Dead Boys I Have Known: Deadname / Joanna Grant
Hoopoe, we made a name
For you out of the notes
Of your melody
We made you a story
Of blood, of death
Yoked you to it without
Your knowledge or consent
Called you Tereus, after
That hateful human rapist
All the torturous things
We humans must do
To wring beauty from
Terror with our neverending
Words words words
And all you have to do,
Little bird, is sing
May your soft, throbbing notes
Tell us over and over again
Your very own name
One we mere people
Can never hope
To know
Or reclaim
Rose pruning / Judit Hollos
Halted mid-cascade,
a silenced scream, an uncurrented dream,
only a handful of hikers notice
the trickling water in its ice shell.
The girl’s palm feels warm in the older woman’s hand
as they are struggling up the path that leads them
to their private promiseland,
a mountain viewpoint over the meandering river,
curled up in fetal position, unknown for most tourists
who roam the popular trails during empty weekends.
Ascending towards the blistering heavens,
the little girl tries to avoid the touch of the stinging leaves
of nettle bushes raging against the sunless sky,
but there is no reliable method of wading though the thicket
that would prevent her from burning her fragile fingers.
Ever since she managed to march home from the camps,
ever since she reunited with her now-deceased husband,
she has only found joy in looking after her friends’ children.
When she is not trudging up the forest trails,
she spends eons of time in her ever-expanding garden,
cutting off the thorns of wild roses of all shapes and colours
with relentless motion, as if she was trying to prune an inner wilderness
that never ceases to grow new buds,
just a step away from reaching perfection,
to shut out the metallic smell, the guards’ barking commands
to make sure no harmful memories take root in her soul.
There should be a granddaughter within her garden’s gates
who devours too much dessert during the summer break.
Or at least a girl who dwells on the outskirts of the city,
or one who is so deeply entangled in an affair with a married man
that she never has time to come to visit.
Variations of wasted fates appear, one by one,
growing from a womb they removed from her ages ago
in one of the concentration camps scattered
across Europe towards the end of a world war.
And then she finally, her inner thorns are dissolving
and she begins to feel as if her wounds were slowly closing.
Legend has that Ilona
was named after a breathtaking beauty
who, having lost the true love of her life,
restlessly wandered around the valley
and nurtured the murmuring waterfall
with her very own tears.
In another version,
she appeared in the form of a fairy,
helping lost villagers, injured hikers
before she turned into a winter nymph,
with only rays of sunlight trapped
between the trenches of her frozen skirt.
ode to the ode / Brice Maiurro
Ode-to-the-Ode
Unfinished Yearbook / Kimberly O’Connor
The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim.
–Henry David Thoreau, “Spring”
When at the end-of-the-semester meeting
I’m asked to write on butcher paper
my year’s accomplishments and I put first on my list
I kept a teenager alive through the fallout
of the authoritarian takeover,
my colleagues don’t seem to know
whether or not I’m joking. I add to the paper
my estimate of 130,000 words
of student writing I’ve read since January;
note that I’ve written some words of my own,
a few of which were nominated for a prize
they didn’t win, and that’s all I’ve got
for the yearbook. Spring semester is a crisis,
with its unnatural winter beginning,
its ending in first bloom, saying good-bye
under a shower of apple blossoms,
tulips clanking like plastic Easter eggs
beside the walkways as we leave campus
for good. I didn’t write on my list
that each morning I folded my grief
like warm pajamas and left it under my pillow,
or that each afternoon I wished for one wish
I could use to go back in time
and hold my baby one more hour;
I didn’t write each time I stared into the frozen pond
of my students’ silence, I waited as long as it took
for one of them to thaw, inhale, and speak.
Thoreau in his writing about spring
says the melting ice thunders and booms.
We are still trying to form words
for what we could possibly say
to this extraordinary season.
It’s okay to laugh, but no one does.
The Life of Death / Michael Schad
Descent / Kashiana Singh
The entirety of a city below her,
making a statement to crested mountains—
breasts rising skyward
toward the blue blanket,
flush and full.
Peaks. Valleys. Troughs.
Braided, like a young gir
’s hair
in a plaited halo,
a double weave.
Puffs of cloud ride into the future,
uninterrupted
except when she glides
into their water-filled bellies:
a knifing, a sliding,
a glorious concerto
of steel wings and altitude,
unstoppable exhalation—
a sky-bound machine.
Every part, every particle
laid bare
blobs and bridges,
barrages, buildings,
a horizon framed
and alive.
Carved formations,
undulating etching
,waves in doodle-script,
all spread wide—
broad and far—
as if all of it
were being offered
one final time.
Unveiled
just before descent.
Finality hums inside me,
mystery still unresolved.
Ash of loved ones
scatters through these blue skies—
memory in motion,
a soft murmuration.
Breaking Away / Elizabeth Wolf
Sometimes Sad Girl went back by
X School. She and Brody weren’t enrolled any more
but the kid who painted the white chalk lines and
tended the fields and sports equipment in-season
often left the shed unlocked. It was a warm and cozy
place to sleep. Sometimes if she had a little
something extra, she tucked it in his desk drawer
or under his clipboard as a thank you.
Sad Girl was sipping coffee in a café by the school
wondering what to make of her day when Brody showed up.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
She shrugged. “Stuff happens.”
Brody finished her cinnamon roll.
“But the good news,” he said,
“is Bryan screwed up and is in
big trouble.” He took a big sip
of her coffee and made a face.
Not nearly enough sugar.
“And why is that good?” asked Sad Girl.
“Because he’s been using my mother’s
old car,” said Brody. “And now he cannot.
He’s grounded for a week of hard labor
and I have wheels. Want to go somewhere?”
“Yes please!!” said Sad Girl, sitting up straight
and shining. “I’ve been thinking about
the farm I used to visit up north
and missing everyone there. Can we go
visit? I know exactly how to get there.
I used to hitchhike, I know every blessed mile
between here and there.”
