January - Poem 26

Blueberries / Haley Bosse

Half-thawed
from the back
of the lightless,
breezeless freezer,
soil frothing up
to float
a spinning tire
crusted over
in the image
of the distant
midday sun.

The light drapes itself
across our trembling bodies
then circles back to dance
through the tanager’s uncut song. 

The dark below
my tongue
begins to pop
the skin. 

the storm / Jess Bowe

the know-ahead gives us time,
we think, to drip the faucets 
and spread the salt along 
the sidewalks. 

deadly as it comes. 

driving 
  and 
     walking

are impossible dangers,
a heaviness on every surface. 

the weight of it 
alone 
on highways
of electric power
is enough
to leave a city 
in the dark. 

in Greenland, a mass 
sheet loses 8,000 tons
per second. 

i can feel it swallow us 
from here, calling 
for homeostasis

the natural order of things,

one way or another. 

Grounded / Joanna Lee

--after Nikki Giovanni

i cannot bring myself
to do anything

about the spider
twitching to and fro

across our kitchen floor,
daring me to smush him

if i don’t watch every step.
i can’t even

sweep him up
in the dustpan & air-

lift him out the back door—it’s
ten-degrees and snowing on our porch,

& so much death outside
already.

Unglamorous  / Thomas Page

It seems like everyday I’m cleaning up urine
or finding that the floor is covered in emesis.
I keep taking you to get venipunctures
while she cleans the bathroom of your excretions.
You litter the floor of your rags of mucus
while I cleanse the home with antiseptic.

While I cleanse the home with antiseptic,
it seems like everyday I’m cleaning up urine.
You litter the floor of your rags of mucus
or finding that the floor is covered in emesis
while she cleans the bathroom of your excretions.
I keep taking you to get venipunctures

I keep taking you to get venipunctures
while I cleanse the home with antiseptic,
while she cleans the bathroom of your excretions.
It seems like everyday I’m cleaning up urine
or finding that the floor is covered in emesis.
You litter the floor of your rags of mucus

You litter the floor of your rags of mucus.
I keep taking you to get venipunctures
or finding that the floor is covered in emesis
while I cleanse the home with antiseptic.
It seems like everyday I’m cleaning up urine
while she cleans the bathroom of your excretions

While she cleans the bathroom of your excretions
you litter the floor of your rags of mucus.
It seems like everyday I’m cleaning up urine.
I keep taking you to get venipunctures
while I cleanse the home with antiseptic
or finding that the floor is covered in emesis.

Or finding that the floor is covered in emesis,
while she cleans the bathroom of your excretions,
while I cleanse the home with antiseptic,
you litter the floor of your rags of mucus.
I keep taking you to get venipunctures.
It seems like everyday I’m cleaning up urine.

Listening to Tigran Hamasyan on January 25, 2026 / Amy Snodgrass

At about two and a half minutes, I hear his voice: a new 
language to speak the loss that has hollowed me out.

The moaning glory of his melody carries me floating out 
from my jaded immobility of hope. The window holds its shatter

–awaiting me. The rising sun recalls the night before and
I cry out in my new language: ten shots and huddled coats.

And that’s how it starts, finally–a slit almost invisible–
a droplet forming–and gasps escape my shoulders. 

The curves of my shirt enter the pillows in a line, the click 
of my knees, my dented forehead. A collapse of hard-lost dams.

Later– wrung– I listen. A shroud surrounds me, hovering, not touching. 
His crackling piano plays for a nation dying, for a window as yet unbroken.