 
### Sixfold Poetry Winter 2018

by Sixfold

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2018 Sixfold and The Authors

www.sixfold.org

Sixfold is a completely writer-voted journal. The writers who upload their manuscripts vote to select the prize-winning manuscripts and the short stories and poetry published in each issue. All participating writers' equally weighted votes act as the editor, instead of the usual editorial decision-making organization of one or a few judges, editors, or select editorial board.

Each issue is free to read online and downloadable as PDF and e-book. Paperback book available at production cost including shipping.

Cover Art: Elena Koycheva. Online at instagram.com/lenneek/

License Notes

Copyright 2018 Sixfold and The Authors. This issue may be reproduced, copied, and distributed for noncommercial purposes, provided both Sixfold and the Author of any excerpt of this issue are acknowledged. Thank you for your support.

Sixfold

sixfold@sixfold.org

www.sixfold.org

### Sixfold Poetry Winter 2018

Bryce Emley | Asking Father What's at the End & other poems

AJ Powell | Butterfly-minded & other poems

Faith Shearin | Biology & other poems

Claire Van Winkle | Admitting & other poems

Sarah W. Bartlett | Summer Cycles & other poems

Nooshin Ghanbari | Vincent & other poems

Meli Broderick Eaton | The Afterlives of Leaves & other poems

Jeddie Sophronius | Refugees & other poems

Paula Bonnell | In Winter, By Rail & other poems

Addison Van Auken Waters | Girls & other poems

Daniel Sinderson | Hallelujah & other poems

Andrew Allport | All Nature Will Fable & other poems

Marte Stuart | What an Insult Time Is & other poems

Matthew Parsons | My Father as an Inuit Hunter & other poems

Emily Bauer | Gently, Gently & other poems

Bruce Marsland | A once lovelorn bard's final journey & other poems

Beatrix Bondor | Night Makers & other poems

Isabella Skovira | Lawless Conservation & other poems

Juan Pablo González | Colombia, 1928 & other poems

Molly Pines | The Pillbug & other poems

Jamie Marie | On the Lake & other poems

William A. Greenfield | If You Show Me Yours & other poems

Bill Newby | Tuesdays at The Seagate's Atlantic Grille & other poems

Elder Gideon | Male Initiation Rites & other poems

Joel Holland | Dear Gi-Gi & other poems

Martha R. Jones | How Lewis Carroll Met Edgar Allan Poe & other poems

Contributor Notes

Bryce Emley

### Inheriting

—for Erin

Maybe we ask too much of the stars.

They must be tired from the weight of our small lonelinesses,

tired of being cast in our stories

when all they want is to show us the shape of the night.

They must know there's so much space between them.

They must know how we talk of their dying,

how they're already gone before they reach us,

and yet all they do is reach with arms so dim

they can't even press the shadows from our figures,

the way we can't stop ourselves

from becoming our fathers,

who didn't know how to keep from hurting us.

It's good to be loved so much

we can hurt the people we love.

It's good to be always ending, and so needed, for now.

It's good to tell someone

Here, and here, and here

as you touch the parts of your face you want to be kissed

and feel warmth from their lips

like light from trillions of miles away on your cheek, your temple,

the curve where your jaw meets your neck.

### Grief

You don't feel it. You have it

or you don't.

No one tells you it's like that.

They don't tell you to have it is to feel everything

you've always felt

but in new tongues, new colors, new coats

in the same bright, busy country.

They don't tell you feelings don't matter,

the way you don't feel

the bones you carry through the world

until you're too tired to stand,

all that love you kept sleeping

waiting for the ones who would take it,

all your wondrous youth.

You won't know it as a feeling.

You'll know it by a lightness: a gift

of one less thing to be afraid of,

an openness already collecting your breaths,

recurring dream

losing its shape as you describe it

and even now can't recall,

but know you had it.

You know you have it.

### Asking Father What's at the End of the Darkness

He says I think too much of falling things,

of what comes next.

Lately buzzards have been flying circles in my head,

I'd like to know to what extent we choose

our nightmares. I'm tired

of how things have to end, how everyone we love

are bonfires night has just begun to swallow.

I think this is why he needs God,

why my heart is always playing jackstraw with my ribs.

I'd like to know it will matter if I pray

for him, I believe in God

the way I believe in Icarus and starlight,

in bones waiting at the bottom of the sea.

I think he needs to think I'll miss him when he's gone,

ashes sketching wild shapes on the wind.

If I don't speak it's because I keep a prayer

lodged in my throat: _Make me someone_

_worth hurting to see_.

AJ Powell

### Butterfly-minded

Do you write upon delicate places?

Imagination is the storied underside of lepidoptera wings:

scales seamed together—papery and trimmed

to triangle arcs, graceful for flight,

wandering from thorn to blossom.

Do you feed upon surprising things?

Make meals from an insect's food-stuff:

fennel, milkweed, aster, daylily;

find shelter in a hollow tree

and travel among tall, wild grasses.

Do you grow in stages?

Nothing is certain except metamorphosis:

egg on leaf, caterpillar slinky-crawling,

chrysalis dangling susceptible,

and bodies winging wonder.

Have you journeyed generations in a day?

Poems are pollinators, flitting

across oceans, the migration always

for a flower's sake and

our survival.

Are you, like me, butterfly-minded?

Velvety in the dark, then

all manner of speckled and variegated,

and become emanations of alabaster, or

iridescent and sorrowful in blue.

Do you wish to unleash every fleet thought?

When the butterflies in your stomach

stir a hurricane with their wings,

churning fear and discovery, do you

wish to release them, through seppuku?

### Hike

I like

to pick

my way

through

a trail

of rocks

and roots

a moving body

in the still earth

wild wind

companion creek

sun blaze

tree shade

lazy magpie

foraging squirrel

white noise of

waterfall descending

lichen-blanketed granite

beside wildflower bounty

and scent of

dust and dry pine

in the air

til afternoon

rain

releases

dampening life

and my soul

long buried in

paved tombs

exhumed

enlivened

and feet

find

their way

### Cliffside

Half the world is drowning;

half the world is on fire.

The earth is warming and

our tempers flaring.

The total eclipse of the sun

marched across the length of our empire

northwest to southeast,

stunning us into silence,

its corona a net to rescue us,

stirring us to whoops and hurrahs,

then gone, and

a normal sun in the sky again.

The world is turning;

the world is ticking

toward some glory or menace,

slipping toward some

cliff's edge—wanting

to see if we have wings.

We are sending our castoffs

to hurricaned regions

as our sun sets red

behind the haze of

trees turning to ash.

We are driving with our eyes on our phones.

We are dropping our eyes from

each other's gaze,

for who can look and live?

Who can stand

beside our neighbors,

let alone reach a real

hand toward a real

forehead with a cool cloth?

We are left alone

and right alone,

brittle and stubborn

in our stances.

Humility is exiled

from our hearts.

Too many or too few signals

lurch out of the noise.

We are sound, fury,

friend, phony—

naked under the sky.

### Psalm

Change is the invisible whisper

underneath everything,

the silent source of wild things—

green, growing, and filling

our senses.

Snow crystals become water drops and,

given time,

carve cleavage into mountain bosoms

to nurse life and wanderings.

Glacial blue ice peeks out

from a snow field's farthest regions,

nether-caverns of ancient colds and

deeper freezes than the ones we've known.

When the road curves or the cliff climbs,

and the way is blocked,

then the only way forward is back.

Find the future in geologic past—

realize it is all we've ever had.

Rivers wash rocks and float salmon

up to birthing grounds.

Shrubs bubble viridian on slopes

toward frothy, snow-topped peaks.

Every valley is a respite

in a climbing world.

The mountains are outside of time and going nowhere,

filling everywhere with

what was and is and is to come.

The wild is beckoning,

watching for our willingness to howl.

Peaks tease us toward heights

which halve our reason;

we are passengers in time,

lasting only a blink of God's eye,

too loose and shifting to last,

while the pack and density of mountains

adhere them to eternity.

Rain comes at intervals like a shroud—

a reprieve from wonderment—

dimming the displayed creativity of God.

I lift up mine eyes

to the hills.

I cannot look away.

They are on top of me and

I will bury myself at their feet forever.

Astonishment crashes like an avalanche

down to the highway of campers and

cars caravanning back to civilization.

The fools—abandon your vehicles!

Run for the hills,

walk until you must climb, clinging to vegetation,

to the highest holy places.

Holy is the variety.

Holy is the mutation.

Holy is the menace of predator.

Holy is the meekness of man in Nature's maw.

Multiply the leaves and tree needles.

Multiply the grasses.

Multiply the raging and rambling waters.

Multiply the salmon and the bears they feed.

Multiply the pollinators and the honeycomb.

Multiply the rainstorms.

Multiply the mosquitos who know to drink deeply

the lifeblood in the place.

### By Myself

I spend time with you when we're apart.

Watch the sun drop behind the horizon from the back deck with you

sitting next to me in an empty chair.

Wander a mountainside, circumscribe a meadow;

I am a solo traveler and you're by my side.

Sing along to old rocknroll as I drive down the highway—

you laughing at me from the passenger seat with no one in it.

Sigh inside a poem like a room unto ourselves

together as I sit alone.

Cry into my pillow and you place a warm hand

on my shaking back in my deserted bed.

Laugh at the joke you haven't whispered in my ear.

Dance in your absent arms.

Nest my nose in your distant neck.

Dip our toes in the sea, ankles lapped by waves,

a wide and solitary beach the setting for our excursion

by myself.

Faith Shearin

### Old Woman Arrested for Teaching 65 Cats to Steal

after the headline in the World News Daily

I'm still trying to imagine how she did it.

Maybe she used costume jewelry

to instruct them, served tuna

each time they carried a necklace or ring

in their mouths, as a mother might carry

a kitten? They were her pets

but they worked for her, as thieves,

balanced outside unsuspecting

neighbors' windows on feet as quiet

as desire. She was an old widow

in Ohio, the sky low and gray,

and she was lonely in her flat ranch home

where her felines began to multiply, their

hunger like her own. She taught them

to bring her what was shiny—pocket watches,

earrings, diamonds—from a suburb

where things went missing

when someone closed their eyes in front

of a television set, or stepped

outside to get the mail: whiskers

against bureaus, velvet ears twitching

in the evening shadows.

### Early Lab Mice

Robert Koch hung a curtain between the place

where he treated patients and the lab where

he began growing anthrax in a cow's eyeball.

While his wife was upstairs, marinating

a roast, he remained in the basement,

dissecting an infected garden rabbit,

its ear under his microscope.

Robert drew whatever he observed so

the pages of his notebooks filled with

sketches of rod-shaped bacteria;

he noted how anthrax could be

active or passive, revived by temperature

or moisture, and he remembered the mystery

of a sheep eating from a spring field,

blood gushing from its nose.

Robert set mousetraps in the horse barn,

and when his daughter, Gertrud, was given

white mice as pets he took a few downstairs;

he told his wife to turn away all but the sickest patients

and went on working by lantern light,

his cultures growing over a low flame; I imagine

how Gertrud's mice watched Koch

from cages and jars, with haunted

pink eyes, balanced on hind legs,

their tails naked behind them,

sensing danger, discovery.

### When The World Was Flat

It was possible to drift off the edge,

white sails billowing into eternity,

the earth sometimes in the shape

of a box, sometimes

like a dinner plate. You may

have read about the four corners

guarded by angels who held

the winds; once, we floated on air,

or rested on the backs of elephants

which stood on a sea turtle

swimming in an infinite sea.

When the earth was flat it had

a primordial tree at its axis, and the sky

was a canopy, and life ended

at the horizon, in the place

where clouds fattened,

growing round.

### Laika, Before Space

Stolen from the streets of Moscow,

Laika was a dog trained for space

by living in a cage; in photos

her ears bend forward, as if listening,

and she wears a flight harness; she stands

in the cockpit of Sputnik 2: the satellite which

never meant to bring her home.

I have read that Laika weighed

eleven pounds, that she lived

on her own for at least one winter,

each day dark and narrow, snow

in her fur. One scientist took her

home to play with his children before

she was launched into the burning panic

of her final hours and I imagine

Laika in the back yard of her last November

chasing a ball that collided

with a fence: ice dripping from the eaves,

frozen earth, her breath floating.

### Biology

My daughter's textbooks bring it back,

and her notes on a chalkboard where cells

go on dividing, mitosis and photosynthesis

exactly as I left them all those years ago,

the fetal pigs with their eyes closed,

dreaming of birth. An aquarium bubbles

in the corner and my lab partner has lost

her notebook in which she has been drawing

anthrax and babies who cry like cats

because of a deletion in the short arm

of chromosome 5, babies who won't live

long enough to learn about prophase

or anaphase, and now the teacher is leaned over

a microscope, explaining the vast

universe we cannot see: viruses, dust mites

in our pillows, time, the biology room itself

which stands in my imagination, at the edge

of a white forest in Michigan, 1985.

Claire Van Winkle

### Admitting

for Kat

The woman in Admitting sits in her reinforced fish tank

all day, smacking her gum and scratching

between her legs when she thinks the wait-

ing room's back is turned. The light

flickers like a foot tapping or breath catch-

ing how sickness catches in a scorched throat.

Only this lock-and-key sanctuary could hold

such deviant light—its switch- blade of fluorescence

on bullet-proof glass, its warped waves and pockmarks.

The desk-girl doesn't know what we know. She hasn't learned

the art of knitting shadows, of fitting

tight into the corners one conjures in this labyrinth

of knock-kneed chairs. All she knows is hair

spray and fingernails— not cut short, like ours,

or bitten to the quick. No, from cuticle to curved edge

hers are sharps, contraband. Her hands tell us

that she is on the out- side. Their thick nails

will pick the ward's lock at the end of her shift.

She'll clock out before the snug chain of electricity

is released from the overhead lights. She'll go out,

get a cab, get laid. We know she holds at least

one skill we can't grasp: we will still see

her bruised-berry lips long after she's punched out,

and the smell of her hairspray won't quit, but by six

we'll have vanished from her varnished world.

We admit it's not the glass or needles or men

in white who hold us here for our own good. No,

what keeps us guarded goes deeper: That bored girl at the desk

is a mistress of the art of missing nothing

she's lost or left behind while we are stuck

here in this strip-searched light with our past lives

laid out like tarnished cutlery. We roll up

our sleeves, bare our hearts and teeth, and shock ourselves

as we attempt to commit

the theory of forgetting

to memory.

### Fixed

There is technical language to describe a cat whose ovaries have been removed, but the word they used was fixed.

As in:

The day we had her fixed we picked her up and she was stoned, heavy as a sack of rocks.

We hauled her home, doing our best not to stretch the translucent film of exposed skin—her shaved underside cross-stitched by that mad embroidery where they'd sealed her shut with one ragged seam.

As in:

She'd just been fixed and we were afraid we might break her.

### Peach Picking

You said you picked me 'cause I wore white stockings & no lipstick & in the low light I looked a little like your kid sister Etta. Said you liked how I was all elbows. That you could tell from the get my pussy would taste like peaches.

_You're s'posed ta smile now, sugar pea,_ you said. So I did.

Before long, you got used to me—your favorite pit-stop on that beat-up highway from here to heaven and back.

I figured you'd tire quick, come to see that stockings run & lips crack & no matter how fresh & clean a thing starts, if your hands are dirty it's gonna get stained. After some mileage I even told you plain: _Peaches ain't so pretty once they're bruised._

_True,_ you said. Then you spat on your rough palm, got yourself wet, hitched up my skirt & pushed into me. _But damned if they don't taste sweeter._

### Mother Tongue

for Stacy

Stacy dreamt of cocks that spoke

Mexico City Spanish—rolling hard,

every syllable requiring tongue,

the body's pestle grinding city dust

into its mortar. _Coño de madre,_ she'd slur

through sleep, pressed into the dressing room's

beat-up couch—restless,

sucking her thumb.

It was the only time she'd shut her mouth all night.

Inevitably the phone would ring, or one of us

would run a stocking and curse, and Stacy

would stir—irritable, like a child

whose pacifier has dropped out of reach.

She'd smack her lips, twist them to bare

her ruined teeth, and hiss _What're you putas lookin' at?—_

her voice all throat, her dripping thumb jabbing the air, slick

as meat on a spit.

### Rabbits

She named her rabbits Zyprexa

and Xanax. Zyprexa made me

uneasy; he'd get loose

at all hours, wander to our bedroom,

and make small sounds like

the sucking of old shoes

in wet weather. He was the color

of dirty bed sheets and he smelled

like cabbage, but she loved him.

She called him Zippy.

When I asked about the scat on the floor

around his cage she said

the greenish lumps were _pellets—_

that rabbits ate their own crap

to get what they'd missed

the first time around.

She told me she liked rabbits

because they knew how things worked

and handled their shit

accordingly.

Sarah W. Bartlett

### Emptied of Heart

"as I get older, I feel emptier"—jbk

You sit, vacant eyes an island

on your inner landscape, emptied

for lack of desire for more. Emptied

of loves lost and leaving you

lonely and afraid. Emptied

of life, left only with pain. Emptied

of will unlike those valiant years

of hair loss, chemo. Emptied, too,

of relentless worry over holding

a job, putting bread on a table you sit at alone

without appetite. Emptied of things

as we consult and consign, pack up

on the eve of change. All that remains

is bleak dark, the vast fear

of fading away

empty.

### For My Sister

All night your heart treads

the rough ground of uncertainties,

rumbling over their spiky terrain

like a hamster striking the spokes of his wheel

racing as if to outdistance pain.

Or outsmart the doubts strewn ahead

with careless abandon. You

could choose to pause and reflect.

Assess the landscape before you.

Select your steps intent

on placing your feet on smooth ground

to assure balance. Sense

the solid nurture of knowing

you are whole. The rough ground

but a transient truth. Uncertainty

the true texture of a lived life.

### Fear of Falling

She fears falling in the shower

so I go first, set the water to welcome

then extend my steady arms for her

to grasp. Reassured, she steps

leaning against the wall, the bar,

my naked chest as she seeks support

that speaks safety. Slowly I seat her,

leg bracing the stool as I lower her down.

Water courses past her shoulders

blessing her trust, our bond.

I hand her soap and washcloth, hold

the spray above her head.

Unbidden, her hands unfold the motions

of life-long ritual. Side by side, we sisters

slake a thirst for simpler time shared

if not recalled—immersed

in laughter, leaning one

into the other, trust unspoken.

And now, her hair washed

and rinsed over and over

'til it squeaks as she likes,

I towel her dry in the warmth of the stall

as we plot our exit, her fear of falling returned

full force. I stand strong, lift

support her weight on me only

to discover her legs no longer hold.

She reaches arms around my neck

as I step slowly back, clutching her

withered body to mine, our shuffled tango

an uneven course the few feet to bed.

For the last time, I hold her close

before she falls away.

### Sunset

dark gray puffs of cloud

interspersed with neon pink

backlit context of the day's

layered leave-taking, light

and gray intermingled at the end

of a too-short visit with a life too-long

lived in the gray of loss—appetite

or energy for life— the same

day in and out, no hot pink zip

or even the pretext of joy

just the occasional shimmer

of a few days together

yesterday and tomorrow

a soft glow fading quickly away

like the sunset over the tarmac

anticipating an on-time departure

### Summer Cycles

I. Last night, I brought the first

red daylily of summer inside.

It had been bent, the quiet way

things happen, unnoticed.

By this morning it had wilted,

its short life shed into a single tear

shaped blood red pool.

II. How sweet my sister's seaside visit

last summer—her first

wheeling her on canary yellow wings

to float on waves. We never got

that far, it being low tide.

But we laughed a good deal

and looked forward to this

year's return. Instead, I revisit

her final trip, relive those firsts

and what I recall of her joy.

III. All day, I have been noticing things—

daylilies clumped along old stone walls,

daisies' ardent faces vying to be counted

as if pulling petals could tell

what I already know: _she loves me . . ._

she loves me not . . .

she loves me.

Nooshin Ghanbari

### Holy War

after Gholson's "Border: Mirage Wire"

We fight after Sainte-Chapelle.

(When I break

away from my father

there is

a moment of peace. Notre Dame: a moment

of prayer. The rose window

is my new horizon. Fractured, refractured,

refracted.)

Outside the cathedral, gelato

drips sticky down one hand

in roads of orange and pink.

### Vincent

after Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows & The Harvest

Crows crowd the horizon

Bleeding onto the canvas

In curves of inky black—

In a scythe, in a comma

Indicating a pause and

A procession, though not

Quite an ending—

In a Rorschach test that

Reads _where will you go_

From here, there is nowhere

To go from here.

Home is on a different

Horizon.

Across the way, a farmer

Burrows about in the foliage

In that insistent way that

Little clouds grow on trees.

Every ladder he has ever owned

Leads nowhere. Up, not away.

And yellow—

My god, there is so much yellow.

### Blue

Hands to ears,

I can hear the bass of

my heart pounding.

There is a terror up here,

this state of looming above.

The water rearranges itself

in an act of God—

ripples outward—a pause—

then a great scrambling

to what it once was.

(Blue. It was once

and always will be the purest

blue I have ever seen.)

And you, superimposed

onto the blue,

onto the syntax

of the Cornwall horizon—

you, swathed in black

like a bruise, rearranging.

### Light Rail Elegy

after Tarfia Faizullah

We held each other's hands

but did not promise not to let go.

In Amsterdam, they let go.

Girl unmoored, girl shivering,

unfamiliar city spinning. Tram

shadows lengthen, recede.

Their blue and white bodies

could offer up shelter, reprieve,

but not tonight.

No one knows where home is

tonight. Girl unfeeling, girl alone.

Overhead, the moon winks,

extinguishes its flame.

Meli Broderick Eaton

### When We Were Mud

Our nothingness was everything

when we were mud, still,

stirred, we stood

to be counted and forgot

our filth, the dirt beneath

the crescents of our fingernails. Maybe

we departed before the mud dried, maybe

we arrived before we were formed,

maybe we didn't remember

we were dirty.

We rose and forgot

that standing is just the start

of the need to lie down, to tie our eyes

with sutures of sleep eventually,

inevitably

a furrow begins in the first petal

the perfect cup of a tulip collapses

the wheel of each flower spins into dust

every leaf trades green for fire every stone

softens for the river every beat

of your heart is a pump closer to falling

back into the earth.

When my mud dries, open the heavens

to let the rain fall into pearls

on this skin I wear

wash the dust back to my feet

let my petals curl

out of the way, for the next

blossom might mean more, the next

leaf will rust into glorious tatters, the last

beat hammers into stillness

and we remember everything,

everything is borrowed.

### Blackbird

Blackbird bobs on his branch

at first, I think his dance is the wind

but then I see it is his own weight

too great for the slender stem

clutched in the circle of his toes.

Through fleeing light he peers

with intense button eye—just one

as though he has found what he came to visit.

Behind his bright shouts beneath

his dark mutterings I hear

the things he doesn't say, the things

he can't wrap with sound.

I don't know the words either

but in the crimson thrust of his epaulets

as he bristles his throat I sense the urgency I hear

the boulder of his thoughts the fear

night will come with some pearl unsaid

some idea too big for his song some sigh

that can't be heaved because its weight

would break us would make us

fall from our tree.

With one flap he fades into the spilling night.

This darkness, known, is a kindness

maybe

the other is, too.

### The Afterlives of Leaves

(Komorebi: tree leaking through sun the miracle of light, leaves)

Cellulose bones strung

like ribs parched in the sun

woody webs spread over their own decaying

roadmaps pointing to their end.

Do they remember seizing the light

as it fell, driving cupped hands upward

in worship?

When you get there

will you know if you are broken

into fractals of yourself or

just broke down with your back to the light?

Will you remember the last time

laughter fell from your lips as you sipped

time from the silty swirl

at the bottom of your cup?

Look up at the heavens where

it all starts over, where

we strung our words on the spokes

of the stars for later, always later.

They flutter and rustle where we sift for order

where we cling to each other hoping

to hold the light before it passes.

### Web

Untethered

tiny spider mariners

set sail into the unknown dusk

their entire lives

strung between trunks

that must seem like planets stationary

unmoving as the wind sways them

from one galaxy to the next

and they never know.

Beneath

our feet seethes

the coronary flow of this earth

the whole reason

we stand in the first place

but the rock we cling to, sink our anchors

seeking warmth is forever reforming

pushing us away from its churn

and we never know.

Buried

in our hearts

sits a seed placed there

before we came

out of the darkness

sliding into the arms of our family trees

the fertile carbon fingers that start

the heart seed's tendrils drawing

our map back home.

### Flight

Is there wonder is there light

when time has fled when

the heart trembles its last when

your hand is not there inside your hand

this was always meant to happen

Do you stand balanced between mountains

or are you wrapped inside a cloud or

do you drink the river whole as

you swim like a salmon to completion

this is the natural order

What sky do you feather with raindrop wing

can you still see the shiver of a lily stem can you

feel the last paint of sunset brush your skin do you

hear the hawk scree as it streams toward the earth

you need to get over this

Will you remember a black so black

it reflects green a song so sweet

you can't possibly think when some tiny miracle

makes you catch your breath

are you still

still

Jeddie Sophronius

### I Memorized the Lord's Prayer

I memorized the Lord's Prayer

& with every wrong kingdom I named

I met the teacher's cane

I raised the Five Pillars of Islam

the night before I kissed a Moslem girl

outside the invisible line of _purdah_

According to the sacred texts

Krishna is the God of love

& one of us is going to _naraka_

There was no way an old man from China

could have believed in the God of the Israelites

But what do I know?

— _For thine is the kingdom,_

In her sick bed, I tell my mother

about Saṃsāra

— _& the power, & the glory,_

God, she is coughing blood

& insulin

_for ever & ever._

Amen.

Please, I don't want to lose her in heaven

### Interlude: Refugees

If I were

a bird,

I'd be too

claustrophobic

to sing.

I'd drown

my wings

long enough

to become

man again.

You can call it

evolution,

except

that it isn't _._

We've all

been here before:

singing and drinking

until our lungs

collapse

like buildings

during

an airstrike.

Indiscernible

refugees

die every day

without their names

ever mentioned

in the newspaper.

Children born

of war

die in war.

But why

bother? The work

of God is this:

for every snowflake

that kisses

the ground

a child's sand angel

gets closer

to getting buried,

and so does

the child.

Somewhere,

a farmer shares

his last cigarette

with a soldier

over a field

of limbs.

Paula Bonnell

### To a Chicken Pie

Dearly beloved, you were there

to greet me with a smile of steam

when I walked home from school

on those winter grade-school days,

home to avoid the abhorred squishiness

of lunchbox sandwiches and the softball games

of the noon recess. You were there,

consoling, in my young married days

on the nights when we got home

at 10 p.m. from work and night school.

You were there in my civil-servant days,

transmogrified to a turkey pie

with a touch of cinnamon in the gravy,

made by my co-worker on her turkey farm.

Those were the days when I came home late

to you, having enjoyed the privilege

of rank: unpaid overtime.

And I recall, too, how even before

grade school, when I looked at the illustrations

showing rivers of milk

and islands of cake, I always knew

that the pies growing on trees

were you, O chicken pie.

And now, dear friend (as my nephew said

to his big wooden truck when he carried

it down the stairs), I do not question

your coming to mind as I stand here

in my near-vegetarian middle age

on the subway platform,

a vision of your browned crust

rising rotundly.

I simply greet you with pleasure.

When broken, your crust will—I know—

release fragrant hints

of the white, orange, and green

nourishment deep in your inland sea

of gravy, cradled in your crinkled silvery pan.

### The Who & How of Morning

The rooster hauls the sun

from the bottom of the sea

and the little birds

with the fine mesh net

of their songs

lift it inch by inch

over the horizon

And by the time

its bottom edge

clears the horizon

the seawater

has all drained

out of it and

it is light

and can rise

of its own accord

to the top of the sky

### When & Why It Got Wet

Noon:

and the sun has risen

so high that it can see

how little we have done

all morning, how much we

have omitted, what bungles

we have begun. Changing

its angle hardly improves

the picture. It

notices certain small

worthy persistences,

its slant rays reveal a

good deed, inspirations

here and there, but the sun

sees everything. It is

heavy-hearted, molten

with grief, unwilling to

face the wrongs that might be

done after dinner when

what is kind is streaked with

what is cruel. It paints

a canvas that mingles

shame with a flowchart for

glory, then the sun

lowers itself in its

bath and the world

floods with darkness.

### On The Bay

Rain salts the air

Vagueness erases the horizon

Blank sky seared with

white from a hidden sun,

a diffusion of clouds

Bright!—

the air pops open—

Thunder slams it shut.

Once

and once only . . .

Rumbles fall off the edge . . . .

Yes, we all saw it, all heard it—

No, all the trees seem intact—

House silence:

Tearing lettuce,

choosing the green bowls,

milk glass, a blue plate

Talk of our mothers,

torn bread, fish chowder

Amen.

### The Interior Decorators' Vow

When my partner and I took on this job

we were clear from the beginning

about what we wouldn't do.

We wanted to avoid

even the idea of a concept.

Two rooms in a millionaire's penthouse

and a little vestibuley anteroom

that he called a "lobby." (A

million isn't much these days,

when you think about it.)

Manhattan.

In the lobby we placed

a low cedar chest. And beside it

an African sculpture, upright,

the kind Picasso admired.

A warrior, this one—I'd say maybe

related to his Don Quixote

drawings. Nothing else

African in the place.

(I don't count, of course,

the faux zebraskin rug

beside the ormolu table

on which rests a bakelite box.)

Our fakes were the real thing:

fakes. We didn't overdo the faux

thing, though; that would have

been too much of a good fling.

The bedroom had color:

rich reds, deep blues. The

living room tried to be almost

without color. Not neutrals, though.

Nothing gray, for example.

There was glass, open-textured things,

some greens mixed in.

No pure whites. A lot of

stuff in that room made

of natural materials that were

variegated as hell (or as hell

wouldn't be, if there were

such a place)—baskets in which

the tones were an astonishing

mélange of straw yellows, reedy

browns and clay reds, the whole

thing quite the mixed discourse.

I'd say "airy," but that's a con-

cept, and what we were trying to

avoid.

### In Winter, By Rail

Black shine on water

Shadows precede

each of the trees

Marsh stubble dull copper

Loops of river water

coppery, smooth

From the train:

rivers disclose harbors

birds land

and hold themselves in their wings

Old blue clothes

caught in a tree

beside the harbor

Redbrown leaves, stones,

trunks rising—

branches V and branch again

Muting whistle

a feeling of mist

beside trees, beside waters

Causeway—

osprey nests on platforms—

a flotilla of swans

White-covered boats

houses on stilts

a toss of small birds

Addison Van Auken Waters

### I Already Gotta Husband

I done dance marimba

uke-le-le.

Sweet boy lover boy

hundred sing say.

Sugar cake butter cake

Sycamore sway,

Pretty rain ova valley

Like-a-duvet.

Milk moon

Queen tune

Star-seat sky.

Big wing

black wing

Inda cloud fly.

Shush.

Malove sound like:

Alabama Muddy River

Zula TipToe

Amen

Amen

I'ma say it again

Alabama Muddy River

Zula TipToe

Stay forever sugalover

Boy don't go.

Zesty lemon chilepepper

Spicy rice tree

Wheat grass Virginia grass

Tiger grass Free

Left foot Right foot

Da ting ting Be

We got nuttin'

'less We got We.

### Parasite

I have weaseled my way into

the guts of a peach,

a fig,

a fruit or

red red meat,

and bumped my head on the stone—

I was blind, too.

The worm wriggles

a hole in the sky—

or dirt.

### Girls.

GENESIS

He wanted to become a Priest,

but he took all them girls instead.

All them girls

and the maid,

kissed them,

gave them beds of gold,

taught them

the rudiments of touch.

Him: CHIEF. Keeper of the Women.

(The girls some fair young virgins).

EXODUS

Them girls

in royal apparel,

he stripped bare of leopard bodysuits or

spandex purple pants,

and with penetrating steam,

red-faced

opens his mouth (as if wishing to eat)

breathing up or down,

the body and the organs rubbing,

The Bull drives.

He pours the Juice.

NUMBERS

_Seven_ them girls

1 the one selling her virginity for $300,000

2 Naomi (from Harlem)

3 the leggy queen (too old)

4-6 the maid, your sister, Mother Earth

7 the mermaid (he loved her more than all the others)

7 received his gift:

The Venomous Worm

stinging againandagain

JUDGES

Them girls

the Womb red with flame,

Ripe

fair fruits of earth.

Their vast egg

ripped from the follicle.

Them woman once strong by birth,

Lifted up their Voice and wept again:

Let no man hurt our bodies.

Poison infected me.

Bruises.

Beast of prey.

Hang him from a tree.

REVELATION

He returns to the mother's house

like a playful boy

to yield the milk.

Evidence destroyed.

Meanwhile:

the clouds wept ninety rivers

the poison hung in the sun

the breath lingered in the mouth, foul

Extinguished were the lights of men.

Extinguished were the lights of girls.

Daniel Sinderson

### The Floor a Light-Year Away

This, as all the others, is a story of the mechanical flesh:

of dirt and ugliness and sunsets before a cool night

spent hiding cigarettes from the rain.

Eventually, we are all delivered home—

our boots mud-sucked and gray,

eyes looking past the glass to crushed leaves and soggy walls.

How do we feel so much with so little?

Hearts stop—not like a storm passes, but like a knot

pulled tight then cut. These are the things we make promises with,

these figures of flesh, these fragile houses

with the windows boarded and the doors ripped off the hinges.

In the closet is a suit on a hanger and it has been to three weddings, including your own.

From that place a new house grows,

the saga repeats, and our prayers

confront their own clumsiness.

The windows swing open.

Looking to the sky we imagine the universe scrunched into a fist, a single, crushed point

and through every telescope we fall back into ourselves at increasing speeds

into confusion, just this thickness of a globe

strangled with life—our faces, our actions

staining some passing time and place.

And on a cool night the far is unfrozen;

it seeps right through your eyes with the rain.

### Little Brother

Of bright monotony: I drink and watch the sun rise.

The news is red. I am

the little brother with his brain taped back together.

Dear sharpened light and deafening voiceless everywhere:

Do my cells complain too?

I know I am a man made of borrowed things

here, alive in the sun. I drop

like blood flowing to the lowest point

in a still life filled with too many too-crushed hearts.

Again in the hourless houses, outside the world that matters,

I pray for the sound of human blood in human veins—

for that inviolable voice choked and buried over by the dust it makes.

O bliss O world O music

in a city of monsters, where the light won't end.

### Hallelujah

Shipped the world over

to accost others, every angel arrives spent, shaking

on elbows like a drunk against the floor.

I listen, but I'm tired with pity.

Tired of their broken wings and wheezing breath.

Tired of the vertigo they say is truth.

Outside, emerging from the ragged past, the pear trees bloom.

It is Sunday. I stay outside

to watch the shadows we call creation;

to live in these meanings we make up.

### The What of the Machine

I dreamed of genesis again but it wasn't like Genesis; saw our voices

as foaming marrow

building bones that could hold us. The image

sticks to the back of my eyes

where I smash the world flat

and call it seen. This room—books, clothes,

cats, fleas—bulges in the throat like a song

and I know it's not mine, but ours.

I know that regardless of the density of light, it looks like now—

like this song is a book, like this book is a mouth

where the dead are swallowed

and given houses to burn down

as bright as spinning wheels

through the teeth of a country. I drink

on the porch with the fleas, and listen

to the shriek and gospel of the world

from across the street.

I shouldn't stay awake like this,

smiling and embalmed below the buzzing light and the incinerating moths,

on this chair like a bed like a boat into dreamland where I drift with the sewage to the sea

and good morning good morning good morning good morning!

To live is to sign our names across the everything

until nothing but mess is left—

a house of ill-made images, where the sun beats.

### Fool

I watch the garbagemen outside

and sit on the edge of our bed.

Another day and it feels like church,

and like in church I'm clueless;

I don't know the words, but I sing.

Andrew Allport

### All Nature Will Fable,

Said Thoureau, if you lack ability

to express it in language, every rock's shine

becomes a myth.

Thus armed, our father and son go fishing

a pond below the railroad cut, bright bobbers

lacquered in a green slime.

Just then, an osprey folds its wings and bombs

into the water, rising with a tremble

as a Reno-bound freight train thunders by

above, machine in the garden.

Which machine? Which Garden?

When there was no more beauty, we decided

we could worship the loss of beauty, and so

nothing was lost. Lo, how the water sparkled

under the uranium mine, clear as lucite,

and the sky a monument to ignorance.

Monofilament in the bushes along the shore,

seabirds dying of thirst. Mommy and me

saw it once. Did you see sharks? Yes, some,

I lie. And where was me? You? An egg

we carried in our pale adaptation

of a mystery. You were one

conclusion in the middle of a line,

mine story, the end of life as we knew.

Marte Stuart

### Little House on the Prairie

Death's entry awaits silence.

Gerda's chest sucks at air

uneven and ragged,

breath's undertone

hooks her here.

Listening is the last to go.

Friends croon old tunes for old times' sake

' _f you only knew, dear,_

_my entire yesteryear_

reverberate into every cell,

a relief when finally still.

Free too, clock's incessant itch.

Lay hush, the struggle to receive.

Turn the dial low, beyond off,

through the os, to be reborn

an amplifying instrument,

an expansive bass-note set

onnnnnnnn

The storybook read aloud echoes deep:

the girl blazes across an open field

of rustling prairie grass,

ears deafened with wind

blown from a limitless horizon.

Ploughs furrow creases in time.

Toil clamors just beyond the rise,

the din of measured work—

Pa's calloused hands

pounding heartbeats.

Death's resolute rap-tap-raps

send shingles to the wind.

Pack-up the covered wagon,

hitch-up the horses,

leave the old house behind.

Turn, wave goodbye

and keep looking back,

until you can't see the barn _off_

### Peach Death

Puckered and soft

clings yet to the branch,

its rose blush plump

in the sigh

of late summer's heat.

The warm delight

of an afternoon's play

upon its surface,

dangling just

for sweetness, say.

Luxuriating too

in loosening skin,

in gravity's tease

at its grip. The moment

a blessed breeze

unhinges the—

_pok_

an easy release

and free fall,

trusting the rest

to its seed.

### Variations on the Word Breathe

The bookmarked page left

beside your bed, like a secret

guide to your mind's last lure,

held Atwood's dreamy whispers

and likely drew you fully under

to the pit of your suffocation fear,

with no one there to whisper

the word of protection: breathe.

Beside me, your body lay lifeless.

Yet, you-in-the-room entered me

timeless, and I breathed for you

to allay all those strained years.

Gentle breaths, in and out,

bearing no clear distinction

of beginning or end;

taken only for the peace in it.

Mine, a gift of effortless breath,

while all-that-was-you filled me.

Yours, the small white flower

suspended in poem, to save me.

(A tribute to Margaret Atwood's Variations on the Word Sleep)

### What an Insult Time Is

What an insult time is

since you died.

Cruel even,

ticking away

on and on

following life.

No pause

for death's

arresting nature.

Just more _now_ ,

the gap between

lengthening

like shadows

at sun's fall.

Matthew Parsons

### Mountain Roosters

Woke in the morning, weak in the mind.

Grabbed the grain but could not find

one benny hen of my whole damned passel

and begun to think of the last night's hassle.

The cock on the hill, crowing at two

saw me sipping the morning dew.

Hung up and over, I woke at eight

to find the bastard crowing late.

In the night he stole my good Domineckers.

Mountain roosters—clever peckers.

### The Tools

I'm a drunken fool

with a trunk of tools

and not one was stole nor borrowed.

Each one is mine,

both beer and wine,

and I walk the hill tomorrow.

The crest and fall,

the walk and crawl,

the holler calls me waken.

The moss and creatures,

the early peepers;

lost features frost has taken.

Does the man on the mount

make a sound

or does he ride one down around there?

Just let him ride,

of his drink, abide.

Let him drink his pride and founder.

I'm a drunken fool

with a trunk full of tools

and not one rule between them.

When I die, oh Lord,

take my shield and sword,

for I fear the Devil's seen them.

### My Father as an Inuit Hunter

He chews the bones to make the boat.

He sews his jacket down to its leathery top

and looks a lot like a sea dragon,

dragging his pride behind him;

losing himself in the frozen water.

Gone huntin',

running reindeer down stream

until they collapse like a dream

on a rocky shoreline.

By the time he drags it home,

it'll be past supper.

He won't mind

and he'll skin the deer in the dark

to hang overnight like a roof over our heads,

which we also have him to thank for.

Lord knows he gets shit done.

And I grew up thinking

my father was a native.

### Haystack, Highlights, and Silk

Ain't she a wise woman?

A sly woman.

A know-your-own-shoulders,

sit back and sigh woman.

T-shirt,

hard hands,

right for making a man.

Dang.

She done made me, didn't she?

There's more down the line.

They're thick as thieves.

Haystack and Highlights,

them cackling hens,

I wonder what they believe.

Silk is still sitting,

the prettier she's getting.

It'd put a good wine to shame.

Haystack and Highlights

would kill a man outright.

But Silk rubs her shoulders

and turns the world over

and surely I knowed her

by the back, so I told her:

Ma'am, I'm obliged

just to sit by your side.

Her face is hiding

but I know she's smiling

a mile wide and wiling

her whole life away.

### Genghis

Jubal

Genghis rings the doorbell

and straightens up his robes

and precious jewels dangle from his ear lobes.

When the door opens, he enters.

He don't need no invitation 'round here

and 'round here is everywhere, in case you didn't know.

Genghis has his son,

and his son has his son

and so on and so on

until we reach the now.

Genghis likes culture

and by god, he's vulture

picking the bones of our holy cows.

We got our own Genghis

like everyone else.

Maybe you're too afraid

to see the Genghis in yourself.

But if you're scared of Genghis

remember he's long gone.

Praise be to our emperor,

the little Jubal Khan.

He's a ruler of rulers,

giving orders to yard sticks.

He's playing with oranges

in the floor at the market.

By god, he's a baby

who'll soon be a man.

He'll have no emotions.

He'll not give a damn.

If he scrapes his knee,

he'll not cry like a girl.

He may never love,

but he'll soon rule the world.

And that's the trade

that old Genghis made

when he conquered the countries

on a quest to get laid.

He don't talk about feelings.

He don't say I love you.

He don't think there's a God up above.

He might think it's him,

or the fate of all men,

who don't know what it is to feel love.

Emily Bauer

### Gently, Gently

There is not a power in me

that mirrors the might of a mountain

or the intensity of the ocean.

I do not possess the ferocity of a

midsummer storm.

No. I am subtle magic.

I unfold slowly,

curling around you like tendrils of smoke.

I am quiet magic.

The kind found in the charm of a small town

or on the face of a still lake,

reflecting the sunlight,

making it dance around you.

I will not turn your world upside-down

or inside-out.

Instead, I will wade through it,

bathe in it,

let it coat me so that I know the

deepest

parts

of you.

### Simplicity

Poetry is the backcountry three-finger salute,

my digits slowly rising from the steering wheel to acknowledge

the only other car I've seen on this county road

in the last ten miles.

It's the small café in a town of 251 people,

the waitress charging me $1 for three cups of

Maxwell House Breakfast Blend,

throwing out a "Hey, honey" at every turn.

It's deep, dark dirt that makes up the

hidden lavender farm on highway 127.

Iowa soil can grow anything.

It's the rolling rows of harvested corn,

a solemn sacrifice not so solemn

because this is what they were made for.

Inconspicuous magic.

### Things Better Left Unsaid

You said that I was a book

you'll always wonder about.

I said maybe that's the beauty of this entire thing.

What I wanted to say was:

I want to be your favorite book.

I want my words forever embedded in your mind.

Your fingertips,

stained black with the ink from my pages,

are extensions of palms that know my weight

as much as your own.

The earthy scent and cracked spine

on this well-loved body

bringing you comfort and joy.

Bringing you home.

I want to be the book you carry with you.

Keep me close.

### Slumber Party

Anxiety makes a bed of down and cotton,

inviting me to curl up in her tight embrace.

Depression brings out my favorite blanket,

tucking me in tight,

making it hard to breathe.

I can always count on these two being there.

Being here.

They now whisper to me,

one in each ear,

asking me to stay awhile.

They remind me of how cold the outside is

and how warm this bed has become.

Perhaps I'll lie here

just a little bit

longer.

### How the Tide Saves Me

I've always felt at peace

while watching the ocean's tide.

The rhythmic waves settling

a heart that often beats

too quickly.

The constant roar drowning out the

destructive thoughts that

bounce around

inside my head.

I taste salt on my lips,

feel the sand move beneath me,

and I know,

deep within these worn bones,

that I am home.

Bruce Marsland

### Picnics of jam and inspiration

Let's start Euterpe's engine

and hum gently up the avenue.

It's crowded on the interstates

of angst and unrequited love.

_Oh my heart, my spleen, my vandalized soul._

Death spins in perpetual roundabouts

clogging commuter routes with fatalism.

_You'll find some irony in the glovebox._

But we'll engage the four-muse drive

to skip off road,

in search of rough terrain, the stony trails

of balancing philosophies,

the lonely thought less had.

Maps show T.S. Eliot's tracks

as faint impressions to the east

coming and going like Shakespearean extras,

gossiping with critics in the wings

while Whitman's yawp

still echoes in the morning air

above we loafers with leaves of weed,

and who knows what's awaking

in the cerebral woods of revelation.

_Pass me a coffee spoon, Alfred,_

_and tell me more about the mermaids._

So let's go.

I'll pack sandwiches.

### A once lovelorn bard's final journey

The Northern skies were streaked with signs of spring

as, embracing, we re-kindled last night's fire,

not yet knowing birch logs book-end everything

or how commencement ceases our desire.

_It's the heat of anticipation without fulfillment_

_that burns hottest in the splintered couplets of our after-years._

_It melts the snow, it stokes the sauna,_

_and it leads to a series of the wettest winters on record._

In the rising sun's own land, with grace we leant

into each other's shadows, racing fate.

Our Eastern moon began a shy descent,

attempting to avoid the burn. Too late.

_Oh hell. This stubborn pursuit of a classical love affair_

_gets clichéd in orienting a flambéed occidental heart._

_Geishas cannot save it, nor can a struggling haiku:_

_Sunny afternoon. / Kisses hot, embraces warm. / My tea has gone cold._

I've played my games with you, and you're ahead.

My scrabbled brain heads South in its despair

to Ipaneman ladies who have fed

my flames but bossa nova'd different squares.

' _Euphemistic' up from 'Quixotic' would be double triple word score,_

_but I'm stumbling with pronouns near the bottom of the board._

_There's more than one thing to do in bed, you know,_

_though you couldn't tell from the magazines of picture poetry on my shelf._

Veni, vidi, vici, love has gone

to sleep. Romance dies cold when you need a catheter to pee.

You're my undercover policeman set upon

surveilling neurological austerity.

_My senile verse lies fractured._

_Dog-eared, dog-Latin doggerel never won fair heart._

_a² \+ b² = c²_ x _d²_

_Circle squared, I drift alone in the post-Enlightenment West._

### This poem is already written

Alice Springs, Australia

"One should perhaps visualise the Songlines as a spaghetti of Iliads and Odysseys ... in which every 'episode' was readable in terms of geology." —Bruce Chatwin, 'The Songlines', 1987

There is a well-worn path for poets

where every Google-mapped destination

holds an aesthetic scribbling,

revisiting lost love or lamenting urban indifference.

Centrifuges of literary movement,

impatient with yearning for dynamic innovation,

capture ink at instants of zenith or nadir.

This place, though, breathes a different sentient fire.

Here, the stories form in earth or rare drops of water.

Here, the poem is already written.

The muse springs round Alice, and Alice springs.

Many for whom the land speaks lyrics in their mother tongue

now hunt on the colonial road, hawk carvings in eucalyptus

or ochre-painted bark, whose symbols mean as little to tourists

as the hieroglyphs inside an ancient pyramid.

But the old red rock will not be silenced.

Histories, tragedies, comedies carved by and deep in the terrain

echo sunlight, loudly visible, comprehensible but to a chosen few,

until the dusk cross-fades to a soundtrack of drum and didgeridoo,

leaving the land to hum its mournful night-time dreaming.

The vibrant earth questions me about my ancestors;

wild parrots perch like notes on a telegraph stave

breezily whistling my tales, which the goannas already knew.

Daybreak brings the dance of clouds and the ballad of sand.

Departing in the warm embrace of dawn, I wonder

if the young pod forming on an acacia branch will grow to notate,

for those who can sing, a fleeting aside on my passing through.

### The cut flower's lament

I'm beautiful,

you say,

as I die dismembered

in an agonizing

spectral bouquet,

blooms bursting

post-mortem.

I am cut.

I am slain.

I am forced

to give pleasure

to rapists with secateurs

who waterboard my foliage

in saturated foam.

Rootless, I wilt

in the hot sun of torture,

man-handled,

sniffed at,

waiting, just waiting

for my colors

to fade

in time

with her obituary.

### Rhyme scene

"As most poetry practitioners in this day and age, we find rhymed poetry to be a thing of the past." —The Inflectionist Review, 2015

Our thesaurus lies indecent, face down still,

spine bent, splayed at the tear-stained lines you cried

in desperate explanation. I reach in guilty

shattered silence for filthy fingercourse

with salty specks of disembodied

DNA. Before divorce, your word rounds

had spat fire at me in deadly rhymes, fractured

semi-automatic iambs. Now I recoil

at spent lexical casings echoing

the air's confession. I taste the Conan Doyle

vignette with a tone-deaf tongue, and retch the dueling

interrogatives you flung into our swear jar

between Eliots, George and T.S., on your bookshelf,

where our abandoned dual-accreditation

doggerel awaits forensics.

Beatrix Bondor

### Night Makers

Imagine the assembly of nights.

A zodiac conveyor belt tightens all their bolts

and tosses them across Mayan squares.

Everything must be exactly in place, precise

every nose, beaded bracelet, pair of gray

vans, limit. All ambition hardens in drizzle,

Thursdays left out to dry in the sun

stretched side by side with loose teeth and used condoms,

peace of all the body's cells, streetlight circles

lining the way home, the desire to break,

and other things that will vanish by morning.

This night isn't done, they may frown

before adding a walk alone

through rain prickles that fall only

between one and two AM, a stanza.

The finished nights must come out golden

brown, perfect pies with swollen bellies

and crusts puffed just right, the perfect resistance—

although I will never know,

not being a maker myself.

I consume nights passed to me

one after another, as they are dropped

into my round and hungry palms.

### Titling

This is how you get a woman to tear her body apart,

not by crooning or cookies, but by the time to title.

Give her unlined. Mean it.

It isn't the carrying she'll do it for or even the lifetime

of doorways opening and closing with curfews and college,

white paint peeling a little but holding.

It isn't for the memorizing or finishing or slimming,

the coolness of a hand or season, not for the shower,

green park benches nor the railings penning

them in from the East river, not for being strung

or doing the stringing, hopes, fears, and meals

softening in a wide milk bowl placed on a weekday wooden table.

It isn't even for the release of something heavy.

This is the kind of pain that is worth it.

This is for the setting down, observing

footsteps down a long carpeted hallway, for learning

and fattening and heat, basketball courts and cobblestones

and wildness that hangs just above bicycle handles

and December dew. This is for the bath,

the cleaning, decades lined up like bowling pins

and brimming with the mystery of the place behind them,

somewhere only strikes and gutterballs know,

a place to push toward where speed is good.

This is for the naming,

the grace hung on the lips of a life

as it puts another into words.

### Red Telephone

I think the green bananas are a kind of street

sign, and that the wind behind

the lens is misleading.

Polka dots are classy, in a way

only salt crystals could understand, and

this striped world could learn by not hanging up

the phone—the world could learn

a lot by pronouncing the "tele"—and twisting

its coiled cord like the '80s, or the curls of a girl

before straight was the style.

Seventeen failed

relationships darken my mind

tonight, and so does one successful marriage.

So does the right choice, and so do

the peppered canyons between the seconds

before my very first

kiss. I hope the words don't learn

about caution. I hope they'll tumble forever,

without searching for another time. I hope

you're awake right now to share

the night with me, because someone,

somewhere, is tasting for the very first time

champagne, crayons, red canyons,

saltshakers, the bravest sand dunes,

and the bladed bananas

in all their terrestrial tartness.

### Solving

Here is the problem. An unbalanced equation

is your banner, your alphabet. Today

is shiny floors and backpacked crowds;

you don't know your schedule.

Your shoes give you blisters, a growth

spurt is on its way, the bus pulls up.

Faces and pencils sharpen.

This is the stage of questioning.

Now is learning forms, names.

Here is the during. You are stumped.

Something won't balance, or the plugging was flawed.

Word stacks are crooked. Draft four takes hours.

This is when the boy doesn't like you back

and lab goggles begin to print red

on the bridge of your nose. There is no sleep.

This is combustion. The bus is on the Deegan,

you have fallen in love. Boyle's law

makes sense of pressure. Things heat up.

Nick Carraway has turned thirty.

We use machines to see through flesh.

People put themselves into tubes and call it flight.

The SAT is next Saturday. You move to a new city

and spend afternoons alone. Your brother leaves home.

The dog begins to forget old faces.

This is the Experiment. You'd give anything for more.

Objects are in motion; forces are unbalanced.

Here is the conclusion. You factored

correctly. Carvings around your eyes run deep.

Goggles are back in the lab cabinet, finals

are over, sneakers have molded to your feet. Bus

doors swing open, it is May. Now is for printing,

sending away, recycling. The good guys win.

Romeo and Juliet have separate funerals.

We have named the elements. Prom

is dancing to a song you know all the words to,

and your ears ring in darkness remembering.

He will be in a different time zone. You are over.

Forces have acted. The system is at equilibrium.

This is at rest.

### 55 Minutes in America Today

—Thomas Hart Benton

I. City Activities with Dance Hall

My head lay in your lap in a feed-me playground

when I realized I would never leave this planet.

It starts on the right foot, ten cents a whirl

between trapeze artists and cigarettes over sidewalks,

the only place where concrete steps

back, stilettos of mica

and chewed gum boots. Yellow dresses

are not my style, my grip was a strength

you wanted. We hadn't made landmarks.

Our ground was ordinary. My mind

had nowhere to go

other than here. Before reasons,

there were "why-nots." Because we wanted

to live, we called this instinct.

II. City Building

This is the part where I fall

and you mock everything I believe in,

then face it beside me and bear upon your back

the blueprints, paintings, pavements,

the making of nights and cities.

These were conversations that you needed

to be excused from. Our fingers scrabbled

through broken glass for an earring

in the dark. The art of losing

excited you and the shards

we left behind. The people who built this spine

knew power, or at least got lucky.

Here where they dug the tunnels

we can only imagine how it felt to lay the tracks,

the makers of Sin City and electric lights

scraping the sky, escaping into the bowels

of the earth because this is their beginning,

they've been here since ours, and in the darkness

before traffic there could have been

only ambition and a mind to move.

III. Steel

Silver pushes us forward.

This is what we hold between stops, our rails

and our tracks and our turns, your shells,

my speed, something we both rode

and wrote. You think of steel's dense breath,

I hold mine high, this night

like the time we danced on the platform

coming home from Mulberry Street or the Oculus,

and this is what I think of when I see a rat.

I discovered your back, an alien swan

rippling with April inhales and chords, solid

as a moon pebble heading home.

Nobody had constructed this spine I wanted.

We pass our thundering words

from palm to palm, triumphant in our roar.

IV. Coal

This is what we've avoided, the dust

that clings to curved bones

where something straight once stood.

Your letters on a sheet scream

that you were here and thinking,

maybe of your pidgeon fear

or the caverns between their coos.

Tell me about Basquiat, his scribbled skins.

Faces eat each other in neon red

and green, your colors. Mine are missing.

All I can rely on are green bananas,

the ones I explained to me years ago

standing in front of a painting in a white

walled room that taught me everything I know

about love and slipping. You were in the background,

busy with musicians whose figures didn't fit

together, just the way you like bodies.

Ripeness was off with yesterday's dusk. We were green

and peeled before our prime.

V. Instruments of Power

We have so many: plastic combs, fearlessness,

promenade walks, goldfish, the sputtering

of one La Croix to another, stamina of self,

our own. We have pages, fish that spin on the scarlet

ceiling, and the blessings of Mother, Father, and Pa

who will be coming home just as soon as the panes

are there or not at all, our outlets sideways

and the rugs have all become carpets.

This floating sinks to skinning, the small loves

shifting into all our nights in warm socks, sunset,

cucumbers discs sprinkled with salt,

your pupils pooling into puddles of iris

with a tight black yolk at the center, 100 Barclay Street,

our freedom and lips of the buildings

speckle sky against the cold

even though you aren't here tonight.

Yesterday we inhaled those minutes,

standing in the shower in pajamas and clarity

under scalding water cradling our ankles,

the ink river that takes you home every time.

I must be cracking your eyes against the rim

of my metal bowl or your collarbone,

this smooth countertop and the tracks of my ribs,

and under the lamplight your breaking

looks more like magic, the kind that turns this

into something worth saving for last.

VI. Changing West

Do I know your handwriting?

VII. Midwest

Saint Louis in the sun of the continent, starry

eyes blinking like hideous eggs

into orbits of day. Tell me

how it feels to recognize the smell of storm

before it comes. Show me your precipice.

What was it like when you named this "rain"?

VIII. Deep South

A place we're happy to be out of,

just imagine all the dove to be tasted

and all the feathers that will interfere.

IX. City Activities with Subway

At first, I held my breath and plunged,

gorging myself on the grime, battering

again and again. The shame

scraped deeper than I'd like to admit.

The city doubled and I crusaded alone,

certain of speed. I am on my own,

for my own, the ownership

of occupancy. The man across from me

has a square face—has he been here, have I

had this since the beginning? It's been here.

I wouldn't call it love. It was triumph

without anyone to pull me back

from the yellow line that replaces the white.

The track splits road and we meet

in the middle, shifting our weight

from foot to foot, street into sight

into home that never needs balancing.

X. Outreaching Hands

Finally, the palms it always comes back to, the palms

that cup the seconds between our doors and our lips.

Certain that this is prayer, all the mornings

will be like this: 83rd and York the harbor

of our goodnight, the back of your neck bobbing

home, my anchor.

Our first and only, summits and telephones

make sense of our Picasso conversations,

our masterpieces framed in color and light,

shapes that come together.

Isabella Skovira

### String Theory

Some scientists say there are more

Dimensions in our multiuniverse

Than number of days I spent with you.

But I tied so many strings between us—

Memories of your hair whispering its way

Between my fingers, how you put on socks

Standing up—that, in theory,

I can never be without you.

Maybe there are other universes

Stacked above and below our own

And in all of them we fail.

Maybe we don't even exist.

But there are echoes of you

Even in these flat, visible three dimensions

And if I close my eyes

I know every possibility is a reality

Somewhere.

### The Relativity of Space

Sometimes I feel so small

Compared to you

That surely you must see me

From outer space

Where all things are curved

And nothing is absolute

(At least in the Newtonian sense).

I'd still like to believe it's true

That the shortest distance between two objects

Is a straight line,

But we've been talking

So many circles around each other

That I truly feel the relativity of space

And the distance between us,

So small before,

Now seems insurmountable.

But I still wish on stars,

Whose light might be past tense

By the time I'm seeing it,

That with the snap of your fingers,

With just the flick of your tongue—

If for once you'd just tell it to me straight—

There'd be no space between us at all.

### Zeno's Paradox

I'm fragmented

By the fact that

I can only send you

Bits of myself

Which only become further

Diluted by distance

Which only ever

Tears me apart more.

### Lessons in Anatomy

I read somewhere once

That the tongue was

The strongest muscle in the body.

This made sense to me:

Just the tip of mine carried the weight

Of questions unasked

And sentiments left unsaid,

The dreams I didn't tell you

When I'd begun to feel I was boring,

And the quiet, innocent declaration of emotion

That would startle your sleepy eyes.

I know now that was wrong.

The masseter is the strongest muscle in the body.

Located in the jaw.

Designed to keep your mouth shut.

### Lawless Conservation

Catch and release

is a practice within

recreational fishing

intended as a technique

of conservation.

Just because

there was kindness

and compassion

from you at the end,

it doesn't change that

it was all sport.

If in protecting me—

and my rarity

and the way you

made me out to be

so adored and special to you—

you must let me go,

then I'd rather have been

slit, gutted, and flamed

just so I could live in your belly.

The ocean may be the same

and she'll swallow me whole with her love

the salt water will heal me

but I am different

because your hands

slid over my body

as I gasped soundlessly for air

and you still sunk your hook into my mouth

just to examine me,

decide I wasn't worth keeping,

and toss me back in.

Juan Pablo González

### The Tempest

Another abandoned thought

submits to a ruthless windstorm.

This cruel gale I have created

to make ideas prove their worth.

If all my little miscarriages

were somehow to have lived,

I could have painted the world,

and vanquished my own grey.

### Colombia, 1928

Waves.

The rocks.

The sea spray.

A friendly breeze.

And up the river,

where countries go to die,

the red in the flag spills o'er,

the blue and the yellow subside.

As the river mourns the death on its shores,

the violence borne by telegrams,

the derelict land where it flows,

shuns the cries of its children.

Carry this blood downstream,

O, Magdalena,

'til it dissolves

in the sea.

Washed by

waves.

### Colombia, 2018

I remember the last day

before we returned.

The surf caressing your feet,

the wet sand between our toes

Two cliffs stood guard

to that unpolluted beach.

And the rustling palm trees

stood guard to us.

And we both danced with the sea,

with the tumbling from the waves,

as they rocked us from below

and turned us on our heads.

An ocean filled with you and me,

grew both angrier and tenderer.

Its silent, chaotic melancholy

upon the eyes of a dying emperor.

I thought about my certainties,

how they're out of my control.

The ones I'd like to have.

The ones I'm proud to hold.

How I wished to spend my life

conjuring images and words.

Round them up with sounds

to make mementos of the world.

There are no lines upon the land

and no limits on the sea.

My mind is taller than the Earth

and wider than myself.

Hidden waterfront,

eternal eventide.

And all the centuries that converged there

to where you and I went to hide.

### Bucket

Sometimes it rains.

Once it rained when the sun was out,

and all the minute drops refracted the sunlight.

A cloud of diamond shrapnel floating in the sky.

Gleaming reproductions of the colours of the world.

Sometimes the sky is clear.

And I run outside, looking overhead.

For all that I fear is running to find out

there are not enough clouds to make it rain

and not enough life to write about.

Molly Pines

### Coming from California

Winter seems to reappear

Month after month here. The old snow

Lingers in patches. The sun stays low.

Gray coats the dampened trees in blear.

It's April and I've been thinking of home.

These dark and darker months in Boston

Have been too long, too easy to get lost in.

To Berkeley streets and Stinson seafoam,

I miss you. But pride and age and some

Fascination with red brick

Pushed me here, and I need to stay.

The ache of being far away

Is cold and falls and seems to stick,

But I know it comes with the coming from.

### Hiking

In Haiku

Climbing the sand dunes,

she squints at an amber world

of infinite noons.

Meanwhile I'm flushed,

my skin damp, burnt, and cracked as

my legs scratch the brush.

A lizard arrives,

and she sees kaleidoscope

skin and gray-green eyes.

I slap a bug from

my arm, smudge the blurry speck

off with my small thumb.

She follows along

the crooked lines in the sand,

like rivulets gone

or paintings evoked.

I stop to drink some water,

my t-shirt sweat-soaked.

She goes on, dreams up

dunes as melting pyramids,

hopes for mourning doves.

I'm glad to think and

look at things the way they are.

Sun is sun. Sand, sand.

Soon, we'll be leaving.

But she sits on a dune's crest,

still, bright, glad, seeing.

### Elmwood Cafe

There is the always shortish line in front

of the pastries: cookies, lemon currant scones,

and only a few chocolate coffee cakes

left today. And there are the big, round cups

with faded yellow patterns round their rims,

filled to the brims with different shades of warm

brown-beige, a sprig of sage drawn out in white

on each of their nervous, foamy surfaces.

And there are the old men with salt-and-pepper

beards and unkempt, emphatic eyebrows wrinkled

as they talk morning paper politics;

and teenagers with eager fingers clasped

around their pretty lattes; two women, happy

and complaining: work, the kids, the gym, the drought;

a writer splitting time between her muffin

and her poem, brushing crumbs off messy pages.

People in coffee shops seek different things.

For me, this is the world of little joys:

the bit of sugar that lingers at the bottom

of a coffee mug, the smell of peaches baking,

the quickness of a whisk against a bowl,

a ripple in a passing cup of tea,

the happy murmur of all the working and thinking,

all the talking and nodding, warm and sure and always.

### The Pillbug

When we were young, we liked to play with pillbugs,

Those little armadillos of many nicknames.

We really only liked them for their one trick,

The one we learn in the dirt by the sandbox. Well,

Trick or torture, I never could decide.

But still I poked them, thrilled by the perfect globes

Of their bodies. They never learned that giant fingers

Were not to fear. We didn't hurt them, really.

More fun was when we turned one on its back

And watched its legs, thinner than the wrinkles

Of our palms, its translucent abdomen stretched tight

Across its underside, like cellophane.

What kind of stuff is underneath the skin

Of something with an exoskeleton?

What was it like, to see the whole world flipped?

And could it back-flip back to life? And how?

It didn't look like much. But then, somehow,

It worked. This bug flipped, it somersaulted!

It carried on, unfazed: its shell still smooth,

Its legs still quick, its thin antennae reaching

Calmly, matter-of-factly, like before,

Towards green and rain-soaked earth, towards dirt, towards home.

Its legs all pattered down my palm. _Squash it!_

Said a friend. But I let it go instead.

Jamie Marie

### On the Lake

As we float above, hunger inspires us to great lengths.

Bearing down on an offering from the local grocery store,

we didn't know the "right" way

to coax a pomegranate. We hacked—

one step up from rocks, with a wicked sharp bottle opener.

Each garnet aril a juicy heart

salvaged from the bleached, pitted husk.

We tossed those white remnants to the water,

a lazy offering to the gods.

The azure sky darkened. "You know,

Persephone was trapped in the underworld

after eating one of these buggers . . ."

Your fish-bone print bikini turned sinister;

your pale skin blistered

where I'd been too timid to rub in sunscreen.

Though smiles still flickered like silver minnows

as we sought the hidden stars on our way back—

lying to be with you,

that would truly be hell.

### Waning Interest

This was the first time

I didn't steal a glance at your house

while going by on my way to work.

Nothing personal of course, just in a hurry

just like we've both been before, during, and after

the time we finally moved closer.

Everyone's just busy, don't take it personally—

but it's a little hard not to feel defeated

when there's so much lonely time on the road.

When we eventually meet again,

we just have to pretend everything's fine

(though we never had to pretend as much before)

because there's no way we could catch each other up

on all those moments of loneliness missed

by not being closer anymore.

### XMEA

Note: X-linked Myopathy with Excessive Autophagy (XMEA) is an uncommon form of muscular dystrophy. It is usually passed down through the women and may affect their male children.

And the Lord said unto them:

let an angel mark some of your children

with blood to spare them;

let the males of your line be more vulnerable

to this defect (like Pharaoh's own).

This will come with tides of regret, a flood

of hesitance—have you no faith,

o fallen woman, or do you wisely brace

yourself against the plagues of medical bills?

Which will you be then, a Jonah or Job—

complaining and worrying over nothing and

roiling in the centrifugal whirl

or gratefully praising the good that remains?

Either way, you'll probably still feel betrayed,

bereft of a vindication for your indulgent tears.

### Incense

By far more pleasant than other types of small scale smoke,

rivaled only by the earthy cracklings of bonfires.

A part of the charred stick droops, a fragrant pendulum

that drips ashes below (a dry puddle of grit),

as the pale smoke spirals into ribboned arabesques.

Whenever I watch these lackadaisical trails pushed gently

in the air, I think of Sister Rita, who admitted in whispers

to me and my fellow first graders that she would watch

the incense smoke while the other sisters prayed each night.

I remember wondering, even then, what was wrong

with gazing on something beautiful, the thin strips like gauzy tulle.

### The Resistance of Memory

My grandma used to paint with oils

until she grew tired of warning her seven children

and all their friends that streamed through the house

to be careful they didn't smudge the canvases.

My mother idolized her cousin who went to art school

and when she went on fishing trips with dad and me,

she brought colored pencils and sketched wildflowers.

I flickered back and forth between them,

reeling in bluegill and drawing my own crooked daisies.

I often watched Bob Ross with grandma

in the room with her largest surviving painting:

a cabin's window the only light given to a shadowed forest path.

Mom mentioned dad had been so good, he could have done

comics professionally, sharp and photorealistic.

Her cross-stitch picture of a bobcat that won $25

at the county fair hung in the hallway.

Years later, one of the only questions grandma could still ask,

when she thought the sunset caught the house on fire each night, was

"Are you still drawing?"

William A. Greenfield

### Heat

A tall bad boy

with perfect round holes in his earlobes

she flaunted an intricate butterfly

from shoulder to shoulder

they intertwined like some alien

performing reverse meiosis

hands and arms in a moving and

feeling frenzy that

bordered on public

indecency condemning

them to a future of disappointment

when the _thrill of living is gone_.

In a booth eating was an

interruption like

a draft that cools the flame

like dinner with family

that torturous imposition that

only serves

to stoke the raging fire

### If You Show Me Yours

It's a game we played when

Bugs and Daffy became passé.

When the best part of the Sears

catalog was no longer Lincoln

Logs and chemistry sets, we

exchanged peach fuzz peeks

behind clapboard garages or

under schoolyard elm trees.

There were rules.

We had to be _normal_ children

just under the curious influence

of estrogen and testosterone.

We had to have working parents

who gave us lunch money and

took us bowling on our birthday.

We had to be mainstreamed

with goals that went beyond

tomorrow's ride on the small bus.

If we were overtaken by this spell;

If our lustful simplicity suggested

that a clueless child should handle

our ripening fruit, we would

surely be put somewhere.

And, of course, there had to be

an invitation, a furtive glance

from the girl painting her toe

nails on the back porch steps.

### Sonder After Dark

I don't know if this word should find itself in The Dictionary

of Obscure Sorrows, but since the author attempted to write poetry,

I will acquiesce to his definition, although I may not find _sorrow_

in the face of the retired policeman as he has his last smoke

late at night. Yesterday, he brought home a Table Talk pie

and tried to remember the last time he ate beef.

When I see him at the window, I know I'm not alone.

His life is a simple one; he eats, he plays, he watches

his wife undress. But his thoughts are complicated.

I don't know why I think this. And here we have the

rub, like when you see the small Mexican man blowing

leaves across the asphalt. How do you explain your

connection to him, your acceptance that he may also be

watching you and wondering if your wife is as beautiful

as his. Mr. Koenig has attempted to "fill a hole in the language."

There is more work to do, as it seems the hole is ever widening.

The river of emotions runs deep.

### The Old Woman Sitting Beneath a Weeping Willow

I'm certain it was my mother because I

put her there; I guided her down the porch

stairs because her knees could no longer

bear her weight. I gave her this tree on

these grounds so she no longer had to

point out its elegant beauty from the

old red station wagon as we passed

farms and groundhogs along the parkway;

she no longer had to covet the polished

pine and ivy vine she saw in picture books.

I served her sliced strawberries with whipped

cream in the shade while she whimsically

reached for the tears of rain left by an

early morning shower. And I gave her a

dream. She climbs upon a spirited appaloosa

and wraps her arms tightly around

The Marlboro Man, weathered and full

of western bravado. She wants to pen

a romance novel about the cowboy of

her other dreams, the one who sings to her

on AM radio. She sings to herself now,

beneath this tree of wisdom. She sings

the same song she sang to me as a child,

when I thought she would, one day, have

her own porch to laze upon, her own

horse to feed sugar cubes to, and maybe

a cowboy to share her dreams with.

Bill Newby

### Clean Pants

Freshly washed jeans hug my legs

and girdle my waist.

The button hole and stud

behave like feuding neighbors

and need a tug across my belly's street

before they're forced to shake hands.

And each pocket is similarly unaccommodating.

My handkerchief has a reservation in the left rear,

but the door is tightly closed

and I need to force it in to get it seated.

On mornings like this

I check the mirror or step on the scale

to see if I'm getting fat.

But I'm just myself garbed in American Casual,

the un-pleated bridge between rich and poor.

And as the hours pass the weave relaxes,

as if attending fabric yoga

where space is breathed into each pocket

and comfort is restored.

### Tuesdays at The Seagate's Atlantic Grille

Ponce de Leon sought a fountain. He should have looked for a band.

In aquariums walling the dining room

sharks slide back and forth,

and jellyfish contract and release

in puffs of translucent motion.

Stone floors and glass shelves shine under soft light,

and the crowd and din grow toward eight.

Table talk is shouted over appetizers

and orders are placed before menus are folded.

But the real meal walks the floor

with a deep tan, smile and gold necklace,

slinks through the arch in high heels

or sits on the next stool.

Some believe in out-growing,

shed clothes that no longer fit,

and leave some sports behind.

Others still hunt and hunt.

Like nomads they trudge from oasis to oasis,

climb rung after rung, squint over bifocals,

and stretch for one more apple.

For them, tonight, _Joey and The Gigolos_ will play,

and play tonight they will.

The room is soaked with sock-hop longing

spiced by seasons of holding and stroking,

lying down and snuggling close.

And while some seek sleep in the hotel above,

many by the bar hope to stay up all night.

The dance floor holds more leg than a meat cooler,

more cleavage than the Canyon Lands,

and dresses tighter than Cling Wrap

and more inviting than an open house.

The band plays in the key of yesterday.

The drummer's pulse is now.

The market's open till ten-thirty,

and next week waits for those still hungry.

### Photography 201

Smartphones in every hand,

on every bridge and stair,

in each park and chapel,

at every meal and market.

Here's a beautiful picture.

_Now, add me._

Here's a miraculous fresco.

_Now, add me._

I took a trip and saw the canyon.

_Look. I'm there._

No more waste or mess,

carving initials into a tree or desk,

spray painting a bare wall.

Look at that tower,

the canal and statue.

_See, I was wearing blue,_

_and the wind whipped my hair._

I know, this one is truly amazing.

Took them three centuries to complete.

_And don't you think_

_that's a good picture of me?_

_Yes, I do too._

### Blinds Down

The highway concerto plays all night.

Sixteen wheelers groan and moan

below the alto hum of tread on concrete

and the rising arias of sporadic speeders

who've found an open lane to fly across stage

instead of slowly stepping toward an exit.

An occasional siren wails,

then dies in the wings,

and a rare car tire thuds

dropping from curb to gutter.

And while the rest of us seek sleep,

a trash bin's clang

as a truck drops its load

reminds us that others are at work

cleaning our mess

so the sunrise will feel fresh and pure.

### Sending a Kiss from Third

Every infield is different.

The ground may be as smooth as tarmac

or loose as a hiking trail –

groomed like the Masters

or as shaggy and snarled as the Turner's tree lawn.

But the only way to play

is with hope for a true bounce

and prayer to snatch a liar.

The game is slow

with lots of room to itch and scratch, spit and stare,

but the window for strolling and shifting shuts

when the ball leaves the pitcher's hand.

Then it's time for low, ready balance –

each foot dug in, hugging the earth,

and arms long and loose before bent knees,

like willow branches nearing the ground.

But as low as you get, your head must be up,

as if you've crept close in a tiger crouch

with your muscles loaded and ready to pounce.

And in these key seconds the world must disappear,

for the only story's at the plate

where you need to read

the back and arms' unwinding torque

as the bat flows in a wide circle

and greets the ball with a crack or ping,

that darts like a bullet aimed at your head

or skitters like a stone skipping water,

seeking a pebble or divot that might shift its course.

This is what you've trained for

and why you've oiled your glove,

pounded a predictable pocket

and even taken dance lessons.

In this instant, the only time is _now_.

Now you must welcome its flight,

delight in its arrival,

and reach wide or close, low or high,

to draw it into your mitt,

embrace it with your free fingers,

and hug and grasp it as you slide toward first,

skating left while loading right,

loading your arm like a jitterbug back step

before pulling your partner into another twirl,

gripping the ball like a door knob

before flinging it wide open.

Then whip your arm, free and relaxed,

free and flowing across your body,

as you turn around your spine

and look at the first baseman's mitt,

like a lover's face arced up and begging for a kiss,

as you let the ball go.

Elder Gideon

### Male Initiation Rites

In fulfilling their obligations, men stand to lose—a hovering threat that separates them from women and boys. They stand to lose their reputations or their lives; yet their prescribed tasks must be done if the group is to survive and prosper. Because boys must steel themselves to enter into such struggles, they must be prepared by various sort of tempering and toughening. To be men, most of all, they must accept the fact that they are expendable. —David Gilmore. Manhood in the Making. (1990)

enemies anytime everything

nothing gives of itself nature tests

hunger and thirst is to be alive

if you fall back in fear we will die

your world is still her little hut

because you're blind you cannot see

what waits to wrest you from her arms

beyond her bed and soft embrace

every male worth seeding must resist

running back into the arms of his

mother's hut feminine mysteries

ceased the night you awoke in your dew

if you refuse to stand and fight

or know what pain it is to live

before your burning eyes you'll see

your kin be swallowed whole and end

where will we be without testing you?

women are born into women but

men are not born but are made into

men who must turn their face to the threat

we show a boy what life is like

to tear him out his mother's womb

to seize and strip him down by force

to face the task awaiting him

whip his legs lash his face tear his ears

sear his skin scar his back make him bleed

It is not we who test not at all

life is far harsher than warriors

### Female Initiation Rites

"The goal of the initiation is not merely to make a better, stronger, or more knowledgeable person of the initiand, however much this may be desired, but to transform her utterly, make her totally different from what she had been, and radically separate her from her childhood existence." —Bruce Lincoln. Emerging from the Chrysalis. (1981)

Widen my hips burgeon my breasts

Darken my groin—

I am the weal of descendants

Ancestors wheel about my nave

Cut their lines and circles

not on a tree stone or bone but me

I show by the iron in my blood

Running from eternal symbols etched in my flesh

That I am the earth speaking to you now

•

In our daughters stirring She dreams us

We are Her ways She taught

She is our ways we keep

In every daughter's bloom She dawns

From soil for crops to grow

Our hearts need only feel with their fingers

To know how She is here

•

Rouse her who left us take her limp hands

Lift her to us from where she's come silence speaks

Join her to us sing songs to our brave traveler

Touch the future from where she's come time unties

Feel her with us gaze into the eyes of our young envoy

Receive her gifts from where she's come goodness floods

Embrace her to us meet this woman who left a girl

Behold her transformed from where she's come changes everything

### Lost Rites

Existence

"is a series of passages from one age to another,"

wrote Van Gennep, analyzing the ritualized life (1909)

of human development in traditional lineages.

In each culture, ceremonies for every individual

were marked what he called "rites of passage."

By these, people developed fully in their society

through every physical change, so that "society

will suffer no discomfort or injury." Another

pattern reveals phases within every ritual passage—

_separation_ , _transition_ , _incorporation._ Life

held continuous, sacred meaning for individuals

in community, despite their social position or age.

Without initiation rituals, fewer come of age

to a viable place of incorporation in our society,

making more painful, uncertain, "an individual's

transition from one status to another."

This in part explains modernity's malaise. Life

for young people seems arbitrary as their passage

of fulfilling desires lengthens. Forbidden passage

through straits of longing can often damage

fragile psyches. Without myths to guide life,

disfigured youth reflect a dehumanizing society.

Youth culture reacts against exile as _other—_

exposing the trauma of becoming an individual.

Angry youth who push back, individuals

who unconsciously seek their rite of passage,

are just as vulnerable to approval of another

force that eats its young. The marginal vantage,

that "novices are outside society and society

has no power over them," often costs their life.

Having shattered every spiritual way of life,

colonialism continues to splinter individuals

into tinier figments of an imagined society.

Without conscious, communal rites of passage,

Western storm and stress will only ravage

what's left of a way forward, one way or another.

_[Separation]_

No wonder youths of our societal mirror rage

against serving life terms—others beneath

elite individuals—without passage out.

_[Transition]_

We are heirs of our imperial society,

Are the aging cannibals of history—

Indigenous individuals sentenced to text passage.

_[Incorporation]_

Societies that desecrate their sacral image

send individuals adrift through another

Far harsher passage in eternal, liminal life.

### Putressence

All conceive in flight

All are heir to air

Few are parent butterflies

More are parent common flies

Few are eggs that hang up high

More are eggs that lay down low

Few are larvae born above

More are larvae born below

Few are fed by what still lives

More are fed by what has died

Few will molt and spread midair

Most will molt in search of sky

Few souls hatch from chrysalis

Most souls hatch from carcasses

If I had not nearly died,

Bored my way out of what is dead

An essence in putrescence—

This iridescent slick—chose

Me to break out breathing

Far beyond my body

### #MarchforOurLives

Awaking with a start,

the President was shaken.

By a dream that no one,

his cabinet nor any

his soothsayers, could interpret,

save some youths imprisoned,

famed for dream interpretation.

He summoned them. To tell him

what it meant—

"I was in the Astrodome

filled with thousands gathered.

intermittent power caused

arena lights to flicker.

When the lights went out,

you couldn't see a thing.

Instead of football on the field,

Every one was looking up

armed and aiming at the ceiling.

Where I stood made hard to see

their target in the smoke.

When I looked below, I saw so

many piled up empty cages.

Then I knew that every person

there was shooting for a prize.

When the lights would blink back on,

their guns would fire all at once.

Rounds of shots erupted like

a dozen awful bombs that

stung my ears and seared my eyes.

No one turned to see one fall

down maimed or dead from ricochet.

No one shouted out

for help that never came.

I saw others no one noticed

Doing something strange.

Standing there with walking sticks.

They waited 'til the lights went out

And all the shooting stopped.

It fell quiet.

Enough to hear another speak.

In that darkness spoke the name

another one nearby.

Gently held his ear.

Natural that it drew their eye

away to look out to their side.

Though they didn't know this

other speaking, something opened.

Do I know you? he would ask,

Of course you do! Remember when—?

So they'd talk like neighbors as

shooting all around resumed.

So engrossed in stories long

forgotten, the one who heard his name

had set his gun down at his side,

unaware it turned into

a walking stick. On they talked.

Face to face like two old farmers

resting hands on tops of handles.

As lights went on, they turned away

To face another near them. Waited

for the quiet of the dark to

speak another's name.

On this went, as one by one,

responding to their names,

others paused to hear their name

and reminisce until their rifle

turned into another stick.

When lights returned, I finally glimpsed

the birds that flew above us.

rounds exploded everywhere

as people fell from ricochet.

In and out the cloud of gunsmoke

up against the metal dome

flashed a convocation.

Fledgling eagles crying out

against no where to go.

My heart sank where I stood,

so powerless to stop.

Feathers snowed as shattered wings

could no more lift the air.

I witnessed many eagles fall

To mauling crowds that fought

and brawled like savage dogs.

Lights blacked out in riot kills

That chill me still to tell.

What say you, youths,

the meaning of my dream?"

Joel Holland

### Dim Lighting

I.

Stained snow presses against our window,

light paw-prints stamp where the cat walked

an hour ago. "He'll come back", I assure you,

but I'm not sure he will. "It's too cold for him out there."

You're distant, beside me, back turned to the edge

of our white couch. You won't stop sighing at

dissonant documentaries. Swimming in small pools of water,

a nursery below reflected trees as sentries.

Swimming in community for seven years

where their mothers did before them.

Your feet are freezing, arched over my knees, dangling,

I pull the cross-stitched blanket, overwhelmed by the feeling.

You kiss me on the hand and check your phone again.

I start to fall asleep. The narrator soothes our

ice-cold afternoon, _"swimming from shore,_

fluorescent fins are seen trailing silhouettes . . . "

The sharks spread out. Fish they hope they'll catch are swimming

to the open sea. "Do you want to go with me?"

You look up, and I can tell you mean it.

"Let's start travelling."

The screen wants to know if we're "still watching,"

and I can't explain it, but suddenly I'm sick to my stomach.

We bundled up and braved the cold

"for some air" to talk of travel and lemon sharks.

II.

The yard across from us still had a manger set glowing

by their door. My hands went numb immediately, but I held yours.

You talked of college debts and that night you kissed a stranger

I hated that story, but the curb cut your words for me. You stopped short.

Three houses down the street, across our own,

screams swirled into the curse of a sky.

The clouds never looked darker.

Sounds howled down our road to that long grey house.

They stopped just short of our own and I heard my ringtone. Jacob was calling.

Ben Howard's _Small Things_ started playing in my pocket,

and you said the guitar riff was fitting. The sirens stuck to your words.

They loaded a body onto a padded platter and slid him in the back.

He was wrapped in white cloth and moaning. When they shut

the doors behind him in the glow of his

street light, he saw his own blood dripping. We saw it too.

When that ambulance started singing again, we were left

with our lives wondering what we could do on someone else's last night.

The cat never came back. We got two tickets for June.

III.

That night, you asked me when I first realized I was going to die,

and I told you I didn't know. I was nine. Sent down a site road

at the campsite we were staying with my dad's side.

Uncle Bill gave me some dishes to wash by the grill, I threw the bag

over my shoulder as I walked there. The old rusty sink spit its cold drink

all over my hands. They shook in the wind. Even then, I had talked

about death, but we never properly met. There was something

about that night, because the boy who laughed at his

great-grandmothers funeral realized he wasn't terribly far behind.

IV.

I don't always answer honestly because I love you, but I don't

always trust you. Sometimes, if let out, I think my words would escape you

or make you leave, so I keep them bound tight in loose-leaf. Stacks

of rambles and journal entries, by me and to me, that I'll never read.

I used to wonder why my favorite writers

fought depression and then, after heartbreak

my pen seemed to press deeper for words

I couldn't find myself. Fighting the pitch-black winter nights

as I tried to describe them.

### Day Of

"Do you pity me?" "Yes, I do," she answered. "Then I love you." —William Blake

Painting affection, she glazed his nails with her coating,

pale purple, and he leaned his head against hers

until their hair tangled together in a dirty blonde cluster.

Closer than ever, as the nails began to dry, she avoided their reflection.

Stepping outside didn't stop the appetite.

In her light blue skirt, she was dressed for the confession.

One half-tucked-in-mess, he devoured the mention of his name in the downpour.

He wanted more, and she gave it to him.

He ran his thumb over her wet lips and she shuddered.

"I shouldn't have done that."

" _We_ shouldn't have done that," he corrected her.

And they did it again.

### One in the Crowd

"If hope was the letter I'd never send, then love was the country I couldn't defend." —Gregory Alan Isakov

Beets and pistachio's blend at the end of the bowl,

side of cherry tomatoes topped at this green salad in Marrakech.

I refuse, but they hold it to my face and there's not much left to do.

It's delicious. And they told me heartbreak couldn't taste food.

Market streets are bare before dusk, bare feet run through us,

over a cheaply made stool. Baskets of fruits and nuts pass long tables.

Henna artists trace lines from side to side like the snakes that rock by

the charmers behind them, and I stare. The square transforms.

I'm hours from our resort, where you intend to stay until Monday,

because we were both too stubborn to call it off, until it was too late.

"I'll see you at the airport," you'd say, and I'd grit my teeth

until you walked away. You're good at that.

The shop keeper, Ahmed, pours thin pasta into a soup with

lamb shavings and chick-pears. Sweet dates are served beside them.

A passing motorbike blinds me as spirited marketers offer me salted snails.

They convince me their tent, no. 74, was put up just for me.

I sit back with fresh squeezed orange juice,

watching steam come off their pans. Ahmed speaks English,

tells me his name means "most worthy" and that's why he runs the shop.

His wife's name (Hasan) means beautiful, and he says it fits her. I believe him.

At 7:00 he laughs and walks home. I watch his workers work their hands slowly

turning the roll of lamb. Another night in their home, another night they've fed me.

"I just need space." I think you've had plenty.

We came to this country together, and we'll leave it the same way,

and I hate it. I hate that the words I needed to say finally came

when you were miles away. I wrote them down and hold them beside me,

just in case they help. My notebook keeps filling with scents, imagery, memories,

but the cover is ripped. You're probably snorkeling, making friends, and

looking for lemon fish. Your face turned red when they said there

are no sharks in Morocco. Just fossils. I'll probably stay in these streets

until their stores close. So full it feels empty where nobody knows me, then

two women catch my sight as they're walking away.

Draping down, dark hair tries tracing covered legs,

familiar shapes, curve to the side of your ears.

But their hair is not yours. Blurs wave me by in the street,

like they're keeping me from somewhere I'm going.

I feel a slight breeze and think of your hatred for snow, and the cold.

Now, in this heat, I wonder how long you might sit with me

before explaining your family was waiting and you had to go.

The sun tries to soothe me, gives up, and goes home.

I scrape the side of my bowl, I savor the cold broth.

Each flavor fights for attention as strangers yell past me to loved ones

across the street. More file into the square.

The dangling tent-lights seem to take a color of their own,

their shades taking the place of a deliberate dusk.

Even in the darkness I find many sun-stained faces.

In all of these places, I'll keep looking for yours.

### Departure

June 26th, 2018

Strangers shuffle down stilled aisles, exchanging quick kindnesses,

loading overhead bins and stopping short of their seats.

A business man is lost in the trail of a black-lined dress

and a child is lost in the fog through the window.

Two childhood friends are seated together without notice,

and one of them can't place the face, but will have

the whole flight to figure out its name. They're both going to

the same funeral, and neither of them have cried yet.

Gritting her teeth, a woman in her thirties won't sit

until she's told. Her small diamond necklace disappears

below her neckline, shaking as she taps her feet.

She's waiting on a text that isn't coming.

Somewhere between worried and carefree, a couple sits

in first-class seats they couldn't afford, working out their plan

for all the places they'll eat when they land. They have eighty-three dollars

between them both, and they're going to spend it all in Nashville.

A twenty-two-year-old woman asks to be moved

by someone in the Navy to thank him for his service.

They share courage and numbers before the wheels

leave the runway. He's nervous.

The girl to my left holds her white pillow against

her sunburnt skin: she smells like a hotel.

The man to my right is reading Hitchens'

"God is not great" and wondering if it's true.

A flight attendant named Sophia raises her voice to make sure

headphones hear her, and we all agree to the responsibility of the exit row.

She waves a pamphlet as she marches to the back. Several whisper about her.

the plane stirs. Cold air blows over closed eyes and sighs

as belts are buckled and protocol drones through the speakers.

Our plane hums like a radiator working overtime and the flaps on the fold start to rise.

The binding of the planes creak against the blow of the wind as if it was going to cave in.

Several passengers think it just might, some fearful, some fantasizing,

All going the same place for a different reason, none of them ready to fly.

### Dear Gi-Gi,

inside, my aunts and uncles step over your boxes,

each claiming the oak hutch was theirs.

If I'm honest, I hope we get it, but mom is silent and so am I.

Grandpa is sitting in the corner, telling a story we've already heard before.

Remember when I asked you what was floating through

your living room? Those dust-mites are still here,

apologetically bumping into one another,

but the light cuts clear through, without permission.

I hold one of your glass birds to my side, light blue.

The one you always put in the front of the tree.

"Make sure we can see it!"

you hollered from the kitchen, taking out another coffee cake.

I place another Andes mint in my mouth,

mixing memories,

and while they're dissolving

aging stone stairs lead me away from mixed company.

Outside, fluorescent lights stare over me

from your garage. The lights shine through

raindrops dripping down side-gutters,

and onto your tangled water-hose. I try to un-knot it.

I let it go, knotted and wrapped around itself,

flopped over a small stack of bricks, turning by the grass,

reaching for the road. I kneel by the curb alone.

Your white Pontiac glows in the rain.

I thought the sun was done for the day,

but by the mailbox,

through your windshield,

I still see some light coming through.

As the water drips back into the side of the hose

it used to flow from, I admit how much you're missed,

wondering when you realized you were getting old.

Those doors swung back for me as I rushed out of the room.

I'm sorry I laughed at your funeral.

Martha R. Jones

### Ode to Writer's Block

My writer's block is sturdier than tungsten, iron, or steel.

No river can erode it. No lava can congeal

To form a craggy mountain or a formidable rock

enough to rival my unyielding, awesome writer's block.

My writer's block is doubtlessly my hero's dearest friend.

It keeps the villain helpless, so there's no need to extend

his sword in mortal combat for a damsel under lock

and key, or even scuff his armor, thanks to writer's block.

My writer's block is massive, yet it's lighter still than air.

More constant than a freckle, more unruly than a bear,

It's exhausted all my calendars and run down every clock,

but it is mine, and I am its: my fit of writer's block.

### Heart Beats

The heart loved in bushels and bunches,

while the body threw nothing but punches.

They fought the same foe,

but the heart would lay low,

'til the body was knocked on its haunches.

The heart would proceed to defeat

every bully it happened to meet.

When the body asked, "How?"

the heart took a bow

and said "Hearts break but hearts also 'beat.'"

### The Was Wolf

When the werewolf is a was-wolf, 'cause the "were" has all worn off,

the pelt is shed, the claws retract, and skeptics start to scoff.

They tell themselves how brave they were in battle with the beast.

The danger is behind them ('til the next full moon at least).

Some like the was-wolf better than the werewolf she becomes.

They wish that she was dead or cured or under someone's thumbs.

Yet, she loves me when I'm virtueless. She should deserve the same.

Love withheld when we're not lovely is unworthy of the name.

### How Lewis Carroll Met Edgar Allan Poe

In a land free from time in a world that is nether,

far from work-a-day woes like "bad news" or "bad weather,"

on a plane of existence where good writers go,

that's where Lewis Carroll met Edgar Allan Poe.

Mr. Carroll had gone flying and saw at a distance

some trees through some fog in his "Plane of Existence;"

not Joyce Kilmer-style trees. These were twisted and bent.

One tree caught his plane in it on its descent.

Mr. Poe came to help after he heard the noise

(broody walks in dark forests were one of is joys).

"Are you hurt?" asked Poe. "Have you an ill or a maim?"

Mr. Carroll said, "I'm fine," and Poe said, "What a shame.

Oh well. No one's perfect. Let's get you straight down,

Unless you would like to fall flat on your crown."

"Not today," Carroll said. "Let us make the day rue us,

not vice versa. By the way, my name is Lewis."

Mr. Carrol was unharmed. His plane surely was.

He'd been seeking adventure and found it because

he'd wandered from Wonderland's miles and acres

toward Poe with his black crows and gaunt undertakers.

The two men climbed gingerly down from their perch

while boughs bent beneath them started to lurch,

and just as they both got their feet on the ground,

the tree top gave way with a deafening sound.

Down fell a tangle of branches and plane.

"Phew," said Carroll. Poe grieved, "Not even a sprain?

A good luck streak. How horrid." Said Carroll with glee,

"Today's my unbirthday. Won't you dine with me?"

Then, calmly and casually, Carroll released

from his pocket, some mushrooms on which to feast,

plus some crochets and tarts. Both were heart-shaped, in fact.

Poe imbibed only sorrow and scones as they snacked.

The pair got to talking of life and their works.

Carroll quizzed Poe on angst and the murderous quirks

of most Poe-ish "heroes." Poe held Carroll nimbly

made up a word if no rhyme could be made simply.

The problem that hadn't occurred to them, yet

was the "Plane of Existence" is not quite a jet

or a plane or one mere, single thing. It's the land

where dreams can come true; both the small and the grand.

But the dreams Poe and Carroll had started to mix.

As they spoke, the March Hare started playing his tricks

on Roderick Usher, who was not amused.

He chased the March Hare, but in vain. Then, confused

The Red Queen's tell-tale heart, filled with regretting

each instance she pardoned instead of beheading.

The Mome Raths were buried alive in a grave, an'

The Cheshire cat spat at Lenore's husband's raven.

The Hatter went madder. Tweedles Dee and Dum

had a jolly time riding the pit's pendulum.

And as Alice waltzed 'round Red Death's own masque.

The white rabbit drained the Amontillado casque.

When Carroll and Poe looked 'round where they'd been talking

and noticed the strange goings on, they sat gawking

a minute or more. They were shocked, but not fretting.

Carroll smiled and said, "I had better be getting

back to my own realm of odd rhymes and mock turtles."

Poe said, "I concur. That's the path with least hurtles

to un-weird this world. Thanks for lunch, and make haste.

Take care (though safe journeys are not to MY taste)."

Then, Mr. Carroll, sans plane, wings, or propeller

produced from his coat a gigantic umbrella,

which soon caught the breeze, and away he did go.

And that's how Lewis Carroll met Edgar Allan Poe.

Contributor Notes

 Andrew Allport holds a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. He is the author of the body of space in the shape of a human, which won the New Issues Prize, as well as a chapbook, The Ice Ship & Other Vessels. His work has appeared in numerous national journals, including Orion, The Antioch Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly and Boston Review. He lives in southwest Colorado, where he helps edit Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts, and is frequently mistaken for someone else.

 Sarah W. Bartlett's work appears in Adanna, Ars Medica, the Aurorean, Minerva Rising, PoemMemoirStory, Mom Egg Review, Wellesley College Women's Review of Books, and several anthologies including the award-winning Women on Poetry (McFarland & Co. Inc., 2012); and two poetry chapbooks (Finishing Line Press). Her work celebrates nature's healing wisdom and the human spirit's landscapes. She founded writinginsideVT for Vermont's incarcerated women to encourage personal and social change within a supportive community (www.writinginsideVT.com)

 Emily Bauer, a born and raised Iowan, heard the call of the mountains and decided to answer. She currently resides in Portland, OR, where she is the lead barista at a local coffee shop. She spends her free time drinking too much coffee, eating all of the vegan food she can get her hands on, and writing poetry. She hopes to one day start traveling and never stop. Catch her while you can.

 Beatrix Bondor is currently a freshman at Princeton University, but grew up in (and hopes always to live in) New York City. This is her first appearance in print outside of work from her high school, Horace Mann. She could not be more excited to continue studying English and creative writing in the coming term!

 Poems by Paula Bonnell have appeared in APR, Rattle, Spillway, and more; and won awards from Negative Capability, the New England Poetry Club, the Chester H. Jones Foundation, and the City of Boston. Mark Jarman chose her Airs & Voices for a Ciardi Prize and Albert Goldbarth selected her "Eurydice" for a Poet Lore narrative-poetry publication award. Bonnell's collections include Message and two chapbooks: Before the Alphabet and tales retold. More at http://paulabonnell.net

 Meli Broderick Eaton developed a reverence for nature through a life in the outdoors of Oregon. At Sweet Briar College, she studied in workshops and independent studies with poet Mary Oliver and author John Gregory Brown. She took a long break from poetry after graduation and returned to it as a method of evolving through loss. She lives with her family on a suburban microfarm in Oregon.

 Bryce Emley is the author of the chapbook Smoke and Glass (Folded Word, 2018). He works in marketing at the University of New Mexico Press and is Poetry Editor of Raleigh Review. Read more at bryceemley.com.

 Nooshin Ghanbari received her B.A. in English and Plan II Honors from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was awarded the Board of Regents' Outstanding Student Award in Arts and Humanities for excellence in poetry. Her work can be found in WILDNESS, The Ekphrastic Review, Apricity Magazine, and elsewhere both nationally and internationally. Nooshin currently lives in Austin, Texas, where she works as an AmeriCorps English literacy tutor in low-income elementary schools.

 These poems from Elder Gideon's first book Without Passage come from his life as an educator, visual artist, and faith leader of a Gnostic community. For over twenty years, he's worked with diverse, underserved young people, whose stories continually impact his imagination and spirituality. He structured these experiences into a chapbook trilogy that section "Without Passage" into meditations on the anthropology, sociology, psychology, and mythology of adolescent development.

 Juan Pablo González is a journalist, musician, writer and designer from Bogotá, Colombia, born in 1995.

 William A. Greenfield is a youth advocate worker and a fairly good poker player. He resides in Liberty, NY, with his wife, son, and a dog. His poems have appeared in dozens of journals, including The Westchester Review, Tar River Poetry, and many others. In 2012, he won Storyteller Magazine's People's Choice award. He was a finalist in The New Guard Literary Review's 2016 Knightville Poetry Contest. His chapbook, "Momma's Boy Gone Bad", was published in February 2017 by Finishing Line Press.

 A senior Christian-studies major from Union University, Joel Holland is the oldest of four. A traveler at heart, Joel feels most at home on a plane, but misses the people he meets as soon as he leaves. He sees his life as a piece of a larger picture and enjoys it better that way. He also claims his name is a palindrome for frothy in mandarine.

 Martha R. Jones is an author, illustrator, lyricist, and part-time nurse (three of those descriptors are how she wishes to be remembered when she is dead. The other keeps her lights on). Her primary sources of infamy are her novels, Faust Forward and Corn on Macabre, both of which contain humor so dark the publisher's daughter is not allowed to read them until she is eighteen year old. www.selfwriteousness.com

 Jamie Marie holds an MA in Literature and recently rediscovered her passion for library work, book repair, and book arts. She was active in a writing group with her high school friends, unofficially published in their collective anthologies, and previously published in her college's literary magazine. Growing up in a Catholic Appalachian family gave her an interesting perspective on things before broadening her horizons. She lives with her spouse and their two cats.

 Bruce Marsland is the author and editor of several works on language teaching, most notably Lessons from Nothing, published by Cambridge University Press. Born and raised in the United Kingdom, he has also worked in Finland and Bulgaria. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon, working as an editor and writer. He was winner of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly poetry competition in February 2016 and a runner-up in the Prole Laureate poetry competition in 2018.

 Bill Newby enjoys using poetry to record, reshape and reflect upon daily experience. His work has appeared in Whiskey Island, Bluffton Breeze, Ohio Teachers Write, Palm Beach Poetry Festival's Fish Tales Contest, Blue Mountain Review, Panoplyzine, Sixfold, and the Island Writers' Network's Time & Tide and Ebb & Flow anthologies. He is a 2018 Pushcart Poetry Nominee.

 Matthew S. Parsons is a homesteader from eastern Kentucky. He is an instructor of traditional music at Morehead State University's Kentucky Center for Traditional Music. Parsons is currently serving as an acquisitions inter of University Press of Kentucky and earning his MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Kentucky University's Bluegrass Writers Studio.

 Molly Pines grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. An English-Spanish major at Amherst College, she is currently working on a senior honors thesis on poetry and psychoanalysis, looking at how language, affect, and interpretation all converge in the act of poem-reading. When she's not reading or writing, she's probably swimming, eating, or napping.

 AJ Powell is a once and future teacher who raises her children, serves on a school board, and attempts to write in the wee hours of the morning with varied success.

 Faith Shearin's books of poetry include: The Owl Question (May Swenson Award), Moving the Piano, Telling the Bees, Orpheus, Turning (Dogfish Poetry Prize), and Darwin's Daughter (SFA University Press). Her work has been read aloud on The Writer's Almanac and included in Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry. She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

 Daniel Sinderson writes a lot and is occasionally published. He is married and has two cats.

 Isabella Skovira started writing poetry in grade school as a response to LoTR. She had an elf name. These days, she writes poetry to fit big emotions into small spaces. If you read one of her poems and you think it's about you, then it probably is. Isabella lives in Spain, works as a higher education admissions consultant, adores her dog, has never drunk coffee, and whistles too much.

 Jeddie Sophronius was born in Jakarta, Indonesia. He received his B.A. in English: Creative Writing from Western Michigan University. His work has been recognized by The Adroit Journal, Fairy Tale Review, Proverse Hong Kong, and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Juked, Vinyl, and elsewhere.

 Marte Stuart gravitates toward poems with scientific and theological underbellies. Her current fav is "A Backwards Journey" by P. K. Page. Once while shipwrecked, Marte laboriously scratched words onto coconut husks and set them adrift, which initiated her writing craft and lessons in impermanence. Marte Stuart's ongoing work is to continually notice her own perceived reality.

 Addison Van Auken Waters grew up in Massachusetts and currently resides in Asheville, North Carolina. She received her master's in creative writing from Durham University in 2017. Together, Addison and her husband have lived in England, Australia, and three out of the 50 United States. She is an emerging writer dreaming up her first novel.

 Claire Van Winkle writes poetry and prose. She teaches at several CUNY and SUNY schools and is the founder of the Rockaway Writers' Workshop. In addition to her creative and academic pursuits, she works as a writing therapist researching and applying creative workshop strategies to inpatient psychiatric care. She is the recipient of several honors and awards. Her work appears in various publications including anthologies by Black Lawrence Press and Rogue Scholars.
