March - Poem 1

do you follow me / Kathleen Bednarek

if today the blue sky 
without saying a word 
lent us its promise 
today the sun returned after the snow
unearthing a lost earring 
ordinary mysteries accompanied 
by the caw of a crow or two  
if to start this poem with their sounds 
but they clutter the blue of the sky 
if as it turns out makes everything a question  
today i am content to be curious 
do you follow me 
i hope for a way through 
i don’t know how

Nightshift  / Myoma Bibi

dust off the broken glass
from the floor
at 2am on your knees

in the shuttered shisha bar
where ginger coffee once stained
the rug where blood 

was almost spilt
where your nights were paid
for by a boss plagued

with prejudice that cuts
deeper than the shards in your fingers
as you miss the sand in your eyes

from when this country was only a mirage
tiny fickle little dreams die
on boats or drown

nearby loss collects in living bones
knees click back up loud
like returning from sujood

during the last tarawih hands clasped
each other shoulder to shoulder
no space left for anything 

but a child chasing futures between praying
legs snap back to silent jabana
a black memory against white

reality as the kettle whistles
and skin is punctured so realise
that I’m just a night soaked voice

on a phone and mourning eyes
from the street even birds 
won’t sing in as your body falls

to the floor and you find the missing 
double-six domino tile
from the game you would’ve won.

Sixteen / Amy Haworth

I wish you would talk to me
like you did
when you were 10.

When I was your everything 
and you were 
my soul.

I wish I could return
to the moments 
you wouldn't let me go

to bed until
you had fallen
asleep.

I was so tired
it hurt
back then.

But your need of me
hurt different
than now's disdain.

They tell me that
you'll be back
again

But never again
in the way
that we were

When we managed to be
only because
of each other.

For the One Who Did Not Call / Christina McCleanhan

I know, I know, you are uninterested.

Today, there was spring warmth.
We may live in a world of phobias, so I beckon
the blackbirds with a faithful hand. 
Let them carry away my orphaned willingness. 
It is no worse than the straw from my yard that will build 
their spring nests.
What will be, will be.

I know, I know, you are exclusive.

Everyone is a neighbor when your heart is breaking.
New friends ask what they do not understand.
What happens when you are angry?
How did you keep walking?
And when my answer is slow to come, old friends push.
Were you angry that summer? That afternoon?
After it happened? Why did you keep trying?
In silence, my mouth is too often parched 
from the stale dryness of the words 
imprisoned on the tip of my tongue.
What has passed, has passed.

I know, I know, you are an intellectual.

Tonight, a late-winter chill has replaced spring. 
I have seen how people hurt others; I am tired, now.
I have felt innocent hope destroyed by barking thieves
who search for diamonds in the water bowls of poor folks,
crippled by a debtor’s loneliness and no heat.
We must first face what will be changed. Understand?

Whim  / Elizabeth McGraw

Fuck.  I forgot.  
My whim and whimsy and talked out loud. 
Sitting in a kitchen I held the hoops close to
my ears and smacked the gum real hard. 
Oh, no I heard them gasp. 
I spit out the gum. 
Reigned myself in. 
Sat on my hands. 
And spoke better next time. 

Fish out of earthly water / Alexis Wolfe

Understand this: if you stumble 
across a quiet, enter. 
Lately reading too
many accellerationisms  ecotraumas  
races for superintelligences    deportations   
before dawns  sentient hells   razor wire 
blueprints dividing dreamt up-transnational- 
national parks    imperialisms   phones mistaken 
for guns    5G aromas    Balenciaga apologies 
dissolving hyperrealities   CGI-generated modeling  
agencies    children falling invisibles   phantasmagoric
agglomerations   plunging birth 
rates   Costco expansions  elitist cannibalism boyscout 
camps  3D printed kidneys / coral reefs    AI-induced
psychosises  baking competitions     competition 
competitions  western wear catastrophes
deepfake porns  Juul-induced popcorn lungs 
washing the shores   razor wire border walls
dividing ideally-transnational 
national parks—before calls and petitions 
for big bend’s wall 
we would float in the Rio, 
one foot in Mexico, frontera invisible, 
frontera nothing but mudded grass, misname 
the constellations (which are the same 
on either side). Springing between hot 
and cold river, we were fish out of earthly
water, we would find 
some quiet place, 
enter: