July - Poem 9

Dream of the Deep End / Clayre Benzadon

Inside of me lives: musk, all shades of olive and teal, the dream where I reconnect with my three old (dead) friends, the obsessive young dream of imagining I can swim towards the deep end, honeysuckle season, night jasmine. I carry rainrods in my stomach. A torch of sandblossoms tied to my wrists. There are ways to measure a body’s burgeoning. A nostalgia that never leaves, shakes with rice and beans and beads that I accidentally swallowed when I was a kid, pennies especially. Outside, I plant peonies, lined neat fuchsia folds budding at the tip of soil. I’m in the season between hurricane and ski-time. I blindly reach for a shade of matches, a shadow work of my own devices.

Inside me, I dream: olive, swim, honey, pennies, peonies, a fuchsia that never stops burning.

14 Facts About Viridian Forest    / RJ Ingram

1 The train doesn’t stop here.
2 The bugs are so big they could total your car so you can’t drive here. 
3 Dana was the children’s den mother & took real good care of them.
4 She asked for the tree’s forgiveness before she cut into it.
5 A real dear.
6 A foxcat guided Dana into the forest to live among the bees. 
7 Children seek her out by opening & closing their palms.
8 Grasping for merit badges.
9 Dana doesn’t deny any of them what they want.
10 A bookcase full of novels.
11 A swinging tree in the backyard. 
12 A foxkitten of their very own. 
13 Write a poem then 
14 come & get your merit badge. 

Before I Cry Again, In the Kitchen / MeraBaird Kuar

Four is a lonely number
tears a peculiar collectable
pink a sharp signature

Cherries pack a sweet tang
a heart a tart temptation
birth a tender test

Twenty is a sneaky start
Anger a chokeberry
nature a nurtured curse

A peace sign gets a blurry nod
life is a curated exhibit
a smile–smoky ice

A baby is lavender unflowered
to bring light, water and food
is a responsibility beaded in magic

Believing in magic is an innocence
dinging doubt as in pinballs through
the museum of everyone’s body

Doubt is your doggy paddle
in a pool garnished with debris
Who will bring the net?

catalog as erosion / Kes Maro

green. carnation. wilde. wolfe.
wolf. wood [forest, morning].
maine. lighthouse. buoy. jetty.
running barefoot across wide
flat rock. frost. marshes. red-
winged black birds. black-eyed
susans. finger paint forget-me
-nots. mourning [doves, straw-
-berry shortcake backpack,
man-made ponds]. new jersey.
hydrangeas. purple [hyacinth,
angels, people-eater]. drawing
blush onto a doll’s cheek with
red crayola marker. waiting for
books to visit my dreams from
under my pillow. waiting for
wings to break open my shoulder
blades and for fairies to take me
back to the other world. night
lights. running away. mulch.
furby. possession. making a ouija
board out of recycling with h and
k and speaking to a demon. arm
hair [mine, k’s].

I Survived the Wreckage  / Azmia Ricchuito

Eyes that glisten 
like broken glass
shattered window
Barefoot 
walking on broken glass 
Put all my hopes
Into a heart-shaped locket
This was an 18” chain 
How did it become a choker?
Somewhere on interstate 95
is where legend says I lost it
A quarter mile at a time
horses under my hood
a black stallion for a coffin
You’re inside me
under this skin
that I’m trying to crawl out of
there’s only room for one
winning is winning
whether it’s by 
an inch or a mile 
Proof of life
I survived. 
But did I ever 
really live?

If I Talk About This Today I’ll Cry: A Villanelle    / Tammy Smith

“But that’s another story,” the veteran sighs
when I ask him about his son. He turns his head.
“If I talk about this today I’ll cry.”

It isn’t what he meant to say. I know he tries
to open up, though therapy tears him to shreds.
“But that’s another story,” the veteran sighs.

Every Wednesday, I help him recognize
the battles his body can’t shake: insomnia, night sweats,
“If I talk about this today I’ll cry”

about the war. He struggles to describe
rice paddies, leeches, close calls with death.
“But that’s another story,” the veteran sighs.

I blink back tears as I watch him agonize
over why he lived when his buddies died instead.
“If I talk about this today I’ll cry.”

Every Wednesday, I do my best to empathize
with his grief while he catches his breath.
“But that’s another story,” the veteran sighs.
“If I talk about this today I’ll cry.”

In Our As If Dream  / Daphne Stanford

As if we framed our faces with muffin tins, bottoms cut out of them, eyes fitting inside two muffin rounds, nose fitting one below. As if jewelry. As if patrimony. As if we actually needed some token of partnership to prove we exist outside tacos or selfies or pictures of things: tire-crushed cans in a Winning Company parking lot; baby shoes left behind after a picnic, before the rain; blurred outlines of tunnels in caverns, pitch-black, full of stalactites & bats-–upside-down but right-side-up, asleep.

July - Poem 8

The Hesitation / Clayre Benzadon

I hold my hand out
to a startled fawn,
a tender imprint in the for-
est (best place to rest).

Clover, berries, acorns.

The fawn hesitates before
she slightly begins to nibble,
nuzzle my hand. My other
hand reaches out to pet her,

but she flinches, jolts, even.

I connect to this creature.
I am slight in response,
fawn in trauma. I nod
my head when I mean to shake

no. I voice ok even if
it is not. Mostly, I’m
silent and paralyzed, like
I’m watching a movie play

out in front of me. Finally,
the fawn trusts me enough.
We both stare at each other
for a moment before she

leaps away and I am left
motionless in the forest,
alone and unsated.

After Patricia Chapman   / RJ Ingram

Freeze your accusations & wander do not run / A bespoke vest a splintered cane a hospital gurney & a gun / Revisionists always play back the last three scenes but learn nothing from the retracing / I’ve got another thing to say about that too I’m sure / You invited me over but I’m not going to take off my shoes & I’m not sorry / Although I am sorry about Thanksgiving / Each of them / Stop drinking from both sides of the glass / Keep a pair of gloves in your purse next to the penknife / Cracks in the stereo sound / The pops resemble topographic maps or old fashioned hole punched computer programing / I can’t be sure / There was a ring & then a riot & then a bow around a yellow box / Toast in the yokes.

A Poem for Javeayah Harris / MeraBaird Kuar

In the morning the sprinkler spreads glitter
in my peripheral and I see you
running through it, face shiny, laughter
ripe with colors hidden in the work
of survival. But in my mind you dance
and stickers don't hide what you endured
they are just precocious adornment
in my dreams the first story is true 
you walked off and wandered into
my yard where you can grow to five,
like my daughter who even when 
she refuses to have her hair detangled
and insists on wearing clothes too big
or too small, gets handled with care
because someone would have taken
care from your mother if given a chance
but now tears trickle throughout town
for those of us who never knew you
but waited for the chance that we might
see you alive and lively, forgive me 
as I write another poem about you
which is a poem about humanity
and how we don't know each other
how every child could hold horror
in their eyes and we would never see
it until it was too late to find the root. 
Now that we know your name, 
which is every name of every child
gone too soon, maybe we will call
out to each other, host children 
in our yards, know the parents
better, be the village again. 

it was like being a deer / Kes Maro

on a long ridge. you
couldn’t mistake it
for walks home from work
or errands. the angels moved
like they had never heard of moving
on or time healing. they were more
like those oversized deer
on long island, sleepless
without an ordinary habitat,
the bags under their big deer eyes
have a hungry shadow; it estimated
the world owed them attention.
they put the balance in quotations,
unreasonable and still often missed.
this confirmed the angels’ fears
or assumptions that the world has passed
over them. it was almost a comfort
to be right. 

If Lil Wayne Was a Life Coach  / Azmia Ricchuito

We think that to change our lives
we must do so with grand gestures

that we must rebuild Rome
with a fifteen step
Instagram-ready
morning routine.

“Get ready with me while I
sabotage my life/burn it to the ground
and create an entirely new life
in which I am my ideal self!”

Lil Wayne said real g’s
move in silence like lasagna

and I’ve learned that
lives are rebuilt
in the quiet moments
in the liminal spaces

deciding.
taking a first step.
sending an email.
making a call.
rolling out the yoga mat.

doing things without thinking
before you can
talk yourself out of it

that’s how this poem was written
from a hospital bed at 4 a.m.

because I told myself I didn’t
need to write a masterpiece.

I just needed to show up.

Stupid and contagious;
put some words on some pages.

I can always trash this some other day.

But for now, it’s evidence
I was here

and for a few moments,
I tried. 

Notwithstanding, Albeit / Tammy Smith

An Abecedarian

Actually, “notwithstanding” isn’t the only word
brilliant minds like my friend Brian use in casual
conversation. Even my dad, bright enough to
discern the difference between smart and genius, thinks Brian
epitomizes both. I’m flabbergasted they
fail to recognize how pompous they are, pumping their own
gas, quoting Goethe and Wordsworth while washing dishes,
holding their grimy hands dramatically over their hearts,
imitating the faux patriotism they’ve witnessed. I can’t tolerate
jokes about bad grammar when all I really want is to
kvetch about my dad and his annoying habits. But Brian
laughs hysterically and reminds me I’m just like him. I’m not a
man, though I sure as hell work my ass off and sweat like one.
Not for nothing, Brian smells worse than my dad. I nod, my mouth
open, tongue sticking out. “Albeit” was another fancy word I heard
professors in college use when they tried to teach us how to
quote from sources, cite them properly, discuss them. Brian summarized his
research articles using a cheat sheet he designed. So clever,
so succinct, his roommate stole it from his backpack. I caught him
trying to sell it all over campus—one more example of
upperclassmen taking advantage of the system before everyone
vanishes after graduation, tossing their caps into the air like confetti.
“Wait until you’re my age,” my dad tells Brian. “More tests than school.”
X-rays to check for broken bones; colonoscopies to check for cancer.
Yelling doesn’t help. It’s not worth anyone’s time to care anymore.
“Zero effort to stay silent,” says the man who can’t stop speaking—
notwithstanding, albeit, my dad still can’t define decency.

Letter to Captain Jack   / Daphne Stanford

Puffin, that is. Captain ‘cause you’re bone-stiff 
& weary of gawking ragamuffins snapping 
Insta-captures with Los Angeles filters.

Those ornithologists sold me your likeness for
Twenty-five dollars & damned if it wasn’t 
the best $25 I’ve ever spent on a souvenir—
though my green feather fluorite sphere is 
a close second. Now I almost feel prepared 
to commune with los angeles de mi pasado, 
though Mom always reminds me, El pasado 
ya está pisado. Translation: don’t go back; 
you’ve already stepped here; or there, on 
that stone, there. Lucky you, tufted sea 
parrot who prefers waddles to flying. 
Oh Captain, my Captain Jack Puffin,
next time you do manage to catch air 
over roped-off nesting grounds & 
tide pools, please—take me with you

July - Poem 7

Drawn-Out Turns / Clayre Benzadon

Whenever I hear a limp-
kin squawking, gawking

at open morning roads,
I think of you, Maureen.

How many times can
I write the same poem

to you, relive the dream
of time? If I wanted to,

I could change the form of this. Because you taught us to fuck with it, structure of a puncture more stretched out. Yesterday, I was watching a video of a man ski down Everest and even after struggling to breathe, stay alive, he was still making beautiful, drawn-out turns. If he falls, he dies. I didn’t get to the end of the footage, because we switched to watching The Bear, but all I know is that I fell too many times and still didn’t die, unlike the man in the astronaut-looking suit high up on the mountain. I guess I’m luckier, or smarter, for not taking that risk.

Maureen, I see,
feel you everywhere.

Whenever I get on
an elevator, you

and Lori are helping
me exhale through my

anxiety. Outdoors,
on campus, I see you

petting a peacock
and naming it Olive,

or Poppy (subtle nod
to your favorites).

I’m trying to keep this
poem resplendent,

not by watering it (down),
but by continuing to add

just one more line, to reach
you just one more time.

I did not use the internet to write this poem  / RJ Ingram

The last time I wrote to you the sky looked like a lava lamp dripping upwards / Periwinkle purples against aquatic blue seal shag rugs / Misty rides her metallic starfish like one of those hoverboards at the zoo / The last time I wrote to anyone we still had that little tugboat that could travel between any of our drains / Gosh Misty missed the good ole’ days / Fishing for sea birds on the flat docks throwing fried potatoes from the shark cages & watching the coral shake of thirteen centuries of slumber / The last time I wrote to you was the summer we returned to those magical beaches & washed the sand from our feet in the neighbors swimming pool / Mother was furious / The neighbors didn’t noticed but it didn’t matter bc mother was still mad / She cut Misty’s hair as punishment / She parted her head into pigtails & handed Misty the scissors & said I love you baby you get to keep one / And neither of them cried although I think they both wanted to / And I handed her a starfish she had rescued from the beach & Misty put it in her had & let the darling glow / And that starfish made her hair grow back just like Misty said it would. 

Aftertaste / MeraBaird Kuar

All this death runs through the woods,
burnt leaves chase after them,
the sun holds them–lifts them up,
they swing back and forth in the air,
their arms wave wildly, sweat splatters
everywhere, they laugh too loud,
their tongues loll, tiny puddles collect their drool
and we plop into them unexpectedly, but sometimes
we’re laughing, heads cocked back, feet up, we warp
like waves, our mouths carry magnets for death to land in,
we swallow without knowledge, we only slightly pause
and purse our lips at the bitter juice,
just enough bite to be aftertaste.

 i don't want this phone, i want to kill god / Kes Maro

title borrowed from Nature by Bianca Stone

i don’t want personalized ads, i want strange
texts from my grandmother with screenshots
i don’t understand. i don’t want to share my location
with you! i don’t want facial recognition,
i want to kill the idea of surveillance as security.
who is doing the watching?
i don’t want to have a face, i want to swallow
the steady stream of catastrophe and spit
lighter fluid. if the government is
going to call trans people terrorists. fine.
what’s a word? i don’t want this phone,
i want to kill god! no more hierarchy, no more
punishment renamed mercy and no more punishment,
no more carceral lens on love.
i don’t want to be the product mark zuckerberg or like
whoever is selling, i want to see like whoever, billionaire traitor,
gut like a fish and strung up, gossamer sheets of gold
flaked flesh poached and flayed so thin light shines in the sky
again and does not burn our skin.
i don’t want predictive text, i want to spell things wrong
because i am bad at spelling. i want to learn to spell better.
forget what i said before about a word not mattering,
it does. i was just hurt more than i thought i would be.
the difference between running and bolting,
how the second can contradict itself, the way we speak
can change what we believe. the distance between us can
change how we feel about ourselves. like, the correlation between
likes and the rate at which young people want to die.
i don’t want this pacifier, baby binky tracking device listening
to all my calls and guiding my thinking. don’t let it parasite us,
don’t let it colonize our syntax, our thoughts just because we know
its happening doesn’t mean we’re resisting it.
i don’t want this phone, i just want to call home. 

What’s In My Bag: Emotional Baggage  / Azmia Ricchuito

I’ve become a bag lady.
My best friend thinks it’s a maladaptive coping mechanism

trying to fill an empty void with Coach bags.

But I’d rather have a closet full of handbags
than one filled with skeletons.

No one understands that I loved
the Loved Leather collection
because it looked like
Dean Winchester’s worn-in jacket.
Now we both have aged leather
and matching daddy issues
except I’m not sure Coach makes a bag
big enough to hold all my baggage.

I bought a blue suede purse
because it was the same color
as my cat’s eyes —
both my deceased cat and my living kitten.
That bag in my closet is better than having under eye bags from crying.

How do I explain the feeling of carrying
a bag that Carrie Bradshaw wore
when she used to be #goals for me
as a writer
until I realized how much her character actually sucked
but her fashion sense didn’t.

And isn’t it remarkable 
that a brand can have
such a comeback?

If brands can
take archival designs
and re-release them
giving them a second chance
why can’t people?

If brands can reinvent themselves
coming out of the closet, literally,
with main character energy
finding their redemption arc
why can’t people?

One day, my purse won’t be so heavy. 
I’ll make a “What’s In My Bag” video
and when I spill the contents of my purse
there will be a sparkling crystal wallet
lip gloss
perfume
car keys

and notably absent
will be all my emotional baggage.

Ode to a Saddle-Stitched Chapbook  / Tammy Smith

Lightweight, portable,
not perfectly bound,
more affordable
to print. It lies

flat, opens fully,
makes poems easier
to flip through,
more comfortable to read.

There’s no room
for an author’s name
or title
on a stapled spine.

So thin it floats
into the hands
of drifting poets
carrying university-press
first editions
at open mics.

Chronicle of Sea-Drifting  / Daphne Stanford

Of mooring, then unmooring—
Rowing my way toward the sunset.

Six of swords leaves something behind, 
ventures somewhere new: somewhere, 

anywhere people don’t recognize your face. 
Please excuse cliched impossibility of running

away from oneself. Perhaps less a running away than some kind of scene change, purview of

train/bedroom windows to different mountains & oceans. No matter how many times you try.

Leave town, the rubber band tethers you: extending, then bouncing back. No ability to 

resist reverse momentum. Attempt to alter
the location of your imagination, instead.

July - Poem 6

Fluid Delay / Clayre Benzadon

I arrive too late
to the party, where 

I crushed confetti, tied 
the strings to my hairends.

Laughed at the clowns 
whom were hosting, 

foolish, coconut pie
crusting their faces.

I never know when
to leave. In this city,

I always abandon
my body in the car:

throat closes, heart
hurts hard in my ears.

I want to say heavy
but it comes out as

heaving in this heat-
stroke zone. Back

at the party, at least 
my face stays put. I 

almost growl at the apples
in the tub, blue basket

another symbol for
fluid delay. Dilly dally

at the fun-
ction, sink your whites

into a more crunchy,
crisp afterwards.

I did not use the internet to write this poem  / RJ Ingram

Imagine for a moment a witch’s road a windy enchanted pathway that connects all eighteen layers of the same story landed upon themselves like sheets creased & tucked into the top sheet / Victory road as they call it snakes around the most quintessential hellscapes / Boxcars pepper the desolate terrains & strung up like catch & release deniers / Each tiny faction of survivors of their own apocalypses is governed by a sovereign leader who lives beyond palaces & your standard public gymnasium / Parents beg their children not to run away from home & follow the train tracks onward / No one who tries to leave returns unless their guided by the foxcats / Shepards between the realms or at least their own / Every world came with a family of foxcats & the young ones latch onto a ten year old of their choosing / The parents can hardly refuse the honor / Plus to be guided by the foxcats was an important position in the villages & citadels / Guiding travelers between the eighteen apocalypses / Consider the foxcat / The evolutionary champion & harbinger of change / Consider how the foxcat wanders around the silo looking at the old tech as if hieroglyphs & consider how quietly the foxcat leaves.

Extinction 7.6

Children leave
Foxcats guided by
Citadels
Consider how quietly
Extinction

Red Velvet / MeraBaird Kuar

My apples get sauced, my stars get striped, 
and stripped and paraded through the streets
My good southern Gramma drives 40 miles
To church every Sunday, she screamlaughs
She watches the news religiously, hands
folded in gracious ability, she bakes 
15 cakes every holiday, she bakes
Songs you can never unhear, no 
Nursery rhymes ever moved on
from her possessive voice, she is
So quiet but when she’s hot, fresh, baked
In her full color, her voice tastes 
of thick honey and it's everywhere, 
everywhere

She is an American dream, lips slanted
Drool-dripped before the day slipped
A noose around its neck, danced
A floppy rhythm to fall and be fooled
Yes, but to survive everything

sonnet for a crab's soft body / Kes Maro

when the stars fall in october, their husks calcify
hollow, space’s fruit rotten even before it bruises
against the soil. i can’t escape what the land looked like
at 4 o’clock, walking through the woods to your house
with the dog, lazy, pulling me back. sometimes,
the world’s noise breaks me. i always wish i had a better way
to put it, but there are only a few truths. your shoulder
was chicken wire stapled to the frame of your body
i remember us in beds of queen anne’s lace and clover.
i remember us framed by the act of falling as we now know
bodies do. did you know? i grew afraid to touch you
in case you’d realize i wanted to be near you.
most secrets are the same few things,
no matter how they take up residence in our throats.

Never-rary, Never Rarely, Sometimes, Always. / Dallas Outlaw

My stay
was measured
in almosts
in folded clothes

that never learned
which drawer was home
in promises

that grew roots
in borrowed soil

Never-rary

the place between
never and temporary
where i knew i should leave
but still watered

what was wilting
because sometimes
dying things

still look alive
when you love them

Never Rarely

because it wasn’t nothing
because the laughter had witnesses
& the memories did not disappear
just because the of yesteryear

because pain is a poor
historian when it only
remembers the fire

and forgets
there was warmth

Sometimes

we were exactly what we said
we were: two people trying
to translate languages
we never learned to speak or write

holding dictionaries
full of definitions that kept
us changing in plain sight

finding forever in moments
that could not afford it

Always

not as a promise
or as a sentence
we have to prove
and not as proof

that leaving made loving a lie
but as a place that existed within
a chapter with no periods

a book with no author
a lived experience in my imagination

yet it still knows my handwriting

And another also

is not a replacement
it is the quiet truth
that life keeps adding
another reason

another beginning
another version of myself
also deserving

also becoming
also present

Existing On the B-Side  / Azmia Ricchuito

When I woke up, I didn't much want

to be awake

Aimless. 
Nameless.
Endless.

Hidden on the B-side

I found it hard.
I was hard to find.

Oh well. 
Whatever.
Nevermind.

The garish sun is intruding
I close the curtains 
but it still won't go away.

It persists like 
the dishes in the sink
the need to figure out what's for dinner
every night for the rest of your life
(wouldn't it be easier sometimes to just not eat?)
like tomorrow

that always comes too soon. 

Repetition Compulsion / Tammy Smith

A dream is an unfulfilled wish. Freud admitted he used his own to demystify repressed desire. He never understood women or what they wanted. Only a man puffing on a cigar would claim something so symbolic. His own anxiety drove him down the royal road to the unconscious, where a dirty syringe in his dream revealed the guilt he felt about Irma, his former patient.

pieces of glass
we step on
walking barefoot

I wonder if the therapist I saw in my early teens ever thinks about me. Does he realize I dream about him every Thanksgiving, after I run a Turkey Trot? Would he remember my name? Recognize my face if we passed each other along the New York State Thruway? What if I bumped into him buying coffee at a rest stop?

rim of the cup
coffee refills
burn the tongue

Freud believed unseen psychological forces dictated one’s destiny. I search for my old therapist everywhere I used to eat with my father—all-you-can-eat, stuff-your-face smorgasbords. No one understood better than the man I paid to listen to me the significance of my father calling me fat before ordering dumplings, glaring as I gnawed on a spare rib until my teeth caught the bone.

therapy bill—
counting my change
the receipt ripped to shreds

Letter to Gull from a Driftwood Log  / Daphne Stanford

You, for whom this sleep thing comes 
So easily: tell me, how do you do it?
Your one orange webbed foot tucked 
Under, into bird-version of tree pose. 
Without this log where I lean, I’d be
Forced to sit cross-legged & upright
Sin vergüenza—shame having been 
Instilled primarily from the pulpit—

Aquellos ojos verdes/cafecitos—
Ojos para mirar el quién quiero tirar 
De mi alma—wordsI’d rather not 
Translate for anyone, let alone myself.

July - Poem 5

Tea Time for Ghosts / Clayre Benzadon

Dearest __________,

I left one muffin crumb
on the counter, for you.

You haven’t been home
in ages.  The house

is a mess. One silver shoe
oxidized outside the front

door. Clay dolls daintily
displayed on a shelf 

in the foyer. Tea time
for ghosts. Saucers

honeyed mint in the sink. 
All I’m trying to say

is I was eating break-
fast and a war plane

shook the walls
of this place, and

the fridge held
the leftover rice

salad with mayo,
chopped carrots,

manzanilla olives,
and boiled eggs.

On the couch
you left your head-

phones, water bottle,
a plate with a the last

half of a hot dog bun.
I’m not trying to be

patriotic, but I think
this is all a sign,

to remember
absence. How

all the things
you left behind

left me as hollow
as an empty pool

float, the last scrap
of you discarded.

I did not use the internet to write this poem   / RJ Ingram

Remember when we greased up the swing set & hoped less friction would help us throw ourselves onto the roof? / We didn’t know anything about aerodynamics or friction but we knew oil made things slippery & slippery things travel fast / Remember the way rain would sneak into the sandbox & we would have to let it dry out in the hot August sun? / Grandpa would fill the green turtle with fresh sand every summer & I don’t think we even noticed bc we stopped playing in the sandbox in the backyard & started playing on the computer in the office / Remember when they turned the boatyard into a strip club & when we drove out to the water tower to watch the the sun set behind the Adultmart marquee? / The radio was turned up to twenty & we thought the guitarist was playing just for us as we watched the truck on the freeway burn down to the tires / Remember when the kids sailed into the harbor on their little ships & we threw confetti at them & the fish came up expecting the confetti to be more than strips of plastic & pieces of paper / When they warned us not to feed the fish they forgot to mention the confetti / Remember when grandpa would fall asleep in church? / We used to bury him in the cemetery & it would sometimes take him weeks to dig himself out he used to be so furious / Remember when we got caught cheating at bingo night at the YMCA? / Mrs. Newman couldn’t prove anything bc we ate up all the evidence including the prizes we won before she had the chance to call the police / Remember when we got so good at disassociating we could make our arguing parents just disappear? / Pepperidge Farm remembers. 

two hundred and fifty / Kes Maro

we keep calling this period
of time ‘these times’ and i hear
myself saying it too,

referring to now as now
more than ever or charged or
maybe even divisive if

people are feeling combative.
how to sum up an era
of catastrophic violence

towards people and earth
as it relates to the patterns that birthed
it? as it relates to the relationship between

river and sea? pink triangulated on my chest?
a city shut down for new royal wedding
while the heat climbs outside?

we use vague terms like they can hold
every unvoiced shame and horror
in meaning’s vague walls. we talk

around what we mean. the poem fails us too.
i keep hearing 45. divided times. anthropocene,
we’re so delicate with our language, so afraid

to condemn. when did specificity become
such a burden? i remember
watching tv as a kid and hitting pause

when the crux of the drama, the plot of an episode
came from miscommunication
where someone could have said something obvious

and undone the whole issue. i called that bad writing.
who talks like this?  

He Studied How to Stay  / Azmia Ricchuito

It’s easy to miss things as a child
when you’ve never heard
the words depression
or anxiety. 
The only melancholy I knew
was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,
a Smashing Pumpkins record
that you were thoroughly unimpressed by.
Billy Corgan,
after all,
was no Pavarotti.
I saw the books
lined neatly on your bookshelf:
Listening to Prozac.
The Noonday Demon.
But I was ten, so I thought Prozac
was some sort of authority figure,
like General Patton. 
And I thought The Noonday Demon
was a work of fiction—
a horror novel,
something Stephen King
might have written
about the things that go bump
in the night. 
And in some ways, 
I was right about that part. 
Years later, I finally understood
what you meant when you said
“The more intelligent you are, the harder it is to be happy.”
I realized those were 
not just books about depression. 
They were books
about surviving it.
I didn’t know
you weren’t studying psychology.
You were studying
how to stay.
How to quietly 
carry your own darkness 
while showing me 
the tiny pinpricks of starlight 
scattered across the night sky. 
You taught me that 
paying attention
comes with a cost. 
You paid it anyway. 
You spent your career 
exploring the universe
at NASA. 
But your greatest discovery 
wasn’t somewhere beyond
our atmosphere. 
It was teaching
a frightened little girl 
that the universe inside her
was worth exploring too. 
You taught me to 
ask the right questions. 
To look directly 
at the darkness 
And still 
find the stars. 

The Heart’s Chambermaid / Tammy Smith

Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know—
—William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, act 2, scene 2

The last time I checked
my pulse, placed my finger
in the soft groove
between bone and tendon,
death was a faraway thought,
one of those destinations
eager, young travelers shove
to the back of their minds
like brand-new baggage:
lightweight, whisper-wheeled,
designed for easy storage.

How easy it was
to disregard the body’s girth,
to board a plane without measuring
aisles, worrying about seat belt extenders,  
the nearest exit door
or defibrillator.

The last time I checked
my pulse, I guiltily wondered
if it was only
the heart’s chambermaid—
tidying private quarters,
drawing a bath,
changing the sheets,
washing out stains.

In Your Golden Dream  / Daphne Stanford

Gulls & cormorants circle the sea stack—ancient monolith that’s been there longer than any of us has breathed—any of those among us now, anyway (here’s hoping no ghosts, that is). My stuffed puffin, Sailor Jack, nuzzles me with fuzz: plush velour; tufted ear-cheeks, emerging. For the birds, as some used to say. No longer. Walk in the opposite direction from hordes, despite fireworks, which Maya P. reminds us can problematic—depending who you are. Depending upon who has chased you. Depending upon the color of your skin/clothes/eyes/hair/teeth. The colors of everything will blend in the pyrotechnics. Golden retriever at the parade nuzzles his nose & ear into my pant leg, presses his body soft against my leg as if to say, “I’m here. No, everything’s not okay. No, I’m not leaving your side.”

July - Poem 4

Skin Costume / Clayre Benzadon

I love, I mean leave
the flesh around
consciousness.

I do not fit
inside the wound
of my mother,

which is really
just a metaphor
for body.

Last night,
I dreamt of my
dead friend holding

me, we were both
crying over what 
our forms could not

protect us from:
not just mortality
itself, but the appearance

of gender. I was trying
to bind my body against
baggage, bias, backstabs.

My friend was hoping
to keep his breathing.
I choked. For a second,

I could see myself
inhabiting a different
frame, a more attuned,

intuitive self. Anatomy
of a hearth-pulse, warm
and giving. I gave up

my friend, woke up,
and still ended up
having to live in this

skin 
costume.

Softboiled   / RJ Ingram

A serenity of nurses emerged from the cave they were raised in & canvassed about the healing power of sandwiches / It was a cult really but their magic worked so we let them descend upon the villages to take care of us / A really symbiotic romance us with our scrapes & bruises & each rose-y-cheeked nurse looking from behind their clip boards feeding us egg salad sandwiches & tucking us in at night / The nurses hatched from a nest in their secret Serenity Cave / After picking through the shells with their stethoscopes & reflex mallets the nurses wandered around looking for smooth stones to take care of like babydoll survivors of car accidents / Each baby nurse wobbled around checking in on the stones a flock of nurseries on a tight rotation / The largest nurse watched over the serenity like a mama bird unable to see anything other than precious Faberges & oh! How she could still remember the designs on everyone’s shell every pattern identical to the scrubs they emerged wearing / The serenity was a harmless boon for a very long time & when the curly haired older ones were ready we sent them out to find more survivors more hospitals to add to their rounds / Serenity Cave had to be kept hidden & protected at all costs / Poaching nurses was a big problem for the community hundreds of years ago / But lately something darker & sinister has been occurring & more & more guilds of assassins show up in the villages looking for the keeper of the nursery the Joyous Serenity herself & the exquisitely thorough & ethereal ledger on her clipboard / The tiniest pieces of her children’s eggs cost millions but Giovanni wants to corner the market & put an end production / Nurse Joy wants to battle / So we battle.

Big, Bad, Wolf / MeraBaird Kuar

The night sits still though I ask it to scoot over
though I howl into its face, though I run all over 
it does not break apart, it just hugs me tighter.
No matter how I try to escape, or how loudly 
I scream, no matter how often I say 
I don’t love you, it does not flinch, it is not injured
It stays whole and full and its color never fades
there is no flushed face, no back turning, no 
tight grip on my shoulders, no rasp in its voice
but mine scrapes my skin, scrapes through
the thick air of my desperate gasping breath
scraps everything, stops fighting, and I feel
my skin grow whispers of hair upwards to where
I am witnessed by the owl, in the live oak tree
not asking who, just shaking its head, just
perched in epilogue and so I turn around
go back inside, get in bed, watch the night
and the owl from my window, I forget 
the hunt, I learn what hunger really needs.

Great South Bay Big Green Boat / Kes Maro

With a butter knife I cut the good parts off rotting peaches you / pass to me. You say to add the jammy can / of blueberries collecting condensation in the sand. The day can be / so simple and free. / We add cheese and mint and / brown sugar somehow still / unmelted in the 100-degree sun. I dreamt I saw something great come / out of the water. Great like horrifying. You don’t want to go home / yet. I keep thinking I hear someone yell “shark!” but it’s / not real. It’s alright. / That great thing from the water stands over me like I’m / not going to be alright.

July 4 / Dallas Outlaw

Institute, Airmen, Syphilis
Bricklaying, aviation, agriculture
W.E.B, Carver, & BTW
the year is 1881

in exhausted Alabama soil
Booker planted possibility
because he understood
what it restored

cotton had taken from the land
the same way a country had taken
from the people working it
and called what remained 

(empty)

he studied the overlooked
the buried and the underestimated
the destitute, dismissed and undereducated before discovering what they were

capable of becoming
the lesson was already in the clay
students learned bricklaying
mixing earth, water, and purpose

into the walls of Tuskegee
where the names engraved
enshrined the builders 
as part of the blueprint

and the architecture became a record
red brick buildings standing as evidence
that the foundation of Black education
was Blacks understanding

that the foundation of America 
was blood stained red from
overworking the blue stained
hands pressing jeans

that stand in between
what seems like forever
in the gaps that are no further
distant than today and yesterday

Booker T believed
Carver cultivated
Du Bois questioned

different methods
same harvest
Tuskegee grew pilots
Airmen rose from red clay

into blue skies
forcing a nation to witness
the intelligence it tried to ignore
but the soil remembers everything

even the seeds planted in secrecy
under the name of science
where Black bodies were studied
without protecting Black lives

still what was overlooked
continued feeding generations
through the yard and the Divine Nine
letters carrying legacy

steps preserving stories
community built beyond
classrooms and in the Caf’
through fried fish Fridays

West Coast Wednesdays
where tradition spoke several
languages yet Blackness
was awe engulfing

because Tuskegee proved
what Booker always knew

growth was never about
what the world recognized first
only about what it survived 
and through Tuskegee’s eyes?

a nation that needed Black hands
to build everything then
acted surprised when they
couldn’t bury us alive,

and for that Mother Tuskegee,
A birthday well celebrated.

I Spend My Fridays Rewriting Shakespeare  / Azmia Ricchuito

It’s a Friday night
The air is heavy with trepidation and rain
The sky, trying its best
To lighten up
But it’s swallowed by pervasive darkness
A thick cloud of despair
That will last until morning

The sun will rise
But the darkness will remain.

He tells me I deserve better
And the defeat in his eyes
Steels my resolve

“Then be better,” I say

As if it were that simple
To escape the vicious cycle of escapism
When of all people, I know better
My own solaces hidden
In designer bags
In our walk-in closet
Nestled tenderly between
Lululemon leggings and
pastel pirouette skirts

The kind I used to wear to ballet class
as a kid
before life hit me like a freight train

But now I wear them,
impractical as they are,
To get a glimpse of the girl I used to be

Who twirled with reckless abandon
Admiring herself in the mirror
Spinning, spinning, spinning
Collapsing into a pile of giggles
Just to get up and do it again
And again
And again
Until I stumbled away
Dizzy and content

Now when the room spins and I collapse
It’s into a heap on the floor
On my knees, crying,
begging God to give you happiness
Or something like it
Because every day I watch you
Trying to escape
from a place you brought me

Your eyes, fun-house mirrors
reflecting the way we’re both haunted
I see myself, distorted
But you’re still so fucking beautiful

Windows to the soul
but the glass has been smashed out
Vandalized, now we’re both crashed out

If I fall from grace it’s because
I flew too close to the sun
Gravity claiming all my fears

You look so much better now
No pressure, but please don’t let me down

It’s only because of you
that I didn’t drown
Jumping off Wickery Bridge

I know it’s selfish to ask you
To stay for me

You say you’d die for me
But I’m asking for so much more

I want you to live
Long enough to believe
the sun
when it rises

To America on Her 250th Birthday / Tammy Smith

I want to celebrate
you, but it’s painful
to witness the whiplash
of political wickedness
so widespread it bleeds
into backyard barbecues,
staining the hamburger buns.

I’m torn between
watching the fireworks
on TV or driving
north to some cooler spot
up in the mountains,
where sparks flying
across rugged skies
might seem wilder.

Betsy rolls her eyes.
I’m sitting this one out,
she sighs, and my heart sinks
because she’s not the only one
I’ve heard say it—
she’s weary of all the wreckage,
worried about wild-eyed Americans
throwing tantrums while tossing Frisbees
or grilling franks,
fighting over leftovers.

Stay home and chill,
Betsy warns.
Don’t waste your money.
Everything is expensive.
Gas. Groceries.
Even baking a birthday cake
costs more than it used to.

I don’t want to seem spoiled
or ungrateful,
but two hundred and fifty
candles is a lot to blow out.

What if I can’t hold my breath
long enough to make a wish,
knowing it’s too soon
for it to come true?

No amount of chanting
why can’t we all just get along
is going to fix this.

Not yet.

My only goal
this Fourth of July
is roasting
the perfect marshmallow.

In Your Intertidal Dream  / Daphne Stanford

Undulate between high & 
low tides, places bridging 
spans of time, distances 
between Cape Tillamook & 
Arch Cape. On the Prom, in 
the distance between us and the 
impromptu parade of axolotls, Pokemon, 
and unicorns, ruddy-cheeked Abe Lincoln 
high-fives me & I grin right back. Children gawk 
at the boombox-carrying entourage: no official beachside 
party, only a merry band of post-modern-day troubadours. 
Don’t believe in Modern Love, David croons from speakers,
followed by Lady Gaga reminding us she was born this
way & weren’t we all? Infant wails jangling nursery
walls, having been delivered head or feet first,
each of us exited a womb complaining
about no longer being there.

July - Poem 3

Senseless / Clayre Benzadon

In the gap between simple 
and ordinary, I chose simplicity.

Plain, decent, friendly, 
sweet, naïve, foolish, stupid.

The word “stupid” sticks to me.

Recently, in EMDR, I envisioned
all the times someone called me 
stupid: struck senseless.

We hold on to so much that later 
we drop it all in the middle of 
the street, crying ugly, until our 

mascara filthily streaks the sidewalk.
Now, that image is simple.
I’m looking for ordinary

this time:

This time, I enter a convenience
store and pull out a Coke from
the fridge, a package of tissues

to wipe off the snot and filth
of being human. The guy
at the counter, instead of

taking advantage 
of this, asks
if I’m ok.

This isn’t simple, or or-
dinary. No, this is sub-
lime.

I was struck senseless.
I asked the guy for a lime,
to chase the stupid

feeling I got from crying
uncontrollably, at everything.
The gap between simplicity

and ordinary is a small light
someone leaves on for you
in the middle of the night.

I did not use the internet to write this poem  / RJ Ingram

I asked Nora to use the back door the dogs have been acting up / I think they miss their father I think they watch too much tv I think I’ve got to flip whatever’s in the oven / Turnips rot in the back of the fridge I bought them for a salad & only used half of them / I know what you’re thinking what kind of salad needs turnips? / Honestly I don’t recommend it / Prairies come & go but getting to yell COW out the window? That shit’s forever / The quickest way to the kind of quiet I’m looking for is a plate of buttery crackers dipped in melty cheese / Of course you can come over I’m pulling monkey bread out of the oven & I’m going to turn the temperature down & make some shrink sinks later / Do you need a ride? I know you’re just across the street but I’ve got half a mile to go before I hit a digit ending in six zeros / I missed you at the Halloween party by the way / I ended up wearing a dozen or so different costumes & had a character for each / I turned it into a drinking game / The first person to guess my middle name won an all expenses paid trip to the back of our minivan / Santa’s gonna be a little late this year & he’s gonna drop off your presents at K-Mart he left a note you can read it yourself.

And the note said / A lot of things / I’m sure of it

The Poetry of An No-Skip Album- A Pantoum / MeraBaird Kuar

I love a pantoum, the way I love the last song on an album, 
the way it lulls me past harmony, past melody, bends some
space to sound me out, slides me into dreams 
holds me there, how sticky-sweet we feel in the heat of release. 

The way it lulls me past harmony, past melody, bends some
time so I savor the chords strung together like plot points.
Hold me there, how sticky-sweet we feel in the heat of release
coordinates map a story of a time, a place, a voice.

Time to savor the chords strung together like plot points
in and out of an orchestrated void, eyelids flutter or fold
coordinate maps of a story, a time, a place, a voice.
My head nods, my eyes draw hearts and stars, they float

In and out of an orchestrated void, eyelids flutter or fold.
I love a pantoum, the way I love the last song on an album
My head nods, my eyes draw hearts and stars, they float
in space to sound me out, slides into my dream.

burning haibun with the color of pomegranates / Kes Maro

a tooth is a sharp growth on the jawbone. a jawbone is the mouth’s rib, caged
but capable of opening or snapping shut. a pomegranate is an apple’s honest
cousin. cystic, it fractures like blood vessels would if they were made of glass.
back then, we thought apples felt too clean. we thought we were exposed nerves.
we had no tolerance for being sanitized or bloodless. we had no tolerance for any-
-thing but truth. there was no snake and the was no garden, at least not one i would
name. i mean i’m turning to genesis because angels were real for you and i wanted
to believe in everything you did. i thought you were holy. you told a story of being
cast out of heaven. i loved to kneel before you in sacrament, but i talk around
a metal bowl and bloody rag, like i thought i was mary magdalene washing jesus’s
feet, not just some teenager poorly prepared to handle the desire to die. i think i am
selfish for wanting to write about this, but i keep doing it.

a growth opening a cystic vessel made
of too clean nerves we had no -thing
but truth. there was no turning to angels
i thought. a story of being loved like
wanting to write about it.

Remedies / Dallas Outlaw

My warning label
comes with a warning label
a sticker of noteworthy
tabs to keep open

read me twice
before assuming fluency
my fine print
changes with context

the side effects
include mirrored behavior
returned energy
without modification

the medical term
is projected dysmorphia:
a condition
where people mistake

their own reflection
for my personality
often misdiagnosed
as arrogance, coldness,

or difficult behavior
symptoms worsen
when accountability
is introduced

without anesthesia &
there is no known cure
only distance from the mirror
or the courage to

recognize yourself more 
distortions kaleidoscope
landscape direction
to last feast on the possibility

that it just might work

I Was Raised on Little White Lies / Azmia Ricchuito

The doctor said take two and call him in the morning.

That was over 40 years ago 
and I've been listening to you
say I know what to do
and you'll get right back.
You never did.

Leave a message after the tone.
The lights are on
but nobody's home.

And no, I didn't know what to do.

I don't know where you went
when your eyes turned black.

I don't know where you went
the times your eyes rolled back
in your head
in your head
in your head.

But I know who paid the electric bill
so that the day they find your body
the stench won't be so bad.

Little round white moons
an orange bottle filled with stars
you're higher than the kites
I flew at field day in kindergarten.


You boarded your spaceship
leaving me behind
All these years later
and all I can ask is why 
didn't anyone ever cover my eyes? 

I shouldn't have seen this
concert for aliens
this cacophony of chaos

the fever-pitched crescendo 
of little white lies
crashing
breaking
metal against earth

180 proof, 180 degrees
spinning out of control
an orange Camaro 
wrapped around a tree.

the only family you have left
are the cousins of death 
and me.



I'm choking on your legacy
wishing I could spit it out
it's in my tired bones
laid bare with agony



It's just me and your ghosts
not knowing what to do
and two howling wolves
and they're always ravenous
whatever I do. 

When My Friend Heather Invites Me to Hot Yoga During a Heat Wave / Tammy Smith

Hell no ❌😈
is easier to text
than calling her
but I probably should
politely decline
doing anything
downward-facing dog
on a blue flowered mat
when it’s this hot out

F that
is what I want to convey,
but I’m not about to text
any fire emojis—🔥
nothing flashing red,
orange, yellow: content
she may misconstrue
as explosive 🔥💥
or flirty ❤️‍🔥

Pointless pretending
anyone functions well
when the feels-like temperature
hits triple digits

I hesitate
sharing anything that steamy,
lest Heather think
it’s 🗣️🔥

In Your Duende Dream  / Daphne Stanford

After your body tethers itself to sand
Blown by wind as duende works the
Body of a dancer, allow yourself
To plop yourself down onto shore.

Let the waterline creep further up 
Your leg, ankles sinking into wet 
Sand. Like that scene in “The Never-
Ending Story” where Artex slowly

Sinks his white body into the swamp 
Of sadness swallowing him, despite the
Journey ahead, despite wishing he still
Wanted to try. Some easy dichotomy

Swims toward you, kicking salt-
Water toward pelicans diving to snatch
Sanderlings. Hermit crab sidesteps by, 
Having found himself a new conch shell 

To inhabit. Not allowing us to believe 
We can’t go home again. He takes his 
Home with him, not hoisting it up but
Crawling toward some deep quiet, within.

July - Poem 2

Writing on Company Time / Clayre Benzadon

Truth is I wrote this
at work. The trouble with

poetry is that you can draft
it anywhere. Once, I scribbled

a love poem on bar napkins
while drinking over an ex.

Next thing I know,
the poem’s plastered on

a huge billboard, so that even
my ex can read it. Poetry’s this

lucrative, I laugh as I take
this statement in like my last

swig of whiskey: neat, chillingly.
The point of a poem is to remember.

In my office, I tune into Dolly’s wisdom:
Be your own boss, climb your own ladder

You keep working, working, working […]
The question is, what work do I need to do

to become my own boss? Is it another
poem, or something more abstract, ill-

egible? Tomorrow, I cried, I’ll be a better
employee. For today, though, I’m in charge

of finishing this last line.

I did not use the internet to write this poem  / RJ Ingram

I am going to spend too much money on an ice cream cone when this poem gets rejected / I am going to slice through a watermelon & press the panini so hard I’ll be forced to turn it into croutons when this poem gets rejected / I’m not afraid of sparklers bc they die out & I’m not applying to lead the choir / I’m just trying to be a better father to my husband’s plants & I promise I will read it to them when this poem gets rejected / I will sing to them on their deathbeds & bury their remains in the slumberyard / I will smash a watch with a mallet at the end of a tight five & tell the audience I will see them next time when this poem gets rejected / I will invest in a ride bracelet at the amusement park & wear it until the periwinkle plastic fades to a muted gray / I will buy myself another ice cream cone & practice my whistle when this poem gets rejected / I will interrupt my father but only when he tries to explain football to me / And I will ask him But who’s on first? When this poem gets rejected / I will try to hold my potty break for intermission & I will sneak out a couple minutes just before / And I will say isn’t this thrilling? To the geese crooning in the park when this poem gets rejected / Here I got you something RJ I say to myself as the kettle whistles & sand runs down the bulb / And hand myself a scoop of red velvet macaron with licorice ribbons: A parting gift just a little treat for when this poem gets rejected.

Prompt 7.1: What is your Ben & Jerry's flavor? RJ Equalitea [Red Velvet Macaron with Licorice Ribbons & Pieces of Candied Anise] 

The Morning I Called For a Wellness Check / MeraBaird Kuar

We don’t eat food that lingers from the table to the sink, 
that spills into the living room, onto the front porch, 
that makes lines of demarcation between the eyebrows. 
Being human today meant standing in the heat outside 
the gate of the woman who told the neighborhood app 
I was suspicious because my backyard was fenced, 
but that was years ago. Today her door is open but I can’t 
see inside the dark opening, like a gap-toothed grin obscuring 
the grooves in the gums that will be an adult smile, yet hinting 
at something lying in wait. Did she yell help, who is there with her? 
I hear mumbles grow wider as I float on a string away from 
and closer to, what do I do? I ask her questions that bubble up 
from the spring, I don’t use my phone to conjure heart, 
I use it to call the authorities and I disappear a few yards away 
onto my porch, where my children wonder what adult novel 
is writing itself, what bit of life is dying on a burning ledge 
called mortality. I blow the wick, I see the waves waft down 
the street. People pass, and ask and inhale and swallow 
the day, hoping it stays down & digests into the juice of tomorrow.

without you and me / Kes Maro

     ’re always in blue
mirrored sunglasses
flipping horseshoe crabs
& cutting out wood-
-en bunnies with a table
saw. always a handful
of pistachio shells empty
on the table next to      .
      ’re always sitting
in that chair.      ’re always
cradling that horseshoe crab
just above the waves & showing
       her legs.      ’re always
asking       why the bunny
has red eyelashes & elephant
feet.      ’re always
making pancakes on a griddle
on a green linoleum counter
& telling     to add blueberries.
     ’re always taking a nap
in that chair.      ’re always
wearing a yellow hat.
      ’re always yelling
up the stairs at a different kid.
      ’re always going
into the basement to get
something.     ’re always
saying don’t step on the crack
     ’ll break my back.      ’re always
in the parking lot at the beach
& never on the beach unless
      ’re in the water
up to      r ankles when
the tide is out like this
it’s like      &     could
walk across the long
island sound on crossing
sand bars & never
get our knees wet. 

From your dad / Dallas Outlaw

Sneaking into windows
eating movie popcorn
laughing hearty laughs
like a true 90s hookup movie

i know you miss him
but this is why
men should ask permission
before taking yall away

when you still need
my pension; a dowry must be paid
and a question must be asked
before a broom can be jumped

or an i do be said
your upbringing discussed
your traumas healed
without childhood ptsd

being the basis for everything
conversations not just with you,
but with me
who’s going to love my baby

more than me
So, before the aisles
of the grocery stores
become the Isles of Skye

and I the Old Man of Storr
I’d wish that you’d consider him
asking, just this once
if he can borrow your hand

before having to return it
with nothing  on it

My Bloody Valentine / Azmia Ricchuito

When I was born, they said I didn't cry.
I suppose after nine months 
tethered to your umbilical noose
sharing a body that 
never felt like home

That I'd long realized I was wasting my breath 
with complaints.

Complaints are for the living.
Mourning belongs to the living.
And I was born
somewhere in between.

There was a part of me
abandoned in utero
before I ever took my first breath
like a song left off Nevermind.
An afterthought, a footnote.

Who listens to parasites, anyway?

My father hated the parts that were just like my mother
because she was never satisfied.
My mother hated the parts that were just like my father
because his temper could make even an angel cry.

I learned to stop crying 
before 
anyone 
could give me 
something 
to cry about.

Long before my precocious ears heard 
the empty threats 
of generational curses
from cycles my grandfather broke.

He showed me the moon
through a telescope
and asked me if I thought
we were alone on this rock in space.

He taught me
How to laugh.
How to sing.
How to ride a bike.
How to love.
How to read.
How to write.

It was in the pages of my childhood diary
that I first learned how to cry. 


When he died,
on a day dedicated to love,
I screamed until my throat bled,
the moon watching in silence
as I cried alone.

V a n i s h i n g P O I N T S / Tammy Smith

Since it’s no longer my fault
I’m FAT or that fads
keep changing (theory & practice) the way

       I   l o o k

at: pills pens pinpricks promises potential
ingest inject introject interrupt ideology

                           sacred scripts

                           in BOLD BULLETS

sublingual. slips of the tongue religiously

a weekly shot between breaths—watching
sweaty layers of scarred flesh

   shed     peel    unfold

as inches disappear

Letter to David from a Datsun Wagon  / Daphne Stanford

High school, driving foothills, boombox in 
back, blasting Jareth’s lament: Everything 
I’ve done, I’ve done for you. Of course, Sarah 
refused to accept her assigned role of 
Goblin Queen. Thigh gap, acid-washed 
jeans: But it’s not fair! Clock hands chime 13. 
You say that so often: I wonder what your basis 
of comparison is? Down in the underground, 
Jareth sought shelter among goblins. 
Gnomes chuckled, briefly–shame blushing 
your cheekbones. Helping Hands lowered you 
down tunnels, toward a daydream not unlike 
Alice’s Drink me teacup. Don’t mind if I do.

July - Poem 1

Quiver Theory / Clayre Benzadon

-after Marilyn Hacker

I was trying to keep my main hand
steady, but I couldn’t help it; the cry
that burst out of me was a monster. I
shook widely, wildly, I lost it, loose. And
then came the aftersniffles. I was full
of trembles, like lightning. Now, I come
home to a wreckage: papers everywhere, sum
of what they call disaster. I feel beautiful
in this chaos. I almost cry again, breast
heavy with a vibrating sensation of want. To be
as elastic as static makes my hair stand up. Trust me,
all I ask for is to be as animate as the last
time I quivered, without a tongue
having to get me there. Let me, unprompted, come—

I did not use the internet to write this poem  / RJ Ingram

Congratulations your application is still being processed you’re on hold to speak with a representative & there are thirty two people ahead of you in line / This is the vacation you’ve waited for the forty-five minutes of freedom you wouldn’t normally have on a Tuesday in the early afternoon / A godsend a respite a gosh darn miracle / The dryer broke so go-ahead & hang the sheets in the yard & when the neighbor boy asks what you’re doing just say some analog shit & blow him a kiss / When the car is in the shop take the bus & get to work an hour early & watch the bag boys get ready for their shift / Watch them take the paper sacks from their boxes watch them shine their rainbow buttons with their dirty T-shirts watch them click their clicky pens like they’re betting on a winner / When the basement floods take an inventory of the unneeded & when the roof leaks befriend every bucket in the house even if it’s not a bucket / The stock pot becomes a bucket the extra cat litter pan becomes a bucket heck even the paint bucket get’s to be a bucket / The world is an unblemished apple / Spinning so fast the pitcher can’t miss it / When he hits the apple the crowd screams & when the bat smashes it the crowd screams & when the worms come up to eat what’s left the crowd screams / I reached for my phone to make a call this morning but realized time works differently now that you’re gone / Things tend to end before they get going which seems to upset everyone else on the carousel / But not me no not me I’ve still got a trunk full of tokens. Hi-yah! 

Melancholic Music Takes Me Back to Sacramento Where I Discovered Fatalism or Something Like It / MeraBaid Kaur

(after listening to NPR's Tiny Desk: Chelsea Wolfe 2016)

My husband says we are all capable of anything, and he believes this, because the rhythm has hovered near the stamen never landing, but the waiving vibration of air wafts in, nostalgia enters the olfactory, the stimuli has been stimulated, response simulated, but its not response, its reflex, it is scents stacked on scents, stacked on scents and multiplied–magnified beneath the sweat that collects in the crevice of any old flap of unexposed skin.

You can’t hear the hovering hum, but you imagine it, you feel it stirring in the navel center where you were once attached to your mother’s lack thereof, there, of course was nothing specific to ingest, just waves of movement giving you fullness, not in language nor volume, in emotion, hers and yours and yours from long ago, and yours from later on and yours from the beginning of time that wasn’t yours, that wasn’t hers, but was.

It’s a choir, a resonant dissonance, it does not bring you chills, it chisels them into your soul, and they grow into notches along the shaft of your hair, it gets deeper now, don’t be fooled by calling it darker, it is not dark, it is pale and stark, your eyes squint to sift through all the light, you turn and eventually shut them tight. 

The ocean of night, wrapped around each drive into town, windows down, the high hangs on from all the other highs before it, vegan sushi from the co-op, where I’d happen upon future stars, knowing they would be someday. I possessed their songs in a painful remembrance perfumed in infancy. Twenty-one was a rip tide I’ve learned to wade in, the shoreline kaleidoscoping around me forever in this sinking symphony.

lights ou / Kes Maro

new river deltas bound in rounded rectangles. creased
sketchbook pages folded into the corner of the couch i
circle closed pieces of land, neatly fitting, but not
touching. negative space rivers, all that nothing enmeshed.
so often i want to be in the world this way, not touching,
fitting. is it taps that plays at night? before sunset,
the coyotes chime in, throwing their voices up matching
bugle tones, entering staggered resolving after the horn
’s measure. the land knows the base by its noise.
the proximity of planes over head, the horn in the morning
and night, sometimes jets breaking sound
barriers. terror doesn’t build
in the air here like elsewhere. nothing has ever fallen
from these planes and decimated a cul-de-sac.
i want the land to feel tight or i think it should be
more like, the way it felt one time driving over the border
into the six counties, how the land rations its breath
under the union jack’s greedy lungs filling in every window, 
or that it should be tenser than that. but the trees here
don’t feel worried. i’m not building
towards saying the base exists peacefully. really, i just
want to tell you about the coyotes, how they love
music, but there’s this landscape holding them
that can't be drawn over. i can't stop thinking
about where these planes go when they leave. 

ASD / Dallas Outlaw

Actually still deft
Agile and clever
enough to keep
you on your toes

quite literally
midnight snack runs
because eloping means
it's time to eat

and no i don't want
the most convenient
i want ice cream
because you know

(sensory)

and in the morning
when everyone's asleep
i'll sit patiently watching
the same clip of cartoons

or you may catch me
bolting in the living room
interupting dead silence
before being forced into

uncomfortable social situations
routine keeps things clean
because my mind is messy
did you know that the color

yellow is my favorite aura
it’s calming, a worldly pacification
since information keeps overloading
on the dock of my brain

once I see red
I’m thrusted back into
emotional dysregulation
all over again

Does everybody have this problem?
Or is my own spectrum colorblind?

How Long Until You’re Gone Too? / Azmia Ricchuito

When you are filled with a longing
For places you’ll never know
Always looking for home
You can never find it in people
With their coming and going
Everyone you ever loved
Will one day be lost to you
Do you start grieving the day you say hello?
Or do you take a chance
That this time you’ve arrived
And put out a welcome mat
And flowers at the dinner table
Building bricks from the ashes of longing
Knowing you are finally home

 Madness Has Some Nerve / Tammy Smith

Showing up unannounced
on a jam-packed NJ Transit bus,
halfway to New York City,
three hours before seeing
Girl, Interrupted
Off-Broadway in the Village.

How dare she block the aisle
with heavy bags,
causing weary-eyed riders
to trip over her belongings
on their way to seats
they already paid for.

Madness doesn’t care
about sweaty feet
tight inside loose shoes,
or pity worn-out soles
stuck in place.

Nothing matters.
Not this quicksand I’m in,
not this labyrinth I’m walking.

Not my therapist’s warning
when he insists
madness is what I manifest
to pass the time.

In the theater lobby,
I watch red-haired wild women
mingle and wait
for the show to start.

Sylvia Plath devotees.
Anne Sexton wannabes.
Hysterics.
Her Kind.
Mine, too.

Not to mention the nun
nestled in the corner,
needing salvation.

Doesn’t everyone?

After the show,
on my way back to Port Authority,
when the subway doors won’t close
and racist remarks spill
from a passenger’s lips
like loose change—
I’m reminded of the older Asian man
who sat in the front row beside me
and confessed he, too,
was a mental patient
back in the sixties.

How turbulent that time was,
not unlike this ride home.

Wilder, Be  / Daphne Stanford

After Lucie-Brock Broido

As in startlement: birds flying dark toward
bewilderment. Emily sought fortitude: wander-

lust, purplings most wild, more purported than
possible. And wild to hold, and wild to shame:

field of larkspur & purple thistle. Dandelions 
blowing seed toward wandering lambs, velvet

nostrils fixated upon moors, traversed: first by 
Emily, then LBB, who wrote herself into E’s hand.

Notwithstanding, removing the tops of heads 
necessitates a refusal to deny bewilderment. 

Master, grant fortitude to grovel toward trails
untraversed: black olive, oak, maple & birch; tree 

trunks guarding lambs huddled in copse-woods.
…And wild to wreathe, and wild to tame: forest & 

fogged-up windowpane, notwithstanding. Be-
come wilder than the wind. (David was here, too.)

June - Poem 30

you can’t take the countryside out of me / A Cento composed by Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

with lines contributed and by Kristina Byas, Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson, Jess Gleason, Shane Moran, Jingyu Li, Stephanie Zito

I go to the trees,
raspberry my heart in blossom,
where sleep left me, torched,
and asks nothing of me
lovestump,
rising off dry ice. — serious — we’re mute ash,
a path worn smooth by someone else’s footsteps.
Yielding detours of my own
and I felt that in my bones.
Unearthing detritus of days gone by,
mistaking this scar tissue
between green covered mountains,
little sticks of dynamite
fading as they flutter, turn pale
like sails over her eyes,
settled inside the wound
and blanket myself in breath.
I can finally breathe.
fluency in us —

Still finding his balance
this moment will never end.
In one dream, the ghost said to get dressed for bed.
I’m delighted to wrap
the laughter of those missing.
Seen
for the son buried warm.
What we owe
a tap root to sink
until it fell in line —

Curiosity called me to climb:
I wanted to do it right, but I was peopling
heroes or foggy mirrors of our fellow struggles
even dreams must bind to —

Am I growing into my father’s sunlight
Because, somehow, I love my father still?
I like watching you smoke,
One mouth moving at a time —

God is a watchmaker in an old southern town,
like a half-dollar rattling the floor til’ flat, hand-holding and
was touch with him. I keep returning
for years, calling it home —

Exchanging hunger for love was routine
in my family. We called it Tuesday.
But the people who chose me back
scatter through the fields, where
my nightmares denting the pastures,
and rejoice in having my life for the living —

I release the interrogation of my own existence
into paper, the winter that healed
the more we flinched against that fire –
After the run of the day the sun takes a dip.
I want those june bugs back —

Birds sing me back to life, making the city
swelt red from my skin
until the day I die and go to hell,
I’m rooted for the season
across our skin again
in terrible corners —

I sometimes shudder to consider
sour obedience.
I lay myself down
then stayed on purpose.
I left the light on in the house.
I believed in infinity then.

I build, I change, I repair.
Begging. I say to you
in some dreams I’m the monster,
roots sprawl, building a staircase as
they move like teeth. Out here in the woods,
I wish I could repent at your bedside
atop the horns you hide.
The cherry, your mouth,
my sensual sanctuary
she gave me. A stone for holding
Kintsugi of hearts, frozen lake,
the sun sporing itself through the clouds —

Hope is enough to let it.
I can be the sturdy clay of earth
settled inside the wound:
I love you—infinity—

I wake up and try to remember
am I still
shimmering and white, monstrous angels
spanning from gold to blue —

I tried to write a love poem but I pained
all the fuck alone in my basement
this internal bruising, we’re just committing
a tap root to sink.
– all I think about is the coming storm
in purple hands.

Watch me silently sit,
the wing fells into the porched arch of my lower back,
belly down. Her ear resting right below his chest
into the untamed fields—a violent dell –
the shadows do not hold,
spikes pointing every direction —

If Michelle Obama is a Man, so Am I / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

Even though we birthed black babies.
Even though we forced them out of our holes
and offered them up to America
as a sacrifice.

Look at the slant of our jawlines
when our heads are tilted to the sky
while we’re thinking, the curve of our necks
when we’re swallowing again and again.

There’s no proof we could give that would satisfy
the doubter: a hand on our breasts? a finger
inside us? Our holes have been probed enough
—every word dissected for missing
consonants, every dress scrutinized
for missing sleeves.

We’ve diapered men, nursed
them, burped them, bathed
them, rocked them, taught
them, led them, held them, grieved
them, enabled them, resurrected
them, loved them. We’ve made men
president, and still some men
can’t say our names without choking
first, without stifling the urge
to say nigger behind us.

Look at all that we begot!
—babies and businesses
congregations and
countries.

Fine.

If we’re men
we’re the toughest
men, the kindest men
the smartest men. If we’re men
(then just admit it)
we’d make the most goddamn
beautiful fathers.

HANDS / Shane Moran

LEFT HAND

Answering the phone at the Berkeley Hotel is how I spent my summers off from college: helping

pretty girls sneak into the pool and drafting poems in the back, waiting for a bell. Every job has its perks, though most jobs are only bearable if the future is on your mind. For me, a present obsessed with the present is too stuck, too Buddhist. 

After I graduated, I became the hotel assistant manager. Hospitality is about pretending you love people despite recurring inconvenience.   I’m quite familiar with such labor, but couldn’t pretend forever. Jim Ryan soon gave me a job writing emails for him in his office. I sat beside Kalea and Sarita, fresh graduates, who walked with me to gossip on the lawn around lunchtime.   

Few things are more interesting than the office politics at an old university. Still, my interest in pretending to be another man eventually dwindled, and my boss noticed and gave me three months to find another job.     Oh.   Well.   My life is over.   Failure.   Ruin.   Blah.   Etcetera.   

Then, probably a week later, I found work in HR—writing about mental health and the quotidian.   No one likes to work, and I know that. So there I was: twenty-six, ADHD, dyslexic, a little girl-crazy, somehow writing for 38,000 people every month, saying things like:

• Remember, getting on SSRIs is probably a good idea.   

• You don’t need to miss your sister’s wedding to finish a spreadsheet.   And if you must, here’s how to cope with it.

• Underrepresent how much you can do in an hour, then quietly exceed what virtually everyone else is doing, since  accumulating wonder is both enjoyable and, in most offices, a marketable skill. 

• Xanax is a perfectly reasonable after-work treat, provided your car is already in the garage.  

• Zoom meetings are for the morning.  Have that drink.  We will replace you.  Live a little.
  
  

RIGHT HAND

Zero is my projected profit from poetry this year.  My days are divided : work, poems, and scrolling

everything except X.  RIP Twitter.  Sometimes, my phone gets so hot that it won’t charge, so I have to take it out of the case to keep scrolling.  Please resist sharing your judgment.  I’m quite innocent—much of my doomscrolling, really, is an algorithm of worthy poems and unreachable women.

Vices are best when people can’t see their effects on your physical body. I avoid overeating, overdieting, gym-ratting, frequent naps on tanning beds, and the like.  I’m waiting to finally get paid for  waking up only to fall in love—for my addiction to heartbreak (and my drinking).  All this is the foundation for the almost-smut, the grief, and the confession I’ve put in this pretty package for you—and, if you ask me, selling it at a decent price.

((Only $20?))

Racing after recognition would be in my LinkedIn bio—if I’m honest. I see you—you see me. If you quote Baudelaire then tell me you watch Baddies, I’ll find you interesting.  Pose for me.   Let’s watch it together, so I won’t feel so judged by the crisp voice of Marianne Moore in my head. You know, one hour of dubious reality TV can feel medical     cathartic, if you will. 

Natalie and her baddies would’ve probably appalled Marianne,  as did Ginsberg and his Beats, as did those pre-internet-porn exposés—but I bet the longer she watched, the more she’d find the ladies' fascination with realness     entertaining.  It is hard to look away.  Knowing her cold eye, after a couple of episodes,  she might write of this life of spectacle over dignity:

I, too, dislike it.     Don’t know why I watch—certainly not for the wig pulling.   Maybe it is the hammer of judgment on my heart,       reminding me of all I’m forbidden to do.

Growing takes time,     they tell me—but it is a constant fight for money and affection, brand and recognition.  I’m eager to determine who I am.  I want you      to know who I am.  I crave an eye that knows what is real and says what it sees. Baudelaire still comes to mind : 

what strange phenomena we find…
‍ ‍All we need to do is stroll about with our eyes               open.

Words for an Adult / Jingyu Li

Please, accept substitutes: a promise ring, 
a cardboard house. Paper folded into a fan shape. 
These were things you lived for. A popsicle stick
could build bridges, a sweet treat meant a sunny day.
Think of paper hearts and think of real hearts.
Among the grasses hide tiny people, bend down
and whisper to them what you hope 
will never change.

Homecomings (and Goings)  / Stefanie Zito

The car was filled with the smell of it
As we moved down the highway from the airport
The rhythmic rumble of roadway under tires
Pavement patched together 
Staccato stretches of billboards 
Peppering the horizon 
A metronome of homecoming
Steamy asphalt and deep fried everything in the distance
Marked the fragrance of summer breaks
Extended family, former homes, 
Now unfamiliar, foreign.
Feeling stranger.
Cold seams unraveling over time.
Connections I didn’t know how to repave.

June - Poem 29

Reflex / Kristina Byas

I stopped

listening to the rhythm of their breaths,
trying to read their faces.

Stopped measuring their silence
only to be mistaken.

Stopped believing
I could outrun
what someone else
had already decided.

As if I could bargain,
trade their truth for mine,
and call it understanding.

Anniversary Poem / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

Though we don’t make
up make
out make
sense make
love make
room for each other
on the couch anymore,
we make
believe we
make do
we make
dinner.  

astronaut apéritif   / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

When I walk into boiling summer days,
the air soup and dampening sound,
my heart is cold with the crisp quiet of winter.

My heart never arcs with static desire for cold
more than in the pinch of winter storms,
when the air reflects the cream-sounding light 
of streetlamps the world, a crystal
halo. Here I crave
a deeper cold to sink within –

some sort of marrow-spoon to hollow me,
soup me up for the snow to eat,
reclaim me into clouds.

So, toss me up, lathered on toast,
to brush across the edge of space.
Let the black matter of the universe taste
what I offer and let me savor
what true freezing tastes like in return.

AUREOLA  / Shane Moran

Grow up with earth   -   eyes closed
Build the palace  -   the sky  
mourn more of your learning
Who learns to sing and does not know

The garden rocks reek of jasmine breath
Bulbs gladdened by a smile become one 
endless ribbon  -   Stars get tangled 
in her hair, comb them out for dinner

Teach kindness as a butterfly would
Become of the finest gifts   -   Chance 
to rise or kill what sprouts out the dirt
of you  -   One can lose   -   only illusion

Window / Jingyu Li

When my grandmother died, my father wrote her name 
in a notebook and drew a circle around it since 
no one can step outside of death. 

When my grandmother died, 
my father drew a circle around himself 
and looked at us through the thick window.

In the nights, he stepped outside the window. 
In the days, he stepped back in.
One day he asked me if he could hurl himself from it. 

What would I do if he jumped out the window and died, 
he asked me. And since I was young, I had no answer 
but I remembered the window.

There were times I forgot about the window
and tried to reach through the air for him.
There were times I believed we were on the same side 

of the window. Or that I was him,
that I was the one about to jump.

Some days I turn my back to it, him and the window.

Cherish  / Stefanie Zito

We sat together
You in my lap and me on the armchair 
Which held us through it all.
Our home’s baptismal furnishings
The inaugural provisions of postpartum rest 
Receiving the mess of waterweight 
The milk that came in 
The tears that followed.
We tested the limits of space 
As we grew two by two 
Canines and kids alike
My capacity stretching along with it.
Our yellow chair, the color of joy– 
Forsythia, dandelion–
Early markers of spring.
Seasons have shifted, bodies growing 
in time under tension
Fraying warp and woof
A slow shredding into disrepair. 
Our trusty, rusty chair sat itself on the curb 
We curled into its final embrace.
and carried our sorrow inward.
November’s darkness hung thick overhead
I turned on my heel and tore outside
Sheers in hand, tears on cheek
I stabbed the chair in its backside
Cutting to the heart, a swath for the savoring \
Running back inside waving 
a victorious yellow flag of revival.
With my needle and thread
I wrote its next chapter
Piercing precious remnants 
Two heart-shaped pillows 
With which to bolster my children’s spirits– 
A new and reimagined place to land.

June - Poem 28

Don’t Mind the Boys / Kristina Byas

Girls will be girls,
free,
wild,
laughing with ease.

Then,
here come the boys,
being boys they’ll be.

The Wound is not a Metaphor / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

The Wound is not a Metaphor
it’s the mangled toenail, split
and lifting. I approach it with reverence,
examine it, stand on tip-
toes, the throb of it.
My little pain baby
—foul fat flesh growing
around it. I love the way
it catches light.

cuteness aggression  / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

Foxgloves accordionfold out 
the hole in my chest
to the wound in yours.
I didn’t mean to let my yellowing hands
scrounge too wide, I wanted
to lounge like the sinners in limbo
with jasmine blossoms overflowing,
on your bruised face, cresting over
crusted cuts in the twinkling symmetry
ionic – iconic in its looming sun-
flickered in freckles and motes,
sloughing broken skin, and unhealing
lines in your face. I left them there –
that you asked me to leave
in a voice begging to leave
red welts, hand-shaped, 
hand slapped, shovel-dug-
slam into your body
again with a meaning I can decrypt
when I bury you in bitter thyme and roiling worms
I pray you groan and rip my skin,
feel coughed nails, lungs splintering in
each bark telling me
that I’m wanted.
Someday we’ll sit, watch the seagulls
dawn over the ocean, and fight over the crabs,
who couldn’t scuttle sideways fast enough
to avoid the sharp beaked love.

Angel Sonnet 12  / Shane Moran

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love? Can the child within my heart 
rise above? Beryl asks sitting beside his ex-wife at their daughter’s 
graduation, dancing with his ex-wife at their daughter’s wedding,
waking from a dream of his ex-wife the day of her second wedding.

Alone is a sturdy coffin, with only one string to pull on,
put he had to feel for it in that dark space. Often, he mistook 
the fabric of his own clothes for the bellstring, until one day 
he pulled and kept pulling it and the casket opened.

For while he stood there looking at the open sky,
until he lifted himself and stepped back out into the world.
His eyes took time to adjust to the bright lights of the sun.
He left new flowers at the foot of his parents grave and asked.

──────────────────

11.    one can
       lose
  only 
      illusion

Other Home  / Jingyu Li

   for River, Komal, Kani, Nancy, David

Somehow
I think I left something behind,
possibility maybe, or a banana slug. A month and
we’ve done what my family never could or never would,
we understood each other somehow, metaphysical 
dogs and all, and in prayer we named different
gods but they all sounded like gratitude
and every day we looked for the bear
that wouldn’t hurt us, in the place
that wouldn’t hurt us. The satellites in the sky
look like fireflies, I said. But I didn’t know 
they were satellites until you told me. 
Of course metaphysical dogs are real,  you said
and so we became friends. 
We make each other laugh, you said
or I forgot the words. I’ve started talking
like you. My brother thought your voice was mine
in a video with the bear. I need to walk this off,
you could have said about anything, 
I’m wide open.

Ordinary Miracle  / Stefanie Zito

Little by little
Rain falls. Sun shines. Flower grows.
Tale as old as time.

June - Poem 27

They Said I’d Understand When I Was Older / Kristina Byas

it was for my own good
at least that’s what they told me
at least that’s what I told myself

because the truth is always quieter
than the lies we
inherit
embody
and
protect

Same Mom. Same Moon. / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

My mom, at home in her slippers,
likes to stare up at the moon and hope
that I, forty miles away at home
in my bed, am staring out the window
at the same moon. “It makes me feel
close to you,” she says. Same mom.\
Same moon. Same moment of quiet
recognition. She likes to praise
God’s handiwork:
the moon, of course.
And me. 

carbon-rod dating  / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

I set fire to this house myself
and lay on the floor with you.
Your sunset-cloud eyes tendered me,
the smoke roiling over the ceiling.

Electricity warps with possibility.
Fire already combusts.

Our hands fell close, but sparks
sang better the less we touched,
the more we flinched against that fire
callusing out of every sooty bond of us.

Water births life.
Fire breeds it.

I stole the attic bird nests to weave
my kindling lips, painted them
with rosemaling rocking chair cinders,
pressing them, finally, to your lavender-stalk neck.

A nucleus fissions radiation.
A fire always radiated.

When the roof avalanched around us,
embers and charcoal and crisps,
a single electron of mine jumped
across the crush of bones to you.

Angel Sonnet 11  / Shane Moran

A child who’s lost the one who made him,
searches for her in the trees and in the unknown
bodies of others. Beryl found a woman other 
than his wife to push grief into and she loved him. 

Four years later, his wife asked for a divorce. 
Their daughter: eleven. Two is better than one,
was the pitch he gave her about her new bedroom, 
which was a carbon copy of one from an Ikea ad.

And when his daughter returned home each week, 
if there was no woman for company, there was crying
through the night. Beryl listened to his mom’s old cd’s
Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love? Can the child within my heart….

──────────────────

11.   chance
rise 
          or kill 
                   what sprouts
out the dirt of  you

Excerpt from “A House in Other Words” / Jingyu Li

mother 
garden         green
        home

       mother
geese         imagine
       home

        garden
mother      home
         green

       garden
geese        imagine
        green

        geese
garden       green
       imagine

        geese
mother     home
       imagine

A mother always faces
                            home while the geese look south \
            to warmer weathers

                                      But what happens when a mother faces two homes?
                         her daughter & infant son
                                                         her mother & father & country in a country far away

      She wishes she could fly the distance—like geese—oh if she could fly!

Roots Entangled  / Stefanie Zito

A seed knows how to grow
And so do I, for I began as such
Tucked in soft and sacred darkness
A cellular unfolding 
A dreaming into being 
Stretching into new spaces\
The liminal land of womb. 
I’m still cracking open
Emerging
Taking root
Going deeper
Growing into the knowing 
Of my being-ness
How to harmonize with
The holy mess of it all.

June - Poem 26

Bully / Kristina Byas

I don’t remember them all,
the many things they called me
other than my name. 

And it wasn’t forgetting,
just surviving,
choosing my own voice 
over their echoes. 

Exiting Eden / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

There are bugs in paradise:
woolly-legged ones,
yolky-eyed, fat-winged,
ones that cling to the skin
like a grifter.

And the sun still spills its
milk on everything,
making us wet and rotten.

This is what Eve knew
when she planned her escape,
her mouth open wide and wanting.

She got tired of all that beauty—
another sunrise, another sunset,
ripples waltzing across the lake.

Sometimes thunderstorms are nice,
or twisters, 
earthquakes too,
how they shake us
up, rearrange
the garden.

Beneath the Hand-shaped Oak  / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

The last time I lounged beneath
was with summer in you
and my hands were brimmed
– june bugs, honey sandwiches, desire.

Now in aches of spring, again
the tree’s blossoming perfumed leaves,
but no June, no honey,
only desire.
Hands emptied, save
cloudy sunshine gaping through
such splinter fingers.

I want those june bugs back
– hopefully I can resurrect enough
of their iridescent bodies 
to forget they stink when smashed.

Angel Sonnet 10  / Shane Moran

She joined him on the other side—held him,
and Beryl shrugged his wife off his shoulder,
telling her he’s fine, and continued reading
his eulogy. She returned to the pews and

he told the people of his mother who now
was with his father, and how he was unsure
if she would be thrilled or slightly concerned
she’d have to cook his favorite chili for eternity.

Once they were all gone from the repass,
his wife joined him in bed and held him—
His core convulsing, screeches of a bobcat,
a child who’s lost the one who made him. 

──────────────────

10.  be
  come
          of the finest 
  gifts

In the Rain in the Dark / Jingyu Li

I hold a flashlight in front of me
lighting up the few feet of road ahead of me
and I don’t know what’s behind me
or around. I wanted to spot a bear,
but I’m only looking at the ground,
though most things fall to the ground
so a lot can be implied from looking there.
The flashlight lights up streams of fine rain falling
and I see the slugs and occasional colored
leaves. I see what looks to be a snakeskin, I think
that’s what it is, so I take a closer look. But it’s the whole
snake smashed into the road, flesh spilling out 
the sides, but barely. A snake it turns out, is mostly skin, 
so with its insides out is still beautiful and recognizable. 
I’m grateful today, that I can say life has taken me
so far. I paint a picture for others to see, I walk
through the rain and tell a story.

Emotional Roll Call  / Stefanie Zito

They trace the trenches they’ve made
swiftly shuffling up the sidewalk
a familiar and deeply trodden path
one by one, brisk knocks on the door
I become their doormat. Groaning.
My hospitable disposition turns cold
hostility instead overtakes.
I light the candles and wish they could go elsewhere.

Maybe they just need to be seen
to be noticed. 
a welcoming wave instead of kneejerk wince.
Suddenly I observe their pain as my own
soften my resistance and draw them in. 
Hello to Fear. Anger. Resentment. 
We go way back... Greetings.
Guilt. Shame. Regret. I see you carpooled again.
Welcome, Grief. I know you like to linger… I’ll pull up a chair.
Anxiety, it’s been a minute, but only just.

How about we make space for the Cautiously Hopeful?
I’ll extend the table– set the leaves in place.
Will you join me? Let’s make room for it all. 
It’s time for some Radical Hospitality. 
Let’s say Grace.

June - Poem 25

Damages the Art / Kristina Byas

I’m afraid you’ve been mistaken.

No one carved me smooth,
polished me for mantel display.
No sparkle or shine.
You won’t find me on a pedestal,
or hear songs filled with my praise.

I’ve got gritty corners tearing at fraying threads,
splinters catching on careless hands.

I am
unbecoming,
jagged.
Refusing to sand myself down
for easier holding
only to be mishandled.

My edges are proof
I’ve touched the world
and been hit back.

But there’s softness
after the burning subsides.

Homegoing / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

her fingernails 
the color of wet tea bags
she holds a moist cotton ball 
up to the place where the mouth 
splits open

in the backwoods 
of Mississippi, pods hang 
from the carob tree, curled up and dry 
like my grandmother’s body

God is a watchmaker 
in an old southern town

Plutonian Orbit  / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

It’s a warm day in spring and I sit 
beneath a sycamore with baby leaves
and I see your green sapling face.

I stand like I’m cornered by a predator
– some tiger waiting at me –
hands out if a 90˚ angle will defend me.

It’s high hot day in August and I roll 
into the shade of that sycamore
and you’re shirtless at the fountain.

I hold in a scream so hard I blow my voice.
I eat Oregon forest black cherry ice cream
to revive what’s left of my throat.

It’s fall, the sycamore is falling,
like the sky, and no one is out
in the gray and the thunder.

So I float down through the cobwebs
of my ceiling and land in my unmade bed.
I can’t stop moonscape-shaking.

It’s a delicate winter day after snow,
I walk looking down, and you
hit me with a snowball.

I gaze at the underlid of your eye –
whatever could be within their green irises too 
expansive in expression and reflected in my own.

I crave your hands at the mid-
crutch of my back – the wing-
spot – where I can never itch.

Caress me there, see me here,
and I’ll kiss you once
and I promise –

I don’t know what,
but I know it will taste like sun-
dried limes, cloves, and honey –

Angel Sonnet 9  / Shane Moran

Backpack bouncing on her shoulders,
she skipped all the way to the car.
Beryl held his breath until he got his 
Hi, Daddy, releasing it with her Hi, Baby.

And then, he lowered the music to a murmur,
asking if she’d like pizza before they head home.
Wearing a bib designed to look like a large slice,
he shared—a little sauce on her face, he had to tell

her something. Grandma—my mom, Lala passed
away this morning. Beryl fell quiet as the pizza fell
|flat on her plate, and she slid out of her booth.
She joined him on the other side—held him.

──────────────────

9.  teach 
      kindness
as a butter
                fly would

Days / Jingyu Li

     by Bei Dao trans. Jingyu Li

Use a drawer to lock up your secrets
Write notes in your favorite books
Insert the letter into the mailbox
Then stand silently for a moment 
Stand in the wind, making judgements 
about those who pass by, without scruple
Be aware of the shop windows lit 
by neon lights. In a telephone 
booth, drop a coin into the slot
Ask the old man fishing beneath the bridge 
for a smoke. The boats on the river 
sound their empty whistles
Gaze at yourself through the fog and smoke 
of the theater’s dressing mirror. When the curtains 
cut off the noise from the stars and sea
Flip through the pages of pictures 
and handwriting under the light. 

Things I Used to Think  / Stefanie Zito

I once thought autumn leaves reattached themselves to waiting branches in spring.
I once thought the lamp post next to the half moon was the moon broken in two.
I once thought I wanted to be an astronaut until I discovered my fear of flying.
I once thought I could save all sea life by snipping the plastic rings of soda cans.
I once thought the difficulty of love was merely in the finding of one’s soul mate.
I once thought heaven and hell were destinations rather than internal residences.
I once thought I knew what I was doing until I realized I didn’t.
I once thought everyone else knew what they were doing, but they probably don’t.

June - Poem 24

Dress Code / Kristina Byas

Girl,
smile.

Be sweet instead of bitter,
easier to swallow.
Because if they choke,
we’re dead.

Psalm of Pleasure / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he
leadeth me beside the still waters. 3  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness for his name's sake. 4  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with
oil; my cup runneth over. 6  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:and
I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

What Dredges When Listening to YUNGBLUD’s “love song”  / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

Slam into my heart with secrets –
you’re screaming bloodily out anyway –
we’ve both kept them too long.

Exchanging hunger for love, was routine,
but sky-fell out of truth and now must
slam into my heart. With secrets,

I whisper over a cauldron of my body
I didn’t deserve the harsh-love.
We’ve both kept them too long,

this internal bruising, we’re just committing
our weirdest bodies to fix this wild
slam. Into my heart, with secrets,

I nurtured whatever love would grow,
It never was for myself. Just memories
we’ve both kept. Them too long

screaming we’re not good enough, never
good-enoughs. Maybe I won’t listen.
We’ve kept them too long,
slam into my heart without secrets.

Angel Sonnet 8  / Shane Moran

He saw nothing but the crown of her face—a halo
as he woke her. His wife away, she brushed her teeth with him.
He sits on the toilet giving her directions
on how to wash her body. After she shouts

I’m done, he has her jump from the tub
into her towel and he lifts her up into his arms.
He tries to do her hair like mommy does it,
but she will have to be satisfied with a ponytail.

He tells her in the car line, not to let any boys
pick on her. And she nods, running out the car
slamming the door behind her. Her Abby Cadabby
backpack bouncing on her shoulders.

──────────────────

8.   stars
         get tangled 
in her 
         hair, comb them out for dinner

Museum / Jingyu Li

crowds trace
one man’s feeling
through empty 
halls and 
silent rooms, can 
walls hold time
in place?

Seasonal Swarm  / Stefanie Zito

The seasonal swarm of winged ants were
eerily illumined by the glow of our chunky television
dispersing soon after arrival.
I sat disquieted on our muted carpet 
my back to our family sofa
watching in anticipation 
with my antenna up.
Climbing onto the couch, 
clutching cushions softly
weeping into the orange plaid
forecasting my own flight. 
I’m lifted and carried off 
to our next house for a season.
The couch didn’t meet us there.

June - Poem 23

What I Answer To / Kristina Byas

I didn’t want to be named for a legacy.

I didn't want a life already outlined,
a path worn smooth by someone else's footsteps,
their story folded into mine.

Chapters written before I learned to hold a pen.
Pages filled with expectations, hesitations, and grievances.
Annotations explaining away the choices
they labeled as mistakes
or immaturity.

But I hear it,
how people say it with reverence.
Like something sacred.
A prayer whispered in a dead language.

I’d rather something chosen
for the person standing here,
not for the memory standing behind me.
No family myth.
No invisible audience waiting to see
if I could live up to it.

A name that belonged only to possibility.

Instead, I learned early
how heavy a few syllables can be.

How a name can point backward
every time it is spoken.

How it can feel like being mistaken
for someone you've never met.

And still, I respond.
Maybe it is suitable enough.

Or maybe there’s a name
I might have given myself,

one that feels like an unburdened breath,
and asks nothing of me
but my own becoming. 

Mother Goose Goes to Therapy / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

Sometimes I want to scream.
Sometimes when I’m making breakfast,
I want to smash the carton
of eggs to the floor.

I’ve secretly wished to push
kids down the hill at the playground.
I’ve dreamt of whipping the children
and sending them to bed.           

Do you think it has something
to do with my childhood?
Is there a pill you can prescribe
to make the rain, rain go away?

I’ve been seeing beggars riding
wishes like horses again. Just last night
I opened the door to shout hey
diddle diddle at the cow and the moon. 

Upon Hearing Stephen Wilson Jr.’s “Father’s Søn” for the First Time  / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

My father fished every Halloween –
glowstick on the end of his deep sea fishing pole
reeling unsuspecting families to the door.

My father used the same pole to fly kites
in the Maine seabent winter winds.
The kite shaped like a shark.

I’ve grown jealous of breezes
rolling effortlessly
as children slipping on ice.

He held the rod over my shoulders.
The wind vibrated down my arms,
morse code of the sky. The shark tried
to snap away, but we gave it slack
with each gust it looped towards the sky
further from the sea. His narrowed arms
surrounded my minnowed body,
held me on earth.

Am I growing into my father’s sunlight 
because I miss the melt in him,
because I want light alive again–
or just that I don’t know how to float?

He didn’t echo as his father’s son – 
too much wind
never enough shark.

Could I’ve been my father’s son
as well as his daughter?

I think I’m shark enough for him:
packful and almost patient, almost-
learning the poor lessons he taught, poor-
lessons he’d learned before. At least,
I hope so. I hope I find that kite
rolled in the attic, the basement, the garage,
reeking of mold and sky, and fish the sky.
I’ve already got his narrowed arms,
his cackle-laugh.

Perhaps, in the winter winds of Maine, I’ll launch
myself up, icing in the clouds over the sea.\
The gulls will eat my eyes
and I’ll see him again.

Angel Sonnet 7   / Shane Moran

The women who proclaim the good news are a great army,
Beryl said to his fiance’s bridesmaids as he found
his place at the altar, hugging and thanking each of them.
Clammy hands and watery eyes, he watched her father

give her to the altar. And after the first married kiss,
the eating and the dancing. They took a bottle of champagne
upstairs and got in the bath. He sat at the end—opposite 
the faucet—his elbows grazing the rim, while she lay

belly down, her ear resting right below his chest.
They scrubbed each other in vanilla. She rose out
of the water, and sat on him with a trill song. 
He saw nothing but the crown of her face—a halo.

──────────────────

7.  be
       come
one end
          less ribbon

The Fast Moving Lights Across the Sky are Satellites / Jingyu Li

and I miss my mother. I miss asking her what’s in the sky 
even though I just talked to her today, and she showed me the baby 
bird that fell out of the tree. It wasn’t quite a baby, it was 
maybe a toddler bird taking its first unsuccessful flight 
from the nest. My mother continued to garden, knowing the bird 
wouldn’t go anywhere. When she finished, she got her phone \
from the house to take a picture. I wonder 
if she would have regretted it, had the bird flown 
off against her prediction. She loves birds, so she might have 
been a little sad, but she would have been happy for the bird,
the way I’m happy the bullfrogs come and leave when 
they’re supposed to. It doesn’t take long to miss a place.
The satellites in the sky look like fireflies.

Self Soothe  / Stefanie Zito

I want to reach inside 
my chest and softly caress 
the unresolved spaces 
dipping fingers into the crux 
of these chambers 
and emptying myself 
of what was never mine to carry.
As I mine the depths 
of my courage
I soothe the spaces that have 
held on for dear life–
I hold myself instead
call myself beloved and 
whisper sweet somethings
under my breath.

June - Poem 22

Good Girl / Kristina Byas

I taste no apologies
on my tongue, but
I remember them,
dry,
bitter,
sour obedience.

Say a word enough
and it breaks apart,
first its meaning,
next its sound,
last its flavor.

I’ve learned a new way to say
I am here,
with a familiar unpalatability,
only not to me.

Blood Harmony / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

Childvoice

Heartbound

Fatherwound

Godbite

Throbknot

Smokeglow

Deadhead

Lovestump

Stillair

Motherchord

Kinburn

Mythmold

Griefwork

Faithflood

Blackhush

Blueode

solstice  / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

summer 
breathe sleep out of my lungs
cobweb sun to my eyes
raspberry my heart in blossom

winter
slake air from my glut
swelt red from my skin
slay shine from my eyes

Angel Sonnet 6  / Shane Moran

How the group decided a man was guilty
was first by him being a man, Beryl read
on the first page of a novel entitled,
Our World After Men, sitting on the table

of his friend’s lesbian parent’s apartment.
Gini sees him holding the book and after
asking if he’d like coffee tells him, how
much she loved the book: you almost forget 

about the men by the end of it. Beryl laughed, 
as he grabbed another book from the table, Psalms. 
The dogeared page had a note in the margin, reading:
The women who proclaim the good news are a great army.

──────────────────

6. bulb
          gladdened
    by
      smile

It’s Father’s Day and I Haven’t Called / Jingyu Li

In the dark I walk
from cabin to laundry room to move my clothes out 
of the wash and into the dryer—it would be too late 
by morning, they would all smell of damp. I felt 
a horror, that fear from childhood, of bears and of monsters 
restless in the dark. The bear I had been waiting for 
in daytime would be something entirely different at night. 

The past days I’ve been asking, how do I let myself 
feel without the flood? My father used to 
cook me noodles at night after a hard day’s work, slim 
noodles in a simple broth, abundant with chili oil, 
scallions, two poached eggs. 

With the trees on both sides and my flashlight 
facing forward, I cannot comprehend what lies 
around me, how much periphery I cannot see. 

The important thing is not to spook 
yourself, if you start running you’ll think there’s something 
to run from. I keep my head straight, step
by step down those wooden stairs where the banana
slugs like to go. But they are not there now. 

I’ve moved my laundry like a good
adult. I’ve burst into my cabin and shut the door.
Can I let myself be afraid now? 
Petrified? Sorrowful? In this flood of warm air?

Please Turn Down the Heat   / Stefanie Zito

AC units synchronize their blasts
cutting summers dank swelter
drowning out the soundscape 
of tunes streaming from rolled down windows.
Neighborhood porch hollers are stifled
as is the incessant construction.
A glass of ice water sweats out a circle 
mirroring my own puddles 
of effort and release
amidst the thick air of ambient stress.

June - Poem 21

Ready. Set. Go / Kristina Byas

I keep count,
measuring the minutes
from now
to memory.

In All My Dreams, My House is the One I Grew Up in V / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

If I tell it exactly how it happened,
we were in a bar or a club, waiting
for a bus to take us home: me, my best friend,
and that one girl from high school I never
did like. The walls were yellow or green,
and I wandered down the stairs,
my son behind me, trying to keep
up with the woman in the black suit
with the bun in her hair. I opened
a door and someone was taking
a shower, but I couldn’t see who  
it was behind the curtain, so we ran
to the street, hopped the bus and rode
so long, we missed our stop.
We had to get off, so we walked
to my childhood friend’s house (but
it wasn’t her house), she let us in,
and we stood in the hall while she changed
her clothes. She was the age I am now, but as
she walked room to room, almost naked,
her body was long and lithe like we were
at seventeen, and I fell to the floor. I almost died
just looking at her. Then, somehow,
we were back on the bus trying
to get back to Mound St.

An Ode to the Tartan Army  / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

I fell asleep on the softest June night on chanting
No Scotland, No Party
My brain looned outward, fraying places
back and forth – Boston to Scotland –
leapfrogging who to sing, hug, kiss,
longest, loudest, hardest.

You rolled Boston in a love like a roar.
In a house burning itself,
you made us touch our own faces,
feel the tears there, and know
what kindness feels drawn
across our skin again.

Angel Sonnet 5  / Shane Moran

He leaves the building for the last time, smiling.
Jury Duty is not a glamorous activity, but Beryl
found it interesting to weigh the evidence of guilt
upon a person other than himself for once.

The man was accused of shooting his son’s best friend
after finding him on top of his wife in his bedroom.
Beryl found it hard to say guilty, but harder to say
innocent. The beauty of his wife wearing black 

didn’t help this discomfort. But under the September 
sky and out of the stuffy court room—he is eager 
to tell his friends all about it—guilt-free, 
how the group decided a man was guilty.

──────────────────

5. the garden rocks
      reek
of jasmine
    breath

Never / Jingyu Li

Tucson night, hot night
another wishbone, fast driving car
there’s an orange in my
pocket, take it, it's free.
A dog with a bone and a bark
on tv, the night was hot. I remember
the cowardly dog.
I remember houses burning down
bad things happening 
to good dogs. I fell 
on the steps, a sharp pencil 
stabbed a centimeter 
below my eye. Tom and Jerry 
were golden, something that would 
never end. If you chose the scared dog
over the brave one, nothing
would end. Nothing would change
walking to the store with your mom
for your birthday cake. She fought
with your dad. Still she remembered
your birthday cake. Cowardly 
dog, you’ve never been 
happier or sadder.

Holding & Held   / Stefanie Zito

Roots sprawl, building a staircase as 
I climb the stone shaped course
Soil-filled slits of eroded spaces
Plant green flags of marked memory 
Holding much in the crevices 
Cracks swell under pressure
Exposing raw spaces.

Though I want to be strong
I don’t have to be stone
I can be the sturdy clay of earth.
Soft. Held. Porous.

June - Poem 20

Doubt / Kristina Byas

Still.
Still not.
Still am.
Am I still?

My Father Talks About Death / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson

My dad says people are dying
who have never died before,
and I wonder if he’s talking
about me: little girl
in the picture—taffeta skirt,
socks trimmed in lace, pony-
tails, bangs, eyes
swollen from crying.

My dad says people are dying
in their sleep and not waking up:
eight-year old me pretending
to doze just so he’d pick me
up and take me to bed.

Object In the Mind of Others  / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason

The only meaning in life is to reside as a good object in the minds of others. 
– Tom Hiddleston quoting a “very wise man”

Longing is not strong enough verb for once
to be a thing, beloved as a childhood 
stuffed toy, velveteen and come to life,

trying to holler with my spaghetti-thread mouth
don’t trust anyone 
who tells you they are a nice
person, trust someone
who is kind to you.

Because nice is not kind.
Nice will tell you a lie and swear by it.
Kind will yell you truth while swearing.
Nice is in the lips painted red.
Kind is in the eyes rimmed red.

I want to live, wiser than Yoda
who proclaimed to do or do not,
there is no try. To try is all
we can swim to when we’re unfathomed.

Nice is thoughts and prayers.
Kind is protesting.

Object in the minds of others
that strength is your arms, your legs.
Object it’s the size of your soul in god’s.
Strength snuggles fawn-shapped 
in bramble space
between heart and lungs in someone else,
eating bark and leaves and clover,
so the sun can shine down, finally
with finality, on the grave fresh
for the son buried warm
for lavender to grow in.

Angel Sonnet 4  / Shane Moran

Beryl conjures his father’s famous courage and smears
the butter on the bagel and makes the coffee with two sugars
just as John likes it. He knocks with only two quick strikes 
and after John’s come in, he slips his way into the office,

minding coffee. He sets it down on the coffee table 
in the middle of the office and asks John for a talk.
I have been here for four years, John, and I would like 
the opportunity to do more than assist your daily tasks.

And John looks at Beryl and laughs, then do it—
you don’t get a new job by only doing your job, kid.
Beryl nodded and turned around leaving the office.
He leaves the building for the last time, smiling.

──────────────────

4.  who learns 
to sing
      and does 
not know?

Dear M—, / Jingyu Li

It’s been hard to speak the truth lately. My hair’s 
been on fire but the painting hand still moves. The brush tip 
touches paper in calm strokes as if knowing some truth I don’t.
How can I speak what I do not know? The familiar feelings 
are not coming, so I must invite them like guests. I had a dream
a girl with the same name went missing. Her boyfriend 
came looking for her and I thought I could be of help. Almost 
immediately, I knew something bad had come of her. That was 
the end of the dream. When I woke, I was only glad to have felt 
strongly. I didn’t consider what the dream meant. It's bullshit 
isn’t it? That dreams are trying to tell you something. We only 
think that when there’s something we want to tell ourselves. 

I think I miss myself. I think I fear that I’m dead. 
Or that some parallel existence of me is dead. It shouldn’t 
matter because I didn’t like her all that much. 
But dear god I miss her. 

Seneca Rocks   / Stefanie Zito

Seneca stands out 
of place, a shifted stone
forced from his home
of the sunken sea. 
A hardened tsunami wedged 
between green covered mountains
strained upright by jagged time.
This rocking relic remembers
his origin, boasting hefted artifact 
with a wave of his towering tidal fin
in resistance to fitting in.