Author: poetryfest

Isn’t it just awful, she
says.
They didn’t bring
the riesling or zinfandel

Red ropes race down the
faces of children
lying in literacy or
maths – it was Tuesday.

Did you hear
about that horrible
shooting? I can’t imagine –
I teach Montessori.

You’re right, I say, they
should have brought
more riesling.
The dry laughs fill

chalice and cup and
bowl and plate and
spoon and desk and
chair and body and and and

I’m a teacher
too. They tried to give me
a gun a few years ago. I
felt indignant about the idea.
About ruining a perfectly
good thing –

Wine is best served
in the absence of
children.

raindrop on a leaf
thrushes emerge from jeweled trees
forever peaceful

#47 [condemned either way]

I’m sorry but nothing you say
can convince me that he’s a Christian.

There’s no charity, no care for the poor and lost,
no concern for the sick and dying, no display
of love and kindness, empathy and generosity.
Where there should be mercy, there is none.

In this case, the one with sin
throws the first stone. In this case,
he would not forgive the prodigal son
but rather send him away to Guantanamo Bay.

Life is a game he needs to win,
which is why he bullies and threatens, lies and cheats.
He builds himself up by tearing others down.
Look at that scowl. Count the number of chins
under his neck when he ad-libs and goes off-script.

If only we could be there after he dies to watch him meet
his maker—what will God say to the orange man?
What judgment awaits in the afterlife?

Will he be tossed in the grinder, shred into meat
or burned to a crisp, wind-blown across this great land?

They invade the dawn breeze like icons they are
With their black necks with the crazy movements they can do with them
Humans drive them crazy but who can blame them
They flap their wings with an breeze no other bird can top
No permissions needed because they just honk it off

Just always honk, it’s the only way they know how
Canadian geese. The best bird that I ever met.
Hatched with pure yellow fuzzy-ness that is undoubtedly adorable
They hiss when anyone who annoys them get in the way then again who can blame
them
Constantly flying in a V because that’s how they slay all day

They don’t slow down for humans that’s not who they are
They are moods in every single way and I love them for that
Learning the way of the honk is easy if people were actually smart
People would rather love on the petite birds then actually appreciate the “different
birds”
The other names people call them are just flat out disgusting and they don’t deserve it

They too swim gracefully like swans or ducks but people still hate for no reason
It almost feels like anyone who hates them has never been bullied before who they are
If they hiss, then they are defending themselves. Every animal does it so why is it
different for them?
They too just want to belong in society but people constantly said no all due to
stereotypes
Why hate when all you can do is love. Is that too much to ask?

But I, DC, the Goose Whisper shall be the one who loves them
And I don’t care if I get hated on too for loving these silly birds
I learned to speak their language
I can get up to them close enough with no hesitation and guess what. No. Hissing.
They are my favorite bird and I am proud of it. Screw what people have to say about
them.

Beneath Apollo’s superficial stare
I found you miles into a pinewood
Doe eyes settling in stricken despair

A coat of false belligerence you wear
Anthropomorphic you stood
Beneath apollo’s superficial stare

You held no maternal sense of child care
Picking at the ashes of my girlhood
Doe eyes settling in stricken despair

This moment an altar, our eyes locked in prayer
A perpetual lull i wouldn’t break if could
Beneath apollo’s superficial stare

If you were this life to spare
Pomegranate promise to remain true and good
Doe eyes settling in stricken despair

Callisto, my Ursa, clawing midair
I’m your Arcas, vision obscured
Beneath Apollo’s superficial stare
Doe eyes setting in stricken despair

Does he hear the lingering screams,
when he sits on the porch
and the wind ceases its sea-surge
amongst the fingered leaves—

Does he regret the strength
that pushed him to his feet
leaving sister, father, mother,
to walk his wounded days alone—

Does he wish he had instead
fallen to his side, rested
his cheek on searing stones,
and let the hot wind take him,

Unwind him and bind him
forever to that place—
does survival gleam
like the gold of fools—

In memory of the survivors of the 2019 Whakaari/White Island volcanic eruption

When school ends the halls empty, with nobody there
The sound of laughter fades, replaced by quiet
Friends disappear paths go seperate ways
Routine falls apart, freedom feels like a void
Days stretch long, unfilled, unplanned
The sound of the bell, now just a memory in our heads
The loneliness comes in, as we think more about time
The absence of talking, a heavy stillness
We crave connection, the shared moments
In the quiet, we find ourselves alone for good

You faded the other day,
like light in Eire’s west, retiring from beating time,
sun and sweat, closing in shutters
making a mess of bed clothes.

These were the bookshelves we left unorganized,
the tattooed skin I couldn’t interpret,
absent-minded that I was back then.

I was innocent of it,
nursing grief wounds that came unhealed,
scabrous in time, that you had helped sew up
lick clean, dress in silk covering.

And how playful we were, naked, unashamed,
frolicking through meadows, melodious,
without care for cuts a branch bramble
would give to those not heeding.

I fell too easily then, coarse feet against
night air and grass stain;
that the trick mirror had revealed
all was worsened from wear.

As your form turned void, shapeless then unholy,
I wept:

thinking of how we would never again be so close to our Garden,
always so distant from Grace, in glass highways
endless stone arches.

I Am a Spider
I am a spider
And you are the dew
That is caught in my web
Though you are not trapped
You could slide down at any moment
Free
Yet you choose to stay
For we are so enamored of each other
I pick you up and carry you on my back
Until the morning sun makes fools of us both

The rosemary bush beside
dad’s house
has gone to ivy. The last four sprigs
reach for sunshine
while the rest suffocates beneath waxy
five-pointed leaves. When
this house sells will the next neighbor
tear it out and hope
for barren ground or will the ivy stay
as if it always belongs? Will the next
neighbors even question
the bush beneath? They won’t know of the bees
that used to dance over purple flowers
and the cabbage moths that fluttered
between the springs. That context of this land
will live only in my mind along
with the memories
of standing in front of that bush
and holding out my hand
for content honeybees to rest on.