Poetry / Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

:: My Mother as a Failed Sonnet, or Maybe Just a Forest ::

I’ve written you as rivers, as frost, as everything 
hidden underneath it, as a children’s picture 
book in a foreign language, as language, that one and all 
others, as your hands and those of your mother and 
hers, most often hers, as what she held in them, as 
the empty tea kettle, as everything she’d lost, the dead
and their sea and its unsinking, as salt, as what abandon 
must mean and what it must taste like, war
and famine, immigration and tea,
Ceylon, Lady Gray, Darjeeling, as the fortune 
it leaves at the bottom of spent cups, and as 
those cups, carried across ocean and name, as water,
generations and generations of it, mothers’ 
open hands, as bare Russian birch branches 
grasping for clouds, as what a child sees 
looking up in a forest.    


 

:: While everything falls apart, imagine how you’ll teach your son about death ::

when he rips a dandelion head off its stem 
and wonders why the body shrivels  
or the pregnant stray gives birth
to her calico litter and you find two of them 
wedged underneath your car tires that winter
when the drunk woman across the street falls
leaving parts of herself down every row-house stair
last night’s howling in her lungs and on your windows
and the neighbors drape her body well
before the ambulance arrives 
he will ask where they’ve all gone and why
look up instinctively and wonder 
and you’ll confess you do not know
hold him and say nothing 
about elsewhere being better or everything
happening for a reason 
you’ll hold him as though your hands
could weigh him down 
could keep his bones from growing
as the clouds move slow
he’ll notice for the first time
they are white “Not blue?”
he’ll ask surprised and you will nod
say something about the shapes of animals 
then he’ll remember the flower and kittens
the dead woman
                                             “Will they come back?”
and you’ll again stay silent 
because the lawn is full
of broken glass and water bottles
full of piss and dog shit full             
of yesterday and you will shake
your head and think you’re doing right by him 
it’s better he know now you tell yourself
and watch him look away and up
search for the dead inside the clouds

From the writer

:: Account ::

These poems are part of my col­lec­tion The Many Names for Moth­er, which explores how the weight of my Jew­ish-refugee expe­ri­ence has influ­enced grow­ing up to raise a first-gen­er­a­tion, bilin­gual, and mul­ti­eth­nic Amer­i­can child. Its poems obses­sive­ly tell, retell, and hov­er around trau­ma and absence—ranging from ances­tral his­to­ries to my per­son­al expe­ri­ence of immi­gra­tion to my trav­els to Easte­rn Euro­pean death sites as a descen­dent of a USSR Holo­caust sur­vivor. 

My Moth­er as a Failed Son­net, or Maybe Just a For­est:  

I’ve been try­ing to define, to name moth­er­hood. I’ve been try­ing to under­stand who I am as a moth­er by delv­ing into who my moth­er is as a moth­er. I feel like I’ve spent my life try­ing to write her to get clos­er to under­stand­ing. The attempt of this poem at def­i­n­i­tion was failed from the start, just like the for­mal con­straint that can­not con­tain what it means to be a moth­er. I’ve been think­ing a lot about moth­er­hood not only as the con­tent of a poem, but moth­er­hood as an ele­ment of craft, moth­er­hood as not only poet­ry but poet­ics. Behind the fail­ings of def­i­n­i­tion and form with­in this poem is an attempt to see how moth­er­hood becomes a form and name all its own, just as it rejects both.

While every­thing falls apart, imag­ine how you’ll teach your son about death:

On elec­tion day, Novem­ber 8, 2016, my son turned one. We began his birth­day with an excit­ing trip to the polls, but by the fol­low­ing morn­ing, excite­ment turned to dread, and unfor­tu­nate­ly, we all know what has fol­lowed since. Try­ing to grap­ple with rais­ing a tod­dler in the midst of what is going on in our coun­try, I began writ­ing a series of poems, “While every­thing falls apart, imag­ine how you’ll teach your son [       ].” In them, I strug­gle with how to respond to the ani­mos­i­ty espoused by the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion, how to teach my son com­pas­sion in the midst of such hate, and how to remind him where he comes from—urging him to remem­ber our named and un-named pasts.

Julia Kolchin­sky Das­bach emi­grat­ed from Dne­propetro­vsk, Ukraine, as a Jew­ish refugee when she was six years old. She holds an MFA in Poet­ry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon and is a PhD can­di­date in Com­par­a­tive Lit­er­a­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, where her research focus­es on con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can poet­ry about the Holo­caust. Julia’s poet­ry col­lec­tion, The Many Names for Moth­er, won the Stan and Tom Wick Poet­ry Prize and is forth­com­ing from Kent State Uni­ver­si­ty Press in the Fall of 2019. She is also the author of The Bear Who Ate the Stars (Split Lip Press, 2014), and her recent poems appear in Best New Poets, Amer­i­can Poet­ry Review, and Nashville Review, among oth­ers. Julia is also Edi­tor-in-Chief of Con­struc­tion Mag­a­zine, and when not busy chas­ing her tod­dler around the play­grounds of Philadel­phia, she writes a blog about moth­er­hood, Oth­er Women Don’t Tell You. 

Poetry / Reilly D. Cox

:: Robert the Gardener ::

My father, always the artist, loses employment
and begins digging holes for a hilly college.

Each morning, he wakes from the same dream:
he’s back in his youth and gliding down the lane 

of an endless pool, his long, hairless limbs 
moving through the water silently towards a Cracker Jack 

salvation, and he wakes. Each morning, he finds 
he has sunk into the covers a little deeper, his limbs 

a little more tired. He rises as his children are still
in their troubled sleep, brews a pot of coffee,

and pours a river through his magnificent mustache.
He eats three raw eggs, chewing the shells

until they are a fine powder to protect his poor teeth—
holey and golden—and wipes the loose strands of yolk

with a slice of rye bread sporting only a few dark blossoms
of mold. He wraps himself in the emerald-green uniform

with his name embroidered over his heart like a target
and heads into the sun-shy morning. With little fires

burning in his pockets to keep himself warm, he plumes
beautifully—smoke signals trailing behind on his walk

to the Great Garden. He’s given up on disciplining the smoke,
ignores the incessant beacon of O-S-O drifting past his shoulders.

He makes sure to arrive before the other creatures, gathers
hundreds of flowers in his battered cart, rides up

and down the many hills, and only opens his eyes when he senses
a good spot. The college wants to draw in new blood

and my father knows how to arrange color to attract
anything. Sometimes, he grows bored, creates a trompe

l’oeil by a hall, a nature morte by a campus gate, but
he is mostly good, cares for the little blooms,

remembers the lessons his father taught him: sees
that their roots are good and watered, that the sun

won’t hurt them or grow estranged. His coworkers—
younger, cut from nylon—keep themselves entertained

by eating little animals whole. One man claims to have
a family of chipmunks nesting in his belly; another,

a whole pond of goldfish. Each lunch, he tilts
his head back and drops little flakes down the length

of his throat, smiles, says it always tickles
when the fish are feeding. My father sits alone.

He worries that he’s mixed up his eggs, that
he has a brood of chicks begging in his belly,

hatched and angry, so he won’t eat today.
He keeps himself warm with clear liquids,

doesn’t dare to light a match. He imagines
how much warmer it would be, to fall in,

a whole ocean to pickle him into summer.
He knows he’s a good swimmer; he won’t drown.


 

:: Robert the Gardener (Tent Caterpillars) ::

My father is setting fire to the trees again. 
He drags us from our play this way.

My brother and I, split body, jerk awake
at the coughing of a chainsaw in our wood.

We leave our shallow of mud, with so many good
sacrifices buried to the neck, and skulk 

towards it. In a clearing, our father has downed
a dozen trees bearded with tent caterpillars

and is lightly shaking a delirious tremens 
of gasoline over the many nests. He says,

If you leave anything too long, it grows.
He then takes a rag torch and lets sing

the good water. I had never heard such a choir
before, it was like the sound of marrow. 

My brother and I watch our father disappear
in the cracking smoke and barely see

the rag pointing across the crown of trees, 
with so many beards waving terribly.

Leaning over, it looks as if the smoke is born
from our father’s beard, and pours angrily 

from it. May one day I be so giving. May 
one day my beard grow so long 

that the holy spirit come flying out. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

My grand­fa­ther passed away this past August, well over three years since my father passed away. At the time, I had been want­i­ng to write about my grand­fa­ther, and the process of dying that was hap­pen­ing so rapid­ly yet slow­ly, and all the things that were slip­ping away as he did, but I was wor­ried that to write about it would make it hap­pen. Then he died, and, start­ing with a nap­kin at a restau­rant counter, I start­ed putting down every­thing that was then slip­ping away.

I imag­ined my grand­fa­ther as some­thing myth­ic but dwindling—a sto­ried fig­ure who, while once mean­ing­ful and revered, had been reduced by time to hearsay and jokes. I start­ed refer­ring to his myth­ic coun­ter­part as Sar­gon, after a Mesopotami­an emper­or who was the child of the roy­al gar­den­er. I start­ed the process of unmak­ing by incor­rect­ly refer­ring to him as Sar­gon the Gar­den­er. In my imag­in­ing, Sar­gon tend­ed to toma­toes in a dilap­i­dat­ed palace out­side of Baltimore.

Oth­er mem­bers of my fam­i­ly began find­ing myth­ic ver­sions of them­selves in the poems—the Witch­ing Daugh­ter, the Son’s Wid­ow, the Blood­less Daugh­ter, and the Son’s Ghost. The Son’s Ghost, my father, was always trapped in a process of dying or being dead; he, hav­ing died long before my grand­fa­ther, in his dying, became Sar­gon. He is one of the few mem­bers of the fam­i­ly to be named in the col­lec­tion, in part because he was already gone, and in part because he shared a name with oth­ers who had passed away and could serve as a greater evocation.

My father was a gar­den­er, some­times by choice, some­times not. He had dif­fi­cul­ty main­tain­ing jobs and worked, for a time, as a groundskeep­er, know­ing enough gar­den­ing to be qual­i­fied for that. While the focus of the Sar­gon poems were on Sar­gon, I was being reminded—more and more intensely—of mem­o­ries of my father and gar­den­ing. So though I wrote the first “Robert the Gar­den­er” as a one-off poem to turn the myth­ic towards the real and to play with un/making, I found myself fix­at­ed on more and more mem­o­ries of my father and plants. Because I tend to be an iter­a­tive poet, I began an iter­a­tive sequence to find my father again, in all his burn­ing glory.

Reil­ly D. Cox is a MFA can­di­date at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alaba­ma in Tuscaloosa. They had attend­ed Wash­ing­ton Col­lege and the Buck­nell Sem­i­nar for Younger Poets. They have work avail­able by the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets and by Iron Horse Lit­er­ary Review.

Poetry / Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

:: Husband Stories ::

[8]

I speak to no one from that past. ...My silence put to use
is the highest instrument. ...Now even the frost holds my
hand...I got rid of the life. ...It took all the ns to make a no.
...The distance is here. ...As for the chandelier... ...I
dig a well. ...Into the well I put many men.




[7]

There was a husband in the center of this story. ...Some
lunar waves were ringing....I got rid of the husband....
Even my ankle rejects you! ...I never told anyone, 
not really. ...The distance is here....Light in a circle 
could not save me.




[6]

Even the light has aged. ...The story does not compute.
...Some lunar waves were ringing. ...My silence put to use,
its highest instrument. ...Now even the frost holds my
hand. ...The things lost with many traces. ...I dig a well.
...Into the well I put many men. ...There are rows of
waiting others.




[5]

I speak to no one from that past. ...Some lunar waves were
ringing. ...What is left of leaves are stone. ...Now even
the frost holds my hand. ...I got rid of the life.
...If I could take it all back. ...It took all the ns to
make a no. ...Into the well I put many men. ...That husband
is gone. ...There are rows of waiting others.




[4]

The story does not compute. ...There is a husband in the
center of this story. ...What is left of leaves are stone.
...If I could take it all back. ...Even my ankle rejects
you! ...The distance is here. ...The ear up close.




[3]

The story does not compute. ...My silence put to use, its
highest instrument. ...If I could take it all back. ...Even
my ankle rejects you!. ...I never told anyone, not really.
...It took all the ns to make a no. ...The distance is
here. ...Light in a circle could not save me. ...I dig a
well. ...Into the well I put many men.




[2]

The story does not compute. ...There is a husband in the
center of this story. ...My silence put to use, its highest
instrument. ...I got rid of the husband. ...The distance is
here. ...The ear up close. ...Light in a circle could not
save me. ...I dig a well. ...That husband is gone. ...There
are rows of waiting others.




[1]

Even the light has aged. ...Some lunar waves were ringing.
...My silence put to use is its highest instrument. ...What is
left of leaves are stone. ...Real gaps spread in the tropic
of paradise. ...If I could take it all back. ...I never told
anyone, not really. ...The things lost without traces.
...It took all the ns to make a no. ...I dig a well.


 

:: Counternarratives ::

                              inspired by John Keene

                    [1]

                    ...God’s gonna trouble the water.


                    [2]

                    It was a gated community....The boy is a high school
                    student....There are rows and rows of others.


                    [3]

                    Forty-two miles from Disney....The frangipani swans 
                    in the streetlight. ...A patrol car’s siren sings several 
                    streets away.


                    [4]

                    Everything signs its name, leaves a trace. ...Real gaps
                    spread in the tropic of paradise. ...Forty-two miles 
                    from Disney....He never told anyone, but he always 
                    wanted to go to space camp.


                    [5]

                    Only the flowering catalpa trees are on watch and they
                    don’t have guns. ...The boy likes Skittles. ...Real gaps
                    spread in the tropic of paradise. ...He rides from station
                    to station until he can rest at home. ...People also ask 
                    what was he wearing....People also search for Emmett Till.


                    [6]

                    Sometimes he wakes feeling gone and doesn’t know why.
                    ...Only the flowering catalpa trees are on watch and they
                    don’t have guns. ...It was a gated community: cause of
                    death. ...He rides from station to station until he can
                    rest at a home. ...Gone with his father on a visit. ...God’s
                    gonna trouble the water. ...Bloodies the ground we stand on.


                    [7]

                    Forty-two miles from Disney....He rides from station to station
                    until he can rest at a home....Before he became someone’s
                    Halloween costume punchline, he had a name....No mention
                    made of his clothing...The warm air is a little brackish tonight.
                    ...The frangipani swims in the moonlight.... People also ask 
                    what he was wearing....He never told anyone, but he always
                    wanted to go to space camp....follow a star north.


                    [8]

                    He plays a game he knows he’s too old for: pinches the
                    moon between finger and thumb, pulls it to his lips.
                    ...Everything signs its name, leaves a trace....Real cancer
                    spreads in the tropics. ...Forty-two miles from Disney.
                    ...He rides from station to station until he can rest at
                    a home....He never told anyone, but he always wanted 
                    to go to space camp....Gone with his father on a visit 
                    and God’s gonna trouble the water.


                    [9]

                    Sometimes he wakes feeling gone and doesn’t know why.
                    ...Everything slings a trace, mouths its name....Only the
                    flowering catalpa trees are on watch and they don’t have
                    guns....It was a gated community....Cause of death.
                    ...Real gaps spread in the tropic of paradise.
                    ...Forty-two miles from disease....No mention made 
                    of his clothing. The warm air is a little brackish tonight. 
                    ...People also ask what was he wearing....He never told 
                    anyone, but he always wanted to follow a star north...


                    [10]

                    He plays a game he knows he’s too old for: pinches the
                    moon between finger and thumb, pulls it to his lips.
                    ...Sometimes he wakes feeling gone and doesn’t know why.
                    ...Only the flowering catalpa trees are on watch and they
                    don’t have guns. ...Real treasons spread in the gaps of
                    paradise....Before he became someone’s Halloween costume
                    punchline, he had a name. ...The frangipani swans in the
                    streetlight. ...Several weeks away, a patrol siren sings...
                    People also ask: what was he wearing?...If God’s 
                    gonna trouble the water.


                    [11]

                    Only the flowering catalpa trees are on watch and none
                    of them brought a gun....Causes of death:...The boy is a high
                    school student....The boy likes Skittles....Feel gaps
                    spread in the tropic of paradise. ...Forty-two miles from Disney.
                    ...Before he became someone’s Halloween costume punchline,
                    he had a name....No mention made of his clothing. Brackish air
                    tonight stings with a little sweetness....A patrol car’s siren
                    sings several streets away....People also ask: what really happened?
                    ...He never told anyone, but he always wanted to go to space
                    camp....But God’s gonna trouble the water, bloody the
                    lawn he stands on.


                    [12]

                    Sometimes he wakes feeling not really here, not knowing
                    why it was a gated community. ...The boy is a high school
                    student. ...The boy likes Skittles. ...Real gaps peel
                    apart the treads of paradise. ...He rides through all the houses
                    before he can rest at home...Before he became
                    someone’s Halloween costume punchline, he had a name.
                    ...The frangipani stitches up the streetlight. ...A patrol
                    car’s siren swats bugs and halos away. ...He never told
                    anyone, but he always wanted to go to space camp. ...Gone
                    with his father on a visit to follow a star north.
                    ...People also search for Emmett Till. ...Stand on
                    bloody laws....There are rows and rows of others.


                    [13]















                    [14]

                    He plays a game he knows he’s too old for: pinches 
                    the moon between finger and thumb, drinks it through his lips.
                    ...Sometimes he wakes feeling gone. He reaches 
                    for why everything sings its name, traces its leave...Gaps
                    split open the tropic of paradise...The sea air brackets
                    him tonight...People also ask: what really happened?
                    Before he became the punchline to a costume, swans
                    of frangipani backlit him in the night. A siren signs

                    several streets away. Cause of death: It was a gated
                    community.... Gone with his father on a visit.... 
                    People also ask: what was he wearing? He never told anyone,
                    but he always wanted to go to space camp. God
                    wasn’t near the water. 
	                         People also search for: Emmett Till. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

//Husband Sto­ries

The Python code is adapt­ed from Nick Montfort’s “Through the Park” code (#!, Coun­ter­path, 2014). This code gen­er­ates sto­ries by ran­dom­ly omit­ting dif­fer­ent sen­tences from a pre­pared list through each iter­a­tion. The out­put has been edit­ed and arranged. Nick’s imple­men­ta­tion and the code can be found in #! and on his web­site: http://nickm.com/poems/through_the_park.py

//Counternarratives

This poem is for Trayvon Mar­tin, a black teenag­er shot and killed by a neigh­bor­hood res­i­dent. He died on Feb­ru­ary 26, 2012.

The title of this piece is from John Keene’s book of short sto­ries Coun­ternar­ra­tives (New Direc­tions, 2017).

The Python code is adapt­ed from Nick Montfort’s “Through the Park” code (#!, Coun­ter­path, 2014). This code gen­er­ates sto­ries by ran­dom­ly omit­ting dif­fer­ent sen­tences from a pre­pared list through each iter­a­tion. The out­put has been edit­ed and arranged. Nick’s imple­men­ta­tion and the code can be found in #! and on his web­site: http://nickm.com/poems/through_the_park.py

Lil­lian-Yvonne Bertram is the author of the forth­com­ing book Trav­es­ty Gen­er­a­tor (Noe­mi Press), and pre­vi­ous books Per­son­al Sci­ence (Tupe­lo Press, 2017), a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press, 2016), and But a Storm is Blow­ing From Par­adise (Red Hen Press, 2012). 

Poetry / Chet’la Sebree

:: Lady-in-Waiting, April 1789 ::

In front of looking glass, I admire my structure, my admixture 
of patterns, as I smooth down the gown that falls to my feet—

bolt of Irish linen stitched into frock for evening, 
where I’ll stand two steps behind Patsy, not behind closed doors,

make a lap around ballroom where candles dress walls, 
blue beads my neck, where my lips will be purple-puckered 

from a wine from a region often named.
Bordeaux, I try. Corset, I say, 

making my mouth French—admiring 
my bone-bound breasts nearly cresting top of dress.

In the mirror I practice, Dame de chambre, femme en attente—
though everyone here calls me Mademoiselle Sally—

esclave sounds better in this language,
maîtresse much the same.


 

:: Paris: A Retrospective ::

Your stagger sought to untether—hand sack of flour against frame, 
          heavy from body heavy with liquid lead.  

Was it me or Isabel you saw spread on the bed? 

~

This is as old as time, mom said.  First gran and her, then Mary and Bets.

~

Breathlessly: Sally.  

~

I could not mend my body to break—cedar berry, tansy, cotton seed minced to tea,
          trying to force a bleed.  

Belly swollen, sick as if still on ocean.

~

I am embarrassed by my opening—bare blush of blossom, floral flush of cheek. A flood staining 
          sheets in need of laundering.

~

Or maybe I didn’t open, but burst—a fracture that still aches in cold.

From the writer

:: Account ::

“Lady-in-Wait­ing, April 1789” 

This poem is in the voice of Sal­ly Hemings—Thomas Jefferson’s slave with whom he had at least six children—when she’s a young woman in Paris. In 1787, at the age of four­teen, Hem­ings trav­eled to France with Jefferson’s youngest daugh­ter, Maria (Pol­ly), to meet Jef­fer­son and his eldest daugh­ter, Martha (Pat­sy). In this poem, Hem­ings is try­ing on a new dress as she pre­pares to attend an event with Pat­sy as her lady’s maid.

In April 1789, Hem­ings has been in Paris for near­ly two years. It is doc­u­ment­ed that, dur­ing this time, Hem­ings start­ed to learn French, received wages for her work, and received fine linens for occa­sions such as the one that unfolds in the poem. While in France, she became Jefferson’s concubine—according to her son Madi­son Hemings—and, some­time in 1789, was pregnant.

When it was time for her to return to the States with Jef­fer­son lat­er that year, she refused to return with him since she could peti­tion the French gov­ern­ment for her free­dom. In Madi­son Hemings’s mem­oir, Hem­ings states that his moth­er returned to the States because Jef­fer­son promised her “extra­or­di­nary priv­i­lege” and that their chil­dren would be freed.

In this poem, Hem­ings tries on language—the ter­mi­nol­o­gy, the French—much in the same way that she tries on the dress. In this poem, Hem­ings tries on what “extra­or­di­nary priv­i­lege” may look like.

Many of the details of this poem—and per­haps even the impe­tus for it—come from my expe­ri­ence of try­ing on a repli­ca of an eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry corset in the The­atre Department’s cos­tume shop at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Virginia.

“Paris: A Retrospective” 

In this poem, Hem­ings looks back at her first sex­u­al expe­ri­ence with Jef­fer­son; this poem fol­lows many failed attempts to write about this expe­ri­ence. Every time I tried to write the poem in the “present” tense of the late 1780s I failed, so I tried to come at this first expe­ri­ence from a num­ber of dif­fer­ent angles. The two that were the most suc­cess­ful were this one, in which Hem­ings is try­ing to rec­on­cile her past and unpack what hap­pened to her, and one where Jef­fer­son dreams of his first sex­u­al expe­ri­ence with her; the idea of break­ing, unin­ten­tion­al­ly, is present in both.

As a writer, I felt con­flict­ed about writ­ing about this moment since I know there is a lev­el of vio­lence I know I already inflict by impos­ing my lit­er­ary imag­i­na­tion on the life of this woman who is voice­less in his­to­ry. Not being able to find my way organ­i­cal­ly into a poem about her first sex­u­al expe­ri­ence with Jef­fer­son almost felt like a sign that I wasn’t meant to write about it, so I gave up on the prospect—especially since I couldn’t rec­on­cile what hap­pened to her.

I often wres­tle with the nature of Hem­ings and Jefferson’s rela­tion­ship and the nature of their first sex­u­al expe­ri­ence since she was at most six­teen and he forty-six when she became his con­cu­bine in Paris. It occurred to me, how­ev­er, that per­haps Hem­ings also felt con­flict­ed. From there, it also occurred to me that per­haps both my imag­ined Sal­ly and I might ben­e­fit from the dis­tance of retrospection.

In addi­tion to Hem­ings wrestling with the nature of the expe­ri­ence, she is also wrestling with iden­ti­ty and moth­er­hood in this poem. Hem­ings con­tem­plates whether or not she’s “spe­cial,” won­der­ing if Jef­fer­son saw her or anoth­er slave named Isabel—whom he’d request­ed trav­el with his daugh­ter Pol­ly to Paris, though she couldn’t because she was pregnant—or if this expe­ri­ence was just her matri­lin­eal lega­cy. Hem­ings was not the only woman in her fam­i­ly who was a con­cu­bine or had a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with a white man. In this poem, she looks at the lega­cy of this through her grand­moth­er, her moth­er, her sis­ter Mary—who was in a com­mon law mar­riage with a white man who infor­mal­ly freed her—and her niece Bet­sy. Hem­ings also wres­tles with her first preg­nan­cy in this poem—whether or not to have this child when she’s deal­ing with so much else, includ­ing being an ocean away from the major­i­ty of her family.

Ulti­mate­ly, it felt fit­ting that Hem­ings need­ed the time, dis­tance, and space from this moment to con­tem­plate it. It also felt fit­ting that, ulti­mate­ly, she also has no answers.

Chet’la Sebree was the 2014 – 2016 Stadler Fel­low at Buck­nell University’s Stadler Cen­ter for Poet­ry. She is a grad­u­ate of Amer­i­can University’s MFA in Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram and has received fel­low­ships from The Mac­Dow­ell Colony, Hedge­brook, Ver­mont Stu­dio Cen­ter, and the Richard H. Smith Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter for Jef­fer­son Stud­ies at Thomas Jefferson’s Mon­ti­cel­lo. Her poet­ry has most recent­ly appeared in Guer­ni­ca, Gulf Coast, and Crazy­horse.

Poetry / Lee Ann Roripaugh

:: #coldspringwithptsd #string of beads ::

midnight’s icicle  ::  each day longer in the tooth  ::  the end of winter
fangs its way in toward your  ::  palely exposed jugular

~

hawk unfluffs a  ::  bunny into aperture  ::  the unraveling
ribbons of slick intestines  ::  rain’s sullen legerdemain

~

panic’s acetone  ::  chipping night’s glitter-  ::  polish of stars / next
morning a stray balloon dream-  ::  tangled in real tree branches

~

relentless birdsong  ::  see-sawing under the eaves  ::  ativan’s static
an impotent snow / tin-foiled  ::  antennae / poor reception

~

leapday: drinking black  ::  coffee / black coffee / drinking  ::  black coffee / stare
at the walls / black coffee / black  ::  coffee / black coffee / stare—

~

the muffled thud of  ::  damp socks Stockholm Syndroming  ::  in the dryer / you
never really listen to  ::  the non-sequiturs of rain

~

relentless birdsong  ::  see-sawing under the eaves  ::  april’s tight green buds
popcorn to ruptured cloud in  ::  anxiety’s hot oil sheening

~

young hawk plucks apart  ::  something tender in the tree  ::  outside your window
white fluff dandelioning  ::  down / spring broken / sprung forward

~

melancholia  ::  unfolds its wiry, anised  ::  uncoiling like a
bitter licorice / roadkill’s  ::  flat pancaked halo of calm

~

exsanguinated  ::  stone / no-more-shake-left injet  ::  spilled milk / licked-clean plate
sac’s cul / crumpled juicebox / dis-  ::  pensed pez / inkless octopus

~

relentless birdsong  ::  see-sawing under the eaves  ::  migraine’s struck tuning
fork blowtorching a fountain  ::  of sparks behind your right eye

~

rain’s slack gray phrases  ::  slurring the blurred windowpanes  ::  ostinato of
the gutter’s percolated  ::  rattle / wilting confetti

of storm-drenched lilac  ::  in the alley / Monday noon’s  ::  tornado siren
diluted, like too-weak tea  ::  in the day’s triggering wet

~

today you are a  ::  delicate glass shattering  ::  under cold water
after rain’s gray anthems / comes  ::  snow’s staticky off-signal


 

:: #sandhillcranes #string of beads ::

sizzle of orange  ::  lightning / the corrugated  ::  tin blind a gaunt bell
clanging in the wind and rain  ::  curious deer near to see

~

roosting overnight  ::  in clusters on the river’s  ::  sandbars / cranes stirred to
call and response by the storm  ::  say hello (hello) hell-oh

~

scribbled warble of  ::  cranes graffiti night’s water  ::  a river otter’s
sleek whiskered head interrupts  ::  the river’s tense murmuring

~

train whistle’s blurred smear  ::  curlicued by coyotes’ yip and wail  ::  the wood-block chortling
of cranes gets frenetic / as  ::  sun’s wobbly gold yolk slides up

~

thousands of sandhills  ::  helix off sandbars into  ::  spirographed kettling
football stadium loud / iced  ::  river exhales puffs of fog

~

a whooping crane takes  ::  wing from the cornfield in snow  ::  ukiyo-e
cranes in snow / moon craning  ::  the river trills all night long  

~

obfuscatory  ::  crooning slices through the mist  ::  filaments of cranes
unraveling / shaggy yarn  ::  from a woolly skein of fog

~

a flyover plane  ::  cranes burble silver water  ::  chirping lotto balls
oil empire’s blinking neon  ::  signage strobes the horizon


 

:: #to the tardigrades #kaze no denwa ::

                    o microscopic water bear!
                    o infinitesimal moss piglet!

                    let us squee and coo over 
                    the winsome gambol
                    of your eight pumping legs
                    the slovenly crumpled origami
                    of your brown-paper-bag body

                    even given the anus-like
                    pucker of the mouth-hole
                    on your face 
                    your optics are far
                    more comforting
                    than the cockroach’s
                    as sole survivor
                    of post-atomic apocalypse

                    your cryptobiotic superpower:
                    an uncanny ability 
                    to freeze-dry and thrive
                    in the vacuum of outer space
                    for decades at a time
                    then resurrecting back to life
                    with a single drop of water

                    your microfossils
                    date back 520 million years
                    and you’ll survive
                    supernovae / killer asteroids
                    and gamma-ray bursts
                    of searing radiation

                    (it would take vesta—
                    an asteroidal ocean killer
                    with a diameter of 326 miles—
                    to potentially erase you)

                    o, tenacious survivor
                    of cosmic trauma / how
                    I wish I could channel
                    the matter-of-factness
                    of your resilience
                    in the face of nothingness
                    your ability to just be
                    and keep on being

                    what is it about myself
                    and other humans
                    that harbors the sweet fruit
                    of suicidal ideation
                    the genocidal fire
                    of self-destruction?

                    why the reverse morse
                    of nuclear codes?

                    spill of poison
                    into the water supply?

                    the seductive electricity
                    of the third rail—
                    that magnetic urge
                    to swerve and plummet 
                    from mountain’s switchback
                    and fall and fall and fall?


 

:: #to the robobees #kaze no denwa ::

                    a machination of horsehair
                    with a sticky ion gel

                    pygmalioned from tiny drones

                    your plastic spinners
                    mix-mastering an electric whir

                    sound of thousands
                    of microscopic blenders
                    pureeing summer’s air

                    a drone for a drone

                    (technological revolution
                    in the means of production?)

                    (linguistic sleight-of-hand
                    in which representation
                    replaces the real?)

                    it begins with
                    the dwindling of
                    the hawaiian
                    yellow-faced bee

                    the withering away
                    of the rusty patched
                    bumblebee

                    diminishing habitats
                    invasive species
                    neonicotinoids
                    climate change
                    colony collapse disorder

                    post-apocalyptic prophecy:
                    a fleet of you
                    pollinating a field
                    of shriveled flowers
                    with the uncanny thrum
                    of plastic zombies

                    is a bee still a bee
                    without honey?

                    (if poets become extinct
                    will the algorithms
                    keep humming?
                    is a poem still
                    a poem when no one’s
                    left to read?)

                    who will miss
                    the idiosyncrasies?

                    bee-flies who mimic
                    honeybees / but with
                    obscenely long
                    tongues to plunder
                    shy primroses

                    sphinx moth wings
                    a throated purring
                    in the night / as they ravish
                    the honeysuckle

                    honeybees lured in
                    by their fascination
                    for blue flowers
                    (lavender / borage / marjoram
                    veronica / love-in-a-mist)
                    returning to the hive
                    with heavy pollen baskets
				
                    who will secrete royal jelly
                    from glands in their head?

                    who will pass the pollen 
                    from bee to bee / each of them
                    chewing and grinding
                    until it’s refined and sweet
                    ready to store in wax cells?

                    (it takes eight bees
                    their entire lives
                    to make a single teaspoon)
				
                    who will make the honey
                    that smells like nostalgia
                    tasting like a memory
                    of lavender flowers
                    fragrant in sunlight?

From the writer

:: Account ::

#stringof­beads is envi­sioned as an eco­crit­i­cal and decol­o­niz­ing col­lage of braid­ed tan­ka, zui­hit­su, and “kaze no den­wa” (“wind phone” trib­utes) that inter­ro­gates the false bina­ry of Nature and Tech­nol­o­gy. In this false bina­ry, Tech­nol­o­gy is the term that’s priv­i­leged as pro­gres­sivist, urbane, smart/intellectual, sci­en­tif­ic, cre­ative, and patriarchal/male. Nature, con­verse­ly, is cast as atavis­tic, raw, unde­vel­oped, pri­mal, unen­light­ened, and female. These terms and the ways in which they’re aligned simul­ta­ne­ous­ly echo racial/racist stereo­types in which Nature occu­pies the oppressed (i.e., raced/Orientalized) pole of the bina­ry: exoti­cized, fetishized, primed for “mas­tery,” sit­u­at­ed to be “known”/subject to “know­ing­ness,” oth­ered, ide­al­ized, and pen­e­trat­ed. Along sim­i­lar lines this con­fla­tion of Ori­en­tal­iz­ing and gen­der­ing cathects in ten­den­cies to always rep­re­sent Nature as pure, “pris­tine,” “untouched” as in virginal.

The idea of Nature as “pris­tine,” “untouched,” and “vir­ginal” is a patri­ar­chal and col­o­niz­ing fan­ta­sy. Even at nation­al parks, Nature is imbri­cat­ed with tech­nol­o­gy and indus­try: roads, sig­nage, visitor’s cen­ters, cell phone ser­vice, etc. etc. To take a pho­to­graph of Nature at the scenic outlook/view is to pho­to­graph a care­ful­ly engi­neered illusion—one in which industry/technology has cre­at­ed the means to the view, but is elim­i­nat­ed from the frame to cre­ate the illu­sion of Nature as pure/pristine/untouched. This nos­tal­gia for an Orientalizing/colonizing fan­ta­sy is also, per­haps, the recre­ation of a phal­lo­cen­tric rape fantasy?

Yet Nature always/already exists along­side indus­try and tech­nol­o­gy. Nature is always/already part of indus­try and tech­nol­o­gy in that indus­try and tech­nol­o­gy are con­struct­ed, at root/base, from nat­ur­al mate­ri­als, and industry/technology is always/already “nat­ur­al” in that industry/technology are organ­ic cre­ations of bio­log­i­cal organ­isms of our plan­et. Mean­ing that the oxy­moron­ic term “man made” is a false sep­a­ra­tion from “nature made.” As if “man” is some­how above/in charge of/master of nature, as opposed to a part of and sub­ject to the “laws” of nature. “Man made” is not nec­es­sar­i­ly pro­gres­sivist or “evo­lu­tion­ary” (in a pos­i­tivist sense), either. “Man made” is an evo­lu­tion­ary process, yes, but eas­i­ly a process that could lead to extinc­tion, as could any num­ber of evo­lu­tion­ary processes.

Nat­ur­al ecosys­tems are, bio­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing, all plan­e­tar­i­ly inter­con­nect­ed, and so there is no such thing as “pris­tine” Nature. The act of dis­cov­ery auto­mat­i­cal­ly cre­ates a First Con­tact between Nature and Tech­nol­o­gy even in out­er space—the result being that the definition/scope of Nature is only enlarged? It’s inter­est­ing that out­er space seem­ing­ly belongs to the realm of Technology/Science/Science Fic­tion, until First Con­tact is made, at which point the “flag is plant­ed” and it becomes a focus of col­o­niza­tion, domin­ion, belong­ing to, and hence Nature. Nature in this sense is con­struct­ed as pas­sive, and await­ing col­o­niza­tion. Nature only exists once ownership/dominion occurs, and is there­fore a term of prop­er­ty rights and col­o­niza­tion. (Hence align­ment with the fem­i­nine and racial­ized others.)

Thus, Nature is always/already Cyborg.

And so what does it mean to trou­ble the bina­ries between Nature and Tech­nol­o­gy in rep­re­sen­ta­tions of, par­tic­u­lar­ly, Nature? What does an inter­ven­tion that attempts to desta­bi­lize the essen­tial­ized notion of Nature as an exoti­cized, fetishized, fem­i­nized, pas­sive, “pris­tine” Oth­er look like?

And in a fem­i­nist rewrit­ing of the pri­mal rape fan­ta­sy (and its nos­tal­gic iter­a­tions) doesn’t Nature tend to trump Tech­nol­o­gy (i.e., nat­ur­al dis­as­ters such as floods, earth­quakes, tor­na­does, tsunamis, etc.)?

And if nature is always/already Cyborg, does this mean that Nature, like all Cyborgs, is semi­ot­i­cal­ly unsta­ble, but also mete­o­ro­log­i­cal­ly volatile (and pos­si­bly unhap­py at being tam­pered with/interfered with by her cyber­genic creator(s))?

With respect to lit­er­ary rep­re­sen­ta­tions, I also feel that con­tem­po­rary ren­di­tions of tra­di­tion­al Asian forms are par­tic­u­lar­ly guilty of rep­re­sent­ing Nature in this “pris­tine,” fetishized, Ori­en­tal­ized man­ner which (in tan­dem with the appro­pri­a­tion of a tra­di­tion­al Asian form by a non-Asian prac­ti­tion­er), leads to a sense of dou­ble Ori­en­tal­iz­ing (both for­mal and the­mat­ic): “muse­um cul­ture” nos­tal­gia for a pre-West­ern­ized Asia, etc. This is ridicu­lous giv­en what a tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-dri­ven and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-savvy group of coun­tries com­prise con­tem­po­rary Asia.

Non-Asian prac­ti­tion­ers of haiku, tan­ka, sen­ryu, et al. are not auto­mat­i­cal­ly offen­sive­ly Ori­en­tal­ist for their appro­pri­a­tion of the forms, per se (although the ques­tion of (mis)appropriation here is def­i­nite­ly worth dis­cussing), but rather for their per­for­mance of the form in such a way that rei­fies and express­es a nos­tal­gia for Ori­en­tal­ist stereotypes—particularly through rely­ing on sta­t­ic imagery of/for a Nature-that-is-no-more (pure, pris­tine, etc.) in a lin­guis­tic style that is like­wise static/dated in terms of con­tem­po­rary poet­ry and poet­ics. (As anoth­er sub­set is (mis)appropriation, per­haps we might con­sid­er West­ern/non-Asian “haiku” (and oth­er) soci­eties that sim­i­lar­ly defend the “puri­ty” and “tra­di­tion” of the form—even as it has already been West­ern­ized through trans­la­tion and non-cal­li­graph­ic practices.)

#stringof­beads plays in this flu­id, hybrid spec­trum between Nature and Tech­nol­o­gy, matri­archy and patri­archy, occi­den­tal and “Ori­en­tal,” pay­ing homage to that which is lost, destroyed, and made extinct through ele­giac intru­sions of #kazen­oden­wa (“wind phone”) poems.

Lee Ann Ror­i­paugh is the author of four vol­umes of poet­ry: Dan­dar­i­ans (Milk­weed Edi­tions, 2014), On the Cusp of a Dan­ger­ous Year (South­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2009), Year of the Snake (South­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2004), and Beyond Heart Moun­tain (Pen­guin, 1999). A fifth vol­ume, tsuna­mi vs. the fukushi­ma 50, is forth­com­ing from Milk­weed in 2018. She was named win­ner of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Asian Amer­i­can Stud­ies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004, and a 1998 win­ner of the Nation­al Poet­ry Series. The cur­rent South Dako­ta State Poet Lau­re­ate, Ror­i­paugh is a pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Dako­ta, where she serves as Direc­tor of Cre­ative Writ­ing and Edi­tor-in-Chief of South Dako­ta Review.

Poetry / Simone Person

:: To the White Woman with the Tiny Backpack in Indiana Who Interrupted Me and a Friend to Ask if We Knew This Was a Non-Smoking Campus as I’m Halfway through a Cigarette ::

Yes, we knew, as surely as your Tevas know the way to the closest
food co-op. There is so little for me here. So little of me
here. So much time wasted crafting myself into edges, of flossing 
barbs through my teeth, and braiding razor blades in my hair 
just to be able to walk down the street. Just to smoke in peace
on the non-smoking campus I was born too broke and not
enough enough to even be assumed to attend. I don’t 
expect you to understand what it feels like here 
in Indiana, how the footsteps behind me on my walks home
are louder, that every car passing feels sinister. There’s less
sunlight every day. Fewer reasons that seem to warrant leaving bed. 
White people are always asking me questions we both know
the answers to, trying to string me up and drag me behind sentences.
And if this was the first time a white person talked at me 
like I was stupid, maybe my mouth wouldn’t have spit nails
so quick, rattling your tiny backpack, and transforming you
into afraid and me into the spook you knew I was anyways.

From the writer

:: Account ::

As a fat, queer, Black woman grow­ing up in the Mid­west, I’ve always felt out of place in my pre­dom­i­nate­ly white schools and towns. After mov­ing to an even more racial­ly homo­ge­neous state for grad­u­ate school, that feel­ing of per­pet­u­al dis­lo­ca­tion inten­si­fied, and peaked after leav­ing my abu­sive part­ner in the begin­ning of the year.

These poems are part of a larg­er project titled Smoke-Girl, which process­es inti­mate part­ner vio­lence and rape, espe­cial­ly the shame, self-blame, and anger. This project also focus­es on how often Black women are seen as dis­pos­able and as threats, and how Black women and our lives, expe­ri­ences, and trau­mas are usu­al­ly infan­tilized and seen as infe­ri­or, or even non-exis­tent, com­pared to our white and non-Black counterparts.

My work—both prose and poetry—is often drawn from my own expe­ri­ences and explores the ways dis­lo­ca­tion and trau­ma inter­sect, espe­cial­ly focus­ing on the con­fus­ing, con­tra­dic­to­ry, and unsa­vory emo­tions that arise at that inter­sec­tion. I want my work to push back against the Strong Black Woman tropes, to show­case that Black women can be vul­ner­a­ble, men­tal­ly ill, feel pain, and that we’re still here with any and all con­fus­ing, con­tra­dic­to­ry, and unsa­vory emo­tions despite the odds.

Simone Per­son grew up in Michi­gan and Tole­do, Ohio, and is a dual MFA/MA in Fic­tion and African Amer­i­can and African Dias­po­ra Stud­ies at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty. Her work has appeared in or is forth­com­ing from Puer­to del Sol, Kweli Jour­nal, among oth­ers, and has been anthol­o­gized in Crab Fat Mag­a­zine: Best of Year Three. She spo­rad­i­cal­ly uses Twit­ter and Insta­gram at @princxporkchop.

Poetry / Juan R. Palomo

:: A Shy One ::

A few minutes in the recreation cage.
Winter’s chill has begun to sneak into fall’s
time and, as he’s escorted back to his cell,
he shivers despite his recent exercise.

The Dallas Cowboys’ game will soon start. He won’t
see it and he won’t hear it but he will know
the results: as soon as the game is over,
the score will echo loudly from cell to cell.

The Cowboys will play again the next Sunday
and Sundays after that until the season
ends. Then they’ll start another season, only
he might not be around to hear about it.

The days are growing short. Fifty days before
his own date with fate, he is now seeing the
world through the eyes of the hundreds of men
who lived this experience in these same cells.

No doubt all felt about their approaching death
just as he does now: whatever happens is
God’s will, and all he can do now is pray—pray
for His favor, for strength—and smile and walk on.

A tour group comes through, looking like regular
Joes and Janes. Three women stand as far from him
as they can and look at him. He walks away
from his door. “Oh, a shy one,” he hears one say.


 

:: His Future ::

1. The Barber

From his cell, he can see
the prison barber on days
 
the recreation cage is used
for cutting hair. He enjoys

the view and he likes the
banter as inmates are led

in and out of the cage, 
and hearing them ask

for different cuts, as if they
had a choice. The view from

his cell window is not bad either. 
He can see horses in a pasture. 

He sees woods, and cars
on a road. Far away. 

2.  The Taquería

He thinks of how he’d feel   
if he were to suddenly find 
himself outside the walls, amid 

the aroma of a panadería 
or a taquería. How he would
love to order some taquitos

de barbacoa, con guacamole 
or pico de gallo. And a Bud
or a Dos Equis, por favor. 

He smiles, realizing he
just sounded as if he were 
in a cafe, talking to a waiter.

3.  The Painkillers

The painkillers make it bearable but he’s
beginning to wonder if there’s something 
really wrong. Could it be stress? Or is
it all in his mind? His body may be filled

with pain, he tells himself, but he should
not allow pain to also take over his days,
and he struggles to remain in good humor.
He just has to learn to be more active,

that’s all, and hopeful. He wonders if the
hearing on the twenty-ninth was held.
He doubts it, for he’s sure he would have 
heard by now if the court had set his date.

From the writer

:: Account ::

Nine­teen years ago I became friends with a per­son on Texas’ Death Row, Roge­lio (Roy) Reyes Cannady.

Over the next twelve years, Roge­lio and I exchanged let­ters at least once a week, some­times more often. Sev­en months after our first com­mu­ni­ca­tion, I made my first of many vis­its to Liv­ingston, where the state’s death-row inmates are housed. Each let­ter, each vis­it told me this was a spe­cial per­son, extreme­ly intel­li­gent. I soon real­ized he was also a damn good writer, despite his nev­er hav­ing fin­ished high school.

His case was on appeal through­out most of our friend­ship, but Roge­lio was a real­ist and knew that soon­er or lat­er his time would come, and he asked me if I could be a wit­ness to his exe­cu­tion. I agreed, reluc­tant­ly. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I was unable to keep my promise (for rea­sons that would take too much space to explain), but we remained friends and in con­stant contact.

Three months before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion date of Novem­ber 6, 2008, he was moved to what is called “Death Watch,” a group of cells designed to hold inmates whose dates are approach­ing. It was then that he decid­ed he want­ed to blog about the rest of his days on earth. Even though he had nev­er seen the Inter­net, he had heard and read about blogs and was intrigued by the idea. Of course, he had no access to a com­put­er, much less the Inter­net, so he asked me to start and main­tain a blog for him. He wrote his posts, in long hand, and mailed them to me to tran­scribe and post. I received his last post a few days after his even­tu­al exe­cu­tion, May 19, 2010.

I have always known I would write about my rela­tion­ship with Roge­lio, and about our cor­re­spon­dence. I just didn’t know how or when. Ear­li­er this year, how­ev­er, in response to a prompt in a poet­ry work­shop, it became clear to me that verse was how I would address it, and I wrote a poem based on a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion I had with him a few hours before he died, and on a blog post from a few days earlier.

I wrote oth­er poems, includ­ing the two fea­tured here, based on his words as found in some of the hun­dreds of let­ters he wrote to me. In many ways, these are his words and thoughts. These are his poems.

In writ­ing them, I wish to offer oth­ers a bet­ter insight into the dai­ly lives and thoughts—and the humanity—of some of those we con­demn to death. In doing so, I also hope to allow myself a bet­ter under­stand­ing of that friendship.

Juan R. Palo­mo was born into a migrant farm­work­er fam­i­ly in North Dako­ta and grew up in South Texas and sev­er­al Mid­west­ern states. He received a BS in art edu­ca­tion from Texas State Uni­ver­si­ty and an MA in jour­nal­ism and pub­lic affairs from The Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty. He was a reporter, colum­nist, and edi­to­r­i­al writer for The Hous­ton Post, cov­ered reli­gion for the Austin Amer­i­can-States­man, and wrote a col­umn for USA TODAY. His work has appeared in The Acen­tos Review.

Poetry / Paul Otremba

:: The New Republic of California ::

I was not remembering the Republic—the cooked egg expertly peeled and split,
a more perfect union toppled by a hair—because that was love they split.

It’s a problem with the math, being told to pick points on a map, then to imagine 
your body in towns you’ll never visit, the distance constantly split.

On this side, a landscape of prisons, pox, slumping extractions of minerals;
on that side, prayer groups and quarterly projections, so hardly a good split.

It’s the recipe for taking what can’t be lost and smashing it
from the charge and orbit, the spin of the matter/antimatter split.

The climate never lets you forget—water might get into the cracks
and freeze, so the face of the statue would split.

On this side, the hand-dipped rag full of gasoline; on that side, the same 
hand offering the rag as a salve to your lip it had split.

I was ready to go Dutch, but your grand juries, emergency sessions,
and Sunday schools have racked up a bill I can’t split.

So what if we cry, Lightning! No hard feelings! Then slap palms moving  
through the line-up—Good game. Good game—just call the score a split?

Don’t feel bad if you recognize you’re just a little bit excited. Everybody  
knows when you come up aces, there’s reward in just saying you’ll split.

We still believe in fair warnings, like any good protagonist: One if by late night 
host. Two if by C-SPAN. Then I’ll know to get back on my horse and split.


 

:: Peripatetic ::

	—After Pablo Neruda and Tomás Q. Morín

I don’t want to continue as a root and a tomb.
I don’t want all this misery.
And I don’t think I ever imagined a workable future,

or any future, for that matter, reading in the bedroom,
or basement, or public park, although getting on
at Station A presupposed some notion of Station B.

And of course it’s not like a train,
but more like a slide, if a slide were full of holes
falling onto other slides with still other holes

opening upon new surfaces to walk along,
this street onto this street, this block
of condos with 24-hour concierge, business

and fitness centers, or these homes hugging
lot lines. Each encouragement announced 
for the continually updating optimal route 

inevitably leading where? It’s the kind of game
we can play interminably: was it getting in the car 
or not getting in the car? The absentee ballot

instead of just rolling over in bed?
If you ask me today, I’ll say I’m tired,
while in front of the cameras, a man in all seriousness

claims if you inspect a gift horse’s mouth 
and discover rotten teeth, it’s only the horse’s 
moral failing you are witness to. Of course,

it isn’t about a horse, and the gift
is only a gift in the sense that you didn’t ask for it
but woke to it in your bed sheets anyway. 

I’d say prop him up, look him in the eyes,
if they weren’t only divots plugged with coins
and palm ashes. His tongue is forked

and the tips can fill both his ears. What image
of the world does he summon forth
when his tongue beats the air?

From the writer

:: Account ::

“The New Repub­lic of California”

It’s hard not to get caught up in the divi­sive­ness of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, and I’m find­ing it hard­er and hard­er not to give in to some exhaus­tion about main­tain­ing a more per­fect union. When I read some tweets a cou­ple months ago that joked about start­ing a new coun­try on the west coast that would take as its prin­ci­ples real lib­er­ty, accep­tance, and com­pas­sion, I had the thought, “Why not? I’d go.” This poem let me indulge in that rhetoric, with—I hope—a healthy bit of skep­ti­cism and self-mock­ery. The “rav­ish­ing dis­uni­ties” of the ghaz­al seemed appro­pri­ate for the sub­ject, and ear­ly on in the writ­ing process, I had the idea for how I might “sign” my name into the final couplet.

“Peri­patet­ic”

This is anoth­er poem in the spir­it of exhaus­tion with the state of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can pol­i­tics and gov­er­nance. Find­ing myself lit­er­al­ly think­ing “I’m tired” remind­ed me of Pablo Neruda’s great poem “Walk­ing Around,” and so I went and reread Tomás Q. Morín’s excel­lent trans­la­tion of that poem, which let me feel that sol­i­dar­i­ty of poet­ry and its human com­pan­ion­ship. The poem opens with two lines from Morín’s trans­la­tion. That com­pan­ion­ship of poet­ry helps me when I’m slid­ing into my despair.

Paul Otrem­ba is the author of two poet­ry col­lec­tions, Pax Amer­i­cana (Four Way Books, 2015) and The Cur­ren­cy (Four Way Books, 2009). Recent poems have appeared or are forth­com­ing in West Branch, the Keny­on Review, Over­sound, and Waxwing. He is an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of cre­ative writ­ing at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty and teach­es in the War­ren Wil­son low-res­i­den­cy MFA program.