June - Poem 1
Matriarch / Kristina Byas
We trampled on cracks
too many times to count.
No backs broken,
they had already become contortionists,
perfected their shucks,
taught us jives
so when we were next in line
only our spirits would fracture,
but no wince to betray the smiles.
Nothing & Everything / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson
the evening sky—pink and blue like Easter
—is a frosted cake
I want to drag my finger across it
and lick
it hangs
above my head like a thought
bubble
I did not come out
here for this
I wanted to walk clear my mind
wanted breath and sweat
muscles and sinew
to make sense of everything
but nothing
makes sense: why
one cloud looks like a mushroom
another a castle one cloud a stuffed
bear another a dagger
a turtle a hook a dinosaur
without legs
one’s a weeping
ballerina another a genie
coming
out of its bottle
before I grew up
I saw clouds
and thought
cotton candy
but now that I know
their names—these are
cumulonimbus
—all I think about is the coming storm
a month after she was born, I hold my niece for the first time / Jess Gleason
for her mother, Johannah
Her weight floats lighter than I imagined,
but oh how heavy her curve
over my chest, tiny feet ready to kick
the ribs over my heart, weak from a car crash.
Gossamer as the hollow between my arms,
I refused to move in case she slipped, unanchored
between safety and the floor, in infinity’s terror
before magic’s made unreal and the floor is realized
in rubbery bones. There should be more time for hurt
to raise out of weeds and alight her body with fireflies.
My eyes flicked from the milia bourne down her nose
to my sister, hazel-loved eyes, milk-smeered, open,
and I Cassandra’d out so many futures: broken
bodies laid out from semi-trucks, glioblastomas, AR-15s,
and the open casket that’s my heart couldn’t close,
her chubby hand grabbed
between the ledge and the lip, welding open whatever
steeltrap car crash once passed for my heart.
okay, that’s enough
I passed the biggest soul
back to her mother.
Untitled / Jingyu Li
SHOULDER / Shane Moran
Scotts, skirl for my grandmother!
Hydrangeas, become a sea for my grandmother!
Organs, song for my grandmother!
Uniformed men, fire for my grandmother!
Love of God, lay upon my grandmother!
Doves, flutter for my grandmother!
Engines, roar for my grandmother!
Reader, know all the love I have for my grandmother!
A Stone for Holding / Stefanie Zito
She cast pebbles of wisdom
rippled over waters of my heart
rocking my world.
Hungry for depth, I collected them all.
Her insight, rich in minerals
nourished my capacity to grow
between rocks and hard places.
Her gems of discernment scattered
spontaneous as star showers.
I later shared the load of her sickness.
Shortly before death called my grounded friend
as its own buried treasure,
she gave me a stone for holding
fibers down in the dye pot.
Submerged in the tint of my own tears
I’m still gripping– absorbing the reality of loss.
You would think the absence
of such a hefty spirit would grow lighter.
Grief is an onerous boulder.
I’m crushed, drenched, holding still.
