Harvest

September is a time of transition and renewal, but also a time for gathering. Harvest celebrates poems that speak to the ordinary and overlooked. Here, you will feel a little lighter, find peace in nature, and remember that poetry is a beacon of hope.

Somewhere, a Watercolor

Emma Trelles

Mornings I raise fists against

The clock, my digital bridges, myself.

Here there is an inch of green

Pasture to enter, horses

Stained in shadow and a vein

Threading mica between hills rocking

Up and down their grassy sea.

Far away, one liar lies about another

Into a microphone, so everyone can be sure

To hear what decay sounds like

While I stand in the college art gallery

Today caped in rain and the morse code

Of pencils trying to speak truth, how

A fat stripe of western light can gild the dullest

Oak and give hope there’s more to living than

(Turn to the left) bracing for the next crash

(Turn to the right), maybe. Somewhere

In the city of my birth there are women

Swinging hoops and azabaches, beating

Sugar into a froth so fine a god would

Sell one chrome-skinned son for a taste.

When the Impressionists netted light

Into landscapes they didn’t care

If we saw field or farmhouse

Only that we felt the crossing

From object to atmosphere, from

The glass-edged sweat of beginning

To how resistance fades into this colorless

Afternoon, where no one writes prison or home.

Let’s just say we all want better and we’re painting

Our way towards it, a tremble of mistakes

Brushed into a soft mask of leaves, a more forgiving sky.

Earth and the Librarian

Jean Valentine 

At the library

she passed a tray with little

books of baked earth on it—

Take one,

And eat it;

It is sweet,

and it is shed for you.

How can I live?

said Earth—

The Lesser Gods

Ellen Bass

Jupiter’s bruised. Something smacked into it Sunday,

leaving a black eye the size of the Pacific–

its strong gravity like a shield protecting the fragile earth.

As one astronomer explained

“We should thank the giant planet for suffering for us.”

I’m not sure Jupiter is a Christ

but as I sit on my front steps, garbage and green waste

lined up curbside, plastic wheels deep in spent rose petals,

sunlight spilling on the blossom-bent spines,

I think how easy to be inspired

by the more theatrical gods: the sun, the moon,

the god of desire, bees throbbing in the throats

of these roses, the roses, how natural to praise them.

But what about all the modest

neglected deities–the overlooked

who’ve never had a temple built to them?

This morning I raise my cup of fragrant coffee to

the god of mold pushing in the shower grout, rust

eating the bent lip of the paint can. Bacteria

toiling in the landfill and all the other detritivores,

millipedes and woodlice, burying beetles.

Also the fly god who lands on my hand,

thorax glowing an emerald iridescence.

And the god of maggots whose infinite mouth hooks

scrape the corpses of reindeer and doves,

raking our own humbled flesh after our visit

to this small planet. They graze,

filter, scavenge and browse.

A Little Light

Suphil Lee Park

Stand

still. My little

light, go

around the world

and spread joy.

Make heavy hearts

a little

lighter.

Little lighter—

set some mind

aflame.

Words coming

to a standstill

where there’s little

light.

The night a little light

when saying this

aloud.

Memory of Sugarcane-worker Off Duty

– for Roslyn Gajraj 

Sasha Parmasad 

Ajee on a wooden bench 

in our road

black pitch soft like her sagging breasts,

sifting rice in a wide square soop,

yellow husk from white grain,

brown arms muscular like balata wood.

How I love her. 

In that ripe heat

the air around her misshapen feet, rippling,

toe-nails like thick scabs

soles thirsty, gray, with black gorges

me at her side, neck arched, acutely watching

the orhini knotted at her sweaty nape bundle

black coil of hair,

bench – crude

hacked with cutlass blades, stabbed with rusted nails,

her tunneling veins,

the green marriage-tattoo on her wrinkled forearm.

I long for merger. 

There is a scent of burning sugarcane in the air 

pungent – and she sighs as she sifts,

long eyebrows of cane-ash swimming

about her heaving arms

velvet butterflies

me rushing to catch them, emerging

with dusk-stained fingers and lips.

“I look like you,” I say.

Nothing. 

I stare at her mango face –

What am I to you? –

at her armpits,

the damp darkness of the cloth,

raw edge of heel.

In a hard drizzle of rice I touch

with smooth fingers, her ankle, gnarled toes. 

She stops sifting to say,“Child, shift out of the way!” 

I step off the brown jute bags spread

like bed-sheets around her bench – 

Yellow husk buzzes in burning breeze;

white grains fall down.

She begins to sing. 

Sponge feet 

butter skin

hand made for holding pen

head level with her calabash knees, I think

You will teach me to work, I 

will take your burden away. 

Through dry, rippling air

I trace the low unraveling 

hem of her dress

the long scar on her ankle,

black, baby toenail,

until 

I see with envy

she sifts

while standing on water. 

Notes: 

Ajee – paternal grandmother or elderly grandmother figure 

Soop – sieve 

Orhini – head-veil

Green Man

Anna Lena Phillips Bell 

He will not subside,               won’t slip into leaf-mold;

he lived in the woods                 where my father found him:

a weathered                             plank with waiting sockets.

He carried him home                   and carved the cedar:

a narrow nose                       nestled in red crest

lichen, lips                  like his own, and scuppernong

beard; bronze ivy                     to crown his brows.

Last, he split walnuts                 and wedged each half

into its hollow,                   hallowed his face

with cool creek water,            and called him whole.

Then, as he’d promised,      he posted him north.

Dry moss crackled                      in the bubble mailer;

wide eyes emerged                 to watch me while

I made him a place                        in my winter house

and bade him rest.                    Now, as I breathe,

a verdant current                    fills craven air:

he exhales, his mouth                 speaks moss, makes leaf.

Delightful Mysteries 

Rosario Castellanos

Here you have my hand, that which raises itself

from the land, full as blooms in August.

Here are my feelings in a fortunate chain,

my heart, place of bonfires,

and my body that always accompanies me.

I have come, happy as the rivers,

singing, under a sky of willows and poplars

as far as this sea of love beautiful and grand.

Now I do not wait, I live.

Translated by Idra Rosenburg