Last minute moments kaleidoscope
into themselves
until every “one more”
conjoins into the first:
the look-back at the Garden,
the hand-pat on the tomb,
and time rejects its own passage,
it folds into itself:
liability and mercy have always been
inseparable, vulnerabilities
that hold themselves against themselves—
that hold, even when the tide goes out.
By Heidi Turner
Yes.
Still.
Evermore.
Despite all.
Even now.
By Heidi Turner
It’s like the calendar took the hint
and gave us a thousand little liturgies
stolen from the internet:
hugging, hats, boys, girls, trans visibility,
cheese lovers, pizza, margarita,
puppies, siblings, denim, May the Fourth,
Limerick, demo, donuts, candy, and kindness;
I think the online knows there’s too much gray
between Christmas and Christmas.
By Heidi Turner
I like to think our songs
interlace in counter-melody,
that we are incompatible
in any other timing,
but the words you sing
run against my harmonies
and push them to resolve—
but, as always, I could be wrong.
By Heidi Turner
The headlines are standing-room only;
I imagine being contained between the lines,
the block text guillotine with its invisible judges
deciding what name, what face is tragic
and who will endure the double-death,
whose blessed memory will burn,
anonymous injustices forced through the cracks.
By Heidi Turner
No force of will can save us,
no magnificent gasp,
no morality haymaker—
there will only be seeds
scattered on the hillside,
old stones rolled away,
wheat standing for harvest.
By Heidi Turner
Does the past take root in our souls
or does it lay like a crypt on my chest,
an unholy memorial, a broken construction?
Does the past live in our bodies
or is the past the Reaper
coming at the harvest?
And is the past the very blood
Spilling even now, iron formed
in the hearts of stars
that have already died and gone dark?
By Heidi Turner
It will have to rain
for another one hundred years
to wash the taste of the blood
out of the earth
the dead will rise first
and the living will wonder why
they themselves are so pale
at the sight of the Rider in white
and for every injustice there will be
a tablespoon of gold-leaf water
for the living to drink,
drowning in justice for the dead.
By Heidi Turner
The asphalt crumbled
under the winter rain,
you watched and I watched
the potholes grow,
the moss grew in,
the color of mold,
and I sat on the sidewalk
until—finally—a dandelion
pushed high enough
for me to wish the road leading
home would heal.
By Heidi Turner
More than forty-seven thousand miles
of freeways that lead to nowhere,
military telescopes for blind eyes turned upward
in worship of empires constructed
on the bones of the dead,
huddled masses chained together.
We built roads to everywhere,
we call ourselves the crossroads,
and we do our best to forget:
Rome will always burn.
By Heidi Turner
Why did I send you to those far away beaches?
What did I tell you that led to the charge?
How did I hold you when you died?
And if you did not, and if I’ve forgotten the why’s,
I have never forgotten the way that you won,
never seen sunrise without remembering
the way you looked back as you said goodbye.
By Heidi Turner
Our alternate futures twist
around themselves,
converge on nothing-moments,
become new stories even in the telling:
I kissed you today;
it will be our wedding tomorrow;
we never spoke;
you are the scar on my trust;
and even so, in every timeline,
we lock eyes in Walmart
on November 15, 2014,
every single one but this.
By Heidi Turner
Somewhere in the chaos
we swirl together
you and I circle each other
like chariots in the whirlwind
your contact is a miracle,
a coat of many colors,
and I am still searching
for a prophet in the air.
By Heidi Turner
Between the multibillion-dollar marriages,
the artificial magic and the never-ending hashtags
and the unhappy joyful, the grieving believers,
the mouth sounds we make by instinct,
the subtle hand-wave at the supermarket,
the generational sagas we tell to our parents
and the self-same we tell to our children,
I’m always home in that other galaxy,
where I belong in that long-ago moment.
By Heidi Turner
I shouldn’t be surprised
that you were born mid-winter
the color of your soul
is concentrated, frozen
an inherited memory
of the summer when we met.
By Heidi Turner
The flowers
bloomed
quiet
all those days
I sped by them
the moon cast
no light
on the evenings
I ignored
the clock
By Heidi Turner
There has only ever been hope:
the occasional promise from heaven,
the endless parade of revisions,
and still we put our fingers through fences,
stretch our arms to the fog
and tell ourselves the future is bright
behind the blank whiteness.
By Heidi Turner
You and I and all
sit beneath a sundial
to escape the rain.
By Heidi Turner
While we wait
I wonder if we’ll give
ourselves a poppy
and what our poppies will be,
what red flower remains
to commemorate the anxious quiet?
By Heidi Turner
I thought I was driftwood
bumping against the shores
of a thousand little islands,
and now I find the storm clouds
come and lightning strikes us all,
a billion boats moored together
on the ever-rising tide.
By Heidi Turner
