Poetry – Page 10 – Novus Literary and Arts Journal

Movement

Written by W. F. Lantry. Posted in Poetry.

There are no orchids here, and no long shore

teeming with raucous life, no salted wings

rising above the multicolored boats,

no overwhelming breezes, and no tides

rising, impelling everything that floats

to shore or seaward where no warbler sings,

and no palm trees, waving their endless fronds.

Instead there’s only heat: the algaed ponds

cannot reflect the sky or even trees,

birches grown bare above them, whose bare limbs

are falling constantly to riversides,

and floating downstream where a viper swims

in wait, for me or you, and all of these

impressions have combined to replicate

the feeling of an ever closing gate.

I want to leap it, get away, become

something completely other, changed somehow

just by the landscape, as my life divides

between the endless blossom and the bough,

walking in rhythm to a restless drum

to Panama, Maldive, or Singapore.

Planting Seeds

Written by Mariel McSherry. Posted in Poetry.

Fall from my palms, then hit the dirt.

Sink beneath the soil, then begin to cry.

Don’t stop until you’ve given

All of your tears, back to your mother, then

Let her hand them back to you, one by one,

As you move through time.

Collect them like they’re diamonds.

Reabsorb them like they’ll take you home.

Make a sustained effort to understand them, and

When you have enough, begin to

Run towards the sun with everything you’ve got.

Until one thousand leaves sprout from your chest,

Until you’re sobbing fruit.

Great Plains Food Bank

Written by Anders Carlson-Wee. Posted in Poetry.

The wind is in the trees again, and I’m thinking it’s a wonder

the body can move. The way the mother at the Fargo food bank

fingers a can of concentrated juice. The way the line keeps

heaving forward. The way the child tugs the heavy skirt.

My job is to look for the elderly, help them load. Like the guy

who grew up in Oslo and is still trying to make it to Bergen.

It’s a straight shot on the train, he says, but you have to be

in Norway to catch it. I lift his meat and yogurt onto a cart.

I wait as he chooses nine of the least bruised carrots.

The trunk of his car has the smell of dried flowers, and his

baguettes fit lengthwise easily. But before I help him lower

himself into the driver’s seat, and before his hands pass over

one another, turning into the northbound traffic, he tells me

I’m young. Tells me it’s spring. Says I should be out of here,

heading for Bergen. I know he’s right. I know he’s

so goddamn right. I stand as still as I can as he leaves.

C₁₀H₁₂N₂O: Ode to Serotonin

Written by Dakota Delk. Posted in Poetry.

The therapist said you need sertraline.

Generic brand is still more

than you can afford. You cough up the tens anyways,

dropping them from fingers overworked

To the bone, nails chewed to skin

Near cerulean capsules quiet the hot static

Pulses, obsessive thoughts

Brain always switched on

like the flickering bathroom bulb your mother stands under

as she scrubs her hands raw. You wonder if they are sticky

like the candy-coated words she pours

from her lips or the slick lies she has been told.

The therapist said you need sertraline.

He said you have your father’s

eyes, as though your honey browns

are covering up his icy blues.

The man with the prescription pad

Stares at you and says that you are not whole.

He thinks your fizzy chaos is more

like your father’s live wire

Than your mother’s high tide.

Your brain quiets more in the silence

Than under the influence

of a licensed dealer like him.

You still look in the mirror

and you take the pills to hide

the blue underneath

your irises.

Shallow Water Over Sand

Written by Jesse Graves. Posted in Poetry.

I have seen this color before, in my mother’s shift-robe,

on old dresses her mother might have worn, blue-green,

delicate shade, like shallow water over white sand,

now in my palm, on a button I picked off the pavement

in the grocery store parking lot, color of thread stitched

into quilts made by hands born the century before last.

I Wake and Feel the Fall

Written by Shannon Lise. Posted in Featured, Poetry.

In the middle of the afternoon I wake and feel

the fall of dark — the shadow on the dogwood

and the shortening of days. It is easier to say

things to the facelessness of crowded places full

of light. You can kill the thing you cherish in a

thousand different ways. In my dream I got

your name wrong; would you leave me if you knew?

In your place there are a thousand other faces

and I don’t know what to say. Long ago you gave

me something from the darkness to hold onto

through the failing of the springtime, through

dimming of our faces — would you make a last

appearance and remind me what it is? You can

kill the thing you’re scared of if you let it walk

you home, if you let it come in close enough —

enough to feel your breath. In my dream I

didn’t know you and you laid down on my bed.