PORCH POEM

Jessica Abughattas

Sitting with my secrets in the sun on the porch. The corridor of cacti yawns along the metal fence. Fragrant are the balms of desire and I’m burning. Fearsome years shed like hair from the trees. The past recedes. Inside, organs at work, pumping blood and ovulating. My unkempt yard, rocks and dirt. Earth, as luck would have it. Was it worth it to gather in your heat? Siren. Car door. Postal worker. The bumblebees, ravenous.

The meadow, cool enough to sleep. On Vermont Ave, city avocado trees crack concrete, their arms full without breaking. All life flickers. Old Mitsubishi, daytime moth. I leave my life on the lawn.

[I HAD A BOUT]

Jane Huffman

I had a bout Of something Undefined

Another rattle In the lung As if I stood

Under the ladder Of my childhood For years

Before I climbed A single rung /

I had a bout Of vertigo

Inside my chest

A clocking From within Was bested By the worst Of me again

As if my body Shook off All its walls And doors And reeled The outside in /

I had a bout Of something

Like a flame

A burning In the core

Like shame

An ache the size And color Of a thought

Aboutness

Like a cough I cannot shake