Landscape

You can’t trust what you see
in the mottled blue and violet
around a black eye.
Real monsters are the ones
we don’t recognize at first.

Brotherly Love

We start out soft as Egyptian sheets – boys,
then we manufacture into men. Notice how the word
men, sounds harder, stiffened by our insides churning
to stone as we grow.

Failed her

I failed
her. Was not
good enough because
no one can ever be
good enough to carry
the burdens of the
dying on their backs, to
be blessed with the
baggage of existential
emotion that makes life so
sweet as to make it unbearable

Yo-Yo

Epic refereed over-the-moon contests
were sponsored by Duncan Toys Inc
outside the best local movie theater
where we saw twenty-five cartoons
for a quarter. Plus the raffle winner
with the luckiest ticket got to bring
a box of chocolates home to mother.

The Luminous Mysteries

For the better part of an hour, I sit
in an examination room, my nose
dripping onto the butcher paper,
having feigned interest in the fake
breast handed to me by a doctor
at this urgent care.

A Broken Hearted Orange

The orange on the counter is no longer an orange,
It can no longer be used for its nutritious value,
For all I see is a sunset peeling atop the skyscrapers in the city.
It can no longer smell like fresh citrus,
For the sound of sweet jazz music fills the room.
The orange can no longer be just an orange,
Because of you—

Performer

He stood adjusting on the small white pedestal
Waiting for the lamb eyed crowd to bend their knees and soften
Their breath.
Looking out he weighed the gold that was still heavy in his heart,
Felt its warmth in his palm as he prepared to cast it into the
shining sea.

Sea Memories

The red fish dangles
Among a set of pictures
Stuck to a wall with tape
Which won’t stick for too long

The photos depict sea nomads
In a generation’s past
When fish was abundant
And boats were still scarce

Reflection Under Yellow Sky

Sitting at a counter in the stoplight diner,
I stared out the window, you staring back at me.

The traffic had travelled down FM 202,
Leaving the road dusty, chaff-filled

After the thresher had fed.
Only you kept me company.

Hearing I

You sit in a dimly lit courtroom facing Maat.
Her veiled face tilts downward at an oak
board with etchings that you can’t make out.
Shadows slither in the room, shuffling
into position but you can’t see them;
the spotlight is only on her and you.

Hidden Nature

Heraclitus said, “Nature likes to hide itself.”
At the heavy sound of human feet,
Chipmunks scurry for leafy cover,
While snails recoil and pretend not to be home,
And moles find refuge beneath the sod.

Thoughts My Morning Coffee Stirs

I believe in the strength of the first sip of coffee
and the rickety leg on the chair at the table.
I believe her tattooed shoulder, against my tattooed thigh
never altered the planet’s arch,
nor the speed cancer grows on a kidney,
nor how many children will be cold tonight as they sleep.

All My Exes Hate Me
it’s a big gross world and
i don’t know what it wants from me
close my eyes
listen to lo-fi remixes of brazilian disco hits
beats hit like waves
and everything smells so salty
i am so damn salty

Exhuming Luigi
God, we were drunk the night we exhumed your ferret
from the dirt in the grounds of your old school. We
drank mudslides and white russians until the bartender
dimmed the lights and put all the stools but ours on
the bar, the chairs on the tables. Stumbling into the cold,
on a chorus of “Life’s Been Good” and “Marian the Librarian,”
thinking what a good idea it would be to dig some bones
from the dirt.

I Am My Own Savior
Somedays I take my pills gladly, with hope
and juice to wash it down, and other days
I glare at them until they get caught in my throat
and I hate myself for feeling like they’ve failed me
already. Somedays it’s 85 degrees in Phoenix
but I’m caught under feet of suffocating snow
with no one to pour salt on my flailing body,
like drowning all over again, but so weighted and cold
I’m dragged to the earth’s core.

Ode Et. Al.
We still pray to the old gods
changing of the guard:
deity in that solemn face of the ancestors.
Help me through [the moon light]
We still pray in Quechua, Aymara,
Lacandon, et. Al.
Affinity –see the shoulder width of those keloids
scars on the backs of African slaves [marks the above fight]

Golden Shiraz
Everyone here lives in the past
In a golden age of bliss
Living in our own versions of the past
Living in a version of what it all meant
Ghosts of what once was
Before the revolution
Before the loss
Before we packed our bags and left
Before, before, before
When we were all made of gold….

Man of the City
Put red crosses all over my calendar
jam my luggage
til ‘tis too heavy to heave
I wanna be sure I won’t leave

Prepare hot meals
anything warm
for our factory-stomachs
let us first lounge & rest
in the shade of our jungle-lounge
hidden away from the omnipotent eyes
of our western lives.

Forest Nocturne
this drama hums birched, blue,
and pine behind winter-closed doors
where raccoons and rabbits still.
i remember the evening’s autumn
cathedral when amber light
massed in prayer above. i
played over the under of your body.
don’t think Nietzsche would be
angry because under
i explored this penumbra’d path
round a temporary pond jewelled
with drake and hen lusty
in spring swell—winter’s death
finding level.

Beloved Mother
What I want to write
is that I am
and I can not stop being
I want to give back everything you have given me, mother.
And thanks to you I am far away again in New York
But I’ll be fine. Do not worry
A poem for you, mother
is the least I can do
turning my love into words.
Here’s a bit of me and you

It rained in your day today
for you mother. I am ashamed
I can not give you more.

Page Leland’s prose poem “Portrait: Woodbury, Indiana” is a poetic journey of narration, rhythm, and metaphor in three stanzas with lines such as these: “When we close our eyes, the sky rips open, sounds like bones breaking”; “Pass the time by searching white clouds for a sign of something divine—“; “9 pm, when the sky is dead and black and the moon is only an outstretched hand away.”

Claudia Glenn’s poetry envelops a quiet nostalgia, but in “Nana Stares Out the Window” nostalgia becomes wisdom: “Every morning the bird returns/And every morning she is greeted/By the wonder of a child/Who just saw their first snow/And the wisdom of a woman/Who decides to make a snow angel/Knowing it could be her last.”

Read “Solar Subjugation” or “Sun-Shattered Bird” by Toni La Ree Bennett and heed the poet’s warning of humanity’s demise on Earth: “And as eons pass, our descendants, if we have any,/will look back at our broadcasts and streaming/and twitters and posts and smile wistfully/at our childish excitement.”

Emily Wong draws poetic sustenance from nature’s presence. Whether in “Moths,” “Meet Me At the Stairs,” or “Change Will Come?,” natural metaphors ground the poems: moon becomes an “empress,”; dawn “the birth of light/after a long misty night,”; and day when “the light is bland,/and the colours don’t dance.”