Overpass by Ada Limón

Overpass 

The road wasn’t as hazardous then,

when I’d walk to the steel guardrail,

lean my bendy girl body over, and stare

at the cold creek water. In a wet spring,

the water’d run clear and high, minnows

mouthing the sand and silt, a crawdad

shadowed by the shore’s long reeds.

I could stare for hours, something

always new in each watery wedge—

a bottle top, a man’s black boot, a toad.

Once, a raccoon’s carcass half under

the overpass, half out, slowly decayed

over months. I’d check on him each day,

watching until the white bones of his hand

were totally skinless and seemed to reach

out toward the sun as it hit the water,

showing all five of his sweet tensile fingers

still clinging. I don’t think I worshipped

him, his deadness, but I liked the evidence

of him, how it felt like a job to daily

take note of his shifting into the sand. 

The Bats by Mark Wunderlich

The Bats 

I share my house with a colony of bats.

They live in the roof peak,

enter through a gap.

 

At dusk they fly out, dip

into inverted arcs

to catch what flutters or stings,

 

what can only be hunted at night.

Sunlight stops their flight,

drives them into their hot chamber

 

to rest and nest, troll-faces

pinched shut. I hear them scratch.

In darkness they chop and hazard through the sky,

 

around blue outlines of pines,

pitch up over the old Dutch house

we share. They scare some

 

but not me. I see them

for what they seem—

timid, wee, happy or lucky,

 

pinned to the roof beams,

stitched up in their ammonia reek

and private as dreams.

Clock with Reverse Gears by Jim Whiteside

Clock with Reverse Gears

 

I’m ten and jumping

out of the pool

 

onto the concrete, wet

only with sweat, walking

 

back to the machine

that reassembles the lawn

 

one blade at a time.

Birds call out with songs

 

that quickly retreat

to their lungs.

 

Your body is made

whole again, the flames

 

returning flesh to bone.

I have a father

 

and then, suddenly,

I don’t. This is

 

the part that doesn’t

change back.

 

In the field where

we bury you,

 

the bag with your ashes

never empties—

 

the hole overflows

while I stand there

 

waiting for your voice

to come through

 

the wind. Every fish

you ever caught

 

re-embodies, spits out

the bait and swims

 

away, while I sit

in a dark room

 

wearing your bathrobe,

watching your hand

 

reaching around

the doorframe

 

to switch the light off

and on, off and on,

 

until the bulb blows out.

Chorus by Catherine Barnett

Chorus

So who mothers the mothers

who tend the hallways of mothers,

the spill of mothers, the smell of mothers,

who mend the eyes of mothers,

the lies of mothers scared

to turn on lights in basements

filled with mothers called by mothers in the dark,

the kin of mothers, the gin of mothers,

mothers out on bail,

who mothers the hail-mary mothers

asleep in their stockings

while the crows sing heigh ho carrion crow,

fol de riddle, lol de riddle,

carry on, carry on— 

salat to define the terms of ritual by Dujie Tahat

salat to define the terms of ritual

 

               [adhan]

 

A calling, a culling, a billowing

minaret banner, a cigarette starter thrown

out a moving car window to prove a point.

 

               [standing]

 

Rapt, trapped, evangelical

about the whole thing

really, hinged

on guilt and hoping

you’ll sign the papers before

the door slams shut.

 

              [bowing]

 

In lieu of communion, Father

crosses my forehead.

                                       Irreverence

has somehow escaped the mouth,

and now we’re discussing sincerity.

 

               [prostration]

 

All this searching for my heart to be broken.

 

               [prostration again]

 

You’ll sleep when you die,

but form is death. The gap

between          every prayer

is sleep. The joke is: no such

thing as sleep.

 

                           Dead be dead.

 

               [sitting]

 

On bare feet, on upturned

buckets, on an ice block

bombing down grassy

terraces, tears blessing

the angles of our return.

 

In our good clothes, shoulder

to shoulder in the pew,

in a broken down Chrysler

miles and miles from home.

 

               [salam alaikum]

 

Back to the work, if you’re lucky,

hands unblemished still with grace.

 

Mask by Beth Bachmann

Mask 

During our self-isolation, you send me collages

of God’s blown animals, breathed into, heated

 

and shaped like glass. Our skin is full of holes

for oil and sweat. When I whisper, Breathe me in,

 

I mean all of me—the scent of my flesh, but also me,

my god, the beginning of the fulfillment of this desire.

 

In a mask, you can be whoever I want you to be, king

or dog: muse comes from muzzle, to track your kill.

 

The plague doctors wore masks in the shape of a bird,

the beak filled with fresh clippings: juniper, rose, clove.

 

The mask is a type of respirator, meaning breathe again,

which is how we’ve managed to stay alive all these years.

 

Through the glass eyes, they could examine the body

they could not touch with their bare hands.

 

Breath can be both instinctive and controlled.

Matisse’s most famous cutout is “Blue Nude II,”

 

a woman who appears to be made of parts, but who

was scissored instead from a single sheet of paper. 

Gossip in the Village by Larry Levis

Gossip in the Village

I told no one, but the snows came, anyway.

They weren’t even serious about it, at first.

Then, they seemed to say, if nothing happened,

Snow could say that, & almost perfectly.

 

The village slept in the gunmetal of its evening.

And there, through a thin dress once, I touched

A body so alive & eager I thought it must be

Someone else’s soul. And though I was mistaken,

 

And though we parted, & the roads kept thawing between snows

In the first spring sun, & it was all, like spring,

Irrevocable, irony has made me thinner. Someday, weeks

 

From now, I will wake alone. My fate, I will think,

Will be to have no fate. I will feel suddenly hungry.

 

The morning will be bright, & wrong.