54. To the Stars Through Difficulty: Diane Wahto

Straight up, light years from Wichita, the sun meets
Beta in Cassiopeia. Cross currents clear the air here,
bring Spring Star into view on the horizon. In Michigan,
a man once asked me about the Kansas wheat
and the cattle. I, a child of asphalt and brick,
saw more cows in Kalamazoo than ever appeared
in my Kansas home town. As for wheat, fallow fields
provide fertile ground for teenage make-out sessions.

Once I walked on lake shores. Now I walk on the verge
of the river that nourished the People of the South Wind.

– Diane Wahto

53. To the Stars Through Difficulty: Gabriela Lemmons

never        will he return to Kansas
he prefers      sea foam on sand
never          and two decades later
his wife offers him sea stars
to forget
he excavates limestone & shale
plants gardens of rose & peony
unearths molluks
trapped in stone
his prairie                 was once sea

– Gabriela Lemmons

52. To the Stars Through Difficulty: Chris McKinney

52. Chris McKinney – April 2 (post May 1)

Above in the blues, violets, and incarnadines
That make the sky look black from below
Shine the stars, like motes of life in my fizzy drink.
Those specs that draw bears, lions, dragons, and other monstrosities
In the heavens give me hope -
Hope, the last remnant in Pandora’s Box.
I’ll reach for that hope.
I’ll grasp it.
I’ll cling to it, tightly.
I’ll die with it.

– Chris McKinney

51. To the Stars Through Difficulty: Melissa Sewell

My residences in this state make a star shape.
I’ve surpassed my sisters at last, deft through divorce
and sorrow, mourning and scrimping and packing.
Can I ever scribble out what I said to you?
We’ll move from the curb into my glass garden house.

No more dreams of death now, love, or waking frozen
next to a phantom weight on the pillow.
Guide my hands holding the wine glass to your mouth.
If there were any possible constellations left,
we’d singe our way back into stardust.

– Melissa Sewell

50. To the Stars Through Difficulty: Timothy Volpert

On Kansas Avenue
most buildings stand vacant;
their disuse is not unusual.
Time is cheaper than the wrecking ball
and so they slouch along the skyline, still:
the landfill of opportunity.

Unfazed on the curbside, I go on
drinking bum wine like I have something to celebrate.
No Western Meadowlark sings for me,
but some Thunderbird might know my personal state song.

– Timothy Volpert

49. To the Stars Through Difficulty: Matthew Porubsky

Dearest,

The sangría was exactly like you described. Your advice to squeeze the cuts of lemon, lime and orange in then stir the slices to the bottom flavored each glass enough so the scent of the wine waned away to a peak freshness. I wasn’t sure about the fried oysters at first. The slivers of smoked zucchini turned the fried taste on its head and I was left with musically rich moments. I’m not sure if it was the first afternoon of fine weather or it was eating on the patio or if it was the oysters themselves, but I had a flourish of inspiration. That instant lent me suggestions that I haven’t been able to escape since and, truthfully, never really want to. You were almost there with me. I think it was the oysters.

Your love.

– Matthew Porubsky

48. To the Stars Through Difficulty: Leah Sewell

One long-haired wheat-headed baby was born with a microburst
in June in a ragtag pad above a storefront on Mass.
The first window crackled apart, a limb flew,
severed an awning, toppled a cross on a country
church south of town, the whole edge
of the state shook and cursed in cacophony
but little hasty prayers went up like campfire sparks
into the inky sky. One woman, her own kind of bolt,
saw through the end of one storm and the life of another. Wheat-
haired babe woke to the rain of glass and mother’s eyes like stars.
– Leah Sewell

47. To the Stars Through Difficulty: James Benger

The clouds permeate the desires
Of all those who pass beneath.

There’s an unspoken unpleasantness
When those clouds overtake the plains.

It’s hard to imagine a bright Kansas sun
When the sky looks like undrinkable river water.
And it is just as poisonous.

But perseverance is in the hearts of the meekest.
And today, with those clouds threatening disaster,
Someone will perform a miracle.

– James Benger

46. To the Stars Through Difficulty: Ken Lassman

Cirrus clouds ice the sky white as deer tails,
which the dog missed but drinks up the hooved soil with his nose
pulling on the leash, wind puffing up clouds of cedar pollen
eyes watering a dread, not knowing, don’t know.
Red buds twist open early by the heat, the snowy owl starves here
in Kansas, irrupted south from the tundra, turkey vultures riding the thermals, spinning
the prevernal cyclones north to Michigan.
Beware the Ides of Marching seasons; unlatch the leash
the dog runs away
towards what?

– Ken Lassman

45. To the Stars Through Difficulty: Ardys Ramberg

Free State? Hah!  Now we be clamped upon!
Leave us free– free by the tea rose planted
by the wild blue indigo.
Ah, that’s so much better, the pale pink and scented gold
begging to be plucked and saved in the family bible,
plucked beneath criss-crossed lace of layered mares tails
as the indigo bends and waves.
And the woodcock is so far away,
hiding in the young woods by her favorite log,
the log under the wild rose glowing in the morning mist.

– Ardys Ramberg