Category: Poetry

August Cao

I will always miss grocery

shopping—what a word, what a

world where one could shop, verb,

optionality as its own activity, every

store a canvas of choice. Recall:

the last moment Home could be seen

from the viewfinder, blue yet parched,

one last marvel at the size of the beast

we emptied, body of which we tamed

but anger of which we could not

temper. I will back the grocery

aisles at night. I will back the incisive

fragrance of rosemary. I will

back the many ways to say apple: Red

Delicious, Cripps Pink, Cosmic

Crisp, Honeycrisp, Granny Smith, Fuji,

Gala, Jazz, and my tongue aches

with the memory of excess. How

common. Eaten. Never clean

to the core, left ringed with flesh, thrown

casually somewhere non-arable. The next

apple I eat I shall swallow. I will go back

one day. And the apple will eat me.

Christian Lozada

Because I have a large spleen

and can hold my breath

but am traumatized enough

to keep my head swiveling,

I ask Nani, an island child like me,

What’s the most landlocked

state you can live in?

as if being inland and diving

are equal amounts of claustrophobia.

She asks “Is there a lake?

Can I follow a river?”

I say yes.

“Then Pennsylvania,”

she says. “Two hours

from New York

and touching a great lake.

You?” As an American child,

I have no feel for geography

and say “In for a penny,

in for a Pitt or a Phil.”

We laugh as we pull up

on our house, uphill

from the sea. The air,

when marine-thick and tide

low, smells like salt, decay,

and promise. This is home,

but our blood says to make

the stilts strong and tall

for when the tide changes

and the ocean returns.

Leah Bobet

The salmon are flocking                     we got in the habit

of doing            without them             their scales         scraped

prickles across       clotted current                      and made us whole

 

The salmon are flocking                     we got in the habit

of picking the locks          along          the blocked channels

we feel               their fingers                            we got in the habit

 

of being reliable              of sober                     containment

The salmon are flocking                      we got in the habit

of blank utility       we got in the habit       their scales feed the oaks

 

The soil           that we held         cupped     in our mouth

itself       a mouth opening                   it got in the habit

of engorged quiescence                       the oaks clutch the egg sacs

 

the shorelines absorbing                      the seed birds are skimming

The salmon are flocking                     we got in the habit

of waiting         of waiting                  they nibble the blackflies

 

from our pooling            basements               they bareback

our greetings       the veins reconnecting    we got in the habit

of strict separations         we got in the habit           of being

 

drawn under      the habit             of having           no more

than we got       they’re planting the seedlings       they’re softening

they’re ripening            we got in the habit       the gravel is stirring

 

the old channels shaking             the salmon are flocking

we’re tasting     the ocean           we got in the habit

we’re ready                                            we’re coming

Bethany Fine

You are asking the wrong question—

that is my fault

in part;

 

it’s not about any bird but why

the bird is nothing like

you and how you

must therefore take it

as far down your throat and into the soft cell

as possible.

Here is the right question:

 

Once flying footless on these back roads I saw a dead fawn fetal circled

circled in the long grass

and jewelly weeds.

I returned

every day I returned to look at her peripherally: it’s true

no thing should ever die

and dissolve

unwitnessed, but the eye’s eye

contains too much, is constrained by veins that memorize. Anyway

 

the weather turned a while. I stayed away until when I finally returned she was

a perfect circle of bones, and then one day she was nothing, or, no,

 

something else: a perfect spherical indentation in all the long and jewelly grass.

Somewhere unseen behind me

her mother? Was there? That

 

is the right question. What’s not

but what keeps getting asked

is—

was it one of those

 

holy spots where your voice is swallowed

when you try to say,

when you point

and try to say: there;

meaning! I am

on a good day: made of hunger, of

 

three good hands and one inscribed

by fire—

 

but that is the body’s body hand.

It cannot, because it will not, know

what its mate look likes. Did you know

they work ceaselessly in the increasingly tender dark? That is one of the right questions. Light, and

 

the space between

the amount of time light requires

to exit the image

for your eyes—

and the eyes, realizing, reaching

for it means most things

will have already turned away, degraded—

 

but you

are the only present. I wired for you the biological thinking toward a kind of way;

 

the way—truly it is exactly this way—

every ancient idol contains as aspect

its own antithesis: like so, listen! Listen: healing

if the lady of war;

time,

if the lady of inscrutability;

bird,

if the lady of uncovered fires. Speaking of the bird.

 

In the early evening it storms; I watched

birds get blown from the trees. Listen;

This is a real thing that happened.

Later I found parts of their nests

in my hair. It wasn’t accompanied

by hunger so

it didn’t mean anything. Localized exceptions—

brontoscopic, maybe, but localized nonetheless.

Allison Whittenberg

Changing leaves colored

Cruel luminous

Red then yellow safety

Was it all a confused dream?

That week when August

Tripped into September

People trapped in a sports stadium

A woman carries

a collie to safety

A thirsty child

begs

A man gains

a television

A rescue worker

rubs his aching eyes still hearing the screams

Six dolphins

safe in a hotel swimming pool

Ellen K. Fee

I try to banish it from my brain, these dreams where I am bulbous & beautiful. where I am the butternut & she is the squash bug, burrowed into my bosom, my bowels, the base of my spine. her vine. a buzz betrays a blush of bees & bougainvillea above me. I blink & the bubble-gum blossoms crumble into beetles & blistered bark. the little bug breathes in. begot onto a barren land, she makes the best of each feeble bounty: the bullfrog’s lullaby, the bird eggs, the bunnies. boredom, bravery, bear tracks, brackish baths & in the bleak midwinter, cranberry beads on balsam fir. for birthdays, bouquets of box elder & bur oak, bracelets of buckthorn & birch. she can’t believe how many flowers there were, once, buds & blooms with bouncy names: buttercup begonia bluebell black-eyed susan bachelor buttons bleeding heart. I teach her, in turns, how to bite & beg. how to boil burdock, bait traps. how it all must be: blood, blight, boars, boys, berries. how to cut away the bad until the blemish is gone. how to begin anything with a bundle of sticks. how to build, balm, blacken, bury, obliterate. this poem is a backburn, a minor blaze born to bleed the fuel of the bigger, more desperate flame. am I an arsonist? her braid becomes a brushfire before I can tie the bow.

Holly Lyn Walrath

After Eli Clare

 

The night we pushed the old

blue Mazda through cold

flood waters and bruises

bloomed like bayou algae

on my shoulder, neck, arms

where the weight of the dead car fell

after we trudged through

the water, snakes, and ants

to the hotel where I cried

terrified not for us but the

dogs we left behind—

is a poem.

 

The detritus on the side of the road—

Styrofoam, glass bottle neck,

couch frame a momma cat had

kittens on, pieces of plastic

too small to count, crack pipe

busted, plastic bag clinging

to a barbwire fence, newspaper

half-buried in the mud, in the red-dust

wind by a gas station out West, litter

like a sea on the side of IH-45—

is a poem.

 

Microplastic invisible to the human eye

slipping into the water system

through the very clothing we wear

(can’t afford 100 percent cotton

and it has a plastic tag)

drawn into the ocean minutiae

from careless children

dropping Sprite bottles

(they were once glass)

into Galveston Bay

disappearing into waves,

a plastic bead spill

(the ship lost its way)

an airplane falling

from the sky

a satellite falling

out of orbit

a contract

falling through

everything degrading

just in increments

so small

you can’t see them

is a poem.

 

The old woman on her porch

who lived 70 years and

the river never came up

to her feet before,

the police never came

to her door before

refusing to leave this place

she bought with her

hard-earned cash from

working so many years

at the wag-a-bag on the corner,

who can feel every inch

of it slipping away

beneath her tired feet

silt-slick boards

under her toes,

no, sir, if you want

me to go, you’re gonna have

to carry me out—

is a poem.

 

The organizers who switch

from LGBTQ to reproductive rights

to Black lives matter without blinking,

a generation who taught

us not just to be loud

but to get shit done,

the ones whose ghosts

we carry on our backs

like fresh water—clean water—

shouldn’t we all be water

protectors? shouldn’t there be

water like justice?

queers who never wanted

justice, an eye for an eye,

justice is blind

who only wanted this win,

then this win, then this win

is a poem.

 

Bar soap in the shower

on a silicone mat

(is silicone better than plastic?

We may never know)

in my gym bag

(in the plastic case)

next to the kitchen sink

(with the wood-bristle brush)

in a million hotel bathrooms

un-reusable, unsalvageable

(Covid cut down on commutes

but tripled single-use)

the one black curly hair

stuck in the white soap—

is a poem.

 

My spouse asleep next to me

under the revolving fan

the AC blowing sweet and cold

everything at peace and

safe—homage to plain-spoken,

never broken, we will survive

together love even if

tomorrow the sun is gone

even if they say

this poem is not enough

William Woolfitt

Low rooms, poor light, cold water, figures on their knees or backs, lay down

boys, gonna be trouble in Cumberland Gap. Close my eyes, try to count

the conscripted fathers, husbands, sons, leased to Tennessee Coal and Iron,

convict miners crowded aboard eastbound trains. Taken off at Coal Creek,

four white and one hundred thirty Black men stockaded in box houses, fed

cowpeas, cold cornbread, hog (round) meat, crammed in rough plank beds.

Now and then a miner is released from his chains by well-directed buckshot.

Try to hear, clap along when Blind James saws the fiddle bow, carry songs

with me all the miles (ninety) from Coal to Coahulla Creek, near my home,

near Dry Valley, where the Cherokee families were jailed and fell sick with

cholera in muddy stockades. Here, cliffs and rocks where panthers rumor on.

Here, the Cherokee Nation, Polly Mocking Crow’s garden, creasy greens

and onions, woods the Ridge and his sons hunted. Here, stolen land. Here,

a medicine show, Gid Tanner & His Skillet Lickers play Boll Weevil Blues,

Hand Me Down My Walking Cane—with Bert Layne mugging, clowning

in blackface—while my dazzled antecedent guffaws and taps his foot,

and my forefather yeehaws, and Aunt Dinah takes a spell, swings a chair,

breaks her man’s little jug. Here, the table-land rises, rocky, cliff-lined,

irregular, notched by valleys, coves, finger spurs. Here, stolen men.

At Brushy Mountain, a prison shaped like a cross, inmates mining coal

until 1966. In 1862, General Morgan torches the hay, the meal, the meat.

In 1908, Felder writes that the whipping reports show an unusually large

number of whippings at Lookout Mountain Mines. Volunteer guards

drill faithfully, take up Winchester, revolver, billy—a force of gentlemen,

slate-eyed and sallow-faced like me. 1863: a secesh lady clad in bonny blue

sings rebel songs. Testimony in 1876: below Sand Mountain, three hundred

men from the state pen work the rooms of coal, supplying light, warmth,

and motive-power to the people of the State. Here, I or someone like me

gets a bright bulb, a swirl of heat, more volts; many suffer to give me ease. 

Lee Nash

They arrive in the autumn

for the Day of the Dead

 

three days of celebrations

the Purépecha tossing oranges

into the coffin of the grinning corpse

the burning of candles overnight

ofrendas hung with flowers

 

this year two more souls

Homero and Raul

will join the festivity

 

you will not pinpoint them

among the gauzy wings

that bend the oyamels’ boughs

the millions of ounces

that flew thousands of miles

to overwinter here

 

we use the same word for stained glass

and blood on a weapon

 

marmalade on their concave tongues

they descend in a long apricot cloud

and rouse the scent of fir

 

kings from another realm

this is their throneroom

 

when they settle, be silent

because in earthly life

they were not

 

 

In memory of Homero Gomez Gonzalez, manager of Mexico’s El Rosario monarch butterfly sanctuary, and Raul Hernandez Romero, a tour guide at the reserve. Both conservationists were found slain early in 2020.

Sofia Ezdina

The world was warm and young.

Poplar fluff burned into smoke, into poplar smog.

We grew up quickly; what was honey turned into copper.

We saw the seam that runs in the heart of the universe.

We smelled shades of stone and the scent of dreams.

We sat in the rye for hours; we set fire and turned

honey into copper, poplar fluff into poplar dim.

 

When the world grew old, we grew old with it.

Poplar fluff burned out into smoke. Into poplar smog.

When the pyre in the fields went out quietly by dawn,

there were two of us in the ashes left: only me and me.

 

Now I think of all those who could not escape.

In my eyes there is still dust, bonfires, poplar smoke,

poplar smog in the world’s heart where the seam breaks,

the sun melts steel, what was honey turns into copper

with a squeal of iron, tearing the golden thread to shreds.

Those who can sing remain quietly aging and rotting,

What was rot now rises, begins to sing.