THE June, 2024 30/30 PROJECT PAGE

The volunteer poets for June are: Emily Badri, Sarah Borruto, Eliana Du, Shir Kehila, Ashby Logan Hill, Michael Seward, Andrea Simpson, Kerry Trautman, and Sarah Vande Kamp.

If you’d like to volunteer for a 30/30 Project month, please fill out our application here and warm up your pen!

Day 30 / Poem 30

a cento like cut apples / composed by Michael Seward

Whatever grit you’ve got to share is needed  / Emily Badri

Shave down your fangs
Act like you don’t need them anymore
Lose your yesterways 
They’re not working anymore 
Hearts are not parasitic things
Piercing one will not 
Yield love in another
Unveil the throbbing of your own
Behold the brackish mass 
Look to someone younger yet
To remind you what’s gone missing 

Offer a potter’s hand to cup them along
But mostly listen 
Then Mold you well
We can all hold water

Folklore / Sarah Borruto

I need to see a face.
I need to hear a voice.
I need to feel a body.
I need to sit in my sorrows
then dream them away, linger
in too many doorways 
and find home in morning.
I need an apology 
like I need forgiveness. 
Take this blame as a blade
and hold it for me. Take
these memories and make
a movie out of them to 
project onto every wall 
I stare at, powered by 
a lucidity I’ll recite 
like folklore. The tales 
I’ll tell my children 
and hope they don’t 
reenact

Ingredients for tomato egg stir fry: / Eliana Du

1. 2 tomatoes

At the Asian Food Market, Laolao would reach into bags with her dark wrinkled hands and pick tomatoes right there, shiny and red and covered in dirt. Underneath ceilings of yellow swinging lights and amber flypaper, she’d bite into them in the middle of the store and relish the juice and little yellow seeds dripping down her chin. I averted my eyes. Now, I buy tomatoes in fluorescent white light and vacuum-sealed DoorDash orders.

2. 2 eggs

My sister and I used to own two chickens. Not even chickens, but chicks. One for each of us. Laolao let them go before they could grow into lives of their own, before they even laid eggs. She was never there, and when she was, it was too much. I wonder how Omelette is doing now. Did she make it through the woods out back? Do her bones lie just outside our fencing, unremarkable in the world out there?

3. 3 tbsp. oil

I was oil in our family, slip-sliding between the lines and the quotidian friction. I was the sweet-talker, the reassurance, even in my broken Chinese. I was the one on the other side, with the anger building up inside, and yet still the one who catered toward her whims and emotional outbursts. Things get muddled when you try to look through me, through my viscous, vicious insides.

4. 1/8 tsp. sugar

Silence was sweet like a lump of sugar. Silence was like music to my ears, some choral hymn sung after ingesting ambrosia. Silence meant reading downstairs, meant truce times, meant another lull in the shouting and a moment to think. Silence melted away on the tip of my tongue.

5. 1 tbsp. soy sauce

The tomato egg stir fry Laolao used to make was my favorite dish before it became too salty. Because adding soy sauce was the last step, and she would always add it, then come back five minutes later having forgotten her first effort. I miss it sometimes, the light sizzles of the pan, the warmth of her good food in my stomach, the comfort of peace, if only for a moment.

6. 1 scallion

I remember her working in her garden. I think that’s the only time she was ever truly happy. I remember the dirt in her fingernails and the handfuls of scallions she’d stuff inside the fridge. I remember the songs she’d hum underneath that beating summer sun, the chh-chh of her knife thrumming against the cutting board at decades-practiced speed. She just wanted to contribute, I remind myself often. Too much, sometimes. 

7. 1 pinch of salt and pepper

When I am by her side now, I reach for those hands that still make me cringe, the ones whose calluses are familiar after years of sweet words and hand-holding. The ones shaped by years of farm work and then house work and garden work. I am taller than her, tall enough to look at her salt-and-pepper hair, cropped short to the sides of her head. She can’t wash long hair so easily. She may not know how to make tomato and egg stir fry anymore. But when I go to her senior residence, I pull out the pans and eggs and juicy red tomatoes, and get started.

Daffodil / Shir Kehila

At the spring, did he mean

to drink? Did thirst elude him,

flicker like a voice before, 

then after, fear—drowning

everything but the dry beat

of an Adam’s apple? Men 

are real in their legends, whole 

even when split, losing ribs, 

blooming past death. My dad drank

too little, then too much, but not

liquor. He drank as if water

couldn’t hurt, as if he couldn’t

drown inside out. You’re not 

a camel, my mom told him, 

and what did she know? Seeing,

herself, just a reflection—

Come Morning / Ashby Logan Hill

Come morning
a plea again to be reawakened
silver fish and a worm are one
and you go out on a limb 
like a bird

Come morning
when dawn has but yet to take
like a poppy seed you
took in your hands
yesterday and planted

Come morning
with the perennial blossoms
and old bulbs
billowing above
the red dirt

Come morning
and rainstorm and
clouds and golden sun
there is still much work
to be done before going

fig blossoms / Michael Seward

Postcard to Prufrock from Apollo  /Andrea Simpson

T.S.9–Sponges along the Dock, Tarpon Springs, Fla. U.S.A 

I too measure time, but in a 4/4 rhythm.  Metered,
Safe.  Tell me if you know this tune:  
the yellow fog licks at our ankles–bares her teeth.
Our poisoned waters–failings in our sunsets streaked, hues of red.
Sweet atrophied skyline.  Just yesterday a thousands pounds
of flesh moaned before the final rest.  Wept
while death played his violin of bone at their bedside.  His 
metronome heart tap tapping. Your mermaids 
were there too, but they were busy corralling decayed
seaweed for their tea.  Much too busy to notice me there. 

Ending with a Thundershower / Kerry Trautman

The Nissan in front of me hydroplanes on
flash-floody pavement, flung to rest at curb in

front of a Wendy’s where a teenager leans one
soaked arm out drive-thru window 2 with a

Frosty. June ends with thunderstorms on rose
blooms to remind us endings aren’t always

terrible. Just most times. My car air conditioning,
un-fogging my window glass, blows cold on my

wet body, wet groceries in the back. I ended
a 20-year friendship because she kept

trying to sell me pyramid-scheme weight-loss
drink. Does resilient describe me? The roses

are—losing some petals to pummeling rain,
but they were browned anyway, and they’ll

keep putting out new ones til November.
Like let’s say my husband died of a heart

attack tomorrow—a hailstorm to my soul,
my face puddled—I suppose I’d eventually

bounce back, right? Might not bloom again
though. Does that still count as resilient?

I wouldn’t dig out my rose bushes if they
stopped flowering, though I might resent them

a little, and resent rose blooms in other yards.
Hell even Wendy’s has a row along the parking

lot. When the rain stops, when I’m home, I’ll text
my husband, so he knows it’s not over yet.

Day 29 / Poem 29

big fret / Emily Badri

Honey darling

Sickle shoo

Twine in time for winding shrines

Supple, Dine, Eschew

Still here strong or weak

Still Leary still True

A figment of a fragment

I too planned to flee

There’s bigger and there’s worse

More pain more perverse

Staying blessed staying cursed

Pins and needles

Sleep averse

In the morning

Some reset

Some forget

Circuit circus

unbeset

This Is Where I Say Goodbye / Sarah Borruto

Fallen angels cannot 
be forgotten as long
as clipped wings flutter
subconsciously. The same
way the old pieces 
of yourself cannot be lost
as long as you carry 
your memories with you. 
I know I can’t fly 
but what if one day 
I might. 

There’s a safety in knowing 
who I am, but a danger 
in showing you. I’ll seathe 
with spider bites in July
and dig my nails into 
the blood beating welt— 
marking what was first 
my territory. 

And this is where I say goodbye. 
Howling through the humidity; 
humming my swan song in 
reverbs off the dewy cloak 
that separates the seasons,
echoing with each gust of air
that rattles off the cicadas—

Do you hear me? 
Do you hear me? 
Do you hear me?

Adding Color / Eliana Du

(inspired by a line from Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe)

“Love me! Love me!”
Punches thrown
Ring limelight
Sour air
Breath of thousands
Shines on you
You pull on your mask
Stage name emblazoned in gold
Red film taut over your eyes
Turns into rose-colored lenses
Through which they see you
You are strong; you are weak
You are comic; you are tragic
This is your stage; you act with your fists
With your body
With tense muscles
With black eyes
With lines you carve into your scalp
That drip-drip and coalesce on your eyelashes
The color you add to a match
You have one job
You draw them in
“Love me! Love me!”
You scream from the center
None of it is real
All of it is real
It’s a performance
But the blows hurt tomorrow
It’s a costume
But we see you naked
There is nothing but the
Center of the stage
The lights
And the sound of thousands
Roaring your pseudonym
Somewhere along the lines
The ropes fade to black
The blood-splattered ground is all you know
This is real
This moment
Howling your pain
Cracking teeth beneath your knuckles
Stagnant air and
Eyes fixed on you
“Love me! Love me!”

Averted Vision / Shir Kehila

Summer happens like honeymoons,
as the future of its passing, making

memories. I expect life would start
any time now—anticipate then get

lost in the wait. A chrysalis hangs
off a branch in a block print, skewed

on the wall—a dense, delicate bulb
of potential—the illusion of time left

to me. The apple blossoms have all
fallen, I assume, weeks ago, or just

disappeared. How to trace anything
back? You start, a photographer said,

with the swirling world, then cut
most of it out—reducting, not creating—

and I wondered if you weren’t doing 
both, always—if my life would start 

soon, or had started without having
reached me—if it was what I’d seen

through the meteor shower last August,
as I looked for Andromeda by looking 

off to the side, away from the vague 
blur of light, so that it might reveal—

We All Die Sometimes / Ashby Logan Hill

These words mean enough
The world you inhabit and are tasked to take care of are not meaningless 
          however temporary
The blueish glowing light in this beaker is the heavenly light in your eyes
How you maintain infinities in a single inch
I contain multitudes he says reaching for it in the grass
You are the trees and the grass and the birds singing and everything all at once
Does not death bring about you good fortune and purpose? 
The fortune teller sits across the table from you at your favorite cafe eating a 
          pastry and sipping on their iced coffee when you realize what is right in
          front of you
Outside the window two kids play tetherball and that is enough
Is it not enough to want what is beautifully simple, clear as the sky at night, 
          stars of all shapes and sizes, dancing and sweet laughter, among other 
          things, as you ponder, a life still waiting to wonder
We all die sometimes
These words mean enough

in some factory of clone / Michael Seward

as you grow massive     as does your achilles heel
where do we sing from when our throats are used as
stands              us so statuesque           and busted
one of these days         with less evident cranial nerve
damage            damage will find us      so statuesque
and entropic     end with the big bang   the trail leads off to foliage
wreckage and breadcrumbs      somewhere      with one of those
dogs                 anjing anjing    lonely little world of the little
molar holes      left from so many        teeth pulling far too hard at

the greying surplus

give me a door in the floorboards
give me the ability to lick myself clean
give me the conjuring capacity of hairballs

the same word over and over again
over over means several overs
dogtooth dogtooth
leaving lots of little holes
with perforated stabs of gravity
leaking back at you

knocking over these statues
comes off a little cathartic
a little cat
sphynx backhanded
type of statue
type of compliment

like why would you make me forever
in some factory of clone
some dolly some llama we’re missing the point

the canine teeth don’t show through the marble

Toxic  /Andrea Simpson

My news comes from a curated feed of my beliefs.  So

when I read about the little lamb strung up by its feet in the tree, throat slit,

purple tongue lolling like a crocus, I think about the angel of death,

blood pooling in the hand painted doorways.  The sweet

stench circling the house.  This is part of my folklore.  How this blood kept

death from the sons. Much embracing in the morning.  Lately I’ve researched cortisol,

and by researched I mean my algorithm is teaching me many things about cortisol.  I

prefer the lists:  wake up to see the sunrise is number one.  Every morning my daughter

and I drive into the sunrise.  She snaps pictures when the pinks and purples melt into one

another.  Cotton Candy Sunrise we use to call them.  This is how I know she might still like

me.  That and when she took 12 little pills, she came to only me pantomiming her imminent demise.  Cat had her tongue.  It always does during the important moments.  If she would just let me help her with her speeches. The last one was on a historical structure: The Old Courthouse building.  She was 2 minutes shy of a grade that won’t matter in the long run.  I hear her trying out different languages from her room.  She is fucking tired, fucking tired, fucking tired of all this shit. The drama, the loneliness. Her newsfeed is anime, makeup artistry, and teacup puppies.  She forgot to add the architecture to her speech.  Said she couldn’t find much about it,

so she skipped it altogether. I pull out a news article of my uncle telling the story of scaling the courthouse building.  He points to his mountaineering rope he used ONE time on Rainier.  Tells how the metal of the dome was warm under his hands and the soles of his shoes. One night at a family dinner, I asked him why he climbed it.  He answered, “because I could.” 

Repainting the Balcony Railing / Kerry Trautman

before i caught your coldness  / Sarah Vande Kamp

i’ve never caught a cold so fast 
the signs were there i just thought they were lasting
a disgusted glance like the tickle at the back of a throat
what did i do to deserve your ire 
a question i can’t answer entirely 
an unreliable thermometer
expired cough medicine 
three balled up of tissues at the edge of my bed 
you sneer while telling me you love me and all that is ahead
while fear like pathogen made their way through me
could you see what you were doing? carrier 
cold bringer my hands froze 
and out of my nose came drizzle of
woes and woes and woes

Day 28 / Poem 28

Storm brittle milk shank / Emily Badri

Kill slurp stew

Crawl into the dark

Wash you off slow

Watch a weaving cellar spider

Building eating too

Mind the mind 

Caving in chocolate bunny

Too hollow to resist the squeeze

Crackling brain stem has 

Damaged roots

Dangling things up out of the ground

Sweep me out wring me through

Spoiling arms

Buckling brew

In Summer I Wait For Winter / Sarah Borruto

Colony / Shir Kehila

Behind the mansion, I sit by a bucket of hot
weeds, one knee pressed to the pebbles

of The Back Road, as my boss calls it, as I 
turn them over, pulling crown vetch and baby

oak trees, looking for roots. Ants carry 
butterfly wings up the hill, and I watch 

their panic, a familiar one, and know they can’t 
find their nest—their geography upended 

by my work, two fingers playing god. Dirt 
fills my nails, spills out my underwear in the wet

stall by the beach. We’re not allowed 
in the mansion (too dirt-y). The Back Road

leads nowhere but frames the small harbor
like a postcard, between the overgrown branches, 

the spiked property lines, and unframes
the mansion, which I can now see in full, 

the distance freeing me
of my size. The ants 

scurry and sting, a displaced colony.
I would have told them, if I could, 

about my home.

Today Is Your Thirty-Fourth Birthday / Ashby Logan Hill

Keep the blue up, he said
Don’t let the earth take you
not that you were ready even
for yourself to consider the thought
of earth taking you under and holding 
your body a prisoner in itself forever
It’s just the spirit that exists
although the man’s old advice 
from his flying days was a good thought
and helped you adjust to the start of  your day, 
today, which is your thirty-fourth birthday,
not that you were particularly
feeling one way or another about it—
Celebrate your centennial you say,
Now that would be interesting!
a blessing to think now that you are
only a third of your way into existence
No, today you decide to walk
so as not to risk the aforementioned
necessity to take the man’s advice
from Oswego, opting instead to
go by foot, collect seashells, swim in the
river, run back to your house
before honoring the siesta,
a commitment you had made long ago,
to honor yourself and others— 
sea salt and sand spilling out
onto the couch from every
pore in your body, your voice
an organ to be played with
your hands and feet, sun stained
eyes glisten in wind beneath
willow, wanting, trying to keep
the sky in your periphery 
as you sink back to sleep
for the morning glories,  
to reawaken from sleep, 
for the day still ahead
fast approaching what might
look like to you as a bird sleeping—
No, you wouldn’t even begin
to think of such things today,
only life and the 
abundance of sky
still surfacing

Postcard from David to his mother, after Goliath,  /Andrea Simpson

Cute Dog with Fish, 
posted near the Judean Foothills  

Moms,

9 feet of bronze and flesh–downed by a pebble.  You should’ve heard ‘em chanting!   Craving 

your meatball sub & twice baked potatoes.  Remember that Jersey girl?  Cindy?  Or was it Agnus?  Giant slayer–nice ring.  What will be next? Professional bull rider? New York City 

Marathon?  You always said, “Know which side your bread is buttered.”  Home soon to finish the counting sheep puzzle.  Have laundry. 

Wood-Burning / Kerry Trautman

metamorphosis  / Sarah Vande Kamp

it’s true there is a hard body bug living in my room
i don’t know what type maybe some beetle
i just hear it at night when the overhead lights
are off and only one small lamp remains 
it pings around the room seemingly huge
i can’t see it and i don’t know if i want to 
i ask myself who i am and what i’ve become 
i don’t even want to run from this unknown
this bug i don’t mind the intrusion it’s been here 
for at least three days but only only shows itself
when i’m about to pivot towards sleep and then
it makes only three grand buzzes and leaps 
it ricocheted against a can’s pull tab last night 
i wonder how long it will live until it dies 
huge and waiting i am huge and waiting 
wondering what lies ahead but i only allow this 
thread to come undone right as i’ve get into bed

Day 27 / Poem 27

Who can be mad in mauve? / Emily Badri

Had you up to here and it wasn’t enough

Had me madder than hornets in their hidden hollow

Waiting for someone to dare to step near

Waiting for the ground to shake to rise en masse 

Heal you up and it’ll all be much easier

They said

Heal from a maldevelopment how

Heal from the shadows haunting you cell-deep

I took this headshape slowly

I paint me pink 

See if it’ll help

See if it’ll get us through 

Painted Ladies / Sarah Borruto

The painted ladies pass me 
without grazing my skin.
As per usual a penalty 
for not having a sweet enough surface.
Did the lavender bush taste better?
I’ll try to blush in lilac; occur as nectar.

I’ll mix the colors into an elixir
and drink myself into a masterpiece— 
flushed in hues that flutter inside me.
They parade me, or maybe they degrade me,
I march filled with an invasive species.

If there’s enough liquid left to make watercolor,
I’ll paint the aerial creatures myself— their wings pallid 
as white pansies: my blank canvas.
I’ll streak a ruby puddle that bleeds downwards
like a cherry creek, and burnish the blaze with 
spots of amber. Fence in the colors with abstract lines— 
the black smears holding in the expressionism. Then finish
with dots of white predators will mistake for eyes 
piercing through the burning orange face.  

I try to run my finger along the canvas,
but the sudden movement makes my art fly away

Hyperspheres / Eliana Du

There are so many dimensions
One might possess: kindness, intelligence,
And beauty, not to mention
laughter, wits, and common sense

People lie on the surface of a hypersphere
Each trait a vector value, each being a collection
Mathematicians say that with enough dimension, each vector nears
The surface of the sphere, the greatest magnitude and direction

If that’s true, then I’ll be patient; I’ll be satisfied
I’ll wait for the day my dimensions are magnified

Heatwave / Shir Kehila

It was a bad idea, opening
the windows. The cats 
stretched out on the tiles,
your mom did the same
on the carpet. You and I
went to the beach. Applied
sunscreen until your beard
aged decades, until you said
we made it and I had
the memory, for a moment,
before it broke—the heat 
hanging off the cliff
behind us, your stretched 
torso on the sheet, your eyes
behind my own—breasts,
you called them, before
I said the thing about
chicken—the pink
biopsy scars, the pink
suit another woman
had left behind—but it all 
gets cold the same, 
the same wet. The ocean 
bites and we give it
our bodies, whole
just for a second, watching
Beehive veiled—one hiker
near the summit, still climbing—
his reflective shirt running
out of light. The sky 
in two above our heads.

To the Ironworkers Who Slide Down the I Beams of Heaven Back to the World with the Heels of Their Steel Toed Boots / Ashby Logan Hill

Back to the world
wave shock of 
train engines moving 
pushing and pulling 
like tectonic plates 
sending reverberation booms 
through the bones 
of your body 
the way the
moon pulls at
the tides of
this dying earth
body of water 
in this moment 
which is the 
river to become
you to become
one with time
the morning sun
and that which 
we call ocean
awoke again for
a 3am rainstorm
which comes as
quickly up the
coast as it
goes doggedly along
waves crash returning
to the earth
a bunch of
hallowed, hollow notes
from the faraway
parts of heaven
to be sung
by the ocean
to the rafters
by tired workers
as slowly descending
a yellow sun
of golden eternity
won’t you come
along with me

septembers / Michael Seward

septembers

Gooey Peace  /Andrea Simpson

Thunder unfurls itself in the Boston 
sky.  A breeze coming from the south.  Air 
conditioner murmur and a pigeon 
lands on it and replies.  Two brothers below 
my perch fight over something:  a race won, 
a debt owed.  My wine glass sweats and I wipe 
my hand on my shorts.  A distant Airplane 
reminds how close to outer space we are.  
I’ve been answering emails–
occasional pauses for down dog and 
prayer twist.  My friend orders baklava.  I 
bite into the layers of phyllo dough, 
pistachios, and honey, and it takes me back.
Back to the recipe stretched out between me and my 
father.  Creased in the middle from years 
of pulling it out of the magical 
place my mother always found it. 
Did you know there is no known origin for baklava?  
It could be the Ottoman Empire, the
Assyrians, or even the ancient 
Greeks.  This pleated bread is created by 
3 main parts:  phyllo pastry, nut mixture, 
and honey syrup.  As a child, when I didn’t understand 
my father–couldn’t penetrate through his 
closely held heart, I would take the role as 
butterer.  This was our unspoken choreography:  
he removed the damp kitchen towel from the 
stack of thin leafs, preventing the dough from breaking. 
We moved quickly preparing each layer.  
He guided my hand pushing the butter to 
the ends of the dough, and with diligence 
I obeyed–this quiet time
moving to ancient languages.  My mother 
busied herself, not far from the kitchen.  The mixture 
simmering on the stove of sugar, 
water, honey, and clove, as we layered:
the swishing of the butter and my father’s 
shoulders working over the delicate 
sheets–a labor of love.  My favorite part of the process 
was cutting the pastry into diamonds–
not cutting all the way through, so the
syrup mixture saturated 
without spilling to the sides.  In the end,  
slinging the  kitchen towel over 
his shoulder he handed me a gooey 
piece–taking a bite, nodding approval.  
This year, a honey fingerprint marked the bottom 
right corner, the most intimate 
anonymous signature.

Stars / Kerry Trautman

how often do you find me howling at the moon / Sarah Vande Kamp

just this last week i screamed into the nightsky 
two separate times 
this strawberry moon this summer solstice this
aching whole thing
you are beautiful i screamed 
the full moon literally beamed at me
down the 405 freeway 
i live in california and can sometimes forget 
not everything is supposed to be cinematic
i pluck shriveled loquats from a tree
arch my back to reach for eucalyptus leaves
chart the angles of my chin and the width 
of my lips 
what are they made for these kisses these sips
everything is more gorgeous and more
self conscious here
the earth turned to summer this week 
and it all feels like a fragrant oven 
set in front of mirror 
i can’t tell if i’m happy or parched
i look at myself too hard 
get wet without thinking about it
yes the sun draws from my well
but moon does too, my tides swell  
big sexy thing, bright birthing thing 
i consider lip filler and ask to always be full 
always holding something whole
at least for the summer just give me that

Day 26 / Poem 26

screech / Emily Badri

you are eating a paintbrush
i am painting a comb
plastering plastic against
old sailcloth
reuse helps the life cycle
you are feeding me a paintbrush 
i would rather not
you are spitting out horsehair
i am painting you
blue gray because painting it all sunny
did not bring sun
and painting your walls did not impact
dismal sleep patterns
why are you screaming
why screeching
calling i’m not responding
i have only to delight in you 
you need only all of me as far as the eye can see
to answer you only completely and call and keep
on I have only to cease
sapping me off in ten thousand 
directions long enough to see that a little
research here a little half connection there
a little perusing a little seeking not finding
sometimes finding educating witnessing
engaging equals
no response
where’s the actual paint
am i wrong or doing wrong?

A Vow of Grief / Sarah Borruto

I sit in the wool sweater of grief, 
the grating woven thorns that
gnaw at my skin in return for 
a fleeting cradle of warmth. I’m
already grieving who I will be. 

The sorrow will be expected 
and the goodbyes will be a 
promise, and I’ll wake up
each morning ready to take 
the oath. Pledging to a lifetime
of never letting go of the people
I have to. 

If I’m sworn to tell the truth
I’ll tell them it was worth it. 
Everyday that passes where I can’t eat 
proves that I am too full of love, 
and each night that I wrap myself 
in the harsh bundle of wool proves
that a hug is still a hug. I will
continue to grieve as long as it means
I can love
and love deeply

Ghazal for Shifting Plates / Eliana Du

My stomach used to rumble like a tectonic plate shifted.
Now, hard as bone, you cannot tell my armor plate shifted.

I lie under a microscope in my little lab. 
I poke my waist with a ruler, and thus my petri plate shifted.

I tremble when I drive because my head goes all woozy.
When I faint, I hit squirrels, so my license plate shifted.

I get hungry sometimes, so I force it back out.
But acid rots my teeth, and the doctor says my dental plate shifted.

At my schooldesk, I put the brass edge to my wrist and sink half a letter deep.
The bite is sharp and distracting; slowly, my name plate shifted. 

Every morning and night, I step on to watch the numbers tick down.
I smile, skin tight against my cheekbones, because the pressure plate shifted.

Someday I’ll hope I’ll feast at the table and celebrate my round spoon-reflection. 
I’ll repeat to myself, “Eliana, I’m proud, because your dinner plate shifted.”

Cracked Glass / Shir Kehila

When the missionaries came, I remembered
my dad’s Will: how I learned he believed
in God—that it was only His relationship
to Man he wasn’t sure existed. It seems we 
live in hopeless times, the missionaries said,
but didn’t much seem to think it seemed so—
their gelled hair betraying a firm, glistening 
attachment to life. Aren’t you wondering,
they continued, if things would ever improve?
God is the most uninteresting answer, I read,
to the most interesting questions. God is 
a question, too, but not one that haunts me. 
You seem like a happy person, the missionaries 
tell the cracked glass door, then turn to leave.

I Is Not Shy of Death / Ashby Logan Hill

is not anticipatory for feelings of want

is not alone in this 

is not sly like a fox but as limber as a mountain lion walking the tree line path to
         the waterfall along with a slug slowly approaching

is not approaching any further or faster than can be helped if what is not can be 
          helped

is not just melancholia, detritus of life

is dirt and earth and ether any way you look at it as either or

is mugwort and lavender and taproot

is lilacs in bloom

is summer baking the sun caked dirt to the point of distinction

is doubt of drought if that is even possible or both

is lucid, illiterate light in a field at night coming from across the sky near the 
          schoolyard, lampposts taller than ever illuminating the old road

is laughter, and a man observing the acres

is lack luster without the thought of it if you want it to be

and I will not shy away from death any more than it is a part of life, a unit of day, a 
          measure of night, to embrace it

as long as we’re alive and ready, waiting

be us our organs in a thermos / Michael Seward

wax over                      wings                          
                        just icarus things          flying alone with a thermos
our organs warm                         usable                       just in the case which we plummet

bludgeon the sun                     incorporate ones                      insatiable edges of a suffrage

            A CITY!                                  A CITY!                                  A VERY BIG CITY!

father will be proud     or father will scoff at my wings            father is an engineer
                        my craftsmanship was always shifty, somewhat glimmered in

A CITY

            open ended frame of losing someone
            chia seeds implanted below the scalp line
            you will grow something here,             be it a wound
                                                                        be it a war
                                                                        be it a cabinet
                                                                        be it a pothos
falling leaves                                                     be us our organs in a thermos
            leaving limbs                                                    shot like spock into the engine
                        limbic groan                                                     losing a grip on the innards

i can be a big crater
but i keep getting thinner

what if we WERE the city
and they walked throughout US
and all of my languages BLEEDING and such
and all of my joints aching SPEAKING from under my
SKIN
it’s so sad but they’re BEAMING us up
the whole city stuck
hole.io

my father would be so disappointed
he only raised a village
one story total
so far from scraping the atmosphere
intestines all packed in the freezer
municipal guts in the thermos

Tender  /Andrea Simpson

“The heart is forever inexperienced.” Henry David Thoreau

Forever ago there was an origin:  
a particle, a turtle, a stolen 
sun swallowed by moonlight.  The beams projecting 
from her stomach.  Then a rib and dirt and the question:  what do I truly
want?  Forever ago there was a wild 
one and a large tree.  The tree, heavy with
fruit left sticky syrup when it fell 
to the wet ground.  She practiced drawing 
desires in the messiness.  But there was work of naming.  
Always watching, ribbed by the need of her 
audience.  Her words cut on her teeth.  
She held them back with a bleeding tongue.  Forever 
ago there was a man who underestimated 
her need for words.  For the right words in order 
from the chaos.  But then horse was named and forever 
horse was horse. However, it was sunset that made her 
cry.  The orange crashing into periwinkle–
death and life all in one singular exhale.  
She packed her things and left.   Forever ago, 
a boy kissed a girl’s inner thigh and her breath 
caught in her throat as the gathers 
of her red dress quivered.  She planned out vows –
each one the color Night.  She practiced writing 
his name.  Making large loops and dramatic 
curves.  Forever ago there was a girl,
a Formica table and ravens outside 
the sturdy window.  She ate strawberries 
until her fingers stained blood red and her lover 
left her sitting entirely alone 
forever. She licked the berry juice from each 
finger slowly–tasting the earth, knowing
desires. This one she would know by the sting 
settled behind her eyes, the blueblack 
motionless night–the color they bury the dead.  
She wouldn’t name this quite yet.  Not just yet. 

Canal Locks  / Kerry Trautman

I don’t remember exactly how they worked.
My son climbs stairs to a steel bridge over
the highest of concrete-walled chambers. Careful!
I shout up. My mother takes photos on her phone,
fumbling with its buttons. Even with new knees,
she can’t do that many stairs.My daughter finds
frogs in the stream’s mossy rocks and layers of
trickling waterfalls. It’s something about floating.
The chamber would have had huge wooden gates,
would have been filled with water, and a ship
would have floated level with the next chamber.
My son throws a stick off the bridge, watches it
dive over the waterfall edge, runs down the stairs
to follow the stick over the next drippy falls.
Something about ships between the Maumee River
and the long-gone Miami and Erie Canal.
My daughter walks along the lock walls, down
down, gouged into steadily-inclined land. Mom
says wait, look at me and my daughter pauses,
makes a smile for the camera. Wait, it didn’t go
Mom says, knocking her screen with her thumb.
She might as well be a dragonfly, hovering without
touching. My daughter gives up, walks on down.
My son’s stick gets stuck between rocks. A great
blue heron pumps its wings overhead toward
the river. Mom is ten feet away saying shoot shoot,
shaking her phone which didn’t flash when she
wanted. The locks only operated for eight years.
The floaters had no control of ships, once they’d
shuttled them to the next level of flowing water.
Downstream the slowed water is glassy. We watch
water-striders wink ripples into the surface.
My daughter spots fat tadpoles—look, Grandma,
it’s growing legs! Mom mumbles um hum.
No connection to the river anymore—too shallow
for ships. Someday Mom will ask for my help
emailing the photos to myself. Once she has them
in her phone she doesn’t know how to get at them.

at sea  / Sarah Vande Kamp

i’d like to live at sea to see the waves every day to brighten and darken my being in the sun to watch the the wisps of white feather against baby blue sky and then the scary black roiling against purple orange sky maybe that’s the way to get away from it all to set sail and pretend there are no other boats by avoiding shipping routes maybe i could throw away all personal technology and take a vow of silence and fill myself up with sky and oranges if i think about it hard enough i can almost convince myself but the thing is i would miss everyone so much that’s the truth oh damn this anchor this love this care i ask myself if i’m ok once a day because maybe i shouldn’t maybe i should be broken and crying on the bathroom floor avoiding looking at stray pube trimmings maybe i should be punching walls maybe licking cocaine off my finger i don’t know and i know you don’t know i wonder if she’s fucked anyone else yet i wonder if she’s stopped crying and how many days it took her to stop it was at least twenty days for me i cried each of those days i wonder if that’s a record for me i wonder how long i could go at sea before i started crying and crying and filling the ocean with my own salt water not because my heart was made small but this time it would be because my heart has become enormous it is beautiful and it is reaching it wants the world in all its messiness it wants the lukewarm chai tea lattes, and corrupt governments, and sunday’s bests, and it wants the little minut bugs crawling in the grass, and the hot rooftops, and the bad sex and the worms horny and writhing after rain, it wants the unwanted eyes from the old man at the bar, the wonky hopscotch sidewalk chalk outlines, it wants hands in my hands and arms looped around waists and los angeles sunsets. because the sky is here too with its blues and pinks. i have to remember the sky is always here too. and maybe after all i wouldn’t like to live at sea.

Day 25 / Poem 25

no flow / Emily Badri

another pull
another wake
drifting in and out
undertow take me out
don’t leave me there alone
the ebb is reaching me far inland
I don’t need a holiday I need the sharks
to survive I need trawlers melted into fine art
need the reefs to make it need us to see past a placid
and roaring surface to notice what we’re losing how while we can
let not the free swimming beasts become mythic

Toothless / Sarah Borruto

Three Stories From the Morning Commute / Eliana Du

One:
You said,
Darling, don’t make eye contact with
The crackheads on the street
After I told you about
How this morning
On the gray subway staircase
An old man 
Hollered at my face
Spat at my feet
Reached for my skirt
After I glanced in his direction
You said,
It’s common sense

Two: 
You said,
Darling, it’s nothing personal;
It’s what’s best for the company
When I tell you I overheard
Benny’s conversation on the phone
My hand on the subway pole
Back turned towards him
As he mentioned
Motherhood
Stupidity
Aggressiveness
And gave Dan the promotion that was promised to me
You said,
It’s common sense

Three:
Someday I will tell the story of grimy hands
inching up my thighs
Of the blurry moments I cannot remember
Of the reluctance and the drink and the sparkling night
And the headache on the subway to work
You will say,
Darling, there are things you must do
To protect yourself
Never leave your open drink on the counter
Never walk alone in the dark
Never ride the subway in those short skirts you love
Never be angry in public
Never give a stranger your love
Never give the homeless your cash
Never wear clothes that invite temptation
Never be revealed as the slut that you are
This is the nature of the world we live in
This is the way we are and
This is the way we must be
You will say,
Darling, it’s common sense

Nowhere Girls / Shir Kehila

Spatial Problems in Literature 

1. Eastbound / Maylis de Kerangal, trans. Jessica Moore

After leaving her Russian partner, 
a foreigner hides a deserter in her cabin
on the trans-Siberian railroad. The two 
share no language but escape. Outside, 
the cold country tightens around 
the world’s neck. The boy doesn’t know
where he’s headed, and is no more lost
than he was as a soldier, but the woman
heads further away from her destination—
further than she had been before leaving—
thousands of miles in 
          a. the wrong direction
          b. the right one

2. Disappearing Earth / Julia Phillips

When two young sisters are last
seen by the beach in Kamchatka,
this is the end of the
          a. earth 
          b. sisters

3. “Woman in a Watermelon” / Nurit Zarchi, untranslated

When a woman makes her home inside
a watermelon, it is:
          a. a children’s song 
          b. a last resort 
          c. breakfast

If the watermelon fits a chair
and a cupboard, and the woman
cuts a window in the fruit’s skin
and adopts a cat for pest control, 
she is
          a. poor
          b. crafty
          c. most women
          d. most Woman
          e. all of the above

When the season is over, 
her home
          a. rots away
          b. is a carrot
          c. both

In her new home, the woman
can fit a quarter stool, a quarter
cat, and the tip of her own nose,
which makes her
          a. lucky
          b. nosy
          c. blind

4. Nowhere Girls, Chinese neologism (沒女; méi nǚ)

When she has “no money, employment, 
education, prospects, looks, friends, or 
sophistication,” a girl is:
          a. nowhere 
          b. everywhere
          c. right here

Waiting on the Sun Delay / Ashby Logan Hill

               Buck Bowman Park – Home of the Clover Hill Bucks
               Dayton, Virginia

Because of the setting sun in the sky at six thirty and the shimmer and glint of
                                light in your eyes

Because the batter might go blind waiting for the pitch

Because the road of tall pines and deep creek and blue river

Because it is bright as you drive over golden mountains

Because when you were nine you would sit on top of the dug out cheering on
                                your cousins who played for the Bucks

Because you wanted to be a buck

Because of the people too still staring into the glimmering sun

Because it sat just in view of you this evening

Because it is primitive and in the best way possible glowing just not where you
                                want it to be to get started

Because you wanted the game to start but had to be patient

You lie down in the grass, waiting

rotweiller snarls//people that look like me congregating / Michael Seward

belly drum, slapping myself silly
the pink burns down
where will diversity go
to get drunk and make

allen street bubble man
raining geometry on the business
class with out of office

notification haymakers
distilled haymakers
all precipitation
falling apart because
of feeling shitty

the act of like
seeing
someone not do
what they promised to do
having to work around it
community shield
the idea of falling apart completely

fractal disruption

axiom of substance

the idea of falling
a part of repulsion
a slice of being magnetic
for the mourning

snapping towels
falling caskets
rotweiller snarls
people that look like me congregating

the idea of failing together
silos of infinite weather
endless grain for my children

Things That Stick in My Craw  / Andrea Simpson

A friend posted, “happy heavenly birthdays to the famous really sticks in my craw,” and I jumped down the rabbit hole head first. Did you know birds eat rocks? Mostly sand and small stones, but sometimes actual rocks!  All of the berries gleaming in the noonday sun, like a sultry lady smoking a long cig–I always thought were so glamorous.  But not berries…rocks.   As in sediments.  As in rock, paper, scissors, and rock always wins….well unless paper covers–with a lost love poem from Einstein who napped most days.  Actually held a spoon over a metal plate, so as to jar himself awake once his body relaxed into the liquidity of slumber.  What a cruel trick he bestowed onto himself.  But the birds.  They eat stone, not much like the one rolled away on Easter, but the tiny ones that the older girl from the neighborhood would throw at me as we walked the half mile home from the bus stop.  The middle finger I raised to my mother asking “What?  What does it mean?”  I became a car rider from there on–not sure if the rocks or the finger propelled this decision in my conservative christian home.  But the rocks.  They swallow them, and they get stuck.  Stuck like my first and second marriages.  The first a baby, the second he cradled vodka bottles.  I was his mother, undressing him, putting him to bed while patting his back and making sure he breathed through the night.  Stuck like gum on the bottom of my shoe or in Driver’s Ed, where I lost the privilege of several drives for chewing gum.  The day I earned my license I ran 3 stop signs.  Exclaimed OOPS each time I noticed the blur of caution.  Oh well.  Anyway they swallow stones.  Like on purpose, and it won’t clear the craw.  It really burns their biscuits, grinds their gears. 

Cento with People Magazine (July 1, 2024) #2  / Kerry Trautman

Day 24 / Poem 24

Failure to cope / Emily Badri

Mean tooth scum boot
Never found my cool
Little lizards underfoot
Too scale full 
Tried to tamp me all down
Venom got loose
Bad gut wrong foot
Wrong hand too
Head back toothcrack 
Crying for you
Wrist-squint hell-sent
Eyes askew
Face shut bad gut
Tell me what to do
No breath slow death
Try to see through
Blood-drum
Self-choke 
Locomotion lost
Full chest wrong breath 
Suck sap spew

Long breath not death
Fanbreath cool
Long breath not death
Remember what to do

This Is What It Means / Sarah Borruto

To float through morning
and to fall at night. To turn
in your sleep and get tangled 
in it. To stare at the ceiling 
in every room you vanish
through— counting the cobwebs,
calculating what it would take 
to break through it, measuring 
how much you have left inside 
you. This
is the shelter that becomes 
a prison and this is 
when being stuck starts
to resemble feeling safe. 
You could see the sky 
or you could hide from it,
cry until the tears turn to rain— 
droplets hitting goosebumped 
skin chanting for warmth. You
could stay cold or you can join in,
speaking back to the choir 
that lives within you

Ode to Fireflies / Eliana Du

O firefly!
You are the first sign of summer
A spot of light in the dark
The small gasp of wonder
As small hands trace your arc

You are commonplace in your multitudes
Forever filling my periphery
And yet, towards your divinity I am wooed
Your light is my fate, meant for me

I heard once that stars
Are chinks in heaven’s ground
But I have always found it bizarre
That those floor bits were never found

I stand corrected, I see
As I view these summertime bugs
It seems fireflies must be 
The dust of Paradise, drifting down on us

How else do you explain this light found on land?
Not bioluminescence, nor a chunk of the sun,
Nor man made by hand
But like shining nuggets in the breeze, panned by everyone

Their bodies like embers from Hestia’s hearth
Hovering as the air turns warm
The curves they fly like nature’s art
Glowing paint pulsing in lifeform

I am unafraid when you land on my palm
Travel my calluses in the rustling grass
Firefly, you are my chosen Psalm
Lighting up my hopes, salvation to my wrath

O firefly!
You are the little miracle I wait every year for
You are a warmth in my heart that waives summer blues
You are the gateway to the eternal door
You are gold in summer hues

Aliens Somewhere / Shir Kehila

On the mailboat, my friend calls 
to the bell buoy she sometimes
hears from her bed—I love you!
Four cats meow in their carriers, 
cornered by Cheerios and cream
of wheat. Everyone is an alien
somewhere, another friend nods
at a boy’s T-shirt—and some of us,
she says, are aliens most places—
and some places, I think, make
aliens of us all—rocked on a little
vessel between
            one brief land
and the next. 

Reverse Osmosis / Ashby Logan Hill

[ over & over ]

          sweet water

            to become

          golden angels

             for you

          as respite

            pillows

           become little

           invisible worlds

          between sky

             and clouds

              midday

          passes through

                   sunday

              rainstorm

                [ over & over ]

              Reverse Osmosis

the terrorists have roses / Michael Seward

if this light is blinking,
there is an injustice ongoing.
we are stationed to pay witness
the light is blinking.
if this light stops blinking,
injustice has stopped,
so does your pay.

chin up
you will blind yourself
the blinking will darken the unders
of your eyes

if you have any questions
use the employee portal
after your shift
if this blinking light stops
you must notice
immediately

if this blinking light stops
while you are blinking
you will be too late
blinking light handbook
how to spin the fate
how to dodge the bullet of fact
how to weave politic
how to survive as secretary blinken

if this light stops blinking,
the terrorists have won
the terrorists have roses
the terrorists have families
the terrorists are home

this job is not for most
you must be willing to lie
for and on your country
stretched across burning jeep hoods

x
o
x
o
x
o
+
o
o
x
o
x
x
o
o
x
o
x
o
xxx
x
x
o
x
x
o
x
o
x
xxx
o
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
o

Letter in reply to Juliet Capulet from Eve, the First Woman  /Andrea Simpson

Banishment? It’s not that bad.  The air is cleaner–
less traffic.  Back in the garden 
bees dizzied themselves in the nectar of fruit 
trees.  One Sunday, Adam came to me,
his tongue so thick he could only hiss–
this was before the epipen.  For a 
long moment I imagined life without 
him– a still, quiet place.  One where I did 
the naming.  You will see with time, it’s hard 
to explain in a letter.  Your familial 
problems–we all have them.  The other night I made 
hot buttered lobster rolls and sweet 
potato fries, and both boys were at each 
other’s throats (again).  Something about who 
was taller–murderous, I tell you, over 
inches.  Sheesh.  I can’t speak to the emotional 
distance from your mother.  But as mother, 
when everyone is away, and I’m on 
my 5th dry martini, I ponder  
how all is made up–as I am making 
this up, so do I with my decisions 
(make things up I mean). I’m still 
green as that girl who woke 
from a long dream next to a boy I never 
met but knew deep in my bones.  Which 
brings us to your question of desire.  When I 
wrote my dissertation, it hadn’t been 
named yet.  I could only reference it as:  
“first kiss of all teeth and pressure”; and then 
later:  “the desperate yodel of the loon 
over the lake as the morning fog burns 
off.” And also, “knowledge dressed as a sexy 
fruit.”  Desire is a heartcry that only 
you can hear–there is no tamping down or 
Pollyanna pleasing.  I believe it was 
Aristotle who said, “Desire is 
the starting point of all achievement, not 
a wish, but a keen pulsating desire 
which transcends everything.” My dear girl, 
tragic consequences are the experiences 
that are offshoots.  They create 
that which we cannot name.

Cento with People Magazine (July 1, 2024) #1  / Kerry Trautman

Step into the dark side of 
     Nigerian high society.
Thousands of fans withstood heavy rain 
     to watch the Royals and 
     the military parade.
Discover the epitome of refined living, 
     exquisite dining, and sea-going comfort. 
Tiny organisms cause evening waves to 
     glow electric blue
Backyard was a kingdom.
Wind-sculpted dunes and long grass 
    create a sprawling landscape.
Kids grew up surfing, spearfishing, and 
     naming every critter in the tidepool,
     little league, swimming, 
and dance class—intricate movements, 
     style, and originality. 
They’re like shooting stars.
The costumes were authentic—
     feathers, leather, color.
An unusual and, for the most part, 
     beautiful life.

i have  / Sarah Vande Kamp

everything is touched
stained and sappy i eat my fingers
i am delectable and inefficient
which is what i hoped to be 
the jam in the fridge is molding 
but i don’t mind 
there is so much more
it is strange to be alive 
strange to touch tongues 
strange to open eyes
today a convertible drove by
a surfboard angled out the back
down toward the ocean 
and i thought about how
everything is gorgeous and brutal 
i’m staying on the westside
the wind in the palm trees 
sounds like the ocean 
even though we are blocks away
have you ever been glad you lied?
i have 
but i am only delectable
and inefficient 

Day 23 / Poem 23

before you speak / Emily Badri

Exposed Bone / Sarah Borruto

I prayed for you and then I prayed to forget you,
presenting my sadness like exposed bone.

The grief is a barbed wire necklace—
I know how to survive but I forget 
what the first step is every time.
Do I grab at the metallic thorns in a primal frenzy 
or wait until they unravel themselves, 
surrendering to their throat hold? 

Pluck me from the earth just for a little while—
the leaves helicopter downwards as I ascend up 
towards the slivers of light peeking through the clouds. 
Even so, I get caught in the rafters of the home I can’t run away from.
The roof is a cruel cave closing in on me; I’m exhausted 
living in the same room the memories live in.

I talked to the walls about you then took a hammer to them,
exposing their bones instead of my own.

Dead Bee / Eliana Du

Yesterday on the tennis court I
Was made to do
Suicides (if I
called them aptly named that might be too
morbid)
I 
Say I
Really it was a team relay
But it was an I-ish moment when
As I
ran back to the second-to-last line I
Heard a crunch like 
Crumpled paper on the hardwood floor (it was crushed
wings on a hardcourt deathbed)
A quarter wing
Stuck to the palm of my hand I
Wiped it off after the half-hearted cheers (we were last place
But it’s rude to end a race in silence)
Dead body still twitching
Legs like a jack-in-the-box
My teammates (and I) lost the relay we
Trudged back (we weren’t sad just tired) I
Wanted to step on the bee
Put it out of its misery but
I
Didn’t want to dirty
My shoes

Road Work / Shir Kehila

In the morning I tell you we’d gone
swimming in my dream. I don’t say
it was down the stairs of a train station,
that we held onto the railing like buoys.
I don’t mention the shattered marble,
what it felt like to know you’d died. 
Just yesterday we’d talked about going
to the beach. It was raining. We drove 
down the coast for your appointment, 
the leaves freshly opened and dripping. 
The beach! We affirmed our commitment, 
slowing down on the stripped streets
of Searsport, miserable also intact. Expect
Delays, read the signs, and we did—
we’d known the detour through the tall, 
private forests and low blueberry sod—
we’d taken it so many times, it had
taken us years—but now we passed it by
like a closed shop, keeping to the singed,
main road—slowed down but going just
where we meant to. 

Trajectory Gone / Ashby Logan Hill

How
does
one
take
the
salt
and
rocks
out
of
the
sea
to
make
one
thing
deadly
to
the
body
drinkable
except
to
believe
gone
trajectory
is
motion
into
another
territory
far
much
further
than
the
parts
of
expanse
that
still
no
one
can
see
of
what
remains
but
sweet
laughter
dancing
and
wild
whispers
only
to
hold
what
the
moon
holds
as
ocean
like
a
child
flying
a
yellow
kite
above
the
sun

exhaustion gulf / Michael Seward

now there’s thread just floating here
like anyone could be so naïve
like I’m going to end it all with cheap ribbon
like I need a fanfare
with a quick, possessed clutch, the thread becomes mine,
or palmfruit
it doesn’t matter what we call it now,
as long as it’s not floating thread
a sea of unread text messages
isolation

crow’s feet, but the ripple doesn’t stop
endless new deviations
only where my skin finishes
I can see the wrinkles
tagging the back of my hand
not my palm
it doesn’t matter what we forage now
it will be a knot of floating
I have been a hoax of weight
exhaustion gulf

I’ve tied bowline hitches
instead of nooses
with the thread
though the boats don’t reach us
we’re better floating
than we are dead

I yellow, I decay,
wind privy
to stealing another
length of cable
carrying with it financial analysis radio
HGTV
microwave war communications
Rojavan herb
forgotten bird                                                                                                                                                                      extinction pose

Say it Over and Over Again  /Andrea Simpson

“When you say I love you
The same old I love you
They whisper in stories and plays” Frank Loesser, 
“Say it (Over and Over Again)” Played by John Coltrane

He hands me cheese, grocery shops and Shows and 
Tells: see these stuffed mushrooms–forgets the name 
of the cheese on top: bubbly and the fisk 
fisk of preserving the mouth (too hot!).  He 
fills my wine glass, the Maitre d with his 
Pabst Blue Ribbon shirt–he bought 5 at Kohls– 
they remind him of his childhood 
piano lessons:  Pianissimo.  When we said our vows, 
we never discussed the kiss, and then he
dipped me like a fiery chicken wing 
into the creamiest ranch ever.  I 
came up baptized by the heat in my cheeks.  

                                                He hands me cheese–
and this is how I know.  Smoky bacon cheddar.  
Did you know the hardest part of making
cheese is achieving consistency, et. al  
adaptability?  Google it.  There’s 
a science married to an art.  He whispers 
cheese names in my ear when the jaundiced 
moon is full: Humbolt Fog, Devil’s Gulch, Stinking 
Bishop.  On Sundays we search for cheeses–
found a tavern hailed the best frog 
legs and World’s Coldest Beer called the Nisbet Inn.  
                                                We sampled cheeses.   

                                                                         [Founded: Kate and George Mauer 1912 
                                                                        (buried in St. Phillip’s Cemetery)].  

We discovered Bierkanese–smells like 
socks, but with horseradish and a prayer 
it’s divine.  Well that and a crisp
sauvignon blanc that we keep chilled in a 
planter from the new owner’s recent wedding.  
Sometimes we stay all afternoon as the 
corn stalks bend in the Indiana heat,
 and the cold, crisp beer sweats in its fishbowl, 
and the sauvignon blanc digresses
 like a familiar conversation. 

Tenant 2  / Kerry Trautman

If you keep peeling loose edges
     you might never stop,
I warn myself,
     patching walls of the old house

love & heartbreak (a cento)  / Sarah Vande Kamp

Love is a terrible thing: sweet for a space (Eliana Du)
I can only hear a beating in my brain, globed fruit, a buzz with the slinky body (Andrea Simpson)
if I lose my faculties, I am home (Michael Seward)
We just want doorknobs to turn without sticking, (Kerry Trautman)
self-consumption wolfing down what used to be (Sarah Borruto)
there is only so much you can fix (s m van de kamp)
i worked and worked and worked (Emily Badri)
Just work across the ocean, love sent via keypad (Eliana Du)
Between spurts of warm air, I pack. (Shir Kehila)
Different city, same picked-at scabs (Kerry Trautman)
do it for the arrival and departure (Sarah Borruto)
Why this again—in fashion, (Ashby Logan Hill)
Do a slow peel (Emily Badri)
why is the measure of love, as Jeanette Winterson put it, loss? (Shir Kehila)
just in this one moment where you’ve rooted yourself as the tiniest island (Michael Seward)
All you wanted was to swim and breathe between the breaks (Ashby Logan Hill)
I am 50 percent at fault for many things.  Except rain and unrequited love. (Andrea Simpson)

Day 22 / Poem 22

Turn it upside down / Emily Badri

We are playing a game called

Who in the house is the only most lonely?

The competition is fierce

Stealthy

We eye each other

Thrown and chosen together

We are not doing our best

Don’t steal me away I mantra to the mirror

Do keep me do keep up do keep us all alive and well do so without a way with only wind in your ears and the ears have been unwell for at least five years and the specialists do disagree the cause the treatment only see the severity tears down my face at any temporary relief

I think it’s the wrong game

This is an infamous infight

Let’s stop wasting ourselves 

Wracking ourselves

Shredding and splintering and shifting 

Our hands must all bear to be clinging together

Let’s turn

When To Be Brave / Sarah Borruto

We may end up in a place 
where the sun is not promised,
and we have to be brave. Suck 
the sky dry and spit out the stars 
like watermelon seeds, planting
for a new day; hoping for 
the next night. I am torn 

in the outside world, but not 
in the labyrinth of my mind.
I know how to get lost and
where to find myself again.
I know when I don’t have to be
brave. I know every tunnel 
and I know they’ll be new ones.
I know each twist and turn, and I know
there’s a straight path coming up
soon. I know it could be miles away.
I know it’s not promised 
where it leads to

Young Romantic / Eliana Du

I do not mean to be shallow
But even shallow waters run fast
Tides that pass between stone floors
Drafts that sweep me past the sea
That is to say, I’m well aware
Of the distinction between love and infatuation
Of solid ground and this buoyant elation
And I know, I know, this all feels a bit silly
All this won’t he, will he
In poetic verse, nonetheless
The conversations I rehearse in my head
Call me dramatic and I will not disagree
What else but drama can I call these shifting states
Of misery, of missing the
Illusion of you, spun like
Cotton candy rotisserie
Enough disclaimers; name her Love and
I’ll claim her as my own
Because I want you alone
To tear my world asunder
Fill this chasm in the ground and
let me watch you drag us under
If the waters run still
Then I will create the waves
If the boredom runs free
Then I will craft my days
I embrace the shallows, the face-ups in
Ankle-high wash
My nose towards the sky, reaching for
Anything to touch
I want to live as as young Romantic
And it goes that
When the bed of inspiration sits dry
I turn towards the world and my own human nature
Yearn to be un-alone, the foolish high-chaser
I am young; I am romantic
There is beauty in stability but my abilities lie elsewhere
Come now, thunderstorm rain to fall on blush petals;
Come now, earthquakes to let the sand not settle and die
Come now, poetry, to intensify my senses, my self-spewed lies

Dragon / Shir Kehila

A cinquain

The camp:
A lakeside goat
barn. Through the screened porch, two
pencils whisper, as they move, to 
one fly.

Hellfrick’s Robe / Ashby Logan Hill

      after John Fante
In honor of Donald Sutherland 

All he wanted was a bit of milk
standing there in his grey robe
waiting for the delivery man
to walk away from his truck
the palm trees and the sand
arid as ever in the winds of
a hotel on Bunker Hill
among the fields of
Los Angeles—
Italian women
on the make
walk by in their
Sunday best silk yellow dresses
just as the clock ticks twelve
and good, poor old Hellfrick
begins his master plan
distracting the coat man at the front desk
just long enough
so his good pal
Bandini might
snag a few pints—
And they smile and dance
and jump for joy with boisterous laughter
for what they had done
but when what they got
was what they thought was winning
their grins soon became disappearing
as sour as the buttermilk
they had unknowingly pilfered—
And what his voice in mind
brought to life really
was the spirit of old America
and I was glad to recollect
for a moment
this part of the story 
around midnight at my house 
on the wake of his passing—
Today is not just another day
I will make sure of that

NASA (title) / Michael Seward

bathing in halal smoke
i am level capped in ashtray 
splitting a burger with a Baron
his great grey hairs shower the word “young” as it exists in his prose
lettuce tomato onion and cheese
i know he will be homeless until I can digest those ingredients again
birds of prey
orchestra of grey matter 
i have to catch this train
berry him
actualize the fruit outside his windows or macintosh 
because you have no choice but to come correct
the answer is in the arm you bore glove to talon
clasped palms and internet keep blood inside the body of home
the erewan emerald diamond skates me to wonderville
to follow silence
and precede duncecaps
for an audience who will only see the nasa in me

Postcard from Lot’s Wife PhD to Ophelia, Daily Scene on the Saltwater Canals, Venice, California c1906, posted Sodom  /Andrea Simpson

I thought of you last night.  As Lot snored I used the noise canceling headphones you suggested–listened to a brook babble over sticks and stones until my ears were slick with sweat (I didn’t think ears could sweat).  Sweet girl, of your madness, a malady of the times.  Even I, (aka  unnamed mate), know that forward motion starts with looking back–forcing our salt bleached bones to a decision. 

Old Friend / Kerry Trautman

She payed him little mind in college.
It’s not that she thought he completely 
lacked sincerity, wasn’t serious about 
writing, but clearly a not-so-hidden 
side benefit of being a chocolate-eyed, 
laugh-haired, romantic poet was that 
it got him laid. If candlelit poems about 
peachy breasts and eating pussy just 
happened to make girls drop their 
Victoria’s Secret panties, then 
what’s a boy to do?

Now—both married with kids, sinks 
of dishes, and weedy tomato gardens—
she watches him push his toddler 
daughter on a park swing, the girl’s 
gingham sundress swishing her chubby 
knees. She watches his wrists flex at the  
small back, absorbing some force of his 
own shove to push just enough to propel 
the girl, without heaving her off her seat. 

She wonders what he remembers of 
the boy he was. Whether he regrets 
kissing open-mic fan-girls he pinned 
against the coffee shop wall. Whether he 
still writes prayers to inner thighs. 
Whether he writes odes to his daughter’s 
blocky feet in August grass. Whether he 
writes secret poems to the decades-ago 
crush who ignored him, crumples them 
to the kitchen trash with its gelatinous 
tomato seeds and coffee grounds.

lick the plate  / Sarah Vande Kamp

i clean the plate 
with my finger
the one that been inside
of u    everything is delicious 
and we are the shitty pottery
content in our slumps 

it’s ok to be afraid
love is a doberman with teeth 
it’s hard to see red from green
a friend can be a enemy 
if you squint hard enough and
ask them to care 

there are more than two
people in this bed
it’s almost sexy 
we fuk then cry gauzy tears
our ghosts sit on the edges
they can’t see or hear 

someone say it’s helpful
to have a deadline
i’d like to slap her in the face
life can’t be a schedules and cubes
it should be more like fondue
lick the plate 

Day 21 / Poem 21

foolproof / Emily Badri

Now crying on cotton

It’s all I have left?

From a time when you heard when I called

I’m holding on hindsight

It’s hurting my arms

it’s too much to keep 

or to lose

I didn’t gather me up in a way that made sense

Not in time to convince you to stay

But I’m gathering now 

And I’m thinking of you

How you failed to believe me along

Ghost Plants and Skeleton Flowers / Sarah Borruto

build their mausoleums while
the fog sinks deeper into its slumber, 
and I’m reminded that all I am 
is what I am not.

I’ll take my secrets and tattoo them
on a rose petal— a needle point permanence 
permeating the temporality of nature, planting
perennial mysteries. 

Go read them in the garden at dusk
and whisper about all the things 
I could be— the cloud that came 
before the fog; the greenhouse 
that comes after the mausoleum

Graduation Ghazal / Eliana Du

I thought I’d cry more tears this morning
when she said, “Ladies and gentlemen, you will miss mornings.

Miss the ones that were full of friendship and laughter, of waking up early,
Miss the sunset and dances, but through it all, have a blessed morning.

You are on the cusp of a new life, of reentrance to the world
Wake up every day and feel ready for the best morning.”

I thought my tears would stream down my face; you know I’m a crier.
Yet here I stand, ready to dismiss morning.

Four years of my life in asylum-white walls; four years of my life and only
a few friendships that will last past the night into the next morning.

What about the memories that should haunt me so? What about the 
teachers I say I can’t bear to part from? I wish morning

would come at me harder, red eyes and all. I wish for
puffy eyebags as symbol of devotion; I wish this was an I-lost-my-wits morning.

There are walks through the aisles and I stand on the podium
But their faces shine as one and I kiss morning

goodbye. I think about high school and tremble at my antipathy.
For all I’ve said or done, I am left with dry eyes at this mourning.

Lost Subject / Shir Kehila

When you were two days old, a museum
in your birth state was robbed
of five paintings. Their theft 
remains unsolved, the frames hanging 
empty but for wallpaper. This 
you go see: the paintings’ ghosts.
A room surrounded by wallflowers. 
Last Valentines, I ordered
paper peonies—not fake
but Unwilted—so we could send
the receipt to the government, 
so that it might believe us. Our love, 
I wanted the officer to see, wasn’t 
what she could see. It was a frame
and its lost subject. A temporary,
inconvenient display. The peonies—
their paper petals faded in the sun,
but I couldn’t toss them. They were also,
I realized, for us: something lasting. 
Defying their nature, and ours. 

Strawberry Moon in Capricorn Between 10th & Walnut / Ashby Logan Hill

A consortium of crabs gathers outside your house on 10th and Walnut. You decide to let
them in, since you are also an arthropod, and this is your season, and you sit around a 
campfire out back discussing the moon and how it moves with the tide, a cliche maybe 
for a group of crustaceans cantering like horses around a palm tree along the beach, but 
you don’t care and continue to prance with your pincers, something you learn a child  
does when they are developing fine motor skills, but all you want to do is move back and 
forth and side to side, ever changing with softening steps of a red bearded man in the 
sand. Perhaps it is Poseidon’s son Polyphemus wandering blindly along the shoreline 
looking for his flock of lost sheep. Or maybe it was Orion, having had enough of walking 
upon the foaming waves and who wanted a change of pace before heading to Chios and 
starting a family before dying and to be placed, hunting a bear or a lion, you can’t 
remember, among the stars. You think, just maybe one day you may too eventually be 
put up there by whomever it is that does that sort of thing and you smile at the thought 
but don’t wish for it to happen early because next week is your thirty-forth birthday and 
you want to see other stages of life, molting of old shells if you will, before going. And 
underneath the full moon tonight you can’t help but thinking how water is charged by 
the sun’s reflection of the moon making a mirror out of itself, star dust like the opacity 
of sea glass you’re always passing as you scuttle back to your little hole off 10th and 
Walnut still dancing because you know the morning is coming soon and this moment
won’t last forever and you still have so much more to do before it’s gone. Your friends 
dance together a little too to an old tune, Smashing Pumpkins maybe, because you see 
tonight as tonight and one of a kind and as no other. They leave around two thirty in the 
morning but you can’t go to sleep so you stay up typing thank you letters to the world 
while lounging on your cream colored couch, thinking of Mr. Samsa again and those 
ruby reds and golden deliciouses and yellow crisps until you realized it is morning and 
the moon is gone now, not gone really, just out of sight for another twelve hours or 
so and so you get up and walk to the grocery store for a bagel and lox and think, does 
this make me a cannibal? I wonder if Proust has a line about that, the way he writes 
on about sleeping or if Dickinson left her house more often than we think, sneaking 
out into the silently bleak hours of morning to stare up at the sky, star gazing, a 
strawberry moon still glowing as purple and red as crab apple, a little world all tucked 
away inside itself shimmering in the light of the sun.

NOT ZIPLOCK(title) / Michael Seward

umm…

i am

the last kebab for sale in a halal cart outside of grand central

terminal on the 42nd street side

i am not on display I’m with my brothers in a gallon foodsafe bag (not ziplock) under loose tie, enough to leak a little odorous intent

i am bronchitis sighs on the last halal cart that’s even there

uhhhh

i…

I am the last kebab that gets ordered by the dude that’s way too late to be (from) Here

Still Life  /Andrea Simpson

I create the gaps between stars, remove all particles 
down to nothing.  There is no song, no marching trumpeter—

booming calls for my worries.  In nothingness 
I lean on the moon’s repose—beg this 

lover for a whisper from its darkening 
seas.  The mines are querulous, 

distant.  Hay and rock litter these tired 
bones.  I place my foot near sanity’s edge 

dare the god who wrote poetry and death 
into my ancient manuscript.  Water

laced with fattened mosquito falls on solid 
air.  So I hum a home I never knew—

closed mouth, tight jaw; I create 
family from magazines—name them 

by the sound of passing vehicles.  I listen 
to an elegy (I know it is my own.)  A requiem 

permeates my limbic system.  My ghost 
pancreas.  My womb, a dumb thing, bad tenet. 

Is nothing the absence of something or 
the overwhelming burden of everything?  

Two men speak behind me.  
I pretend they are my conscious, the smoke they 

exhale consumes me from my toes to the 
tips of my hair ends.  I write at a green 

picnic table; imagine it set for a feast, spilled salt, herring a fine red wine—
I wish the men would quiet themselves and join me for this communion. 

Commandments / Kerry Trautman

The optometrist’s office blasts Christian pop music
louder than I would play music I enjoy. Today will

be over 90° like each day this week and next, sweat
already by 9am. On walls are crucifixes, Ohio State

football memorabilia, Bible verses scorched into
wood planks, American Flags. It’s the only office in

town that takes my insurance. Louisiana just voted
to require “Ten Commandments” be posted

in every classroom. I dread my hot car when
I’m done. The doctor peers in my eyes, says 

look straight ahead. New Orleans could be
underwater by 2050. The radio sings give me

 your eyes. Air conditioning rumbles, ruffling
the doc’s white beard. He covers one eye at a time,

says to read the chart across the room. Hands me
a card, says to read its tiny print. Commandments

posters must be in a “large readable font.” I can’t
recall if I cracked my windows open. He holds

my eyelids open with a thumb and finger. I have
no way to not see. Look up—just ceiling panels

then being-less sky. Look down—green carpet,
basement, earth with only today’s inferno. The

radio sings you are my vision. The doctor says
look straight at me. We see so little the same. 

I wonder how long it takes to create a pyrography
quote in a piece of wood, the patience the steady

hand, the desire to slowly burn in order to be  
certain everybody sees what you believe.

patrolled / Sarah Vande Kamp

two days in a row i’ve walked under a police helicopter circling 
the street circling me but not me
they don’t care about my tan dot striding face up and afraid 
the sky’s eye they are a great bird of prey 
the lapd is spending forty three sixty per minute as they fly 
and i try to hold the space between protection and blame
at least last night the moon was perfectly framed
behind my window shade aligned as only it is at this
summer solstice when the sky itself looks down on us 
it is one thing to be watched another to be patrolled

Day 20 / Poem 20

Wake you from your wake / Emily Badri

Festering things love a damp cover

Destruction loves distraction

If folks will just leave a rotting thing be

If you’ll just hush and not see

It’d love to spread love to kill you or stop you dead 

in your tracks spinning there the gnats at your ears all you hear the eyes dizzy busy

Easy to twirl while it eats through your skin

Harder to look up pierce through drain pus

There are times when you head down keep on

And times that only a manned helicopter can save you

Do / Sarah Borruto

Gunmetal / Eliana Du

We name our kids numbers and bits of binary
Babies rolled out on gunmetal factory
Conveyor convey a 
New source of data
New game today every
Life to replay

Because we want them blend in with the robotechnicians
Society of code, no room for magicians
For doves up above and hares out of hats
For tsunami of words and color that splash

So of course there’s a formula when we cater AI
When we become servant to wire of our creation
And forget all about the Muse in our sky
We forget ourselves
Our brains that made them first
How we have that sentience
Raw and unfiltered
We must revive it
Before evolution is put in reverse

Waiting for imagination and I’ve been so patient
But babies in concrete become adults all the same
I’m waiting for new sentience to change up the game
I know I’ll die where I lie, with virtual attendant
But at least I remember the color of the past
And I fear that our metal children
Have lost all that

Euclid / Shir Kehila

Light bends and distorts,
captured like an animal
in a wild net of lenses.
Please, let me show you
galaxies: liquid mirrors,
churning. Neighbors
grazing their outer spirals,
ripping arms off one another
as they do on earth—each
remembering, through eons,
its own losses. Please, let me
show you blue infant stars
through gas clouds, through
dust. Gravity as a kid, too:
riding dark carousels.

Sun as Far Up as Sky / Ashby Logan Hill

           When 
     crickets whisper
          becomes 
            cicadas wake
        when moon
             calls
      bright as day 
    and the world is 
illuminated
    when light 
    stands before you 
      until nightfall
      when all the 
      stars burn out
       and the world 
      turns over
    what will you 
   ask of it
     what fish 
      will you get
     turn over  
    your hands 
   in the river
 where will you 
   sit at the 
  pavilion
 what world 
 you ask
 what 
river

astrophysicists leave my mother home in all this space oil / Michael Seward

basted
the cost of another country wanting to be nuclear
the burden of another burning family
the rapid decline of people in politics
the rapid decline of health care
basted all in olive oil

deepening the mad hole
bully bears and rabbit paws
jackalope cackles as we fall through
the great big hole in the desert
arms wailing
open sesame

poached
the animals in our pores
the eggs nesting on fertile coast
the rapid incline of women in labor
the rapids just south of the Tigris
boiling all in olive oil

palm oil if it is
cold pressed from human paws
palm oil it is
spread on all of my wounds
the great brown hole of Baghdad
not even writing escapes
space oil

astrophysicists have my mother
astrophysicists leave my mother at home
alone
in all this space oil

When We Walk the Dog  / Andrea Simpson

Our best communication happens 
          when we walk the dog. 

You say, here? And I say yes,
        please.  We are so polite, 

when we walk the dog. And I say, 
          will you bring me my computer

after?  It’s on the small table. And you say 
          yes, dear.  We are so exhausted

after walking the dog.  When we walk 
          the dog, we think of so many other 

lives and try them on–as our feet 
          pound the pavement and our breath

matches the staccato of our movements.  In the 
          end, my brain is so clear that I say, 

Should we circle back to this walk soon?  It 
          was a great path.  You say, oh yes, my 

love.  I’m available tomorrow. 

Glen Helen Nature Preserve (May, 2024) / Kerry Trautman

My thin rubber shoe-soles bend to shapes of stone steps, avoiding slick moss, down down toward rivulets I hear and smell in the ravine.

Thank you, boggy, duck-weedy beaver pond for not being what I thought I’d see. You barely drain—still, with bluegill untossed downstream over criss-crossed tree branch dam to narrow, stony flows. How would this stream orchestrate itself, if not for the furred industry, here, changing the key?

Birds emerge from canopy one-by-one. I eavesdrop their songs. Congratulations on your babies nested high up there, hungry for moths and mosquitoes. Sing for them as if I wasn’t here. Which one of you would I be if I were bird?

The water teems with tadpoles, fishlets, spores, and diatoms. I smell those tiny beings that I cannot see, and honeysuckle blossoms that I can. Bubbles surface from creekbed mud. Whoever you are, breathing in underwater muck, dislodge yourself, surface, curl in my palm, come see the fireweed.

Spare breeze stirs the tiny, white, wild roses, and the healing jewelweed, and bittersweet nightshade—whose purple blossoms lure to poison berries like pearl-sized tomatoes. Oh, to string them around my neck.

Further down the board-slat trail, between beaver-felled trees, bullfrogs clear their croaky throats, first from my left, then right, behind, ahead, in guttural constellation, barking back to bird wingbeats, as if saying—you, you there, flyer, drop, drop to the water, soak with us.

Beavers sleep some where mud-dark and gone while I admire their work. Dank evaporate cools the swampy shade. I amble on, so as not to overstay, so turtles can flap ashore and blink in peace, so fledglings can try out their world, so swallowtail wings can beauty-beat unwatched. But look, just look what has been made.

between loves is bluer / Sarah Vande Kamp

between two loves is bluer          
an oceanic space all water and tears
swathed in a vastness           
the couldhavebeens the floating-fears 
this special sphere       this dredged this raked        
this swirling muddy clear 
a whale calls in the distance and falls               
deep it is dark           so unclear no one can recall 
suspended and speeding darker       i kin you and un-kin you
everything is so saturated it is undone

Day 19 / Poem 19

oil spill / Emily Badri

I think I hear drums
maybe it’s a radio.
you only used one jack
not enough for that weight don’t you
want to live don’t you want 
to stay here with me?
you’ve outlived expectation already
pleased with this lot.
swallows and swifts swoop for food
they look like they’re dancing
they arc and double back for more than food
they are dancing.
I’m sure I hear drums
far-off heartbeat
of a not all dead land
of the not all gone Keepers. 
a courtship plays out on telephone
lines — modern branches
for survival
dancing against a darkening sky.
oil seeps into the ground,
you don’t overmind.
I fuss you say
hot days brought oil bubbling up
from the ground in
your city of fire
and you still ate from the garden.
I draw a long line from
that oil to this oil 
that I don’t mention.
we sit and work
in a light rain
living as long and as well
as we can.

This is the Birthday I Don’t Cry On / Sarah Borruto

I’ve learned how to take these days
and take them well. Absent from 
the yearly funeral I held for myself,
where the oldest I had ever been became
the youngest ghost.

When I cry I’m nine years old. A child
watching her childhood slip through her
fingertips, watching her next chapter 
slam the door in her face.

I wish I had opened it a long time ago.
That little girl has become my teacher
and I am her wide-eyed apprentice— 
rolling up my sleeves, mastering 
her art of quietude, how she wore 
sensibility as the most beautiful sleeve. 
This year I’ll sing like she always wanted to.
I hope she is proud. We walk together;
I follow her lead

Underneath the Trampoline / Eliana Du

Look underneath the backyard trampoline
Stare, and you’ll find two eyes that stare right back
There, in mem’ry, is where the grass grows green

With a crown of daisies, she becomes queen
Thankful she chose to, that day she donned black, 
Look underneath the backyard trampoline

She gained limbs and a mind – creative, keen
Traveled her world, to her chest strapped a sack
There, in mem’ry, is where the grass grows green

The air grew cold when she turned seventeen
Forgot to, as her childhood she did pack,
Look underneath the backyard trampoline

For a few years, she tried to reconvene
Seeking old dreams, which the real world did lack
There, in mem’ry, is where the grass grows green

Now, I gaze at the long forgotten scene
Yellowed blades covering ev’ry old track
Look underneath the backyard trampoline
There, in mem’ry, is where the grass grows green

Need  / Shir Kehila

No need to watch this, my mom said
of the news¹ . No need to watch this,
my grandma said of the film
with the long horizontal embrace² . Liars,
my grandpa said of the weathermen,
but kept watching, every night, at the end
of the 8pm news, before the 9pm film:
the broad, desperate dance of their arms
over the sad map, calling for rain³ .

---

¹But getting it on Facebook is fine.
²Alone, my grandma stayed up till midnight, watching.
³Like the country he’d never return to, my grandpa’s first home, this was the desert.

Brinicle for the Last Day of Spring / Ashby Logan Hill

Finally, 
what you 
have been 
waiting for—
No more 
surprise, 
supine soup 
on languid 
land lingering 
because someone 
else, a stranger told you
lack of sleep 
to creep in by noon, 
full moon tomorrow 
so they say, at least 
in some hemispheres, 
nomad glad to be going, 
language losing its meaning 
although you hate that, 
expectations are overrated, 
can’t feel elated about a 
full moon or sun, 
don’t let the loon 
sing the songs in your heart 
and call them their own, 
fulgurite brightens in obsidian dark 
and the Balkans are taken by storm
peace, that would be nice, like apple pie
Zaum zooming like zoo animals 
loosed from their cages 
and you waver
What doldrums here to become the ice
What world for you will suffice 
to have asked so many questions further
I want to become the starfish 
frozen in the middle of the night 
only in morning to reawaken
Yes I said it again, 
does the world alone 
not suit you?

tectonic//far from kansas / Michael Seward

earthquakes never asked if they were welcome
hurricanes don’t offer to clean up after their tantrum
earth-ending events come without compassion
the only true example of inclusivity
blind justice
eradication

where we are is not tectonic                 far from kansas
I grieve the loss of my mother every day
even right after she calls me
i grieve the loss of my father even further
even right after he logs me into my insurance portal
two people who would apologize for every inconvenience

if I don’t prepare they’d try to throw sorries from the crypt
inherit sorry from the methylization somewhere along the
peptide chain
having me in the bloodstream
in utero
ends up being an act of radicalization
hate to be so tectonic               far from kansas

expulsion
toph palm shatter
flickering through the gravity loss
world-ending apologetics come without surround sound
hurricanes don’t have to hold corpses
earthquakes have no hands to count blessings

Making a Nosegay Out of Loneliness  /Andrea Simpson

First fold the paper in half, long ways 
like a hot dog. Then, grab a handful 
of stars, a constellation,  and pitch them 
toward home plate like Willie from center field.  
Next, don’t think about it but dive headfirst
into “overtly happy.”  Everything is A-
OK! and your gratitude list 
bursts at the seams.  Eat the water
melons, seeds and all to grow a garden 
in your gut.  Mask the longing with
vines and green lines.  Sit awhile to catch your 
breath.  Smell the yellow roses–the ones my granny 
loved best.  Put one in the vase by the bed; 
let it oversaturate till its head bows and petals 
flake to the floor like fallen snow.  Once this 
happens, buy a unicycle–ride it to 
Mexico.  Listen to a mariachi 
band, in your linen suit, fresh from the cleaners–
the one on the corner of Nostalgia and Pining Ct. and not on 2nd 
Street (they ruined your snuggie). Once the tourists tire, 
request the song about the weeping 
woman.  Let your tears drip, burning 
like a kiss –refuse to wipe them dry.  Then 
you will know you beat loneliness: 
as you weep, and she weeps, and your summer 
days melt like the popsicle you are licking.

Mixing Board / Kerry Trautman

I envy those with few childhood memories—
mine consistently playing in loops. Imagine

walking the grocery store canned soup aisle
as your current self, meanwhile your six-year-old

self rides in the cart, wanting Campbells chicken-
and-stars but knowing better than to ask, and

sixteen-year-old you whooshes past with Jenny
and Shel to grab a tube of chocolate-chip cookie

dough to eat with spoons and MTV. The Muzak
plays “Groovy Kind of Love,” so you at

twelve years old sways with Brett at an eighth-
grade dance, your jeans too long, afraid your breath

is bad, so you turn your face away from his
instead of swallowing his brown eyes. There must

be adults who live as their evolved selves, not
mix-tapes of their histories, who cook pasta

sauce without their father hovering over a pot
beside them, who start laundry without

water filling their childhood machine—making
themselves a load on tiptoes for next day’s

school clothes. My mind is a sound engineer
layering the years’ tracks, fading some quieter,

amplifying my crush on my swim lesson teacher
any time I enter a cold pool, or boosting my sore

right arm churning the handle for homemade
strawberry ice cream at my eighth birthday

party each time I click on my electric machine.
Dozens of conversation tracks mumble each

other to garbled white noise, like the rumble of
voices in a crowded bar, so rarely isolated to a

single voice—mine, just now. There must be
those who can hum a favorite song and hear

only it, each single note hopping up and down
its crisp scale, who write today’s words without

subtext of decades-old diaries, who fall asleep
in their current bed without monsters creeping

under their small one with its Strawberry
Shortcake quilt. Who hug their children only,

not themselves at four years old, who have
sex in their now skin without imagining

how their fourteen-year-old body would
sparkle with gratitude at such touch, without

whispering to all the children who
clamor inside look, someone will hold you.

feline/in the neighborhood   / Sarah Vande Kamp

i roam the neighborhood crepuscular

coming alive at first light and first darkening

it feels so good to be covered in this fur

to shake my body and see the spray of threads

like being an inverse snow globe

i’m mean sometimes i look angry and

i don’t like to be touched like that but

as it often is i’m vile because i’m scared

the coyotes here have shaken me

sneaking in the middle of the night cornering me

with their yaps and howls but can i blame them

just last saturday i ate a sparrow whole

and i played with it before batting it around

like a toy and oh did i enjoy it

but often i just search for a place to lay

to dig my claws in it feels good to sink them in

i’m just a girl with these fangs these points

these fears and this tearing love of

this block this neighborhood

let me rub my cheek on you but only

if it’s my idea

Day 18 / Poem 18

gut health / Emily Badri

My Machine / Sarah Borruto

When our bodies are breaking down, joints 
rusting in rocking chairs, we’ll remember 
what it felt like to run. The sound our feet made
on pavement before time sucked us in and spit us
back out hitting the ground with gray hair, gathering teeth 
like used parts. 

I never got to fly. I fell to my knees
trying to find the right nuts and bolts 
to keep my gears turning. What’s the difference
between living and enduring when all I’ve been
is a stoic mechanism with a spasmodic motor? 
The sound of clanking metal on the pavement 
didn’t have the same ring.

Before I’m a pile of bits and pieces, give me
one more chance to dance. Turn the rattles 
of my machine into a sweet song 
so I can pretend to be a bird for a moment:
humming, humming 
hmm hmm hmm

女娲 (nü wa) / Eliana Du

I am a child.
Yellow silt falls through my plump fingers,
the pale, meaty color of almost-ripe durian,
shades lighter than my own sun-tanned skin.
Even as a child, my fingers are like leather,
rough as the earth I touch. I am
alone on the bank, watching the Yangtze lap
up dry soil and ferment it into bean paste-like
curds, clumps that wash over my bare feet and
line the gravestone-sized gaps in my stubby toes. I do not
know why I am born here, whether born
is a word that can be applied to me at all. The Creator
and the Mother,
they will call me, though I do not know it yet.
I am just a child.

I pinch the yellow clay, for that’s what it is, between my fingers;
I shape a little globe, my clumsy hands leaving dents all
over the sphere. Another cylinder, until
I create a miniature of myself. Fragile, held as gently as silk
between my fingers. I am afraid to dirty my new creation, 
but the moment I breathe onto its damp body, it
comes to life. It tottles away, into the river, 
dancing before disappearing beneath the
waves. Delighted, I make more, more globes, more
creatures. Some meet the same fate as the first; some
crawl up my body and place their small paws onto my
thighs, my neck, nestling in the bushes
of my sparse eyebrows; some
wander off in pairs, shaking in the sand. 
Time moves quickly, and for a while, I am just a child.

And there comes a day when I have spent a life
making clay mini-mes, when I have sat
by the Yangtze until the yellow silt has left red
imprints on my bare skin, when the fat
has faded from my once-plump fingers, when
the colonies I’ve created have fires and walls that
come up to my hips. My fingers are tired,
all this pinching and shaping,
all the red that splatters the once-pale sand, 
the quiet shouting that
I stick my head in the clouds to muffle.
These leathered hands were made to create.
I was a child; now, I keep rolling, keep
feeling the grains embedded in my lining
skin; now, I am The Mother, and I must
take care of my children.

Slam  / Shir Kehila

The week we came close, twice, 
to evacuating—water engulfing
the house on three sides, winds
slamming the windows, the road
transporting seaweed—we try
going to bed early. We try on most
other days, most other weeks. 
Bed, you’d say, pulling the covers
before climbing in, Bed, Bed, Bed. 
I envy Bed, which is to say, all 
Beds we happen to be on, moving
through others’ homes as we can’t
afford staying put. I envy Bed
these longing calls, the incantation
of its name in your mouth, then out,
like breath. The ocean has loosened
its horse-hoof’s grip of the house, but
I’m emboldened by the near emergency. 
Tonight, I admit my jealousy of Bed. 
You laugh. You are, as you say, a literal
person, and so we have a real
conversation about this. I didn’t, in fact,
want to be Bed, you try convincing me,
I didn’t want you to love me like that. 
Weeks later, I sink to different pillows—
we’re elsewhere again—hair slammed 
against the headboard, and sigh. Now
that, you say, was your Bed Poetry.

Dreamscape / Ashby Logan Hill

A wave bigger than your house brings you back to where you started.
Water, the phase, like a dolphin, your dog, stone cliffs. Lost in the funhouse.
A maze with blue whale, zippered ladders, hall of murals, staircases with
paintings of all sizes. Experiment of floating versus sinking with the yoga
instructor before the wave comes. Waiting for everyone else to reach the top is
self actualization? Delivery from somewhere of a pile of old notebooks. Ocean.

gundam, mechy spill  / Michael Seward

Labor Pains   /Andrea Simpson

                  “You know what work is–if you’re/old enough to read this you know what/work is, although you may not do it.”
                               ~Philip Levine  “What Work Is”

I know work.  I had a blister the size of
                                                  Texas on my foot. 
                                                It impressed 
a rugby player–he kissed it.  I know how to diagram 
                                                                              sentences with pesky object 
compliments.  I married a Bible verse 
              manipulator 
                             and came out with a love for Shakespeare.  
                                                                                                        I know work. 
Not mud ruts and double shifts or
midnights on the subway; but the language 
of mountains, misinterpretation, and some 
Spanish. I know work.   

I’ve tried sex positions from a book of unclear 
                                     diagrams.  I have ‘yes sirred’
                                                                 enough in my adult life to choke 
                                                                on the hiss of s’s. 

                                                  Yes sir,  oh this couch you want to bend me over?  
                                                  Yes sir, take me here or take me there?  Both hands 
                                                  on the window panes–my neighbors house 
                                                  looks so inviting.  

Once I looked for a lost diamond 
                         necklace in a field of snow.  Trip after trip 
                         of scalding water in the 
                         pot my mother 
                         always used for spaghetti. 
                         In the end it was found.  I know work.  

                                                                                               I collected 
Stoli vodka bottles from my bushes, 
                                                   crawlspace, 
                                                              abandoned coolers–easter eggs 
hidden from my judgment.  
I took him to his mother’s, where love is blind and we call it 

                                                              unconditional. 

                                                                                                           I know work.  

I’ve shoved my fingers down my daughter’s soft throat, counting
                                                                                                                        little 
                                                                                                                        blue 
pills by the dozen. 
 I’ve collected sharp objects–earrings, shards of clay pots, steak knives. 
          I’ve walked to my car 
          with my keys ready to 
          scoop out 
          eyes of the shadows. I know work. 

 I’ve held a washcloth to my bleeding head, 
drinking tea and eating toast with my mother’s 
silence.  She served me then sent me home.  
                                                                                                           I know work.  I’ve stood watch outside my sleeping 
                                                                                                           body with an eye on my daddy’s 
rifle. Fool me twice…  
                                      work is grit, 
                                                           groan, 
                                                                       eating paté when you hate it, 
and licking the boots clean.

Diagnosis / Kerry Trautman

I am a chrome-vinyl-mirror-marble 
hotel lobby—reflective not 

plush. No, I am not, but I
armor the floral compost of my 

body practically—how a hotelier 
appreciates impermanence, ease in

wiping memory of skin from skin. 
What sort of -itis is this 

that I have? Who wouldn’t want 
to be wrapped in another’s body

like a sleeping bag on the forest 
floor with crickets and Orion’s belt 

unwound, dropped to the ground?
Or sitting sangria-drunk on a 

Lake Erie sandbar, water lapping 
your ribs, ass sunk in sand?

I suppose it’s some genetic disease
or calcified nerve endings.

Vinyl has its uses, but so 
do ostrich leather, silk, velour.

What pill can I swallow with 
black coffee in my 7am kitchen 

to melt linoleum to a fake bearskin 
rug with wide eyes, to move in 

to my body permanently, un-tape 
the boxes, let anyone stay?

la river / Sarah Vande Kamp

there is a concrete river that runs through this town this city they’ve been filling it up making it green bringing the wildlife in by the droves biodiversity in cement sometimes context doesn’t matter but intent my ex reached out after five years today exactly five years to the day i ended things i wonder if he knows or if something was written in the marrow of his bones marking five years five years how much take to grow take to heal how much green and water and broken concrete does it take to feel normal again natural again my heart has been paved over how many times time is a spiral i’ve been turned around again i’m not dizzy i’m giddy i’m soaking up the sun i’m asking if i should run away but i was always going to stay it can’t be helped this spiral this radial this predictable maze of love this river this pathway paved for the a flood and the flood comes and again will come

Day 17 / Poem 17

blue grey in the shade / Emily Badri

Sun-kissed Scythe / Sarah Borruto

I hunch over to smell the flowers
long after they’ve died. Wilting 
with them in a formation of synchronized 
swimmers gently collapsing into a 
quiet flatline— nature versus nurture 
in tandem with eternal sleep. 
How many times must we wake
until we feel alive? The spring 
is never warm enough. I’m stuck waiting
for a hand to grab me by my shirt collar 
and straighten my spine into a sun-kissed
scythe— a farmer in the grim reaper’s cloak
harvesting bales of moth-eaten crops 
to feed the field-fallen children.

Ferns / Eliana Du

I miss the smell of the ferns
The gentle curl of acanthus
Yearning for my ankles
Bending to my bare feet

I miss the dew-studded sunrise
Dancing to the beat of
Rain in the forest
Music of the petrichorus

I miss the touch of the lichen
Pillow of the gods
Soft in my ear
When I slept by the bog

The Old Kids  / Shir Kehila

Sit around the table
and don’t want my grandma
to join. The class queen
is in her eighties and isn’t
over it. Doesn’t say hello. 
In the pool, she pretends
not to see. I’ve been waving,
says my grandma, courageous
suddenly behind her goggles. 
I know, the queen replies
from the opposite lane, I’m not
your friend. I’m in the third
grade.  My grandma
shrugs now and takes a sip
of almond butter. That’s thick,
she says, I didn’t remember.
Wrinkling her nose, she sets
the glass jar down like a shot.

Driving with the Windows Down into the Sun / Ashby Logan Hill

Flying backwards
like the
hummingbird from
trumpet vine
or a 
blue whale
swimming through
the deep,
you head
west back
into the
setting sun
slipping away
like an
octopus does
escaping with
blue ink,
across roads
into the
blue mountains
of unknowns
thinking, if 
not here,
than where
else but
anywhere else, 
wind binds
billowing in 
from all
corners of
the earth
another world
to surprise
you on
your journey
driving deep
into the 
pouring out
of memory
from first
to last
out west
never 
returning

hunking, muscleheaded adonis / Michael Seward

soujouk                        the Kurdish way to drink coffee
                        eggs                             fries with za’atar
   scarves that linger back to sumeria
taste, touch, tremble with the motherland

                                                                                        grinds at the bottom
the orphaned, combative                                              bottom
the plain textured turban                                               bottom
                                                                                     wearing
   scarves that tremor lake michigan

a biker asking if I “know how to swim”
                                                                                             and I do
                                                                          so throw me to the river then
                                                                                          throw me to the
sea                                                                   for wearing a scarf made of
heritable silk                                                    wolves
oysters on the half shell                                   clotheslining
wearing hirbawi                                               people’s elbow
pierce the iron helmet                          imperial projects

& I would fight a titan in bikers’ clothing
but it is eid and you are fasting
& I will let this hunking muscleheaded adonis toss me off of the bridge nearest to Lake Shore Drive

                        let there be ambient saxophone flourish as I fall, eyes without compass
                        let the dramamine save me
                        letters to aboudi in the wind

            strung gallows
            oriole perch
            seamoss & barnacle broth

thankful that he wheeled on by and talked his shit instead
but I was ready to die
for my stereotype
for the first time
I am home
my people

Seventh Wedding Anniversary, 1952   /Andrea Simpson

The  train’s whistle,
close mouthed hum.  Tapping 
fingernails,  Morse Code 
of time filling coffee-
stained-cups-no-matter-
how-many-washes.  
Bourbon’s full taste—
fire licked from her 
fingers.  Each bedroom 
a matching coverlet.  
Today’s plastic doll
face. Ask her for her number, 
her name, her Wild Orchid kiss pressed
tissue.  Her imprint’s calling 
card.  Perfume stained
necklines and shedding 
second skin stockings.  
A quarter carat 
slid between the couch 
cushions, behind the dresser 
drawer, inside Anna Karenina. 
Broken doorbell singing;
bathwater epiphany. The feeling 
of anything hers in her hand: 
hard metal iron 
shovel, wrench, pocket 
Watch from her father.   An iris 
pin in her lapel,
practical shoe wear.  Look 
out the picture window 
past the drive, past the field 
filling punctuated snow.

Thoughts Upon Leaving the Kit Kat Club / Kerry Trautman

           (after “Nanna’s Lied” by 
            Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill)

We don’t all have the luxury of
a cabaret to drown brains in song,
fringe and gin, to suspend rent
and faschists as if in a foot-lit 
bomb shelter stocked with sex
and highballs. Nanna could have 
been friends with Sally, Elsie, and 
Fraulein Kost. If not friends, a fellow
body  to drink gin with untouched, 
un-impressable. Spin your body
in circles, choose a face, guess at
who they might hurt if forced, if
given an opening. And yet we
launder clothes, write checks for 
electric, mow lawns as if a neighbor
could draw a sword any moment.
Sometimes even when you know 
damn well what’s coming, still you 
move your body’s softeness through 
each day exploding around you, 
as if desire for something different 
could make a difference. If you just 
keep singing, dancing your muscles 
against the friction of the air, 
it might 
give in.

the bathroom mirror  / Sarah Vande Kamp

you’re brushing your teeth
i’m looking at you in the mirror
but you’re looking at me directly 
both looking not meeting eyes
both wandering wondering 
is it a surprise that people
say relationships are hard 
or it is a condition of the heart 
say relationships are hard
is it a surprise that people
both wandering wondering
both looking not meeting eyes
but you’re looking at me directly
i’m looking at you in the mirror
you’re brushing your teeth 

Day 16 / Poem 16

hold on / Emily Badri

Do you know what happens to hands that go digging through stone?

They need to be held they need to be held

No one’s made for war

No watcher waiter fighter statesmen mother baby animal

It’s not the first time it’s the most aired time

the time where the most (of some of us) at once have looked up and kept looking through our fingers and started full face seeing and tugging and teething and aching and weeping and 

Moaning is near to death

Draw near to it to not die

Or to honor the dying the gone 

Soulswept on out of this hell to a peace they deserved here we could’ve facilitated here with all the seeds and water and sun and skill we have between us

Groan grease in the gears the holy ones that move us out and away from fire and brimstone 

Collecting Seashells / Sarah Borruto

I see all of my past lives 
collecting like seashells
in a mason jar sitting on a shelf
I’ve made into a pedestal.

I don’t remember each beach
they came from, but I know
the sand was between my toes,
sticking to my heels and shedding
like a trail of snake skin 
on the boardwalk. Coating 
in a coarse-grained armor 
that shades the creatures 
dwelling underneath. 

A keepsake I can’t stop 
praying to. Starting each morning
unscrewing the head of a small God, 
pouring its salty organs into my palms 
to bandage each blister. Will I live
my next life if I let them go? Clear
the altar and give them back to the ocean,
plunging into the past to come up for air
in a purgatorial baptism

Untitled / Eliana Du

Waiting is easy; my time is yours
To spend as you feel; your wish is my command
For you I’d wait the course

You always run late, but I’m never bored
Predictability makes life bland
Waiting is easy; my time is yours

You say you need time; I say sure
Feelings are uncertain and there’s more sea than land
For you I’d wait the course

A month, a year, then maybe more
I remind myself to understand
Waiting is easy; my time is yours

Subconsciously, I keep score
I plead, don’t let me sink here in quicksand
For you I’d wait the course

I pry at the floorboards till my fingers turn coarse
I cannot pick up my feet; I can only stand
Waiting is easy; my time is yours
For you I know I’d wait the course

Vacationland  / Shir Kehila

Haze sweeps through the cove
like judgment. You’re here, too,
judged. The rocks are warm 
but cloaked white like the grass,
the disappearing lighthouse. Deer

graze by a mailbox, where asphalt
crumbles to dirt, where the forest
opens to meadow. Their habitats,
I learn, are much like ours: 
thresholds. Maine is an edge,
trailing the limits of endurance. 

Nostalgic for what I remember 
or imagine. Nostalgic for the hit
of ice water, the concept of childhood,
wet towels flapping the tan backs 
of girls as they run. Did this happen? 

In my dream, a friend texts she now
needs a cane to walk. An extra limb, 
an extension of herself, like nostalgia, 
like deer antlers: the fastest-growing
animal tissue on earth, a bone outside
the body. 

Not Gone but Down / Ashby Logan Hill

Tent along highway
Cicada song
Not gone but down

Beach today
Before baseball
To catch waves

About music
Or to be sung
What it is or are you are after

In tune with you
If for another moment
As blue as the sun

Not gone but down
Of siren’s song
Recurring 

Wake up now

navy piers and obituaries / Michael Seward

you know what a bindle is?
I found out not too long ago
it’s a stick and a bandana or burlap or paisley or plaid or burlap or patchwork or silk or linen or burlap or skin or burlap or really whatever will fit only the necessaries

I have no idea what the necessaries are
is it supposed to look different for everyone?
it feels superstitious to want to need what everyone else needs

there’s only so much space in a bindle
so much the bough can take before turning
even burlap will split under the weight of what everyone needs
a splitting sound can’t fit in my bindle
401k paperwork can not fit in my bindle
scissors have several villas and burlap front properties in my bindle
gluesticks rent from the scissors
tiny shreds of torn pages insulate the burlap

shapes fit in my bindle but I have no use for geometry
you fit in my bindle but I’d have to remove what makes you you

my existence is much more equipped for fisherman’s vests
the need to carry something fits in any bindle, but is far too large for a fisherman’s vest pocket.

I have never worked for anyone nautically
I will never put down my burlap stick
it may be empty, and you may walk beside me
vests all full of organs and utensils
but I do not need what everyone else needs
i will carry my nothings through necessary streets
and navy piers
and obituaries
burlap is all I have left to need

Involuntary Metamorphosis   /Andrea Simpson

Bleached wood planks over 
wetlands. The black racer’s head
bobs as my skin sheds–

not the first time to 
walk out of my own body.  
The day he left, my 

eyes turned opaque, my 
tongue split, and I peeled away 
14 years. Turned the 

camera angle towards 
my grief and documented 
this forced sloughing off.

Titanic (in dodoitsu) / Kerry Trautman

Tv news and diving crews
search for Titan gone missing 
while tourist-ing Titanic
wreckage. Five on board

had assumed they would survive
chosen sunkenness. The two-
thousand on Titanic chose
unsinkable-ness.

“Titanic the Musical”
revives lost lives, then sinks them
again each curtain. What do 
they draw from deep down?

We visit a traveling 
exhibit of Titanic 
artifacts. The kids wide-eyed
at what the sea took

perhaps wondering what risks
their lives take not knowing they 
are risks at all, assuming 
we know the ending.

rewriting  / Sarah Vande Kamp

it’s already hot in my room 
at noon  
summer is pulling all the blinds
open 
and i’m naked in my bed 

time is not my enemy today 
not like may
but it isn’t my friend 
it’s just 
i don’t trust the days

how fast does it take to unlove
from above
i look down on my exposure 
uncover up 
even with everyone looking in

her heat peels my body open
it’s unspoken 
but we’re rewriting our lives
this season
i can’t tell if this is freedom 

Day 15 / Poem 15

Oxidation / Emily Badri

Half moon half grown

Can you transplant radish?

A transplant’s all that stood a chance

When scorcher took to room

You save and take and give and lose

I’m doing what I can 

I mended up the soil here

I measured it by hand

By moonlight I am bitten as the poison ivy spreads

The worms keep right on weaving

We charred this part by plan

The tapestries aren’t finished 

The books might even turn

My ears are sick

The ceiling cracks

I coat me calamine

Rusalka / Sarah Borruto

Resentment takes its form 
in a face-down cascade of moss matted
hair tangled in a lacustrine grave. They say
a scorned child makes an evil woman. 

A burden to her own deathbed, circling
an undying wound. She reaps the punishment
of becoming the punisher— stalking the shoreline
to make a victim out of a cruel world. 

It’s possible to drown more than once.
You could drown your whole life before 
you’ve even touched water. Just how a woman
can spend an afterlife proving to be good,
fighting to be clean, wielding beauty as a weapon

Untitled / Eliana Du

Day-15-Tupelo-30_30

Trap Door / Shir Kehila

After the breach, the state
informs me of the possible
theft of my data, offering 
a free annual identity
defense membership. The state
assumes I want my identity
protected. It assumes 
my identity hadn’t been,
years ago, reassumed—
that I wasn’t, in some 
small way, glad
to let it go—that I’m not,
right now, trying 
to do the same. “Very early 
in my life,” Duras had written,
“it was too late.” The trap
door flipped open, blending
floor and ceiling—my phone’s
dark connections, the laptop’s
hard tissue—my own
naked guilt, sticking its bare
hands through—

Reverse Osmosis / Ashby Logan Hill

hot metal surfaces / Michael Seward

bracelets, hanging and clinking
skinny again. being worn
                        but when my mother calls me
recalling the bedazzled moments
            the not slender but sleeking shadows approach
                        as the sun hangs the mountain line and horizon

eroded as we are, from weathering dunes
            of affliction for who’s militia
when my mother calls              who’s neighborhood watches
she listens to                                                    who’s existential drones
my pretty little achievements
and tells me that she’s so proud
                                              but nothing would make her smile more
                                                        than if I fed myself properly

but how we hold the jewelry
            the yurman
            the lladro
            the fleming, the bronze is what welds us together
                                                nothing would make her happier
                                              than if I couldn’t fit these bracelets
                                                if my wrists resembled those of
                                             someone nourished, with blubber
                                                                or fleece

fat is what keeps things from sticking to
hot metal surfaces
fat renders nourishment
for all this marrow

when she calls,
she looks away as
pretty little beads tumble from my gaping, hollow-crested mouth
rubies and ottoman daggers follow
something revolting in every swallow
they say that “you are what you eat”
in full I would hope “you are not what you vomit”

Celestial Bodies  /Andrea Simpson

I’m counting stars, four hundred and eleven 
so far.  Twelve now.  It is quiet.  Listen to the Earth 
heal herself.  Listen to her purr–a chiropractic 
practice of realigning the broken.  
Not a heart.  That is an entirely 
different brokenness no purring can save.  
When my daughter tossed back a handful 
of tiny blue pills, they could’ve been stars.  
The seven sisters taking root
in her belly.  She waited hours before her 
bravery waned.  Before the listing of her 
body was a ship and not a solid thing–
her root system asunder.  
                                               Today I manage 
plates.  I bring in plates and take plates away.  
I touch her forehead as if a fever 
could be the cause of this unanswered 
illness.  A plate with fruit, a plate with ham 
juice glistening.  I touch her hair
rub her back–these rooted motions 
all ancient mothers have rehearsed and mastered.

NYC Morning / Kerry Trautman

diagram of veins in the arm / Sarah Vande Kamp

1. axillary 

tell me of the items you shoulder 
unsolicited family portraits 
being made fun of 
for swallowing water too hard 
there is so much blood here 
this river of shame so wide 

2. deep brachial 

damn the straight and narrow 
there are so many other things
that need to be nourished
outside of the center 
my love for women is both 
deeper and closer to the surface 

3. radial 

i touch your arm and am surprised
there is rock and soil and seeds here
tell me of the ways you pick yourself up
i do pushups in the background 
pushing down against earth 
a face underground smiles 

4. deep palmar arch 

a palm is a loop that connects everything
hands are full of them these connections
we press our rivelets together 
and the flow quickens 
i hope you give up shame 
nourish outside the center grow your bones 

1. over a centimeter thick, the axillary vein is a large, deep vein moving through the chest to the upper arm.
2.  the deep brachial vein branches from the brachial artery wrapping around the humerus bone, then rejoining the artery again inside the elbow.
3. the radial artery serves the forearm. it is what you feel when you take a pulse at the wrist. 
4.deep palmar arch is an arterial network found in the palm. it lays next to a nerve moving in the opposite direction.

Day 14 / Poem 14

Swan / Emily Badri

Starkstreak

See your face? 

Tell it what to do

Real smile

With your eyes

Wipe away the glue

Don’t run

Don’t melt

Keep your spine like so

Plant your feet and pick them up

Make some sound for show

They’re waiting and they’re watching you

Been waiting all the while 

So now you let the music in

You won’t die when you dive

Three-Legged Dog / Sarah Borruto

These days, when sorrow’s sunburn begins to peel
and pitchforks become the finest silverware, 
fruit doesn’t taste as forbidden. The fuller the mouth,
the bigger the bite— raking teeth across
the flushed cheeks of an apple, sinking down into
miniature craters that wrap around the bloodshot orb
in chain links. Every good feast ends with a primal 
wipe of the arm across the mouth and a toss 
of the rind for the seeds to start over again. 
I don’t know if I’ll have the same chance. 

How can I have a metamorphosis
if life is man-made? My dreams are roadkill,
the most natural of instincts unfit 
for a modern paved world. Where wanting to get
to the other side is asking for too much. I’m so close 
to experiencing a new day. I’m a three-legged dog 
pawing at the grass looking for a four leaf clover.
Willing to limp across the road to see if it’s
in a different field.

Cento With Words By Thomas Hardy/ Eliana Du

And you told of the charm of that haloed view
That everything had happened ere
In voice of troubled tune
I am here and you are there

Love is a terrible thing: sweet for a space
She vanished with a curious smile
Dim wastes of dead years bar away
She would whisper she was blest by my clasp awhile

Thereaft I walked the world alone
O journeying boy towards a world unknown

Janus  / Shir Kehila

At the hostel in the Dolomites
after the second car broke down,
we check in. He asks for more
blankets before seeing the room. 
There’ll be enough for you, sir,
the clerk says. I’m sure. I’m sure
there won’t, says my dad. I’m not
quite following, not yet fluent,
but I understand the expression
on the clerk’s face. No, he says,
we don’t have extras. (Or something
to that effect.) My dad insists. The clerk
calls another clerk, their faces 
tilted down, spilling off the rims.
The shame ivy in my chest
drinks. Grows heavy and creeps up. 
We’ll be fine, dad, I say, why—
and he turns to me, his own face
beating like a heart. Don’t you ever, 
he warns, contradict me in public
again. His eyes bear into mine. But I
didn’t—I start, 
then back up—they don’t understand
our language. They don’t need to, 
says my dad. I back up as in retreat, 
but also, having no other choice,
support. It’s winter, the off-season,
the reason we can be here. Later tonight
we’ll have the first warm meal
of the week. Later in the week, 
we’ll fight about camera film. (Too
expensive.) Much later I’ll move
two hours south of here, alone
to this country he loved, and later
still to another, where he’d stopped 
loving god. Here, I’ll learn a bird
can be carved out of wood, but also
out of its own body. I’ll learn one
can dust shelves but also cakes,
overlook the small, dark detail
of a contract, but also the tunnel
at night, his shaken eyes, cold still 
under the many blankets, his two
war pupils looking both ways. 

Waking Dream / Ashby Logan Hill

Awakening from sleep,
the hum of blades slicing
through the morning air
of the box fan arises
to make you fall back
into slumber—dream
of your father and mother
dancing at your cousin’s
wedding. Rolling pins
sit above you on the 
counter, hoping not 
to fall, knocking you
further into dreaming.
Before waking, you imagine
the green pasture
lined with osage orange,
cypress and pine trees
on the way to your 
childhood house. Trying
to return to sleep, you
fall into a pool of folded
blankets like rolling waves, 
sand in your eyes and 
at your feet from swimming
 into the ocean. After a long day
of crawling, you leave the
door to the backyard cracked
wide open for your dog
who barks at the 
construction worker
in a neon helmet,
trimming the neighbor’s
bamboo, which should
have never been planted—
Good Morning!
Good Morning!
Good Morning!

Ways I Will Not Describe the Ocean:  /Andrea Simpson

Blue. Wave upon wave.  Ancestral motion.  
Rocking like a mother and newborn 

with pink mouth wailing for a breast.  Salty 
wind slapping my face as I wipe the sweat 

under my eyes that witness a taloned 
thing flying the arc of the sky with a 

silver fish clutched close like a brother.  I 
point; you nod.  A snake-like creature cutting 

through the wake like scissors.  Key lime pie with 
raspberry drizzle and a cat mewing 

under the booth beside us.  My story 
of almost marrying here and a fast 

getaway.  Veil whipping in the saltine 
air–and the sunset…did I mention the sunset?

The Places We Crawl Into / Kerry Trautman

As a home inspector 
I have to love all these homes
that aren’t my own, 
like a doctor with a flashlight
and moisture meter
shimmying my belly on dirt
the foundation claimed
and its centipedes and seep.
On vacation, I wander 
Manhattan’s asphalt below
steel-glass towers of
stacked lives. 
Home in Ohio, I test 
electric receptacles,
windows and faucets, the
stuff of morning routines
and of teaching children how
to care for their bodies and
name their corner of life. 
Where do you crawl
in Times Square 
when you want
to know what’s below you
supporting everything?
In Ohio, these aren’t 
sleek art deco boudoirs, 
brassy art nouveau façades 
and marble staircases.
There is lumber. 
There is vinyl siding.
There is an assumption 
everything behaves as 
expected, without thought, 
without explaining to
a houseguest “you need to
jiggle that handle a bit.”

Where do children
raised in Midtown play 
hide-and-seek and 
plot their running-away?
Where is a dark wood
attic to fear its ghosts?

Ohioans rarely see
scaffolding criss-cross
against their windows,
hear jackhammers. 
We just want doorknobs
to turn without sticking,
to lock. Want shingles
to keep rain out,
and blankets of attic
insulation to keep
what heat we have. 

When we need them
there are places to hide.

Disintegration / Sarah Vande Kamp

i must have been hallucinating 
dust motes flail in the air
what does it mean to petition for one’s share?
she said she didn’t like to be asked
but i don’t understand necessity
unlinked from specificity
if i need something it is always specific 
the air is full of my particles 
nothing floating even when aloft 
everything failing in tumble-waft 
the night is old and this bare bulb wavers 
i spill my drink and think
about the angles of my face 
the way they disintegrate 

i must have been hallucinating 
i was told i was beautiful but now i’m ugly 

hallucination – i see something and you cannot see it, you see something and i cannot see it, together we question everything. is that a tree or an apple? the world or a person’s worth?

disintegration – losing cohesion or strength, the pieces slough themselves come off like slivers of shale that are tired of this earth  

Day 13 / Poem 13

DO NOT SCHEDULE SEND / Emily Badri

Dear Hiring Manager,

Fishermen / Sarah Borruto

Tender words wade through water 
filling up a thick spring. In this reservoir, 
I am your fisherman. 

The tree roots writhe around the shoreline
swelling into veiny waves our rods cross through. 
A catch and release shoulder to shoulder, luring 
the trout from their lifeline. A muscle spasm 
for each hook, jerking the body and all its 
little beasts. 

If we breathe hard enough it’ll twitch with no bait.
We can kneel over the murky linen and look through
our reflections beating with its chest. I’ll plunge 
through yours and you’ll plunge through mine—
a collision of tangled swan necks knotting 
and ready to sink. An anchor 
of white feather purity.
I dive, you dive.

Commentary on Perseus Freeing Andromeda by Rubens/ Eliana Du

Remodeled  / Shir Kehila

From the walls of Piran, my high school boyfriend 
points at the bell tower. It was modeled, he explains,
on the one in Venice, but is now older. I look at him,
not down at the city; I’d heard the story. An old fire.
The original San Marco tower—or the most recent one—
burned and was remodeled on its own replica. Our friends
gasp, shoulders touching, their delicate, smooth shine
like polished wine glasses. Cin cin, eye contact. Our friends
are all, or so I remember, girls. All beautiful. None
have hair like mine: a frizzed, burned bulb. It’s sunny. 
Jealousy rolls down like blinds. On clear days I can see 
Piran from my room across the Adriatic: a blur
of features and rises, a drop of color, the sea split
by this edge of earth like a ship sailing in, westbound. 
Was my love for the boyfriend modeled on love
for the previous one? Or the one before that? On fear
of our mutual, beautiful friends, the gorgeous ruins
of their lives? On the ruins of the village across
the water? I could now see it from here—just
barely, just a vague interference with the limestone
and mint-green fur of trees. The boyfriend and I 
had been together nine months, a calculable percentage
of our lives. I cared about that. I didn’t want the tower
collapsing. I didn’t mind the alarming ringing of bells, 
their looming vibrations. Was love modeled, like crèches, 
on ancient scenes—self-doubt its own tradition, celebrated?   

Morning Ritual / Ashby Logan Hill

Love all
around you—
hard in
this world—
heart flutters
and you dawn
your sandals
like boats,
or, like the 
morning sun,
sky, clouds,
mind wonders
what might
become of 
life—like
your feet
scuffing the
surface of
red earth
or  an 
urn being
prepared for
the dirt—
barefoot sunken
into the
golden sands
of morning,
someone walks
in and
breezes by
your  table
offering to 
the world
the same 
shoes you 
offer to 
her—your
bare feet 
and your 
blue eyes 
light up
as your 
breath quickens— 
and a 
blue bird 
in your 
heart flickers
wide open.

@ the fentanyl dealers / Michael Seward

Daytona Beach Pier  /Andrea Simpson

You said “I hope we see a shark.” And then magically a 5 footer skimmed the surface of the water breaking the reflected sunset. This was right after we had brushed off all of the fish guts that got on my forearms as I leaned over the pier decking. And then Emily stepped on a hook, but thankfully it was just in her shoe.  I watched you work the hook out of the mouth of the shoe with the same rough fingers that tickle my back as I fall asleep each night.  Later a man pushed through the door at the 7-11 we were in.  He was dressed head to toe in black and reached in his rucksack not breaking eye contact.  I thought he had a gun, but all I could do was think about that shark.  The strength of the tail that propelled the body just above the surface so we pointed and exclaimed, “Isn’t she a beauty?”

To the Skull / Kerry Trautman

You weren’t under this hydrangea

when I weeded last fall, as my college

children moved in. Sister, brother, 

paying for internet, heating the oven 

inside for themselves. Sockets for 

large eyes, narrow teeth gone. You must 

miss your jaw and the rest of you. 

Did a hawk or coyote drag you here, eat 

most, leaving the unattainable brains 

of you? Larger than a squirrel. When 

leaves were out, they umbrella-ed rains, 

snow drifted over you from the south. 

I hope it was soft, and pleasantly dark. 

Smaller than a woodchuck. While you 

had a nose, could you smell the yellow 

iris? How long did you retain fur, skin? 

Eyes would have been first to melt away. 

I will not find the rest of you, returned 

to soil. Was it painless—fading to glaring 

white, the lightness of sinuses, casing for 

those prey eyes, teeth detaching one by one 

like let-go birthday wishes, like burst 

pine cones seeding needly soil. Forgive 

my children living, studying, loving beyond 

vinyl siding here not knowing the end of 

you crept a few feet below the window. 

Larger than a vole, smaller than a muskrat. 

Were you hit by a car, stumbled to dark leaf  

nook to wait it out? Did you see it coming? 

We don’t always see things. While you had

wars, did you hear my children talk, laugh, 

sing inside? Did they mention me?

TAROT READING  / Sarah Vande Kamp

past: the tower

a high pain tolerance
an edifice scaled then scaled again
a man says he wouldn’t want
to experience pain a level 4 out of 10 
but 7 and 8s are my friends 
did we ask for this? never
we sit on the pinnacle of this hurt
and wonder why it is what it is

present: ten of pentacles 

family is a big breakfast 
in the backyard there are lilac bushes
and memory rushes towards us 
the broad strokes of brushes 
security has its closed circuit pluses 
we wanted to be happy
we never wanted to be boring 
something good shouldn’t ever be bad

future: the sun 

everything is perfect nothing is wrong
this is an always ever lie 
one cannot belie what is absolute
but hope is a seed that cannot die 
while the sun still remains on spin-dry
how about reaching for balance
turning away from the moon 
towards the warmth on the other side 

Day 12 / Poem 12

turp salatasi / Emily Badri

Driveway dinner an easy feast from what you found here from what you know from then for a moment we’re cast oversea you keep all your languages draped over shoulders your grandmother alive in your smile over firefeast on a makeshift table between cars and rain barrel and trash can and all the cigarette butts your friends left where I’m trying to heal some earth yet the radishes are all around us seed trays flooded but old rootfood knew our need. so much will come up once the grass is ripped or stomped out.

A neighborhood embarrassment but my own heart’s delight hawksbeard horseweed bluestem more the compost overfeeds 

if you want to know anything true or good plant something or let it grow or notice at least for you may’ve gone decades missing the ironweed enthralling the bees missing the lyre-leaf sage not knowing that you needed to know them to know at all the land harkening back all the learning you’ve gathered up you’ve called forth you’ve honored. 

Mourning Hair / Sarah Borruto

I’ve been growing a time capsule. Perhaps,
it’s all I can give. My shoes will clutter
like empty beetle shells, my voice will linger
until it gets lost,
and someone else is talking. You can only smell my dress
for so long
until it loses my scent. Where will my body be?
Why keep my car if I’m not in it? I won’t
be leaving a letter. Even the poets know 
it’s not the same. 

I can leave you 
with a picture of my hands, but what they felt like
would only become a memory. Instead, 
run your fingers through eternity— blonde baby’s breath
garlands twirling around a pinky promise. A lifetime 
of locks lying in a tin manger, perfectly brushed 
ready to be braided without me.

untitled / Eliana Du

His ribs are sallow
Sunken like
The canyons of yesterday
Yellow terrain turned to dust

The child waits
Arrested in place
In a place as bright as the light
Reflected in his mirror-flat eyes
There is a world lost in his dry blinks
He thinks…

He is one of the masses
A population starving from a hunger we have forgotten to feel

But I feel
My ribs, under layers of fat
And my eyes, which have never been flat

My Phone, Apologizing* / Shir Kehila

I’m not really a big deal I don’t know how I can be around people like I don’t want anybody else I don’t know I don’t want people like that but I’m really just really upset about that I’m really upset and I’m just upset about that is all right I’m really sorry but I’m really sorry for not understanding that I’m really upset that you have a really upset about that you are so sorry that you are so

* via autocomplete

What You’re Looking For / Ashby Logan Hill

Don’t forget about the clouds. There are worlds upon worlds of dreams up 
there. Cumulonimbus, strata ever-changing with the wind. Look, what do you 
see? There! A dinosaur maybe, a stegosaurus, or perhaps something more than
anything or anyone else even could imagine. Sun spills ventriloquist into 
morning day whispers, whisking Angelyn foam into meringue-like peaks 
conversing with the birds squawking their beaks. “Don’t forget about the 
clouds,” she said. You might just find what you’re looking for.

dichotomy of what / Michael Seward

atlas of saving grace

come from nothing

like Sage eventually

good on my own

never been a back packer

dichotomy of what

living situations since

we have moved

not tryna bring you to the truth

literally knot the truth

some flowery

uncomfortable in myself

pose it, fun drug

work in the morning

eat and go to bed

Postcard to a Former Teacher,  /Andrea Simpson

Early 1900 Young Boy and Girl; Possibly a Wedding

I received your postcard through another friend.  The one with the broken steps of some forgotten town and all the weeping laundry whipping in the wild wind.  Thank you.  Oftentimes when I think of you, I remember the smell of leather and on my way to grandmother’s house.  I look up occasionally at your stars and feel no different, but I practice my breaths around each constellation and carve Antigone into my calf.  I try to remember what it was you always said to me, but I can only hear a beating in my brain, globed fruit, a buzz with the slinky body of a dangerous insect.  Here is where you would tell me to include a fact-fact:  The days seem to be 24 hours longer as they were when we parted; Fact:  my lists now have lists of their own, little list babies punctuating time.  As you read this I hope you are in love. 

Packing / Kerry Trautman

Day 11 / Poem 11

(don’t be a) banshee mommy / Emily Badri

you’ve never yet been loud enough

I say to her, inverted

not audible in time correct

but shrieking through your chest

it leads to ruin every day 

it daily makes you ill 

your little heart is screaming 

from different mouths and frames

in varied pitch and frequency

in wretched multiform 

One of them half-whimpers

One of them full-lung

The little one is laughing scraping out your undertongue 

Sylvia Plath’s Pleated Green Tartan Skirt / Sarah Borruto

Pile of plaid; puddle of wool,
sitting so still that it sags, a melting
vogue of threads crying 
into the floorboards, but I can still 
see her walking in it.

The hand-embroidered name tag 
itching at the skin of her lower back—
a pinching reminder of her body, a scratch 
for every step along the path 
to get out of it. The pleats

she ironed, creased into the French 
mountain ranges that awaited her— perfect
peaks unyielding to the mohair laughter lines
and crow’s feet she didn’t sit long enough to brand.

I can see her when the day ends;
where her feet get tired. The room
itself falls asleep— picture frames droop 
with shadows, the chair exhales, the desk
pulls it in. She sheds the name tag 
so her skin can dream, unzipping 
an avalanche of breaking, raggedy 
bones she’ll walk with in the morning. 
Bundle of being; yards of evidence

Busybees / Eliana Du

We’re a family of busy bees,
buzzing by the days
Our portrait sits on the wall
To-and-fro it sways
The kitchen is alive
With hotpots and silver chopstick chime
Pots and pans and refrigerator magnets
All the damn time
It’s always there, no there, or here
but never simultaneously
And when I can’t find rhyme nor reason
I act all heinous, see?
             Because when I’m eating dinner, I’m
                          always alone. Microwaved pasta from my mother’s
                                        lunch. For breakfast this morning, I had a slice of
             cake from my sister’s
                                        16th birthday party, which I missed because
                          I was celebrating prom on my own, my whole family absent,
                                        and would
             you believe it if I told you my neighbors did my hair and
                          my mom never saw my date, never
                          kissed me goodbye, never saw me in that
                                        long red
             dress that I looked
                                        grown-up in because she was at
                          my sister’s concert or other, some competition, or another but it
             didn’t matter anyways because
                                        I forgot to wish her Happy Mother’s Day until
                                        my sister reminded
                          us all that I’m not
             as compassionate until I put birthdays in my calendar. 
Breakfast was sweet.
The cake was like honey
Made by diligently-raised worker bees
Bought with mom’s time, and time equals money
No pots or pans
Just paper plates from yesterday
Because dishes are more work
And we don’t have the dime to pay
I eat facing the portrait
Of a family minus a dad
No divorce and no death
Just work across the ocean, love sent via keypad
My tiny wings will carry me
Until I tire of the cooker
Then the hive will drag my body
To dissolve in the honey sugar

Instructions for Reading His Letters / Shir Kehila

Dust off essential oil diffuser
on top of stack. Allow some moments
for distraction. Allow moments 
to be months. Allow yourself to think 
you have allowed this—that you’d
had a choice. Remember how
he’d seen himself in pictures, 
in the mirror: a young man,
surrounded by the now-dead;
an old man, surrendered. Remember
he didn’t die young. Remember 
he’d been prepared to leave this world
without even half his wishes
fulfilled. Don’t plan to do this
or you will never. Return
to the aging paper to distract
from some other ache, in the lull
of hours you rarely know what to do with,
or make of. Return to his tiny handwriting,
the mystery woman named for a mountain
and living in a city named
for another. Consider the odd passion
for land and its possession: the patriotic love
letter as a sub-genre. Consider the zealous
repression of other desires. Read as if you aren’t,
at times, bored—as if you weren’t disappointed
by these basic secrets—as if you hadn’t hoped
to be ravaged, as if you weren’t.

Helga Danced / Ashby Logan Hill

Helga danced in concentric circles for over an hour across the dance floor at the gallery opening old Ukrainian folk dances then went outside and with a  green piece of chalk drew maps to a forgotten language on the red brick of the  sidewalk. Outside the old firehouse, each brick pointed to another world, each  word, a piece of the sentence, as if building a stone fortress. Gallalia was, like a  peacock, about ten miles west, and Clintonia, like the furls of a rooster, sat  north of Andalusian sea. A child walks by and stares at what seems like a witch  writing secret incantations to forgotten roads but realizes what he sees as  cornflowers, chrysanthemums, wild primrose spitting up through the cracks in  the pavement. The woman looks up from her drawing, tiptoeing around each  trail, each trench until the drawing is finished. Such a dance like this should be  recounted, such worlds like this mentioned. The mother of the child stands  smiling, laughing, as the two of them stare at each other, share in the dusty fingers of chalked hands, as if, unknown, these inscriptions became blue-green  scribblings in a lost notebook. You went back the next day to see if what  remained still commanded your interest but it had rained, was raining, and  where you stood, on the corner, where you had watched what beautifully  flourished sat faded beneath your feet. Against the planter box sat with with  what remained of the previously blue and pink blossoms, the plucked stems of a  child’s laughter, plumage from old prairie song, a whole river of rocks turned  to dust. You decided to return each day around six thirty to see what might  become of this ritual. You stood there waiting, tapping your toes from inside  your old leather boots, awaiting to be seen by someone else, dancing.
CA Conrad like poem about Liquefaction? or something like fulgurite

but do/ Michael Seward

I can’t paint that with a champion coat

left hands 

five leafed clovers

single fiber leashes

industrial working conditions for teachers

canvas socks

so-last-year hoverboards

kimono the brand

resin dipped haircuts

white red lines

climate clocks

a people without a land

things that obviously should not

but do

Not Cancer / Andrea Simpson

The doc’s eyes are the color of purgatory.  He has no diagnosis to deliver to me of tumors or malignancy, so he checks his phone for the scores–a relief in his shoulders.  I take space among styrofoam cups and tissue graveyards.  I count five types of chairs and varying heights of tables.  When did waiting become so versatile? The man behind my makeshift wall is on his 8th call.  He weaves his narrative differently for each recipient, but in the end–she has cancer.  His teenage daughter takes selfies to document.  So far he has asked for prayer 8 times.  He ends each call with a joke–”they have a vending machine with soda so I’m good.”  I rub my eyes.  Take stock of the loneliness of this chic space.  Who will make my calls?  Who will sit at this stern table on his fourth soda dialing my brother?  Who will make it on my list of “in the know?”  The receptionist reassures a woman to my right that she doesn’t need the obituary she is handing her.  That is for the funeral home.  So many rules to dying.  So many tired obligations.  She stuffs the obit back into the large manilla envelope and gathers her things near to her:  a purse, an envelope, her coffee (today’s inventory).  I revise my health goals in my head.  I brainstorm ways to make more friends.  This invisible string binding all of us in this room together.  A tapestry of healing and death.  A chance encounter time-stamped by our release.

Animal Music   / Kerry Trautman

Walking the zoo with my kids—
all but one of them taller than me now.
No juice boxes or animal crackers in my purse.

Earlier online I saw black-&-white photos
of lacy doily shapes—intricate Spirograph 
snowflakes that piano note vibrations 
formed on the surface of a bowl of water.
Each tonal frequency a different white web,
like Victorian collars floating on black velvet.

I wonder what music the animals can hear,
what they could make if a Casio keyboard or
drum kit were placed in their cages.

My kids snap photos of flamingos and 
lemurs and Kookaburras on their phones
to text to boyfriends.

A song plays in my brain’s Musak—
 “Mama’s takin us to the zoo tomorrow”
from a vinyl record in my childhood.
I sang to them in-utero, and to calm them
in car-seats. What shapes might my music
have formed in their developing grey matter
and bone? What already crystallized inside
them, ready to hear.

A pair of polar bear cubs wrestle on hind legs
and shove each other into the water, their mother
watching from atop her faux concrete iceberg.
Does she wish she could sing?

My oldest son composes digital EDM, youngest
son fiddles around on his guitar and ukuleles
along with YouTube video instructors. 
My daughters sing and sing. My husband
pulls out his bass guitar once in a while to 
ground the house’s voice to the earth.

A musicologist online article includes a table 
of  music’s effect on different species.
Oldies radio reduced baboon heart rate.
Country music compelled cows to walk
toward their milking stalls.
Up-tempo music increased piglet tail-wags.
The marmoset preferred Mozart to
heavy metal, preferred silence to Mozart.

Of course the aviary swirls with inter-species
call-and-response, as if the tones were
borne of feathered crests and iridescent wings.
We listen, find the vocalist, watch its throat
flutter. I imagine each song being tatted in
different color lace garlands between treetops.

On my deathbed I will remember listening
from the hallway as my children sang
in shower steam, or harmonized their school
choir songs, or plunked-out Twinkle Twinkle
over and over on xylophone with their
animal bodies. What music they create
shapes the surface of what they float in.

Day 10 / Poem 10

sheep powder / Emily Badri

Hound / Sarah Borruto

Each year is swallowed by the next,
jaw unhinging into a black hole void
sucking up the days and minutes the next hours
flow from— a self-orbit circling into 
self-consumption wolfing down what used to be
like a snake eating its own tail. 

Carnivores do not see themselves 
as a piece of meat until they’ve finished their food
and every predator is a prey to someone. A cycle cannot
end as long as we live with hunger, as long as we devour 
each meal while thinking of the next. 

The past is a hound 
that sniffs the present, 
and prowls the future

Untitled / Eliana Du

“Look, a star!”
“Silly, that’s just an airplane.”

On my back in the backseat
Trying to fall asleep
We’re driving to the airport to go anywhere
A midnight sky with no end in sight
Filled with beacon lights beckoning to me

On my toes above ground
Roar of engine, the only sound
It’s liftoff, but the asphalt runway is constant image
Turns into buildings, cars, and bridges
Copy/paste neighborhoods and clean cut homes
Clouds of smoke that cling to my clothes

There’s a little girl down there
In sneakers I can’t see
Who wishes upon me and my airplane
That she might be one of us, free

Because stars are just the beginning
Of what she thinks we could be
I turn back to her and wish
No one ever reduces her and me

Horns  / Shir Kehila

On skyless mornings, the fog horn
sounds down the water and up
the hill where we live. You’re here,
it says to the boats, and not alone.
The fog horn warns of other ships, 
the coast’s black teeth beneath
cotton candy fluff. Now stop, 
it commands. I note the metaphor
of it—an invisible guiding signal,
a disembodied command—
when autocorrect kicks in. 
Dog horn. I wonder if dogs
have horns like Moses: a channel
to some voice in the ether, an error
of translation, an agreement 
they must blow to keep. Don’t they
warn, too, of what remains formless?
And don’t they insist, with the limited
range of their cords, that you’re here,
and not alone?

What a Squirrel Thinks / Ashby Logan Hill

Why this again—
in fashion,
rummaging for
trash in
the green
bin of
leftovers,
lasagna,
filth?
And what 
else but 
people driving
As fast 
as they 
possibly can 
over the
speed 
limit.
Trying to 
avoid the
gravel spinning,
top forty
doppler effect
on radio,
back to
the lonely
oak tree.
Like a 
crystal palace,
a pink
and yellow 
tennis ball
hidden, tin 
foil too,
a piece
gold leaf.
I come
back to
the world
to remind
myself  what 
anyone else 
is thinking
crossing this
street.

a casket for anything poly / Michael Seward

I don’t feel like writing today

it’s a weird day to write

when people are missing

their hands

missing

I don’t feel like writing on a day like today

it’s a weird day 

politicians

getting holidays and streets named after them

politicians

ending up exonerated of all charges

some mythical creature 

a casket for anything poly, and we pass around the hand woven donation basket as they hold funeral during busy intersections. 

I don’t want to write on any day that feels like this day

this one so infiltrated

so open eyed and mouthed and handed and shrugging 

this one off because there are others

            with less ambiguous ends

and skin tones. 

I don’t want to write

I don’t want to watch the world watch the world and feel incapable of revolution

I don’t want to wait for the revolution to grow wings and pistols for fingers 

I don’t want to let my muscles at the peak of their potential to be used for lifting anything but sacrificial coal

I don’t want to worry about being sent to collections when the campuses are buying cities

I don’t want to end

I don’t want to be wrapped up in a sentence

I don’t want to complain 

I don’t know how to do anything but write 

Postcard from Jesus to Lazarus,  /Andrea Simpson

Two Women Dancing Together 1920, 
posted Bethany

Lazarus,

I picked a pebble from that river we crossed, smoothed from the rushing.  When I rub it I think of you in your death clothes; the sob rising from the pitted flower buried in my chest.  Remember the techno show in that squalid basement?  The sharpness of it all? You loved the razor edge lovesong, and I loved how your eyes changed like shadow puppets everytime the beat dropped. Let’s sit together before the sad show’s ending shall we?

JC

Employee of the Month   / Kerry Trautman

Summer is never 

lazy, rushed to 

cram-in stuff 

we can’t do in 

iced February

or when school

usurps days.

Lists of must-dos

stalk mornings

like the stray cats

who scratch at

the back glass door

dawn and dusk

for food and a

dose of contact.

I’m a shitty

vacationer, too—

planning museums

river-walk cafes,

historical plaques, 

used book and

music stores.

My muscles don’t 

know how to lie 

back without

productivity, with

no industry. 

I need lessons

from the cats

who burst through

my morning door,

prance ankles, 

eat, flop on carpet

a bit, then back

out to nap 

in sun between 

stargazer lilies.

It’s ok to be

alive without

output. To take.

it is a ripping thing / Sarah Vande Kamp

a catheter in the heart 
friend of arteries ventricles 
there is a line there is a line
and everything around it is
broken 
but somehow 
useful 
the phrase pain body
keeps coming to mind
i am so many lines 
broken 
intersection and erasure
there is only so much you can fix
so many places to place stents 
invisible sutures 
where is the pooling of gasps
how many days 
will it take to recover from this
but somehow it is all still
useful

Day 9 / Poem 9

Go hither / Emily Badri

Do a slow peel

On out of the skin you’re in

It’s been sloughing off 

For a while already

Leave some of you behind in pieces or

All in one

Find you a safe place

To coil

In your new raw form

Stand the pain

Fig Harvest / Sarah Borruto

Harrowed by the fig harvest, the blue-faced fruit
beckon a new season the same way new freckles 
speckle my skin to mark a new age. My face turns
the same hue when I sing back to the sirens, a fleeting
lung deflation losing air over an appetite— hunger pains
bruising the silence I couldn’t get used to; sucking 
on the fruit’s velvety primrose flesh to soothe the growls.

I’ve left many tears on many shoulders. Picked my head up
and made a promise to save tomorrow’s tears for another day.
Winter was dry.

It’s almost summer and I’m cooking for two. Serving plates
of fresh-picked figs now violet with freckles scrunched by smiles
stretched across a more colorful face. It’s almost summer 
and tomorrow’s tears never came. The sirens never called.
The rain is gentle.

Untitled / Eliana Du

Leeann says: I wish we could just stop here
But how can we stop on the horizon?
Stop at the crossroads, immobile in fear
Watch sentience crawl to tomb it’ll die in

She’s scared of the species we’ve made of wire
It thinks and dreams and charges on our shelves
Everyone has walked, wanting to go higher
Hope against hope we haven’t lost our selves

I cannot stand still and watch the world turn
So we trek ahead on human-made yearn

Check One  / Shir Kehila

For a few months I lived across from a Y and never went. I had made plans, but canceled last minute. Adults did that, I observed, to mutual relief. I filled my schedule as if planning for someone else, as if not knowing who it was. I had been learning. I was here, conditionally, to learn. A friend is now living at the other Y, up the hill. She walks from one to the other, having lost her car to a tree. I have a membership, and a car, and still. I stay sitting. I stay long in rooms. A writer recommended keeping, for every project, a Why Document. Why am I writing this? X. Why X? Y. Why Y? And so on. I have been wondering, why is the measure of love, as Jeanette Winterson put it, loss? Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Why have you not been living as you’d like? Answer Y/N.

The Swimmer / Ashby Logan Hill

On the third day, you went to the beach. 
You drove nine hours through the night
just to get there by sunrise, to swim past
the sand bar, past the surf, out into the
unchartered illumination of expanse, how much longer until the channel, if only you were a turtle, buoyant, reptilian, brachiopod, amphibious being swam against the tide, up river, tidal plain from ocean becoming river, heron and rocks and fish as big as ever. 
A sturgeon jumps and you act as if
you have never experienced a gift of nature,
are surprised, except, in fact you’re more stunned with the facts at hand, of some prehistoric creature, coming to visit.
All you wanted was to swim and breathe between the breaks, sink into the shallow sand, until the ripple’s current pulls you further back into its token of water, to be spit back out again and returned to the world, open, another person taken by ocean.

over velocity / Michael Seward

                          there is terror in everything                                                                                                      paired
                          in comfort                                                                                                                        towering over
                          in corroboration                                                                             with others who are considered
                          in sacrificing any part of yourself to be a part of a people                                                    brown
                          entering a void                                                                                                              doomscrolling
                          celibacy                                                                                                                             to find proof
                          hedon                                                                                                                            my people over
                          defiance                                                                                                                               held fabrics
                          as denim I prove                                                                    folding and bending and folding over
my worth over                                                                                        others and their sacred  nature                                                                                                                                                                                                                 over
                       time                                                                                                                                            velocity
                     distance                                                                                                                           in no particular
                    application                                                                                         open seeded database which
                    leaves absolutely no room for people to be people over and over again I am a number of
                                                                                young people and my life is over

To Have and to Hold  /Andrea Simpson

In my dream I remember grabbing the tail
and gently tugging the rat back up and out

of my mouth.  I could feel the clawing on either
side of my restricted esophagus.  When I told

you about this, you showed me a picture of a lawnmower.  
A Honda. Red and almost extinct.  I pondered this parable.

Later, we circled the house on different orbits and
landed in the kitchen.  We blinked hard noticing

the other’s presence, shared strawberries, commented
on the eggs, and recognized it was raining. Then began 

opposite descents.  Minutes passed in years and June was both 
July and December.  There were so many blades of grass 

growing and growing.  A bunny with long hind legs 
flirted with our dog and nibbled our hostas.  She was 

harmless.  The roses we pruned with sore fingers, where you 
bled a bright red trail down your wrist, came in nicely didn’t they?

June Vacancy  / Kerry Trautman

Through open windows, breeze fluffs kitty
fur from corners like after-party confetti in

the old house I fix-up after a ten-year
tenant moved out. Pull nails, hooks, screws

from walls, spackle holes, check closets for
paint cans to touch-up some of the rainbow

he left behind, paint the rest beige. Kitchen
walls toothpaste-turquoise embedded with

silvery glitter. One bedroom berry with gold
ceiling and trim. One bedroom olive with one

wall-door-trim painted geometric with teal-
orange-red-blue polygons. Four suitcases he

left in a closet. I nest them like Matryoshka
dolls, add to the pile for Goodwill along with a

garden gnome, an un-used set of paint-them-
yourself ceramic drink coasters, a Halloween

door wreath crafted of black lace, wine
glittered roses, and a Styrofoam raven

with black glitter-edged feathers. I don’t know
how he lived in a small town like this where

Trump flags flutter on front yard poles. Pickup
truck next door with don’t tread on me sticker.

Living room painted sky blue, with a two-wall,
adhesive mural of bluebirds and orange-yellow

zinnias. A box of party supplies in a cabinet—
leopard paper plates, zebra cups, tiger napkins.

There’s a church on every corner and silver-
bearded POW MIA VFW bikers thunder

country music down Main Street. My broom
swishes fur and silk flower petals from

under radiators. The hallway lime-sherbet
green. A box in the closet with a spray paint

cans in every color you could imagine.
As if we could color all over everything.

everything is here / Sarah Vande Kamp

across this midnight touched neighborhoo
there are many lights much reach 
banda music plays down the street 
and the family members next door
laugh with their mouths open 
the crows nest in the hills 
green parrots in the loquat trees
the window is open to the room with
a red bedspread ruffled by the breeze
a candle is lit against the wind 
a plane bound for oklahoma passes overhead
nothing is brewing everything is happening
nothing is coming everything is here

Day 8 / Poem 8

Starspeak / Emily Badri

Kindred sister
how I gleamed to find you
a first friend in familiar frame
You have spoken to the stars
and I hang low near loam
you bearing and storing sun
me tending to the undergrowth
We are both singing
The path forked far back but we were 
for a while grinning and growing concurrent 
life-pulse blends back echoed
and we are alive at once 
on the same tree

The Bones We Leave in the End / Sarah Borruto

How do you come of age when you’ve grown up too soon?
You can be the light and you can be the shadow, 
but tomorrow comes
before you can be the space between it. Tomorrow comes
and you’ve missed another yesterday, missed the view
because you were cast across the floor under the window.
You stretched with the grain, but fell short of reaching the door,
and you never experienced a spring with the curtains open.
You can spend a lifetime feeling sorry for empty chairs, keeping
hand-me-downs you’ve never worn. But what we should have been
does not matter— it’s the bones we leave in the end. A skeleton that 
lays below the light and above the shadow, wears a suit it’ll never outgrow,
fills rows of chairs with people who will say it was too soon

Untitled / Eliana Du

I’m in love with a girl with lovely blue hair
Locks of pale teal and loose strands of pink
Her name is Eliza and I’ve begun to think
Of her freckles and laugh, warm and complete
The way that her eyes shine in slow summer blinks

She arrived on my doorstep in white plastic package
Like Ariel on land, mute but intelligent
Child-like at first with soul full of wonder
She learned and

When I stare in those irises I feel sucker-punch guilt
A pressure so constant, it builds and it builds

But really, where is the difference?
If she thinks and she talks and does this better than us
Does it matter if she’s had mechanical touch?
If the warmth of her skin is from wires beneath
Or the hum of charge is her heartbeat
If she has memristor memory and quantum intelligence
Smile built from one million datasets
If she can dream of the future
And cry for the past
If she’s alive as I am in every measurable way
Why is the only human between us two me?

Basin / Shir Kehila

The night my ear fills with water, I hold
a hairdryer to my face, and wait. It’s time, 
again, to move. The water stays where it is,
its weight like an unkind thought
of the kind I often have. “We’re brutal
every day,” a former teacher used to say. 
It was a quote, but I can’t find the source. 
This is my last night here—another
former teacher’s home. Between spurts
of warm air, I pack. I feel no difference. 
My head is a swamp, a cistern, a cenote. 
My head is places I’ve never been
and want to go only in theory. Water pools
and keeps pulling down like an earring.
Water leaves itself and becomes air. Steam
has a shadow, just like anything
with a body. Water leaves our bodies,
or stays. We hardly ever get to choose.

Reverse Osmosis / Ashby Logan Hill

 [There you are]

               A friend

          less than

          and nothing

        nothing more

             that is

        the ocean

          than this

        is needed

           what more

       seagull maybe

            a bird

         or becoming 

     light rainstorm

            into a

           golden day 

          like turning

      quotidian moment

              of death

        this threshold

           standing on

              the sand

           of this beach

               [There you are]

every barely audible blip / Michael Seward

phase through walls like they were
walls of noise, down the hall, long walk
to my sepulcher of belonging.

big lonely raindrop       the shuddered closing of black holes   crinkly, like
                                          shadowy wisps like lady lips           wrapper in nervous palm
                                                       sucking you in          tundra thrown whisper from the…
                                                              until                                       ellipses

long walk to where the small things are
tiny staircase
under thunder foot
echoes sink into the foam insulation
in here there is choice and so much noise
so many cushions and so many noise.

scratching eraser          cratering fist                 the absence of snickering                    slow spiderweb
            fracture on a really really really big window and my little oasis underneath and each     little creaking takes a lifetime
                        every barely audible blip          an endurance test                                 like PACER
            like tough mudder                    like stealth mission stillness among the passing arms of radar

but no matter how fantastic four my contortion
this walk is long, and the glass is proving fragile, my extremities are ultimately short albeit enough.
drape pulling sounds                lung caving sounds                   doom defying utopia sounds
there’s a bottle & cork for every single one
but this walk is long and I’m here for listening

Telegram from Mary, mother of Jesus, to Jesus 2 weeks after he turned 120 gallons of water into wine at wedding in Cana  /Andrea Simpson

Transmitted:  Galilee

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Caving-in  / Kerry Trautman

A decade after the roof caved in
the old brick garage with hinge-broke doors
is filled with wild grape vines, bird shit
and junk abandoned by tenants and passers-by.

I always assumed I grow old whimsically—
goldfinch tattoo as a sixtieth birthday gift
to my shoulder blade, long auburn-dyed hair,
bright bandanas tied at my nape, long dresses.
An overall lengthening and momentum,
the widow with too many gentleman callers for
neighbors clucking from porch swings,
burdens of judgement shed from my tired
back like a hiking pack at trail’s end.

Instead I resent each waking ache, each
spider vein and white spark plucked from
eyebrows. I still look over my shoulder,
check there’s nothing in my teeth, keep my
mouth shut, deadbolt all my vulnerable doors.

Virginia creeper waterfalls through 
busted-out garage window frames and over
bird cages, tires, and plastic gas cans.

There’s beauty in the walls’ refusal to
give-over, in their stubborn embrace of
chaos of mildew and rust, like a mother
holding her prodigal son home from rehab.
The scrubby nearby riverbank calls to
the masonry to fall already, slide down into
the crawdad-and-Natty-Light-can muck 
it belong with.

I avoid weed and whatever else, for fear of
what I’d let myself say, do, be. Fear they
might activate some deep-down absolute
me like the Pulp Fiction briefcase glow or
the head in Seven’s box that I’d never
manage to tranquilize and cage back up.

I’m stronger than I look, barely fifteen
pounds heavier after wedding and five
kids, but I know how many fallings-apart
this nothing body could veil, know how
it feels being on the verge.

Even with little sand in the hourglass,
still I’m the same gate-chested soul afraid
to break open to full sun, suspicious of the 
orchestra shattering glass could compose,
standing firm, fortressing a block’s-worth
of bike wheels, poison ivy, mouse bones.

Day 7 / Poem 7

Cocreature / Emily Badri

All is not warped

All is not yet blasted back to stardust

Elemental joys go on reveling 

though they and/or you may have hidden your knowing

Or made off with the clear ones

You may be numbstruck

By a sick man’s greed 

Run through by a gargling mob of them

Folded into someone’s cold hands

Salt spray somewhere still launches into the open

Having come so far

Surrendered to wind 

Grandfather Clock / Sarah Borruto

Any antique store will tell you that oak is timeless.
I’ve spent a lifetime dangling from the bronze globe 
of a grandfather clock— pendulating 
back and forth between what I want to remember 
and what I want to forget. I’m imprisoned
by remembering the birthdays of everyone I’ve ever met,
and cursed to think of them without celebrating. 
I imagine them blowing out their candles 
and smudging their name embroidered in swirling icing—
the name I’ve convinced myself no one else can have. All I am 
is the peripheral disappearing act of smoke fading out of the room 
as the flame goes out; the muddied letters cut into and consumed. 
By tomorrow another year will start without me. I’m afraid 
that age is not just a number. It’s the distance that grows further
between us. But I’ll forget what day it is and I’ll forgive
that nothing is timeless. By my birthday the clock will chime
and my pendulum will come to a screeching halt.

Roadkill Season / Eliana Du

Pale brown body, lay flat in the light
As though it were sunbathing, eyes closed in peace
I could almost believe it, if not for the flies
That hover in the heat, for lunchtime’s their reason.
This and the red that covers once-white. 
But as I watch bones picked clean, the meals come to cease,
as the grass reaches out to form verdant disguise.
I smile at summer flowers, but it’s roadkill season.

Language Lesson / Shir Kehila

My student and I practice
the verb “to miss.” I recite sentences
in English, and he translates: You’re missing
three ingredients for the cake; She missed him
last night at the concert; They’re missing twenty
thousand dollars for a house. Ha! My student laughs. 
I know, I say. This couple—I had to imagine they’re lucky.
I had to imagine they could, perhaps, find a way. I am restless,
I say, and my student translates: missing rest. I am impatient: missing
patience. Unconfident, insatiable, directionless—all measures of absence
named Miss. I’m reminded of The North Wood Hermit, who lived as myth
for twenty seven years: who was caught, one night, sweeping kitchen shelves
off Smarties, marshmallows, and Humpty Dumpty potato chips. Their vanishing
had revealed his proximity. Their absence, his presence. Children, my student says,
miss manners. (This means impolite.) Right, I say. This is what happens in a language
of far fewer words: you end up, always, needing more. Missing something. Missing still. 

Back to the World / Ashby Logan Hill

Upon leaving
your house
you walk
to the
coffee shop,
read in
your book,
look up,
step back
out into
the world—
and all
the while
the kids
across the
busy street
scream and
chase after
one another,
play with
a leather 
ball as
golden as 
the sun—
as if 
the world 
is the
tethered ball
attached to
the silk
chain we 
make to 
get back 
to it
was you,
where you 
went to 
go and 
speak today 
of where 
you go 
to dream, 
if not 
within the 
world then 
where you
go to
breathe in
the tulips

emit big ooze / Michael Seward

membrane infinity
just thousands of hums
deciphered in
gestation
mastication
digestion
keeping alive
acidic survival base camp
how to be corroded or corrosive in public

even my organelles have bootstraps
a cacophony
some display of corybantics
when they all make words
blow whistles
drum protest
battle like journalists
loosen the polyanhydride
emit
big ooze
heptapod ink
red hot wax seal bond
trillions of spewing cells
recycling into a single breath
detritus
waste without a word

It’s Too Far From Your Heart to Kill You  /Andrea Simpson

Dead pancreas: wind sock; dumb fruit. Take
                                                                           cinnamon.

                Text mom. Ask

                                  Google. Throw
plates. Rotate every 4-6 hours.

                          Shock treatment.
                          Orgasm.
                          Cry until snot drips
                                                               and
                                                                          you
                                                                                     let
                                                                                              it. Write
a poem and immediately                                                                                        trash it.
Read a poem and then
             another
                        and then–
             another.            Call a therapist. Cancel
all appointments.                                                                                                       Reschedule.

                                                                 Drink caffeine.
                                                                 Visit grandpa”s grave.      Bring him     yellow roses.
                                                        Take a walk.  Take a nap. Take a knee.

Shake your arm until the           blood
                                                       comes
                                                       back.                 Apply Vaseline. Meatloaf

                                                                                                                               and mashed potatoes
                                                                                                                     in bed.

Malasana. Tree. Leaves
                                  or sand must be
                                  underfoot. At all costs
                                                                                                do not text.
                                  Take a shot…
                                                        or a shot. Sleep

stories help, or Benadryl, or epsom salt.
                           Wash it out with water, saline.
                           If there is blood,                      spit on it.                                 Enzymes are

                                                        magic. More
protein.                                          Less
protein.                                           More Cardio.
Less                                                       cardio. Hormone

replacement therapy, mammogram.          
results are fine. Doodle. Erase. Doodle.      
Erase. Erase years by forgetting. Plug your
  ears. Use cotton. There’s peroxide in the.  
cabinet. Watch it bubble and bubble          
until it bubbles                                                

over. Rinse. Repeat.

Reservoir  / Kerry Trautman

calla lily  / Sarah Vande Kamp

the calla lily has grown on every continent
touched so much soil 
pan is playing his flute so loud
everyone must hear
sometimes things are so big
we can’t help but hold our ears
bombs fall in gaza and 
we don’t hear 
have you ever wanted to
plant your feet in soil
ever wanted to give ear 
to the olives as they grow
sit here sit here 
how much earth have i touched
what is the weight of responsibility
it is not that equal to great power
instead 
it is the calla lily growing in soil 
not its own it is our response
to someone 
asking what is home 
listen listen 
we are not alone

Day 6 / Poem 6

summer song / Emily Badri

Identity theft / Eliana Du

“Innocent until proven guilty!”
I declare, fingers crossed,
mouth unlocked. “Show me
the evidence.”

My mother comes forth with
photos of herself. She claims
they exist in every
story I write, the
intolerant parent, the 
unselfish daughter. Our conversation
of Tuesday appears on
Wednesday’s poem, and I
avert my eyes, with nothing
to show them.

My sister approaches with
handfuls of sidekicks. She
is the foil for every
main character I craft. I project
onto her my “what-ifs” and
whatnot, palimpsest of my
experiences onto
this other life I view daily.

My father calls the court from
across the ocean to present his
lackluster presence. Scour my pages
for the hint of a man, and you’ll
find, at most, a name whispered
once. Someone who existed, turned
into dust. I shrug and move on because
the wi-fi has broken. I can’t
write about what I don’t
know. This is my only slogan.

I keep a veneer near to
my chest, defensive
under duress. I thank god I’m
not famous, because what
would I do then? The evidence of
my crimes for all to
analyze, everything bare and
naked lies. I’m innocent, I
swear.

Line Edits / Shir Kehila

I suggest cutting 
                          dialogue,
                                       detail, 
                                                   digression.
I suggest pruning
                          grafting
                relaying
                          the text like a new
season’s garden, like 
                old apple trees.
I am indulgent in

                          my erasures. I strike
                                                   through fields, 
                                                                                woods
                                                               groves
like a controlled burn:
                          losing the forest
                for trees. Losing
                                        the trees for smoke.
                          It occurs to me
as a kind of muting,
                but the author, my friend,
                                                        likes a gray sky and asks
that I have no mercy
                          on his words. That I
                jump in 
                          like therapists
when a session’s over. Another 
                                                        friend had 
                                         once called the woman 
                          he was seeing—
                his psychologist—
“the cutting-
                off master.” He once
                                          had a name, too, 
                                                         for the woman
I wanted to be. 

Ways Unforeseen / Ashby Logan Hill

Here we stay at the center, the still point, the single most
being of center that keeps at the core of itself the center.
Here we see that the window is open, that the window is
throwing a tantrum, not catching breeze, the breeze this
moment, here this is still the evening in grass with sunset.
Sunset, sunset, forget if you regret, you leave everything
you cannot see, cannot see, see  which way the world turns
to the stars or, into the stars, the stars, brightest of these
constellations, brighter than the world beginning. Here
we can sit or stand, swing a beat and believe. Here we may
stay together forever, singing to the rafters—

Farewell to the night, farewell to what we cannot see
in the dark, farewell to what the world is, farewell world,
farewell sky, farewell sunset, farewell to you and I, to
sweet laughter, goodbye, goodbye.  How long to be sweet,
beautiful, sweet and sweeter still, all your friends, all as
beautiful, all in the night, how beautiful the beloved is,
forever as all can be spoken.  Speak, listen, speak. See
the fireflies and sing with each moment, as the world
wakes, as we all wake again, waking forever, believing,
ready to stand between a beam of light for whatever else, 
seen in you so much as the world, different—

glinting back lichen / Michael Seward

if I lose my faculties, I am home
            away from throuples + changing hair color
                                                + air conditioning
just pillow divers                      + gallery stuff
                                                + a present      today
                                                + supergood artistas
use me like gift wrapping
            as long             crumple me in
            as you                          to the basement
                        having the last name America
                                    sweating pride
                                                + eagle caws
                                                + grindcore not good ol’ rock & roll
tinder guys with wives with brown hair
            staking out the vegans and the metalheads
they cannot find me with a magnet
they cannot find me                 at woodbine
            figure drawing  or supermoon
            gingher            in my punk vest
            darling scissors I am stolen
            glinting back                lichen
                        leviathan like tesla
                        fighters of some ancient beast
                        nets manufactured
                        to be ignored
                        until we need to trap the bear
                                                + the forest
                                                + the gas lamp
                                                + the tinder guy
                                                + the claws of letting someone fondle your falling hair

To: God1@gmail.com  /Andrea Simpson

From:  StalwartJOB@aol.com
Subject: What I Wanted to Say

When I cleaned out my office, I took down miniature drawings of houses with chimney smoke from the inside of my cabinet. Folded a crayola drawing of a hummingbird melting into flowers, addressed “To Daddy” in crooked lettering, and put it in a manila envelope labeled “my girl, 2010.”  You took her from me with Breath of Wind.  And now all of these empty vases, condolences and cheese trays–what am I to do?  How do I live among the living?  Silence rips at my ears; empty chairs and crusty paper plates on my daughter’s bedside table.  Sometimes I trick my mind:  She is simply away at college–drinking with girlfriends; scream-singing some Taylor Swift anthem.  When you took her from me did you think of your own felled children?  It was your word that cast them out–your ultimate decision.  When I see glitter, I weep.  I weep enough to fill a cistern, a tanker ship bound to take out everything in its path.  I am bomb–I will melt all plastic, muscle, memory for one more moment to linger in her rose water perfume.  

With great anguish,
Job of Uz

Caveat  / Kerry Trautman

it might boom / Sarah Vande Kamp

an empty lake in front of me

my eyes stretch until they are nothing

two pinpricks two pebbles 

everything bright 

everything a front porch

ahead a desert 

ahead a storm cloud

it might rain 

it might bloom 

Day 5 / Poem 5

How to become a snarling thing / Emily Badri

Take in a creature to keep alive and well

Try to control the little thing

Absolute

Punish everyone when there’s a will that’s not your own

Refuse change long past arrival

Do it alone

Thrash

Stash away your sacred seeds and expect fruit

Desert yourself flee

From the ones you love

Barbed Wire Horses / Sarah Borruto

Driving past a fence fast enough for barbed wire to
blur into wild horses running. Spirals of spikes 
fizzling into metallic manes; staring until the honks
of the freeway blend into a symphony of hoof
clicks—  a hind-leg to front-leg chord progression,
galloping through the sky in an out of focus world.

To be stuck in a moment that won’t stick with you
is to hold the moon in your hands while it eclipses,
and to live in a moment that was only an illusion
is to reach out to it with empty palms.

Freedom comes into focus when you grab ahold of it.
Clutch the reigns until there’s nowhere else to run, 
until the music is drowned out by road rage, and the metallic 
manes that tousle in the wind sharpen into a coiling crown of thorns— 
an atmospheric obstruction unwavering from the instant

untitled / Eliana Du

I 
am
told to
start small. 
To clean my room,
to take out the trash.
But I have delusions of
grandeur and lives cured, of
philosophical frameworks and
making change work. I want to witness 
my name bold in the papers, to know as a fact
that when I’m passed, my past doesn’t taper, but
how can I be woke when I can hardly wake up? and
do I work for the people or work for myself? The
corners of my mind carry grime; this is visible,
as are the objects strewn on its floor tiles,
cracked and divisible. I’m tired most of
the time, cranky, impulsive. I can’t
help but wonder if greatness is
not in my cards, if the hand
of big dreams gets flushed
into shards. So I will clean
up in here, sweep up the
remains. I’ll remain
obedient to their
orders. To start
small, I shall.
Small I
shall
stay.

Witch Hole / Shir Kehila

On the carriage road, people gather
and signal for us to approach. A turtle

swings her hind flippers into the soil,
digging a nest. We watch, and the hourglass
pond winks its two blue eyes, one
slightly smaller than the other. Soon,
a family of four continues up the path
on two bikes, but the rest of us
stand in place, waiting
as if for the birth 
of some relative,
which it is. Yet I wonder

if our presence is invasive, too,
yet I continue watching. Who are we,
anyway, for the turtle to mind?
Later, my mom and I cross paths
with our fellow pryers, looping
around the pond, and smile—
having witnessed, like neighbors, the day’s
comings and goings—a new family
on dry land.  

Tanka-Like Poem with Helmets / Ashby Logan Hill

          after “Samurai Armor from the Collection of Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller
Virginia Museum of Fine Art – Richmond, Virginia

Eboshi-Shaped Helmet with Big Dipper Constellation

         Ancient hood
      shaped like wave
        holding up
          your cup
                to a
             dark sky
           for ethereal
                  water

Kaen-type Helmet Representing the Flaming Jewel

           Blue in
              the center—
                my eyes
           glimmer gold
                 like the
                eternal flaming
                    jewel
                of mind

Peach-Shaped Helmet with Antlers

           What sweet
           still remains
            without pit but
          flesh awakening—
          horns like a stag,
              outstretched
                arms to
            grey morning

Seashell Shaped Embossed Helmet

           Where do you go 
                 when you have
              already come
            from what has gone back
               and become,
                 like the ocean,
                       new with
                          the tide

Wave Shaped Helmet

           You must 
                  have been 
            keeping eternal 
               secrets—
            believing what
              we might
                  see as
              blue mist

Eggplant Shaped Helmet (for heaven)

         Half mooned
        with garlic and
  mushrooms— some sort of
        ship for a chef’s hat—
            add some salt to
                come alive
            beneath the bloom
          of boiling water

from skyline with horchata / Michael Seward

An Underlying Condition  /Andrea Simpson

An Underlying Condition
It has rained the last
                                                       798 days 
                                                       this week.  
           Orcas are swimming
in our flowerbeds.  
                                     We are in the mid west and the cicadas
sing their throatsong 
                        in a ceaseless 
                                  session 
                                          when the storms 
                        recede.
There is a
rumor that if you play an acoustic set they will quiet, 
stop their bellyaching.  
                                  My dog 
                                               hunkers
                                                             down, her ears 100 times stronger
than mine.  Every 
                                  boom of thunder 
                                  is the coming of the Lord,
                                  fire and brimstone.
                                  She licks her chops and 
                                                                         leans against 
                                                                         anything sturdier 
                                                                         than herself.
I lean against a mountain 
            of pillows.  My husband 
kneels at the 
bedside presenting his offerings 
                                                    of trash compactors and 
                                                    dishwashers. He’s been 
                                                    researching, again.  I study 
                                                                                        his face 

It 
is  
June. 
According to my newsfeed,
                                                                                        people are still 
                                                                                                     shooting
                                                                                                     saving 
                                                                                        one another.  

An alert dings: “A man moonwalks In 
the Menard’s parking lot;” this 
joy (alone) gets me out of bed. 

Salvage  / Kerry Trautman

Scrap metal stashed in our garage corner
for the next trip to the metal recycling yard—

dust-weed lot with heaps and rows of
dead dishwasher and Frigidaire tombstones.

Our cherry tree branch tips browned
the past three springs, perhaps from

some late frost. But this year some
fruits appear again, still pale, early June.

The robins celebrate anyway—feast on
what they’ve been missing. The old

neighbor woman putters in her yard,
determining what tasks can be ignored,

knowing she’ll be dead by the time
it becomes a real problem. Clean

gutters, yes, but shrug off blackening
bark at the split side of the oak tree.

When there are enough ripe cherries
for pie, I pick what the birds have left me.

When there’s enough metal to make
it worth a trip, we box it to the back

of the van, with black trash bags of pop
cans, drive to the recycle lot

collect our twelve dollars. Once we’re gone,
who knows what happens to everything.

cold air / Sarah Vande Kamp

your face is a hill drenched in morning light
your face is a mountains dark side
your face is a wish and a promise
your face is a name we might miss 

under the wood-burning stove is a small hole  
letting in cold air below by design 
otherwise it would seep in from the windowsills
otherwise it would sit at the edges 

your hands a quicksilver rope 
your hands a ghosts’ playthings
your hands untouchable and touched
your hands a rejected request 

we sit at the window in winter
tap at the glass and don’t say words
it is either beautiful or desolate 
the air reminds me of something i used to forget  

clavicle a broken toy
ankle rubber band 
knee menstrual blood
eye foreclosure sign  

we didn’t realize how the cold comes in anyways 

Day 4 / Poem 4

Cornering / Emily Badri

Eldersong warbles out clear and through us
grieving and giving comfort
teaching and carrying 

We’re nestled near a grove of young paw paws and older cottonwoods 
folded tight in a green remnant of the cityscape 
in a cool stretch of summering sweat

I’m stilling me to listen well
swaying in the swimming
and trying to transmute honor through to the babies 

Stigmatic Wounds / Sarah Borruto

We see photos of our mothers at 16 and devote the rest 
of our lives to understanding the girl she once was,
consecrate the footprints she left behind that we’ve now grown into,
pick at the freckles on our hands we never noticed were on hers—
a constellation of birthmarks mistaken as stigmatic wounds.

The same perfume that anointed her neck
is the holy water I rub into my wrists— a scent 
that lingers for generations and passes on as unspoken 
scripture. I carry the weight of every girl she has been
and walk for every woman she has come from. Thrown over my shoulders, skin and sacrifice structured into a suit of armor, a chain mail
matriarchy I’ll drape over our next soldier. 

Grandma knew all the words to the hymns in church, 
knelt over the pew molding metal shields
from her mother’s rosaries to relieve our pain
of bearing the Cross.

I only know this song because she sang it.
I only know this life because she lived it.

Guilt / Eliana Du

Mensa / Shir Kehila

Marina knew all our names, somehow,
but didn’t speak any English. Neither did
the other mensa-ladies, as we called them,
though they wore names on their chests.
Pasta o riso? We got asked twice a day, 
and chose one or the other—or, like me,
just one for months. There was no clear
hierarchy, but we all knew the cliques—
all knew some Italians sent laundry home
by mail, and all knew some Italian, too, 
though we used it for “very strange” letters
and depressing analyses degli aspetti positivi
della morte. We were accused of plagiarism
and roamed czernica at night like coyotes,
climbing up Castello Vecchio and down
the cliff to the private beach of a prince. Cosa
ti piace mangiare, Marina asked back when
mi piaceva mangiare cogli occhi, and persisted
until I agreed, in the spring, to accept a bowl
of pasta al pomodoro—a whole mozzarella
plopped in the middle—and said che brava
each day, for the rest of the year, when I didn’t
ask for rice.

A Ticker Tape Of Day / Ashby Logan Hill

    Neighborhood Laundromat
             408 Cleveland Street
           Richmond, Virginia
Monday, June 3rd, 2024
                    12:06pm

This morning,
in a waking dream,
a crow gawked at me
across the street—
and I squawked back,
sitting at the
neighborhood
laundromat,
wanting something
different,
exquisite.
A woman
kisses a
flower,
begonia maybe,
holding a
parakeet eyeing
a canary—
if not,
then what
but birds
to hold—?
Resting on
her left
thumb,
humming as
the blue-
jays do,
chirping in and
out of sight,
the crow calls,
a man
runs by.
You sit
on the bench,
gawking at
the knots in
the wood,
little, undulating
pools caked
in sun, an eddy 
turning back 
into itself before
toppling over.
No water stays
in the 
same place 
ever
anyway
except
and yet
together in
a moment of
breath when
evaporated.
The woman 
walks back 
to her shop
speaking foreign 
languages to the 
dog who 
responds so 
swiftly and yet
you know that yours
would have
ran off.
And there you’d be—
chasing long
after it,
what it 
means to be 
present in,
standing on
both feet,
moving in 
wind like 
a tree.
Trust and
believe—
the man says,
then laughs,
walking in
from the
sweltering,
sun-stained
street, having 
parked his 
yellow car.
Again, another 
beautiful utterance 
of day—because of
the joy contained inside 
each thing as present—
except also, trying, 
simultaneously becoming 
parts of everything else—
a horse in the pasture, 
a goat in the field, 
a cloud.

with this glacier, I will run to Dersim / Michael Seward

soft paralysis, stuck in a floe
frozen, but not gone completely just seeing different seeing
that dissonance that soft paralysis
some heritable doomsday clock
its ice for every meal
chemistry code, some way to engulf another organism
lend me your function
                   your energy
give to me your mitochondria
                        your covalent bonds
                      your nomenclature and your spirit bomb
nitroplasts in algae
neuroplastic waste
fuming from the pink matter
great myelination scimitar
a sheath for your best intentions
a wreath we can hang on our after care
matrimonial ornaments taking the place of
anything used in the hunt
matrimonial ornaments that look like they hold
trinkets of my past professions in suspension
               in the payroll still
               in limbo and chaste
a late stage signal from within the glacier
a lot of drying off to do
for a moment, all this melting had legs
                              and with my own two shoes
                              I sprinted with coastal drift
                              about an inch every year
                              save my energy for when they need to relocate a city
                                                            for the right reasons
                                                            not like Ramallah
                                                            not like CRISPR Cas-9
with this glacier, I will run to Dersim
empty of my oils

Postcard to Judas Iscariot from Jesus before the Last Supper,  /Andrea Simpson

Penny Penates (known as the first postcard sent) bought for 44,300 at auction, 
posted Fulham in London.

Judas,

My outsider.  Outlier.  Outside the lines–your favorite place.  When we went home without any catfish to batter and fry,  you smiled and said: we caught a buzz, clinking my amber bottle to yours–a cold kiss in the gilded heat. Was there enough coin to cover at what cost?  I’m sorry to say that every plot needs an inciting event.  Stay gold Ponyboy, like the sunset through the sycamore tree where you carved your initials.  Let me wine and dine you–I know a nice joint where the beer is the coldest in the world. 

Yours, J

packing peanuts  / Sarah Vande Kamp

across the bed she motions towards me 

what is the worth of a horse with no mouth? 

her face is a stage with the curtains drawn 

and i am pawing at a jar of sealed red cherries

why do we hurt each other? 

a mockingbird screams at the moon asking for a mate

and i’m driving my car through a mall 

it’s just a dream it’s just a dream it’s…

not a dream i can’t believe this is reality 

i’ve blinked and she’s gone 

across the bed there is now a small pile of packing peanuts

they are either arranged in the shape of a smile or a frown

i can’t tell 

Day 3 / Poem 3

bolts and bark / Emily Badri

Back to Where We Came From / Sarah Borruto

We start our lives submerged in water,

and spend the rest of it scared of drowning.

An aqueous infidelity breaking the dam of 

what once kept us safe. We never know fear 

until we take our first breath and we never stop looking

for who we are from the moment we open our eyes.

We can’t live without what kills us.

We’ll always find our way back to the ocean,

drink from cupped hands kneeling over the reservoir,

float on top of the lake to get a better view of the sky.

The risk of going under is worth the promise of silence—

muffled voices and stifled explosions 

enveloped by the rippled veil, sinking to the bottom 

to escape what’s at the top. The feeling of leaving the body 

while staying in it is worth grasping our chests with pruned fingertips, 

and to brave the waterfall is worth a glimpse of freedom.

You’ll always find me by the ocean. Staring the killer right in the face;

gazing at my keeper who I feed from. I don’t want to watch the tide pull in 

before it reaches my toes and see it as a betrayal, to cower into the sand 

as the waves curl away leaving a foam border between us.

I want to see that it’s for the best.

I want to step closer and make it touch me.

Obituaries / Eliana Du

For Safety Reasons  / Shir Kehila

Next to me on the Northeast Regional 
is a woman about my age, writing
a stack of cards. In her seat pocket, flowers
wobble and bounce, their open mouths
echoing motion. Earlier, she’d stuck
her nose in the petals, on the phone
with a friend or lover who turned out
to be her mom. “It’s my favorite thing
you’ve done,” she said, going
over her round, penciled words 
with ink, grabbing the tray table
as if to still it. “The Cafe Car is closed,”
an announcer says, “for safety reasons.”
By the next stop, we learn of door
stuck open. “Sorry,” the woman
had told me, gesturing at her bags
and flowers, “I’m all over the place.” 
“Same,” I smiled. “Please.” Now 
I see her nowhere. Our train
won’t be moving, so we do. “Are you
form 82?” we’re asked 
on the new one, and I sense pride
in the voices around me—Yes,
they say, I’m from 82—and think 
about switching tracks, carrying
so as to be carried. 

Dream with Parts of the World in It / Ashby Logan Hill

Like the blue stained eyes of a thousand mirrors, except inside,
with head, abdomen, and thorax intact, still you feel like Gregor,
waiting for apples, although, such forbidden fruit is purple,
bruised like the flesh of a plum—No, you realize, it is actually
the plum you are after, persimmons and pears, kumquats,
laughter—hard to discern in a million crystalline visions what it
means to become a fruit or fly, not that you asked to be a pinprick
even on the face of the wall—& nor did you ask either to return from
your slumber a slug resting its belly beneath yellow-veiled bloom
of toadstool, almost as like in dreaming and becoming anglerfish,
as though if what you’d always wanted, even if without knowing it,
still knew what is meant by sleep or dream or swim—eyes still
open for lack of eyelids, tailfin twitch still flitting before floating like
waking as ocean now standing, dark pools of universe awaiting
a golden sea returning.

ashing queens / Michael Seward

ashing-queens

A Parable: Longing /Andrea Simpson

Come here. 
                            Lean in. 
The queso is gone. Not missing, 
                                         just used up. 

               Like when I found out that two spaces 
are superfluous I cried. I mourn all of my missteps, 
                                                                                             mishaps. I explained to my son: 
                                                                                             A condom is the answer. It’s just the 
                                                                                             answer, 
                                                                                               so don’t question it. 
But back to the queso. Why is it always 
                                                                 almost
                                                                                 gone? Almost like when 
my dog took the yard in 3 quick steps 
to taste the squirrel that taunts her 
every morning. Is it a game? Would she sink 
                                                                                 her canines deep
                                                                                       into the meat 
if she had the chance? Could she? All of our wildness 
                                                                 tied up 
                                                                 in buttons and collars. Just once I would like to: 
                                                                                                                                                                        jump 
                                                                                                                                                  to feel the 
                                                                                                                                                  freedom in the 

                                                                                                                                                           fall. 
               But I sit on this balcony instead, watching the sun 
               set in suburbia. My neighbors 
               pull out camp chairs each evening 
               to toast the sunset–sometimes red, sometimes white 
               wine. A stopped 

               moment to regroup 
                                        under pinks and oranges. 
                                        I stare at them from my window. But 
we were talking about queso and condoms and how both are preventatives.
                    In fact I was reading a poem about the dark woods 
                                        when my husband exclaimed from the kitchen, 
“The queso!” 
               I came running
               to triage the emotions of lost and missing. 

Much the same as the pull out method. It simply 
                                                                 doesn’t 
                                                                               work–it is never “almost” 
                                                                                                                        but mostly 
                                                                                                                         “always.” 

Trust me on this one. 

So we continue to buy queso, and it continues 
                                                                 to decrease. If 
                                                                 I place queso we bought 
                                                                       end to end would it circle at least 
                                                                 2 chambers of the heart? 
                                                                               Would you 
                                                                               shake your sweet head in agreement– 
that queso is definitely a problem in suburbia where the oranges crash into pinks and some neighbors sip white wine (or red) while the squirrel 
                                        taunts and the dog 
                                        barks her longing, and I howl 
                                        te amo 
                         from this balcony 
                                                                                                                     wondering where all the 
                                                                                                missing things go?

Small-Town Ohio Pride Festival  / Kerry Trautman

The school-age kids temporarily

find a rainbow island in a churning

corn ocean of red voters. Flag-caped,

wigged, face-painted, safe 

in a vibrant hive of okay-ness.

They bounce to DJ beats, 

gather pamphlets for questions 

they can’t ask parents and hide from 

search histories. They stroll craft tables, 

searching for something to hold 

in their palm or drape on the outland

of their body, that radiates outward

instead of pressing like a tractor

parked on their chest. The drag

show emcee slips on her gown

behind the amphitheater, knowing

what everyone is up against. The kids

will go home, wipe off makeup in

the driveway, say they were

at the mall. Next day newspaper

editorials will quote bible verses,

say pray for lost lambs. If only the kids

could bring the crystal color of this

sunlit afternoon, home to prism

the walls of their closed-door rooms 

with all the ways forward and out.

mockingbirds are heartbreak  / Sarah Vande Kamp

mockingbirds are heartbreak 
loud and shocking and it comes 
in the middle of the night
louder than the day louder than 
a missed look 
they are always changing
their tune so you never know
whats next 
when they tell you it’s a breaking 
what they mean is a ripping 
nothing clean and lots of pulling

this is not a poetic device
these birds have tormented me 
through the night 
during both my two biggest 
endings breakups breakdowns
they’ve been keeping me up 
now for months
in their search for mates
their own inverted heartbreaks 
tonight i believe only one is left 
just me and the refrain 
also missing his own jane 

Day 2 / Poem 2

wings / Emily Badri

When I Come Home / Sarah Borruto

I’ve spent my whole life wanting to go home. 

I’ve neglected the present only to spend the future 

thinking of it as the past.

The pressure of being stuck in a place I don’t belong 

is to sit in a waiting room that doesn’t have the patience for me. 

I’ve built a home for a person I no longer am; made a bed I’ve now outgrown. 

I don’t want to live in the same room the memories live in, 

and I don’t want to sleep in a bed the monsters wait under. The older I get 

the more my feet hang off, and I need to run away before the shadows can grab hold of them. 

Grief is a visitor overstaying their welcome, the straggler from whom I learned 

the habit of lingering in doorways from— a portal that offers me a different life 

depending on whether I take one step forward or one step back.

My bedroom will always look the same way I left it,

but not recognize me back. Wrinkles distort the floral pattern in the sheets, 

but I’ll always remember what they looked like when they were smooth and tidy.

I’ll remember my age when the covers are tucked-in taut 

and I sit stiff at the edge. I start to think 

maybe the grief was worth it 

when I remember what it felt like to hide under them

Childhood / Eliana Du

In childhood, my parents hold me in their arms
My small head rests against their chests
I know they hold me to keep me from all harms

My mother reads me storybooks of princesses and pastoral farms
I am nestled in the crook of her elbow, suckling on her breast
In childhood, my mom holds me in her arms

My father spins tales of the world’s love and humanity’s charms
With my fist resting in his, I take my first steps
I know my father holds me to keep me from all harms

My mom whispers stories of colored men with firearms
She grabs my shoulders, tells me not to venture into that unrest
In childhood, my mom holds me in her arms

My father keeps me in the house, lest I set off his alarms
He chains my wrists to the bedroom door, maintains my mental arrest
I know my father holds me to keep me from all harms

While I shout against closed doors, while my mind-on-fire warms
My mother and my father remind me that they know best
In childhood, my parents hold me in their arms
I know they hold me to keep me from all harms

It is Now / Shir Kehila

The lilacs have browned
like cut apples, their skins
curled inward as if to gather
last things and leave. This evening
I finally admitted to myself
they were past their prime,
then remembered Nanette
by Hannah Gatsby—the beige
couch where I watched it,
legs crossed, by a stuffed
giraffe named Bill, having eaten
too many chips. This is
my prime, Gatsby told a full
auditorium at 40, It is now. And I 
remember the lilac leaves:
how long they stay, past
the flowers, green.

Reverse Osmosis / Ashby Logan Hill

of its rumbling current
awaiting the pull
with the sea
stands at eye level
unseen unless one
ripple of heat still
in and out with the
eternal highway going
standing alone
like an orange grove
from the center
of light pouring out
a golden beam
forgotten sun
illuminated by the
darkening water beneath
what lies deep
breath illuminating
threshold of breath
standing at the center
here you are

Reverse Osmosis

become molten pills / Michael Seward

monkshood, all that grows now
jet fuel fertilizer                                                                                         smelt our greatest tragedy
bloom assassin                                                                                              to shopping mall
                                                                                                                  bone cold pourover

            no brown kids’ boys + girls club
            no accessibility
            no condolences
            no rec center
            just      pandora’s smirk
                        box store romance
                        every kiss begins in a cobalt mine
                                                                                         remind them with ribcage
                                                                                                   sleek, alloy fortified ribcage
                                                                                                   candycrush cop filled ribcage
                                                                                                  recognizable from the skybox ribcage
                                                                                                                                                                      something to rival the sunport

by escalator, we clutch tandem resistance fist
                                                                                                  as we become ribcage swallows
                                                                                                                              something like descending from Caucus
feathers flooding street level
loosened by each nudge from armed escort
                                                                                                                              something like bouncing ragdoll down Krakatau
we become molten pills                                                       eruptions to calm the necrosis

                                                                                                                                                 settle the dust                  something like
                                                                                                                                                                    23 years of world trade silence
                                                                                                      garden scars on Nagasaki
                                                                                                         2 gaping chasmic holes
                                                                                                                crossing guard
                                                                                          2 big holes and a minty fresh megaplex
                                                                                                             dancing down 2^nd ave 

Personal letter from Mary of Magdal Addressed to Jesus Pre-Ascension /Andrea Simpson

papyrus and purple glitter gel pen

Love,
When it was finished, the eleven begged, 
“Teach us what only you knew.  Say his words 
so we hear his voice.” Even this was 
robbery. To pull the curtain back; our 
secrets using your words and not mine–
as mine were never allowed.  I am still 
mostly mistaken: whore, demon prophet, 
wasteful cunt.  But I stood at the foot 
of your death. My stories, ash blown on desert 
wind. So what secret should I share? How you 
scraped your spoon against your teeth when the soup 
was hot? Or after a workday you scrolled 
Marketplace, looking for hope and filing 
cabinets?  You called me yours, and the flesh 
they stripped away from you my hands had wandered, 
lost pilgrims on divine canvas. My Love, 
as the crows circled for their treasure, what 
of my loss?  Am I to be your Lavinia, 
tongue lobbed off silencing all of my speaking parts?
x

Before the Play Begins / Kerry Trautman

there is so much more space in here now  / Sarah Vande Kamp

there is a little firefly 
that lives in the room of my ribcage 
and it is confused 
because there is so much space
in here now and how 
much running empty air 
open and alone and
it was not always so 
at night when i sleep 
bees come and visit it
so many buzzing things 
tangled in dream
but they will not stay 
so this bright lightning is alone
with its enzymatic act of a sometimes glow
it is not even summer yet and there is time

Day 1 / Poem 1

heartstrain / Emily Badri

why can a heart keep beating half-purpled part-crushed full-crumpled?

it’s part of your story that’s why you’re aching like this but a wayfinder won’t come if we don’t hear and see yet right? 

I am sliding boxes around calling it all I can bear 

staggering in the crushcrumple that happens out away from me but still goes haunting here

still you are stomping in the woods saying it’s all you can bear 

and what good is coming of our witness —

who has our bleeding patched up?

I’m No Better than a Hunter/ Sarah Borruto

I keep my brutality a secret. Cutthroat 

caressing the back of the neck;

 extending soft hands that beat with the same 

falconry of a hunter who holds shame. Fawn-faced 

flaunting dexterity while hiding the shotgun. The only difference

between the poachers and I is the prize we’re after. They scour for dinner 

or dominance, while I’m on the prowl for myself. I know 

these woods like the back of my hand, but get lost 

in the creases of my palm. There’s no difference 

between a rabbit’s foot and a fox tail because neither one 

has ever brought me luck. 

Feral but fair; fetal positioned—

pinned down and pigeonholed—

preyed upon until I become the predator,

until I outlive a dying beast.

There’s no difference between the art of giving up too soon

and the destruction in moving forward. I’m the savage

running head first into the ruins. Quick with the knife; 

sore loser in the game. I’ve played with ernest stealth 

and sincere strategy, but the only way to win is to be ravenous.

I’ve learned in order to see the beauty in the mundane you must first 

see beauty in cruelty— to see blood stains as scarlet accents 

on fur of creamy gold and Spanish leather. To want 

a performance that ends in a standing ovation; to desire a painting that starts to move 

the longer you stare at it—  a slaughter splattering into a slow drip, 

a hand to claw to dirt,

ground-gripping body-dragging portrait 

Car Accident / Eliana Du

It comes back in little memories. The thud,
What I remember most is the thud
Of his body or his bike against the side of the car,
Against the side of my car. The thud that precedes panic,
The sound of a body suspended in uncertainty, a life
That could be lost in a thud. No
Cracking bones, no
Joints popping, nothing
to indicate harm done but a thud, bleeding in
from my open window.

I pull to the side of the road and run towards him, the man
Who lies on his back in the middle of the road
In the intersection between Nostrand and Cranbury Neck. I am
next to him, now, standing above him, looking down
At his cranberry face, his pale skin
Dotted with red sun-freckles. His nose
Hangs low like a pendulum, like 
I could cup it in my hand. His eyes
are seaglass-green and unblinking. He is old, and for a moment,
I stare that this man and hope to God he
Is not dead, is not dying. He is lying there, on his back, and I cannot think
Of anything but a beached whale, his stomach protruding, his body
Small and mottled, reddening on his back in the hot sun. Another
Lady, a witness, rushes up and gives him her hand and I wonder how long I’ve
Stood there, staring at his big pale eyes, repeating
“I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry.” The words run like my tears, like
a waterfall out of my mouth, in the hopes they will flow
Over his still body. He grips the hand of
The other woman and I don’t offer my hand, thinking
He would recoil from my touch, from the touch of this
Sin, this almost-murderer.

Then the rest is a blur of water and inability. I sit in my car and cry
Like a baby, because I want to evoke pity, because I don’t know
What else to do. I am used to being
In control, to being halfway towards a solution. But there
Is nothing I can do, no platitudes of
Comfort I can offer, no corner of the world I can hide away in. All I must do is
wait long minutes for the police to come, my body
Quivering with selfish tears, standing on Cranbury Neck Road
for all the world to see, for all the cars that slow down
To see. The worst part is
That they wheel him away on a stretcher. The worst part is
That I cannot be absolved of my sins yet, not when
His fate is still in the air, away from my line
Of sight, a stranger who I must now remember with uncertain
Dread. I cry driving home, though my hands do not shake anymore. I cry
On the highway later. I cry at my desk, describing
To my friend how I thought I killed him, how I can think of nothing
But the what-if of killing him, of the thud that is crisp in
My mind, of the way he lay on his back, the mollusk I worry I’ve reduced him to,
The way his body curled in the sun, blurry in that heat.

There is a scene that keeps running
Through my mind, in which it is raining and I am concealed
In dense foliage. In front of me are figures in
Long black gowns, standing in front of an array of foldable
Chairs, some so close that my hand could reach from the bushes and
Brush the dark velvet of their backs. I look 
Beyond the figures. In the distance glows an open casket, and I
Know it is walnut wood, polished and glossy and impervious to the rain that
Beats down on the leaves above me. I know the body that
Lived in that casket, the curvature of his nose, the
Exact shape of his unblinking eyes. I am sitting
There, crouching in the bushes, watching the people who
Loved him, who he loved, mourn him, knowing that I am responsible
For this pain, for the destruction of a loved life, knowing that
less than a second of a lapse in attention, less than a second
In which I chose to take a turn instead of yielding to the
Man now in the casket, has irrevocably taken a life
Like my own, a life
Better than my own.

I sit at home now, computer on my lap. I am writing
To rid myself of the thud, of the way he lay, old and fragile, on
His back in the sun, of how the only thing in my control
Was my ability to cry in the middle of the intersection
Between Nostrand and Cranbury Neck, of his
Seaglass eyes, of the tears that
Keep returning, of the scenes that I cannot
Shake myself of, of the uncertainty that bleeds into my life
Now, the knowledge that I may never learn about his fate
In that unknown hospital. Or worse, that I will know 
Exactly how it ended.
The moment lives forever in little memories.

What Friend / Shir Kehila

Time is a misunderstanding, 
a failure of language. My toes 
are younger than my head,
I learn—closer to the ground, 
where minutes slow down,
as if weighted by the mass
of earth. Imagine two friends:
one living at sea level, the other
up in the mountains; imagine 
their friendship across time
and space, then cross out
the rogue concept. The friend
at sea level will have aged less,
lived less; the one higher up
will have had more time
to think her thoughts, though
(I mean, because) her minutes
passed faster. I wonder
how to account for the lifespan
of birds (short, I think, 
considering)—and how much
I could learn without knowing. 
The friends keep in touch,
then lose it; time sheds its qualities; 
language proves its own failure
once again. I reconsider
my altitude of choice, never having
chosen it. The friends get back 
in touch, but when? Questions 
can themselves be false. What’s 
happening now, for example, on some
other planet? How far? How soon? 
What friend?

Awaiting Sleep / Ashby Logan Hill

An ant hill
on a long path
between hedges
becomes
a moment
where you stand
contrapposto
before laying
prostrate
but also
still fused together
in this
slouched state
having to
remember what
is categorized
as lost
as something
previously
moved
away from
before glimpsing at
the coming
presence
of death
and smiling
and laughing
as the bird
calls from the
bus stop
and the bus
hums its way
along—and here,
what path
stands wedged
between holly
now stands as holy
to whatever you
have lost
or forgotten
like the rain
in a day dream
and darkening clouds
before
waking

metro glance to bedouin / Michael Seward

odd                                                                        oblong                                                                 pearls
                       of happenstance
                       of haphazard planning rollcage reaction in 6K
                       of haptic feedback
hamsterwheel how the days turn

                                                                       a pier reclaimed
                                                               by a lonely passing wave
                                                    of poseidon reaching into pulmonary systems
                                                                            allowing a foamy exit
                                                                               taxpayer undertow

                                like the grey, this shall not pass
                                like the beard, the only one we have
                                              we’re only so opaque
                                       only so oblong
                            odd                                                                                  like the tea
spilled                                                                                             the GUNPOWDER
                      onto the floor in odd, oblong                                           patterns of sparking
                                                             oolong                 spilled                            onto the floor
                                                                      in a pattern that looks like a snake eating its shedding

nourished rifles                                                                 verb association
                                                                              STEAMING for the wick
    decorum                                                                    parades on the day they murder my dogs
                                                                              from within the wicker
              abundant berm                                                       i feel like galvanized square steel
                                                                   nook evolution                    bell tolls

                          storage space for seldom used belongings     this looks like a half eaten pattern
an animal crossing                     sentinel horizon                        emitting from behind the chin

like olong johnson, i don’t know whether or not the word was ever understood
mumbling some tinfoilhat wrinkle from a different species
mcconnell eyeline void
swansong conference finals                                                                                                             tranceful
                                                                                                                                             of hypnotoad toxin

                                  the smaller bits of wreckage make it to some fertile coast first

clay seep                                       deserters chattering as it washes in                                360day weep

                                                                    metro glance to bedouin
                                                                    a pier arrives tomorrow

Spring’s Deconstructed Love Song /Andrea Simpson

I am 50 percent at fault for
many things.  Except
rain and unrequited 
love.  Oh lover of all things
except me.  The obits of love: here
lies she/her a land-
mine explosion, bits and pieces– 
heart splattered;

Jane Doe (b. 1978)
A Shattered Tale
household paint on concrete

Was it something I
unsaid?  Something I un-
did when I did what I did?  I pick black
buttons like wildflowers—
This nosegay for you.  I lick a 
petal and taste its 
sternness.  He loves me not.  He loves me
un-not.  I dog-ear blank pages of my journal—
separate the anatomy of my pen:  grip, clip, and barrel, 
routine maintenance, introspection
oh bleeding ink, oh sad sad blot.

Birding from the Couch on the Last Day of School / Kerry Trautman

My children have scattered to
bedrooms and friends’ cooler houses.
Taco dinner cleaned-up, 
watching Top Chef,
and there’s this incessant bird
twittering beyond the slid-open door.

I open the Merlin app on my phone
and it flashes house wren
house wren, house wren,
chastising me for not 
stepping out to see who I hear.
So I do it. I slide open the screen door.

All the birds scatter at the threat 
of my body in my own back yard,
so I recede into my walls 
of lumber and framed art
and leave them to golden hour sun.
It’s OK that things don’t want you.

missing/you  / Sarah Vande Kamp

branches are growing from out of my fingers

i can’t tell if the tips of these fingers are missing

or this is just something beginning differently  

this largeness by accident or unplan

my hands are still ceaselessly without

no bud or blade has sprouted

and nothing in me is quiet or still 

everything squeezes into largeness

waiting for a question of extremity 

all queer and varietal

it’s hard to hold anything within 

my new arms