Bourgeon

Little Creatures

The teacher who looked ancient
to her circle of first graders
leaned forward and explained

that the typical lightning bug
was simply the twinkle
in an angel’s eye, the only part

of our guardians God allowed us
to see, and in the small
classroom where we learned

the sound of each vowel
and a vocabulary of simple
words so we could read

the unassuming adventures
of Dick and Jane who ran
with Spot while their little

sister Judy sat with their cat,
the butter-colored Puff,
all this seemed right and good.

Later in the season of the lawn
sprinkler and popsicles,
we’d wait in the dark

for the chants of crickets
and cicadas to pause and even
when the moon was white

as milk and as disclike
as a sugar cookie, we looked
for those little creatures

that glittered with irresistible
flickers of green and gold light.
Yet sometimes we just sat

and mulled over how many
guardian angels visited here
and if they all belonged to us

or if some were on vacation
while others stopped by
as part-time bugs.

Walking Away
Languedoc

The gate is open, the pebbled path
between weathered stone walls, old,
and Mother is walking away.

In the middle distance,
a chiseled-brick archway
over a lane that’s long been dusty

as no wind has come along
lively enough to sweep back
and forth between the aged houses.

Mother’s a tourist in this region
where, if a person said Yes
in the vernacular of troubadours

and radically Christian Cathars
rather than in the Parisian patois
used by invading northern nobility,

she might’ve been marked for death,
along with entire families and towns,
slain by bonfire or the sword.

Mother’s been able to say Yes
in a handful of languages.
Yes, to a marriage, to children

and to a dynamic accumulation
of days and, lately, Yes
to whatever waits ahead.

The breathless blue sky
above the down-sloping village’s
hillside and its castle in ruins

are nowhere in view. Only the walls,
the open gate and the path on which
Mother is walking away.

The Last Word
after Jack Gilbert

When the angels came, he was working
on the Sunday crossword puzzle.
He’d filled in “apple” for forbidden fruit
and, down from the first letter,

penciled in “agape” in the squares,
then stopped, caught more off-guard
by the incongruous intersection
of greed and ungrudging goodwill

than by the two sinewy, winged figures
who looked like extras in a Zeffirelli film.
All he asked was could he continue
the puzzle. Both angels shrugged

so he took up his pencil again.
The two drew near, leaned over him,
close enough for him to discern
the faint scent of his favorite flowers,

lilies of the valley, those delicate bells
that never ring. Hemingway, one said,
pointing toward a five-letter space.
Donne, the other countered dryly.

“But I have so much more to finish,”
the man mewled, showing them
a baffling expanse of vacant spaces.
By the time he put down the final

letter, the sky had given its last
rosy show of the day and the man
said he would slip on his sweater.
When the angels led him toward

a brightness, he tried to let go,
arguing, “I don’t know if I gave
the right answers.” No one does
was the angels’ reply.

Lenny Lianne was born in Washington, DC, and spent over forty years in the “A” suburbs of Northern Virginia: Arlington, Annandale, and Alexandria. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from George Mason University and her poems have appeared in regional, national and international journals and anthologies. She’s taught the writing of persona and ekphrastic poems as well as the ode in workshops on both coasts. One of her poems was chosen by Dorianne Laux as a finalist for the 2021 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize. Lenny lives in Arizona with her husband and their dog.

Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Inner Compass

Golden shovel from David Whyte’s poem “Sweet Darkness”
“…anyone or anything that does not bring you alive it too small for you.”

It could rain anything
during the night—leaves, perhaps— or
maybe you dream of anyone
speaking a riddle that
you can answer. In what language does
a cardinal call? You yearn for time not
designed by Techie gurus who bring
unending yet pointless updates to you.
None of them will keep you alive
until your imagination is
free to understand that too
many things feel small
because a cramped vision is useless for
the world that calls to you.

Stone to Sand

Time works slowly—the rounding of mountain peaks, the way it turns stone to sand. Was I born at the beach? It’s as much home to me as it is to the seagulls and the sand pipers. When I walk near the ocean, it’s as if I’m a selkie yearning to swim deeper, find my treasure under the waves. I have been every color on this shore—a pink and white newborn, a red, Noxema-covered child building castles, a tan, sun-soaked woman floating in front of a cresting wave.

This beach knows my life’s secrets. The lonely teen struggling to be cool while the lifeguards swooned over her friend, the mother teaching her toddler to kneel in front of the breakers, suddenly seeing why her child was terrified at their crashing. The woman, walking in the moonlight.

Now I meditate to the sounds of waves at dusk and lick salt from my reddened skin. Wrapping myself in a towel, I savor the turn of another day. Whatever comes next will be a blessing and a joy. Time works slowly—the rounding of mountain peaks, the way it turns stone to sand.

Ann Bracken has published three poetry collections, The Altar of Innocence, No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom, and Once You’re Inside: Poetry Exploring Incarceration. She serves as a contributing editor for Little Patuxent Review and co-facilitates the Wilde Readings Poetry Series in Columbia, Maryland. She volunteers as a correspondent for the Justice Arts Coalition, exchanging letters with incarcerated people to foster their use of the arts. Her poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, her work has been featured on Best American Poetry, and she’s been a guest on Grace Cavalieri’s The Poet and The Poem radio show. Her advocacy work promotes using the arts to foster paradigm change in the areas of emotional wellness, education, and prison abolition.

Image: Chiring chandan, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Crossword Clue, 5 Down, and a Hint: “Love” Isn’t the Answer

I said it first,
Come over here, and help me out,
and you laughed.

You said it in place of any other words.

To you, to love was to breathe,
to dance around the kitchen in your Sunday socks
slipping in and out of tile lines and realities
burning eggs and licking pancake batter
off the spatula before dropping it in the sink.

In place of
Good morning
eyelashes fluttering across my cheek
and a confession

Again, again, and again without losing meaning.

To you, to love was to be,
to bathe yourself in the heat that fueled your temper
quilting comfort from the sinews of my muscles
nesting inside my heart as a mouse in midwinter
pumping my bitter blood with your saccharine promises.

In place of
Good night
hair falling in a pile in my lap
and you laid at the base of my spine.

Until I made myself sick with your sweetness.

The way you said it, and how often,
I forgot to tell you how some people
build brick walls around their hearts,
and I am one of them.

Well, to me, to love was 5 down and zero to go,
and all I knew in your arms and breath
was that I wanted to exist as you did
to sing ballads from twenty-twelve instead of sitting
at the table hiding in black coffee and newspaper puzzles

instead of
silence
brushing over your sticky syrup fingers
and green-tea-honey-stained lips
I wanted
Good morning
to be waking with you
crashing to the floor together
forgetting to
sneak out before the sunrise glow broke
watching you on pink mornings
petals opening and vines climbing
to entwine their limbs around the object of your affection
inviting you inside my mind with a welcome mat
to learn freedom, and it read,
I don’t know how to love
the parts of myself that are becoming you.

Down, across, and undefinable by black grids and ink.

Love was as easy as trusting, which is to say
not at all—but I needed an answer,
and you let me hold you until the moon
until my sleep-drunk truths painted your body in bruises
until I could not untangle your nerves from my own.

Whose voice spoke as the words tumbled to the page?
I felt them through your limbs:
I love you, I love you, I love you.
You said it in place of any other words, and in return, I called you mine.

The Girl in the Striped Overalls

I heard of love like spirits,
the image of a woman floating in
on a bed of cloud dust and moonlight,
beauty like gold in a gossamer gown,
soft and safe, needless of want.

But I fell in love with
the girl in the striped overalls, she
stomps into my heart and climbs
inside my thoughts, clumsily, heavily,
hiding her gentleness from my corruption.

She is unyielding behind those loud
lines of color, red and yellow, blue
and the ocean with it, and in all
understanding of the world, where there is
sight, so is she. This, I must hide from, too.

There is no room for love or beauty in me,
only the clash of my emptiness, the fog
resting on my shoulders, and the cloth
draped around the semblance of a lover’s
form, shrouded from meaningful existence.

This darkness, against her screaming brightness,
incomprehensible, in the way even her hair is pink,
and now so is mine, unnatural brilliance that
binds us together, and we begin to wonder, is this
poison, after all? How far a leap from dye to death?

She is everywhere, she is suddenness,
she is my unweaving, the shards of light that
leap forth like the stardust that created the first
woman, an incantation for unwelcome synesthesia,
blinding, carving my eyes from their sockets.

I refuse to yield, but as she rises with daybreak,
there is another tide of damp regret that pulls me
back into the depths of misunderstanding, and
I refuse to yearn. There is nothing to desire here,
nothing to do but suffocate the flame she lights in me.

Which is corrupted, the prism or the void?
If all of this is true, if we can trust that
shades of light define perception,
my own theory of love emerges, and it is this:

If I am the absence of color, then she is everything I stand to lose.

You Guessed Wrong

I had another dream about you last night
woke up wondering where you went
if your breath still fills the space
between waking and sleep, in someone else’s bedroom

and I want to tell you how I am and who I’m not
lay out all those things of yours that I wove into my being
without confessing that I miss the moments
you forgot to leave behind

neon lights and sober parties and flour on the floor
the vacant familiarity of fair-weather friendships
knowing without knowing
knowing without ever having truly met

and it makes me think how I’ll never see you again
you’re in Tempe now and studying forensics
I’m on the other side of the country trying to forget
we met, so when they ask me,

Have you ever been in love?
I don’t have to tell them about the taste of orange juice
and how I would’ve been okay if I really had been dying
that night I passed out on your couch.

You’re the reason I get pancakes at the hotel breakfast buffet
and always wish they were blini
because if they can’t taste like my mom’s
I wish they were yours

I keep steeping my tea bag too long
until I choke on the bitterness, remembering
you and how you looked at me like I was a stranger,
but I let you braid my hair.

Lex Page (he/they) is a queer young adult writer, poet, and student at the University of Virginia pursuing a BA in English. Through poetry, he seeks to explore the messy edges of queerness, gender, and family and examine love’s meaning in all its forms. When not attempting to become a local cryptid, lex is working for LGBTQ+ advocacy groups and making questionable decisions in the kitchen.

Image: Pozitron, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Middle Path, Kenyon College

I didn’t know which ones were
nasturtiums until after the warm
September afternoon I spotted
their round leaves with orange and yellow
flowers on the side of middle path,

Chosen by a gardener as part of a plan,
I imagine, as I think of the free seeds
picked up on a trip to the Lowe’s near
my house on one spring day
when there was plenty to forget

and I tossed those seeds into the overgrowth
of my garden, thinking only of the times
I had enjoyed nasturtium blossoms in fancy
salads, not expecting much, busy with the end
of a semester, never looking for the

other end, like on this path, always going
forth and never back, never idling like summer
time but looking forward to harvest
or the sowing of seeds, the nurture
in between consuming all the hours

of the seasons we may have noticed
while not looking around to find out what
comprises this incidental beauty, the space
in the middle of our hurry,
but when I looked up moon-shaped leaves

and the colors of nasturtium, it turned out
they were part of what I already knew, the
part I noticed and remembered long enough
to find out more, to connect with something
from other walks of life, to look up.

Dog Fountain, Mount Vernon, Ohio

A plastic orange lab shoots water
out of its mouth; all the dogs do,
towards a golden bone in the center
of the fountain in the middle
of the old downtown, a corner
where for six months of the year
passers-by lean into their scarves,
heads down into the wind, but
after the thaw water gushes,
dalmatian, beagle and boxer gleam
while a plastic cat positioned to watch
and retired people we haven’t seen
for half a year sit, blanketed in coats
and sweaters, splashing sounds
like company after a long winter.

Murmuration

starlings,
swirling flecks of black
flocking
how big they sound
when they settle in the tall trees
behind the house; it’s like
god’s own conversation,
an enormous voice
all around, echoing,
almost as if we could make
out the words if we could
recognize the language

Jeanne Griggs is a reader, writer, traveler, and ailurophile. A PhD in English, she directs the writing center at Kenyon College and plays violin in the Knox County Symphony. Jeanne’s volume of poetry is entitled Postcard Poems; she reviews poetry and fiction at Necromancyneverpays.com.

Image by Leonhard Lenz, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons