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our patterns make legs, Alan Bromwell

now I had seen in her, Alan Bromwell

Aurora (II), Alexandra Fresch

Aurora (II)

Aurora you were not my first house but now you are

Aurora all I remember are your vacant lots alive with dead

yellow foxtails and weather-gnawed trash and tiny paper rat skulls and grasshoppers springing from my feet

Aurora I was so young and you had no children for me

Aurora I had to play alone ranging over your Kentucky bluegrass lawns wobbling in the heat

in the dirt where I dug deserts in puddles where I set earthworms to suffocate while I unaware

of their simple long-brained fear watched them arrow through the water, elongating like pointed Slinkys

in the summer-melted tar on the streetedge where I built leaf sailboats and staked pillbugs on pyrocanthia thorns for the birds passing uncatchable like gods

Aurora your Highline Canal ran wet and dry like a wound where downstream crops nursed greedily in summer where the mallards

glided scolding to themselves like brooding hens and I threw stones to make them shout and scatter and fear me where I

stabbed branches to break the tiled soil and boil over anthills like giant red-jawed water molecules

Aurora your Highline Canal where my parents told me never to linger after dark, for fear of the very things that I always wanted to be

four-pawed dangerous eyes glowing like lanterned slashes in a rice-paper screen

Aurora your streets held a squirrel curled up too stiff to be asleep, a comma of foam at the corner of its mouth

Aurora your nights shattered with that hoarse cri du chat not even my parents knew; they told me to shut my window

against whatever it was, a bobcat or a cougar or a madman hunting smooth-gaited through the bushes

Aurora your days were long enough for me to think like the peppermint rioting by the drainspout—that I would know nothing else

no friend to ever roam with me, my uncatchable self

Aurora but your insects and your swarming sun

Apples, Jennifer Burnham

Stop Light, Jennifer Burnham

A Vastness - Georgia, Jesse Edwards

Broken Bells, Sarah Elsea

Sickle, Sarah Elsea

Dear Sir or Madam, Mickey Bakas

Dear Sir or Madam:

It broke through the skin of my gums,

the tooth.

Two cusps.

I open my candy-cane jaw,

and kiss your missing eye.

Dear Friends, Mickey Bakas

Dear Friends,

the hidden sidewalks:

I hate it when you look at me.

I wrote down the season,

the situation of the leaves.

Dear Children, Mickey Bakas

Dear Children,

Never meddling with the surface of the couch,

or brushing the bathtub horse with a dirty sponge.

You too will grow up to be horrified at night.

Cold and shoeless on the elliptical,

and alone. 

Loved Ones, Hannah Warner

The last time I saw you, you had wet yourself and curled your legs into your stomach.

We stood together, waiting, watching –

°Â±ð’r±ð in the hospital again and

you’ve covered your hands with butter,

the repetitive motions,

daily life in delirium –

we gave you the full two doses this time and

you spread it over my eyes    faintly Vaseline,

the halos of oil

°Â±ð’r±ð

everywhere

·É±ð’r±ð

standing at edge of the

the overwhelming sky

the fence

the rolling earth

Lingering soft undertones coming from your bed –

your body

such a small body,

those disjointed sheets,

you are less     and      less      and

                                                less and

                                                       less

I am a child, a little plaything

I remember going in to wake you in the mornings

you would grab me and tickle me.

I remember

I would loose air

trying              trying

to scream

how much how much

how much air for

sound

much and

many    many times you wouldn’t

trying trying

you wouldn’t the sound

shouting and you

never wouldn’t

air air air

woudn’t you can’t

you can’t hear me.

You are dying of lung cancer.

Breathless.

I’m trying.

looking at him like this

nakedness, vulnerable

I see you shrinking up

looking for pants

needing pants.

the things that build up on bodies.

I can see the sunspots    sores

on you

the markings

you are so much smaller than me now

I search for something to say that will unburden you

but

I know that it’s always been like this

this heavy clothing

I can feel myself reducing

dwindling

keeping you company

ignoring the fences

the fences

the fences        we are

the perils of life

but

I know you are unaware

searching for your pants

trying to get home.

Waiting

waiting for lost insurance

the other grandchildren

and sons

and and the daughters

all the others

we are the boxing motions of all these

missing items...

I am

absent family packages

it’s fogged detachable eyes.

I don’t recognize you

after all that’s

spilt     all this

some point      some motion,

·É±ð’r±ð rocking back,

again the distaste of –

my dad kept you alive, waiting for the rest of them to arrive

the recognizable night

pulling at your oxygen mask

sliding it down your face

you’re waiting for that family portrait

it is endless,

late

unrecognizable

regardless, we continue

we are kicking the same bucket

everywhere     just to be

almost over

to be

just

another

another

another

Grandma clings to the wooden box etched with Aspen trees.

I’m trying to understand shrinking

I am grown but my size stays uncertain

waiting to

diminish back down

recoiling into that

sterile

bed

how you go on reducing after death,

how even you

even though you were fully grown,

you are miniscule and ash.