Flying Saucers
So many strange things said in those weeks,
the well-meant, the wild, the thoughtless critiques.
Like the gasp at six weeks: “Are you pregnant again?”
No, my friend, just human, and soft where I’ve been.
My body had become public somehow:
discussed, assessed, compared to before,
as though motherhood were a temporary weather
expected to clear from the shore.
But nothing, nothing, could ever compare
to the moment she paused, mid-coo, mid-stare,
and with utter delight, as if spotting a sign,
declared, “Your nipples! They look divine!
Like flying saucers!”
She said it with wonder, eyes all aglow,
and I nearly choked on my lukewarm cocoa.
A cosmic commendation, sincere and absurd;
the strangest yet kindest praise I’d heard.
Because they had changed.
They no longer belonged to beauty alone,
but hunger and comfort and keeping alive.
Small pink planets around which another life
had learned to orbit and thrive.
So let it be known, in this postnatal strife,
I’ve fed a small universe into life.
And if aliens land, they’ll know what is true:
even the galaxies bow to what mothers do.
Natalie Harveld
Fly
Buzzing
the house fly flew
Flying:
was its pleasure;
aside from locating a lump of lard
Seeing with a thousand eyes, the world was taken in:
a dead flea, a rubbish bin, grease spots and a drop of yellow yoghurt
Landing on leftovers, his soft snout slides from under his face
His sponge tongue drinks a droplet
A hop and drop to the top of the bench
A quick lick of his hands, he grooms
his bulbous eyes to keep clean
The head tilts
A shadow stretched across his view
The world flickered in his thousand eyes
Danger
Flapping his wings,
they lifted his black body off the benchtop
Heading home,
he had a good day’s work
A taste of toad,
a smell of soil:
all wonder for his toil
E. Avenel Perry
burning man
Freshwater breeze whispering
an overheard conversation about
the seagulls and loons
intruding another cloudless day.
Dry heat waving, casting shadows
of pure imagination. Where we go
to collect our thoughts when the world
gets in our way and we pivot.
Life is full of pivots, sunburns that linger,
blistering to spite the tan. Where we chase
groggy mornings with flickering nights
basking in the crackle, killing time
with recollections and stories we repeat.
To build and perform, burning man
on a forgotten beach that stretches beyond
our comprehension, building castles in the sand.
Arden Felker
Buying lotion on vacation
In Hawai’i my skin is saltraw
& crackling. I rub the lotion
from the trapped-tourist grocery store into my hands
& suddenly I am holding a toy from my childhood
with this exact smell: dark coconut, I want to say, hot leather sandals.
Like the last thirty years were a cul-de-sac. I bring my palms to my face,
breath searching between every finger — Which toy?
Mom would know. I want to tell her that this smell
is still alive out in the world.
I want it to mean that she is, too.
Kristina Percy
And Everything, Forgotten!
if i tell you a secret
promise me, stranger,
you will receive it with an open heart.
there’s a door somewhere in my village
the color of parched earth, of weathered
wood, of things that were once seamless.
it hangs loose on one hinge,
still ajar —
into a world unburdened by
the city’s clamor, its relentless hum,
the selves we are coerced into wearing.
past it, a thin river runs
unnamed and unbothered.
the palms preside like an old man
casting shades upon those
who wait without being asked.
as i cross this rust, one foot into the familiar,
the other into void —
the door sighs shut at my back
like a prisoner meeting open air.
the water does not greet me.
it continues, and that indifference
is the kindest thing, i’ve been
offered in ages.
here the light falls unhurried and
unambitious, it carries no destination.
this is the secret stranger, not the door /
not the palms / that i keep coming back
that no version of the city has ever
fit me the way this broken threshold does.
so now you know, there’s a door,
and on the other side of it,
i’m not performing /
i’m, at last, myself.
Hamna Kamran