June - Poem 5
Jhene, About What You Said… / Kristina Byas
You mentioned being born tired,
and I felt that in my bones.
I’m still wondering when the ease will come,
when the cycle will break.
I’m sure we’re more than the weight we inherited,
but that doesn’t mean it’s not heavy,
sometimes,
often,
nearly always.
Still,
maybe it’s not destined to remain.
I’ve known many weary hearts
still learn to dance in the rain.
All Fathers Smell a Little Bit Like My Father / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson
momento mori - MRI / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason
PENIS (2) / Shane Moran
To be gone down on? I’ll call an Uber!
After dinner and the rain,
I’m delighted to wrap
my bomber jacket around
your shoulders. It’s cold.
I like watching you smoke
your spliff, hot tip smoking
heat peaceful oblation to feel
time pass. I like your gentle
thumb holding it steady your new
fires stop the canoeing.
And I like how you protect—
the cherry. Your mouth
glazed in Addict
lip glow, I cherish your
wet art opening for a high—
this is Paris, after all.
This is our one almost
riskless way to let it all go
before we lock together
our hazy eyes and taste
our sooty breath,
before my flat and the warmth
of your right hand around it and
the shine off your dotted nails—before
the Uber says to put it out.
Father Nightmare / Jingyu Li
Once I was impressionable: a man could be made
by stacking spheres, pebbles for eyes.
My mother said he could be unmade
with warmth for hands, only the buttons
would keep. Last night a snowman
walked my dreams, I screamed
when he melted because he was everywhere:
my shoes, my chair, even my face
was touched with him. I keep returning
to how quickly it happened
how fatherlike he was and how
starkly different now.
Sometimes I think it’s not even about him.
Canticle for Questions / Stefanie Zito
I’m stretching the strings of what's been unraveled
plucking an altered processional.
gathering the echoes of inherited insistence
drumming to the cadence of crumbled certitude.
I’m writing a hymn for relinquished ritual
humming the elegy of an unfurled grip.
drafting an eulogy of forsaken assurance–
what once was firm has fallen.
I’m composing a canticle for questions,
a requiem for scattered sureness.
Lamentation lives inside my loss of certainty
I set up camp amidst this hazy mystery.
Questions are the quest themselves
so I make my dwelling here
I lift my voice and my life with it–
give glory to wonderment herself.
I sing an anthem to ambiguity and
lift wavering hands of exasperated awe
at the riddle in which we all reside.
I release the interrogation of my own existence
and rejoice in having my life for the living.
