Welcome to the 30/30 Project, an extraordinary challenge and fundraiser for Tupelo Press, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary press. Each month, volunteer poets run the equivalent of a “poetry marathon,” writing 30 poems in 30 days, while the rest of us “sponsor” and encourage them every step of the way.
The volunteer poets for June are: Kristina Byas, Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson, Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason, Jingyu Li, Shane Moran, and Stefanie Zito.
If you’d like to volunteer for a 30/30 Project month, please fill out our application and warm up your pen!
March - Poem 18
Shrine / Kathleen Bednarek
Other realms of softness guard
those laid low in severed belonging.
Follow me in the early morning
where the manholes create fog.
Choirs blow through momentary blindness.
Their songs distant yet
you can hear them in the garbage bins
rooting for echoes of mercy,
splashing in the buckets of crabs
fighting for the top of death in Chinatown.
A sword in its light through the trees,
a confusion of the barristers,
appeals of children found standing out
in the street, swooped up
placed in the back of vehicles, hiding
their cheeks against IDs.
Portraits of listening, equal nodding
and closing the eyes, equal tears and
nothing left to say but presence.
I offer you mine in the pale–
what is a small smile but the sun.
The ruth of hospital halls hovered
over when a small thud makes the woman
ask: someone help me.
When your bitterness uses the word
temporary against itself. When
the sea is filled with wrappers glinting
in the light. When
lying on your side looking left to right
you hear a shot. When it takes you
under your breath in the morning
dark, you ask the ceiling for their refuge.
Cigarette / Mymona Bibi
When you hold your cigarette,
my breath draws in
sucking in the air inside,
my body stuck at the window
watching your cigarette
clutching you back,
my friends always talk of tomorrow
and the next year so I keep
them around me like an armour
against the feeling that there is nothing
beyond the blurring of your hands,
behind smoke
now there’s no tomorrow
only - yes - for last night,
in another life
mothers might have healed
bruised skin
without held breath,
in another life
you’d drop the cigarette
and i’ll see your eyes
in my eyes
unblurred
unsmoked
I see you're by the T.V. again, / Susan Hankla
in that swell of talking-heads-news.
My outfit of the day is a gunny sack.
Historically they were worn just after
women being corseted for more than several decades.
Carry a wicker basket of hot pepper jellies,
and when you're saying and replaying
what Trump did, I shut my door.
(If only I had a chamber pot I'd never hear
T.V.). I already know the sacred things are all but
disappeared.
I blow on purple nettle Devil tea, pore over a Picasso
voluptuary. Once I hung bunting, but now the sign
on my office door says Insane Asylum. I search
for the sky
blue bra lost in surgery, spend time trying to write better,
using a grammar book from the Jeter School for Women.
Distraction / Amy Haworth
I see what you are, you rodeo clown
conniving a con
shaped like the pantry
Smooth, honey-lipped orator
selling timeshares.
untitled / Christina McCleanhan
oak trees bowing
throat locked
wet sidewalk
; do not disappear
unbuttoned cuff
holding snot
still
1834, this same day in March the first US railroad tunnel made home in Pennsylvania / Alexis Wolfe
and it has me thinking of the hush mouthed
pear eyed black Irish great great grandfather
I never met operator of Pittsburgh’s first street car
the one who walked like a cat clawing slow
on his tin roof even at ninety and when he died
five years later still had charcoal in his hair, how
when his cherry tree got sick he wrapped it
in bandages, swore hope long after the others
killed it off—the next two seasons he reaped
sweet biggest cherries you ever
seen, loved three daughters who never married
and spoke up for unions put his whole hand in
a beehive and never got stung how in the years
after retirement he’d ride that same car just to
become it, always recognized and free the same route
he’d ride for hours, prouder than if
he were flying
March - Poem 17
[Memory is something gone] / Kathleen Bednarek
Memory is something gone.
Already it sort of explains loss.
Was the sunset that spotless, like really pure peach?
I believe in the progression of wind fraying the edges of flags
You can still fold the flag when you think it’s done.
You walk out to the mailbox and put the metal bar up.
And the message will be sent by unknown carriers.
Flight Academy / Susan Hankla
What is your heaviest book; the teacher is leveling
his punishment.I am to stand at the front of the class,
and hold the heaviest schoolbook I've got
in one hand
high in the air, until he says
stop.
A civics book full of
lynchings
and crusades.
Or a small Latin book
about wars.
In front of the board, sinews
snap
my armpit wet,
shoulders ache.
White blouse untucks from kilt,
raised arm holding the heavy book,
till
stupid arm, it begins to shake
with the big book in the air,
knee socks inch down
calves, toward loafers.
Spirit floats to Ben
Franklin down
the street
to pick out black
bikini panties
with wolves embroidered crimson,
their tongues licking out all over them
like sex.
Where it happened / Amy Haworth
Night decisions linger
uncomfortable
Less powerful people drowned in noise
Ease gravitates toward authenticity
to elevate warmth
not recreate -- but evoke -- déjà vu
Tablescapes communicate promises
with obsession
hallmarks
suspended above
artisans
control transitions
from day to night
For Those Who Dip French Fries in Gold / Christina McCleanhan
Drop the art, pick it up.
Drop the art, rest a minute, pick it up.
They do not tell you in grade school, as you struggle to
open the lunchtime milk cartons, tie your shoes,
how to be creative.
You are told to paint pictures or
sing songs, wait for the bus, wait for the juice.
There is rarely applause for
the girl who colors the cat blue, or the boy who
introduces his best cackling witch between
Fa and So.
Drop the art, buy a brand-new Pilot, pick up the art.
The hands that control time make bargains with
off-brand gel pens.
The story of a princess slaying in sweats,
sending a witch to the Pipedown Tower for
a cookie break, naptime,
takes more than the allotted time after recess to build.
Give the artist two, fifteens, as well.
Let the hands be washed of pigment for
those who do not offer to
clean the brushes and sweep the floors.
Pick up the art and consume it.
Let its sweet roar coax the right eardrum into a euphoric ripple.
The butcher leaves his local cows for
packaged roasts cut by robots without faces.
The baker greets his truth by
trading his wheat field know-how for
an influencer's disclaimer.
The candlestick maker turns down his light, and
turns a profit by yelling, "scarcity," in
a crowded room.
No shame, no worries. We are only trying to glow.
Go on, now, be feral.
Live Action / Elizabeth McGraw
Hear me out, she says.
It’s got little to do with me, she says.
It’s clear there’s been a misunderstanding and it’s all spun out of control.
Enrolled in the weather pattern.
Awake at the spark.
Lightening around the bend.
The transponder struggles to blow out.
Nothing here’s got anything to do with me.
Walks away.
I stopped having a story / Alexis Wolfe
or a selfsong maybe when
i moved to the high plains let that blank space
blankpage me, the one i intended to sit at
i became: what is it to reject your own story,
know it so well you sick-of-it
let it flit into a windstorm, watch it
trip over a cactus and slip behind the
unhazing mountains slitting the mesas or plateaus
whichever and know the sun always sets in the west
no not just know, comprehend inconsolable
March - Poem 16
Sheet music / Kathleen Bednarek
Mozart holds a lake of symbols in a metal stand— the silver of a dentist's office.
Sundays butter the scales, making new pentatonic drifts into a Mississippi of cardboard suitcases and crossroads.
My breath pushes the shift upward in my throat.
I rise a whole note: Go tell it on the mountain.
My shoulders from behind, hold composure; the room itself, inclusive to my timing—yes, I made the echo.
Who’s the rat that scribbled over the concerto? marooned the metronome? made carved faces in the wood of the piano with inattentiveness? Dare. Coda.
I will use pressure From without or in here.
Found Balance / Mymona Bibi
A found poem using a page from The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Sing Where it Opens / Susan Hankla
The one where your heart opens
like an upstairs window in an old house,
where starlings tickle the sill with their tiny feet.
If I were to put my life into another language
would it have enough range to be heard down this new street?
My sisters-in-song, one sings & one's lost her voice,
both I recognize as sisters, but why isn't she
bitter her voice is gone. I don't know how she has the grace to go on.
Keep singing, she tells my other sister. Sing this one,
she says to me.
She sings how she tried to fly as a bird to her mate
only to be caught, her feathers unzipped by sharp blades
on the window, so she could not fly, a song stuck
in her lump of a throat. You must stop right where you are,
for you are listening to god's voice. Sisters, don't cry.
At Schonburg Castle / Amy Haworth
Suspension / Christina McCleanhan
Hope is haunting me; hope has dwindled.
Almost a hundred degrees before noon.
Skin’s rougher than a sanding block.
Can’t quiet these squawking babies,
crying chickens.
Will there be supper, Mama?
Spare some bread, m’am?
Need an extra pair of hands, Mrs?
I am tired of bones-
soup bones, knee bones, brittle bones
in worn-out pots with
broth twice boiled down for
sopping, not sipping.
Oh! My darling, that
last Christmas with the spiced punch.
Think loud enough, and the stomach retreats...
I am tired of stooping to
pick peas from vines that
cannot feed me, warm me, or barter my escape.
What will I do this time if the cough doesn’t stop?
I miss keeping company with
cleanliness. Each day, there is a sky to
welcome and tumbleweeds to applaud.
Sometimes, I bite my tongue to keep
from screaming, look toward
the brilliant nothingness
of dust, and wait.
Remember who I am, who I have always been.
Season / Elizabeth McGraw
It hits you slowly then all at once.
Over and over again.
A season ends and the transition is harder than the brutal conditions
Hard to imagine the days when socks feel silly today. Hard to believe that print will be warranted in a week’s time.
The search for bookends and barometers tailspin. Mark your spot.
Multiple fronts colliding on us.
Which one to choose?
I always choose you.
Musical porch / Alexis Wolfe
oh easy i’ll just write it—like how earlier
listening to Scorn walking the alley from gym to home
i couldn’t see twelve feet in front of me there was so much
dust i started all what would it be like
to be under such rubble we know so little
about war doesn’t happen here war i watch
on my laptop war i pay for lately i’ve been playing
musical porch with my neighbor he’s deaf you know—
we take turns sitting in our porch chairs staring
at the empty grass lot he grimaces stark staring mad
when he sees me in my rusted goes into his house
i smirk when I see him / sometimes flop inside
yes seniority still rules we take turns
like this chasing our own tails of course I imagine he wants
to be alone never asked his delicate dreaming
give us this day our daily porch battle this is
our hardship I karate chop the dirt dusters / fist
fight my projections my war is spiritual I am drafted
at the front lines of my branded beliefs / we go looking
for it
March - Poem 15
Poem for hope / Kathleen Bednarek
All there was was a crater in the earth. A charred crater. It absorbed the acid sky reflecting it back into
little bones divided amongst themselves to count how many people there were. An enormous event
without clear record. By all accounts there were no worms anymore. No green where there was once
manifold, plurality, lushness soaked in cloud water. Butterflies of the super generation. Atomization
built dust and wind into mountains expending oxygen carried by currents to the lowlands. Agile
spines of jaguar and leopard stalking the plethora, delicate primate arms stretching the canopy, and the
brighter the color the more fantastic the poison; the mind knew which to avoid. The ocean filled with
moon jelly and whale songs. The reversal of time parallel to lunar tides. The ocean blued further before
the conflict placed weapons in the mud, put explosives in the sand, and dismantled the turtle eggs. For
we held the shells up to our ears, we retold the stories, and breathed the bones back together,
occasionally lifting the throat back to scream. There were dear angels, benefactors, gourds filled with
agate, resonant instruments, what the nothingness forgot we reflected about the rainbow. When the
rain fell and fell iridescent from the oil and disintegrated planes, cycling itself over and over until its
falling was upheld, it was supported by the nightfall and the accompanying day-rise. The little bones
filled with air started from the smallest unit of sound that vibrated from the crater, throwing itself up
and up and up like the descent that was now reversed upon it. It was a circle they wanted the center of.
They got none of it.
Your Hands / Mymona Bibi
These streets are veins,
full of the blood that flows from your hands.
Sometimes diluted, tasting like the children's squash,
sometimes of the adults’ memories clumped with clots in your hands.
That day, I wished to see you on Clayton street,
when did the sunrise get so late in your hands?
When will she stop calling me disgusting?
She's only a bully because buses in London are red, red, red, painted with your hands.
The old curtains of fury are drawn,
I was as silent as her voice coming from your hands.
You were so silent you cut open the sky and drank its vapour,
I watched each gulp and jump of your Adam’s apple and the stretch of your hands.
Tomorrow is for us to crawl out the wound of the world,
whilst soft lampposts burst into red, red, red in your hands!
If we kissed, we could take out the past from each other's tongues,
'kullu yihalif, fiqri yiterif' in the creases of your hands.*
My desire is louder than the wailing streets,
until you slip in the rain and graze your hands.
*Eritrean proverb, ‘everything passes, love remains’.
Questionnaire / Susan Hankla
It said: What Was the Last Soup You Made?
The last soup?
The last soup you made was floating white petals you tore from the funeral
spray that topped your mother's casket so that the flower parts lay on the surface of plain
tap water in the cut crystal bowl. This is the last soup you'll make, the very last soup
you'll make of me, she said accusingly in the dream.
The last soup you'll make; what is the very last soup you will ever make?
You reread the question in the magazine and notice that the questionnaire hadn't meant
what is the very last soup you will ever make in your whole life. It meant what is the last
soup that you can remember having made.
The last soup you can remember making wasn't soup, it was chili.
The last soup you were able to swallow was Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup
that your mother brought you on a day it snowed in the mountains
and school got canceled. It was the last soup your mother brought you
placed at the center of the dinner plate of saltines, the bowl of strands
of white squiggles and chicken shreds in amber broth. You had a cold.
That was the last time you had soup that you remember.
What is the last thing you remember about home? The yellow kitchen table?
The dining room with the round table where you did homework every afternoon?
Think about something else.
When you told your aunt that you weighed one-hundred and eleven pounds, she said,
"The old hag's weight." She was given to making pronouncements.
That you'd reached the old hag's weight, you were a victim of fate.
When you told her a certain matching shirt and skirt made you feel unlucky
each time you wore it, she too had a cursed garment, the brown wool sheath
which when she wore it to her job as grade-school principal, the children became
harder to manage, and circulated a rumor that she had an electric paddle.
Like a Piggly-Wiggly bag, your dull dress was really an inauspicious thing,
with little olive-green flowers, but somehow the skirt of it rode around so that its zipper
would be in the front, and the shirt tail of the matching blouse untucked,
so when you returned home from school you looked ravished by William Blakes' Tyger.
The Weight of Your Ideas / Amy Haworth
They say that one day the yellow stones will erupt
from the pressure
and that's all I can see when you describe
being buried
by the weight of your ideas.
The earth's crust can only contain your power
for so long.
It's inevitable what is within you will erupt
from the promise
and the path forward --
a beautiful spectacle.
Then, some will say, "of course she has",
while others will know it couldn't have been any other way,
but you'll still be a little surprised it happened the way it did.
The relief in making it rain
will be air to your exhumation
from the weight of your ideas.
Freedom after John William Waterhouse's painting,The Lady of Shalott / Christina McCleanhan
The day has cooled; the dew is falling.
A hard-working swallow seeks
companionship or food among
the river weeds.
The Pollyanna is stoic; her innocence is reverent.
Nature has draped itself around
her bashful grace without apology.
Onward, Onward, Onward!
quiet, quiet, quiet.
She looks, she rows, she listens, and
whispers to herself with stutters
birthed from humility-
A-a-across my p-p-pale moon youth,
White wind blows,
The ch-ch-chain slips from my grip.
Shadowed fate, I know,
I call out reed, oar, r-r-river as I go
with truce on my tongue
toward death do I flow
To Ca-ca-camelot,
charged by the nightingale’s prayer.
My want is meager, my-my-my wrists are fragile.
Cling to submission or fall to exile?
To Camelot,
ch-ch-charged by the nightingale’s prayer.
The river is wide; the current is slowing.
And now, her dreams are lifting beyond
her shoulders: she sees them mingle with
the lily pads. Below her swim fish, beyond the
bend, fog is rising.
She will…she will…she will…
exhale.
NO COMMENT/ Alexis Wolfe
The U.S. Military had no immediate comment
There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad
The White House and Pentagon did not immediately reply to requests for comment
The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment
The U.S. had no choice but to strike because of a recalcitrant ___
There was no immediate comment from Israel or the United States
March - Poem 14
To the Fox Running Full Barrel Across the Road at Night, / Kathleen Bednarek
Vulpes vulpes
you wear a night cape
you listen to the Misfits
your shiny mouth smiling
jaw pulled
back by the gauge of your run
a page lit-torn & flung
over moon water
a tangerine sheared
a cigarette flicked
a firepath dashed perpendicular
atop old hot rod rubber
surviving faster than blinking
your eyes split and catch
Fish / Mymona Bibi
When you fed me your words, you told me about the first time the fish you caught was bigger than your brother’s. That fish has reappeared. I saw it in the bathtub, dead, floating, gutted. Still the pride of that day lives in your eyes.
Rebecca / Susan Hankla
Too late, I heard cancer settled into your milky breasts.
Your body had been perfectly Carrera marble,
which might have been dealt with well, so that you'd be
somewhat restored. For that I am sorry. But my darling
debutante, of the thigh-high 70's fashion boots, like silk waders, you
of the fingertips-to-elbow kid gloves in the bell of your coming out mini-
dress ringing, ringing a kind of pretty warning. In our twenties we were trains
too fast to board, so we shrank to toys.
I see why we didn't apply ourselves to tasks, smoking grass at parties,
while others made the next brave moves. Some guided us out to the road,
even waited with us. Gave us pantsuits for interviews, listened while
we practiced what we'd say, feeding us hardtack prayers. But you were already fleeing,
while I loitered by a rented punch bowl, or sliced wedding cake,
or waited, waited by the borrowed car for a tow, untended tires
thin as balloons, maps all flown away, like purple martins shot
out of the trees by the violet dawn.
Lunch Time / Amy Haworth
Lunch’s time
has a majority stake in
the idea that
it occurs at noon
but zones of time
and hunger in degrees
are the true temperature for when
to wander to the microwave for
small talk in 30 second increments
as I nourish and sustain
between
multi-colored jenga blocks that tell
me where to be from 9 to 5.
Stopping for real lunch is
loosening my ski boots in the lodge
with the same effect
so most days I choose
room temp, desk view
and buy time
in 30 second increments closer
to progressing digital conversations,
ideas in slides and
ways to loosen the hold of the status quo
fueled by remains of yesterday’s
dinner.
For Anyone Hungry / Christina McCleanhan
Keep quiet, my darling.
Your mind is thirsty,
Your ankles are weak,
Your belly is hungry.
Those gentle folk,
who matter,
are looking for you-
lanterns lit,
gourds filled
with joy, waiting to
take turns feeding you love
and honey and buttered grits.
One day, real soon, you will be a
grown woman with babydoll hair,
whispering, “Maybe I can try.”
Go on, sweet, sweet lady.
Weep, first.
Weep for your mistakes, wrong turns,
willingness to drink
Coke flat, and the time spent
whisking meringue that fails to peak.
For God’s sake, let the threading of
acceptance warm your veins-
death, loss, cannot be reversed, and
biscuits will not be flaky without
cold butter cut into each fold.
But jam,
jam made from strawberries picked and
sorted by careful, patient hands
almost always sweetens the
deal.
Friday Night / Elizabeth McGraw
Friday
6th day of the week
Penultimate
Not penultimate for some, strange
Letting the tight rope go
Night
Twilight
Sleep
Rest
Dormant
Cheesecake
Scrumptious
Creamy
Rich
Delicious
Factory
Fabric
Oppression
Productivity
Machine
Breaking News this is hardly a poem / Alexis Wolfe
everything is Breaking News lately and who am i to argue. J and i talk about interior/exterior writing like its urgent, the former like finding a private fountain filled with mute swans but you’re invited to the property, maybe. everyone is bookclubbing their clubbish book lately we can’t even read alone. we sidestep labyrinth of false messages and i keep my phone in a box near the front door. our democracy has whittled to fanfiction and no, they’re not eating children, yes, we’re approaching the underbelly of the world. what we really need is to fine-tune our good-enough instruments, no one goes to the cobbler anymore. someone once told me the theory or principle that posits just paying attention to matter changes its molecular structure but I think she misremembered the unradical observer effect which is not about transformation by attention alone rather change by direct observation which always involves instrumentation sigh. i’m thinking quantum entanglement or maybe quantum decoherence i’ve never had a mind for principles. i’m thinking of all of the women obsessed with Egypt that have never been to Egypt. I’m thinking sharp movements always catch the corner of my eye, i’m too slow or i’m dreaming
March - Poem 13
Poem for Kerouac on his Birthday (3.12) / Kathleen Bednarek
God got back down from heaven on the third day,
you sd.
A bashful blue ink blot from your downward pen
pooling a dove of camellia ink under your shirt pocket
before your heart exploded onto teletype paper.
Lost, bloodshot outside a Kettle of Fish,
jukebox light reflected in your black hair, avant guarding romanticism.
What it must have been like leaning against the doorway before the dive,
your mother love in your head. You gave me the freedom to write
really bad poetry with all its rags and jewelry. I went searching too
for Pooh Bear winding my sentences at 2 am in Cawker City, Kansas around
the world’s largest ball of twine. The agony in the garden is the Golgotha
of one person in one room spent thinking.
Ah, who am I kidding?
Spring / Mymona Bibi
here is the spring,
a mirage of sweet-pea collecting,
they told us this was nature,
not the millenia of training,
redirecting woman to point at man,
some compasses need breaking.
non-men don't have the privilege of spirit,
tungsten chains strong enough to lock up the night
so that spring can pass without cleaning,
without fragrance, but with nutrient-rich
mud under our nails as we dig
up the graves of living lovers.
god is as masculine as the ‘door’ or ‘book’,
both shut by the mere flick of an
accusatory tongue as violent
as the winter before.
when will you ungender us?
so we might continue popping
bubble wrap between table legs,
carelessly playing, forgetting the position
of the sun in the sky.
Reverse Ekphrastic / Susan Hankla
Why not present all the conditions for something to be a piece of art,
by listing all details and how they coalesce
and call those a painting, or sculpture, or a sketch.
Like the way you looked when you could tell just by seeing
our friends arriving at their home from the hospital that day,
by the slow way they walked, and how they held themselves,
you knew without any exchange of words that Bill didn't make it.
Out of Stock / Amy Haworth
Patch, pellet or pill
there’s a line of ladies
released from lies.
Waiting to replace what gets lost
with energy found
Flawed studies steered generations
away from the alchemy
our mothers should have had.
A Hovel In Camelot / Christina McCleanhan
The room was small, no more than a postage stamp.
A window, a chair, a shelf for dry goods and potatoes.
When loneliness swept across her thoughts, she
danced
barefoot
across the wooden floors while
sing ing
Raising Hal
le
lujah hymns.
She bought bread with daydreams
hid in quiet from
angry rain, blew kisses at
pigeons - felt like you, like I
do after trying on the silk
of a night that sweet-talks its way
into the drawers of our intellectual
curiosity.
I have only ever been to Mars in my
nightmares.
but I understand how to ignore
lima beans served on a plate by
a big-footed giant who is too
arrogant to cover the floorboard cracks
with the rug we sewed together
My pockets, after church, are
full of holiness and fortune cookie madness:
vulnerability sounds like faith and
looks like courage, from your friend
Brené Brown.
The window was large, wider than a rich man’s sack.
A cloud, a plant, a curtain to draw against the sun.
Her laugh built fires on the coldest day.
Stabby Things / Elizabeth McGraw
It's stabbing snowflakes.
Hitting a toasted ground.
It's falling moisture in a season that slowed migration
and keeps the insects away.
No gnats on my window screen means fewer bugs on the pitch.
We wind the week towards the respite.
But no rest for us there.
It's running and running and running some more.
If the weather passes and we can stand clear.
I'd call that a victory and a good way to pass a time that belongs to my others.
On endings / Alexis Wolfe
typing with my forehead again
what’s left to say? Churp
slurb birb chirp day turns
tunnel vision. A no-longer-admired
once said if you know how a poem
is going to end it’s not a poem—I guess
that’s a law of living replace “poem”
with “life” but who can speak in nots or laws
or tell me anything about endings—how’s
this? i’ll make of you a sorryfish
March - Poem 12
Windy Hill / Kathleen Bednarek
There is no
meandered end
to the red barn
holding itself up.
Even when you pass,
two muddy ruts run
parallel
against their edge
of sight.
We cannot wait for / Mymona Bibi
when the drinks are cool / when the sister acts non-alcoholic / when rivulets burn / when the city’s teeth are veneered / when limerance is the body’s speech / when walking is painless / when his name is officially misspelt / when her love is unidentifiable mostly to herself / when we pour libations and supplications over graves in Arabic / when without hands we use tongues / when without tongues we use hearts / when without hearts we feed the worms / when I stitch a road from here to Sylhet / when the drugs of war win / when resistance comes from wound-mouths / when hallucinations are generational / when the djinn are at the door / when the wrested mangroves give way to flood /
Grateful / Susan Hankla
for the memory of being in the tub at my aunts'
hearing the telephone ringing, then both twins
poke their faces into the bathroom to say, "It's for
you." Tell them I'll call back, I said. "We can't do
that," they said. Wrapping the yellow towel around
me, I sat in the designated phone chair, while they
listened to my end of the conversation. And for
the memory of being in the tub on another day,
and hearing way far below, in the driveway
Mrs. Mounfield holler from her black Mercedes
sedan, "Susan! Susan! Come down. My son's gone
nuts and you've got to do something, because I
don't know what..." I dressed, flowered jeans sticking
to the apples of calves, 32 B bra frunpy and wet
the rest of the day, water being the perfect conductor
for urgency. I did my best to help. Now he's inventor
of some kind of special golf club, and rich as shit.
I blame myself.
Precious / Amy Haworth
A re-mix of the famous line from Mary Oliver's The Summer Day
To tell
me
what is real
is to tell
it
like you know it
Keep your plan
to yourself
And do
with it as
your heart beats
one, two, three
re-wild your soul
and stop
being so precious
with your life.
Yes, I Promise / Christina McCleanhan
after a dream, i cannot return to sleep, without
a glass of water, a piece of buttered bread, cheese
picture a peaceful current below an incline,
grass painted in shades of
prozac that seed into a Stepford landscape,
a cedar red canoe, a woman, a white dress,
a green sweater, a red lip
meant to make someone, anyone, fall
headfirst into
the flesh of summer
she calls out, “help,” as the boat
hits shallow water, but laughter
lives louder than
sorrow in
her tone
i mean to help her, i mean to offer my hand, but
where are the sticks to grab hold
of? The roots, the pockets
of dirt to slide down?
like a peeled orange
on a hammock day,
she smells of woodsy heat, I am sure
this Calliope has melted butter
with Coltrane playing
on a radio
in the window of
her studio apartment.
Her gift is heavy already
against
my spine
when she departs
-fast nor slow, but all
at once.
joy, peace, it is time
to work.
don't know, it's late / Alexis Wolfe
lately i don’t know it’s like
late in bed typing rhythms by
keyboard light worn screech
from other room think of you
saying hope parents are
going swimming! or something
like that during my life i needed
options on earth I am 30
listening to podcasts about
quitting and that one daybed face
saying magic cunt and how
its not about what you
was wearing but how
March - Poem 11
Poem for Offices / Kathleen Bednarek
It’s amazing anything gets done
when you consider the fact
as I do every so often that
the amount of people who
understand what to do is likely
equal to the people being trained to
do something they’ve never done before.
As I’ve been released for approximate hours
each day committed to increasing productivity
even in my off days so as not to disappoint the balance.
And there is this tension in lines and in lack of silence being
needed into all the waiting spaces and our gradations of escape
looking into wanting phones to say the war will ever end. But there
are the quiet ecru walls in the break room and people who thank you
and say goodnight. Information changes by summoning my kingdom
of data. I want to be grateful for my usage and I appreciate yours. That my
Person may be seen standing in midair without these floors pinging with the hum
of machines at night. When the Blue Heron rises from the stormwater basin at headquarters.
One light going off by timer signaling an incremental change in the sun’s position on the matter.
In / Mymona Bibi
My road to you was always in,
into the house, inside the room
we turn over our bodies
melt in our sheets.
we all hope that loss is a game
of hide and seek.
that our grief is the darkness
of the empty street corners
we’ve sought each other in.
there is a prayer between your thighs
and a god in my jugular
both throbbing to the music
in front of us.
Don’t Try this at Home / Susan Hankla
A slammed door is always wrong.
then forever out of plumb.
In another world / Amy Haworth
A blanket of tides pulled over the shores
laps the chin of the world.
Cotton candy clouds race on the wind,
currents are currency running north to south.
I push against what I know will keep me alive
and re-route breath through a workaround,
and allow the hand of the whole ocean to dunk
me under to a garden that needs no water
where the purple lattice of a sea fan bows
and a baby shark offers a pirate eye
like a submarine I move through the depths
sized wrong and manufactured for temporary survival.
The slower I go the longer I stay.
Even if I want to go up, I must stay down.
I swim in a cup of warm tea,
a cocoon cocktail of body heat and neoprene.
And I realize how easy it could have been to say
"I have no interest in that"
and how I would have missed frogfish and pygmies,
giant grouper, camouflaged flounder, and wingspans of rays --
How I would have lived never having known
us
in the ocean.
Kitchen Window Thoughts / Christina McCleanhan
When August comes,
it is complicated and trying.
Parched days unfold,
dusk attempts to seduce,
burned out mosquitoes,
drunk on muggy blood,
and stagnant creek conversations.
Morning shadows dance
across
a curated wilderness
that settles
across your freckled skin
during the honeysuckle season.
The greens will blend with time.
Washed-out January colors
brown needle scrub pines,
and the starlings
anticipate the first frost,
waiting to retire for the season.
Sycamore trees root below
tall grass.
Long forgotten trunks
fall near a horizon line
of roof peaks
peppered by telephone poles,
interrupted by bird whistles.
Listen, Darling-
when life takes
its breath
from me,
how wonderful the rest would be,
if I could lie
in peace
beneath
a walnut tree.
The Point Is / Elizabeth McGraw
Marked by a silhouette.
I’m kidding, marked by a marker more like it.
A reckoning with what we hold compared to our capacity to tell the story.
I’m being ambushed as I write this. After seeking my escape.
cracked tongue i was / Alexis Wolfe
cracked tongue i was
small child who believed in
secrets the long hallway of
light spilling from passing cars—
next it is april still we are
shedding winter’s quilt
we exist every - as patchwork
what am I? don’t know
just glad dogs know nothing
about personal space
colonized time
people can smell labor
and deer, human hair from halfmile
the night always being compared
to a wound—some things i guess
remain a given
I am all mouth stuffed with sky
wind dying spinning still
these crumbling lines
the light streaming through
March - Poem 10
this kid / Kathleen Bednarek
(for K.W.)
the edge
of the moon still visible
padding the earth body
with its rounded blanket
those storied wishes
a vision of a world beyond us
barely disappearing
circling the neighborhood
looking into the backseat
seeing part of my face
what am I going to do
returns
holding you under your soft arms
my palms under your armpits
my lips in your hair
lifting I don’t know
in a dream seen through
the dark with you
For that relative who'd come to stay / Susan Hankla
summering at my grandparents,
who took her false teeth out
for the boarding house repast,
leaving them on the table,
later saying, "That sure was good."
How else to show appreciation.
Coming from Stone Mountain
to dry out, she didn't know
better. I bet Opal laughed.
I bet Willie didn't. It was someone
related. He feared he'd used up
the good will when he'd asked if
his sisters would look after his five.
Come from Indiana to Virginia
after Lulu died, there was talk
of separating the girls. But he married
Miss Opal, and nobody ever talked of loss.
Opal sewed a dress every day some weeks.
Made the girls face each other, and sit
in hard chairs when they rough-housed.
She lost a brother Elga by him drowning
with his new wife in Lake Louise. The little boat
capsized in the wake of an ocean liner. The obit
read: The Sad Death of an Unhappy Man. She
was grieving him when Mom was conceived.
The summering woman did dry out.
She went home fat.
Get Lost / Amy Haworth
I'll consider it
Maybe we've got it all wrong
I won't rule it out
This current state of progress
has removed wondering
We pin locations and know the fastest route
Efficiency or ease winning out
Now getting lost is a malfunction
We've been told the way
Shown the path
And forgotten what we no longer consider
We were made to wander
To look up
at the stars
Instead of down
at our phone
Can you imagine?
What did we do when we spread a map eagle-armed
Obscuring the road to see the route?
I'll consider this:
We were made to forge trails
not follow them.
Once upon a time
getting lost
was our way of being found.
For the Quiet Nightingale / Christina McCleanhan
The night cold has come home for a visit.
Frost on the windows,
damp on the front porch swing,
fog clinging to the iron fence posts.
Where did she go? Has anybody seen her?
Darkness hums in stillness, waiting for the rain.
Your sweater is inside,
near the out-of-tune piano,
but it’s best to hideout by the brick pile.
There, no one will
touch your skin-cracked bottom lip,
laugh at your swollen ankles,
witness your overdressed misery.
She’s sad again. Go check the bathroom.
Moonlight slips between the porch boards,
lightening strikes, a sharpened sailor’s curse.
You tried to decline the invitation,
now you’re frozen and wondering,
how much longer will it be
until you can go home,
open the kitchen cabinets,
pull down one of your grandmother’s old plates
and cut a leftover chicken sandwich,
toasted and gravied,
into triangles.
Wait! She left earlier, before dinner.
Frost on the windows,
damp on the front porch swing,
fog clinging to the iron fence posts
The streetlight blinks as her shadow passes.
Bursts / Elizabeth McGraw
I am trying to encourage small pops of inspiration cause that’s all the space I have. In bips and bops they are revealed. They emerge, burst, then disappear.
You gotta be ready because when they appear. It’s just for a moment then they travel and unravel and leave but just a trace.
An image, a memory, a smell, a taste of the feast that was promised.
I am lost without them. Discovered anew. These small baubles of choice.
It’s a capturing, a rapturing, and a voice. To be heard but mostly just remembered.
Nan taught me / Alexis Wolfe
(Hi kirsten<333)
Nan taught me to
pucker up put the sun
in a headlock seek the blade
beneath the mattress
I was there and she
was there but staring into
her stills I was
underneath sure
those polka dotted tulles
glabella squinched
temples prodded by
knockknees peering
at the certain
violet: me crushing
the Coors can
me balancing paper
plate of friend’s berry
pie my eyes matter
of fact blood-blackened
me one hundred
years old pigeon chested
and counting me
tits out for Jesus
my work was once called
sophisticated—untrue
the most
embarrassing thing
in the world to be
a poet but if I could
take you for a spin
on that?
not tell you show you
to hightail it to the elevator
knock on any door no
it’s not your birthday
maybe it’s your mom’s
say this is my only night
in town do you have
Purpose? I’m it
March - Poem 9
Spring Cycles / Kathleen Bednarek
Windows unopened
Birds are impossible guests
To peck house data
-
Holding my fingers
Budding restraint side by side
Make an oath and rise
-
Here in the spring mud
Evangelical preachers
Teach hell and Easter
The Last Summer Nap / Mymona Bibi
Tree roots
were unearthed by animal
play and rot
was marvelled at by residents
of the whole street.
The Robin’s old knowledge
was made anew for us,
the orange of her chest
was fire flickering
above ground.
Another city was bombed
into orange darkness
whilst the children noticed
the tree’s protruding death
and they poked, prodded,
giggled, pointed,
cut, dug, fell, smelt
and everything
but talked.
Grief is a silent language.
My eyes drifted off
into orange darkness–
it is so easy to sleep
under the summer sun
when the noise
is so far away.
The Ten Thousand Things, Some of Them / Susan Hankla
Hoping to see again my mom's dress with the green caterpillars printed on it. Was she the living butterfly?
Did a thousand dishes by hand, happy the ancestors broke up sets of them, the missing cups their slender
handlelessness easier to dry on the tea towel.
Someday in another life we'll see who rapes who. I don't live by the notion of an eye for an eye. I'm sitting here after insomnia has me stingy in the eyes and skin, and a feeling of knowing that something has been wrong.
Just after Dad died, I had the sensation of my heart coming awake, as if before his death it had been on doze mode. Now when I opened the newspaper, the first thing I read is obituaries, & in reading about each person, I could feel that I was in communion with them and their loved ones, all sharing a heart.
Once a frisbee glowed at night so that coming through the door, I screamed to suddenly see it in my studio when I flicked on the light.
I miss my meadow. Grass stains. The skeletal branch on the dessert plate where crisp green grapes gave up their sweetness. I miss attar of turpentine and rose and orange oil when my twin aunts painted China sitting together at a card table and how many undercoats must be kiln-fired, before you actually see anything.
20 Years from Now / Amy Haworth
At the end of our lives
I hope you live next door
So we can laugh in your kitchen
About the diagnosis
And you can pick me up after the procedure
And we can be done (we'll never be done) analyzing
And marvel about how it all turned out
And cook dinner for friends like we did in 2001
Under a full moon descending on snowshoes felt like flight
At the end of it all
We'll make up for lost time
Doing whatever we can with the body we have left
Celebrating your courage that stopped the longing
And my gratitude for how you helped me find my way
and got me to ride a mountain bike race once
By then, at the end of our lives,
I might even have a dog.
I hope I have a dog, but not nearly as much as
I hope I live next door.
Dearly Beloved / Christina McCleanhan
Imagine California, Oakland, the East Bay, it is a decade before today.
There are clouds in the sky, low-hanging from pollution.
Leftover morning fog sails
toward a hillside of homeowner-privileged craftsmanship.
Reach up, lift off, and look
at the fatigue-flushed freeways, spiriting everyday people on their mission
to build a world meant
for entertainment, safety, love, survival,
and the opportunity to cash in or share sick days.
It felt like an electric stamina willed me to believe
I was the cinnamon crunch of hard candy
when rain muted the sun.
Those cool, old moccasins never stopped bouncing
down steps to
the round rhythm, sharpness of bus wheels,
desperate brake pads.
My youth looked ahead, trying to ignore the quiet
shake, shake, shake
of garbage-day premonitions in neighborhoods
that waited for cardboard-castle renewal.
I first ate Turkish delight at twenty-four with a tall classmate.
The powdered sugar coating stuck to the roof of my mouth,
leaving me disappointed, you know?
We saw each other for a while in our classes or in the hallways.
He spoke of volunteering and
the frustration of teaching change with limited resources
I spoke in circles of metered pseudo-intellectual pretentiousness
meant to hide the essence of my ordinariness.
I was afraid I might want to love him,
that he would want to love me,
so I closed my mouth when nodding hello
and forgot about the afternoon on College Avenue.
But today, the laundry basket’s broken handle poked my wrist.
I remembered the downstairs washers that we used,
saw San Francisco in its Converse,
felt Oakland breathe.
Now, I realize that I know nothing-
except that today’s prices would still be too high,
even if I had agreed to a second date.
Tiptoe / Elizabeth McGraw
What’s does a day bring in a season of change? It brings cold mornings, iffy conversations and strained relations fixed with a note.
House at 77 no time for the air conditioning so windows all set afloat.
Lord, the dog smells well overdue for his spring cleaning.
Birthdays on the horizon coinciding with the change in time.
Not quite equinox.
Skies a hazy gray. I lay down my head. The house is quiet.
A young one dances in the kitchen. Winter work overdue creeps in.
It ties in a knot that promises to unravel. A promise of the season to come.
Floating in the Indian River Inlet / Alexis Wolfe
Because I could not stay in the green place
I drove straight to the barren one
my teeth chattering and the Atlantic ghost crabs
doing their sideways dance.
Not even that emptiness could hold me.
My eyes and cheeks stung red
from a sun I did not forgive
because I did not know how to ask for it—
not directions
not a warm bed
I said little
no endworld in sight
I floated
in a made up place
between low tide and earth’s edge
one that could hold
my breath
March - Poem 8
Sister Cecilia / Kathleen Bednarek
My fave nun. By the time I was in the third grade, she was on her way to blindness. She taught me meter and "The Owl and the Pussycat." She had a scratched cornea from Ash Wednesday, when ashes slipped off the slope of her forehead into her right eye.
The edges of her thick glasses magnified into serious wattage when the light came in at a slant through the classroom windows.
Poetry teacher, literally reading close. Explaining to a pod of youngsters in a back room at a school named Epiphany how to wield imagination.
We ditched phonics. At home, typing on a typewriter named for a munitions device: Canon. This is what I wanna do for the rest of my life. Volley words. I compared the falling snow to doves.
You disappeared after the spring and went into retirement, in rooms that continued to blur at their edges.
"I suppose" should never be in a poem, or "suddenly," they say. But you and I were together in the fog this evening as I drove home on the interstate. I couldn't see, and wanted to know the sequel:
So, if "The Owl and the Pussycat" were married, and let’s say they had babies they would have had superior night vision— pure hunter's sight. Eyes specialized for darkness. But the owl would have been lost right now because the two taillights I’m following are red. Owls can’t see red. Cats can’t either.
And I could...see you with the fine downy hairs on your face. What did you like about that poem? The plump cheeks, hazel eyes magnifying, the habit like a black hole out of which knowledge was sucked in then flowed out, offset by your white hair looking at me through my eyes as I looked into yours in a memory patterned forward black and white.
Staying with the car ahead of me which is your face, which remembered language though the eye has not seen, ear has not heard. Sought.
Trace, lineage, metronome; in the middle of the fading curves appearing, the tail lights, two disparate things held in relation to one another. Create attention. Keep sitting, looking. Forego the drenching rainstorm, let the fog soak through.
Diaspora / Mymona Bibi
STENDAHL SYNDROME / Susan Hankla
Yes, it's true, often works of art prove
useful-–the incident at the Phillips Gallery
when I saw the movie of myself unglued
by his "Green and Tangerine" color field
painting in The Rothko Room.
At the Whitney, the Louise Nevelson
retrospective happened to my body: hot,
quaking, surprised, nearly walked into a black
wall of her imagination.
I hereby sign this affidavit these instances did occur.
I’m certain / Amy Haworth
Dedicated to DLo
“I’m certain
the path to success
is
never
forgetting
where you’re from.”
An angel
without wings
scatters wisdom
like salt
on a blizzard-bound
sidewalk
providing a temporary
spring
of hope in remembering
instead of wondering.
We grow tallest when our
roots touch
the blistering sun and city hum
music jumping open window to air
who we were
is who we are
we are proof of what watered us
tasting of the soil that grew us.
A Note on Understanding / Christina McCleanhan
I do not
fear
the spiders
the pill bugs
the centipedes
hiding
beneath
the damp surface of cold,
outside wetness
in my grandmother’s yard.
We are not so different-
the earth and I.
Branches, long or short,
offer me shelter
from inevitable elemental shortcomings
much like the respect given to birds-
hatchlings born and grown
on worms and oxygen.
deep
deep
deep
down in the backyard mud
live the memories of my youth.
We are here; they call.
We remember; they call.
My fingers will dip and prod
until they grasp a root, or
the old handle of my grandmother’s trowel,
then, amidst the decayed, rusted earth
I am reminded of
our long laughs,
summer evening shadows,
ants parading along cracked sidewalks,
that first mow after Easter,
Saturday night gravy over chicken,
quilts weighed against winter’s effort,
warming cold bedclothes with floor furnace heat
and love-
usually effortless and mostly free.
A Highway Through Tees Noc Pos, New Mexico / Elizabeth McGraw
A wilderness all of its own as the highway rolls underneath.
The swells from the searching brings my eyelids to their knees.
It’s been a long walk along this road in search of a phone.
Feet clad in jelly shoes and dad by my side.
They said it was a misunderstanding like in the evening show but I was swept up in a hurt and pulled along this road.
We walked for probably just a mile with the stars laid out quite bare. It was lonesome and fun at the same time.
Strange when the familiar faces swung slow to offer the ride. We said no, knew where to go, and remarked not many walk around here.
As they pulled away.
The phone booth found and the call made but nothing spoken of our journey or the late hour. The attendant introduced us to the driver of the rig and that is how we ended up here.
In a wilderness all of its own as the highway rolled underneath.
The swells from the searching brought my eyelids to their knees.
middle child what should i / Alexis Wolfe
middle child what should i
middle child, what else
should i call you? hotfoot
but slow to descend worn
stairs, kind in the cunning,
snagged on life’s pith. last time
we sat in the ice cream
parking lot smelled like wet birds
you drew long faces on your shoes
left school again asked me for
a flight to texas started dating
another dancer, the real sweet this one
played me voice notes of your misplaced
songs without asking if i wanted
to hear or if I needed ( ) only unanswerables
March - Poem 7
The Morning Bus / Kathleen Bednarek
Standing,
waiting for the
morning bus
on the corner
of Eastern,
one man
laughing
at the
blurting
of one
goose
yearning
through
its neck
toward
the harbor—
To pet
that long
neck!
He slaps
his leg
with the
broken foot.
Questions / Mymona Bibi
to saunter along the river is to ask questions,
the question of how
as your shoulder blades try to kiss
each other in the morning stretch,
of why do your fingertips tap
your thigh in wait
and where does all the water we forget
to drink wash away to?
what does all of yesterday melt into?
perhaps the curve inside your elbow
sweaty, creased, brown, lines, separate
when you reach over
to ask me a question
i can’t answer
not yet
not under this crescent.
REPEAT AFTER ME / Susan Hankla
exploits
escapades
episodes
capers
charades
moments
pentimento
caprice
carapace
spirit wind
convalesce
pork rind
sinshine
codex
architect
Kotex
context
text
sex
Vienna sausage
Kosher dill
hill
safety match
soft serve
swerve
Brillo-pad
hard water
patio
slaw
slay
barbeque lays
my little pony
paint-by-number
printed matter
gray matter
it matters
safety in numbers
salad days
Sundays
supper
sup
porcine
pork
telephone
Bible
bubble
Swiss Miss
mittens
smitten
witness
waitress
wellness
wasted
stunted
student
pork chop
music
magpie
chocolate cheesecake
nabs
stabs
wanted
stunted
pinecone
telephone
leave me alone.
Mother of Good / Amy Haworth
Love your neighbor
Love your mother
Mother may I
Mother’s Day
Day after day
Day after tomorrow
Tomorrow never comes
Tomorrow come what may
May I
May-be
Be happy
Be on time
Time to go
Time to change
Change your attitude
Change is growth
Growth is good
Growth rate
Rate your experience
Rate of approval
Approval of the President
Approval of the way we live
Live and learn
Live your best life
Life is good
Life will end
End the way you begin
End state
State of things
State of mind
Mind the gap
Gap between things
Gap to close
Close it off
Close the door
Door to nowhere
Door to somewhere
Somewhere out there
Somewhere over the rainbow
Rainbow wishes
Rainbow bridge
Bridge over troubled waters
Bridge to build
Build the future
Build up
Up we go
Up to something good
Good for you
You…
Good…
To Live is to Accept Circumstance / Christina McCleanhan
During the spring rains,
on a Friday evening walk before the moon is full
or on a late-morning Tuesday
after the geese have stopped chasing the runaway dog,
you might be the first to spot
the new blooms on a secluded bush of wild roses
and tangled onion grass.
You will visit whenever there are no groceries to buy,
mouths to feed, clothes to wash, or faucets to fix,
and remember other freedoms you have known.
Because no one else sees your adoration,
you can pause to suck deep breaths
of cut freshness and damp sweetness,
to bruise one, maybe two of the petals;
There is no owner to judge.
There is no cost to regret.
Linger in this place.
Rest during this season.
Look up at the sun with laughter, my friend.
The wrinkles will be worth it.
Days like these / Elizabeth McGraw
Don’t require much of me certainly not all of me and somehow make me wonder is this something new.
Uncomfortable for sure far from a flow that I intimately know. It’s feels like a stretch but before the release that’s always best followed by a deep deep sleep.
In it there is candor that hides a more indirect level of speech. I listen and lean into and watch. Note the books on your desk and order one so that I might know the situation better.
Showing up and showing down trying to find a footing. Like a back up singer accustomed to the solo I do-wop with the chorus. Inadvertently though it always seems I’m always a bit out of step.
Found a niche that feels new and maybe a spot to grow. No scaffolding here this I know so build it for myself until I go.
Always ready to stay but life’s so short so much to see. I’m a traveler loyal the most to me.
windlogged / Alexis Wolfe
sitting in the window again wishing i had
a desk, its like sitting at the easel
of the word—sentence jumble, vessel / portal
and so on, you know—remembering my mouth
could be blown to bits but it probably won’t.
lately I wake windsick, the wind bangs my
house loose and something bigger than an animal
is scratching up the attic—a young opossum
is called a joey if you didn’t know and their cries
sound sort of like pushing a shopping cart
with a broken wheel. Each time I hang my laundry
I retrieve it a few hours later from the dirt.
Each time my phone rings I scream and the wind
picks up. Someone always wants me
to meet their dog walk their dog watch my dog.
I feel about the birds the way everyone must feel
about their dogs—they’re all my pets and invited
to dinner. Last year, I ruined my friends shoes and now
she won’t talk to me any more: no one is worth more
than a good pair of Hokas. I used to walk into a new
city but now i’ve drunk all of them. But still isn’t there so
much? enough burn bright? to make a myth of war?
March - Poem 6
First Day at the Conference / Kathleen Bednarek
When there are this many voices
When the ceiling is forty feet higher than any
person here
Where there are designated tables with nothing
on them that could be sold so people know they
can sit without purpose
Where this is non-fiction and the essayist
recommends free chocolates
The amount of voices sounds like the ocean &
the closer the voices are to me they sound like the
people on the shore
When I don’t know what to say I say “thank you”
This table is made to look like grey sand
It’s the first time I’ve ever been asked “are you
using this bench?” Though I’m the only one here
& I am not sitting on the bench
I’m at the ocean sounding like the
people on the shore
A Photo / Mymona Bibi
A photo of a ripped photo -
torn in the shape of a border
in a land, in a tongue, in a house.
My camera clicks,
captures a moment
to be sent on whatsapp
captioned in a different language -
receive a city fertile with my
body in a photo of a photo
with the edges worn like rubble.
Hate speeds up
the decomposition process.
The photo of a photo is deleted.
SAYINGS / Susan Hankla
Keep your feet on the ground even though friends flatter you.
You are on the verge of something big.
Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.
When the moment comes take the top one.
Man knows more than he understands.
Don't be afraid to smile, you never know who's falling in love with it.
Want to catch the fishes, one must go home and build the net first.
You have a remarkable power which you are not using.
It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.
Life always gets harder near the summit.
Keep your feet firmly on the ground, even if your friends flatter you.
You are on the verge of something great.
Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.
When the right moment comes, choose the best one.
People know more than they understand.
Don't be afraid to smile; you never know who will fall in love with it.
If you want to catch fish, you first have to go home and build a net.
You have extraordinary power that you don't use.
It's much easier to be critical than to be right.
Life always gets harder at the top.
If you want to stew on the ground, and you're your own child.
If Jy and midde-in iets groots.
Logic is dead wrong and dead gees.
I want to die well, die the best.
Mense see more as what happened.
Moenie bang wees comes to glitter; I don't want to live.
And he went to the net.
He will build krag what you cannot.
This makes us believe in wees as we reg in wees.
The die lewe is highly moeiliker daarbo.
Split Personality / Amy Haworth
so Dimness asked / Christina McCleanhan
Should the Lord ignore your prayer, your pleas, your bargaining tantrum,
what will you do?
Well, I will…
Sing!
I will sing the scripture of my grief.
whole notes!
high notes!
the sweet, pleading dusk notes!
I Will Lift My Arms in Praise and Holler His Name
to
the preacher
the choir loft sopranos,
the congregation of early morning baritone frogs,
the man spitting tobacco in the mud by my mailbox,
the child who is too grown for cherry Kool-Aid,
and the sparrows.
And could you still submit, if He does not answer?
If his back turns on you in disappointment,
what then will you do?
Well, I will…
Wait!
I will wait without worry, a storm’s mischief
becomes joy
beneath the Dogwood trees,
where I will rest until
His peace commands my feet.
Tired, though I may be.
Oh, ho, ho, if death’s stillness bears
upon your tethered mortality,
would you still extend
the Eirene of your Father’s grace
to a fellow traveler?
Might your fatigue be better soothed
in a cold, dark dwelling place?
Go now, small one
save your strength
for those in need of a shoulder.
Go now, tepid beast,
go peddle your Belial’s privation
to those whose foolish tongues
confuse vinegar for wine.
Me, I will sing.
Incomprehensible / Elizabeth McGraw
Lady at the airport lounge in a language I don’t speak. Who talks this much so early in the morning?
Friends travel to town and you’re having a personal crisis and barely engage.
6am flights arriving an hour prior to boarding. 3am wake up call.
What has been left unsaid that needs to be spoken at this hour?
Incomprehensible.
Tickets to a rodeo that I saw last year. Do I really need to see the mutton busting again? Don’t even listen to the rascal flatts, no offense.
Meeting starts at 6pm so jumped on the 6am flight. Naturally.
Sold the old cooper for the new fangled ride and I hate it. Cameras and all.
Drive 13 hours every summer and still never a phone call in between.
Left the family chat group. Have Facebook friends don’t need more.
Hosted a month, never heard another word. I did the same.
Snow in March at this latitude.
Incomprehensible.
contemporary bicoastal lullaby / Alexis Wolfe
won't always be this
simple: thunderclap,
bioluminescent sea, soft language
begetting breath beneath
beating chest. shh
shh shh whispersongs
soothe even sung by yellow
ing teeth. lay still in this
wet quiet, thumb in your
mouth, invite
surprise—
March - Poem 5
For Art on His Birthday / Kathleen Bednarek
When I consider art it has a double meaning. As much as the Tate Modern it was a September
installation of clothing and records in front of your parent’s house, a yard sale to help you pay to make
it to Peru. The excess of your namesake Rimbaud who I always thought of as your kindred
spirit/brother. Always Adventure ADVENTURE. Excellent. Worry is a waste of the imagination
living fully is creating inspirational quotes by the way you are. And I don’t think it’s ever over?
Macchu Picchu is otherworldly, to sit up in the clouds with the condensation and stones in your hair.
Wanting to be taken rather than granted. Like death. I have no idea when. It’s something we are all
granted. It’s probably all an energy song anyway and you are still jamming at the Oasis where the
jukebox is thankfully useless. Pick B4 and keep running barefoot in my neurons. I’ll meet you at the
streetlight on the corner where atoms have vibrated into appearing as Philadelphia. And it’s be excellent
to one another, not just a quality. It’s a function. As we are all in the car coming back home laughing in
our bodies.
We never needed eyes for this / Mymona Bibi
I’ve never slept with the filth of noise stressed and stretched a place to thrive between legs and behind them - in a tent - I once nearly died in a tent suffocating underneath them - in a library chewing
on hardback for a chance to be safe before I tasted blood and flesh, teeth sunken sucking whistling inside, spitting outside, the city is loud from the curdle of birth, gutters filled - relief when the cloud silenced the sun and sometimes the running palpitation of an orgasm ripples through - lightning! off go the lights we never needed eyes for this - down sets the sun we never needed eyes for this - in a friend I feel unnamed bites bumps slow down / reconstruct / retile / sew the tarmac closed / taut / stressed and stretched / now - round 2!
I choose to live with a thumb in my mouth not my thumb but my city which tastes like everyone I’ve ever loved.
Mrs. Wyeth / Susan Hankla
A woman rests her arms on a windowsill of a wooden house and looks out.
She wears a wide-brimmed leather hat and earth brown cable knit sweater buttoned up to her throat.
Her arms are crossed on the windowsill, and one pinky is up. The gesture expresses openness, maybe.
She looks out the open window that has no screen. It swings out. What could be captured in her hatchet-blade gaze?
Who is she? She's her famous husband's, the artist's wife. But who does she think she is?
Is she counting geese? She wears a man's hat every day. My mind drifts to when my husband almost died.
I wore his brown Stetson to see him at the rehab place. He is also a well-known artist. He has nine or ten
visitors every day. Some get there before I'm even up. For years I was angry all the time. Now I've just made 5 copies
of his DNR. He tells the nurses at the rehab place that I never come see him. I'm there every day. When home by myself,
I do his laundry and turn the lights out early and look out at the sparkling snow covering unraked leaves.
Alligator Alley / Amy Haworth
The first time we drove
straight
across Florida
it was you and me.
Running away while we had a couple of hours
to be who we were before a baby.
I hoped to see an alligator
instead there were only rivers of grass and broad winged birds
Perched like Kings
Looking
Watching
Holding the sky?
After that — these birds — I no longer cared
about an alligator.
It was their nonchalance that made me pause
as we moved 70 miles per hour
they stood air-drying
Aloof to the encroaching asphalt and the noise
Part of my soul bowed as they took flight.
Their spell cast, I learned their name,
Anhinga a’ñinga anhangá
and rolled it over, tasting it, teaching my mouth to say it.
Holding your hand as we drove
straight across
something had shifted
tamed
in that wild land.
The Definition Of / Christina McCleanhan
To kiss
is to exchange
lit divinity
without interruption.
as friend
lover
family
or foe
this spit-worthy violation of vulnerability
is a mark
to be wiped across memory’s sword.
And you,
no longer my beautiful man,
you met
the ugliness of my raw eagerness
with watering can and trowel
in the sturdiness
of your gentle hands.
There.
Sunrise came early,
on your steps,
in the cold.
Our bare feet found the truth
I would leave in your home.
i was unfair…
… cruel…
The shelves were not mine to claim.
On my front stoop / Elizabeth McGraw
We’ve known each other for ages and it’s really just years.
We reach out with our stories and fears.
We share no Astro sign.
We believe in each other and it feels kind.
You say you love us but you love the unit more. What we are making together in outside circles has struck a real chord.
I don’t hear it from my family or an internal crew.
So when you travel to say you’re starting a family and it starts with you.
I’m a sister
I’m an auntie
I’m a friend
Your new sweet family is just starting out.
I hope for you the blessings of imperfection and nonsense that lets you holler and shout.
A cacophony that shatters all the rules
A love that abides and ultimately cures.
It’s a world for the loving and adventurous alike.
Don’t be fooled it’s hard but for the living it’s a calling and a dreading and a life.
And like all things never lasts.
Pinto Canyon, after the phone rings / Alexis Wolfe
Julia calls and it’s earthflight
and blinding, calls me her bright&shiny, like if
we stare too long into each other’s swirling
we get a headache. She tells me about a coworker
who didn’t cry at his girlfriend’s or mother’s
funeral, though they were only a week apart—
he makes me believe in parallel realities, she says
incoherence and your own power are hunting
you down. If a man asked me to trade
places, I’d place one hand in a hot
frying pan and the other into a blender. I walk
down the winding and know the meadowlarks
sing for me, I hold the cows’ cries of separation
and whisper may what is for them never pass
them by. Once, a bald professor read my account
of an infant’s forehead and said this beauty can only
be written by a woman. I resented it, but knew
what he meant. That same child once suffocated
on a dog toy and I fishhooked him faster
than spit, faster than fingers. The same one who,
allergic to living, sometimes turned blue chewing
oats. I would balance him on my forearm
like a small clown, thrust my palm until he blushed
pink and snot smeared his eyes. There are so many
things I still cannot do alone. Julia says, I can’t wait
to raise a child—it’s like going to war!
Of course, there are more apt metaphors.
Of course, there are a million poets
dragging tonight, but she called me
March - Poem 4
Day 4 / Kathleen Bednarek
I’ve counted on my fingers, counted on flagrant red petals that slipped
and counted on people who ended up being known by their actions like came through or left me stranded.
Counted on paychecks, counted paycheck dollars, counted days until, days since, counted blessings, thought of absolution (really?) after ten Hail Marys
Hide and Seek counting to 100, sometimes skipped or sped through the numbers, eyes closed, eyes opened seeing where you were. Counted time
with no drinks; years went by and we spoke across tables about time as a free fall, the rising and falling of each Worm Moon or Strawberry Moon, eclipses hidden by weathermen counting tenths of inches of rain. My height marked on the wall purple magic marker line ____ below my best friend’s (for now my line is above her eleven year old daughter’s). My,
my, my….no it’s not mine. Impermanence–this breath on my
lip, the fall and rise of the belly. I’ve been dreaming of a butterfly; fake snoring whistling like a cartoon character, one eye open to see you giggling, I blink and fully grown living in Manhattan, a city of how many people? Taste the innumerableness of this soup! Floating carrot and translucent onion swirling, dash of pepper, splash of dark vinegar to cut.
How I can’t even begin and then do
and then I am borrowed to–
About thirty minutes into
the science showabout black holes: the universe is expanding though it may be infinite
Swollen / Mymona Bibi
the city swelled like the curve of a cat’s back
when I ran out before dawn shivering
from the police in my apparitions,
you sliced the moon and found a sun inside it unkissed
dying - rays untouched.
the light of the new sun burnt the apparition from memory,
we stumbled on cobblestones back home
where we believed we were meant to go,
before you could help me stitch up the moon
so the nights would be ready for the sleepers.
in the padding of the night-cat’s paw
which crawled away from us is a reminder:
we can’t go back to bed until the city empties itself.
Mrs. Wyeth / Susan Hankla
A woman rests her arms on a windowsill of a wooden house and looks out.
She wears a wide-brimmed leather hat and earth brown cable knit sweater buttoned up to her throat.
Her arms are crossed on the windowsill, and one pinky is up. The gesture expresses openness, maybe.
She looks out the open window that has no screen. It swings out. What could be captured in her hatchet-blade gaze?
Who is she? She's her famous husband's, the artist's wife. But who does she think she is?
Is she counting geese? She wears a man's hat every day. My mind drifts to when my husband almost died.
I wore his brown Stetson to see him at the rehab place. He is also a well-known artist. He has
nine or ten visitors every day. Some get there before I'm even up. For years I was angry all the time. Now I've
just made 5 copies of his DNR. He tells the nurses at the rehab place that I never come see him. I'm there every day.
When home by myself, I do his laundry and turn the lights out early and look out at the sparkling snow covering
unraked leaves.
Introductions / Amy Haworth
Inspired by the beautiful prompt and poem by George Ella Lyons
I am from sagebrush
and last year's aspen leaves
I am from frozen eyelashes
and roller skating in covered courts.
I am from goodbyes to sister friends
from moon boots and mittens
I am from will you be my friend
and green mountain cabins and cards.
I am from outside looking in
hollow longing filled with good grades
and folded notes
I am from bridesmaid dresses
and moonlight snowshoes.
I am from U-Haul adventures
and severance packages.
I am from new year's sparks
turned rings below purple mountains.
I am from bedrest to baby
at 36th and Vallejo
I am from sea shore and man 'o war
finding patterns as a doula for change.
I am the cycle of the sun
watching age wrinkle as she teaches
I am awake. I am alive.
I am.
Dear Spring, Come! Quick! / Christina McCleanhan
Close your eyes. Listen…
to the thawed dirt…the robin’s shuffle…the barking dog
the distant siren…the neighbor’s saw…
Hold out your hand. Wait for Manna.
Turn the palm upward. Wait for forgiveness.
Clench into a fighting fist. Wait for peace.
First, you are exposed flesh; then, age and hydration become evident
when tendons resist the stretch.
Why must our joints strike in protest?
“Kneel,” I tell you, “Kneel.”
Pick up the spade. Slice into the earth.
Slide the worms, the rocks, the necrotic rot into the bucket.
Ignore its missing handle.
Renewal is rewarded with nourishing grace, not presented elegance.
Now, be still. Breathe.
One beat, two beats, three.
Space rests on your skin against your lines, fingerprints,
and
the knuckles meant for gripping life...
Attention-
offer it, plant it often.
Go ahead, share your fear.
Exist.
Horizontal / Elizabeth McGraw
Is it Monday, God no.
It’s Tuesday.
No alarm and it’s 4am.
Stayed awake with a single idea about work until 6:05.
True alarm.
First drop off at 7:18 but not before a heated debate on the term crashed out.
Husband in Amsterdam.
As it relates to sister.
Second round begins.
This is not torture.
Torture is knowing you leave for the bus stop in forty-seven minutes and wonder what might you accomplish. Shower for self.
Food for others for the entire day. Quick text. Morning Joe. A novel.
Walk the dog.
Head covered. Alarm set. A recovery.
New day. Same day.
All is well.
Grievances, Dreams / Alexis Wolfe
You have to dance, not
over-dance, someone said.
People are just like grass,
Agnes Martin tells me:
that is the way to freedom.
If you can imagine you’re a rock,
or—even better—a grain of sand,
you are free. To be free
one must summon a vision of quiet,
one must not over-dance. We are
our own dragon, longing
to hold one.
When you wade in the river,
you are just like me. When your
hair is caught in your car
windows, you are just like
me. A function of language
is to relate—relatively, I am dreaming
alternatives to Subject/Object
syntax structure—colonialism burned into
the brittle bones of our
language. Each sentence
a door, yet: He (subject, dominant) holds
her (object, passive). We speak
Corporation—it is all so
boring. What about Subject/Subject-ing
with me? We hold we. The body and
the language resist, there’s one.
This is less about listing grievances
and more about summoning a vision
of quiet within the school of Dreams.
This evening I biked over a hill
and smacked my face on the orange
moon. I couldn’t stop squinting
into the flat horizon—Now,
what is the function of that?
March - Poem 3
Window / Kathleen Bednarek
-thinking of Lorine Niedecker
Portal into field
Unchanging frame
Unknowing
Wyoming
-
Green & brown dots for cows
My body with its eye-
rises
A piece of paper rolled-up &
Stuck in the hole
In the screen
To keep the mosquito
Out
How I learned words
Given to the sky
Now read out loud
To the mountains
Over my book
Time / Mymona Bibi
there are some
who are great
with time,
they swim through
it or it swims
through them
and their fingertips
never wrinkle.
instead time
is something
i choke
on catch
in my throat,
spit out
and lift
my head to find
spite in my eyes.
when the time
swimmers float
towards me,
the clocks
break.
i am elated
by the witch
from my nightmares
who kisses
my forehead,
plucks time
from my throat
and tells me to
swim,
i dive
into the pool.
when my head
resurfaces
the sun rises
and i smile
in pain.
what a pleasure!
to feel this body
in another body,
the clock face
relaxed.
tears are nothing
but calls
to ocean.
Mother's Shrine / Susan Hankla
In old albums, sometimes they've cut around a picture
and stood the inch-tall photo against the black page.
I have one of those of Mother (her splendid legs cut off)
I keep in a plastic box which I don't know what to do with.
It's by my keyboard.
In it, I've added a chip of purple glass I once thought was amethyst
until I dropped that brooch from my grandmother on my office floor.
Earlier, when I thought it was made of amethyst, I 'd sent it to my cousin's daughter.
She never thanked me.
Waiting too long for a note from her, I asked that she mail my brooch back.
After more long months, she tucked a nearly illegible note to send
with the pin. Her chilly little message was about the nature of misunderstanding.
She never knew her great grandmother, but what I wouldn't give
to have got a thank you note from Ruth mentioning the heirloom. Not being thanked
made me lonelier than ever, ever I was-- the butt of her joke.
One day Mother sends me a handwritten note.
First Friends / Amy Haworth
My two friends would come to play
Board games and Barbie dolls
From 10 to 2 we'd huddle down
Happy as we could be.
My two friends would come to play
Until there was a fight.
She threw a fit and yelled and screamed
Until the other cried.
My two friends would fight each day
And then I'd set things right
With mother's tone and lessons taught
They headed to their home.
My mother asked if they had left
(I knew she could not know.)
My friends, you see, were made of air.
Alive to me alone.
One left behind when we did move
The other came along.
I never wondered where she lived
Or if she had home.
My two friends would come to play
They were mine alone.
Ghosts or angels — who would know?
For I was not alone.
Please Exit the Ride to Your Left / Christina McCleanhan
To understand is to land
beyond
the chewed rim
of your styrofoam cup.
at the party
we were laughing
haha
hilarious
Hey...
come back,
come back…what happened…
to the Santa hat?
haha
hilarious
like most,
our evening passed
in silence
haha
hilarious
then, there were
only voices left
to adjust
only seams left
to patrol
no need to stage my nightmare
with your spotlight guillotine
my eyes were already wide
when we
walked
to the fenceline
the stars
that night, they wept
A Refresher / Elizabeth McGraw
Sitting in the chair under the glare I see my skin sink and dull.
Color at the roots tips left bare, lipstick still bright red.
I am hoping for a miracle or just a small nudge further from dread.
The clock is ticking.
I've actually somewhere to go but they won't know where I've been
except for the clean trim and filtered smile
that shows I am ready to begin again.
The candle, not quite a tealight / Alexis Wolfe
the candle, not quite a tealight
waves its neck at my eroding
spray roses; their water is milk
March - Poem 2
Zero Days / Kathleen Bednarek
Last night I was met in a dream by a man I had never met before. His face, a composite of men who have worked in body shops or out in the cold. A traffic flagger. Large, red-faced, longer gray hair flowing out from under a baseball cap that said Semper Fi. I arrived in this dream not because I am a Marine, but maybe because my sister recently told me over the phone: Semper Fi, short for Semper Fidelis, always faithful.
The man across from me told me he drank Busch beer from the time he woke up, and that it helped him to come to the shop already on his way to blotto. Lucidly, I noted PTSD as a possibility. I don’t know, what rooms are we ever in when we confess? I can't recall. The emotion normally overtakes the atmosphere.
No one confesses anything unless they can't stand it any longer but the spaces stay. I listened to him and didn't say a word. Even in the dream I never had him do work on my car.
My sister conjures humor from depths, sourcing Bloody Marys in Civil War-themed restaurants during snowstorms staving off the lack of light. Sweatpants and high heels juxtaposed, with an old winter coat for a quick jaunt to the supermarket. You know this is the America of spray cheese. Of Powerball. Of poverty, that's different from other countries' poverty, because it dies of heart. If you give someone dreams, there are those who know the turn. The empty-handed side. Here you laugh. And I shake. But no one will know what kind of shakes. Was it from laughing? Who goes there?
Zero days. A Brad Pitt movie, exited in near darkness. What kind of people are in your dreams? Where are you all sitting, can I sit here? I've been in many rooms. I recall blacklight, deeply cushioned furniture, wood-paneled walls and conversations I no longer wanted to be part of. It was to leave them to return to myself. A different dream. Now it’s Sunday, I'm facing a bare-limbed forest, a winter that won't quit. I think of you enduring. Life will make you its mercenary—pick a song to go into battle with. Dance with it in your room.
Orange / Mymona Bibi
Like the start of a morning or end of a night, orange is tomorrow it’s believing we have a chance it’s the aura of hope. don’t look at it, my love, for orange burns, stings, in a wound as i cut open slice through orange, strings of white, orange, find you in two-toned fruit and one toned flesh, each segment falling, rocking, boatfuls of juice on a small plate. it’s a kiss and the fire left behind on lips and tongues, lighting departures in alleyways. orange is a street full of us, is my knowledge of floating rings and shining jackets and emergency flames where we beg our abusers to save us because no on else is left.
Untitled / Amy Haworth
I weep for the girls
who will not see
another sunrise
who will never know
this girl
cries
for the girls
who I have never seen
but imagine
holding
their mother
I've never met
in this lost
world
where they should
have come home
from school
today.
I Had Two Childhoods / Susan Hankla
One in which a father betrayed me.
One in which good women saved me.
So really I had no childhood at all.
But why get all psychological?
I know how to make biscuits you can see through.
When Courage Fails / Christina McCleanhan
Let depression’s horror sweep across your feet
before it rises to probe your sacredness
with its clinical fingers.
Offer your shoulders
to the heaviness of jealousy’s resolve
if forgiveness feels shallow and useless.
But, do not stop dreaming.
Raise your head and watch the sky,
wait for the rabbit’s jump
from the tall grass
behind the abandoned white house
with mismatched clapboard siding.
The dogs will wait or walk; the dogs look after you.
When fear comes
to pour itself along your breast,
greet its sting
like exposed flesh
reckons with a January coldness.
Welcome reflection
that means to forge your buyer’s regret,
compressing your wounded foolishness
into a proud thickness
that may take another week or year to mold.
But, do not stop breathing.
Slam your fist down into the dishwater,
rest while the countertop slant draws the suds
toward the hidden mildew behind the faucet.
The guests will eat or starve; the guests came for you.
Recognize / Elizabeth McGraw
Call it like you see it, what should I call what I feel?
Wait to perform when I know I am liked,
but they won't like you until you perform.
I am a monkey.
By midday / Alexis Wolfe
By midday everything is slippery-wet
flubber, my hands are two sieves
and i’m hyperfixated on the notes
of a vacuum-sealed Bookkisa coffee
bag again: florals, meyer lemon, melon––washed
process, weren’t the last: meyer lemon, peach, bergamot?
Why all these lemons, melons,
where there are none? Everything
is everywhere. Coffee is coffee,
not ripped petals, drenched fruits. I drink it.
I read about the detrimental effects
of globalization: our foreclosed future,
earth mass smashing
into the continuum of past and future,
completion as a limit and the time
of the finite world beginning. Excess, meet
excess meet excess, you’re all the rage
lately—enjoy a cacophonous
conversation.
The sourdough loaves cool and talk
amongst each other on my countertop and
it excites me–i don't know
who I’ll gift them to, unable to eat.
I say I can’t write anything lately,
but then what is this? What is anyone
talking about anyways
on my kitchen blah blah blah
radio, through the nightshade, at the local blah
blah grandmother-dedicated
restaurant. I don’t care.
Of course I do.
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 / MyMona 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.
Bus Station Mishap / Susan Hankla
What looked like my yellow Samsonite suitcase
was full of car parts. Back then, you called the person to arrange the swap.
It worked fine. He came to me with my dresses
and underwear, his suitcase a lot heavier than mine.
We laughed and were grateful. That suitcase I’d picked out
at the store had exploits. It went to London. It went to Sweden.
Once I flew from Virginia to Providence
with a new frying pan.
But Aunt Marjorie’s jar of cherry jam
was leaking. She could never manage to get it semi-solid.
I scooped the red stuff from inside the corners of the yellow suitcase
with a serving spoon and spread it on Sally Lunn bread.
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:
February - Poem 28
BROCHURE FOR A DREAM / A Cento
composed by Ashby Logan Hill, with lines by and from Kristine Anderson, Barbara Audet, Bee Cordera, Ashby Logan Hill, Amy Marques, Sonia Sophia Sura, and Samuel Spencer.
As far as I can tell, the only laughter came from me,
thin emerald leaves rising from the dark, shivering earth.
I can hear the morning rain pattering on the leaves.
Outside my window, the heart maintains its worth,
everything you could desire. I’ll think of stepping outside on a
clear night, trying to count the dots of glitter in the sky.
Some moments are too precious. This beauty seemed to
speak to me nightly in my dreams, your dancing in the
sky, captured in eardrum hollows. My body and soul are
riven now because my heart is where you are.
Touch me too firmly and you will get burned.
Like the Earth, we are made of dust. Please accept
this. It was an unlearning like this that taught you,
sometimes the best song is silence, something new.
The 30/30 Challenge: Twenty-Eight Days Later / Kristine Anderson
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Eliot
It’s like the family piling into a station wagon, 1968, driving
from the California Bay Area to northern Washington, hot as blazes
through Mendocino County, raining cats and dogs in Crescent City
and all the way up the coast from there. Then, arriving:
My first bee sting outside the motel room I shared with my sister.
Smiling at the uncle I’d met only once, learning to make pie crust
from my grandmother, already stooped from all her hard years.
The point, though, is after a week with little-known relatives,
after hotel swimming pools and diner hamburgers,
after the long road back, once Dad parked in the driveway,
I, at twelve years old, carried with me the revelation of a bigger world
and walked into my bedroom with its hand-me-down bed
and old wooden dresser, the blue braided rug warming
the hardwood floor, while rising around me: welcome
familiarity, electrified with new anticipation.
Don't you feel it, too?
February Haiku No. 2 / Barbara Audet
Stubborn ice-bathed land,
Gets mocked by all teasing warmth.
March prefers to roar.
On Black Love / Bee Cordera
Like moonmilk flowers
cradled in waxy evergreen leaves
blooming like they always
have for millions of years
upon the summer breeze,
heavy on the branches of Magnolia
slowly, but surely, gifting
their sweet scent to the beetles
who have always opened up
the flowers to polinate them.
Durring the land before time
when there were only slow
sunsets moving through hues
of blue, gold, grapefruit pink
we are those tumbling flower
beetles making the Magnolia
bloom look easy, bold,
ancient as breath.
MASTER SONNET #2 / Ashby Logan Hill
At the Monet exhibit I asked about the cold you don't remember, Alaska.
Not even the roses could compete, a dalmatian and carrier pigeon, friends,
the heat of a summer breeze sweeping through the night, then daylight.
This beauty seemed to speak to me nightly in my dreams.
So, feeling enlightened, tonight we slept with both our eyes open.
Secretly I wish for you again. The rain keeps our hearts forever.
“I love you like the dew at break of dawn.” “I love you like the morning tide fading.”
It was the rain in the night, the early morning light that saved us.
“I was wondering when you’d come back up to see me.”
At the light, I was reminded what magic grows of mountains.
At dawn I’d find the foxes lurking, smiling at my counting.
Standing there waiting for me on front porch like fire, glowing,
this second chance at breath you hold a bit before breathing.
We drove into the dark, into the night. We were chasing the light.
Mended / Amy Marques
Exhaustion of
realisation
& misgiving.
Then:
mended;
seeing good.
Source Material: A Tale of Two Cities
Endings / Sonia Sophia Sura
How do I write about endings?
A bird flies away;
A meal’s last bite is chewed;
Eyes open to the morning light.
On the other side of the end
Is a new beginning.
On the other side of a no
Is a yes, and
Yes, and
Yes to something else.
August Something, 2025 / Samuel Spencer
You help my hand
and for a brief instant, I believed
that everything that had passed
through its palm was merely practice
for this moment. All its dexterity, all the
fine motor skills gains performing other
tasks – the racquets, the pens; all the minute
movements I’ve trained its tips to do.
For decades, this hand developed
its Life’s Work, relying on the calluses
formed from holding onto the wrong things
or holding onto things the wrong way –
Only for it to fade away, its form
enclosed in the shape of your own.
I never knew a hand could feel
at home, that it had had reached for
now seems so vain in your simple grasp
on that sunny day in London, in the park
whose name
I can’t seem to remember.
February - Poem 27
My Friend, Let’s Remember / Kristine Anderson
Snapdragons
like the ones your mother planted in the backyard
sun-yellow and lavender and white
strength, mystery, protection
The duck
that wandered into your childhood, which you adopted
quacking as it waddled in the yard, teasing your terrier
grit, fun, adaptability
Chocolate
as in Halloween or Easter candy, but also in baking
Christmas cookies every year, a sweet endeavor
a small luxury, a gift, celebration
Your cocker spaniel
the puppy a gift from your father who was dying from cancer
moving with you to a new home with its impish pleading eyes
loyalty, affection, playfulness
One could do worse than have such landmarks along the way.
Justice / Barbara Audet
… Bold self-creating men did statutes draw,
Skilled to establish villainy by law;
Fanatic drivers, whose unjust careers.
Produced new ills exceeding former fears:
Tarquin And Tullia/John Dryden
Self-shady men ever negotiate the penchant
To vanish faith, duty, decry mercy as an attribute.
Dryden’s villainy secured by law is ever true.
New ills, new fears, fruitful times of wickedness
Are willing stand-ins, holding permanent,
Planting gardens of seedy plotters, overgrown patriots.
Evil does not deserve to be redundant.
The poet wrote, “innumerable woes oppress the land,”
Did his insight leapfrog down the centuries to cast a searchlight
On baffling justice, the lacking of, that holds nations hostage?
ELEGY FOR A SECOND CHANCE AT BREATH / Ashby Logan Hill
Standing there waiting for me on front porch like fire, glowing,
as sure as you are that you still breathe, a heavenly thing,
brought down from sky to earth, as Faith is an angel,
you take all of the air that you can in, release what’s not given,
swift as a brisk wind, cold enough to freeze over, like the
Dry River high up and out of sweet light, for you a
second chance at breath, longing no more for what is lost,
instead for all that breathes and sings holy — Faith is her name,
a way to be whole again, ducks by the shallow pond and
green fields of morning, our walk through Central Park,
and all that remains holy is night — the night, our endless,
sleepless night that brings, sings with it our joy forever.
It’s things like this that make a life. It’s things like that,
this second chance at breath you hold a bit before breathing.
Consider / Amy Marques
Consider looking
at attitude
his whispered
anxiously unattended
suspicion
his untidy reckless
demeanour,
his sympathy
which made him
turned
back
and paused.
Source material: A Tale of Two Cities
I do not want to live a life that is boring / Sonia Sophia Sura
I do not want to face my journal and have nothing
to write.
I have already lived a thousand lives in this one,
and I’ve recovered enough of my parts to live
my present moments in one body.
My soul is all-in this human-thing and I am praying,
meditating, cleansing, bathing.
I am calling on all those higher-ups,
the most unconditionally loving
archangels and
elevated ancestors
and my highest self.
We are all here,
cherubs surrounding me with their
cute faces and
white wings and
deadly bows.
I am impenetrable.
I am light shining so bright,
touch me too firmly
and you will
get
burned.