I find comfort in stillness
when blades kiss my skin
and thundered tongues
hail down my name.
In the grey,
I close my eyes—
and let the rain mourn
me.
Latoya Wilkinson is 20 years old. She is currently a rising Senior at the University At Albany, studying Journalism and English. She doesn’t have any intentions of being a poet, but she took two poetry classes and realized that she would much rather write than breathe—and that says a lot.
I passed it unawares, others fallen, rotting
with perfume pervasive as the gnats
forming my halo and feasting delicately
on the membranes of my ears and eyes.
I knew the yew had metaphorical heft,
but failed to remember the sources.
Nowadays memory fails faster than legs
which also begin to falter halfway.
Nothing prepares you for death—
isn’t quite true. We know in our bones
that shadow from the hill will only
lengthen as the day wears on.
Yew, I never knew you in your glory,
having never walked these woods.
But is it a crime to feel no sadness
for a tree that perished naturally?
I walk toward a clearing, heavy
in my heart and heavier-legged
as I seek something more than
communion with a natural death.
Salvatore Difalco is a Sicilian Canadian poet and storyteller. His work appears in a number of print and online journals.
I have watched the figs
ripen for centuries
I have stolen the dandelions
scattered their seeds across
fields of tulips and tamarind
I have felt desire crack
my lips apart under the weight
of its slippery skin
What fresh figs, what sunny flowers
What breaking hearts
rot beneath the hills
beneath sticky sidewalk pavements
We grow older but not duller
hovering translucent over
calendar time
Sara Whittemore is a poet living in Houston, Texas. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa. Her work has recently appeared in Interim Magazine, Juniper Press and Tiny Spoon, and others. In addition to being a poet she is an artist, alien and cat person. You can find her on instagram @sarafromsaturn.
the chosen people
god’s blessed
people
brutalized attacked and slandered
beaten throughout centuries
wandering through
a mist of sorrow
through world wars
through a cemetery
the size of the Sea of Reeds
then blessed by God
and nations and given
back their homeland
holy land
returned to Zion
oh Israel oh holy land
oh El Elohe Yisrael
oh The Mighty One
God of Israel
how terrifying you’ve become
how brutal your power how punishing
your vengeance how bloody your hands
you’ve let loose
the leash of the angels
of the apocalypse
upon your neighbors
and upon their land
God’s hell has risen
now the broken people
now the occupied
the scattered descendants
of the conquered bombed
to dust their hospitals
their places of worship
their schools their people
their children their lineage
their line of hope obliterated
in the constant barrage
of revenge
only the law of God
matters El Elohe Yisrael
only the law of Israel
above the laws of men
of war of nations
above the internationals
from above comes the law
from above the blessing
of violations of wanton cruelty
from above the blessings
of starvation the blessings
of suffering the blessings
of obliteration of the grave
of the dark
terror begets terror begets terror
begets the horror show begets
infinite suffering a sea of tears
a grand canyon of corpses
for your neighbors
not mercy but broken bones
not compassion but severed bodies
for your neighbors there is no salt
no bread no wine but disease
starvation and poisoned water
oh Palestine the world watches
and not much is done and what is
done seems as spit into the wind
as spit on to the face of Palestine
Palestine no mother’s day
Palestine no fourth of July
Palestine no apple pie
no answers from Salat no call from God
no response from the deepening chorus
of mourning echoing out toward Mecca
and bouncing off the Kaaba
Ted Vaca is a Denver area based poet and performer. He began writing steadily in the late 1980’s in his home state of California. He has been published in numerous publications and has self-published two chapbooks. He is a member of the 1995 Asheville National Slam Poetry Championship team. He is a founding member of The Mercury Cafe Poetry Slam, (Denver, CO.) established in 2000, and ongoing since then. He is the coach of the 2006 Mercury Cafe Slam Championship team. He has hosted countless poetry readings and slams and special events throughout his 35-plus years in catering toward poetic pursuits.
Ted is an award winner of Colorado’s Lulu award for accomplishments in poetry and The James Ryan Morris Tombstone award.
Ted has worked for Art from Ashes, a Colorado based not for profit that encourages and teaches healing through art therapy, catering to youth in illness and at risk.
Through the Looking Glass
Land-starved and stubborn we pile
windows on top of windows and climb
so high everything looks small and distant.
Birds leap into the sky wide-eyed and unbound
and rocket themselves into cloud and blue-
stained glass stunned like butterflies
in freefall spinning and spiraling through
the wind. I heard the thick thump against
the double-pane and caught a mourning dove
as it fell solid as a blood-warm stone in my hands.
Its feathered imprint a chalk outline of wings
and beak left stamped against the looking glass.
Too often we see what we want to see until
it’s too late. I stick vinyl bird-shaped silhouettes
on the reflective surface like dusted ghosts
and recite them as I rub them flat with a card
sparrow, dove, cardinal, blue jay,
finch, mockingbird, grackle, wren.
S. N. Rodriguez is a writer and photographer in Austin, Texas. She is a Writers’ League of Texas 2021 Fellow and her work has appeared in The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, Blue Mesa Review, River Teeth, and elsewhere.
Image: Saad Chaudhry
Firmament
My boss asks me to watch 16 hours
of camera footage. Instead I watch dandelions
lose their heads at the slightest breeze. Nearby weeds
shed their mustard petals. The sky dares me
to name its every shade of blue. Cotton, Chromium,
Seafoam, Tremor. There are more
important things to worry about today than work,
like breathing the grass-cut air, catching
the sun’s bright spears. The swollen clouds are
an army of angel wings descending.
I watch their feathers fall.
Eric Raanan Fischman is an MFA graduate of Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He has taught free writing workshops in Nederland, Boulder, and Longmont, Colorado, and has had work in Bombay Gin, Boulder Weekly, Suspect Press, and many more, as well as in local community fundraising anthologies from Punch Drunk Press and South Broadway Ghost Society. He also curates the Boulder/Denver metro area poetry calendar at boulderpoetryscene.com and is a regular contributor to the BPS blog. His first book, “Mordy Gets Enlightened,” was published through The Little Door in 2017.
Image: Denny Müller
The Tyrant Smells Decay
Stop seeking a reality
Neither sound nor trace
Relieve empty scavengers
Of chemical spills and
Luxury boats
The sharks have nothing left to chew
This ferry is optimistic
When the world ends
You’ll get there anyway
Fingers work a video game
Of delusional fuckers
And farmers markets
A terrible Frankenstein
A real piece of living art
Roll and pitch master
You’ll be happy
Building a terrible thing
This is a found poem from Grant, Mira. Symbiont. New York. Orbit, 2014. Print. Pages 444-472.
Jen MacBain-Stephens (she/her) went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and now lives in Iowa where she is landlocked. Her fifth, full length poetry collection, “Pool Parties” is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2023. She is also the author of fifteen chapbooks. Some of her work appears in The Pinch, Kestrel, Cleaver, Dream Pop, Slant, Yalobusha Review, and Grist. She is the director of the monthly reading series Today You are Perfect, sponsored by the non-profit Iowa City Poetry. Find her online at http://jennifermacbainstephens.com/.
Image: Nathanaël Desmeules
Full Moon Reflecting off the Peaks
As snow does to a fire
gods who bit flowers of ink
a nest of mad kisses down the long black river
the milky way sky’s pale vertebrae
archipelagos of stars
framed between small branches
blossoms of small arms , nails us naked to the color
of pink hyacinth singing singing
in deep red ripples
your voice is a pale street lamp on calm black water
just (a word planted by the water
before I am a stone in a stone-swallowing river
thrown
into
sleep
————————————————– your eyes
Donnie Hollingsworth has lived in many small Rocky Mountain towns and currently resides in Lamar, Colorado–where he teaches Art and English at the local community college–with his wife, cat, and dog. His art can be found here.
Image: Quinton Coetzee
don’t open your eyes yet
the want is ravaged and set alight
I will call your pain to me
name your beasts to do my bidding
call me back
to worship with wanton knees and eyes
nail my collarbones to the bedroom door
and drink from my bruised lips
a dream like this demands a hungered sacrifice
call me back
to your kingdom on this starless night
the rain so reckless in the shadows
let me dream of your trembling spine
and pry open your butterfly ribs
call me back
to plant moonflowers in your blood
they only bloom carefree in the dark
let me honour you with what remains
beyond skin and crushed days
call me back
to your bed, your voice drowns
out the world. Was it even real?
I just want to feel you – here and here.
all I touch is glass
christmas morning constellations traced on your skin / undressed / spilled / beneath
the quiver ing lashes and breathless light /enfolded below the midwinter dawn / so
stolen between
the call of the day and the coffee /(do you want to go and see the worst of me?) /heaped
clothes on the creaking floor / a tangible whisper in the curtains / the red farewell /stars
sighing in your image/
and the resurrection of today/ sheltered twilight /can’t hide the embers mined in / the
dead of night /still on my lips / I am still starving /my heart half eaten / still obsessed/with
what remains
of the distant bedrock / the thunderwounds of yesterday / (do I not burn when
I bleed?) I hold your hand/ through these hurting dreams to support their
weight/ still /again/
we summoned and witnessed / an unspeakable trinity
come / here / tonight /
Despair
Desire
& the small Death
(prayer is whatever you say on your knees) and if you can’t forgive what lurks
below the skin / remember / I am fire-tongued and anointed by your touch
/deciphering the holy infliction
of having been wild and perfect for a moment / (thirst to thirst) / surrender
now / (your fingers in my hair / my mouth / covered in my blood) / hold
me / in this space
we are rebuilding the universe / my words are the bare bones /
painted with the colours
you have
shown me
/ l o v e /
this is how we retaliate / desecrate the decaying temple /with solemn lunar
devotions feral laments / spellbound in the marked sheets / the unmade bed
(I think we’d survive in the wild)
all hallowed
to be read in case of emergency
we crossed this ocean /I lost the ground / the moon
drew me/in /my crimson tides /beckoning your hands
in red /on the mirroring surface / the light of early dawn
come
falling
apart
celestial bodies of water / on the fine shoreline before sleep
betroth my hands / to your breath/your elfin throat
vowing /gasping / on half of the dead stars
to be strange / to be beautiful / to be wild / to be/
open water
crashing on broken shells / blessed October sand
a litany / a siren song / an unchanging state of affairs
I am not going to hurt you /cannot resist the call of
continued disturbance and fractures on the wind
a tear bled / into black ink stains/blossoms / into a word
echoes into a constant dream yet untold /let’s send a postcard
from
where
we
fell
some things are better on paper /some things are better
signed and sealed / in blood
When we share our stories, we realize that we are not alone with it. We begin to see the system that behind violence, injustice and exploitation. Telling our story is the connecting moment to take action and to initiate change.” Kate MacAlister (she/her) is an author, feminist activist and founder of the multilingual community arts and literature project Stimmen der Rebellion/Dengê Berxwedane/Voices of Rebellion. Her works have been published in journals and anthologies all over the world. Kate’s debut chapbook “songs of the blood” is filled with poetry that speaks of human connection and the dreams of revolution. Coffee, her cat Bella and, naturally, her activist friends are particularly important for her creative process. Find Kate on Instagram at @kissed.by_fire.
Image: Ben Kolde
Kodak Black Man Reads Poetry
St. Paul 2021
You double tap hold your Airpods. Noise canceling activated. You have your sunglasses
on.
You are indoors, in a book shop, somewhere in St. Paul, Minnesota. You are waiting for
your turn to read. All these people are here to watch you read. Not just you, though. It’s
never just you.
Your mentor is on stage reading an essay. He is animated. He can spit like a muhfucka.
You realize what essay he’s reading, and how traumatic it is for you to listen to. It
reminds you of the Summer of Floyd, when everything burned around you. When you
were afraid of racists from Wisconsin, who drove through these streets, laying cans of
gas in alleyways. Shooting up Black homes. Coming back later that night to set them on
fire.
You ask yourself how on God’s green earth you ended up in a place as racist as America.
You realize you never had a choice. Much like being a writer, you never had a choice.
Your family left Africa for this shit.
On your first night in America, it was a drive-by on your block in Atlanta.
You’ve always told that story and repeated that catchphrase: we left Africa for this shit?
You’re in the thick of it now. That essay is starting to crescendo. You can see the impact
it’s having on your mentor. He is getting more animated in his delivery.
Damn, that nigga can spit.
Also: he is feeling it. You are feeling it, too. Pacing the corners of the room, nervous. You
turn on Kodak Black. Kodak raps about murder, but it calms you down. Kodak raps
about the things which he was born into, which he had no choice but to survive. Kodak
raps about the struggle cuz it made him a man. You know about the struggle, but this
audience of white faces won’t understand.
Your mentor is done reading now. It’s almost your turn to go on stage. You instinctively
start walking towards him. You meet him just outside the audience’s expectant eyes.
White people are always expecting something from us, aren’t they?
You embrace your mentor, now. He is shaking. You see the tears in his eyes. Not quite
tears, but more like… a swelling, of moisture, just shy, of teardrops.
You hug him now. You stand there hugging. It is a shared struggle, these Black male
bodies, in this country built on the understanding that all your bodies are worth
is the price of strange fruit.
Poplar trees, nigga. Emasculation. Manhood stuffed inside of mouth. Tarred
and feathered.
This the country where niggas like you come up missing. Whether you rap about murder
like Kodak, or you stand in front of white audiences like a poet professor. You could come up missing, young nigga. No matter how old you are, you will always be a boy to them.
And you know this. Not even deep down, you know this consciously.
That’s why you don’t care about their praise, about their critique, about their putdowns.
You don’t care about their fear of your manhood. About their fetishes surrounding it.
You don’t care about their cuckold fascination.
White wives, Black dick. You don’t care about it.
You only care about your words, about your honor, dignity, life.
You go on stage to spit these bars, but you don’t even care about them half the time.
You only care about this moment, this shared embrace. Two Black men, acknowledging
each other’s existence. Holding each other in ways that the world is incapable of.
You only care about the now.
And now… you go on stage.
Dim the lights.
Turn off that Kodak.
Fade to Black Man.
Said Shaiye is an Autistic Somali Writer & Photographer. His debut book, Are You Borg Now? was a 2022 Minnesota Book Award Finalist in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir. He has contributed essays to the anthologies Muslim American Writers at Home, The Texas Review’s All-Poetry Issue, and We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World. He has published poetry & prose in Obsidian, Brittle Paper, Pithead Chapel, 580 Split, Entropy, Diagram, Rigorous, Night Heron Barks, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota, where he was a Graduate Instructor of Creative Writing, as well as a Judd International Research Fellow. He teaches writing to Autistic kids through Unrestricted Interest, as well as in the English Departments of several colleges in the Twin Cities.
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