Dear Sylvia: The Black Album / Joanna Grant
This is the one I didn’t
Want to write, the one I
Put off, the song I never
Wanted to sing, this bitter
Song from a barren throat.
That’s what you’d call me,
And me barren by choice,
Not even some tried-but-failed
Tragedy you could pretend to pity,
And yet—here I am. Still here.
This empty museum’s got herself
Up and out and off to work every
Goddamn day these last thirty-odd years
Teaching other women’s let-down kids
How to reorder their pain, the griefs
Piled on them by the many forgers
Of their hurts on the anvils of memory.
Sylvia, in my not-so-empty museum—
So, so many names scratched on my walls.
Look—over there, that’s me. And there—
The little boy whose mama back in
Valdosta used to go after him with a knife
When she’d hit the booze and see a little
Too much of his absent daddy in her baby’s
Eyes. And there—the girl left all alone from
The age of nine so her good-time mom could
Play at being someone else’s perfect wife.
And there—oh, Sylvia, there, the marquee
Stars of this sad, sad little show—the babies you
Almost gave to the gas when you, the
Oh-so-fertile triple threat, chucked it all
And dove headfirst into the coal gas stove,
That last meal of bread and milk you left
For them set too close by the open window letting
In the snow, the sleet, just outside their reach.
The Snow Queen’s soliloquy / Judit Hollos
On frosty December mornings, a sleepy staff fears my arrival
as I sweep across the corridors – a vengeful, slender fairy of the night,
dressed in a tight jacket with sequins reminiscent of snowflakes,
armoured with white skinny jeans and a pair of lacquered boots.
Oh, that constant whining about overtime right before the holidays,
the neverending longing for sitting by the fireplace at home!
Those nerve-wrecking I-have-never-even-received-a-trainings
those painstaking Where is my Christmas bonuses!
As I am swooshing by between my beloved mortals’ desks
with a cup of early morning matcha latte swinging on my spiked nails,
the smiles on those elf hat-covered heads are quickly fading away,
and each video clip vanishes into the mist of virtual space.
I lock the door behind me in a secluded corner
of the jingling crystal palace’s gigantic tower
and immerse myself in the mirror of my laptop screen
where a whirl of social media notifications flare up.
As a hopeless narcissist and a budding online influencer
I monetize the loveliest years of my colleagues and family,
my fifteen minutes of fame may have been renewed too many times
but I’m here to stay, at least for a couple of more centuries.
FACE / Zach Hauptman
at the beginning of
Crossing Delancey
a young modern Jewish woman
patiently plucks the chin hairs
of her beloved grandmother
stop, you’re killing me
pluck
stop, you’re killing me
you look
beautiful
my mother waxed her face
moon-like
until the month she died
still asking for
me to wash her hair
she never asked for
my hands on tweezers
never taught me how to melt
wax at the proper temperature
she didn’t want to be killed that way
she didnt want me to kill her
in college i cut my chin hairs
the odd little curls
surprised and delighted me
tiny intrusions
proof of something that
without words
grew in my body
at home i learned to
apologetically take a razor
to the gentle fuzz
whispering a sincere apology
a prayer for the spirit that
escaped abraded pores
the only time i fought with my mother
about my strange form of manhood was that
to be beautiful with a beard
could only unwoman me
weep / Brice Maiurro
i.
my throat cannot swallow this much war all the time
my arms cannot lift the weight of today let alone tomorrow
my hands cannot hold onto the thin line of hope
my lungs cannot breathe in a lack of oxygen
my eyes cannot look everyone in their eyes today
my stomach cannot metabolize this mass of news
my feet cannot run fast enough away from a gun or fast enough towards the field
my head cannot answer all of these violent questions
my body cannot hold this great wave over america
crashing & crashing again
so i weep & i weep
ii.
my head can hold the words of these poems
my feet can walk with the earth
my stomach can handle a righteous hunger
my eyes can see a bird so far away
my lungs can hold a note to the other side of this moment
my hands can carve a wand from a broken branch
my arms can open to the wind
my throat can demand that i speak what’s in it
my body can be a citizen of its own volition
our bodies can be a nation of dissent
where we howl back to the wolves that raised us
where we weep together an ocean to hold our dream
Companion / Kimberly O’Connor
In a presentation a student incorporates
the linguistic history of bread—
companion, pan, breaking bread,
together-ness. Weeks later eating donuts
with my friend —we rip them into nuggets
and stuff our mouths, dotting our cheeks
with sugar—I don’t tell her that
next week I am meeting for
the first time in 40 years
my biological father, who is passing through.
We have reconnected.
We have planned to walk along
a creek in my town which as
a matter of fact though it seems
too cute to be true was the same
town I lived in the last time
I lived with him, and my mother,
together, till she left him, taking
me with her, and threatening,
if he followed us… details
are soggy so many years later…
I’ve never used the word
abandoned, which before it meant
that you left something behind
meant that you controlled
or owned something. I’ve used
words like probably for the best.
I’ve made it clear that I am not
interested in the past. Maybe
they once bought a baguette from
a red-and-white-striped-awning-fringed bakery
with teacakes gleaming like ornate jewels
in the storefront windows, the scent
of yeast and toast wafting from the door
propped open to the warm day. Maybe
they smeared it with salted butter and ate.
I am too tired of this story to share it
with my friend. I don’t know what
will come of it. I imagine our walk
will be sunny, the creek singing below us.
Perhaps there will be sandwiches.
Alka-Seltzer + Seagulls = / Michael Schad
My brother told me
that if you fed Alka-Seltzer
to Seagulla they will explode.
I did not believe this.
I asked Tyler Spyvack,
he said, it was not true.
Actually, if you feed Alka-Seltzer
to Seagulls their eyes start to bleed
and they fall to the earth dead.
I believed this.
I went to the bathroom to find
Alka-Seltzer, I found it beside the NyQuil,
I slide it into my pocket and went to school
at lunch I looked for the Seagulls in the yard, none.
Later, I tried to get my mom to take me to Bayport
Beach, no. I asked my brother to go with me to Tony’s
pizza because I knew we’d pass a dumpster with Seagulls,
We had meatloaf for dinner instead.
I put my pajamas on and my mother took
my clothes to the wash coming upstairs to ask me why,
I had Alka-Seltzer in my pockets, it was not a good ending.
Years passed.
I waited for the ferry in Sayville to take me to Sailors Haven,
and while I waited I watched the Seagulls just sit atop the wind
then dive down for shells, fish, garabage, whatever.
The angle of their wings, and their defiance made me glad
I never fed them Alka-Seltzer just so I could see their blood.
Where Does the Boy Go? / Kashiana Singh
That year, you were breaking from boy into man—
the same year your beard raced to admire its own curls,
each arm cradling a labrador: black, celestial,
its eyes luminous—yet not enough to eclipse
the light bursting from your eighteen strapping years.
It’s easier to picture you as a child—
less body, less voice, fewer guffaws
less arm, less presence.
As the dogs chased their tails,
you gnawed your nails—half here, half elsewhere,
already fluent in indifference,
as if even then, you knew:
detachment is the final triumph.
Summertime Blues / Elizabeth Wolf
Brody felt the trees looming
over the narrow rutted roads,
new-growth spindly branches
like skinny fingers reaching for
his jean jacket, freshly-shaved
throat; sprawling bushes bearing
more thorns than sweet berries.
Poison ivy lurked everywhere.
But he showed up
faithfully
bearing folders of assignments
each and every week.
