Depression, Too, Is a Kind of Fire - Taylor Mali

I’m an idiot because once

before we were married she asked me whether I knew

that we would not be having children

if we did get married, and I said yes.

And because she knew I was lying,

she asked if I was really okay with that.

And because I’m an idiot I said yes again.

And once during a fight, not married

more than two years, she said she felt like my first wife,

and I, like an idiot, assured her that she was.

She worked out at the gym five times a week

and smoked as many packs of ultra lights,

and I’m an idiot because when I asked her why,

She said, Because I hate myself and I want to die.

And I laughed and said something I don’t recall,

something completely and utterly insufficient.

From the roof of our apartment,

I saw 40 or 50 people jump from the towers

on a Tuesday morning—we used to be able to see them to the south,

just as, to the north, we can still see

(and by “we” I guess I mean now just me)

the Empire State Building,

which still steeps me in gratitude

because I’m an idiot—

out of the smoke with arms flailing.

And I swear I saw a perfect swan.

And I was going to write a poem

about how fire is the only thing

that can make a person jump out a window.

And maybe I’m an idiot for thinking I could have saved her—

call me her knight in shattered armor—

could have loved her more,

or told the truth about children.

But depression, too, is a kind of fire.

And I know nothing of either.

LENS - Andrea Gibson

I’ve been practicing gratitude.

I’ve been skipping entire weeks.

Practicing a wider lens. Listening

for the bully’s heartbeat

Hearing it in my own chest.

I’ve been remembering the time I cried

in a cloud of tear gas at a peaceful protest.

How I decided I was too soft to last,

and then I decided to be softer.

I’ve been remembering way way back

to the moment they told me Jesus walked on water.

How I knew whatever I’d grow up to believe

I would never try to wrestle a miracle

away from anyone’s reason to live.

I’ve been remembering how I wrestled a miracle

away from your reason to live.

If only shame could wash me clean,

but that is never how healing works.

Nobody ever won anything from anyone

thinking the whole world was out of their league.

I’m sorry you know

what I look like when no one is looking.

I don’t expect anyone to believe

in justice and forgiveness at the same time.

If it’s any consolation

I feel like a ferris wheel in a snowbank

twenty years after they shut down the park.

If it’s any consolation I’ve been living in my head

whenever anyone tells me I have a good heart.

And I think about you. I think about you. 

untitled 8 - Mira Gonzalez

it is 2:05 in the morning

your foot on the brake is preventing the car from drifting backwards

he is kissing you first deliberately

then in a lazy or confused way

you know he is trying to communicate something important

and maybe he has wanted you for a long time

but his tongue is moving around your mouth

you begin to wonder if he wants to kiss you

or if he wants to push his way through you

you can see his bedroom window from where you are standing

he is climbing over fences and unlocking them from the inside

he says ‘go up those stairs and turn right’

you swear that you would have loved him a year ago

and every day since then

you are waiting at the top of his stairs

you don’t know where to look or what to touch

you are thinking about the ‘check engine’ light in your car

you are aware of certain things while he has sex with you

helicopter noises through an open window

a bottle of blue cough syrup

street signs indicating the direction to an eastbound freeway

he is strong and gentle and you wish he was only one of those things

he is tracing his fingers across the edge of you

everything is quiet other than a barely audible sound

in the space between his arm and his shoulder

he says ‘why are you sighing so much’

you say ‘that is just how I breathe’

he says ‘you don’t want to be here’

HEAVENLY CREATURE - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

For Missy

I remember the day you showed up at the bus stop:

quiet, pale, a thick veil of dark hair, we stared

at each other through overgrown bangs. We were just

beginning our dry sentences at Baldi Middle School.

In those days, our jeans would be tattooed weekly

with the coded names of every boy who flicked

his eyes our way. The backs of our hands became

necks and lips for practicing on. I once even

doused my backpack with my brother’s cologne,

a sad effort to at least smell like I’d had a boyfriend.

Walking around your housing complex, we’d stare

through the windshields of every man who drove by.

We thought of our bodies as dangerous chemicals,

our breasts as match tips waiting for love’s flinty gaze

We were sure all the boys around had firecracker hearts

just waiting to explode. And look, I know I know I know

I am not telling the whole truth. Things in your house

were different, were not right, were accepted because

maybe no one knew any better, or maybe they did

and didn’t care. And whenever the whole dark truth

would spill out, I remember I’d gather my features

into the center of my face, unable to figure out

the right combination for my concern, for fresh alarm.

I’d forget how to sit, how to blink, breathe. It’s true,

sometimes you look back and all the things

you should have done rise up like volcanic islands,

whole civilizations, whole existences, whole lifetimes.

But what did we know then? Fourteen, I took

the hammer of my dumb tongue and tried to tap

comfort into your impossibly small ears,

your impossibly small fists. We were kids,

and the future was our dependable escape plan.

We’d be gone soon, so you had just better suffer through

it all now. We’d be gone, so until then, I tried

to make you laugh. I’m sorry I never realized

I could’ve unlocked your exit earlier, that I

could’ve released your story from the shogun

of my own throat. The letters you send me now

are like postcards from that hopeful future:

you are okay, you are alright, with no return address.

So this poem is a telegram to let you know that

I still think about you, that I’m still proud of you,

that when I remember you, I always remember you

as beautiful.

Crow, Scarecrow - Leonard Gontarek

A crow sits on the head

of a scarecrow. I see myself in that.

Which part of fuck off don't I understand.

twilight musings - Charles Bukowski

the drifting of the mind.

the slow loss, the leaking away.

one’s demise is not very interesting.

from my bed I watch 3 birds through the east window:

one coal black, one dark brown, the

other yellow.

as night falls I watch the red lights on the bridge blink on and off.

I am stretched out in bed with the covers up to my chin.

I have no idea who won at the racetrack today.

I must go back into the hospital tomorrow.

why me?

why not?

LETTER TO A LOST FRIEND - RICHARD SHELTON

War, trade, religious debts to discharge, these are mostly the reasons

for men’s distant journeyings: but you take pleasure in distant journeys

without reason.                                                               – St.-John Perse

we do not realize what we want

until we learn

what we are willing to give up for it

and you did God knows you did

when swimming was no longer possible

you learned to sink you learned

to live at the bottom of the sea

now tell me of the chambers where you sleep

tell me it does not matter

lie if you must

is your bed luminous is it festooned

with seaweed do all your narrow windows

open onto water

is the tide kind to you

forgive me if I do not understand

last night a stranger asked me what

gives you most pleasure and before I thought

I answered her revenge

PARTY - Andrea Gibson

I was 13 the first time

I drank so much the bugs stopped.

A high school party

at Chrissy Olden’s house,

a senior, whose mom worked overnights

at the truck stop and embarrassed the customers

by not being embarrassed to lose

a solid 10 minutes

rambling over the register

about who wrote what in her yearbook

in 1971.

I was sitting in the middle

of the living room

on a corduroy couch

telling Katie Mathews,

the only other 8th grader there,

something about the temperature of music.

Somewhere there was a DJ

holding his finger under the faucet

of the party.

Every few minutes

I’d be handed a bottle of something

that razored my tonsils all the way down.

If someone had told me

it was nail polish remover

I would have believed them

but I would not have stopped drinking

the red off of my heart.

Do you remember

the first time you knew you

were absolutely safe?

I stumbled into the bathroom

and locked the door behind me

so I could smile as wide as I had to

without anybody knowing I had to.

The mirror was caked with Aqua Net.

There was enough hair in the sink

to mistake the drain for a pet.

The last person who had vomited

in the toilet had missed the toilet.

A year prior, just before my grandfather

swallowed the worm of his life,

he leaned his yellow face into my terrified eyes

and made me promise to Never

go near the bottle.

Nobody had to tell me

that booze was a terrible way to die.

But this was a party,

and I was person for the very first time.

You won’t know what I mean

unless you’ve been there too.

The bugs drowned till morning.

Say what you want about addiction.

I pulled the hair out of the drain with my hands.

I took it home.

I gave it a name.

Bad Habits - Richard Shelton

how could I leave you behind

old friends

since I am going nowhere

here is good and there is evil

and again I fall like a drunk

between two stools

of all the things I have

I cherish most

what no one else would want

At the Restaurant - Stephen Dunn

Six people are too many people

and a public place the wrong place

for what you're thinking--

stop this now.

Who do you think you are?

The duck à l'orange is spectacular,

the flan the best in town.

But there among your friends

is the unspoken, as ever,

chatter and gaiety its familiar song.

And there's your chronic emptiness

spiraling upward in search of words

you'll dare not say

without irony.

You should have stayed at home.

It's part of the social contract

to seem to be where your body is,

and you've been elsewhere like this,

for Christ's sake, countless times;

behave, feign.

Certainly you believe a part of decency

is to overlook, to let pass?

Praise the Caesar salad. Praise Susan's

black dress, Paul's promotion and raise.

Inexcusable, the slaughter in this world.

Insufficient, the merely decent man.

Untitled - Chris Mc Geown

Mental illnesses

Are constellations

Of the mind–

Most people won’t

See them

Unless you point

Them out.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE - Richard Shelton

                                                      For Michael Hogan

on December nights

when the rain we needed months ago

is still far off and the wind

gropes through the desert

in search of any tree to hold it

those who live here all year round

listen to the irresistible

voice of loneliness

and want only to be left alone

local knowledge is to live in a place

and know the place

however barren

some kinds of damage

provide their own defense

and we who stay in the ruins

are secure against enemies and friends

if you should see one of us

in the distance as your caravan passes

and if he is ragged and gesturing

do not be mistaken

he is not gesturing for rescue

he is shouting go away

AND THE SCARS WILL BE COVERED - Richard Shelton

responsibility fell at my feet

like a dead bird

and I left it for the collectors of feathers

now I am leaving these words on sand

for the water

and when everything is gone

a voice will say

that’s home

where two paths cross without speaking

where a lost shoe full of darkness

is curled up

under the roots of the snow

then I will point myself in the right direction

alone I hope

I was never much for company

and start off down an empty road

toward winter and a silence

which no one will ever repair

Straw House, Straw Dog - Richard Siken

               1

I watched TV.         I had a Coke at the bar.       I had four dreams in a row

where you were burned, about to burn, or still on fire.

               I watched TV.          I had a Coke at the bar. I had four Cokes,

four dreams in a row.

Here you are in the straw house, feeding the straw dog. Here you are

               in the wrong house, feeding the wrong dog. I had a Coke with ice.

I had four dreams on TV.          You have a cold cold smile.

               You were burned, you were about to burn, you’re still on fire.

Here you are in the straw house, feeding ice to the dog, and you wanted

               an adventure, so I said          Have an adventure.

The straw about to burn, the straw on fire. Here you are on the TV,

               saying Watch me, just watch me.

               2

Four dreams in a row, four dreams in a row, four dreams in a row,

               fall down right there. I wanted to fall down right there but I knew

you wouldn’t catch me because you’re dead.          I swallowed crushed ice

pretending it was glass and you’re dead. Ashes to ashes.

You wanted to be cremated so we cremated you and you wanted an adventure

               so I ran          and I knew you wouldn’t catch me.

You are a fever I am learning to live with, and everything is happening

               at the wrong end of a very long tunnel.

               3

I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything,

               couldn’t do it anyway,

just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made

               any sense, anything.

And I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t sit still or fix things and I wake up and I

wake up and you’re still dead, you’re under the table, you’re still feeding

               the damn dog, you’re cutting the room in half.

Whatever.           Feed him whatever.           Burn the straw house down.

               4

I don’t really blame you for being dead but you can’t have your sweater back.

               So, I said, now that we have our dead, what are we going to do with them?

There’s a black dog and there’s a white dog, depends on which you feed,

               depends on which damn dog you live with.

               5

Here we are

               in the wrong tunnel, burn O burn, but it’s cold, I have clothes

all over my body, and it’s raining, it wasn’t supposed to. And there’s snow

               on the TV, a landscape full of snow, falling from the fire-colored sky.

But thanks, thanks for calling it          the blue sky

               You can sleep now, you said. You can sleep now. You said that.

I had a dream where you said that. Thanks for saying that.

               You weren’t supposed to.

Untitled - Rupi Kaur

how is it so easy for you

to be kind to people he asked

milk and honey dripped

from my lips as i answered

cause people have not

been kind to me

Survival Poem #17 - Marty McConnell

because this is what you do. get up.

blame the liquor for the heaviness. call in late

to work. go to the couch because the bed

is too empty. watch people scream about love

on Jerry Springer. count the ways

it could be worse. it could be last week

when the missing got so big

you wrote him a letter

and sent it. it could be yesterday, no work

to go to, whole day looming.

it could be last month

or the month before, when you still

thought maybe. still carried plans

around with you like talismans.

you could have kissed him last night.

could have gone home with him, given in,

cried after, softly, face to the wall, his heavy arm

around you, hand on your stomach, rubbing.

shower. remember your body. water

hotter than you can stand. sit

on the shower floor. the word

devastated ringing the tub. buildings

collapsed into themselves. ribs

caving toward the spine. recite

the strongest poem you know. a spell

against the lonely that gets you

in crowds and on three hours’ sleep.

wonder where the gods are now.

get up. because death is not

an alternative. because this is what you do.

air like soup, move. door, hallway, room.

pants, socks, shoes. sweater. coat. cold.

wish you were a bird. remember you

are not you, now. you are you

a year from now. how does that

woman walk? she is not sick or sad.

doesn’t even remember today.

has been to Europe. what song

is she humming? now. right now.

that’s it.