Unbecoming

On her 63rd birthday, Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to survive a barrel ride over Niagara Falls.

from the summit the

water looks more

like a fog

endlessly

rolling in on itself

ghostly white and

without shape

across the gorge

birds huddle

in the treetops, but barely

make a sound

muted as they are by the

river’s howl

what can live

underneath so much turmoil

—this flood

that cuts deep through

rock like

the slow hand of

God

Robyn Campbell

The Blue Cow

after Gainsborough

The sky is too big for the blue cow, too noisy 

in the land of commerce. She misses her apple tree

and stands with her meadow mates watching a painter

shaded at orchard’s edge. Fishermen take shape

beneath brushes. Boats clog the blue bay.  Men squint

at oars, bobbers, sails, cattle. Even cattle have eyes 

only for clover, horse flies. Women follow children

singing cloud shapes. On the bluff between small

farms and the future, the blue cow, her face open 

as a mother’s arms. She blinks all afternoon, brown

sun, brown moon.  The shepherd nudges his herd

home, but the blue cow won’t leave the canvas.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Eremophobia, The Fear of Being Alone

4:00 AM, can’t sleep, the humid air thick

as tree sap, so I go outside to name

the constellations and trace the shapes

of their white neon bones. The stars

don’t know they are part of anything:

they spin and burn, they swallow darkness

for nourishment, they can’t remember

their own luxurious names. Tomorrow

I’ll look at the sky and pretend to marry

that pale blue bride, tomorrow I’ll stand

in my driveway holding a single

black feather I found on the gravel road.

Christopher todd Anderson

Please Don’t Fight

Mark says, "Be good

to your sister. Don't fight.

Please don't fight," on the phone

on our way back from Manhattan.

His wife's left him. He's staying with his brother

in Emporia, the night falling all around us,

and the red lights on the big wind turbines

pop on—like wishes, like eyes, like

the last of what the fire can give.

Kevin Rabas

If I Should Say I Love the Tree

that dropped my dead parents slowly, remains of a morning shower, would you believe they’ve landed back on Earth, their cancer cells dispersed into the ground? Ghost of a white dog tracks their movements. I find wings buried in the tree’s roots, eye the swans that droop upon each other at the edge of the world. A hollow wailing like the inside of the cello I still haven’t learned how to polish or play or store properly. All this tucked densely behind yellow eyes as my parents search for their three daughters, confused by the smell of the tree’s maple plotting their path. I wait for them to return from their spacewalk and realize the skillfulness of rain, a heavy moving drug that conjures the remarkable. And family is the only home for a tree that rains. 

Theresa Senato Edwards

*The title of this poem was inspired by Lynn Melnick’s If I Should Say I Have Hope.

Calligraphy

Once, there was a garden. He and I 

grew tomatoes and green peppers,

a jalapeno or two. We lamented

the rabbits, as you do. But we did not

tend it, and the earth went fallow.

My favorite photograph is of me

and Lila in that garden. Her, a baby,

wedded to my chest in a carrier.

I remember taking her everywhere,

letting her use my body in the 

animal way it was meant to be used.

In the mess of children and the mess

of men who wanted something else,

I forgot the message of my body. The way

it can interpret another body. 

The way it can write its own 

small letters on another. The way

they have been written on you.

Last night, I surrendered. Wrapped

my legs around you. Sent the Morse code

of my cunt, a telegraph

I didn’t think I would send again. 

And still, I can look you in the eye 

first thing in the morning 

and have you say, I’ve made the coffee.

I kept your sweetener in the pantry.

I am sore, and this reminds me of you.

Alicia Casey

Underunder

Wherever we are now,

whosoever you may be,

I have come to love

these fathoms, their blackblue

tang wedging

between our teeth—

Good worm,

to keep us here.

Julie Phillips Brown

Breezy Point after the Hurricane

for my mother

We dig matching trenches

with our heels, beach chairs paired 

facing the ocean,

watch kids flick footprints 

into patterns, admire how skimmers stitch 

their slim black beaks so close 

to the water’s surface we suspect 

they’ll tumble. 

You in bright turquoise swimsuit,

gray-blonde hair tucked behind your ears, 

stone blue eyes.  Seagulls reel on invisible strings.  

I open my old lunch box; we pass back and forth 

silent bites—

You pack a thermos,

Campbell’s alphabet soup for the beach—

ridiculous, my favorite.  You teach me to write 

my name.  

Mom, I hand you my spoon.  

I am making space to lose you—

the trench of my heart is big 

enough, a deep hurricane unraveled: 

take it. 

Today the sea a neat blue remnant; 

the sand feels new.  

A plover makes her nest a shallow dish.  

In woven beach bags 

what we know but can’t quite say—

this great blue hem of sea

this vast seam coming undone.

Jen Ryan Onken

*This poem recently earned the Maine Poet's Society 2019 contest prize for previously unpublished poets.

“She Began Looking at the Sky/Expecting a Large White Angel with a Blue Crotch”

Title taken from “Gods” by Anne Sexton

My legs halve://two yet-to-be //lilac branches,/forced to bloom /in a jelly jar/next to the bed.

I lie in the V/of legs. I rise/for the kiss./To speak/with a tongue/forked is to lie. 

(I fear the spliced/wires dangling small clear/light bulbs/across the windows.//I love 

the paper mobile/of blue swallows/hung in an undulating V: each tail/a blue folded crotch.)

I have a Venus/totem carved/in blue shale/stretching her blue/almond vagina.

Yeah, yeah/I know the signs:/woad buds in the jar,

milk seeping from/their velvet suede stems/I sliced: sour, dries/up the lips. 

Jennifer Martelli

Hematology 

When I see my hands, the discrepancy of shape, 

the way my skin swells with the weather, 

I remember the frosted ground I was formed from— 

I’ve seen new 

life planted & dug up, a child 

born not in the usual way— 

There was the summer August heat, thick with water, 

but no hot blood, no sweat from skin or the fluid of it 

all, or human sounds or the breaking of flesh— 

An unearthing of sorts, it was a child pronounced girl 

at birth, a girl with a name I felt in my mouth— The girl-child and I share 

something, and if it’s heavy breath, I will 

give her my best air, will stay in this place 

where my labor has been kept. If I exist here, I am most myself in October 

when I smell the nutrients that joined me with someone else, 

the particles that fill me in the cold. 

What I’m talking about here is circulation, the harvest of blood— 

If another girl is born, I will be thankful for one more thing to 

keep me here— 

Kristin LaFollette

Makalani Bandele