January Full Moon Special
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Cacophony
Les Epstein |
One damned flake descends
From a hasty spoonful Scraping my wind pipe Into atonal fits All through tooth brushing Its jagged edge Now long gone to who knows where Nags me on In hack and sneeze-- Tears in waves-- I’m my own Vaudeville Making a highway merge Between oil tankers Bolting out of the Blue Ridge Into our bowl shaped city And I reaching school halls Enter a shaken cubist work “Oppressed Hacker Descends a Staircase” Then yak and yak about Massachusetts bards With fourteen fourteen-year-olds Honking, blowing, picking at nasal nuisance All engaged in Transcendental wheezing Group debris to Thoreau. |
December New Moon Special
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The Howling Wolf
Tai Timmerman |
Self-isolation and loneliness on the grounds of nature
while your jaw is muzzled shut The truth spoke to you Hiked on cliffs to reach out the echos of self-doubt Everybody hears, but not everybody listens. Treacherous traumas open the tundra of old wounds through your fur coat freezing your playfulness and freedom Melt the boundaries created through the moon phases as the sparkly sun protects your instincts. Yelped and stood to reach the Statue of Unity waiting to be understood by Coeus. |
December Full Moon Special
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The Dream of Monstrousness
Naomi Thiers |
In the dream of monstrousness, I can’t tell
which are my frayed nerve endings, which your probe jabbing; borders of who-is-what, who-does-what dissolve. In this dream, you tell me you watched me when I thought I was alone, saw me pull cats out of the TV screen, cuddle and talk baby talk to them, then put one in my mouth as if to eat it. I know this can’t have happened, but your face is serious. Yet you’re not disgusted; I amuse you. We swim through what is real, what imagined like waving sea plants; their leaves brush our bodies in the murky water, confusing us in the dream of monstrousness--and we are both monstrous. And all this dance is, is two sodden people trying to be close, to know each other, to connect-- only connect! And we keep trying, upside-down blind through the wavery borders, we keep reaching. There are bright fish and cats down here. |
November New Moon Special
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Shepherd
Alexander Etheridge |
Shepherd of slow granite
all night your flock of stars rove over dark houses and empty roads
Shepherd of ancient glass
glinting in dusklight Wanderer in fields of your otherlife memory It was scar tissue and fire that unspelled your name the day you were born the day you died Now your silence stretches into everything
Nomad of snow
hail and freezing rain the night you died you led your wayward flock over black hills and apple trees as you were born into another mind on a path of its own never-dying its own forever
Yours is the cycle of
desire and loneliness Yet your stars never know hunger as they wheel through God’s great shadow Your endless stars follow you anywhere sentinels of a perishing world
Old listener
bring your herd of blue-white fires back into warm skies over a wintery people out there in lonely paradise of nothing left too late and always gone
Constant walker
with one prayer left there’s an October creek running by orchards leading away through its thicket of dreams to the half-moon valley where your stars sleep at last |
November Full Moon Special
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Heavy
Jessie Juniper |
It's dark outside
And inside Like an endless And open void and yet It's so heavy It's still And stiff And blisteringly cold And angrily painful and It's so so heavy It's quiet And eerie Like nothing could ever possibly be But yet It's so so heavy It's empty Open and distance Far away and intangible But It's so so heavy I'm dark inside I'm still And I'm quiet And I'm empty and yet all the same I'm so so heavy |
October New Moon Special
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Moonlight Man
Braden Hofeling |
In your open palm, I am
waking. Here the sun opens and closes fast as an eyelid. I am neither here nor there in the dark, an uncoupled quark undiscovered. The tree rattles against the autumn air, frigid in its attempt to be let in. I hover, watching the wind wake you, pull you fast from your trips through starlight. You brew another chamomile tea and clutch Teddy. On the streets a mariner whistles a tune to fog covered light posts, casting twisted shadows like morbid faces. Is he a captain? Or just another lost soul. Thoughts can only go so far before reaching Neverland before washing up on the shores to stand in line -ticket counter- for the funeral pyre. Monsters endlessly The world blinks and shudders from a dreamer on the precipice of dream-death, something bitter, something pleasant - like rotten strawberries hidden away deep in the field. Bodies sprouting the sweetest corn- I board the first train home, but it is raining handrails slick I can’t quite close my fist around it before drifting. |
October Full Moon Special
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Socializing
Alivia Knight |
I haven’t always been so awkward
Or maybe I’ve always been this awkward Or maybe we’ve all just gotten awkward But I swear I just asked for a muffin And she’s looking at me like I have something in my teeth Did I ask for it wrong Does she want to be my friend Did she say something to me I’m sorry? I like your shirt Oh, thank you, I like your hair Was I supposed to say something else I’m leaving I wish I had more friends |
September New Moon Special
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to watch
Salma Mohamed |
to watch the pain of words
cut through you like a blade sharp and cutthroat it becomes 'painful' to watch socializing becomes a mission something i wish to do but to watch it unfold something i cannot do to watch others, do what you cannot do the fear of being "cringe" or "loud" so i just watch to watch is comfort even from a distance your place is still here even when you're watching |
September Full Moon Special
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Laundry
abbigail |
i am a wrinkled shirt
and you are in dire need of clean attire. i sit crumpled in your hands, creased and waiting. but you bag me up like dirty laundry and throw me over your shoulders. rinse my flesh of this stick and sweat, slick my hair to my temples with your soft hands, freshly washed in lavender hand soap. set me straight, unravel my folds, iron out my stiff limbs, so that i might hold you with my warmth. for five minutes you’re pulling me close, arms wrapped tightly around my torso, unwilling to let go. as if a shirt can move on its own. i let my heat dissipate into your skin, and though i grow cold you let me stay close to you. i enjoy this moment, for it is just a moment until i become laundry again. |
August New Moon Special
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Thursday
Megan Lolley |
On Thursday, I was holding a cup of coffee.
Little tongues of heat swept through my palms, and steam curled past my lips. Not that I was cold, but that human hands need warmth, and after you left it started to rain. The drops settled into my coffee like tears. “Don’t you think the raindrops look like tears?” You’re foolish, thinking you know the rain. You sit and sip your hot coffee folding and unfolding your cold palms. Human hands need warmth. “That coffee burned my lips.” When you cried at night, I kissed your lips so they wouldn’t need to explain the tears, and I remedied your sobs with warmth. I told you we needed to talk over coffee. You said nothing, but covered my palms with yours. It had started to rain. On Tuesday, you sat outside in the rain, and I sat inside to watch you. I remember—your lips are blue. Why don’t I move? My palms are sweating, and there are tears dripping down my cheeks—numb. I pick up my cup of coffee and throw it against the wall. I am appalled by warmth. “Don’t you know that human hands need warmth?” Wednesday screamed a scream that curdled the rain. We didn’t drink coffee that morning. I wished you would open your lips, but you said nothing. Behind the bedroom door there were tears. The pills slumped into your palms. They didn’t cover your palms with their white sheet—I thought human hands needed warmth. I can’t cry—my tears After I left the rain, I found nine little pills forgotten by your lips, and now they laugh at me through this rain-colored cup of coffee. It’s Friday, and this cup of cold coffee is still between my palms. My lips never brought you warmth, but I hope you’ll tell me if raindrops are really tears. |
August Full Moon Special
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Washcloths
Natalie Schaffer |
She was on her knees in your bathroom
Matriarch and healer Stitcher and collector But here she was On her knees in your bathroom Kneeling to her father I imagine she was also kneeling to her Father She got upset when I told her I didn’t want to say grace at the dinner table anymore But I think She just doesn’t understand Communion has always tasted different in my mouth But in this moment I would almost relent And say grace- for her But what I really want is to say grace to her Because god is something, sure But right now she is on her knees in your bathroom She soothes your confusion She speaks all the skinned knees of your pride to sleep She says “it’s going to be ok” You and I are not so sure But before my eyes she makes it ok You couldn’t make it But she makes it ok There is no dignity in dying But Jesus Christ is there dignity in daughters They will wash away the worst Forgive the facile friction of family And the aches of old and unintentional alcoholism For your sake At least they knew you always sent up ramshackle prayers with their names on them Whenever you remembered what they were But I think it was that week You started to tell them you loved them For the first time this century They showed you the same with washcloths Or words Or wishbones Or daughters For years For years |
July New Moon Special
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The Greatest Race
Pauline Aksay |
My mama said that when it rains
it is the world crying in pain she’d watch the raindrops take their place as they’d fall down in a Great Race and catch the drops before they’d break returning them to where they came her work would take the pain away it’d make the world whole once again but mama said she was okay when dad got gas but never came tears were running down her face like rain but in a different place I couldn’t see her in such pain I vowed that on that very day I’d catch the drops ’fore they’d escape I’d embark on the Greatest Race the teardrops went down from her face past her pillow and bed duvet I tried to snatch them, but they laced ’round my fingers, under my brain travelling on the carpet laid squeezing through the hardwood aged I almost lost track of its place then refocused and quickened my pace down the stairs, dead living space past the kitchen dinner plates funneling into the cold base -ment, into the crooked foundat- ion, and soon, beyond the crawlspace scavenging under the estate six feet down, I undertake the chase, but the drops still don’t wait and after leeches, then the lakes, years of sediment displaced nestling in tunneled cityscapes past wonky tectonic plates swimming in the mantle, grace- fully, the teardrops still don’t brake but I know that I have an ace I’m so close now, I can almost taste It, and at last I reach the core My head and limbs are all so sore The cornered drops can run no more I’ve got the tears I’ve been chasing for-- but when I resurface in haste my humid heart, it starts to break ’Cause everything around has changed Nothing has remained the same... My mama’s gone and I have aged I don’t know when she passed away The Greatest Race that I had played was over, and I won first place I looked at the heavens in space and let her teardrops evaporate returning them to where they came it’d make her feel whole once again. |