-
Carol V. Davis
Music Minus One Sometimes I practiced using Music Minus One: Telemann’s Trio Sonata in C Major. The harpsichord accompaniment unflappable whenever I stumbled. I wished the recording would pause on its own, wait for me to catch up. Slow does not mean easy. I learned to count in 8th notes. Challenging, as I was never good in math. A woodwind instrument strengthened my lungs, helping my asthma, as I summoned the will to regulate my breath. Now. as my husband loses words, he scrambles, growing more and more frustrated. My own responses speed up, irritation mounting. “Think about the connections between the notes” my music teacher once said. I tried…
-
Jess Sand
Double Dutch I used to watch the girls jump double dutch their arms the swinging ropes wrapped round each other thwap thwapping a cocoon of muscle memory musical laughter an arc of childhood. I used to watch them, wondrous flames of fiery girls feeling my heavy feet my round face offering nothing in return. Jess Sand was born on the East Coast, and has lived in the Bay Area for more than 20 years, calling Oakland home for the last decade. She has always written poetry, appearing in print for the first time as a child, eventually earning a degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University,…
-
Natalie Marino
Superbloom My therapist says I carry unresolved grief. She says I need to focus more on what I can change. Awake at five in the morning again, I can’t stop thinking about how long we lived through drought, how last summer California’s temperatures were higher than they had ever been. And then the winter rains came, bringing with them fields of poppies. Outside my open window the sky turns into a scarf of spring brilliance, a show of striking beauty. I want to hold onto hope but I can’t tune out the howl of a single coyote, blue as a piano. A Little Love Letter to Southern California in Summer …
-
Gail Wronsky
Let the complicated times roll for my mother who is schizophrenic We’ve been lost for so long in mysticism, fighting madness with the slender blade of lucidity, feeling the steel needles of panic, emerging from swamps of outrageous laughter, or marooned on the island of absurdity. Sometimes I think that sanity lounges on a tree branch right above us, like a puma, but we are only allowed to see the tip of its tail. Who knows what trees dream of? she asks. I dream of the fear I have of myself. And of her. It’s something about the blending of tenderness and cruelty around her mouth. Although I love her,…
-
John Surowiecki
The Evacuation of Limbo Someone has probably already told you about the new decrees and old miscalculations, the redefined edges of things, the this, then this, then this, then this, then this, reaching no conclusion as to cause or effect and finding little of interest along the way: nothing to consider really and nothing to imagine or read about or learn. It was a circle of a place, beyond knowing, since almost all of what a circle is is outside it anyway. Beyond it spun another circle, the unhappy world of love and hot air. Something like a sky was left and under it the remains of a plain where…
-
Bart Edelman
Even the Dead I called the number you gave me; No voice bothered to respond. It wouldn’t be the first time I tried contacting a kindred spirit, Who could care less for communication, Or me, if the truth be told. I seem to suffer, quite often, From a low grade personality— Disorder, so far over the border, My citizenship has been revoked On more than a few occasions. I take scores of assorted pills To keep me steady as sin, But always find myself flopping This way or the other, Without any wind at my back. Face it; I’m a hot mess and a half— Too frightfully cold to…
-
Michelle Petty-Grue
How it was Wake: Feel full weight of body. Feel pressure on my chest from purring cats named Anxiety and Depression. Miss: Being an early riser. Force myself through morning routine because that’s what moms do. Surge: Temporarily feel something like …
-
Clayton Clark
This Morning I Ate the Holes left by tiny snails in my Tuscan kale, wrinkled holder of holes. I’d gone to the garden and knelt to cut but couldn’t after finding on the underside a creature with a spiral galaxy riding its back. I left it on the leaf, ten-thousand-times the snail’s size, where the little alien opened portals with its twelve-thousand teeth. Glad it didn’t end up one of my regrets. I returned to the kitchen with some greens, guest-free, and hoped nothing would swoop down or crawl up to swallow the mini designer who offered me new world views, one after another and proof we are not alone.…
-
Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Early Morning Considerations after a Night of Rain There you are, first light freckles in the curtainswith dawn while the jay insists: It’s six. Six!It’s six — as if I don’t know that. Good morning, welcome, new Thursday. I arcthe blankets away. The dog sheds gladness allaround me as war news shrapnels out of NPR. Outside, everything is still gleam & green afterthe first rain in months, & petrichor — a word somepoets sequin into their pastorals — left in the wind. Petrichor! I imagine a starched table & gold candlesas erect-pinkied connoisseurs sniff a Zin & a guesthighbrows: I adore a good pertichor. It’s not in my vocabulary of…
-
Cory Henniges
The ways my life changed after the witch turned me into a bird First off, I can’t do math.Just can’t. I see one seed shellor more than one seed. I’m not sureif this is a bird thing or a me thing.I can’t smell, which is fine in this cage.But my memory is great, maybe even better. I miss: the scent of a thyme, garlic, butteron a seared steak (I avoid thinking of chicken,it’s conflicting). Sex and cupping breastswith warm hands. The happy buzzfrom half a cocktail before too many. What they don’t tell you (because they can’t)is that shitting is bliss.It makes up for all the above.I eat even when…