Ode to September If April is the cruelest month, Septemberis its still good enough looking brother,drunk and whittling a stick on a porch. Drunk on red wine, September. What are the little gold leaves fallingon the lawn? September couldn’t say. September wants not to think too much,to whittle until it’s afternoon again. There’s a voice on a speaker half a mile away,now trumpets, drums, a trombone,a game being played it hears little of. September is telling a story while it diminishesthe stick to a point, tosses it in a bush. September thinks it can hide from time,hanging out inside it. If September caresabout anything, it cares about September. Spilled into,…

Collecting Against Loss Conifer conesarranged from egg-sizedto almond. Two oval stonesmy mother paintedas iridescent insects. Quail feathershe found on the farmand mailed to me, enfolded in tissue. Seashells and polished rocksbought during childhoodbeach trips. Walnut shell half.Two tiny acorns:One wearing its hat,one bald. Piano music I never play:Chopin’s “Raindrop Prelude,”Grieg’s “Butterfly.” My late sister’s books:One more copy of Jane EyreI didn’t need, but the plane ticketshe used as bookmarkmade her real again. Keys to lost padlocks.Photos of peopleI never talk to. Vintage wool coatI’m scared to wear,its red satin lining already torn. The last item my mother sentbefore evening mantled her mind:Hospital bracelet from the day I was born. Janna…

Day Break …the acoustic nature of sheets―Brian Turner “Alexa, Awake” What whispers in the corners, whiskers feline in the dawn light? Sounds I assemble from the silent slip of feet on sheets, ears tuned for the softest shuffling, the lake-flat plain of my longing. A way to fathom open spaces, the echolocation of everyday wanderings when what presses in on every side is a tangible absence, a soft cheek brushing against mine, a waft of plum: that perfume I used to love. The shawl I wear, smoke- light yet warm. Today, it’s too warm, but I bunch the soft fabric at my throat loosely with one fist. A puddle of…

It Was the Millennium. It Was Aught-Aught. Once relevant, now quaint.The makeshift ways which some people fancied essential.If it didn’t come out of the refrigerator, it was a hot meal.We all knew that California was full of notions.Collage was what life was after college.Which was everyone making their own case.We felt like we had figured out the time thing.Even in California you saw the dawn two hours before everyone else.You wrote poems as if they were Vermeers. With a Vermeer veneer.To be so nice you’d step aside for a slug.You kept an ostrich egg in the refrigerator to remind you of the lifestyle you’d rejected.You liked to get yourself in…

The 2021 Pantone Color of the Year Was Dual: ULTIMATE GRAY + ILLUMINATING They said it was a marriage of color. They said it was a message of strength & hopefulness. They said it’s good to push two shades close together.                They didn’t say that illumination makes the gray grayer.                They didn’t say shadows make the sun brighter.                They didn’t say eventually all paint peels.                              (They didn’t need to put ultimate in front of gray.)…

Crab Apple The crab apple treesieved the windaround the field’s edge, spikey-dense, fruit acidic and rarely picked,binocular-distant on the skyline. The quietthere. Only a ground-level scurry of something like brushes on a snare drum.Is that the place I found the larva,its raw thorax gleaming mid- moult, prolegs collapsed to a slatherof grey nubs?We’d unwound its twill of gauze and bandagesand exposed an Oz behindmoist curtains, termination shimmering in the ruined cocoon.We didn’t mean to hurt a thing, yetwrought our damage. We tossed it in the flattened grassnear burdock flowersand a twisted elbow of the creek.   The Perseids Best chance to view them is late,away from the city’s glow, in…

Religion Out walkingand I have the sudden desire to pass the churchat the bottom of the hill. I’m not religious—it reminds me of Europe, which has beauty.In Rome, the men lookingmade me want to pound my face on the pavement.I gave private tours to Americans. Once,I took a married couple through the Vatican museumsand at the end the man was surprised to be in the Sistine Chapel.I thought it was in Paris, he whispered.The church at the bottom of the hill has dozens of stepsup to heavy doors that are usually locked.For a year I went into every church I saw in Rome,sat in the quiet. I had time then.In…

December Evening at Big Y the axle-bentcart swerves,stubborn, aimingfor anywhereI don’t want to gobut I am more obstinateyanking the handleharsh as the harsh lightecstatic song echoesin the pet food aisleheaven and nature singperfect companionsin the cart is my prisonertree, wrapped tightin green meshoutside: the grey rain Written in Winter traversing his endless palace the first emperornever slept in the same room twice for lack of spaceI had to cry in the car Martha McCollough is the author of Wolf Hat Iron Shoes (Lily Poetry Review Books 2022) and the chapbook Grandmother Mountain (Blue Lyra 2019) . Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades, The Boiler, RadarPoetry, Bear Review,…

Fugue of Vodka Light GS with lines & variation from Lorna De Cervantes’ “From the Bus to E.L. at Atascadero State Hospital” The woman screams I want Vodka now! InsteadI offer her more coffee, but tonight youKnow this won’t work. She is adamant—wereYou here you might be scared, hereWhere anger is a daily ruse. She balls her fists. WhereIs the Vodka? She’s in her fifties, delusional. TheWoman grew up in a closed factory town with its woundedMen. Bradford’s blue factory light. BlackbirdsOf men begging for bread. Coal trains warbleAlong the Allegheny River with their industrial jazzFed the furnaces of the Zippo plant. InA town where she was raised by her…

What I Failed to Notice Sometimes in August, the heat demands that your brain shut down, that nothing more should occur to you, even if it is only that the squirrels and crows seem to be having a cocktail party in your backyard, the squirrels like frat boys, the crows observing with mild disdain, even if it is only to ponder a small microwave that the neighbors have placed on the mangled stump of their fallen cotton- wood, where it shimmers and remains for a week. The sun glares in August and distorts your vision: maybe the crows are hawks, maybe the microwave is a box. Tension pulses in the…