october 2010 poems
YOU WALK A FISH IN NOVEMBER by joanne lowery
Chilled by autumn’s night, this salmon
welcomes a sunny morning, its mouth
open to greet you, your first steps in.
Slanted through the gills, rays light your walk
down the cavern of arching bones and branches
bathed in damp pinkness, a tunnel flanked
by hoarfrost organs of bog.
This is a long long fish you are touring.
A few bacteria rotate and stare.
You look for a way to shortcut
the remaining gut as you stroll
downstream through the pearly emptiness
left by summer’s roe.
Chilled by autumn’s night, this salmon
welcomes a sunny morning, its mouth
open to greet you, your first steps in.
Slanted through the gills, rays light your walk
down the cavern of arching bones and branches
bathed in damp pinkness, a tunnel flanked
by hoarfrost organs of bog.
This is a long long fish you are touring.
A few bacteria rotate and stare.
You look for a way to shortcut
the remaining gut as you stroll
downstream through the pearly emptiness
left by summer’s roe.
RESURRECTION by rose postma
“It’s [our] policy to card everyone who orders a drink”
–Applebee’s Company Policy
It’s a stupid comment
at the end of an inane conversation.
You really mean, he says,
that if your grandma was here
in this Applebee’s (he gestures
to the memorabilia on the walls)
the waiter (he points for good measure)
would even card her?
And in that brief moment
between pronoun and punctuation,
she lives.
“It’s [our] policy to card everyone who orders a drink”
–Applebee’s Company Policy
It’s a stupid comment
at the end of an inane conversation.
You really mean, he says,
that if your grandma was here
in this Applebee’s (he gestures
to the memorabilia on the walls)
the waiter (he points for good measure)
would even card her?
And in that brief moment
between pronoun and punctuation,
she lives.
SUMMER SOLSTICE by emily wick
I.
The longest day of the year
and I am far north.
I can barely remember the morning
when I swam in the lake
and weeded the garden.
When he touched me last night
by the lake, I fell into his hands
but as soon as they were gone
it left that familiar
but long absent feeling
of being conquered,
so that on the way home
and as I drifted to sleep,
I could not stop
chanting to myself
I belong to no one, I belong to no one.
II.
I paddled out into the lake
and couldn’t stop looking
at my arms.
Muscles taut and curved
under skin golden
in echoing sunlight.
My shoulders burned
and my whole body
coiled to propel me forward.
I am like a lover discovering
a body for the first time,
amazed at its atmosphere,
its own golden gravity.
III.
The light lingers until after ten
and I surround myself
with the last orange bloom of it,
swimming at dusk,
naming the goodnesses
that washed over me this day,
beginning with the breath between my ribs,
the skin smooth over my breasts,
the planes of my stomach
parallel to the earth
as I float alone on the water.
I ask only one thing of my body--
to align itself with the earth this way,
to absorb the sun’s glow into me
as though I am a river,
as though I am a moon.
I.
The longest day of the year
and I am far north.
I can barely remember the morning
when I swam in the lake
and weeded the garden.
When he touched me last night
by the lake, I fell into his hands
but as soon as they were gone
it left that familiar
but long absent feeling
of being conquered,
so that on the way home
and as I drifted to sleep,
I could not stop
chanting to myself
I belong to no one, I belong to no one.
II.
I paddled out into the lake
and couldn’t stop looking
at my arms.
Muscles taut and curved
under skin golden
in echoing sunlight.
My shoulders burned
and my whole body
coiled to propel me forward.
I am like a lover discovering
a body for the first time,
amazed at its atmosphere,
its own golden gravity.
III.
The light lingers until after ten
and I surround myself
with the last orange bloom of it,
swimming at dusk,
naming the goodnesses
that washed over me this day,
beginning with the breath between my ribs,
the skin smooth over my breasts,
the planes of my stomach
parallel to the earth
as I float alone on the water.
I ask only one thing of my body--
to align itself with the earth this way,
to absorb the sun’s glow into me
as though I am a river,
as though I am a moon.
