me to the pavement’s edge

where water sipped at grey sidewalks

and moonlight overflowed onto our feet.

You held the starlight in your eyes,

singing waves of love to me

to break like music in my ears.

We caught a breath of time between us

as eternity bathed the evening in light

suspending us in bright forever.

I went down to the pavement’s edge

where you slipped my hands into yours

our feet glittering on prism sidewalks.

I tried to see your starlight soul

shining tear-like on your cheeks

and feel a mighty ocean love,

but time exhaled to divide us,

eternity bled over the pavement

and I denied you my forever.

Making Home (Emmie)

I hated this placeholder for home
and its harsh, artless streets,
tainted but still bare and
uninspired.
I listened in alleys and on highways
but all I heard were empty reverberations,
not even in cacophony
but in stale dissonance.
For years I waited
to hear more than the same lifeless noise.

But with time this city forced
a new image for itself,
now bound with memories
and more sentiment than substance.
Years can turn even a wasteland
picturesque with strained glamour,
and Saturday afternoon drives
through smokey air and past fading, painted walls
become enough
to declare vandals poets
and discord harmony.

Encounter (Meghan)

Encounter

In delicate crochet from her vintage shop,

her long, straight hair parted down the middle,

doe eyes that looked up to recognize mine,

you were there.

She spoke to me, simple directions.

I smiled transparent ignorance: a lie.

And he, beside her, I barely knew

without the handlebar mustache, his arms

covered in color stronger than I remember, but

you were there.

How could he recall my shivering face

always shielded with your gloves?

If you walked through the door,

past the blades of my back

your fingers quickly memorized,

I’d want to know if I am still a muted palette,

a wheel of sophistication tinged with gray.

I’d want to ask if you’ve found the second in a million,

If you harvest parsnips and eat them straight

from the ground while she stands by and laughs,

carting carrots to rinse in the sink.

Her mind is matter.

Her body is bones.

Her love is simple addition.

You don’t admire, but you understand.

And I’m being carried from room to room,

valued like a view with indeterminate horizon:

a riddle you’d begun to unravel

when I still let others pull the strings.

She’ll tell you that she saw me,

though she’s sure I’ve traded soul for something else.

She didn’t see you in my bourbon neat,

didn’t know that

you were there.

Pilgrim (Alix)

Pilgrim

Wax sentinels dripping hope,

staining the alter wood

carved to catch each passing dream,

a dollar prayer whispered to the wind,

catching in a throat.

Renowned halls sending voices heavenward,

pleas leaving ripples in rafter dust.

Lives are buried here beneath the pews

tucked into crumbling pages

supported by ashen, worn spines

bound on different land; in different company.

Halls empty.

Cries ring hollow.

A shrouded woman bending rheumatoid knees

to take a last communion.

Empty hearts are insatiable,

questions without witnesses.

Lifetimes splintering on faith

honed by diamond-like righteousness.

Unshakable foundations crying out for repair,

while the wax marshal keeps time

burning generations’ cares into the alter,

dreams dissipating over dusted rafters

cries sent heavenward

people sent home.

Eclipse (Davina)

The human spent her childhood
in the early days of the moon,
holding hands and laughing through
the trees, spinning like young stars

on the ground until the moon awoke—
rising to take her place in the sky,
she slipped her growing hands from
the human girl's with faint regret.

So the human wandered into dawn
and met bold, bright, handsome Sol,
bursting with youth and impossibly
charming. They danced and played

for hours, like children just finding
their feet, and for a long while
she neglected twilight, though now
and again she stood and looked

at Luna, all grown up and lovely
and so far away. When Sol found
it was his time to leap into the sky,
the human knew to let him go,

but she tilted her head back and
talked; she would not lose a friend
again. Sol told the girl of all he saw,
the forests, rivers, endless oceans—

and one day he sighed, saying
I have found perfection. Lovely,
lovely Luna. How I wish . . .
But the human heard no more

for the sorrow drowning her ears.
That night she wrapped herself in
Luna's silent company, comforted

with the warm memory of laughter.

There were three words curling
on her tongue and she kept her teeth
shut. (Please don't—) Sol was
a charmer, she knew, and Luna

could not be long in noticing. One
morning she stayed up to meet him,
and at their hands' first touch
the human's world collapsed,

crumbling and dissolving like
sugar in the sea. The girl cried as
she bid the sun and moon farewell,
teeth still (please—don't—) shut.

Drawn up on shaking fingers,
she kissed them both before she fell:
Love swallowed the words
she was never meant to say.

The Road to Awe (Emily)

Warmly lit pea pods split and

Glaze the mushroom cap in your hand as

You try. You mix and mash to the plucking of the harp

On your sphere of copper moonless nights

In time but not in motion,

A compass off the globe that spins

Again, again, again,

But won’t land because of the

Mixing and mashing of your hands.

You beat the harvest

To wrench apart your crispy arms

Into lines of churning ink and blood,

Their stains circle you

You, a body in a slinky,

Bound to the harp ticking your head

Ears stuffed, sound gone, you continue

To serve the charred black on your ring finger,

Master mark of all.

Her gown has wilted among your garden of weeds,

Her body was not yours

To cling to the soil beneath her bruised and

Beauty feet

That lingered in the snow for far too long

As you would say.

Her body, mostly bone, in yours,

Your orange arms flex but still those bones

Drain her body to the earth.

You mix and mash, pluck and beat

Exasperated souls until mercy climbs perched

Into your focused lap and says,

‘It’s time’

To drop your sword and microscope

I hope you let your shoulders sag and be

Carried on. 

Intuition (Meghan)

Intuition

On this green platform

bench, the air stale with waiting,

you’re feeling purpose.

I’m knowing you are good, as

sure as nerves know nemeses.