The March, 2023 30/30 Project Part 2

Welcome to the 30/30 Project, an extraordinary challenge and fundraiser for Tupelo Press, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary press. Each month, volunteer poets run the equivalent of a “poetry marathon,” writing 30 poems in 30 days, while the rest of us “sponsor” and encourage them every step of the way.

The volunteer poets for March 2023 are Ashna Ali, Carmella Braniger, Caitlyn Coey, K Dulai, jawno okhiulu, and Alexandria Regilio! Read their full bios here.

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

Day 27 / Poem 27

Wax Phonograph Cylinder / Carmella Braniger

You didn’t exist, I know,
before I thought of you,
swaddled in hospital sheets,
or was it my bridal veil,
or an old copy of lost news.
an unwanted package
out of which, just in time, you unabashedly burst forth.
The long-awaited night howls,
silenced only by my own
amber moans of abandon,
reverberate across the river.
Your lost wax cylinder spins
Just one song at a time.
Those loud sweet grooves
turning down church aisles
until it sounds like the blues
The old, slow, low-down blues.
But they don’t exist, like you,And never did except as virtu.
All I think I have come to know
about your being here at all Is
only half of what we call truth,
the other half sown by you,
who spent your childhood
unknowingly teaching me
there’s more than one way
to cut a groove, to convert
vibrations into sound that–
like the sun, or earth rumbles,
or a sperm whale’s cry–
no one may hear, like the way
your violin sounds when it shivers
in place, nerve pulse of strings–
almost ready to snap.

Spring Sunday / Caitlin Coey

After Ross Gay

A balm of light,
stove top sweet potato biscuits,
flowers in a vase on a big wooden table,
the last of the cake, the Norway
maple, the clover’s bloom,
fig tree, a galaxy
of wildflowers
shimmers.

Great Barrington / K Dulai

Under a cold star

starvation—

brown skin stretched over vines, over

white, roped bones

This is the you

who is not you

Away from potted cityscapes,

in-love in a snowbound forest

exchanges of simple words

with future sophisticated men

taking a break from their ambition

Under open night skies,

behind a llama’s cry

frigid jeans covering hips, covering lips

against fevered kisses—

against another night’s anguished heat

lust wide open on white snow

Love lost in a jungle of it, of snow

In My Mother’s Kitchen / jawno okhiulu

Daddy may call this his house but this is my mother’s kitchen

In my mother’s kitchen
there is always something to eat

In my mother’s kitchen
there is food memory
In my mother’s kitchen we don’t read the recipes
we taste them

A smidgen of salt, some nutmeg and cinnamon
A hefty helping of brown sugar
Sliced ripe peaches, make sure they real sweet!
A whole lotta butter
Get you some flour and a dash of cornstarch
Combine all of that
With some boiled water
Always top it with extra cinnamon and sugar

I sho’ did inherit my sugar love from my mama

In my mother’s kitchen

Unless I came in picking out the meat from the pot
I was always welcome
Even when I came home with paint on my fingernails
And them dangly earrings I love to wear
I am welcome
The whole neighborhood is welcome

In my mother’s kitchen
I learn my grandmother’s kitchen
Talkin’ tradition baked in cobblers of compassion

I was fed
Never had to beg
Prayers were always said
In my mother’s kitchen

First Aid Kit / Alexandria Regilio

For Abby

I wish someone had told me
how much wisdom we hold at
eight. Often, this is the age

of change. Pull the strings of
Little Kiddom through the
holes of the number, top and

bottom, and bring your dreams
through to the other side where
you will soon grow taller than

some parents, and if not taller,
certainly smarter. You’ll want to
keep a lock of horsetail in your

pocket for strength, seed paper
for poems and offerings in your
notebook and chamomile in a vial

for a hint of psychic spf. Consider
these items your eyes and ears,
your first aid kit for summers between

school years when structures melt
like orangesicles and boredom is
anything but your best friend. When

in doubt, turn toward the plants.
Sit quiet with them. They’ll remind you
of what you already know.

Day 26 / Poem 26

A SMALL HISTORY OF PLEASURE / Ashna Ali

after Richie Hoffman

The movie ache of a young thing, waiting. When the coil
of the phone cord could muscle between rooms, suffer
the squeeze of sweaty palms, recounting surges of hope
before a dance. Eyes wandering toward the oblivious
during class, the indulgence of sighing over
what I’ll never have. Some of us had no choice
but to nurse the unrequited. One does what one can
with what one has. Which is to say that I was well-versed,
can still remember how to yearn as the practice of joy.

I walk twenty minutes from the subway past the male
springtime ritual of choral hollering, purchase nicotine,
keep working on my phone right until the door. Order a glass
wine alone, catch up on the bartender’s week. As they enter,
I hug my friends, ask all the requisite questions, feel the jolt.
Anachronism of cord coil in my fingers. Oh. Oh dear.
Friend, I am anticipating the scent of your hair, soap,
deodorant. I conjure its cut across the beer and bodies
the moment you enter. I inhale. Drop my phone
in a pocket, zip it closed. Smile.

The next morning I make eggs. I know you must be running,
imagine your trek under the sun. Sip coffee, remember
the squeeze on my shoulder. Perhaps it was stolen.
Perhaps just warm, which you are, always. In the evening,
I drop my jaw to curl my lashes with mascara, induce
slow-motion replay of your mouth saying my name.
Your satisfied shimmy across the 2am floor, the songs
you’ll choose that send me back to that young thing
belting to the radio, delighted to feel, wanting nothing back.

The Türk to His Coffee: Stillwater, Late 90s / Carmella Braniger

For Miriam and Siyavus

For you who keep my eyes wide open
in this foreign land of brilliant, wide skies
as I stay awake and watch for her to come
and join me over a cup of you–black coffee.

I wait for her with you in hand, my mug
full to the brim, steam clearing my head.
Your aroma fills my lungs with energy
I will need to court her properly tonight.

Oh deepest dark coffee from silky beans,
you know the secrets buried in my core.
My longing for the homeland, my mother,
the son I never knew I would have.

Even so, dark brew, you see me through
the night, the golden wave of desire,
uncertainty pulling me toward her legs,
her thighs, the purse strings of her heart.

When I wear the guise of a poet I’m okay / Caitlin Coey

After Lucy Grealy

but when I try to wear the guise of a woman, it’s a disaster.(1)

And I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for – but I’m so lonely.(2)

I feel like there’s a hole inside of me that at times
Seems to burn.(3)

When I have anxiety these days, it’s all about being alone.

(1) Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
(2) Saoirse Ronan as Jo in Little Women
(3) Sandra Bullock as Sally Owens in Practical Magic

San Jose Fools / K Dulai

Those first years in California

we learned to live with the absence of rain

We landed in a river city in the middle of a drought, not far from a crackling Guadalupe River

that once flowed heavy with salmon. For generations, the site of celebration

I sought comfort in driving the highways, past dry brush and Ebay, Apple, JDSU HQs

the right distraction from not feeling at home

We had moved here like fools

thinking the valleys still had gold to give

only to discover all that glittered were ranges mounds of hairy, yellow earth in the distance

Girl, Find Your Phone / jawno okhiulu

I wanted to tell you that your poetry tore me a new one
Filled holes I didn’t even know I had
Milked, gagged, and spanked me numb
I wanted to let you know
That your words sent me on a furry flame course
Through all the haters and the traumatized lenses
Beloved, you helped me burn my inner demons

Damn, I wanted to tell you to your beautiful face
Sitting pretty above your beautiful beating heart
Bearing audacious self love and divinity, my god
how much your excavation dug up out of me

But dammit all, i didn’t get your email address or nothing

Just your Instagram that you can’t access
Because there are two steps to your verification

You well secured muffucka you I hope you feel so safe and secure
Even without your phone, I hope you’re finding peace without your phone
I hope you know you’re still out here impressing the girls
Even without your phone but selfishly more than anything
I hope you find your phone!

a note to men / Alexandria Regilio

don’t be afraid of dreaming in keys
that unlock doors to blue-black winter nights
where you will lose your breath
at the beauty of a woman who has lost track of time
wants to know how you drank your coffee at twenty-five
versus how you drink it now
and what you want to plant in spring
watermelon or zucchini

where you will have permission to stop feeling so fucking old
where you will have permission to die and die again
until your veins run the darkness as freedom
from the desperate pursuit of joy, that little minx you think hides in plain sight at the beach and yet you can’t find her

until you know the taste of your own blood
until you master your own heartbeat, shed your skin and are willing to learn the language of desire in her eyes so you can take without asking,

until then

dream

Day 25 / Poem 25

These Stories We Tell Before the Loom / Carmella Braniger

after Rita Dove and Elizabeth Bishop

It is strange learning to let go
of something you’ve harbored—
the ultimate movement
away from the center of self.
We move slowly, in concentric circles,
without asking or saying why—
only to find ourselves as close to
or far away from where we started
as we need to be. Patterns vary—
watch the way, great-grandmother
crochets afghans for hours
on end with no end in sight,
they keep bringing more yarn
and pills, and she continues on,
no longer in any more pain;
We all find ourselves before the loom
weaving and unweaving our stories,
hoping someone might be listening:
love, loss, heartache, betrayal, glistening
gold birch tree leaves in the dead of winter,
light shimmering down through branches
casting shadows onto the sheen of snow—
or the summers spent on our stomaches
crying for hours, sometimes drifting
off to sleep in the late afternoon sun,
occasionally arousing for public display—
almost entirely broken save a few postures
of integrity moving us through our days
still, we swirl back in, and then, out again—
the story changes each time we tell it;
she stretches out an arm
from beneath the awning—
a daring bold gesture
for a Midwest prairie girl—
to turn oceans of grass into salt,
another cool pillow
on which to rest her tired head,
inlets of respite,
a quiet third-floor loft,
dozens of white down comforters,
out of sight, not in view—
never fully giving up the mystery of it.
And what about this story, daughter?
The one where I gave you a mirror
to look at your own vagina,
mistaken bit of nomenclature,
what a stranger cannot touch.
You were only seven,
and you called it your baby hole—
I silently tried to tell you about
the power
the pleasures
the pain
the deep deep love—
oh, what love comes
from such holiness
and you, in your beauty
and innocence and simplicity
asking “how can it be so ugly?”
Oh, Bishop, and those horrible breasts
and every woman who’s been repulsed
by or attracted to our burdens—
Oh, Dove, and the pink within us all—
these voices rush in on me as I stand
in my bedroom holding the mirror,
watching your eyes take it all in, I say,
no baby, you will learn
in time just how beautiful
it can be.
You smile, gold rings already starting
to spin out from your glorious new center,
as I watch you take off down a new path
so much joy in my heart, it aches wide open.

Self-gaslighting/ Caitlin Coey

I have a low tolerance

for bullshit

but a high rate of clamping

my mouth closed over

my own feelings

second guessing

third guessing

compassion sometimes,

consideration and also

ask me how I feel some days

and I’ll look at your face

for the answer

Leaving Salome / K Dulai

In Rue d’Aerschot, somewhere along its flashing streets

a lonely man slips in and out, between the legs of a dark-haired woman perched behind glass

just minutes before.

On the bed

between the press press prowl of her body,

she does not contemplate love.

She knows the night is almost over,

a warm drink of Turkish coffee and a precious memory of the hum and drizzle

of her grandmother’s restaurant in Ephesus, not long away.

She no longer bothers with longing for morning or counts time backwards to a bus stop in Izmir where she abandoned the ghost of Salome.

Her body has journeyed west from

Istanbul, in a plane that stutters like her clients as they

push through their Hail Marys

on their flights back

to their wives.

She thinks of the emptiness in the sky from the arch of an airplane window,

speeding against the hint of night—

stupid, cranking love, that damned machine, nowhere in sight.

Prayer / jawno okhiulu

I grew up praying with my family before we ever left the house
And singing hymns on Sunday mornings to keep the bad spirits out
See my family knew the world for what is was

Knew that out there was a lot of loss and the remedy was a lot of love
I love the loveful lovelessness of my upbringing
Under urban apartheid, where the caged birds keep singing
We stared statistics in the face and said come try it
We knew a Black becoming beyond destruction was possible
And we ran there, we stumbled, we fought,
But we kept on

One day, I pray, there will be come between us
No more fear and anger to negotiate with all the love

Rewind / Alexandria Regilio

“Does this remind you of dad?”
she yelled at me, across the dance floor.
I only nodded
and we both sang out every lyric, too loud
and not loud enough.
It was my wedding and she was my sister
and the song was Call Me Al.
She had a different girlfriend then,
I had a different heart.
Almost twelve years later,
I wish I had held her in that moment, instead of making
sure whatever fool told the DJ to play the song, thinking it would be funny,
knew that I knew
every single word from that beautiful track,
played on a cassette tape in a beat-up blue Toyota pickup truck
over and over again.
I was too busy being brainwashed
by the bride,
to hold her, really hold her
and ask her,
“Does it remind you of him, too?”
I’d put my whole life on rewind
to go back to the moment and trade the white dress for a t-shirt and jeans,
the dance floor for the ground above our dad’s grave,
my sister’s hand in mine,
like two bodyguards
who are both named Betty.

Day 24 / Poem 24

ODE TO MY GIRLIES / Ashna Ali

Liver paté, red wine, chicken overnight brined, we are golden, I insist,
when you tell me how much we have aged. Remember when we’d drown
our last dollars in the dive bar, battered shoes slick with stick. We’d unspool
as we do now, shot glasses and salt shakers staging the most perilous
of our recent plays. The man who chased you across three states.
The window through which you threw out your mother’s memory.
The groom gone mysteriously missing, the cursed pregnancy.
How many rounds of hope horribly thwarted. Thickened with thought,
we got grown, still garrulous and gorging ourselves on our griefs,
egging each other on to be brave again, and again. My girls, how you get me.
How we make trials light for our banshee braying in the back,
spiraling, but stacked around one another’s blocks
in getaway cars, armed with wisecracks, prepped for war.

Memoir of Desire: An Address to the Lover / Carmella Braniger

Reach for me only at your own risk.
At the beginning, on the high branch.
(Your moans are shuddering horses,
Not quite delight, but almost danger).
Sweetfire dilemma of body and senses.
Sappho sings the blues to lure time.
Erotic missiles tempered in honey.
Greedy to please, you learn to weep;
replete to live, you learn to die.
The heart is an ancient descant lyre,
strings pulled taught enough to snap.
(So much hunger for what is missing).
Crying above the pain; I forgive you.
Lack loosens limbs, limbs loosen heart.
Pleasure begins, on soft wings departs.
Perceive only sweet rapture’s undulations,
soaring, holy delectations of the body.
No chords of desire as a cold fire ignites
the hot tongues of lovers; even Sappho
sings the pain of longing in latent beds.
What free-range- roping western cowboy
wastes precious time reaching for me
with so much left to conquer?
Deserted, I leave you to your burning.
Quiet the buzz so you may hear the coming
of wild horses across the vast prairies,
and remember the wake of their shudders.

A Mood Soon to Be Forgotten / Caitlin Coey

After W.S Merwin

Dragonflies were

made of light

as common as

sunlight, crosshatched

backward and forward.

Crowd / K Dulai

The lords of play
operate swiftly
beneath
rock and muscle.
Your life is
one
striation
In a horde
of sinew and bone.

Tango / jawno okhiulu

Let me tell you about our dance with the fruits
This one setting sun adorned by the tangy flavors of the Amazon

Let me tell you about the dented knife that unveiled each of their secrets
one by one, Chris twisted and pulled their bodies apart as juice poured onto
the wooden slab in his lap.

I could use words like succulent, tangy, juicy, creamy, intoxicating…

But I’ll leave the flavors up to imagination, to be honest it wasn’t all about the flavors
No, It was the tango of it all, the sinful reflex that turned the sweet fruit spicy
Our laughter filled the gaps that the soft flesh left to be desired

We did not come here in search of lovers but we found them
In the afterglow, in São Paulo,

sharing fruit together under the fading light

Holy Montezuma Cypress / Alexandria Regilio

Your spine is a root,
a holy montezuma cypress
burning in the distance–signaling
the start of a new cosmic year.
We wait for your opening move,
for you to turn our petals
into thicker skin, our breath
into a breeze that will carry us
to safety when life feels a little off–
or like a tsunami.
Since childhood, we’ve watched
you map the way with fingerprints,
love hard when others couldn’t.
All this when humans have made
truth the most complicated thing.
Aries, you remind us truth is
best distilled
down to something so pure
it evaporates like water wisdom on the tongue.

Day 23 / Poem 23

TARAWEEH / Ashna Ali

The day before Ramadan, I eat Korean fried chicken
at Peter’s. We watch raptors fall out of the New Delhi sky
in the hundreds, their carnivorous souls as unwelcome
as the Muslim brothers who save them, heal them, or grant
honorable burials. That morning, the Yemeni brothers
threw an Afrobeat party at the bodega in preparation.
They asked me my plans as I ordered an egg and cheese
with ham. We integrated, I shrug. He smiles broadly,
offers me a Yemeni husband with whom to fast.

A cluster of dead kites, vultures, and storks
arranged delicately on the rooftop before going
in the ground. Contemplation of finitude to lend
meaning to so many abundances. A Jewish Italian
therapist from Staten Island once told me that most of our
problems are blessings bumping into each other.
They are still driving brothers and sisters out across
unknown borders, burning their homes. Side-eye us
at the airport. When I was twelve, the men at the mosque
put me too far back in my body to come before God.
I smoke on the stoop as the sun rises, imagine
my mother ten hours ahead choosing the silkiest
of shawls to cover her hair, silently doing ablutions.

The next day, I will eat as I always have,
have a cocktail at a poetry reading where
I will listen to ourselves milking our own macabre
for amorous declarations. While my mother
recites on her janamaz, eyes closed, who will ogle
her shape? How many? Will God hear their prayer?
Or is it hers that will be silenced, the signal
jammed by prurience? Do I ask her if it is
too late for my American character to shed
everything, cleanse my bowels,
purify my soul? Do I have one?

Conversation Not About Race / Carmella Braniger

For C. Beck

We sit outside at night, in your buick,
planning which set of plants
to put in your window next,
and watch your neighbor’s tv reflecting
in his Jeep that sits out front
where his cats come and go.
You say you haven’t seen him
with Fox News on lately.
We both chuckle as a dark-haired
damsel in distress flashes across
the big-screen broadcasting
all-day-every-day this white man’s
picture window full of shutter.
It’s not always about race, you say,
which might be true.
The neighborhoods here are mixed.
I change the subject\
to the surreal play from last evening,
and you ask for a summary,
and I don’t say race, I say,
(the reflection wobbles like jello)
it’s about how who you are affects
how you see, except we both know,
when the child steps off the stage–
out of the story–and asks
the white audience to switch places
with the black cast onstage,
it’s not supposed to be
about how I feel or see
(cubes of gelatin tumbling down).
He notices my step to the side.
Exchanging glances across the dash,
we are off talking hypermasculinity,
and over-feminized culture,
not about how we are built, necessarily,
but about how they build us.
How they inscribe onto us all
expectations for how to be.
I say, remember the cactus
the owner of Taqueria La Perlita
gave you last December
on that day you asked about her
winter harvest of them
all stacked right inside the portico
where we come to pick up
our tacos al pastor?
The prickly pear cutting
came with instructions for drying
on its side in the shade
before planting in the bright sun.
You look in the rearview mirror
at how you took your time
picking out the one you liked best.
I poke you in the arm to bring you back.
Remember what she taught you,
“no seas un pinchazo.”
We chuckle again as the engine purrs,
your long dark fingers against
my white thigh against
the moonless night.

Things we say to each other / Caitlin Coey

I’ve got my arms wrapped
around you.

You’re doing so well,
keep going.

My days are so much richer
with you in them.

Forget half full or half
empty, you see
the whole glass.

Legacy / K Dulai

They appear before us, the divine and destructive, mocking
our reprimands—the swirling echo of sands on a gut-drenched beach

In the shudders of our howls our daughters wield
swords, swinging their wrists

Every jagged word they have swallowed
billowing into corrugated triumphs

What does it mean to be made from stardust? / jawno okhiulu

For all the star-children curious about where they come from:

A star dies of burnout, billions of years pass,
a planet is born from dust and frost.
Divine order Divine chaos Divine happening.

Divinely we happened,
children of star death and time.
The cosmos is our birthplace.
Everything we are is outer space.

Water is the tears we cry,
The carrier of our lessons,
The source of our life.
Am I a fool to fall for water?
In love with the unconcerned fervor of it all
Paradise in fluidity
The deep blues
Like Langston Hughes
Is calling out to me.
What is out there for me?

Something’s in the water
A deep, quiet, rocking sea
A boat untested
A course of unknown possibility

I hope
After we are all gone
That the universe remembers how cool it is
That it was able to create
Such ludicrous creatures
And absolute anarchy
Out of thin space

I hope the universe takes notes.

goodbye, alcatraz / Alexandria Regilio

the coast guard
is perfectly timed.
she flies over the bay bridge
at the exact moment i should be parking.
i am late.

the motorcyclist in the left lane
knows it. she shakes her head at me
inside her helmet and roars past
toward the coca cola sign.
it is my lateness she resents,
not the fact that my blinker has been on for a mile.

i exit fremont street
and admit that i secretly want to miss this boat
to scatter her dad’s and uncle’s ashes.
maybe i lost track of time on purpose
and am a bad person.

halfway down the embarcadero,
it hits me why:
i am no longer the earthquake support beam
i used to be.
how will i comfort her
when my heart is no longer rock?

on the water,
i cry behind giant black sunglasses.
suddenly, everything i have is black.

black pants,
black blazer,
black shoes,
black journal,
black tourmaline,
brought, of course, for grounding,
something i always need in air
or on water.

grief, she says, is learning who you’ll be in a world
without them.

i stand in the bow
and accept myself as weak,
as someone who cries at funerals,
as someone who is brought to her knees
by how beautiful
the ashes look circling the water’s surface.

i cry for two men who raised my best friend,
i cry for two little girls who raised each other.

then
it happens.
i cry for the strong one inside of me
who has finally surrendered,
wonder what life will be like now
without her.

goodbye, mitch.
goodbye, mike.
goodbye, alcatraz.

Day 22 / Poem 22

EXODUS / Ashna Ali

I am the kind who leaves. Walking out scrapes closer
to the raw material. Digs under the false parallel
between repetition and comfort. The body knows.
The body knows better. The body puppeteers.
All the things we have backward. Consider the mind
that drives the nervous system that drives a body
that spends its days making itself dizzy, hurting,
bursting into flammable paralysis. We read that
as a problem. But the body knows. The body knows
better. The body knows that the mind is a poor
listener, and that too many minds in a room
breeds dangerous blindness. You tell me I’m sick.
I tell you: listen. Listen with me. These ancestral
hieroglyphs we call limbs, their magic. We can
start there. We can amass what we have always
known, thank it for its efforts, and walk away.

Variation on Bishop’s “Little Exercise” / Carmella Braniger

after Elizabeth Bishop

Think of our daughter, swinging recklessly
in the balances, like a monkey swinging
from branch to branch. Listen to her screams.

Think how she would play now, violin strings
vibrating indifferently to the bridge of mourning,
joy-filled melodies floating down from the sky,

to which a sparrow might suddenly turn his beak,
maddening our neighbors with his glistening black
unwanted shine, and choke down a worm.

Think of the power lines and evening dusk,
birds snaked in circles across the skyline,
the quiet hum like a possum in deep sleep.

They are singing now, the power lines,
lowly hanging among stars in every sky,
longing to be free, the birds to be gathered.

Then our daughter spins out again in a series
of large, graceful arches across the lawn,
each one another little bit of something.

Think of her walking along the top of a tightrope
tuned to a violin or the undertone of a comment;
think of her as unstoppable, barely bothered.

Aha Moment / Caitlin Coey

Per my last email
We need to redesign your goals
for OOO during TO,
so notify me if you’re AL
hasn’t added the deliverables
to the EO ASAP at EOB COB
POS POC QT time-tracking
the all-staff at the strategic planning
meeting to the values and the mission
Empower you to leverage your best practice, core competency your
key takeaway, jumping the
shark 110 percent, reinvent
mission critical
synergy,
boil the ocean!

The Fruitpicker / K Dulai

A peril in an orchard

coiling and distressed—

a soiled thumbnail,

a spoiled fruit

Then, a fall from a paradise

no rib can recreate

Ten Sweet Things Worth Saving / jawno okhiulu

1
Bischoff cookies and you
dip them in coffee and
they melt into delicacy

2
All the little ones

Playing laughing
crying tinkering
dreaming thinking
learning breathing

3
Honeysuckles and the
tradition of pulling them
from their vines in the
summer, like bees in
need of sweet nectar

4
Record Players, Vinyls
and the machines that press
‘em into existence

5
the strangers that find the whim
or the courage to fling a
compliment your way and
brighten up your day

6
the poets

7
some type of frozen sugar ice
for the sweltering summer heat
cause that right there ain’t
junk food, it’s medicine

8
love and dreams and
dreams and love

9
Laughter

10
The one song you have
On repeat in your head
As joys Hail Mary

Sad Girls Party the Hardest / Alexandria Regilio

It’s all fun and games for the Sad Girls. They have nothing left to lose. Everything has already been lost. Innocence. Safety. Purity. Now it’s high time to destroy; finish what they fucking started. To sleep with vultures, you must become remains. “Look at us now!” the Sad Girls say, hanging from the roof of complete annihilation, splitting a pill because it’s cheaper, then splitting another. Wooden Dr. Scholl’s sandal dangling from her toe; her hand dancing under the water of a bathtub filled with goldfish. There is nothing more boring than a freshly showered boy. Dark alleys taste delicious. A messy car makes Sad Girls salivate. Lying is like a lemon on a sunny day. At the first sign of real love, Sad Girls say, “Nooooo, you can’t be serious. This can’t be serious. I will fuck this up for you.” Certain boys need people to know they’ve been with a Sad Girl; it makes them seem less scrubbed clean by their mamas, less homework at the dining room table, done under the watchful eye of a parent who cared. So they announce it. One writes a poem about it and reads it to the poetry class he has with Sad Girl. Another says something crude about her pussy into the mic at a show his band plays. Sad Girl doesn’t blink an eye. Doesn’t blush. Sad Girl doesn’t care. She quit feeling a long time ago, remember?

She tells another one this. He says, “I know, that’s why I like you.” It stabs her in the gut. The realization that everyone knows. The jig is up. She’s in the crosshairs. Terrified, she begins to cry and doesn’t stop for three days. The bathtub overflows and the goldfish swim to safety.

There stands the Little Girl. Ready to use her sadness as strength.