Geer Austin | Bird of Paradise & October

Bird of Paradise

With green spears
crested orange flowers
& bird beaks
I’m a showoff
a show stopper
an in-your-face
specimen of a plant.
Some say I’m pushy
like a rooster, a brilliant
tropical thing screaming
my name at sunrise
keeping you from sleep.


__________________________

October

My face is a jack-o’-lantern a couple of days
before Halloween. The oak trees in my yard
bear 24-karat acorns; squirrels break their teeth
on them. I smell a cloudless blue sky, but it’s raining.
I’m staring at my laptop. Alan Cumming is trying
to sell me stuff on Instagram, but I’m not buying.
I can taste the money those gold acorns will bring me.
Okay, I can’t really taste money & acorns
aren’t palatable. So I munch a Macoun I bought
at a farmstand the next town over. My neighbor’s kid
tells me to chillax, but if I follow her advice I’ll forget
to vote. Her mother tells me about pif paf pouf. I say to her
this insane bench of stoicism is not a comfortable perch.
I ogle the orange blossoms that attracted hummingbirds
last summer. All of them have flown to Ecuador
where they work a gig entertaining tourists. I remember
their wings whirring next to my face while I read
novels on the deck. I always flew after them
as they rushed toward their next flower. But Chucky’s
saying that’s not true. What does he know?
A honey-drenched butternut squash opens its interior
for me. Cinnamon sweetness splats my taste buds
& I think about dinner at an agriturismo in Sicilia
one year ago. An acorn lands on my head & black squirrels
scramble up tree trunks. Pretty soon it will be November.


_______________________________________________


Geer Austin’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Poet Lore, Manhattanville Review, Big Bridge, Plenitude, BlazeVOX, Boog City, and others. His short story, “Stuart Livingston Hill,” is a recent episode of the podcast A Story Most Queer. He has served as a judge in the PEN America Prison Writing Awards and the Bisexual Book Awards. He is the author of Cloverleaf, a poetry chapbook (Poets Wear Prada). He lives in New York City.

Carrie Magness Radna | Studded Orange

Studded Orange

Why did ya pick dis man?
people used to ask me;
they thought I was still in play,

that his love & kindness
wasn’t enough —

but his skin,
on a good day,
smelled like an orange
studded with cloves

before the muddled wine
& cinnamon Red Hots
were added
to our winter-friendly
romantic recipe.


__________________________________

Carrie Magness Radna is an audiovisual cataloger at New York Public Library, a choral singer and a poet who loves traveling. Her poems have previously appeared in The Oracular Tree, Mediterranean Poetry, Muddy River Poetry Review, Poetry Super Highway, Walt’s Corner, Polarity eMagazine, The Poetic Bond and First Literary Review-East. Her latest poetry collection, Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador Press), was published in December 2019. In the blue hour (Nirala Publications) is expected to be released early 2021. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, Carrie lives with her husband in Manhattan.