If you are a poet, prophet, peace-loving artist, if you are tolerant, traditional or anarchistic, haiku or epic, and points in between;
if your poems sing, shout, whisper, dance, scratch, tickle, trot or crawl; if you value the humane treatment of every creature
and the planet on which we dwell, SoFloPoJo seeks your best work.
What do we mean when we say "your best work?" Or that we seek well-crafted poems that are thematically complex, emotionally nuanced, or "in your face,"
filled with images that excite wonder, mystery and dread, and challenge the reader to question their assumptions?
We hope you will enjoy reading this issue as much as our editors enjoyed answering that question by selecting these works.
if your poems sing, shout, whisper, dance, scratch, tickle, trot or crawl; if you value the humane treatment of every creature
and the planet on which we dwell, SoFloPoJo seeks your best work.
What do we mean when we say "your best work?" Or that we seek well-crafted poems that are thematically complex, emotionally nuanced, or "in your face,"
filled with images that excite wonder, mystery and dread, and challenge the reader to question their assumptions?
We hope you will enjoy reading this issue as much as our editors enjoyed answering that question by selecting these works.
February 2023 Issue # 28 Poetry
Abdulkareem Abdulkareem * Amina Akinola * Saurabh Anand * Gustavo Adolfo Aybar * Kayode Ayobami * Jay Brecker * Saturn Browne * Gregory Byrd * Jessica Dubey * Amelia Díaz Ettinger * Arvilla Fee * Ariel Francisco * Michelle Glans * Leslie Hodge * Wasabi Kanastoga * Emily Anna King * Daniel Edward Moore * Caridad Moro-Gronlier * Frank Paino * Martheaus Perkins * Beth Brown Preston * Lisa Rhoades * Shane Schick * Sarah Sorensen * Garrett Stack * Sarah White * Cynthia Robinson Young
Abdulkareem Abdulkareem
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Flotsam Ask the dead flower― what it means when the hands meant to wet, uproots. The officer said my friend was prodigal for being outward against extortion & he kissed him into silence with a gun. My friend becomes a memory, & the officer becomes the night in a gathering of eyes. Inside my dimly lit room, I begin another poem with death, bloody tongue of a sickle; the black robe living in the off-white walls of a protector. I paint the metaphors with the portrait of what killed my friend. I break into splinters like a flotsam & weep. My tears are bullets piercing the wooden stool. My phone autocorrects corpse for cops― & I assume it meant the corpse of everyone killed by the cops. My friend dissipated like a morning mist—his dreams crumbled into shards like my grandmother's mirror. I dreamt of vengeance, but my soul dreamt of mercy. What kind of mercy do I withhold for a home that whittled my friend's presence into an ellipsis? Say, home is where everything tries to kill you, how the one meant to protect crushes like the wing of a moth. The grief of my country, water washes over the landscape. Our protest, loud enough it could deafen a small country― The wind is tired of my clamour. My friend's father bred curses cascading like the song from an opera & he fed the ocean in his eyes to the night. Tomorrow, another prey would go against the laws of their gravity & he would become memories of a gunshot. |
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Whirlwind "Man should never show feelings, being sensitive never helped" — Kendrick Lamar [Father Time] To be a man is to learn how to be calcified like a rock when the salt level of your emotions soars― The boy who lived next door knew a lot about disappearance. His father became a moth, & he became the egg & his mother, the host plant. Boy said he was born for disappearance like the smoke. & he abandoned his mother like a whirlwind winding through the North. He said being a man is the shape of a knife that peels off the skin of his softness which cascaded him into the frontiers of pain. & the morning that breathed droplets of water did not awake with him. There is night in every single day, & to weep is to be humane. But my secondary school teacher said a man unlearns every art of fear. & I learned to trim every of my fears with the wildness of monolith anxiety. This body howls in a strange language, because I'm not allowed to fear—please, I want to be anything other than a man, a song permitted its trembling. |
Abdulkareem Abdulkareem writes from Ilorin. He is a fellow of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship. He won the University of Ilorin S.U. Writers Competition (Poetry Category) 2022. He was also on the shortlist for the Vallum Poetry Award, 2022. His works have been published and are forthcoming from POETRY, Lolwe, Nat Brut, SAND Journal, Qwerty Magazine, Rough Cut Press, West Trade Review, Orion’s Belt, The Shore, Afro Literary Magazine, Brittle Paper & elsewhere. He reads poetry for Frontier Poetry & Agbowó.
Amina Akinola
Cross-over
Lord — I begin with hope,
a customary way of rebirth.
my mother said when there is a
prayer in your mouth, you plug
it into the circuit of the wings.
So, I whittle my tongue
into a box of high current.
But — I must be too transparent for
cessation, that my body stands
like cheese. I proceed into my
bones to search for miracles.
instead, the mouth of my marrow
is yawning. See — sometimes, the
sixty percent of water decreed
into our body is not enough to
immerse the tiniest percentage of
grief. & I
Am — beginning to think that my body
is allergic to the reaction of light.
Because I had recognized its
aftermath in the body of a boy
stomped under the feet of
thunder. I recognize it in the
flickering eyes of the old beggar
down the road. I want to reform
into it too, light, a proper one.
I — mean to say,
it's not only the grave that gulps
a man, sometimes darkness
clasps us better than death. I
mean, I'm meant to spring out of
my mother's mouth, without
stuttering. a petal in the eyes of my
lover. But, here I am ransacking
for blessings In the orifices of
everything that holds
the D of dew. They say life is
always not a bed of roses. I say;
in this wilderness, there is no room
for weeds and survival lies around
the neck of a lion. But, the
breaking news is that my sojourn in
mishap is over. I, a windfall, I,
A — glee in the month of grace. Today,
I am treading the path to Egypt. let,
me not plummet into the belle of
the sea. let me not dine with sorrow.
Lord, teach this body the
philosophy of brightness.
Let me rise and
Spoon — into the intestines of adorable life.
I am crossing over with prayers in
my mouth. God, fill my cup, I am
not afraid of a run-over. I have run-
over and over. hence I have lost the
valor to embrace dismay. Let me
cross over, into every section and
subsection of favor.
let me
let me,
—let.
Lord — I begin with hope,
a customary way of rebirth.
my mother said when there is a
prayer in your mouth, you plug
it into the circuit of the wings.
So, I whittle my tongue
into a box of high current.
But — I must be too transparent for
cessation, that my body stands
like cheese. I proceed into my
bones to search for miracles.
instead, the mouth of my marrow
is yawning. See — sometimes, the
sixty percent of water decreed
into our body is not enough to
immerse the tiniest percentage of
grief. & I
Am — beginning to think that my body
is allergic to the reaction of light.
Because I had recognized its
aftermath in the body of a boy
stomped under the feet of
thunder. I recognize it in the
flickering eyes of the old beggar
down the road. I want to reform
into it too, light, a proper one.
I — mean to say,
it's not only the grave that gulps
a man, sometimes darkness
clasps us better than death. I
mean, I'm meant to spring out of
my mother's mouth, without
stuttering. a petal in the eyes of my
lover. But, here I am ransacking
for blessings In the orifices of
everything that holds
the D of dew. They say life is
always not a bed of roses. I say;
in this wilderness, there is no room
for weeds and survival lies around
the neck of a lion. But, the
breaking news is that my sojourn in
mishap is over. I, a windfall, I,
A — glee in the month of grace. Today,
I am treading the path to Egypt. let,
me not plummet into the belle of
the sea. let me not dine with sorrow.
Lord, teach this body the
philosophy of brightness.
Let me rise and
Spoon — into the intestines of adorable life.
I am crossing over with prayers in
my mouth. God, fill my cup, I am
not afraid of a run-over. I have run-
over and over. hence I have lost the
valor to embrace dismay. Let me
cross over, into every section and
subsection of favor.
let me
let me,
—let.
Amina Akinola, Frontiers VIII, is a creative writer from Lagos Nigeria. Her works are up or forthcoming in The Shallow Tales Review, Maroko Lagos Journal, Asterlit Review, Kalahari Review, Eremite Poetry, Fiction Niche, Brittle Paper, IceFloe, Ngiga Review, Spillword Magazine, Woven Poetry, Shamsrumi, Lumiere, Poetry column NND and others. She's a member of Hill Top Creative Art Foundation, Lagos, Nigeria. Her poem was shortlisted for the Arise Africa Anthology contests 2020. Tweet @Akinola51
Saurabh Anand
Seventy-Five Years
During partition, souls were raped. Infants were stomped upon.
So what if it's been seventy-five years?
Nani Maa weeps, recalling her childhood home, turning ashes in front of her.
So what if it was seventy-five years ago?
Midst happiness, Chaiji often reckons those who couldn't catch the train to Attari.
So what if it's been seventy-five years?
Earrings still terrify Bua. They remind her of the night her Baaliyan were snatched, tearing her lobes.
So what if it was seventy-five years ago?
So what if it's been seventy-five years?
During partition, souls were raped. Infants were stomped upon.
So what if it's been seventy-five years?
Nani Maa weeps, recalling her childhood home, turning ashes in front of her.
So what if it was seventy-five years ago?
Midst happiness, Chaiji often reckons those who couldn't catch the train to Attari.
So what if it's been seventy-five years?
Earrings still terrify Bua. They remind her of the night her Baaliyan were snatched, tearing her lobes.
So what if it was seventy-five years ago?
So what if it's been seventy-five years?
Born in Delhi, India, Saurabh Anand (सौरभ आनंद) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of English at the University of Georgia. His creative works have appeared in the Journal of International Students, Washington Square Review, and Untranslatable Project, run by Kent State University.
Gustavo Adolfo Aybar
|
Edged Weapons Training
1. Grips, Stances, Angles, and Entries What I remember of that summer is the trying not to try—not to think― giving myself over to muscle memory, to reflex and the need to trust the training. What I remember of that day, is the fear of the electroshock knife. Three of us recruits (nervous pee-ers) caught between bravado and our body’s biology: its response to stress or anxiety. I remember the forceful pushing and pulling. The gripping. The bending of wrists, the direct blows, and forced to face the walls. Eyes closed. Do not move until you’re attacked. 2. Scenarios and Kills I remember I took eight thrusts. The marine who served in Afghanistan, the marine who knew Krav Maga, the marine who’s seen dead bodies and was responsible for some― the marine, took about thirty. I remember later that day, the instructor half my size, who flipped me on my back. Sprawled, knife at my throat. The double-edged blade ready to slide from left to right, to slash, then sever my vocal chords and carotid arteries. I remember the phrase, last ditch effort and being told come to work prepared with two or three knives to survive this type of encounter on the street. 3. Emotional Survival I remember Erika’s words slicing their way into this night. And I remember or maybe I don’t remember, how each syllable fell and how they felt against my flesh: a blur of short stabs and cuts. No, I did not stay calm or keep my voice low or recall that at this distance, a few feet apart, I could have delivered a strike to her throat, her trachea —disrupted her breathing. Prevented her mouth from forming the cause of this new argument. Promise me, you’ll only buy one knife. Promise me you won’t become an enthusiast. The attack seemed prison-like. A shanking. The weapon plunged quick and deep into my abdomen. Then again and again. We slept in separate beds. Though the scenes flash and fade now, I woke to find it had become October and I had graduated the police academy; she woke much later to find me gone. |
A Reminder on How You Hold Your Sons, America
1. Buzzing about Baseball The year the Bay Area earthquake hits and stops game three of the World Series, thirty minutes before the first pitch is hurled over the mound, I’m twelve. I live in LA. The jolt occurs months before my parent’s divorce, and years before my move to New York where I’d watch footage of the Rodney King riot. Part of my childhood burned and turned to ruins baton strike, after baton strike. 2. No Punch Backs Today, as we cross the San Francisco Bay Bridge, my son plays the license plate game from the back seat, including punches for out-of-state tags. More fight-night, “Iron" Mike Tyson than sparring partner. His tiny torso moving rapidly from side to side punches landing heavy. Precisely. He’s eight. I hold hands with the woman I love and will soon lose. Her cackle floats out of the windows as we joke about the sea lions on Pier 39, their barks, her hisses and recall the event that led to their migration. I don’t remember where I was that Tuesday evening in 1989. Maybe with Jonathan or Rosendo wrestling on the grass, pretending to be Randy Savage “Macho Man” or Hulk Hogan; our childish misconduct and brutality choreographed. Not televised. 3. It All Happened In Seconds I don’t remember news reports of the Cypress bridge and the way the freeway buckled and twisted; its columns failing, upper deck falling. Vehicles dangling at the edge. Or how this same bridge we’re on now, crumpled, causing over forty deaths. My son scans the road. Fists clenched. Our smirks and eyes meet. I hold his gaze, my hands up guarding my face and the back of my head from his quick rabbit punch. I think of that mother whose apartment building collapses as she is about to change her baby’s diaper. The thought interrupts my high-speed pursuit and hunt for vehicles; prevents me from punching back. Her family lived in the Marina District. 4. In the Aftermath The mother remained trapped under a beam, keeping her infant son close. Surrounded by parenting and true crime books that ejected like spent bullet casings. Her eyes watching as his body, a ground- ball—burrows in her left hand, now a glove. Her right hand trapping every seam of him. Her torso a bullet-proof vest: armor and protection against the lightbulbs or glass exploding like shrapnel and other crumbling, unstable things: his breath, his heart- beat. 5. After the Devastation The baby’s lungs couldn’t clear the debris and dust it inhaled; he chokes to death an hour after the quake. The parents leave California and have another child—now a teenage boy. Rodney King drowns. The Marina district sees a quick, dramatic rebirth. A hotbed where patrons gather to shop or drink and dine on clam chowder with sourdough bread; savoring spoonfuls of the warm and flaky meal. Most local stores in South Central LA will never reopen. My son’s scream helps me escape the shattered, burning buildings, the looting, the siren wails, and thoughts of dead sons. Florida!—fast, ear- splitting, like a battle cry. A coyote call; first a bark then a deep howl piercing the dark, moonlit night. |
Gustavo Adolfo Aybar’s first poetry collection is We Seek Asylum. His chapbook, Between Line Breaks. He received fellowships from Cave Canem and Artist Inc. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in SpanglishVoces, Space on Space Magazine, !Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets, Primera Página: Poetry from the Latino Heartland, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture, Salem Press, ABC-CLIO, Asymptote, EZRA, InTranslation, and other journals and anthologies.
Kayode Ayobami
|
Remembering What Home Used To Be
before the arms-men(herdsmen) became the owner of the nation, father reared his livestock, milked his cows, making sure our morning started with fresh Milk caressing our throats, planted the food we ate, sang as he toiled day and night on his farm, ignoring the sun's mischief, smiled at the sight of his crops dancing to the rhythm of the rain, prayed for downpour whenever nimbostratus cleared up in the sky. Home used to be a place filled with grandmother's folktales, her wrinkled face telling her stories of yesteryears, her frail palms, in camwood, caressing the soft body of my little brother, her room filled with the smell of camphor & the aroma from her clay pot of soup. Grandmother was a shield from father's scolding Before she left in search of horse's horn. Before I left, home was two hundred neighbors raising a child. A man, playfully, throwing his boy into the air, giggling in return knowing his father's hands were fit enough to catch him. Home was a woman blowing her daughter's nostrils with her mouth. Home was an ankara fabric holding an infant against her mother’s back, loads dangling on her head like a pendulum. Before the wind of migration moved me away, home Was filled with boys chasing vehicles on highway roads To tie down their daily bread, their black skins colliding With the smite of the sun, beads of sweat building a lake In their brows, their body breaking into pools of sweat, Drenched wears as though they were illegal immigrants Swimming their way through the Mediterranean. |
That I, Too, Am A Beauty.
Let there be blackness; there was me Turn on the night; I came with a moon Head; my hair— galaxy of stars Earth, a stretched canvas—I, a black oil In its sleeky elegance— this is a way To tell the world that I, too, add to Its beauty. Ask the horizon who knows the secret of the fog The mountains and the greens will tell you the Wayfarer that paves way for the dew— this is a way to tell the world That I, too, know many secrets Lurking in her belly. I know myself— this is how to Announce your liberty from the Cobwebs of supremacism—this is How to keep one's ocean away from The desert conjurer. Until rhinoceros decides to cover Its teeth I'll never cease to invite the sun to sing of the beauty my melanin oozes. |
Kayode Ayobami is a Literature in English student at Usmanu Danfodio University, Sokoto. He hails from Ibadan, Oyo state, Nigeria. He is the Interviews Lead of Book O’Clock Review and the editor in chief of The Poetry CLUB UDUS. His works have been published or forthcoming from konya shamsrumi, punocracy, àtẹ́lẹwọ́, BBPC anthology, icefloepress, cult of Clio, Kalahari, fieryscribe, isele, echelon, New note, book O'clock and elsewhere. He tweets @AyobamiKayode15
Jay Brecker
|
Elegy for Leslie
1. You taught me—after the rain of a summer storm sluiced off the overhang and gutters overflowed, four of us shed our clothes running under that unnatural runoff, washed our hair: blond, auburn, amber, and brunette glistening as the sun cleared the clouds, a lake of grass dried under our feet, we heard water trickle in every direction as birds took wing to race insects taking to the air, while we sat drying off, smoking, sharing a pot of tea—outside your door, just off the corner of the porch, the red-belled flowers were fuchsias. |
2. After, your mother (you wouldn’t speak to her) arrives, calls you by another name, claims what is now hers to bury in a white, frilly gown across the country at Mission San Gabriel. We hear she burned your jeans and flannel shirts. We hear the priest didn't say the only name we knew. We complain she has you hidden in plain sight where you are lost to us among the stones. |
Jay Brecker walks and writes in southern California. His poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Rattle Poets Respond, Birdcoat Quarterly, The Shore, Permafrost, Lily Poetry Review, Ocean State Review, RHINO Poetry, and elsewhere. His manuscript, blue collar eclogue was a national finalist for the 2022 Hillary Gravendyk prize.
Saturn Browne
Unshelling
I’m never quite sure what I’m looking for,
perhaps the spaces between an oyster’s shell
and its closing: the sand all gone. Like my
mother’s mother, I hunt for mollusks in
the river outside of our old village at the heel
of a mountain. Pry open rock hard shells
of scallops to reveal the soft-bodied animals
of their beings. Sundown, we haul wooden
baskets back home, carrying lost light past
the unevenness of clay-dirt roads unwinding
itself to the night. My wrists still damp from
water clogging up the red strings for protection
my grandmother tied to me at birth; something so
binding and free all at once. Back home, we
cut up vermicelli and scallion, steaming the
flesh in steel pots. Under burning oil lights,
my grandmother’s face yellows like the moon I see
as I peel open the muscles between shells and lift
the pearls out one by one, the beads still shining
with the light of a thousand rivers and the water
I drown in when I kiss the shells goodbye.
I’m never quite sure what I’m looking for,
perhaps the spaces between an oyster’s shell
and its closing: the sand all gone. Like my
mother’s mother, I hunt for mollusks in
the river outside of our old village at the heel
of a mountain. Pry open rock hard shells
of scallops to reveal the soft-bodied animals
of their beings. Sundown, we haul wooden
baskets back home, carrying lost light past
the unevenness of clay-dirt roads unwinding
itself to the night. My wrists still damp from
water clogging up the red strings for protection
my grandmother tied to me at birth; something so
binding and free all at once. Back home, we
cut up vermicelli and scallion, steaming the
flesh in steel pots. Under burning oil lights,
my grandmother’s face yellows like the moon I see
as I peel open the muscles between shells and lift
the pearls out one by one, the beads still shining
with the light of a thousand rivers and the water
I drown in when I kiss the shells goodbye.
Saturn Browne (she/they) is thinking about horses and potential new names for them. They can be found in the window seat of an Amtrak or something similar. You can find her poems in Cosmic Double, Beaver Mag, San Antonio Review, and more. She tweets @saturnhas9rings
Gregory Byrd
Pecky Cypress
for Peter
I like to imagine that you’re up late at night
too, sitting on the sofa downstairs and reading
a book whose words are worth yours.
That the house is quiet and Jeanne is peaceful
and, for a moment, you can be yourself again,
as things were when she was drawing
and you were writing and the house seemed
a living thing.
When Jeanne scraped paint
from the living room beams and her tool
pierced deep into a void, she feared at first
termites or rot, but found then pecky cypress
and made trip after trip to the hardware store
for paint remover
while the children were at school.
Through the fumes the beams emerged
and the house began to remember itself.
Volunteer palms and live oaks reached up
and surrounded clapboard and tile floors.
Now the knocking from above
is not the pounding of little ones’ feet
and the house has to be told over and over
what it is made of.
for Peter
I like to imagine that you’re up late at night
too, sitting on the sofa downstairs and reading
a book whose words are worth yours.
That the house is quiet and Jeanne is peaceful
and, for a moment, you can be yourself again,
as things were when she was drawing
and you were writing and the house seemed
a living thing.
When Jeanne scraped paint
from the living room beams and her tool
pierced deep into a void, she feared at first
termites or rot, but found then pecky cypress
and made trip after trip to the hardware store
for paint remover
while the children were at school.
Through the fumes the beams emerged
and the house began to remember itself.
Volunteer palms and live oaks reached up
and surrounded clapboard and tile floors.
Now the knocking from above
is not the pounding of little ones’ feet
and the house has to be told over and over
what it is made of.
Gregory Byrd, winner of the 2018 Robert Phillips Chapbook prize from the Texas Review Press for The Name of the God Who Speaks, is a Fulbright Fellow, a Pushcart nominee and received an Individual Artist Grant from Creative Pinellas. His poems have appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, Puerto del Sol, Tampa Review, Cortland Review and Poeteka (Albania, in translation). See more of his work at gregorybyrd.org. Greg has taught writing, literature and humanities for more than 30 years at St. Petersburg College.
Jessica Dubey
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When I realized I was a nesting doll inside my mother,
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inside hers, I got a feel for their skin. The contours told my body where hips take shape, where clavicles gently dip like shallow birdbaths, and where my no-nonsense crown belonged—a little smaller, a little less polished than the ones before me. This was the only way to get to know my grandmother, shucked before I was born. The only person in my family I really looked like. My mother was always trying to rejoin the two pieces of herself to fit neatly inside her own mother’s mother’s mother. Sometimes I think I was just asking to be born. To be that last little nugget of a doll, whole and nestled inside all the women I came from, the last of my kind. But we rarely have the last word. I can already feel the stirring that says I’m about to break open.
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Jessica Dubey (Endicott, NY) is the author of All Those Years Underwater and For Dear Life. She is a member of the Boiler House Poets Collective which convenes annually for a poetry residency at The Studios of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. She has been nominated for a Best of the Net and her work has appeared in numerous journals including Oxidant | Engine, Barren Magazine, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry and Kissing Dynamite.
Amelia Díaz Ettinger
|
when my time comes to leave this world,
I want these things: children that chance to see a white rhino in the wild and abundant monarchs that satiate the sky forests that grow lavish and dark with trees whose waists are wider than any man’s big arms jungles that breathe calm gift giving air and where the smallest child has abundance and clean drink, waters, where rivers flow unbarred and wholesome fish find harmonic places to hatch more ruddy selves where storms gather strength without an angered earth who fights with steel the blossoming of parasites that threaten to undo her *** when my time comes to leave this world, i would let go of my arrogance and deceit and be assembled, but not in the order you might imagine, my head should not lead ahead of my heart, and it should stay closer to my hands each organ and cell catered carefully by craft, not of an engineer, or a sculptor, not even a carpenter, but by a weaver with the gifted voice of fresh water and wind so subtle the song would softly coalescence each part of me to converge the life that we must become someday a senate simply secure like a feather’s nest tight, yet soft and compassionate allowing bounce between virtue, deed, and gratitude this body would reach the golden zenith and yet my feet would never mar the ground |
Boredom
I know the general shape of boredom Its long and unarresting barbs with un-teethed thorns torn smooth by endless cups of coffee watching the dogs play on our land the greenish tint like the aura of an abandoned shed then at the corner of the trail the cougar that bolted yesterday as she sprang from shadow her tail a horizontal question that mirrored the moment my grandson saw a patch of buttercups as cloud moved to let sunlight in, and he yelled the yellow is alive, so it was with the incandescent redness of the cat’s fur those claws heightened the heat of a lazy summer after the spring of mushrooms morels—to be precise those quiet and silent walks on the clear-cut behind our forest our hands full with the gold and brown bounty a small celebration that can’t dim the loss of the great grey owl’s nest the herd of elk who sat on the coolness of the green what was then the lack of boredom in a forest. |
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When I Was Five I Knew,
When I Was Five I Didn’t Know
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Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a BIPOC poet and writer, she has two full-length poetry books published; Learning to Love a Western Sky by Airlie Press, and a bilingual poetry book, Speaking at a Time / Hablando a la Vez by Redbat Press, and poetry chapbook, Fossils in a Red Flag by Finishing Line Press. Her chapbook, Self-Dissection will be released in April by Poetry Box, and These Hollowed Bones, Sea Crow Press fall of 2023.
Arvilla Fee
Silencer
My shoulder bumps into another shoulder
in the crosswalk, but neither of us says sorry,
or maybe we do mumble something, at least
in our heads. What does it matter in the sludge
of humanity, heads bowed to the mobile gods,
bowed against bitterness, bowed with intent
towards a thousand destinations. My lashes
feel wet, but I know I’m not crying. No one
has time for salt; so, I raise my face to the sky,
and there they are—luminescent white flakes
cascading from the sky, as though the one God
who should exist has shaken a feather pillow
from heaven’s bed, and I stop, just inches
from the sidewalk, face upturned, receiving cold
baptisms, until someone clips my arm with his
backpack and mutters something about getting
killed by a taxi. I move, but only to the safety
of the curb then tuck myself back just a foot
or so from bodies pressing forward, oblivious
to miracles nesting in hair, framing footprints,
softening the sharp elbows of the city, muting
its cacophony of curses and catastrophes.
I stand motionless, as if inside a globe shaken
with glee by a toddler, stand until I cannot feel
my hands, my feet. Stand until there is nothing,
no one, until I am the sole survivor in the city’s
anti-apocalypse.
My shoulder bumps into another shoulder
in the crosswalk, but neither of us says sorry,
or maybe we do mumble something, at least
in our heads. What does it matter in the sludge
of humanity, heads bowed to the mobile gods,
bowed against bitterness, bowed with intent
towards a thousand destinations. My lashes
feel wet, but I know I’m not crying. No one
has time for salt; so, I raise my face to the sky,
and there they are—luminescent white flakes
cascading from the sky, as though the one God
who should exist has shaken a feather pillow
from heaven’s bed, and I stop, just inches
from the sidewalk, face upturned, receiving cold
baptisms, until someone clips my arm with his
backpack and mutters something about getting
killed by a taxi. I move, but only to the safety
of the curb then tuck myself back just a foot
or so from bodies pressing forward, oblivious
to miracles nesting in hair, framing footprints,
softening the sharp elbows of the city, muting
its cacophony of curses and catastrophes.
I stand motionless, as if inside a globe shaken
with glee by a toddler, stand until I cannot feel
my hands, my feet. Stand until there is nothing,
no one, until I am the sole survivor in the city’s
anti-apocalypse.
Arvilla Fee teaches English Composition for Clark State College and has been published in numerous presses including Poetry Quarterly, Contemporary Haibun Online, Drifting Sands Haibun, and others. She also won the Rebecca Lard award for best poem in the Spring 2020 issue of Poetry Quarterly and had a poetry book, The Human Side, released in December 2022.
For Arvilla, poetry has never been about gaining literary genius status but about being in the trenches with ordinary people who will say, “She gets me.”
For Arvilla, poetry has never been about gaining literary genius status but about being in the trenches with ordinary people who will say, “She gets me.”
Ariel Francisco
|
Brief Scene from a Movie I Walked Out On at the
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival A jangled station wagon with a giant bloody cross strapped to the hood takes a too-sharp turn on the cliff- side highway it’s racing down and Jesus slides right off and kites through the air for a few moments in a perfect swan dive before smashing into pieces against the sea as someone up above yells something frantically in Italian. |
Westward on I-10 a fog descends to drape the night in its dramatic gray. The highway empty except for me. Every streetlight looks like a UFO earthbound to abduct my flattened, crop-circled heart. |
Ariel Francisco is the author of Under Capitalism If Your Head Aches They Just Yank Off Your Head (Flowersong Press, 2022). A poet and translator born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents and raised in Miami, his work has been published in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The New York City Ballet, Latino Book Review, and elsewhere. He is Assistant Professor of Poetry and Hispanic Studies at Louisiana State University.
Michelle Glans
|
While Downstairs in the Library
Sitting in a leather chair under reddening wood I watch my hands, examine their dryness like old paperback novels with their spine bending then turning white, the ones we never bothered to care for because they’re from a time when we read books the same way we read lovers now, keep them for a few days taking them everywhere with us, fold their pages until they’re creased for good, and then place them in the back of the bookshelf to let them wear away. I let my hands fall on my lap and then look at my skin, cleanly shaven, covered in goosebumps. I wonder if it’s worth it. |
The carpet here is like stars or maybe a map, one that won’t take me anywhere except for the bathroom down the hall but I like to think when it gets late at night and no one is here but those who have decided that they don’t need to sleep but need to write about the crumbling patriarchy in South America or have to study the methyl shift until it doesn’t, that the floor darkens with the sky and the only thing they can see are little yellow stars like bat’s eyes so that they’ll feel like they’re coming home. And next to the side table (or maybe here it’s a treasure chest) with aged handles and brass buckles that don’t seem to open to anything, I have decided that I am getting better. |
Michelle Glans recently received her Bachelor’s Degree from Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied Biomedical Engineering and writing. Her poems have been featured in Orange Island Review, Odet Literary Journal and SWWIM Every Day. She has won the Ringling College of Art and Design “Storytellers of Tomorrow” Competition, Austin International Poetry Festival Competition, and the It’s All Write Short Story Competition. Michelle currently resides in Madison, Wisconsin with her cat Benjamin.
Leslie Hodge
Chicago Winter 1978-1979
They were gloves of grey cashmere
that I could not afford to lose –
wonderfully warm and soft
when the wind howled off the lake,
and sleeting snow profiled the face
of the fifty-foot Picasso
dominating Daley Plaza.
Plodding toward the Lake Street El,
head down, I stumble off the curb
into the frozen slush. My shoes
are soaked and cold. A taxi drifts
toward me, yellow in the gray.
Cabs were cheap then. Warm inside,
gloves on my lap, we’re driving north
on Lake Shore Drive. The cabbie looks
like my dad. “Ah, you’re going
to break some hearts,” he says, taking
the fare, then pulling away while I
stand in the swirl of snow, knee deep
and rising – cold, and gloveless again.
They were gloves of grey cashmere
that I could not afford to lose –
wonderfully warm and soft
when the wind howled off the lake,
and sleeting snow profiled the face
of the fifty-foot Picasso
dominating Daley Plaza.
Plodding toward the Lake Street El,
head down, I stumble off the curb
into the frozen slush. My shoes
are soaked and cold. A taxi drifts
toward me, yellow in the gray.
Cabs were cheap then. Warm inside,
gloves on my lap, we’re driving north
on Lake Shore Drive. The cabbie looks
like my dad. “Ah, you’re going
to break some hearts,” he says, taking
the fare, then pulling away while I
stand in the swirl of snow, knee deep
and rising – cold, and gloveless again.
Leslie Hodge lives in San Diego. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications including Sisyphus, Spank the Carp, The Main Street Rag, The Orchards, and The Journal of Undiscovered Poets. Leslie writes poems to try to make sense of her life in a way that resonates with others.
Wasabi Kanastoga
Monday Morning Rain
When I feel the blues
I look for you, Thelonious Monk
To pick me up
With a syncopated tune
To ride your notes
Meter and key
To surf your 88’s
With a horizontal glide
Imagining sweat beads
Drip dropping upon your hands
Your fez about to tumble over
That scraggly beard needing a trim
The shine upon your forehead
And your funeral black threads.
When I feel the blues, Thelonious
Your Cossack fur hat
Appears in black and white
And the cigarette smoke
Curls, carrying notes
Upon the balustrades of my mind,
You, a swirling dervish,
A ritualistic Sufi endlessly spinning
Upon a bebop rhythm
Only you can hear
Transfixed,
Transcendent,
Translucent,
When I feel the blues
I come to you.
When I feel the blues
I look for you, Thelonious Monk
To pick me up
With a syncopated tune
To ride your notes
Meter and key
To surf your 88’s
With a horizontal glide
Imagining sweat beads
Drip dropping upon your hands
Your fez about to tumble over
That scraggly beard needing a trim
The shine upon your forehead
And your funeral black threads.
When I feel the blues, Thelonious
Your Cossack fur hat
Appears in black and white
And the cigarette smoke
Curls, carrying notes
Upon the balustrades of my mind,
You, a swirling dervish,
A ritualistic Sufi endlessly spinning
Upon a bebop rhythm
Only you can hear
Transfixed,
Transcendent,
Translucent,
When I feel the blues
I come to you.
Wasabi Kanastoga is a Cuban poet living in Los Angeles.
His work has appeared in various anthologies and reviews.
His latest chapbook is titled Don’t Break My Heart, Los Angeles.
He works with abuse survivors at a non-profit.
His work has appeared in various anthologies and reviews.
His latest chapbook is titled Don’t Break My Heart, Los Angeles.
He works with abuse survivors at a non-profit.
Emily Anna King
Hummingbird ; Call
One image, three words: throats of hummingbirds
you ask me why i think of them when there are no daffodils in small white roots
upturned lips parted a question why do people wrap themselves in pain
to silence themselves from– joy writes itself into classic songs on the radio
there is static and your hand brushes mine i notice straw wrappers and glass
in the place where a deer laid down to die
seven winters ago the roads froze under ruthless ice but today they are sunny
and you tell me about a house you saw on the market and where the nearest rest stop
may be maybe this is a version of you loving me before the nightfall
when hummingbirds sleep flowers curl into themselves to sweeten the loneliness
that comes with loss of light or the peace how nectar mixes with honey in tea
you hand me a mug and it’s warm when i take it and you’re humming
a song i don’t remember beyond the fact that it never fails in making warmth kindle itself
behind the chest as the ache remains upturned
One image, three words: throats of hummingbirds
you ask me why i think of them when there are no daffodils in small white roots
upturned lips parted a question why do people wrap themselves in pain
to silence themselves from– joy writes itself into classic songs on the radio
there is static and your hand brushes mine i notice straw wrappers and glass
in the place where a deer laid down to die
seven winters ago the roads froze under ruthless ice but today they are sunny
and you tell me about a house you saw on the market and where the nearest rest stop
may be maybe this is a version of you loving me before the nightfall
when hummingbirds sleep flowers curl into themselves to sweeten the loneliness
that comes with loss of light or the peace how nectar mixes with honey in tea
you hand me a mug and it’s warm when i take it and you’re humming
a song i don’t remember beyond the fact that it never fails in making warmth kindle itself
behind the chest as the ache remains upturned
Emily Anna King (锡萍芳) is a Wellesley College graduate pursuing her MA in Creative Writing at UCC in Ireland.
Her most recent publications are in Tír na nÓg, Massachusetts Best Emerging Poets 2019 (Z Publishing), Pamplemousse, Lily Poetry Review, Paragon Press, and Otherwise Engaged Journal.
Her most recent publications are in Tír na nÓg, Massachusetts Best Emerging Poets 2019 (Z Publishing), Pamplemousse, Lily Poetry Review, Paragon Press, and Otherwise Engaged Journal.
Daniel Edward Moore
|
Glory Ville
Naked soldiers sentimental steam hissing through the cracks of black and white photos warmed the hearts of weary men, tired of a rifle’s cold steel mouth ending like always with one body down, while another sat weeping, holding himself, begging desire to bury Death’s name in a field so black, even the sky could not see the trees writing our names in smoke. Imagine if we asked our hands to build something holy then watched it burn, watched how muscle ignites the bed by rubbing chaos with care. |
Loch Ness
Delicate is the last thing she’d call me because manhood is a country I visit daily with her at the border wearing balsamic black, inspecting my obsessions top to bottom, between a question's last gulp of air and the answer she hopes lives in my pants like a masculine myth of power. If I’m the monster no one has seen, she’s the woman sitting on the beach waiting for the water to stir. |
Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His work is in Plainsongs, Southern Humanities Review, West Trade Review, and forthcoming in Ocotillo Review, Tar River Poetry Journal, I-70 Review and Texas Review Press. His book, Waxing the Dents, is from Brick Road Poetry Press.
Caridad Moro-Gronlier
|
Advice to a Congressional Body During a Siege After the Sixth Active Shooter Drill of the School Year
Don’t hide in plain sight. Open air and light make you an easy target. Hide under your desk. Hide under your backpack. Hide under your best friend. Seek out dark crevices. Retreat to hard corners. Even a first grader knows that. |
Snowbird For Zoe All winter the grass has held fast to green so lush it is easy to forget how hard the ground can be without an expanse of blades to cushion the fall. It is warm, here. What a relief to shrug off the wool coat, untie the want for sunlight, move in a cotton dress cut from ocean blue cloth and water the birds of paradise, beaks parted in a mangrove of yard, flock that thrives in soil that knows nothing of flowers nursed for months beneath the snow― daffodils and paper whites, bulbs bred to endure the burrow beneath the earth, roots shortened by season, buds clenched in fists of unfurled petals, their strength gathered in darkness, for the spring from the shroud. |
|
Memory As Chrysalis, As Butterfly
After Portfolio, a painting series by Sofia Fotiadou Your memory is still more skin than armor not quite shell or breastplate, still part kiss, part sapphire, part Paris, metamorphosis takes time. What’s meant to fly will break through a mille-feuille of years no matter how tight the weave on the skein of its silken cocoon. The butterfly will emerge remade tissue and limb distilled down to cells that exist only to rebuild themselves into wings. |
Please Don't Touch the Art
Hold this salvage of stone in your hands. Applique your knees with pebbles. Learn the heft of Paris in pieces, shrine to the resurrection of ruin. Disrupt the Jenga of lead and canvas. Coax the filmstrip out from the pyre and pull it free from the crevice, pull on a boa of still frames and hold it up to the light. Sit beside the woman shelled in plaster, unwrap her, reveal the soft center and uncrook her neck after years of looking down at knuckles and knees. Walk along a welcome mat of coal, strike a match against the kind of stove your Abuela warned you about. Feed the line of men with remnants of the soil that broke them. Straighten the clutched hats, brims twisted by the plea in their fingers, skin so hard now, no softness left after begging for less than what it cost to memorialize them in bronze, marble, plaster of Paris. ____________________________________________ After Steigend steigend sinke nieder (rising, rising, falling down), 2009-2012, Geheimnis der Farne (The Secret of the Fern), 2007 and Die Erdzeitalter,2014 by Anselm Keifer and Depression Bread Line,1991 and Subway by George Segal as seen at The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, Miami, FL. |
Portrait at Thirty-Six
Thirty-six is an uncalibrated scale
that tries to balance the weight
of elation against a crib mobile
playing Clair de Lune on repeat.
Thirty-six is a dyke bar
in another city where you remain
unknown and hold hands with a woman
you just met but feels like home.
Thirty-six is a bottle
of knock-your-socks-off
she bought at auction, the command―
come hungry, stay late.
Thirty-six is a long string
held taut on either end, two women
who draw in the slack
toward one another.
Thirty-six is a corkscrew, a compass,
a patch of blue, a mangrove, a fortune
teller, a Dragon Mouth orchid
that opens in a warm breeze.
Thirty-six is an uneven sidewalk,
a stumble, a buckle, a thump
when you land on the ground,
scrape so fresh it doesn’t hurt yet.
Thirty-six is a runaway truck,
spewed gravel, adrenaline rush,
hand clutch, relief when you idle
at the bottom of the mountain.
__________________________
First published in Of Poets and Poetry: A Publication of the Florida State Poets Association.
July-August 2002, Vol. 49.4.
Thirty-six is an uncalibrated scale
that tries to balance the weight
of elation against a crib mobile
playing Clair de Lune on repeat.
Thirty-six is a dyke bar
in another city where you remain
unknown and hold hands with a woman
you just met but feels like home.
Thirty-six is a bottle
of knock-your-socks-off
she bought at auction, the command―
come hungry, stay late.
Thirty-six is a long string
held taut on either end, two women
who draw in the slack
toward one another.
Thirty-six is a corkscrew, a compass,
a patch of blue, a mangrove, a fortune
teller, a Dragon Mouth orchid
that opens in a warm breeze.
Thirty-six is an uneven sidewalk,
a stumble, a buckle, a thump
when you land on the ground,
scrape so fresh it doesn’t hurt yet.
Thirty-six is a runaway truck,
spewed gravel, adrenaline rush,
hand clutch, relief when you idle
at the bottom of the mountain.
__________________________
First published in Of Poets and Poetry: A Publication of the Florida State Poets Association.
July-August 2002, Vol. 49.4.
Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the author of Tortillera: Poems, winner of the TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Prize. She is a community driven South Florida poet whose literary engagement includes writing workshops, editorships, and public readings in partnership with local stakeholders throughout South Florida. She resides in Miami, Florida with her family.
Frank Paino
Thích Quảng Đức
(11 June 1963)
First, a baptism
of gasoline
that translated saffron
to a deeper gold,
then, a mirage’s
shivered vapor,
the Austin Westminster’s
cool blue hood
forever frozen agape
as if in mute witness
to the impassive man
who struck
a match as casually
as an offered light,
as if to steal Death’s thunder,
as if to say,
No matter how close you hold me,
I will hold you closer still.
(11 June 1963)
First, a baptism
of gasoline
that translated saffron
to a deeper gold,
then, a mirage’s
shivered vapor,
the Austin Westminster’s
cool blue hood
forever frozen agape
as if in mute witness
to the impassive man
who struck
a match as casually
as an offered light,
as if to steal Death’s thunder,
as if to say,
No matter how close you hold me,
I will hold you closer still.
Frank Paino’s poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies. His third book, Obscura, was published by Orison Books in 2020. Among other awards, he has received a Pushcart Prize, The Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature, and an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. He lives in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. (frankpaino.net)
Martheaus Perkins
|
The Only Time I Wanted to Call You Dad
You said “son” with twang like an untuned fiddle, sharp cuts to a boy’s ears. I told you Spider-Man was my favorite superhero. Cause he ain't got no daddy? Remind me of my response; I only remember being whipped by chill snaps in the truck bed of your rust-lined Ford, your spruce needle, gruff face looked nothing like mine. Our silence was more honest than words we pretended to mean. I was shivering because Momma forgot my padded coat. Ten years later, I learn why she was angry that morning. You draped your faded denim jacket over me like a bearskin rug, jagged and bunched on my back. Was I your son there? Dad’s jacket wrapping me lukewarm in all you were willing to give. Momma lost that jacket in the trash on my behalf― she knew the only reason I was there: you said, if I have to pay for him, I want to get a look at him. after they stuck you with child support. But I didn’t know that in your truck bed filled with dead leaves cracking under my Skechers. I still wanted to believe in your secret identity, that something genuine was hiding under your sunglasses and cap. |
Amazing Grace
As a boy, I thought “Amazing Grace” was the National Anthem for Black people. I had only ever heard it sung by black women—lullabying us with high octaves and belted whispers. When Miss Marleen, in her daisy dress, pulled out Mary Hoffman’s book, I thought she was only reading to me—to the black boys and black girls. Grace looked just like momma. Grace was young. Grace was pigtails and gap-toothed smiles. For years, I sing the lyric as Amazing Grace, how sweet the sun. because I knew the sun gave momma her darkskin and I knew Black meant sweet. That saved a wench like me. wench became black mother. I didn’t know what it meant, or even that it wasn’t the right word. Its meaning became stubborn dreamer. I once was lost but now I’m free. Grace must be the kindergarten mat, my square with the daisy-bright star, and Miss Marleen correcting my lyrics with damp eyes. |
Martheaus Perkins is an undergraduate English major at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. He is an African-American writer and his heroes include Maya Angelou, Billy Collins, and Langston Hughes.
Beth Brown Preston
|
At the Library: Montreal, Quebec circa 1950
Portrait of a Black man as scholar among ancient volumes: Abandoned by his native country for Canada, followed the North Star to the destination of his mind’s bright freedom. His desire to write of the slaying of monsters: “Then Beowulf spied, hanging on the wall, a mighty sword, hammered by giants, strong and blessed with a powerful magic, the finest of all weapons. But so massive no ordinary man could heft its carved and decorated length. He drew the sword from its scabbard, broke the chain at its hilt. Then savage with anger and desperate lifted the sword high over his head and struck Grendel dead with all the strength he had left...”. And the Black man wandered that library’s dusty corridors in a sacred building nestled on Montreal’s steepest hills gathering the endurance of mind to conquer his task: to render the poem, so early it was sung only to kings, a ballad, written by no one knows, yet passed on, in tradition, glorifying the fierce and brave deeds of a warrior. And the Black man himself became a warrior, wielding the sword of language, fighting the good fight, who basked in the light of a certain fame, never worried about the consequences of his bravery, save his own honor, of greater value than any poem. The Black man rendered dreams a world without monsters. |
The Crystal Room: Christmas circa 1963
Christmas 1963: a photographic postcard in black and white taken on the last Saturday in the month of December. Momma dressed us up in our bright red chinchilla snow suits. And Daddy snapped a picture of us standing close, gloved and booted, two sisters holding hands at the bottom of our driveway. We boarded the Pennsy at the Cheyney stop and rode into town to Philadelphia’s gothic Thirtieth Street Station. Hailed a shining yellow cab uptown to Thirteenth and Juniper and the magnificent edifice that was the John Wanamaker department store. Momma’s favorite purchases were Estee Lauder perfume and genuine silk Schiaparelli stockings. For my little sister Alice and me she would choose pale blue Evan Picone sweaters with matching tartan plaid pleated skirts, and black patent leather pumps we would polish with Vaseline every Sunday morning before wearing them to church. We dined on the ninth floor ― the Crystal Room ― where mountains of fancy baked goods filled transparent glass cases, and an all-white staff of waiters and waitresses served us from the menu without question or protest any meal we ordered. We sat always at the center table beneath the huge prism chandelier rainbow arcs reflecting in our water glasses. We sat together at the center table tall and proud ― the first colored to dine in that luxurious room. But secretly still I felt out of place. ‘Cause we were black and everyone else was white as if there had occurred some angry and purposeful omission of our kind. |
Beth Brown Preston is a poet and novelist with two collections of poetry from the Broadside Lotus Press and two chapbooks of poetry. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Writing Program at Goddard College. She is at work on a debut novel ―CIRCE'S DAUGHTERS ― and on two new poetry collections ― OXYGEN I and OXYGEN II. Her work has been previously published in the pages of Adanna, African American Review, The Black Scholar, Callaloo, Obsidian, Passager Journal, Pennsylvania Review, Rain Taxi, Sinister Wisdom.
Lisa Rhoades
The grasses of the field
Always some part of me standing at the shoulder,
always
some part of me caught
longing
beside ditch flowers as they bob and nod
in the breeze kicked up by passing cars.
Chicory, day lilies and queen Anne’s lace―
the grasses of the field
always a marvel, left to their business,
just out of reach of
the mower’s blade.
Always this restless loss
as loosestrife and ragweed give way
to the yarrow’s yellow buttons
unkept, unkempt beside a sloping field,
a graveled drive,
a few head of cattle, a swayback mare
some part of me
forever
a chigger bitten child
naming the barn cat’s mewling litter
unable to stay or leave.
Always some part of me standing at the shoulder,
always
some part of me caught
longing
beside ditch flowers as they bob and nod
in the breeze kicked up by passing cars.
Chicory, day lilies and queen Anne’s lace―
the grasses of the field
always a marvel, left to their business,
just out of reach of
the mower’s blade.
Always this restless loss
as loosestrife and ragweed give way
to the yarrow’s yellow buttons
unkept, unkempt beside a sloping field,
a graveled drive,
a few head of cattle, a swayback mare
some part of me
forever
a chigger bitten child
naming the barn cat’s mewling litter
unable to stay or leave.
Lisa Rhoades is the author of two full length collections of poetry, The Long Grass, (Saint Julian Press, 2020) and Strange Gravity, (selected by Elaine Terranova for the Bright Hill Press Poetry Award Series, 2004). Currently a pediatric nurse in Manhattan, she lives on Staten Island with her spouse. Individual poems have appeared in various publications including Barrow Street, Thin Air, American Journal of Poetry, Saranac Review, and Prime Number and are forthcoming in Calyx and The Southern Review.
Shane Schick
|
Volition
We’re all qualified to die but not everyone is eligible to have help. Only once your quality of life retains the merest quality of a life: Medicated more often than you’re bathed, sleeping in a bed where love was never made. A name written on the sides of your slippers, but not necessarily one you always recognize. Where pain pays visits that become so frequent it doesn’t even bother to sign the guestbook. If you love life but it clearly wants to leave, aren’t you supposed to set it free? You won’t have written that on the request form, but in signing it your hand must have invigorated itself enough to make clear the one decision that would take every other decision away. |
NPC
Some of their video games include “non-player characters.” Usually friendly, their actions are not directed by a teen pressing buttons or wielding a controller. Instead, they often live solely to assist the gamer. Storing items, for instance. Regenerating battle-weary players with elements that give them health. Shopkeepers. Companions. Bystanders. Their interactions help advance the plot. My son explained all this to me one day, following as I carried up his laundry, then added carrot sticks and green pepper slices to his lunch. Later I just stared out the window as he biked to school, ready for when he might need me next. |
Shane Schick has poems appearing or forthcoming in Juniper, Loch Raven Review, Karma Comes Before and other literary journals. He is the founder of a publication about customer experience design called 360 Magazine. He lives in Whitby, Ont. More: ShaneSchick.com/poetry. Twitter: @sh aneschick
Sarah Sorensen
|
Cold Night in a Hot Void Surrounded By Plumes
Eight slick geese in the rain are descending. A late November baseball diamond sits empty. A bored Midwestern suburb on a Sunday evening. Their bodies are like scraps of nature strewn across dirt, a cluster of wild, live things. Where is some hellish god to change me over, to blend my skin down to the feathers? They, a crowd of warm companions, built for every element. They are not, have never been, the thousand frauds this life demands. My earth, hotter, stranger, and so furious at what we’ve wrought. She’ll give you a tantrum of storms. Let me be the innocent, feral thing I was born to be, before my people came to tame me back, prune me into a microwavable world. Plastic clothes on shameful skin. Oh to be a goose, rearing back, honking: body like a single lung catching the air. |
Sarah Sorensen has been published over fifty times in small press publications. Her most recent work can be found in Aurora and The Del Sol Review. She is currently writing a novel. Sarah resides in the metro Detroit area.
Garrett Stack
|
Radio
She still calls in her song requests to X103 THE BEAR because of course she wants to hear her song but there’s a little something else there too when she gets off the second shift and puts the truck into third she feels the low bone rumble of snow tires she hopes will carry her through |
one more season and its not me she pictures riding shotgun but her or him or you and all the other headlights passing in the black who she requests for so that no one rides alone tonight and when the DJ whispers her name and spins her track out into the icy night the song’s first bars sound just like prayer. |
Garrett Stack's first book is Yeoman's Work (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems were most recently published in Tar River, Atlanta Review, and Third Wednesday. He edits the Lakeshore Review and teaches at Ferris State University in West Michigan.
Sarah White
Saint Apollonia and the Oak
|
In a Massachusetts town—Hadley, Hatfield, Holyoke or Leeds —there must be a figure of Saint Apollonia, wearing a stately gown, displaying near her heart the essential emblem. As Saint Agatha, in portraits, carries her severed breasts on a platter, as Saint Lucy’s eyeballs gleam from a silver tray—Apollonia bears an outsized pair of forceps and a tooth, root and all. You can look her up—she is the patron saint of dentists like Doctor Eric Chu of South Hadley, Massachusetts, my home, and patron to his patients. Neither he nor I is Catholic but both are bound to revere a Christian maiden who retained her Faith even while pagan Romans sought to accomplish her conversion by breaking her teeth out. Accordingly, Saint Apollonia, blessed be she, seems to have sent help to me and to the well-named Doctor Chu—perhaps from Hadley, Hatfield, Holyoke or Leeds, perhaps from across the sea.
Doctor Chu’s assistant suspended a small lens near my left ear and showed the doctor what he then showed me: signs of infection––a darkening—in the root of Tooth 13, premolar on the upper left. I quailed when he said it had to go. Tooth Thirteen, though I had never given it a thought, was one I was attached to. I wondered how much blood, pus, pain, it might contain. I won’t describe the horrors I imagined but skip straight to the dazzling result: No suffering! None. The whole procedure never made me bleed, swell, or hurt. I only heard a few inward squeaks and groans as the forceps did their work (a tool so clean, so slight, compared with Apollonia’s!) Bless the Driver who conveyed me to the well-appointed office; bless the receptionist who worked my walker through the double doors. Bless Beata Apollonia who must have relished the New England autumn day. She seemed to know that I, though Protestant (lapsed Presbyterian, no longer even Christian, at least not one who goes to church) welcomed the intervention of a maiden martyr. Those forceps! So handily they yanked away a piece of me! Where is that fragment now? In some canister of sterile waste? in a nearby lab, washed of all schmutz? How many thousand bits of me remain? True, a thorough process would require a lot more Novocaine, a lot of squeaks and groans o’erheard, but surely, working quickly, you, Doctor Chu DMD, can perform an overall dismantling. It won’t be too much for you. I’ll sign a document that promises not to sue. My sons will bring the urn. One nearby town commemorates a certain Holy Oak. I have chosen that tree to mark an ideal burial place. By now, it will have come into a lovely valley view! |
Sarah White's most recent book is The Poem Has Reasons: a story of far love, published by Dos Madres, a lyric memoir of her life as a daughter, traveler, poet and translator (from French and Old Occitan). Other books, including Wars Don't Happen Anymore, were published by Deerfield Editions. Retired long ago from Franklin and Marshall College, she lives in a retirement community in Western Massachusetts.
Cynthia Robinson Young
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What's There/What's Not There
“Why do you keep painting and hunting Black hurt?” -Tiana Clark It’s like an itching I can’t reach Right in the middle of my soul. Every poem attempts to reach it One way or another. I tried To write a poem about water and ended up At Chicken Bone Beach in Atlantic City in the 1950’s, With chicken bones buried in the sand Until the chicken bones found their way to my bones, And the bones of my ancestors, washed up From the sea of graves, over a hundred years old, Now washed up and waiting for my children With their sand shovels, to unearth them, mistaking them For the bone white seashells, like the ones we hold up to our ears We can hear the ancestral voices over the waves swooshing and crashing Against our eardrums, the same Atlantic Ocean water they crossed over In the not so long ago. A Tsunami might wash bones up too, might uncover Buried sins and old hurts. Bones, like poems, are capable Of anything. |
A Renaming
Everything should die at night. Morning dew should be renamed the amniotic dew of each day’s resurrection, a rebirth. Everything should rest in sleep and be renamed Repentance, a laying down of each day’s failings, and morning, another chance to perfect the impossible. Everything should live at The Awakening. Tears should be renamed a baptism― from a Presbyterian sprinkling of renewal, to a full-blown Pentecostal moaning. It should be a washing, a bathing in Living Water― not in a crowded, body temperatured ocean, but in that narrow, cool, arctic steam. |
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The Name He Wore
“Some persons call me Harry and others call me Henry But neither is my correct name.” -From Tracy K. Smith’s poem, “I Will Tell You the Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It.” 1. How then, are we supposed to find you? We lost our family in so many ways. Before we lost our language, it was spoken in whispers in our prison on the Ocean, on the auction slave blocks in the unfamiliar land. They recited it like a mantra under their breath in the southern Georgia cotton field, on the North Carolina tobacco plantation, and sang their names to their babies born into this captivity- Egururu Until some forgot. Then they told us the names given us, And we held onto the sound of them because we could not read. No matter. Our names were not even written down on the Census- just the number of us, counted like the pigs rooting in the yard, like their dogs being groomed to hunt us down in the swamp, if need be. Yet, we remembered our names- some written in the Holy Bible, some spoken as a litany of who begat whom. But when the census man finally asked our names, still he got it wrong. Roosevelt sounds like Rosabel, but our grandfather was a man. Naomi is not Neoma for God did not change our matriarch’s name like He changed Sarai to Sarah. And it wasn’t easy to teach us to remember our names, when all we heard was Boy when they called our uncles, and Gal when they talked to our mothers and grandmothers, and Nigra when they talked to us. |
2. How are we supposed to find you? My grandfather had a name but as a sign of respect, he could find nowhere else, he told his children to call him Father, until he permitted us to change it, to shorten it, to Pa. Now we can only match him up with our Ancestor, Emmaline, and hope our research won’t rename him, won’t link him with a woman, and a name that was never his. We hope it will be the name his mother chose, and not his master, naming him the way we name our pets, a way just to get their attention, to “Come!” when we say “Come!”- to do what we command. 3. We hope we will one day find The name God calls you by- layered under all that sordid history, the person you were created to be, The name you really wore. |
Cynthia Robinson Young is a native of Newark, New Jersey, but now lives and writes in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her work has appeared in journals and magazines including The Amistad, Poetry South, Grist, Sixfold, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Writer's Chronicle, and the anthology, Dreams For a Broken World (Essential Dreams Press). For her chapbook, Migration (Finishing Line Press, 2018) she was named Finalist in the 2019 Georgia Author of the Year award in her category.