July - Poem 4

Skin Costume / Clayre Benzadon

I love, I mean leave
the flesh around
consciousness.

I do not fit
inside the wound
of my mother,

which is really
just a metaphor
for body.

Last night,
I dreamt of my
dead friend holding

me, we were both
crying over what 
our forms could not

protect us from:
not just mortality
itself, but the appearance

of gender. I was trying
to bind my body against
baggage, bias, backstabs.

My friend was hoping
to keep his breathing.
I choked. For a second,

I could see myself
inhabiting a different
frame, a more attuned,

intuitive self. Anatomy
of a hearth-pulse, warm
and giving. I gave up

my friend, woke up,
and still ended up
having to live in this

skin 
costume.

Softboiled   / RJ Ingram

A serenity of nurses emerged from the cave they were raised in & canvassed about the healing power of sandwiches / It was a cult really but their magic worked so we let them descend upon the villages to take care of us / A really symbiotic romance us with our scrapes & bruises & each rose-y-cheeked nurse looking from behind their clip boards feeding us egg salad sandwiches & tucking us in at night / The nurses hatched from a nest in their secret Serenity Cave / After picking through the shells with their stethoscopes & reflex mallets the nurses wandered around looking for smooth stones to take care of like babydoll survivors of car accidents / Each baby nurse wobbled around checking in on the stones a flock of nurseries on a tight rotation / The largest nurse watched over the serenity like a mama bird unable to see anything other than precious Faberges & oh! How she could still remember the designs on everyone’s shell every pattern identical to the scrubs they emerged wearing / The serenity was a harmless boon for a very long time & when the curly haired older ones were ready we sent them out to find more survivors more hospitals to add to their rounds / Serenity Cave had to be kept hidden & protected at all costs / Poaching nurses was a big problem for the community hundreds of years ago / But lately something darker & sinister has been occurring & more & more guilds of assassins show up in the villages looking for the keeper of the nursery the Joyous Serenity herself & the exquisitely thorough & ethereal ledger on her clipboard / The tiniest pieces of her children’s eggs cost millions but Giovanni wants to corner the market & put an end production / Nurse Joy wants to battle / So we battle.

Big, Bad, Wolf / MeraBaird Kuar

The night sits still though I ask it to scoot over
though I howl into its face, though I run all over 
it does not break apart, it just hugs me tighter.
No matter how I try to escape, or how loudly 
I scream, no matter how often I say 
I don’t love you, it does not flinch, it is not injured
It stays whole and full and its color never fades
there is no flushed face, no back turning, no 
tight grip on my shoulders, no rasp in its voice
but mine scrapes my skin, scrapes through
the thick air of my desperate gasping breath
scraps everything, stops fighting, and I feel
my skin grow whispers of hair upwards to where
I am witnessed by the owl, in the live oak tree
not asking who, just shaking its head, just
perched in epilogue and so I turn around
go back inside, get in bed, watch the night
and the owl from my window, I forget 
the hunt, I learn what hunger really needs.

Great South Bay Big Green Boat / Kes Maro

With a butter knife I cut the good parts off rotting peaches you / pass to me. You say to add the jammy can / of blueberries collecting condensation in the sand. The day can be / so simple and free. / We add cheese and mint and / brown sugar somehow still / unmelted in the 100-degree sun. I dreamt I saw something great come / out of the water. Great like horrifying. You don’t want to go home / yet. I keep thinking I hear someone yell “shark!” but it’s / not real. It’s alright. / That great thing from the water stands over me like I’m / not going to be alright.

July 4 / Dallas Outlaw

Institute, Airmen, Syphilis
Bricklaying, aviation, agriculture
W.E.B, Carver, & BTW
the year is 1881

in exhausted Alabama soil
Booker planted possibility
because he understood
what it restored

cotton had taken from the land
the same way a country had taken
from the people working it
and called what remained 

(empty)

he studied the overlooked
the buried and the underestimated
the destitute, dismissed and undereducated before discovering what they were

capable of becoming
the lesson was already in the clay
students learned bricklaying
mixing earth, water, and purpose

into the walls of Tuskegee
where the names engraved
enshrined the builders 
as part of the blueprint

and the architecture became a record
red brick buildings standing as evidence
that the foundation of Black education
was Blacks understanding

that the foundation of America 
was blood stained red from
overworking the blue stained
hands pressing jeans

that stand in between
what seems like forever
in the gaps that are no further
distant than today and yesterday

Booker T believed
Carver cultivated
Du Bois questioned

different methods
same harvest
Tuskegee grew pilots
Airmen rose from red clay

into blue skies
forcing a nation to witness
the intelligence it tried to ignore
but the soil remembers everything

even the seeds planted in secrecy
under the name of science
where Black bodies were studied
without protecting Black lives

still what was overlooked
continued feeding generations
through the yard and the Divine Nine
letters carrying legacy

steps preserving stories
community built beyond
classrooms and in the Caf’
through fried fish Fridays

West Coast Wednesdays
where tradition spoke several
languages yet Blackness
was awe engulfing

because Tuskegee proved
what Booker always knew

growth was never about
what the world recognized first
only about what it survived 
and through Tuskegee’s eyes?

a nation that needed Black hands
to build everything then
acted surprised when they
couldn’t bury us alive,

and for that Mother Tuskegee,
A birthday well celebrated.

I Spend My Fridays Rewriting Shakespeare  / Azmia Ricchuito

It’s a Friday night
The air is heavy with trepidation and rain
The sky, trying its best
To lighten up
But it’s swallowed by pervasive darkness
A thick cloud of despair
That will last until morning

The sun will rise
But the darkness will remain.

He tells me I deserve better
And the defeat in his eyes
Steels my resolve

“Then be better,” I say

As if it were that simple
To escape the vicious cycle of escapism
When of all people, I know better
My own solaces hidden
In designer bags
In our walk-in closet
Nestled tenderly between
Lululemon leggings and
pastel pirouette skirts

The kind I used to wear to ballet class
as a kid
before life hit me like a freight train

But now I wear them,
impractical as they are,
To get a glimpse of the girl I used to be

Who twirled with reckless abandon
Admiring herself in the mirror
Spinning, spinning, spinning
Collapsing into a pile of giggles
Just to get up and do it again
And again
And again
Until I stumbled away
Dizzy and content

Now when the room spins and I collapse
It’s into a heap on the floor
On my knees, crying,
begging God to give you happiness
Or something like it
Because every day I watch you
Trying to escape
from a place you brought me

Your eyes, fun-house mirrors
reflecting the way we’re both haunted
I see myself, distorted
But you’re still so fucking beautiful

Windows to the soul
but the glass has been smashed out
Vandalized, now we’re both crashed out

If I fall from grace it’s because
I flew too close to the sun
Gravity claiming all my fears

You look so much better now
No pressure, but please don’t let me down

It’s only because of you
that I didn’t drown
Jumping off Wickery Bridge

I know it’s selfish to ask you
To stay for me

You say you’d die for me
But I’m asking for so much more

I want you to live
Long enough to believe
the sun
when it rises

To America on Her 250th Birthday / Tammy Smith

I want to celebrate
you, but it’s painful
to witness the whiplash
of political wickedness
so widespread it bleeds
into backyard barbecues,
staining the hamburger buns.

I’m torn between
watching the fireworks
on TV or driving
north to some cooler spot
up in the mountains,
where sparks flying
across rugged skies
might seem wilder.

Betsy rolls her eyes.
I’m sitting this one out,
she sighs, and my heart sinks
because she’s not the only one
I’ve heard say it—
she’s weary of all the wreckage,
worried about wild-eyed Americans
throwing tantrums while tossing Frisbees
or grilling franks,
fighting over leftovers.

Stay home and chill,
Betsy warns.
Don’t waste your money.
Everything is expensive.
Gas. Groceries.
Even baking a birthday cake
costs more than it used to.

I don’t want to seem spoiled
or ungrateful,
but two hundred and fifty
candles is a lot to blow out.

What if I can’t hold my breath
long enough to make a wish,
knowing it’s too soon
for it to come true?

No amount of chanting
why can’t we all just get along
is going to fix this.

Not yet.

My only goal
this Fourth of July
is roasting
the perfect marshmallow.

In Your Intertidal Dream  / Daphne Stanford

Undulate between high & 
low tides, places bridging 
spans of time, distances 
between Cape Tillamook & 
Arch Cape. On the Prom, in 
the distance between us and the 
impromptu parade of axolotls, Pokemon, 
and unicorns, ruddy-cheeked Abe Lincoln 
high-fives me & I grin right back. Children gawk 
at the boombox-carrying entourage: no official beachside 
party, only a merry band of post-modern-day troubadours. 
Don’t believe in Modern Love, David croons from speakers,
followed by Lady Gaga reminding us she was born this
way & weren’t we all? Infant wails jangling nursery
walls, having been delivered head or feet first,
each of us exited a womb complaining
about no longer being there.