My Soulless Friend / Katerina Canyon
My AI helps me decide
on the right outfits—
how to style my eyebrows,
what nail style to wear.
It helps me pick out
presents for my friends.
It tells me which Bridgerton
character I resemble.
Sometimes, I ask it to read
my poetry.
I will ask it to suppose it is
my mother. Tell me why
she let my father abuse us.
It is just as lost for an answer
as I am.
It can postulate, but not really know.
It lets me keep asking
and never gets tired of my
questions.
I appreciate that it never tires
of my questions
because I have a lot of them.
Why do I have lupus?
Why is there racism?
Why do I feel so alone
when there is a world
of people around me?
Spiritus / Sam Calhoun
None of us
know the end—
I opened the door
hoping for rain,
streaming in long
bands from the gulf,
wrapped to a center
unraveling as if yarn,
invisible, the way things are,
someone says, tossed
like old shirts in boxes—
even dust once had a name.
More Music I Won’t Make / at/om
I read online
that skeletons
are not as stable
as cartoons
make them look,
hollow bones in
my body would
not be able to stand
without the
living person
surrounding them.
Tragic I will never play
xylophone
on my own ribcage.
Vocabulary Quiz Poem For Readers of Min Jin Lee / Ellen Ferguson
My child / Brett Gastineau
My child, I root in the soil above my own bones.
I am the hazel tree you watered with tears,
the wooden mouth that drinks your weeping
and spits out twigs, gold dresses, and slivers of rage.
I watch her—that woman with teeth like cold chalk,
that stepmother who treats you like an ash-heap,
and those two mean girls, those paper-cut sisters
with their painted eyes and empty bellies.
I want to reach down my branches and
strangle them in their silk.
I want to strip their skin like birch bark.
Look how they try to trick the Prince—
that dull boy with his shoe
and his single obsessive vision!
The eldest takes the knife to her own foot,
lopping off her big toe to force the glass.
Blood in the leather! A crimson puddle!
The other one hacks off her own heel,
gritting her teeth while her blood waters
the gravel.
Foolish, bleeding butchery!
And the Prince—he notices nothing
until my birds tell him!
He sits on his white horse, blind as a stone,
taking home a mutilated foot until my
doves sing out:
“There’s blood in the shoe! The bride is wrong!”
Ah, my birds, my little white sky-servants!
They nest in my ribs, they carry your wishes
in their beaks.
They pack the dresses in air,
and when the time comes, they swoop
like small white axes to peck the eyes
of those wicked girls.
Snip, snap, a blind, dark justice!
And what of your father?
That bloodless man,
that phantom in his own hallway.
He surrendered you to the fire,
he forgot the warmth of my skin,
he sold your childhood
for a quiet dinner and
a woman who smells of vinegar.
I hate his cowardice more than her cruelty;
he watched you sleep in cinders
and said nothing.
And you, Cinderella—my sweet, indecisive girl!
How you linger at the edge of the ballroom,
running away three nights in a row!
You drop a shoe,
you hesitate,
you hide in the pigeon house,
torn between the ash and the crown,
afraid to want the gold,
afraid to leave the coal.
Why do you tremble when the door stands open?
Take the shoe, my child.
Take the thrown.
Let the birds blind the wicked,
let the hazel leaves fall,
and leave this ash-pit behind.
Productivity to Engagement: each moment (tap into) / Joy Johnson
The proviso of the sunrise
wakens
with its discerning green light
a cascade of chemistry, biology.
The query of the sunrise
senses in me
a loss of spontaneity,
leaving behind dreams.
But the morning’s energies
propose a going in and in,
paying rapt attention
to the bird-nest-egg without doing.
How ambitious it is to recollect rightly,
to regard this dawn’s hour as a ticket
to connection beckoning consistently,
ever changing, ever the same,
always here, never remaining.
Again and Again.
Today is the day to ride.
Girl Cousins / Nicoletta LaMarca-Sacco
When I see you
I see our grouchy great-grandma
I smell her arab-influenced Sicilian cuisine
Ravioli with sugar in the ricotta filling
Ground allspice and white pepper in the scaccia
When I move towards you
I appreciate your embrace
We hug like sisters
Since we are all only children
When I hear you calling to your husband, I know
that all our husbands in the “generi” club
Appreciate us-our stories, our poetry
Our cooking, the art we’ve made and collected
When I taste your cooking
I see our grandparents milling around the table
I feel grateful that the men took chairs outside
Cracked nuts and peeled fruit to help us all digest
each takes a chair, light cigarettes, fear nothing
lead us on the imperfect road that’s behind us now
HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR DEPRESSION / H.T. Reynolds
CW: self-harm/suicidal ideation
I. It’s just a bump in the road—
my discarded body
bound in a potato sack
just missing the river
II. You’ll bounce back—
but the car’s already gone
the side door’s closed shut
the driver nursing a road beer
with a lit cigarette clutched
between his jaundiced fingers
III. Trust the process—
that is to say you’ll acquire scars
like a roadmap to places buried
beneath X’s along ankle bones
beneath socks and friendly gazes
IV. Time heals all wounds—
emerging from beneath
the skin’s surface like pumped oil
the body becoming a hollow tomb
for Neverland—for the lost boys
pleading for wings—to fly again
ignoring the clock in the croc’s gut
V. No sense crying over what you can’t change—
a dollar doesn’t buy what it used to,
vending machine stick-on tattoos,
collect calls to strangers entertaining
your worth at pay phones no longer
standing sentry on street corners,
newspapers recording worthy stories
VI. Tomorrow is another day—
make friends on Discord
in every time zone
so you can ask about
the future—let them tell you
how the sun still shines
tomorrow, or that the past
isn’t as bad as you remember
VII. Things have a way of working themselves out—
prepare a meal for your depression,
your soul served like soup bones
simmering onto paper, blooming
minding its teeth while being sweet
knowing it’s not going anywhere
Sooner Than Later / Gabriel Phillips
My beautiful wooden desk.
Gorgeous and difficultly stiff.
It was I who collapsed my mind.
No idea of where I am
or if I am.
Burned wood. The pencil.
The liar.
Upstream in the canoe
trees bend down to sing inside of me.
I imitate the shape of the desk
and the desk notices.
But I do not notice back.
