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Salvation ─ Keaton St. James
The Opposite of Abandonment ─ Alexis Acevez Garcia
Lullaby for the Grieving ─ Ashley M. Jones
Ship/Plum ─ Maija Haavisto
Griot of Strange Places ─ Romeo Oriogun
eschatology ─ Eve L. Ewing
Jesus at the Gay Bar ─ Jay Hulmes
The neurologist gives us permission ─ Seema Reza
Wild Geese ─ Mary Oliver
Salvation ─ Keaton St. James
angels ain't just flesh and feather.
they come in different palettes─
sea foam, cherry bark, rose thorn.
in the right heaven-yellow light
anything could be holy enough
to save you.
The Opposite of Abandonment ─ Alexis Acevez Garcia
listen to this poem here
Lullaby for the Grieving ─ Ashley M. Jones
make small steps.
in this wild place
there are signs of life
everywhere.
sharp spaces, too:
the slip of a rain-glazed rock
against my searching feet.
small steps, like prayers—
each one a hope exhaled
into the trees. please,
let me enter. please, let me
leave whole.
there are, too, the tiny sounds
of faraway birds. the safety
in their promise of song.
the puddle forming, finally,
after summer rain.
the golden butterfly
against the cave-dark.
maybe there are angels here, too—
what else can i call the crown of light
atop the leaves?
what else can i call
my footsteps forward,
small, small, sure?
Ship/Plum ─ Maija Haavisto
the ears lie but claim
the eyes lie or perhaps the body
either way the world is a ship
I call it "vestibular unease"
as I glance smartly over my glasses
motionsick in my stationary body
the fancy word just means
I live on a yellow submarine
not quite as glamorous as it sounds
you should be able to sink
your heels pleasurably into the floor
enjoy the solidity of the world
reality is not supposed to have give
like an overripe plum
I prefer wooden floors to marble
but even plastic laminate is okay
it keeps you upright and springy
I refuse to live on a ship/plum
I have no navigatory skills
and I don’t want to be the stone
inside gooey fruitflesh
straight horizons should be
mandated by law
don’t make the world turn wrinkly
like my fingers after bathing
I crave stability but
refuse to be the stone
Griot of Strange Places ─ Romeo Oriogun
In a roadside bar in Ouagadougou,
a Togolese who claimed to have lived
along the hills of redemption, drunk
and alone, said to me, for ten CFAs
I go sing you God, I go sing you rapture.
Looking into his face, I thought
about the wooden pipes of long-haired monks
who carved out of rocks a ten-foot effigy of Christ,
carrying it for miles until devotion carved a wound
into their shoulders. I didn’t know this man,
this bard from an old and distant city,
whose forehead was wrinkled like a couple
of rolled up maps. Outside the open windows,
women kept walking back and forth.
Pimps stood in dark corners, lighted by street lamps.
A man in a dark coat jumped across a puddle of water,
and on the other side, the black earth moved
into the newness of things as a jazz band
pierced the air, mimicking through music
the movement of God, the elegy we all belong to,
bringing me to witness an old bald cobbler
walking from one street to another, logging
behind him a tin box, the vestige of his small world.
eschatology ─ Eve L. Ewing
i’m confident that the absolute dregs of possibility for this society,
the sugary coffee mound at the bottom of this cup,
our last best hope that when our little bit of assigned plasma implodes
it won’t go down as a green mark in the cosmic ledger,
lies in the moment when you say hello to a bus driver
and they say it back—
when someone holds the door open for you
and you do a little jog to meet them where they are—
walking my dog, i used to see this older man
and whenever I said good morning,
he replied ‘GREAT morning’—
in fact, all the creative ways our people greet each other
may be the icing on this flaming trash cake hurtling through the ether.
when the clerk says how are you
and i say ‘i’m blessed and highly favored’
i mean my toes have met sand, and wiggled in it, a lot.
i mean i have laughed until i choked and a friend slapped my back.
i mean my niece wrote me a note: ‘you are so smart + intellajet’
i mean when we do go careening into the sun,
i’ll miss crossing guards ushering the grown folks too, like ducklings
and the lifeguards at the community pool and
men who yelled out the window that they’d fix the dent in my car,
right now! it’d just take a second—
and actually everyone who tried to keep me alive, keep me afloat,
and if not unblemished, suitably repaired.
but I won’t feel too sad about it,
becoming a star
Jesus at the Gay Bar ─ Jay Hulmes
The neurologist gives us permission ─ Seema Reza
to go to Rome: Live your lives.
We order cocktail shrimp at the hotel bar,
fries with a parmesan snow. The waiter fills
our flutes to the brim & we swim
in the golden liquid & sink into the leather sofa,
the delights so cliché the cliché the delight
we sing along & avoid eye contact
with the lounge singer: sha-la-la-la-la
two brown-eyed girls in love
dark lipstick on the rim of the glass
& the lounge singer starts Lady in Red
& we swoon & people around us eat their olives
from shallow dishes & we order dessert
to keep the night going, to keep
the sweetness in our mouths
Wild Geese ─ Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
moni's note: would it really be a poetry collection without Wild Geese?