April - Poem 3

The Day contd / Maureen Alsop

I turned the page and the river opened. Thin pages, subaqueous and fetid, a
continuum. The eye of the storm crosses the bay at midday.

The trees remain unsettled. Buttercup blue waters collect beneath the roving papers, 

an inconclusive thesis. The tyrant sun. A revolting sun. Navigation itself is research, 

trial and error, a means of breaking and returning. 

A cloud is a misappropriation of desire, a subtext and sometimes a desire. 

The spirits here were woeful. Absolutely woeful. The reflection of ideas rather than
choices.

I am writing a series of postcards to you. A mindless compass without stamps,
seriously, I am getting these together.

Kidney Stone Blues / Bob Bradshaw

My CT shows a stone
teetering on the edge
of my uretha canal.

I obsess over it.
Like a monster in a fairy tale,
it grows bigger,
--every night-- till it’s a boulder
rolled down from a glacier, 
stuck in a ditch.

“It can be painful—
like giving birth,”
my doctor says.

So, shouldn’t my wife
be the one carrying
this damn stone? I ask.

“You’re funny.
Women must love you,”
my doctor says.

What do you mean? I ask.
“You have a tiny stone. 

Yet the thought of it 
wandering down
your uretha
inflicting pain
keeps you 
from sleeping!

But your wife
is looking at pushing
a boulder
out a straw
when she delivers!
When she screams
what will you 
advise her?
To man up?“

My urologist 
shakes her head. 
“If you feel pain,
you can’t bear,

maybe you should
ask your wife
what she would do.

Don’t be surprised  
if she offers
helpful words like
Push!
Push!”

Tenth Birthday  / Stan Galloway

Sunday nights we’d race home from church
to catch the end of It’s About Time,
or Land of the Giants
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
or Time Tunnel –
shows about astronauts and science
in a topsy-turvy world.

At 10, it was no different than at 9 or 8,
except my birthday was a Sunday,
and Apollo put a module on the moon.
Human history hit a high-water mark
and I was blowing out ten rocket engines
on a cake that lasted maybe for a day.

The Mountain / Ava Hu

*

Quickly, a bobcat darts.
Mist closes after it.

Everything broken 
mends

if your mind believes
there is no mind. 

Do you become invisible
in the mist?

Do you hold 
what disappears?

The evening star
breaks open.

You break open
a brush of light

across the purple
mountain.

*

Driving to Hurricane Ridge / Kirsten Miles

I

4:00am, immersed, posting a poem by an interpreter
for asylum cases, still lingering in warm sheets
hygge rising around pattering fingers
a wooden crack breaking the hush

under the window a yearling spike
rubs felt off his finger-
sized horn on a fallen
branch under the pear tree
a watchful six point tries to lock
racks then wanders off 
unable to get a purchase on the 
one slight point 

A doe and her twin fawns seek shade 
under the cave of the western red cedar 
boughs draping a massive sward around 
the picket fence, just past the mailbox
one lone root gently lifting 
a ridge on West 11th street

Morning News / Sergiy Pustogarov

in the morning dew drops kiss my feet as i dance with the golden butterflies.

in the morning 
            i dance with 
                        dew drops 

my feet 
            kiss                  
golden butterflies

dew drops 
kiss
                   butterflies

i am not a monsoon, but a summer storm / nat raum

ire takes over dusk. bruise-grey
clouds replace chalked orange

skyscape. this is a fraction

of what surges veins, anger
spiking adrenaline like lightning

zips its way through a cloud.

i’m a cliché. disrespect marked 
my forehead, bastard child of ash

wednesday and carrie (1976).

i no longer believe in honorable
shades of grey. you either bleed

or you’re dead.

The Raccoon / Daniel Avery Weiss

The headlights unfurl from the blackness
one thick, suspicious glare. Pupilless and very near to rabies
not being a metaphor. I have seen them

wild and hungry, clawing at each other,
a scattered family in a marsh on the Gulf, snapping turtles clad
in a zebra's disposition. This is

not that: this is in the garbage,
equal parts frozen and furious,
and bewitched by my sad, untrashed life on this earth.

You are right.
There is more trash than I know what to do with.
I eat it every day. Do share.

They skitter away, spitting
primal squeal and swearing vengeance against
every wall and all the grass. Perhaps I will join.

fluctuations / MK Zariel

a text message poem

my anarchism stems in part from a hatred of imposed order.
i hope this wasn't too weird to talk about.

she kept getting flustered when i complimented her
he is on the board of a fucking startup. it is terrifying.

i've gotten to the point of asking everyone i know if they know people in milwaukee.
we all have our contributions.

this may sound strange but you're really good at explaining this stuff
can i send you a poem?

i love being your resident anarchist friend
this is less about logic and more about how my bodymind responds to things.

your fight scene was iconic
i know casting decisions are final, it just worries me.

he wrote it in 3 minutes and didn't care
i could create a homebrew flashback condition

the discord is nuts right now
i hope you get chosen

April - Poem 2

The Day ctd / Maureen Alsop

Below the equator above the 26th parallel and the Brisbane Line[1], I live in a space of my own choosing.

I’m working through a “third state”[2] of consciousness, organically seeking subtext, solitude. Working between image and experimentation. I expose myself. In this, I expose betrayal. 

An anatomy with

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

[1] The Brisbane Line was a division designed in WW2 wherein the whole of the northern region of Australia would be abandoned in the face of catastrophic attack. Comforting for one living in Far North Queensland right?! I don’t want so plainly to announce my who and where, but suffice it, I am both American and Australian. Though in both countries, I’m confident, I would be most obviously considered as an American. I will try not to judge this. To introduce myself to one “why” I am here in this situation of 30/30, I’d like to thank Tupelo for their support. Tupelo kindly published some visual poems some years ago:

https://www.tupeloquarterly.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Alsop-Witness.compressed-copy.pdf

I like to support those who support me. I’ll leave it at that for now.

[2] The idea of a “third state,”  here described through a found reference to a war ship; “war ship” and “worship” are two continuums of American heritage. To me, the “third state” is better defined by the theta, or dream state, also possibly that momentary decomposition shortly after death. At the moment, as at every moment, there are many destructions afoot. I am human, thus wounded, let’s go with that, hey?

My Father Shaves / Bob Bradshaw

An early memory of my father?
A towel around his waist, 
he holds a shaving brush,
as he stands in front
of the bathroom mirror.

The walls crawl
with droplets of water.
And Dad’s cheeks? 
They are slopes
lathered in clouds
of foam. 

With his brush he dabs
a dollop of cloud-stuff
on my left cheek,
then stands back, like an artist admiring
his morning’s work.

His index finger 
draws a cloud-trail of foam
down my right cheek.
Shall I shave you, son?

I nod, yes! And carefully
(blade closed) he scrapes
the cloud-surf from my face
with his blade.

Go show your mom.
She’ll be proud to see 
how much you’ve grown up!
and I race off with
the good news.

One Sock  / Stan Galloway

between washer
and dryer
lies unfound
for weeks
missed but
looked for
in wrong places
mate set aside
unable to cry out
also lost
because alone. 

The Widening Field / Ava Hu

Make it stand out

*

Who am I
a witness

to green entering
everything

dervish of myth
and pollen

we fingerprnt canyons
dust climbing light

we fngerprint the bruise
of rain on white jasmine

belly of a cloud
expanding with breath

which line unsettles
the field?

Who will be the water
who lifts the boat?

*

untitled / Sergiy Pustogarov

i have started planning my morning around my time on the toilet.
i know it will take me anywhere from five to thirty minutes
every morning when i get up to do my business,
and so i wake up thirty minutes earlier than i want to;

just because i know that my body doesn’t always love me, and somewhere 
inside my bosom, the gears are not completely turning in synchrony.
i know this isn’t normal, and every two years i know it will get much worse--
throwing me into a housebound fit of nausea and constant pain, but it’s life.

and i’m too scared to go to the doctor to figure out what could be wrong 
with me, and my anxiety is too high to get the tests they want of my insides,
just to be able to say what’s wrong, and what my final verdict will be. what medication 
they say that i should shove down my throat to let me get up thirty minutes later in the day.

so i just tell myself that it must be ibs, because it’s a magical little thing that 
cannot be easily identified; and it kind of fits all the symptoms that i’m having;
and it’s not as bad as colon cancer. well, wait it could be that, i guess.
and i’m sorry, but i have so many issues running through my mind.

you see the thing i didn’t tell you at the beginning is that i am a medical student--
i know more things that could go wrong with your body than the average person.
and somehow that sometimes sends me into a tailspin, wondering what i’m struggling 
with today when i wake up thirty minutes earlier, just to sit on a cold porcelain throne.

and i guess it could be colon cancer, because i do vape-- and there have been a hundred
different studies that show the tobacco i’m slowly inhaling into my lungs 
is somehow connected to the rest of my cells; causing them to turn all beserk,
and never really know what they are doing inside my body 

it could also be some other disease like crohns, making every meal i eat a dance 
with the devil. never knowing how it will affect the rest of my day, and how long 
i will be sent back to the seat of durge, to pay my respects for simply eating.
but i’m still too scared to get that colonoscopy that in the end could show nothing. 

so today i end the day by telling myself it’s ibs all along,
and plan to get up thirty minutes earlier tomorrow. 

--this is ibs—

blacking out at my first phillies game/nat raum

scarlet and powder blue are now phanatic-shaped 
blurs in the back of my retinae. surfside tastes

like stevia so i stomach the whole can in sacrifice.
i know i’m a good friend—that’s not the point.

i giggle from behind the phils’ dugout and pray
they dig themselves out from five runs down

despite my loyalty to baltimore’s baseball birds.
we take the train back up broad, take fishtown

iced teas to the face and shots of beef broth 
to boot. sometimes i still don’t believe myself

when i run it all back, and i’m not just talking
about this afternoon, chilly but sunspeckled,

shitfaced in a way that doesn’t burn the house
down. i watch thereal housewives of new york 

and everyone says ramona’s an angry drunk.
i watch southern charm and they say craig’s problem

is not the booze, but the fury which lies closer
to the surface than most of us are comfortable

with. i also mean myself, my own disdains
and demons once gasping like goldfish, begging

for their fair share of oxygen. the last oracle card
i bought said dance with your shadows; they are a part

of you.  i sip dirty martinis with mine now, certain
dark and light are close enough to hold each

others’ hair back, if it came to it. i smoke mystery
blunts outside the bar. i come to bent over a toilet,

more mess than pillar, but still alive. sometimes
i have to remind myself that i am still alive.

Bison Gallivanting in South Dakota / Daniel Avery Weiss

He is as breath
on fire
a sort of fan
a shovel into some
thing seeking
a soul
oh,
what dirt

reconcile / MK Zariel

i’ll leave it to you to see me

in the cold yet glowing light of a Wisconsin winter,

in the reflections we ignore, in the way

neither of us feel a single thing without

questioning it first. come and make small talk


at the edge of a cliff with me—update me

on your transition goals while we watch the world burn—

make me wonder if we have original characters

or just shadow selves. you feel like safety

and home to me, a person for whom safety

and home are mixed bags at best. i can’t decide



how to feel about that. i’ll extend a casual

invitation, a shy smile, nothing more than an

ill fated event and a gossip session after,

soft light, quirky memes, the infinity of time.

you don’t like to talk about the future. you don’t

talk about things you don’t respect. i’ll move on


or pretend to—watch your smile like a curated

cottagecore aesthetic, watch your selfhood like

a beautiful fortress, watch you build walls

made of desires as-yet-noticed. you once told me

i was your only real friend, and i was equal parts

horrified and impressed.

April - Poem 1

 The Day / Maureen Alsop

the dream cut into the heart of her belonging, she entered the
lagoon, welcoming a rose—blossoming at the ocean’s depth—

she entered the sea and survived the dockyard hands /the dockyard men /the hands of
men

her sister survived by war paint

seen to be unseen

My Black-capped Chickadee / Bob Bradshaw

She’s more welcome  
than the Golden Oldies 
flying from a radio
into my yard.    

A little scholar
she sports 
a black cap
as if she’s 
graduating today
from kindergarten.

Put out a box 
of wood shavings
and she’s happy 
like a toddler
discovering
LEGO.

And she’s always
ready to snack,
her black bib
tucked under
her white 
cheeks.  
I leave a seed
by the bird bath.

Like my daughter
she watches,
cocks her head
 as if I’m tutoring her
in French.
Voila! 
I say to her and her heart
flutters wildly 
in a burst 
of wind 
and she’s off!
singing 
“Hey Sweetie!” “Hey Sweetie!”
—as if even
at her
young age
she knows life
is short!

Batu Khan  / Stan Galloway

ancient voice
beside the Dnipro
soughs through
silver birch
insists this dirt
this rain
each breath
is hexed
always will be
coveted by
outsiders.

*Batu Khan led the siege of Kyiv in 1240.

Revisit / Ava Hu

*

The earth shakes her memories 
into the shapes of falling flowers:

folded wing of chrysanthemum,
hooded iris unfurls.

The dark universe 
we open and close

the burn of wildflowers,
the glacier melt. 

We are the black-ribboned 
song of Orpheus descending, 

the ascent all depends 
on how you hear it.

A Day for Fools Like Me in April. / Sergiy Pustogarov

I close the front gate,
The warm wind cajoling around my shoulders.
It’s ninety degrees outside
With blazing sun.
The summer crock of toads meets my ears
As the world sheds its winter coat 
And leaves start to peer around the doors. 
April fools!
Tomorrow will be thirty degrees again.

A lizard runs out in front of my foot,
I pounce to grab it and admire all its beauty.
The tail comes off,
He keeps running.
April fools!
The mystery always seems to get away. 

I get in the car,
Turn on the racket under the hood 
And start driving.
I turn onto the freeway
And past the sparkling water,
Its glisten reflecting back through my eye.
A spark of hope finally awakening,
The world will finally keep on healing,
And the light will keep on shining.
April fools!
We started another war today. 

Ahead I see a puddle 
A reminder of the soft raindrops 
That watered the earth the morning before
Granting passage to this beauty now 
April fools!
It’s just a mirage on a hot day.

It just keeps going on,
Every day a new horror.
The world somehow isn’t awakening in joy,
It’s still in pain like all along. 
April fools!
I thought humanity would do better, 
It seems we never learn. 

instructions for fortification via upcycling the body / nat raum

A haibun after Sadee Bee

bloat lungs like steaming balloons which float through the late
summer skyscape. tie esophagus at the top and allow to collapse
inward. wipe crusted sleep from corners of eye sockets; cut feet at
the ankles and replace with wheels. submerge fingers in the gristle
of grey matter. begin to sculpt. cast a spell across the night, stars
shuddering in both anticipation and supernova. smolder brighter,
soar higher.

the city can only
see you before you’re about
to die, recycle into dust.

The Kidney Stone / Daniel Avery Weiss

I consulted my dog yesterday about the weather.
In his old age, his legs have shifted

purpose: no longer for walking, now only for the ache
of incoming rain, premonitions of petrichor

twitching his inky black knob of a nose. He will not go outside now
if the great oracle of his musculature simmers

clouds into raindrops. How very omnipotent, I wonder,
that perhaps his legs themselves demand rain, a gift earned with age

and so exhausting to wield that he can only spend his days
lounging, unmoving, on the couch. Gods need their rest, after all

is said and done, what remains is a drenched backyard, grass
like wilted spinach, the life cycle of dirt to mud made manifest,

and he is right. My dog is right, and I, too, feel futures
in my gut, each step closer to them less premonition

and more kidney stone assassinating its way through
me—oh, to be Merlin, missileless mut, blind, deaf, head in the sand

by virtue of age alone—is this his superpower? Flight
from it all? Stupefying glare of his mortality

holding him fast and hard to whatever home, home,
home this is? Something rotten haunts

our days, you and I, whose bones we
frantically teethe.

How our bodies hurt that we face a future
that faces us, looking back at its dismal birth and howling,

How did we ever let that happen? It was in our bones, we
poor dogs, and we could not stay inside.

My dog—he has cataracts, eyes like frosted glass—and
when our eyes meet, uncertainty flails between us

until something bites—he looks away, or huffs, or I hear the news.
To tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, glaring steadfast at the blood and iron,

Hello.
My name is Daniel, and my world is ending.

Shake my hand.
Let's talk.

a politician posted on Bluesky / MK Zariel

for Trans Day Of Visibility. i was supposed to feel seen,
i think, but i shrugged and kept scrolling.
i don’t feel visible so much as in-progress, a forgotten footnote
in the drafts folder of my brain. social media screams out
a resonance for trans survival, for the way we will likely all venmo one another
the same tired chunk of money, for the mutual aid graphics, for the
pithy quotes, for nobody, for the small talk

we’ll make with a well-meaning cis friend, asking
what they can do to support us. it’s grey and desperate
here in the midwest, the sky changing hues like the pronouns
in my bio—snow melting and reforming only to blossom
into a short-lived false spring. today i reached out to an ex
asking if she felt visible yet. she didn’t respond. today i woke up
feeling resolutely normal. today i was trans, but i wasn’t

entirely sure what that meant anymore. since when did the simple fact
of having never felt like a girl create a void to be filled
with labels, with litanies, with the question of whether i should just
be the first person alive to transition in both directions at once.
transmasculine lesbian fits like the new outfit you buy
at the peak of summer, wondering if maybe you’ll feel
like a different person. being visible makes it hard
to be anything else.

March - Poem 31

IF WE KISSED, WE COULD TAKE OUT THE PAST FROM EACH OTHER’S TONGUES / A Cento composed by Susan Hankla

With lines from and by Kathleen Bednarek, Myoma Bibi, Susan Hankla, Amy Haworth, Christina McCleanhan, Elizabeth McGraw, and Alexis Wolfe.

The shades are drawn on the work,
after trying on the silver of a night.

I'm sat in my little kid closet;
the dog's barking begs a long story.

Poverty chickens squawk; by all accounts 
there were no worms anymore.

Awake at the spark, my friends always talk of tomorrow
What does yesterday melt into?

There's a line of ladies released from lies.
Was the sunset that spotless like really pure peach,

when the sea is filled with wrappers glinting in the light?
I miss keeping company with cleanliness, unbuttoned cuff

holding snot. I am all mouth stuffed with sky, and hardtack prayer.
There is rarely applause for the girl who colors her cat blue.

I'll make of you a sorryfish, a photo of a ripped photo;
grass painted in shades of prozak, I'll sing the scripture of my grief.

Think about something else: I'll put peas in the orzo.
I am from bridesmaids' dresses. Shalimar on pure cotton cloth.

I am a monkey near the out-of-tune piano.
Rewild your soul: there is a prayer between your thighs.

We are mountains, my lips in your hair: A taste of the feast that was promised.
It's not about what you wear, but how. Dandyism is a thing, Y'all.

I used to walk into a new city, feet clad in jelly shoes, but now I carry 
a wicker basket of hot pepper jellies, the only one to take the story with me.

March - Poem 30

A Closing Prayer / Kathleen Bednarek

Prayer survives in the mouth. 
It survives despite the book 
being partially burned. 
And blooms back in muddy ash 
from a mistake of fallen tears.

A patchwork of pages, 
known by its ply 
of edges and shadows. 
Words spoken in.

A hand upon the cover— 
peace—you are beloved. 
Incantations pressed 
by repetition upon sand 
from the Indian Ocean.

All I can give you is finite.
Grains of continent flung back 
to the emptiness of space. 

This hymn of a star’s collapse.
Shared with time, 
desire falling in on itself. 

Encouraging our passage
to be sung, let us complete 
silence taken in, heard through 
a window in the heart. 

Black Grief  / Mymona Bibi

I'm at that stage of grief
where black lakes spill
out into black land
on black days and under black moons.
Once upon a time 
there was a line between sky
and water - I remember wading
through blue bodies.
Now the world is darkened
with ravens and sinking 
is easier,
my voice is dying,
becoming another black sound.
As loud as the last time
I sobbed in the back
of a taxi,
as loud as the dog 
barking at the rising tides.
I want what he wants.
To make art from swallowed pride.
To find stars in the black sky

Every few years I make a list of jobs / Susan Hankla

people have that no one would ever imagine existed.

1. The people hired to carry the trains of heavy designer gowns 
at such places as the Met Gala, or on the Red Carpet the night of Academy Awards.

2. The people who wash all the cat and dog dishes at SPCA.

3. The person or persons who assemble things you buy online:
such as the under-the-desk printer caddy, or the teak shower bench
which weighs close to three-hundred pounds. 

4. The person or persons who knits sweaters for Teddy bears for Etsy.

It's time for the dance-break for words: whoever invented this phrase deserves a medal:
"You can't dance to every record." It's a real stress-reliever to hear it.

An ekphrastic for poems that are classics, such as "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop,
or E.D.’s "Because I Could Not Stop for Death."

A public service announcement: stop using the word "iconic". Please just stop using it.
Certainly, everything can't be iconic. A couple years earlier, in overuse was the word, "ironic."

And FYI: Dandyism is a thing, y'all. Look it up. Try it on if you are male identified.
We women need to smile.

A poioumenon is a written work that tells the story of its own making, such as
"I May Destroy You" by Michaela Coel.

I'll keep you posted when I think of more things I think you need to know.

Conclusion   / Amy Haworth

(A cento from my March poetry)

A boy on his bike
won’t be shut down, torn down, talked down
by majority votes won

I weep for the girls 
healed
with shadowed lines

And I realize how easy it could have been to say
“I see what you are, you rodeo clown”
rolling it over, tasting it, teaching my mouth to say it

I am from sea shore and man 'o war
when I was your everything 

Today could go either way
but the spring, when it comes, tastes like sunshine

We were made to forge trails
immersed in beauty so loud
you’ll notice it tickle your back
                 Gen       tle
Ghosts or angels — who would know?

I hope you live next door,
(No one here will I know in a year)

As if I knew,
Mother of Good,
the ladders are being burned.

Here's What Makes Sense to Me / Christina McCleanhan

Grief sleeps in the throat.

rouses…peeks…
ragged breath passing—
a golden witness turning darkness

Joy lives in the eyes.

Self as writing prompt / Alexis Wolfe

imagine you are falling
place a penny under your furred tongue
marry a liberal Jeep Cherokee at the local courthouse
sing Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart into a spinning 
orbital sander, shatter your grandmother’s Churchill china  watch
their baby blue rosettes fly, spit cherry jello down a goose’s 
throat, kitefly a tumbleweed on your bichon frisé leash,
crawl on hands and knees the reeking leek fields
adjacent the Auvers-sur-Oise cemetery,
vandalize red the grand canyon
change your tax-filing status to Derelict
ding-dong-ditch Marina Abramović

March - Poem 29

Lyric to Goodbye #1 / Kathleen Bednarek

It sounds like spy code, 
but here’s how the song went: 

Yellow mailbox, this is redrose bush.
& these are your blue eyes 
& your idea about tomorrow. 

I have a surprise, it's behind my back. 
They’re closed tomorrow 
& yesterday. 
So I can’t remember 
how to return it.

Where there's a surprise, there’s something 
completely unknown—
what is it? 

I’ve returned the outline of that moment.
In the shape of what you 
could only make—

(Tape ends)

By accident / Mymona Bibi

I left the door unlocked and the keys
on the floor by accident.

I thought we were free with our
toes in the water, free from accidents.

There is a scar you forgot to touch
and a story I forgot to tell about that accident.

This birth between the night and day
was to be a miracle, always an accident.

I slipped in a puddle and saw your face
in the clouds, all by accident.

A fear of drowning is a fear of playing
and these fears were not built by accident.

Let us kiss beneath stars until they fall and burn
my skin, we are not the last accident.

FROM THEIR JOURNEYS  / Susan Hankla

World tilts on its axis   / Amy Haworth

Second world war could have gone either way 
A matter of days, hours of difference 

Today could go either way
A matter of decisions, powers of difference.

Yesterday was currents of people 
marching as one, a

Calibrating force 
A matter of unity, none cower in deference.

In Longing, I Root / Christina McCleanhan

Poetry is juiced from the orneriness of our gut.

Today, I drove a road I learned to miss yesterday…Kinniconick was pooled at the place where March always visits... hands on the wheel… air softened by old bark and dried leaves…I drove by instinct… I went to my grandmother’s cemetery… sat on her tombstone, to be close to her plot of earth. I willed her to speak… scold my disrespect…waited for her to claim me as her own…cleared sticks, stepped on soft ground…it’s good the ticks are not hungry this early in the season...I forgot to wear socks.  

Our history got caught in the river tide.

On the way, I passed through my grandfather’s town…there was no music…at the four-way stop, I found a voicemail…played it until the tires bounced onto the railroad tracks. His death made my bones ache… for the first time in six years, the summoning to visit ghosts was louder than my fatigue…I was prepared to sit in silence…Instead, I spoke to the one who designs my days. I asked Him to love me…let me be useful…show me what to build with the sorrow I hold…His answer was a symphony of lawnmower, birds, and wind.

In silence, what is carried rests. 

March - Poem 28

Feel vs. am / Kathleen Bednarek

Everything is changing. 
The tangerine is softening.
The tangerine is softening there.  
Pulling from the waxed light of its porous 
           surface so much like still life. Pulling 
           moisture reserves inward, 
           into the cellular structure of its white 
           threads and pith. 
Fibrous, elsewhere split apart 
by the teeth of expressive monkeys 
and a separate catbird. 
Taken in 
and cast aside, the bitter rind 
rolled in dust 
skin up.

FOUR INSTANCES OF CELESTIAL INTERVENTION / Susan Hankla

On that flight to the manuscript conference
in the Berkshires, the red sweater
featured on the cover of my poetry book 
sits down and flies beside me. We arrive 
to see Yankee Candle's HQ, "The Scenter 
of the Universe."

Christmas one year after Mother died,
on December 26 I call suicide hotline 
just to talk, but no one answers, so I call 
the number for vets, and Dreama picks up. 
Hearing her Appalachian voice slows 
my racing pulse.

When I see the male lead's distinctively thick
mustache in the movie Chicken with Plums,
I email Lincoln Labs at MIT and my lover
answers it after forty years. A connection never 
broken, because of the red thread that binds us.

Waiting outside an Italian restaurant,
in a downpour in Littleton, our first sunset 
at Frost Place, like the magician's dollar bill 
centered in an orange, folded typing paper in a bush
catches my eye; it's the poem I've been looking for
so very long. Eight poets gather to eat, each served 
one at a time, as if there's but 1 plate, 1 fork, 
1 knife, 1 spoon.

Broken Sleep / Christina McCleanhan

Raise a glass of milk,
cry out, “here here,”
go to bed.
She was taught to barter by
strangers seeking commodities
sculpted by her personality and flesh.
In the beginning, lived her smile.
In her smile lived the truth.
As she ran, the panting wind
left her parched.
Good water left by tepid people
trailed sediment along her throat.
Once, twice, she coughed.
When her throat did not clear,
their hands were still
out of reach.
She understood.
Ugliness made them
feel helpless. What is
seen in the dark is not often
forgotten in the light.
Can I be enough, she thought.
Stay calm, stay still
have the wisdom 
to wait.

I still can't speak for the wreck / Alexis Wolfe

I still can’t speak for the wreck / windless field /  closed window against worn sky —

I want to lick creek bed 
after creek bed after creek 
bed dry, until

little red flowers sprouting    
into brightness 

March - Poem 27

Preparing for the Gala / Kathleen Bednarek

Believe me and I do. I do speak of restoration, of apokatastasis, rather than apocalypse. I believe and I
act through the distribution of genuine care exacted in small acts of kindness, holding a brass
candelabra picking up the refuse of a history that haunts us, trudging, jabbing the cold ground of its 

mistakes and treachery so others may attain comfort rather than receiving the fast food bag of no
choice, only apathy, or other poor roping mechanisms terrorized by their faces looking into doom
mirrors. We need each other just to open the cellophane on a pack of cupcakes or gather the 

measurements of the sprinkler system greening the desert. It’s wonderful the systems mostly work
seamlessly—the streetlights determining the timing of the fish market delivery truck. The snapper’s
fresh, thin, pink halo eyes on ice stored in cardboard looking up sideways at us who they will now 

enter though never understand, nor us them, though by saline sensation fed into our bodies formed by
millennia of ocean. Delicate flesh to go with the wine. We who wander in parties of preferences who
are thrown into finite lives pointing to count attendance. We enter and stream like shiny naked ghosts.

Come heal me with your deadest cells/ Mymona Bibi

golden shovel after Candace Lin’s g/hosti exhibition

The street is full of our regret until the trains come
to pick us up and hold us, our knees bump as we try to heal
our wounds from the arrow of time. you and me
watch the tunnel close in, we’ve never breathed with 
our eyes open so the darkness is home, damp is your
memory. we burst out the ground and our bodies are the deadest
after mutating and clutching the differences in our cells.

The Painter  / Susan Hankla

had easels stationed

all over her house 
and at each one
ice cream bowl-sized ashtrays 
full
of her cigarette butts 
bearing lipstick kisses, 
briar rose.
After she was gone 
tours
of her house  still went on, 
except now she no longer 
could give hugs 
to greet us. 

Nobody 
dared empty
her ashtrays, 
even then.

in memory of Nancy Witt

82   / Amy Haworth

My dad on his e-Bike 
is eight years young
I drive his car
    slow 
mid-morning light,
mom and son in the car
10 minutes earlier, he made his own plan
called it
"I'll meet you there",

Wind and joy 
     alchemizing aging
Now
    feels the creep of a car
Steals a glance to assess,
his eyes on the road,
My smile rises, its genesis 
in heart's canyons
birthplace to the most extraordinary
lightness and love
Please—my joy pains in his purity—
can I always have
    this moment in time,
see it in frames
freeze it forever.
If the world answers prayers
let me never forget
how happy he is
just
   A boy on his bike.

Something to Consider / Christina McCleanhan

The only roof worth the dime it costs is made of tin.
Down the rain slides, and sound is carried
throughout the waiting rooms below.
Volent thrashings from pelting rain- the roof
shelters man from nature’s temperament.

The roof exists in a place of repetition,
and on occasion, a pause.                                 

Rust-rimmed bolts, dry, caked dirt live a quiet existence
near the missing edges, birds nest around the gapped soffit.

Summer is told through expanding beams,
through winter as harsh air settles into the corner stillness.                                              

The roof, sturdy and competent, intact or in pieces,
protects the chair, the bed, the family without cessation
until broken by an angry element—
water, fire, wind.

Renewal is dependent, resting in the hands of its owner.
Courage is irrelevant—collapse is anticipated.

There is a crack, a loose nail,
and a leak traveling to a box of photographs.
The subjects -soon to be forgotten.
What can be used to repair the loss? Not the roof.

A tiny human cries for peace, for understanding, and

who will bring comfort? Not the roof.

But unroll a cot, seek refuge from a damning heat,
a blistering sun, and you will be shaded
by its commitment.

The rain does not ask the roof what it remembers.
The roof would not hear the rain if it did.
The roof lives in a space of bracing, shielding, and rest.

Disappointed, lately keep telling myself / Alexis Wolfe

tilt lobe / open gullet 

featherling awaiting slackblue-black

jagged confetti swirls out 
instead

forgive me the party, it was 
unintended

my ears   burning red

you thinking
of me again?

March - Poem 26

Feeding the Goats / Kathleen Bednarek

Nothing that can ever be accessed 
is being disposed of at its center 
through your life

Like the sunlight known only by darkness
People have said various things to me 
to escape their own confusion

I give them my shoelaces & 
somehow they have found a hunger for 
candy

Live and Die / Mymona Bibi

We live with all our passions,
desires, memories,
exponentially changing
begging for consistency.
We ask so much of each other
so that we can blame all this
disappointment on something 
that breathes.

Let's not mix our life with our world. 
Those two that hold each other
from different bodies.
Skies are emptier when we forget
the places of those two
in our minds and souls,
like the street in 2020.
We both looked out-
life and world fused together.

Now, we're lucky if our skin
sags-
gravity is nothing but time passed.

Let's stop it all for a second.
Let's float.

People Invisible to History  / Susan Hankla

can still have a good time.
Their music, played in kitchens after work
in the late hours, going all night
in their improvisational juke joints, 
they make make-ups: lyrics thought up
on the spot, fresh songs and adding on.

You'd think I know all about this, firsthand, 
but it's from meeting someone who wrote a book 
on Mississippi delta blues. The man most focused on, 
a gravedigger, made clay skulls with flash-cube eye sockets

and field corn teeth. Said, they're ashtrays.

His skulls live in collections
in American Folk Art museums. 
The live music is what I want to witness.
Only one white man so far has accessed
–he's good people and he's written down 
the "make-ups", mostly filthy.

It puts me in the clouds, said
James Son Ford Thomas, 
Music is judged by feelings,
not by faith.

For Bill Ferris,
         who introduced me to what is hidden

Broken  / Amy Haworth

The x-ray showed
your shattered bones
healed
with shadowed lines
And I knew 
       one day
we'd come back to this
        to mine
hope that a heart
broken
in 1000 pieces
will also 
return
    full
        range
              of
                  motion.

When We Art / Christina McCleanhan

plant your feet in play—
release the honest note
simple but exact

The thing no one ever tells you about being creative is how red hot your heart and loins and breast and muscles feel when you plant your feet and write the truth in simple but exact terms, and release fire in play between yourself and another actor.

The thing no one ever tells you about being creative is how everything is really about fitting circles into squares-a white elephant seated at a table crowded with personality and greed.

The thing that no one ever tells you about being creative is that the finish isn’t scary—the completion is exhilarating—it is the fear that you will be too dumb or distracted to catch the purpose of the next idea or that its intensity will be inconvenient and in reaching for the uncomplicated you may lose the most previous gift of all, but it is also having faith that whatever we acknowledge or respond to, agree to peel, will come from the poetry often buried deep within the ordinary and mundane.

                whatever we acknowledge
                agree to peel—buried deep
                the ordinary mundane

Singularity  / Elizabeth McGraw

It’s 3am and I can’t sleep. You’re up making coffee back home and I toss and turn now with notepad in hand.  I read recently that writing comes back into vogue because AI can read it so well it’s easily transcribed and stored digitally. He takes his dozens of moleskins and scans it all in and discovers he’s even more findable. I wish I could scan myself. Hit control F and find what I’m looking for.          

Disappointed, lately keep telling myself / Alexis Wolfe   

Disappointed, lately. Keep telling myself 
branch out, believing I’ve eaten all 
the branches. Little tricks to makebelieve I’m younger—
hold my forehead taut and stick my tongue out 
while I drive. Living east, I cursed Snowplow Days 
and now I miss them—that is how these things go. 
In a moment it will look like summer again—I’ll complain 
about the salt stains on my camouflage hat and disappear
into some backcountry byway or another. It’s easy
to think you’re the only one sleeping 
near an open window. I can’t name a single friend 
with health insurance. Keep your extremities inside 
the ride at all times. Years and years—that’s how much 
time passes. But the moment will take care
of itself—incredible, how we bear alone. 
Maybe you, too, are in search of salvation.                                                   

March - Poem 25

Poem for Friend Request / Kathleen Bednarek

The last I saw you was fifteen years ago.
We were in a bar on Locust Street. I could barely hear you.
You were with your boyfriend, now husband. 
I want to say
we were talking about Philotes, the goddess of friendship,
how her mother is Nyx, the goddess of night. Talking about 
how your dad was the first in our neighborhood 
to get the internet. Prodigy. How we rounded up 
instant messages along the Oregon trail, fetched tokens 
sitting cross legged, eating sweetened fruit pressed onto paper 
we unrolled while you fantasized about boys. 
I sat up in bed. Your face set against a background, a field of tall grass. 
I want to say 
I ran over to you but I think you saw me first. We were giggling so much 
we couldn’t breathe. We were kicked out of the movie theater 
while seeing Little Women. We ran away for no apparent reason 
from Girl Scout camp, feigning endless hunger and strife.

Does anyone stay on the phone all night anymore? 
I type your name. I include the image of a heart which is now 
traveling across           a space     somehow   
but not literally, like.

My / Mymona Bibi

hand-holding
heart-pounding
litter-throwing
wall-punching
teeth-kissing
new-kissing
self-hating
self-changing
time-eating
day-dreaming
glitter-spraying
care-rejecting
risk-chasing
night-maring
feet-pacing
city-craving
tongue-cutting
liquor-tasting
friend-finding
bus-taking
street-sleeping
stone-throwing
not-waiting
rough-asking
lie-binding
all-seeing
us-keeping
self-healing
moon-facing
world-making
baby

There are sparkling moments during great sadness:  / Susan Hankla

 

two white-tailed deer

                                  leapt in front of his mother's Hearse

on the way to her funeral.

                                So cold that December in Greencastle,

in tall grasses, ice encased each blade, and made its blinding

                               spectacle so that we arrived in a Damascus,

changed.

Geological Chart  / Amy Haworth

Born alive on dusty trails
embraced by wrinkled rocks
elite in their impatience for weakness
and fools
floating
in a raft, my rodeo
bronco
S  
    n  
 a
        K
    I
       n
g
the Snake River
until I was bucked off
hauled in
saucer eyed
parents’ horrified faces
while (another) bald eagle glided
sheriff of the skies
must’ve been dug from
ancient soil and arrowheads
gold flecks
and thrown by the wheel of
first settlers and log schoolhouses
big bell ringing
in a catacomb of wild things
bare feet blocks in a mountain lake
my chart in the house of Shoshone land
and ascendent wildflowers
immersed in beauty so loud
I lived awestruck ever since.

Peace / Christina McCleanhan

When sleep has gone off to
play in everyone’s bed but mine,
I open the window that serves as
a headboard.
Rain drips down
into clumps of
leaves lying brittle
-forgotten, but gathered-  in
 graves beneath the eaves.

And. Here I am. Still.
Amidst the poking, wet air- I live.
And. There you are, hushed.                                                                                                                                                                               
                                          Amidst the calm, waiting air- you breathe. 

On a Long Road    / Elizabeth McGraw

I hate to stay. I hate to go. 
It’s a longing and a loathing at the same time.
Is this what’s meant when they describe being an adult? I’m sure an adult would be 30% less bothered. Taken in stride. 

Could the news be worse? Long lines at the airport. Repaving the road in. It’s all a promise for tedium. Go early and you engage with it more. Go late and there’s an entirely new gift in store. 

Tuesday is the longest day of the week. It’s my favorite you said at the bus stop. Travel like this makes everything Tuesday. Too far in to turn back but not yet at the turn in the bend. 

I’ll take your position that it’s full of hope.  Wish me luck on this Tuesday!

Armageddon is an era / Alexis Wolfe

    Anyway how’s your heart? a friend 
asks my android  Fine covered in dust 
i always reply—Armageddon is an era 
not an event 
even the moon moves away
from the earth at an inch and a half per year
splintering light disperses in fractals
 creates repeating patterns   
At least life will be easy soon   J texts
from his grounded flight in Qatar  
he is always boarding grounded flights
chasing the ocean like it left him
i am always putting on my work pants,
eyes cut by the sun. there are truths
 we find to be self-evident: all of this 
was a gift, how I keep forgetting

March - Poem 24

Smoke Ring Ghazal — An Imperfect Ghazal / Kathleen Bednarek

Tears soak through the filter of your cigarette. You try—exhale.
Don’t answer the door if the police come. Fake sleep, lie, exhale.

A total liar. I allow myself to say I don’t know. 
Disembark the planet. Vodka. Breathe a stinking driver side exhale.

Under some stars, the car in a snowbank. A mechanically fucked angle.
The solution, rather than the problem. I am alive. Exhale.

Now I want peace under a large breaking sky, completed by doubt.
My face upward, rain falling onto the lids of my eyes —exhale.

I stopped before I ever learned how to blow a smoke ring. 
Parting with illusions, I learn to go without, let time exhale.

Saying I don’t know transforms and opens our present future.
I love you Kathy. You too, sister. Forgive each moment. Exhale.

Bibi Garlic / Mymona Bibi

My Sestina  / Susan Hankla

After Elizabeth Bishop's "Early Sorrow"

I'm staying up in here, I'm not leaving this house, 
b/c this's where I commune best with Grandmother.
I've stayed indoors quite a bit, even as a child,
Her house was lit; she had her dressing table by the stove.
And the piano was against the wall on the other side, like my tears.
What's missing is a copy of the 1954 Farmer's Almanac.

Is this what you want me to do, Grandmother?
I'm afraid I'm not grown up enough, so call me a child.
I just can't get it out of my head how you cried tears
whenever I wanted to go outside in pine needles by your house.
You said you needed to read to me from the Farmer's Almanac.
I've misplaced it carefully, and darkly inside the cold stove.

You say you think it's in the sewing box I've loved since a child.
I think you know I am wicked enough to hide it in your house,
because Mother says I am spoiled, then fall real falling tears
of mine; she's fierce, unlike you best-out-of-two Grandmother!
I really like you & your three-hole notebook kept by the stove,
in the chewed, flaky antique secretary's bookcase, beside the Almanac.

Somebody ill-informed like a cop, would say I'm in a mouse-house.
I roll out molasses-spiced dough and leave it to cook in the stove. 
The recipe for gingerbread biscuits we serve policemen who shed tears:
"Those cookies are so good we could throw them up and eat them again, Child!"
But I don't acknowledge appreciation because I'm reading the farmer's Almanac.
She stands near me, sliding out more trays of cookies, my lovely grandmother.

I just had a flashback from literature; shall I push her inside the stove?
Uh oh, can't stop thinking that thought, but that's why books live in this house.
We are educated women, ahead of our time; in that sense I was never a child.
It's probably because I hold reverence for her husband's farmer's Almanac.
William knew when to plant the asparagus, and greens for Grandmother.
Too bad he died the good death in his roses, but that didn't stop our tears.

I can only remember his arms in white sleeves reading the bles-sed Almanac.
I remember he taught me to like sardines and saltines, holding me, a tiny child.
He read for the crop settings, & the storehouse of facts: how to polish a stove.
He handed Grandmother his paycheck; she balanced the 7-daughter household.
I wanted to be Mother's sister, why can't I, I cried salty hot stupid tears?
Yet I wanted to be the 8th daughter; sew me white dresses like theirs, Grandmother!

It's time to make that don't rhyme with corsets, Grandmother'schild!
Here's a house that will live in my tears, in my 5 senses, out of the lovely stove.
But in the end, you know I'll bake her with the Almanac for kindling & live to tell.

Wisdom  / Amy Haworth

Who are we when we forget to listen
Not to hear, but commit to listen.

We’re burly bullies when we know it all
Arrogance, the absence of knowing how to listen.

Talked over, interrupted, disregarded
When I’ve been taught it’s best to listen.

Won’t be shut down, torn down, talked down
I’ll speak up, but first -- I’ll listen.

Years it took to have enough to say
Now, mon ami, I see you’re ready to listen.

Assessment / Christina McCleanhan

Of course, there will be chicken, it is Tuesday.
the room, mirror, tabletop trinkets are familiar
enough
hairspray and vanilla musk
linger
between the funeral plans and walking the dog,
pantyhose was rolled down into thick ankle doughnuts,
mourning dress, pearls, and
travel bag tossed on the bed.

I will kiss you as if the brilliance of
sunshine travels on your breath.
I will lift the shades to peer at the
people walking below who
do not care that you prefer a medium-well steak.
You will notice the woman's pinched brow as she
delivers an extra blanket and hope she makes time to
shave and soak away her appetite.
We wait for room service, and imagine how long it takes to
fold towels with new nails.

What is my pillow chocolate worth? Less than three blocks to
a pint of red-skinned potato salad.
Turn up that Charles Mingus jazz, so I know how to
dress myself if the room gets crowded.
Don't come looking for me, either, if I'm wearing sneakers.

So, this is temperature-controlled ambition. 

Japanese? Maple?    / Elizabeth McGraw

The neighbors’s cherry blossom bloomed loudly last night.  It’s crossed the threshold and is telling the rest of us to catch up. That’s you too temperature but don’t turn it up too much. We like a little bristle in our walk these mornings and a whiff of rain as the climate rolls across the earth. The dandelions are taking root ready to be rooted out.  The peonies begin their peaks breaking through burgundy against the soil and early clover.  In back where we face the north a rolling spring arrives. Tight bursts on the eastern redbud tell a native story of resiliency.  Edison lights hang in the maple tree. Bare for all to see. Will the hostas reappear? Will the azaleas bloom? Remember at the native nursery and you asked if the species was local and she replied slowly. Japanese? Maple?  Made us laugh. Still. 

To Elliot   /  Alexis Wolfe

scintillating progress
dusted wind
blank window weaves a  forgotten memory
what your heart was:  dustmote
what your heart was: swollen thumb

tyranny of bedrock
scintillating tomb
make of me a martyred ____
you can be the expanded thing

to witness the tendril       alone
shining web  whistling  alone

tiny  wet  web    alone

to witness

to witness     splitting 

to witness alone
frozen horsemane     shining moss
frost-turning-water    tiny web witnessed   alone

   mist of air 
cat’s cry    knotted pine
  asterisk    

March - Poem 23

Tanka  / Kathleen Bednarek

A pear tree reaches
Higher than my tipping toes
Your hands lifting me 
My fingertips weigh the air
Capturing soft fruit

Snapping against your
Arm—you steady this body
The waving sheets
Lower me—my arms are wide
                        Sky—floating with two pears

This was not the way I drew it up in my Coloring Book of Revelations; / Susan Hankla

when bent over it, filling it in with paints,
I feel I am right with the Almighty, 
and then when I stop coloring, I'm 
losing my way again. No one can color 
all day except Leonardo de V, his puffy
shirt glued by his sweat to the scaffolding.
                               But is it unseemly for a girl to do like that? I ask and hear a voice that says do it anyway.

Planting Season  / Amy Haworth

today’s pause at the kitchen sink
peeled my eyes to the out back
imagining how someone would see it
if
they stopped by for sugar or an egg
might be surprised to find
a hot reflection bouncing
corrugated steel
filled with fickle soil that loves carrots -- 
but the spring, when it comes, tastes like sunshine.

Here in Consolationville / Christina McCleanhan

The unspent laments of vertebrates and fishers’ grief live in
the hollowed timber of vulnerable shorelines after receding
waters deposit their haul on consignment until the next
storm swells the limits of its compassion.

Lines that live in faith,
Lines that live in courage,
Lines that dance with maracas and failed dreams and
acceptance and resistance, and tympanic precision that
directs the balancing spin between what has been and what will be.

On a quiet walk, toward the blue cottage, notice how 
shadows hang from leaves. Consider resting
near the snowball bush; the old, black cat’s ghost will follow.

Us, without words, we do understand each other.

Us, who are the missing
socks, useless bottle openers, slim phone books, forgotten
leftovers, empty ice trays, and worn treads of
circumstance, will sing willingness louder
than the ticket-takers care to listen. 

Places I’d Rather Be   / Elizabeth McGraw

It’s Spielberg, no wait, Richard Cunningham. 

You emerge from the barn having brought a new calf into the world. Wipe your hands on the apron that’s been worn all night long. Your hair is frizzled and relief shines all over your face. You’ve met life at the moment it starts to walk. My god. The moment it’s been given movement and the gift of survival and discovery. 

You are greeted by an outsider asking why you aren’t more in.  Your holiday over, you shake his hand. 

When mail comes I drop it / Alexis Wolfe

Smurf tells me he’s been recommended for
another six months in solitary    but sends dreams soft
as the backs of hands—once I came to him talons tied 
with blue ribbon once I was an owl nesting brown 
on his shoulder  when awake he is cold and I am cellless  
I am cells   driving my car complaining about peanut butter 
additives  the leak in my coolant reservoir days running hot
smurf signs his letters to beyond 
the gates  teaches me creole but forgets the seasons
pledges allegiance to Selena  remembers my birthday
and works for greeting cards   one call per x week 
what x week is it? more than five hundred and forty
have passed   he tells me he is Miami   finds hope
 and utility in birds  this my alarm   this  my radio
sometimes says Him  believes in Unlucky
doesn’t say sparrow says sak pase 
has always wanted a Kawasaki
  last month his sister flew in from Japan
they didn’t like her dress, wouldn’t let her through—
now tell me, what is usual and uncruel?

March - Poem 22

Humility  / Kathleen Bednarek

The pulp of Delaware watermelon.  The continuous search of sparrows. A puppy licking my ankle is cordial. Friends talking fast under umbrellas, holding each other up as they pass. Silently stirring a pot adding some water now foaming with beans. Now, isn’t it? Your breath unwavering as you speak. What it takes to regenerate bone. To watch someone be moved to regenerate. In all honesty.
Used auto parts of shame discarded to the rain storm.
My knees. I put a bunting and a banner around the interior of the hall for your get together.
Welcome them into the light of your face. 

Out in the distance,  / Susan Hankla

I am the only one made
to take the story with me, 
this particular
mystery.

But I try to re-enter it, and find I need props,
Shalimar on pure cotton cloth.

You can walk with us  / Amy Haworth

When you walk with us, the wind will brush your skin like a baby’s warm breath and you’ll notice it tickle your back. You’ll wave about 50 yards before we meet with a hug and a smile that etches the lines a bit deeper at the creases that tell joy’s story. We’ll briefly exchange our surprises about the weather, and I’ll shed warm clothes, knotting empty arms at my waist. We’ll turn north and then east, drawn to a new path amongst throngs of young families and old locals. Someone will know to ask us to take their picture “over here, under the sign” and won’t stop talking about how many people and that they knew we weren’t tourists because they’re from Delray and Boca. We’ll talk about farmer’s markets, sobriety, removing data from the web, the difference between being a serious person and taking yourself seriously. We’ll get yelled at by a security camera for walking on the other side of the street but too close to the fortress and we walk further just so we don’t have to double-back and be chastised again. We’ll banter about what we make for dinner on repeat, and contemplate what’s for dinner tonight. Because of our walk, I’ll put peas in the orzo and it will make me happy. We’ll interstitially wonder where exactly we are but it won’t matter because the only direction is forward.

Nightstruck / Christina McCleanhan

Is your forgiveness soft? Does it lean into the curves of sweetness you prefer? Your gut, your bowels- does the release assuage your guilt? Look up, my wilderness, and see the half- moon's face from the swing on our front porch. Does it remind you of how I wear my apologies with resting acceptance, a cardigan that covers the careless stain on a never-worn, party-dress chiffon? And the others? Strangers who rush crosswalks with beep-beep speed, do they feel sorry for the violets crushed beneath their anxious feet? Watch the hornets shaken from their nest—stroked heat, burning anger quick. I could stomp my feet, clap the blackbirds away, but maybe they tire of backyard maples, spruce, and elm like wedding rings make me sigh. Mud tracks on a concrete floor, sweep them wide while the dogs bark and the neighbors watch. When rain falls hard on your tin roof, is love a lightning strike that writhes in agony through corn field luck, or water meant to clean the sins from a poor man's hands? How can forgiveness be soft?  

Neighborhood Library   / Elizabeth McGraw

All these comings and goings clog up the street.

You’re wandering and crossing where you’re not permitted to pass.

Hands full of books likely long overdue.

In the rain.
In the snow.
In the spring.

Arriving by foot.
By bike.
By car.

My god you’re old.
Good grief you’re young.
You’re meeting in pairs.
You’ve come alone.

You come and you come and you come.

And they want to close it. 

i'll die like this / Alexis Wolfe

dog smudged mud across
printed page and i almost raged 
at it—stick chomp stick chomp
stick after careful printing 
sorting
  arranging  cut  pages
earlier i watched a worm disappear
its neck  mashed my fingers 
through wet earth searching
its revival—the flowers slime 
like the worm slimes like we do—
dog bites head off yellow 
blooms all afternoon 
presents stick with longing 
cow eyes here look what i made
i’ll die like this

March - Poem 21

Persona Poem   / Kathleen Bednarek

Poems that start with titles 
end in poems titled “Poem.”
Fallen to earth in the land of the living 
a sign from a number sequence,
this poem’s lines are a paper cut, 
a 99 cent origami after the penny 
has been retired.
A blender gifted to a stranger. 
Nah, give it to a traitor, since it was won 
at a 50/50 raffle. 
Beauty is just symmetry. 
The structure of flowers that fit 
to the rods and cones in the eyes of invasive species.
I need a key cut to get into vaudeville.
Whoever lost money wiping windshields 
and selling oranges to buy more
used this poem to even the score in an informal economy.
It was used to fill in the gap in the toe of too big shoes, 
then was pressed too small by midnight 
your heel slipped.
Sprayed with itching glitter, 
flustered by strobe lights, 
given its blessing to exist as a mirror,
it hooked on a feeling that wouldn’t quit, 
then wandered over… 
Tossed a magazine aside. People.

Red Name / Mymona Bibi

after Emily Skaja’s black lake, black boat
red rain, red raid,
streets know us better
than we know each other
red sky, red sun,
catch us in existence
in the fog, in the crowd 
of foes
flash red, speak red,
tongue cherry, flavoured red,
clutching the flyers 
in your pocket
red doors, red yards,
know your rights,
red writes, red wrongs,
don’t let them pour
your brothers blood
into your cup
red bins, red buses,
bodies cover bodies
hidden body 
behind body,
red docs, red doxx,
the city is listening
‘that’s my name in its mouth’. 

The eyes of the stove / Susan Hankla

have read and reread The Coloring Book of Revelation, because beyond its vivid colors
it is worded. In the dark at 4AM, after cooking over a hot stove all day long, cooking up
something art-reverent the eyes can't leave the olde cookstove all day long, unless the stove 
is moved into a museum of has-been-appliances in the warehouse a stones' throw from 
the Telephone Museum, our favorite stop.

The stove is still good, it functions better with use, even though it's an apartment sized,
even if a pound cake must be hand-rotated, lest it be raw on one side due to the floor here 
in this house being uneven, even slanted. Yes, we know to turn our cakes and exactly when. 
There's always something cooking up in here. We've got out the pressure cooker about to consecrate 
jars for the grape juice of sacrifice to be drinked with the now-rising, Bread of Life. The prettiest 
tea towel with tiny strawberries embroidered on it is draped over the rising dough in the tunnel 
pan on the silver radiator in the sewing room.

Outside, the Mulberry tree keeps us in purple ink so we can keep ahold of newly created
recipes, which are harder to write than most poetic forms, because of the no gray areas
which their intricate chemistry demands. We have made a swinging desk to hang from our ink 
pen tree, to swing in when we are falling-down in the spirit and need to be lifted-up from the dust
on the tent revival floor.

The Coloring Book of Revelation comes along, & we want to thank those who have financially 
contributed to its construction. And also those who have demonstrated their faith in us.

Letterbox  / Amy Haworth

Opened a drawer
and crossed into heaven.
How can it be
your words are here
on a card
when your soul is in heaven?

Somehow you knew
cursive swirls
carry your embrace
from everywhere
and nowhere.

Your thoughts
and encouragement
— now stars —
of your constellation.
Arranged as a life cut short

by a needle and relief.

A voice recorded
by your hand
and saved in the drawer
As if I knew.

For the Girl with the Wooden Cart / Christina McCleanhan

I have searched beneath layers of
rotted leaves from
harvests long scattered by
springs and snows for
daffodils and hope.

And I have lingered in the desire to rest.

I have twirled into rooms
filled with professed love, empty love, social love
and walked away with
one hand clutching at safety
while the other reaches for
a tree with limbs that
prepare for nesting birds and warm rain.

And I am amazed that life continues to feed me.

I will conquer the mosquito army 
by the stagnating overflow...one day. 

Not Easy  / Elizabeth McGraw

It slides into the week 
a day of rest 
but rest is not so easy.

The week’s not yet done 
but the shades are drawn on the work 
that is not yet complete.

Roll into the weekend 
and come with your list. 
It won’t finish itself 
you know this. 

Close your eyes and wake once again to a day like another and wonder where is that day of rest we were promised? 

RETIRED SHEPHARD DREAM ANALYSIS / Alexis Wolfe

been running on E like buzz buzz blap
earlier walked over to C’s studio sat beneath 
treeshade  told me about this dream his friend
spun jungian I’m sat in my little kid closet again
same one where I floorflat I can see the Christmas
lights  all my toys same place I hid porn and H calls me
I’m knee begging her back and she says certain STOP 
SHEPHARDING ME and I woke fast and we laugh 
saying retired shepherd and ex-herder and Flock Off 
these sorts of things then chirp his med change / walking around
in sleepstate  three years never choosing
the person you’re choosing and sorrow that some lifelong
version of love is only ever winner / loser / winner / loser 
N says it’s inability to integrate the feminine
aspect of self    communication without sight
  the closet is key  a shepherd tends but wants control 
it's biblical I tell him  desire to keep flock is older 
than the flock   to know yourself a powerless animal 
and bury this truth—amass amass amass hooves to trample it

March - Poem 20

Stars   / Kathleen Bednarek

There is fired chaos
And with a jagged eye 
It is cut to likeness—

Soften the gaze  
Don’t break…

It is possible to reach all sides
Even though you cannot see us
In an afternoon 

West of spider and swan

For the inside of how you touch
Is formed wholly 
Of what happened to make light

Even the fly 
Without a wide mind
Has taken off

The dark distance 
In its eyes

Threat at the border / Mymona Bibi

there is a difference between border and boundary 
when we touch your border softens 
melts into mine
not everyone has learnt to blur that way 
kissing you is a lesson 
in silence and borderless belonging 
not every body has found 
yet here I am searching
pulling open the flesh of a date
checking for pests in the dark fibres
between us.
I never find anything 
listing boundaries 
not knowing I’m standing
right at the border
this formation is not an accident.
yet here I am searching 
fingers tracing foreign scars
like a wandering drunk 
after midnight
both threatening 
                       to find
                                  to love
                                              to lose 

The Coach and the Gym Teacher’s Baby / Susan Hankla

After school 
I always walked
from Richlands High 
to Gateway 
Shopping Center
across a strip of land
to Gateway
Drug Company, 
where Dad 
filled
prescriptions.
And see
their baby 
in a carrier
in the shade 
in the 
navy blue 
Fiat 
in the parking lot. 
Coach Jones 
and Sandy, 
his wife,
the gym teacher, 
talked about the baby.
I knew it was their car.
No one else in the mountain town
owned a Fiat.
A Fiat is an Italian car.

What we need to remember  / Amy Haworth

What this country has done
Makes my blood boil
Makes me recoil
What this country has done.

Makes my blood boil
Memorials torn down
By self-appointed crown
Makes my blood boil.

Memorials torn down
Erasing what we need to remember
Will the world exist in September?
Memorials torn down.

Erasing what we need to remember
What this country has done
By majority votes won
Erasing what we need to remember.

What this country has done
Makes my blood boil
Makes me recoil
What this country has done.

I Want to Become this Woman / Christina McCleanhan

Last night i dreamt
i was
        squishing blackberries
between pointer and thumb
dirt, seed, fragrance
childhood

       thawing as
spring berries burst
through last season’s
broken promises

i long to marry the earth

Deadline  / Elizabeth McGraw

I lean in and turn on seeking to Devine the creative spark.

Coffee in hand and daylight high I am overwhelmed with my choices and seek a routine.

It’s go time and I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. 

Waiting for applause or the silent eyes looking back at me.

JoJo / Alexis Wolfe

got to thinking about jojo his whole face a tattoo how when I made him and kindred dippy eggs their golden disks flying he said I could never do that eyes like balloon animals every time they fought or I brought home coffee   we corralled nubian goats stalking Japanese knotweed across townish city sidewalks we lived for free took an RV just to pick up pizzas and skip rocks where the Monongahela ran thin / I never saw him again   heard he got picked up for arson in West Virginia  asked for a shot after close bartender called him crazy  said here's crazy flipped a match behind their backs caught the dumpster on fire I mean half the building   got caught speeding near Wheeling but heard he got out  heard he wore horsehair to the Louisiana derby  tye dyed T-shirts at his brother's birthday party started howling in Vermont sang ditties with some boundless jason ended up back where he came from

March - Poem 19

Barking   / Kathleen Bednarek

The dog’s barking begs a long story. 
It echoes and transforms beyond 
chain link. It remembers its mother, 
and maybe its father. The father was 
what gave it the muscly chest 
and upper body, the mother, 
its overall size and ears. It knew 
the back of the cage for a while 
and didn’t want to be noticed. 
Once it was noticed, my neighbor wanted 
its soft believing eyes, 
its black and tan genesis, 
a togetherfuture.
The dog wags its tail so much 
the kids are afraid it will snap off 
and fly from its body. They say 
it will slingshot to Jupiter 
and become one of its moons. 
The dog seems to listen to this. It is 
a tangent of love to watch a being adored. 
It is a ritual to return staying with my hands.

red kite haikus / Mymona Bibi

Red Kite: heard.

every meeting, new
call of curiosity,
‘play,’ answers the wake.

Red Kite: seen.

speck of red-brown, speed-
less, threat to soar down and greet.
necks crane for life’s firsts.

untitled / Susan Hankla

Bit what was your allure?
I weatch butterflies at flowers and still I don’t know.
your voice? Your texts? Your approval of my flesh?
Thank you for my love of sorrow, because it rhymes with a lot of things.
But your temper, jealousy, no sense of humor when your brutish ways were like Heathcliff on the Moors.
So, Go on, Git!

Pitfall  / Amy Haworth

We fell into the hole
Been trapped down here
Playacting hope in the system
While, above ground
the ladders are being burned.

Commonalities / Christina McCleanhan

poverty chickens squawk 
in the dirt yard on the corner-
but eggs are eggs-
they cluck despite their dusty feathers
they eat and sleep, sleep and eat
on plastic drums, metal sheeting
                                        small breast, scrawny thighs do not 
                                        predict their running speed
wealthy chickens preen
two streets away in 
wooden boxes painted like barns-
but eggs are eggs-
they peck their owner for breakfast
they eat and sleep, sleep and eat
on new straw, beneath heat lamps
                                       large breasts, thick thighs do not
                                       impress their KFC cousins

liar liar poet on fire / Alexis Wolfe

i like a poem that lies
  leans back and burps  asks me to take
its waterlogged raincoat  drips a river in my hallway 
doesn’t say thank you  never sorries  stretches its legs 
long and sighs i like my poem pathological 
sticks to the facts straight as a kaleidoscope still as 
a merry-go-round hiccups like a horse lockkneed in mid-
gallop laughs like Austin Powers says shag me
says lightning pop never sets an alarm buries clocks
in its front yard reminds me a prophet has never stared
directly into the face of god and knows no one’s reading this

March - Poem 18

Shrine  / Kathleen Bednarek

Other realms of softness guard 
those laid low in severed belonging. 
Follow me in the early morning 
where the manholes create fog.

Choirs blow through momentary blindness. 
Their songs distant yet 
you can hear them in the garbage bins 
rooting for echoes of mercy,

splashing in the buckets of crabs 
fighting for the top of death in Chinatown. 
A sword in its light through the trees, 
a confusion of the barristers,

appeals of children found standing out 
in the street, swooped up 
placed in the back of vehicles, hiding 
their cheeks against IDs.

Portraits of listening, equal nodding 
and closing the eyes, equal tears and 
nothing left to say but presence. 
I offer you mine in the pale–

what is a small smile but the sun. 
The ruth of hospital halls hovered 
over when a small thud makes the woman 
ask: someone help me.

When your bitterness uses the word 
temporary against itself. When 
the sea is filled with wrappers glinting 
in the light. When

lying on your side looking left to right 
you hear a shot. When it takes you 
under your breath in the morning 
dark, you ask the ceiling for their refuge.

Cigarette / Mymona Bibi

When you hold your cigarette,
my breath draws in 
sucking in the air inside,
my body stuck at the window
watching your cigarette 
clutching you back,
my friends always talk of tomorrow 
and the next year so I keep
them around me like an armour
against the feeling that there is nothing
beyond the blurring of your hands,
behind smoke
now there’s no tomorrow
only - yes - for last night,
in another life
mothers might have healed
bruised skin
without held breath,
in another life
you’d drop the cigarette
and i’ll see your eyes
in my eyes
unblurred 
              unsmoked

I see you're by the T.V. again, / Susan Hankla

in that swell of talking-heads-news.

My outfit of the day is a gunny sack. 

Historically they were worn just after

women being corseted for more than several decades. 

Carry a wicker basket of hot pepper jellies, 

and when you're saying and replaying 

what Trump did, I shut my door. 

(If only I had a chamber pot I'd never hear 

T.V.). I already know the sacred things are all but 

disappeared. 

I blow on purple nettle Devil tea, pore over a Picasso 

voluptuary. Once I hung bunting, but now the sign 

on my office door says Insane Asylum. I search 

for the sky

blue bra lost in surgery, spend time trying to write better,

using a grammar book from the Jeter School for Women. 

Distraction / Amy Haworth

I see what you are, you rodeo clown
   conniving a con
     shaped like the pantry
Smooth, honey-lipped orator
    selling timeshares.

untitled / Christina McCleanhan

oak trees bowing
      throat locked
      wet sidewalk
                                ; do not disappear
 unbuttoned cuff
      holding snot
                    still

1834, this same day in March the first US railroad tunnel made home in Pennsylvania / Alexis Wolfe

and it has me thinking of the hush mouthed
pear eyed black Irish great great grandfather 
I never met  operator of Pittsburgh’s first street car
the one who walked like a cat clawing slow 
on his tin roof even at ninety and when he died 
five years later still had charcoal in his hair, how
when his cherry tree got sick he wrapped it 
in bandages, swore hope long after the others 
killed it off—the next two seasons he reaped 
sweet   biggest cherries you ever
seen, loved three daughters who never married 
and spoke up for unions   put his whole hand in
a beehive and never got stung how in the years
after retirement he’d ride that same car just to
become it, always recognized  and free  the same route 
he’d ride for hours, prouder than if 
he were flying

March - Poem 17

[Memory is something gone] / Kathleen Bednarek

Memory is something gone. 
Already it sort of explains loss. 
Was the sunset that spotless, like really pure peach? 
I believe in the progression of wind fraying the edges of flags
You can still fold the flag when you think it’s done. 
You walk out to the mailbox and put the metal bar up.
And the message will be sent by unknown carriers.

Flight Academy / Susan Hankla

What is your heaviest book; the teacher is leveling 
his punishment.I am to stand at the front of the class,
and hold the heaviest schoolbook I've got
in one hand 
high in the air, until he says 
stop.

A civics book full of 
lynchings 
and crusades. 
Or a small Latin book 
about wars.

In front of the board, sinews 
snap
my armpit wet, 
shoulders ache. 
White blouse untucks from kilt, 
raised arm holding the heavy book, 

till 

stupid arm, it begins to shake
with the big book in the air, 
knee socks inch down 
calves, toward loafers.

Spirit floats to Ben 
Franklin down 
the street
to pick out black 
bikini panties 
with wolves embroidered crimson, 
their tongues licking out  all over them
like sex.

Where it happened / Amy Haworth

Night decisions linger
uncomfortable
Less powerful people drowned in noise
Ease gravitates toward authenticity 
to elevate warmth
not recreate -- but evoke -- déjà vu
Tablescapes communicate promises
with obsession
hallmarks
suspended above
artisans
control transitions
from day to night

For Those Who Dip French Fries in Gold / Christina McCleanhan

Drop the art, pick it up.
Drop the art, rest a minute, pick it up.
They do not tell you in grade school, as you struggle to 
open the lunchtime milk cartons, tie your shoes,
how to be creative.
You are told to paint pictures or 
sing songs, wait for the bus, wait for the juice. 
There is rarely applause for
the girl who colors the cat blue, or the boy who
introduces his best cackling witch between
Fa and So.

Drop the art, buy a brand-new Pilot, pick up the art.
The hands that control time make bargains with 
off-brand gel pens.
The story of a princess slaying in sweats, 
sending a witch to the Pipedown Tower for
a cookie break, naptime, 
takes more than the allotted time after recess to build. 
Give the artist two, fifteens, as well. 
Let the hands be washed of pigment for 
those who do not offer to 
clean the brushes and sweep the floors. 

Pick up the art and consume it.
Let its sweet roar coax the right eardrum into a euphoric ripple. 
The butcher leaves his local cows for 
packaged roasts cut by robots without faces.
The baker greets his truth by 
trading his wheat field know-how for 
an influencer's disclaimer.
The candlestick maker turns down his light, and
turns a profit by yelling, "scarcity," in
a crowded room. 
No shame, no worries. We are only trying to glow.  

Go on, now, be feral.

Live Action  / Elizabeth McGraw

Hear me out, she says. 
It’s got little to do with me, she says.
It’s clear there’s been a misunderstanding and it’s all spun out of control.

Enrolled in the weather pattern. 
Awake at the spark. 
Lightening around the bend.
The transponder struggles to blow out.

Nothing here’s got anything to do with me. 
Walks away. 

I stopped having a story / Alexis Wolfe

or a selfsong maybe when 
i moved to the high plains let that blank space
blankpage me, the one i intended to sit at 
i became: what is it to reject your own story,
know it so well you sick-of-it 
let it flit into a windstorm, watch it 
trip over a cactus and slip behind the
unhazing mountains slitting the mesas or plateaus 
whichever and know the sun always sets in the west 
no not just know, comprehend inconsolable

March - Poem 16

Sheet music / Kathleen Bednarek

Mozart holds a lake of symbols in a metal stand— the silver of a dentist's office. 
Sundays butter the scales, making new pentatonic drifts into a Mississippi of cardboard suitcases and crossroads.
My breath pushes the shift upward in my throat. 
I rise a whole note: Go tell it on the mountain.
My shoulders from behind, hold composure; the room itself, inclusive to my timing—yes,  I made the echo. 
Who’s the rat that scribbled over the concerto? marooned the metronome? made carved faces in the wood of the piano with inattentiveness? Dare. Coda. 
I will use pressure From without or in here.

Found Balance / Mymona Bibi

A found poem using a page from The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Sing Where it Opens / Susan Hankla

The one where your heart opens
like an upstairs window in an old house,
where starlings tickle the sill with their tiny feet.

If I were to put my life into another language 
would it have enough range to be heard down this new street?

My sisters-in-song, one sings & one's lost her voice,
both I recognize as sisters, but why isn't she 
bitter her voice is gone. I don't know how she has the grace to go on. 

Keep singing, she tells my other sister. Sing this one,
she says to me.

She sings how she tried to fly as a bird to her mate
only to be caught, her feathers unzipped by sharp blades 
on the window, so she could not fly, a song stuck 

in her lump of a throat. You must stop right where you are, 
for you are listening to god's voice. Sisters, don't cry.

At Schonburg Castle / Amy Haworth

Suspension / Christina McCleanhan

Hope is haunting me; hope has dwindled.
Almost a hundred degrees before noon.
Skin’s rougher than a sanding block.
Can’t quiet these squawking babies,
crying chickens.
Will there be supper, Mama?
Spare some bread, m’am?
Need an extra pair of hands, Mrs?

I am tired of bones-
soup bones, knee bones, brittle bones
in worn-out pots with
broth twice boiled down for
sopping, not sipping.
Oh! My darling, that 
last Christmas with the spiced punch. 

Think loud enough, and the stomach retreats...

I am tired of stooping to 
pick peas from vines that
cannot feed me, warm me, or barter my escape.
What will I do this time if the cough doesn’t stop?

I miss keeping company with 
cleanliness. Each day, there is a sky to 
welcome and tumbleweeds to applaud.
Sometimes, I bite my tongue to keep 
from screaming, look toward 
the brilliant nothingness
of dust, and wait.
Remember who I am, who I have always been.

Season  / Elizabeth McGraw

It hits you slowly then all at once.

Over and over again.

A season ends and the transition is harder than the brutal conditions

Hard to imagine the days when socks feel silly today.  Hard to believe that print will be warranted in a week’s time. 

The search for bookends and barometers tailspin. Mark your spot. 

Multiple fronts colliding on us.

Which one to choose?

I always choose you. 

Musical porch / Alexis Wolfe

oh easy i’ll just write it—like how earlier 
listening to Scorn walking the alley from gym to home
i couldn’t see twelve feet in front of me there was so much
   dust i started all what would it be like
to be under such rubble we know so little
about  war doesn’t happen here     war i watch
on my laptop  war i pay for   lately i’ve been playing
musical porch  with my neighbor he’s deaf you know—
we take turns sitting in our porch chairs staring
   at the empty grass lot  he grimaces stark staring mad 
when he sees me in my rusted   goes into his house 
 i smirk when I see him / sometimes flop inside
 yes seniority still rules   we take turns 
like this  chasing our own tails  of course I imagine he wants 
to be alone   never asked  his delicate dreaming
  give us this day  our daily porch battle   this is 
our hardship I karate chop the dirt dusters / fist 
fight my projections   my war is spiritual   I am drafted
 at the front lines of my branded beliefs / we go looking 
for it

March - Poem 15

Poem for hope / Kathleen Bednarek

All there was was a crater in the earth. A charred crater. It absorbed the acid sky reflecting it back into

little bones divided amongst themselves to count how many people there were. An enormous event

without clear record. By all accounts there were no worms anymore. No green where there was once

manifold, plurality, lushness soaked in cloud water. Butterflies of the super generation. Atomization

built dust and wind into mountains expending oxygen carried by currents to the lowlands. Agile

spines of jaguar and leopard stalking the plethora, delicate primate arms stretching the canopy, and the

brighter the color the more fantastic the poison; the mind knew which to avoid. The ocean filled with

moon jelly and whale songs. The reversal of time parallel to lunar tides. The ocean blued further before

the conflict placed weapons in the mud, put explosives in the sand, and dismantled the turtle eggs. For

we held the shells up to our ears, we retold the stories, and breathed the bones back together,

occasionally lifting the throat back to scream. There were dear angels, benefactors, gourds filled with

agate, resonant instruments, what the nothingness forgot we reflected about the rainbow. When the

rain fell and fell iridescent from the oil and disintegrated planes, cycling itself over and over until its

falling was upheld, it was supported by the nightfall and the accompanying day-rise. The little bones

filled with air started from the smallest unit of sound that vibrated from the crater, throwing itself up

and up and up like the descent that was now reversed upon it. It was a circle they wanted the center of.

They got none of it.

Your Hands / Mymona Bibi

These streets are veins,
full of the blood that flows from your hands.

Sometimes diluted, tasting like the children's squash,
sometimes of the adults’ memories clumped with clots in your hands.

That day, I wished to see you on Clayton street,
when did the sunrise get so late in your hands?

When will she stop calling me disgusting?
She's only a bully because buses in London are red, red, red, painted with your hands.

The old curtains of fury are drawn,
I was as silent as her voice coming from your hands. 

You were so silent you cut open the sky and drank its vapour,
I watched each gulp and jump of your Adam’s apple and the stretch of your hands.

Tomorrow is for us to crawl out the wound of the world,
whilst soft lampposts burst into red, red, red in your hands!

If we kissed, we could take out the past from each other's tongues,
'kullu yihalif, fiqri yiterif' in the creases of your hands.*

My desire is louder than the wailing streets,
until you slip in the rain and graze your hands.

*Eritrean proverb, ‘everything passes, love remains’.

Questionnaire / Susan Hankla

It said: What Was the Last Soup You Made?

The last soup?

The last soup you made was floating white petals you tore from the funeral 
spray that topped your mother's casket so that the flower parts lay on the surface of plain
tap water in the cut crystal bowl. This is the last soup you'll make, the very last soup 
you'll make of me, she said accusingly in the dream.

The last soup you'll make; what is the very last soup you will ever make?

You reread the question in the magazine and notice that the questionnaire hadn't meant 
what is the very last soup you will ever make in your whole life. It meant what is the last 
soup that you can remember having made.

The last soup you can remember making wasn't soup, it was chili. 

The last soup you were able to swallow was Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup 
that your mother brought you on a day it snowed in the mountains 
and school got canceled. It was the last soup your mother brought you 
placed at the center of the dinner plate of saltines, the bowl of strands 
of white squiggles and chicken shreds in amber broth. You had a cold. 
That was the last time you had soup that you remember.

What is the last thing you remember about home? The yellow kitchen table?
The dining room with the round table where you did homework every afternoon?

Think about something else. 

When you told your aunt that you weighed one-hundred and eleven pounds, she said, 
"The old hag's weight." She was given to making pronouncements. 
That you'd reached the old hag's weight, you were a victim of fate. 

When you told her a certain matching shirt and skirt made you feel unlucky 
each time you wore it, she too had a cursed garment, the brown wool sheath 
which when she wore it to her job as grade-school principal, the children became 
harder to manage, and circulated a rumor that she had an electric paddle.

Like a Piggly-Wiggly bag, your dull dress was really an inauspicious thing, 
with little olive-green flowers, but somehow the skirt of it rode around so that its zipper 
would be in the front, and the shirt tail of the matching blouse untucked, 
so when you returned home from school you looked ravished by William Blakes' Tyger.

The Weight of Your Ideas / Amy Haworth

They say that one day the yellow stones will erupt
from the pressure
and that's all I can see when you describe
being buried
by the weight of your ideas.
The earth's crust can only contain your power
for so long.
It's inevitable what is within you will erupt
from the promise
and the path forward -- 
a beautiful spectacle.
Then, some will say, "of course she has",
while others will know it couldn't have been any other way,
but you'll still be a little surprised it happened the way it did.
The relief in making it rain
will be air to your exhumation 
from the weight of your ideas.

Freedom after John William Waterhouse's painting,The Lady of Shalott / Christina McCleanhan

The day has cooled; the dew is falling.
A hard-working swallow seeks
companionship or food among
the river weeds.
The Pollyanna is stoic; her innocence is reverent.
Nature has draped itself around
her bashful grace without apology.

Onward, Onward, Onward!
 quiet, quiet, quiet. 

She looks, she rows, she listens, and
whispers to herself with stutters
birthed from humility-
A-a-across my p-p-pale moon youth,
White wind blows,
The ch-ch-chain slips from my grip.
Shadowed fate, I know,
I call out reed, oar, r-r-river as I go
with truce on my tongue
toward death do I flow
To Ca-ca-camelot,
charged by the nightingale’s prayer.
My want is meager, my-my-my wrists are fragile.
Cling to submission or fall to exile?
To Camelot,
ch-ch-charged by the nightingale’s prayer.

The river is wide; the current is slowing.
And now, her dreams are lifting beyond
her shoulders: she sees them mingle with
the lily pads. Below her swim fish, beyond the
bend, fog is rising.
She will…she will…she will…
exhale. 

NO COMMENT/ Alexis Wolfe

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The U.S. had no choice but to strike because of a recalcitrant ___

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