Pangyrus

“This poem is part of a project I’m working on in which each section is inspired by an episode of the BBC documentary Planet Earth. One long poem (‘Mountains,’ for example) or multiple poems make up each section. ‘The Gates Open’ is part of the ‘Seasonal Forests’ section. In May 2023, just after my book, Apocalypse on the Linoleum, came out with Lily Poetry Review Press, I insanely signed up for 30/30 with Tupelo Press, which meant writing a new draft every day of the month. Each new poem would go up online, so there was a real pressure to not only write every day, but make it decent enough to be seen in public. After the month was over, Tupelo would take down that month’s poems and start over. ‘The Gates Open’ began as one of those drafts. I sat on the steps of the farmhouse porch and thumb-typed on my phone while the party went on around me. Minutes before the midnight deadline, I sent the draft into the ether, and in the morning, still enamored with my output, sent it to my friend who’d hosted the farm fundraiser and answered my questions about cheese. Two years later, I was still tinkering with it, and up until recently, I hadn’t nailed down the title, which references a mystical (Kabbalistic) belief that on Shabbat, the gates to the divine realm open and we receive a second soul, which allows us to open ourselves to the mystery and to delight in the kiss of divine light that floods in. I’m still grateful for the push to write so much in such a short time — I still have some unworked first drafts from that month, sitting in a folder, waiting for their moment,” — Josette Akresh-Gonzales on her poem “The Gates Open.”

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“The nannies clustered on two benches and snuck drags off v**e pens. The stay-at-home moms claimed the other two benches, made hushed comments about the va**ng, called, ‘Jeremy, put that down,’ or, ‘Stop hitting your sister, Terrence,’ before turning their attention back to their phones. Three dads in baseball caps pressed their backs to the chain link fence that held us captive, took long sips from steaming travel mugs. They made small talk about yard work and renovations, stared at our nannies’ legs.

We gathered near the slide, waited for our adults to tell us to play, but they didn’t notice the tight knot we’d formed, how we bent our heads toward one another, our furtive whispers.

Terrence slapped his sister again, hard enough for a sharp crack to sound, just to see if their mom would notice. This time, his sister screamed, ‘Mommy,’ but the mom didn’t move. She said, ‘I won’t warn you again, Terrence,’ but we knew she would. She always did. Though sometimes she made him sit on the ground at her feet for three minutes. She set a timer, called it a time-out, continued her conversation about reliable babysitters and potty-training techniques,” — an excerpt from “Recreational Riot” by Laura Leigh Morris.

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Image by Hugo Cornuel on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.