She Says Her Husband Doesn’t Want to See Her Pour Herself into a Black Hole
It’s easy to say, she says,
but what else am I supposed to do?
There is resistance in me, too,
to the idea of dark space, or blank—
to the pauses between two people
like gravity.
I don’t understand, not really,
how constellations disappear,
how they linger, how often
we don’t look up.
I tell her it took me three tries, yesterday,
to read the phrase: everlasting love.
I kept seeing: exhausting—
exhausting love.
She laughs, and says:
as in God so loved the world.
And I wonder if we will ever say: enough.
As if what we carry,
for an aging mother, or a faltering son,
can somehow be measured.
But we both know a black hole
is an absence that swallows—
a gasp, or a gape,
a wide-open mouth.
Victoria Melekian
A Report From the Apocalypse
Father Terry is not celibate.
Based on the merch,
few people know how to spell apocalypse.
There are crop circles in the vacant lot
between the Rolling O and Two Strikes Bowl.
All twenty-seven entries for the chili cookoff
won first place ribbons.
The band quit early so the drummer
could propose to her girlfriend before midnight.
The judge declared the dance contest a tie.
We dug up a grassy patch in front of Bank of America
and buried a time capsule inside an empty keg:
several Polaroids of the four horsemen, the mayor’s
curly red ponytail, yesterday’s Daily Gazette.
The escape room was empty.
The fire department’s kissing booth
raised enough money to send our high school’s
track star to the Paralympics.
My husband won the bet: “If you really believe
this is the apocalypse, you’ll go nude.” I wore
a new dress with my blue cowboy boots and a yellow
and white daisy wreath woven into my hair.
Zachary Spencer
Valley Rings
It’s a Friday–
I will propose to you tonight.
I suppose you’ve been waiting long enough…
Maybe we’ll dance in the orchard
To a band playing love songs, songs about heartbreak and loss.
Do you remember when they came on the radio
Driving through the river valleys of Montana, against the current,
Somewhere between Bozeman and Yellowstone?
How the mountains were still snowcapped in July,
Hazy and only really real in dreams?
Your mother is somewhere in that haze,
Saying she’s sorry she can’t make it
But mine will be there for you to borrow– she is proud.
She is a daisy stem spinning between two pinched fingerprints,
Spinning inside a ring of grandkids.
She is whispering secrets to you through their lips.
In the hazy dream-snow, your mother is refracting
Like the gem I will slip over your knuckle tonight,
Gleaming in the sun, tying a bouquet of turquoise and rose gold.
Another band scheduled for the orchard–
Your favorite– has cancelled again this week.
The buttercups in the yard, we hold under our chins, reach
Toward the sun– children who cannot yet fathom impermanence.
Just this morning, you found a five-year-old photo.
You’re holding our daughter in the palm of your hand,
Before the twine between thought and word had come full circle, formed a knot.
She is telling you she’s proud to have you for a mom,
That you can borrow her bouquet, if you promise to tie it.
Tomorrow, we will wake on a king size bed
In a room that will not be our own,
And tonight will have been another snowcapped dream,
A haze we won’t wake up from
Until all the daisies and grandkids start spinning the opposite way,
And the sun winks at everything that refracts its light just before sputtering out,
And the mountains out west slide away from their rivers into the sea.
But, for now, I’d like you to know
That it was never your favorite band
To which I’d tie a ring around it all.
the poet's billow 