Poetry / Justin Carter 

:: See You In The Lobby ::

	
When Diana Taurasi says to the ref
see you in the lobby, I think

about when she put her fist 
through a door after a playoff loss

& how, if she could, she’d do
the same to the officials. It’s a shame

the phrase contains the connotations
of violence because otherwise

it’d be such a beautiful thing
to say: see you in the lobby

of my dreams, see you in the lobby
of that hotel we stayed at

the night of our wedding,
how we fell asleep before we even

put the jalapeno corn away,
& the last time I saw someone

in a lobby—your parents, at the hospital, 
beckoning them in to see our child.

From the writer

:: Account ::

This poem comes from my man­u­script Lat­er­als, a col­lec­tion that uses sports as the lens through which it inves­ti­gates things like love, par­ent­ing, death. I grew up lov­ing sports and part of me always want­ed to be a sports writer, though I went the “get an MFA” route. But there’s not a lot of mon­ey in acad­e­mia and at some point I found a paid sports blog­ging gig as a side job while I pur­sued my PhD and slow­ly that just kind of became my main thing, until I ulti­mate­ly left acad­e­mia. I didn’t write any poems for maybe three years until it seemed like I might be gone from that world for­ev­er, and then at some point, the words just showed back up, and my poems kept tend­ing toward using sports as its way of under­stand­ing my life. I think work­ing a day job where I’m always writ­ing about oth­er peo­ple, about ath­letes and games, has made me veer in the com­plete oppo­site direc­tion in my cre­ative work, to dig deep­er into the per­son­al, but told through this par­tic­u­lar frame.

Justin Carter is the author of Bra­zos (Belle Point Press, 2024). His poems have appeared in Bat City Review, DIAGRAM, Sono­ra Review, and oth­er spaces. Orig­i­nal­ly from the Texas Gulf Coast, Justin cur­rent­ly lives in Iowa and works as a sports writer and editor.

Poetry / Christian J. Collier 

From the writer

:: Account ::

These three poems are part of my the­sis for grad school. The cen­tral theme of the work is an array of things and peo­ple that have haunt­ed the speak­er over the course of his life. I think, as an Amer­i­can man, a South­ern man, and a Black man alive today, allow­ing myself to be more hon­est and open in my life and in my cre­ative writ­ing has been a nec­es­sary endeav­or, espe­cial­ly giv­en the dis­course sur­round­ing man­hood and mas­culin­i­ty the past few years. Addi­tion­al­ly, by turn­ing inward and writ­ing about not only myself but where I grew up and moved back to as of a few years ago, I gained the abil­i­ty to speak out­ward in a man­ner that was new for me. I’ve arrived at a place where I can reject, inter­ro­gate, etc. many of the ways I was con­di­tioned or, as a means of sur­vival, con­di­tioned myself as a man. As a result, I chal­lenged myself to extend grace to for­mer selves as well as the flawed indi­vid­u­als who have, since the 90s, left deep impres­sions on me, and I see each of these poems as being illus­tra­tive of that task. 

Chris­t­ian J. Col­lier is a Black, South­ern writer, arts orga­niz­er, and teach­ing artist who resides in Chat­tanooga, TN. He is the author of Greater Ghost (Four Way Books, 2024), and the chap­book The Gleam­ing of the Blade, the 2021 Edi­tors’ Selec­tion from Bull City Press. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Poet­ry, Decem­ber, and else­where. A 2015 Loft Spo­ken Word Immer­sion Fel­low, he is also the win­ner of the 2022 Porch Prize in Poet­ry and the 2020 Pro­For­ma Con­test from Grist Jour­nal.

Poetry / Blas Falconer 

:: Gold ::

We came looking for it.
A little farther. A little longer. 

One brick, then
another. A house. A chapel. We will

live here. We will pray here.
And if some finds its way

into our pockets, who
will blame us? The small stone

biting your hip all day.
Tracing the impression with

your finger at night.
Mosquitos rising up

in a cloud. A streak of blood
smeared across your hand.

The fevers. The heavy sleep.
The raids. The fires. Everyone

looking. Everyone looking
away. Which way? Dear God,

which way now? Find me,
it says, sinking deeper

into the ground. I am not here,
it says, waiting for you.

:: The Belltower ::

                                              After Campanario, Jose Melendez Contreras, 1960


It is alarm—this panic of
sparrows loosed from

the belltower, the night air
come to life. They

cannot settle, not while
you’re here. The bell

like a stone, the dome
a heart, the birds ringing

over the rooftops, someone
somewhere, waiting for you.

:: Ars Poetica: A Cento ::

Over there, says the wind
a sail ready to depart
with my little joy

four centuries of dawn casting themselves into the landscape
my plainest song
Let it be a duel of music in the air

to open my arms to nothing
rolling in a blue without ships, without port
something like a world paused in its history

In each dawn we will dissolve together
and collapse in echoes across the earth
and all the stars will come down singing

There is so much sea swimming in my stars
Only leave me as I am, ringing


                                                           —for Julia de Burgos

From the writer

:: Account ::

For a few years now, I’ve been writ­ing explic­it­ly about Puer­to Rico, con­sid­er­ing not just my expe­ri­ences there or fam­i­ly leg­end, but its his­to­ry, art, and lan­guage. One poem exam­ines the col­lapse of Arecibo’s obser­va­to­ry, once the largest sin­gle-aper­ture tele­scope in the world. One stud­ies the aban­doned set­tle­ment of Caparra. The three poems fea­tured here come from that project. “Gold,” a per­sona poem, is writ­ten in the voice of those who’d first come, who’d do any­thing, for the wealth that they imag­ined wait­ing for them. “The Bell­tow­er” was inspired by a paint­ing, Jose Melen­dez Con­tr­eras’ Cam­pa­nario (1960). The Cubism-influ­enced image ren­ders a flock of birds in flight, alarmed per­haps by the sound of bells mark­ing the hour. “Ars Poet­i­ca” is a found poem inspired by the work of the great Puer­to Rican poet Julia de Bur­gos, who my grand­moth­er recit­ed and laud­ed through­out my youth. Years lat­er, I long for this place that loomed so large in my child­hood, that shaped so many of the peo­ple dear­est to me. Sit­ting down to write is a way of return­ing to the island—the coun­try­side, the town square, the sea—and the peo­ple I once knew there.

Blas Fal­con­er is the author of four poet­ry col­lec­tions, includ­ing Rara Avis (Four Way Books, 2024). He is the recip­i­ent of a poet­ry fel­low­ship from the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts and a Mau­reen Egen Writ­ers Exchange Award from Poets & Writ­ers. Fal­con­er teach­es in the MFA pro­gram at San Diego State Uni­ver­si­ty and is the edi­tor-in-chief at Poet­ry Inter­na­tion­al Online.

Poetry / Melissa Fite Johnson 

:: Found: Lines from My Mother’s Emails, 2002–2012 ::

	

First, I don’t like this new Hotmail format, do you? Sorry I was kind of
winey-piney when you left and put the guilt on you. In truth, it had been
a nice day. I know you’re very BUSY but, of late, you don’t respond
to my e-mails, which is frustrating to me (especially my last one
about my missing cell phone). I finally found it for I had to ASSUME,
if you weren’t responding, you didn’t have it. Let’s keep politeness going,
and even if it’s very brief, respond to each other’s e-mails. Sorry
if I’ve been too needy. I was disappointed, but that’s life. Thinking of you
in your very BUSY week! (Be sure to take your vitamins). It’s disappointing
that your brother doesn’t keep in closer touch. He “fades away”
every weekend. These days I miss seeing you! Maybe the nicer thing
(for my feelings) would be if you’d said to your friend, “My mother and I
usually meet for dinner on Thurs. nights but you’re more than welcome
to join us” or “She has Bible Study at 7:00, so I could come over then.”
Hi Busy Daughter, I miss you! I’m sorry about yesterday. I overreacted
to what I felt was a hurtful situation. Every year, I’ve gone to Dad’s grave.
You would’ve known if you’d cared enough to ask or shown some interest.
And let’s face it, I wouldn’t have had to be there for you to go to Dad’s grave
with Marc. Has he ever even seen it? It’s sad how things are evolving
between us… I will try to control my temper and my comments more.
Sad about Patrick Swayze’s death, huh? Hi Busy Daughter.
I sure understand how busy you are. I miss you! Today it’s 12 years ago
that Dad died. Dear busy daughter, I know you can’t do the movies
until Sunday, but are you able to do dinner tonight? That’s fine, but maybe
(when school starts), we can get back to that Thurs. night tradition.
I understand where you’re coming from but, truly, I hardly see you
(once or twice a week). I’ll miss you, dear daughter! I’m sorry about
all I might have done to upset or hurt you in your childhood and teen years.
Circumstances (for all of us) were not ideal (with Dad’s health situation)
and I’m sure that stress and worries caused me to say or have done
some hurtful things. I agree it doesn’t excuse my bad behavior but I do feel
it does help to explain it. I don’t want to have the few, precious times
we’re together end up being painful. Well, maybe I’ll see you Thursday night
or not. It must be your lunch or planning time for you to write such a nice,
long e-mail. I know you DO try and you’re a precious daughter. It’s me, not you.

From the writer

:: Account ::

I used to believe my moth­er was two peo­ple. Twen­ty per­cent of the time, she was who I wrote about in the essay The Account pub­lished last Novem­ber. The oth­er eighty per­cent of the time, she was her “real” self, lov­ing and kind—the per­son in this poem. Grow­ing up, I told myself to weath­er the not-her times and focus on the true her (much as I would lat­er do with an alco­holic boyfriend when he drank). As I entered my twen­ties, the decade of my life this poem spans, this kind of ratio­nal­iz­ing became hard­er, and so did our relationship.

In 2014, I insist­ed we go to coun­sel­ing togeth­er. My moth­er brought to our first ses­sion the email I’d sent her stat­ing that if she were any­one else—a friend, an aunt—I would’ve cut ties with her long ago. In that email I went on to explain all the rea­sons why, but my moth­er didn’t bring that part. She brought the three sen­tences that hurt her and lit­er­al­ly cut away the sev­en para­graphs that hurt me. When I filled our ther­a­pist in on the miss­ing con­text, my moth­er said she didn’t remem­ber any of those inci­dents. She didn’t deny any­thing, but she shrugged and said, “Her mem­o­ry is so much bet­ter than mine.” We tried coun­sel­ing for a year, until she moved to Kansas City to live with her new partner.

I wrote this found poem in 2023, after I final­ly decid­ed to end our rela­tion­ship. Read­ing through our old emails in search of under­stand­ing and clo­sure, I real­ized that lines I once con­sid­ered lov­ing and kind were actu­al­ly incred­i­bly manip­u­la­tive. The word “busy” in par­tic­u­lar is a weapon. Hon­est­ly, it felt heal­ing to cut and paste her words to suit my purposes—the reverse of what hap­pened in that first coun­sel­ing ses­sion. Com­pil­ing this poem helped me real­ize that while my moth­er has apol­o­gized to me, as she did at the counselor’s and in these emails, she has nev­er addressed the spe­cif­ic hurts I’ve tried to dis­cuss with her. Those she cut away; those she didn’t remem­ber. Instead, she was sor­ry for all she “might have done.” My moth­er wasn’t two peo­ple. All of her words and actions were the true her, and they were all rea­sons to leave.

Melis­sa Fite John­son is the author of three full-length col­lec­tions, most recent­ly Midlife Abecedar­i­an (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, and else­where. Melis­sa teach­es high school Eng­lish in Lawrence, KS, where she and her hus­band live with their dogs.

Poetry / Brooke Harries 

:: Corolla ::

	
You will have everything you wanted
when you no longer need it. You will
own a car and have hours to drive,
but will no longer be a smoker. 
That turn to the highway that made 
no sense will separate from another 
dead end and you will hold each 
like a sprig of garnish. You will drive 
to Maine alone, eat a lobster, 
and the warmth of melted butter will 
remind you of popcorn, then of teeth, 
then losing the first few, and your mother, 
the Tooth Fairy, unfailing in that one role. 
You realize you forgave her before too late.
Your heart hurts for the day you cleaned
her apartment as the September sun set, 
one sibling shut in a home, another 
wandering off. How you drove back 
to the city in your friend’s Corolla. 
You are no longer friends with her. 
Your needing wasn’t mutual. Sometimes 
you heard her tell her other friend I love
you on the phone and wondered
who said it first. You miss her and 
you miss your mother and your sisters
and you are in Maine with a book 
on a dining table. You will want to 
hurl yourself onto the hotel bed and call 
someone out of the blue, but you turn 
on the TV and watch Forensic Files 
without sound. The jumping wavy lines 
of its title flare yellow and red across 
the screen and you elect to search 
for some ice. You slip your key 
into your hand and enter the hall 
with the plastic bucket. You find 
that nothing, not the click of a door 
opening nearby, elevator, fire escape, 
janitorial closet, escapes your clattering 
loneliness. You eye the paisley floor 
like peacocks in traffic staring at you 
through their desperate show.

From the writer

:: Account ::

“Corol­la” is from a col­lec­tion of poems that explores the nuances of grow­ing up with a men­tal­ly ill moth­er through the lens­es of gen­der, eco­nom­ic strug­gle, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, and the con­flu­ence of the nat­ur­al and mod­ern in my cur­rent home in the Deep South. Back­ground­ing domes­tic imagery and daili­ness, the poems med­i­tate on thwart­ed inti­ma­cy in var­i­ous rela­tion­ships. As my speaker’s voice moves between a humor­ous and plain­tive tone, the poems make music out of painful rec­ol­lec­tion. Music and song lyrics also appear as sub­jects, sig­nal­ing ties to mem­o­ries that are inescapable. Food appears in the poems too, link­ing my speaker’s past and present. My aim in writ­ing these poems was to be com­pan­ion­able to read­ers, to hon­est­ly exam­ine child­hood mem­o­ries, and to account for why cer­tain moments cor­re­late with the past so strong­ly. Although my moth­er has passed away, I have not writ­ten con­ven­tion­al ele­gies for her; rather, I have been com­pelled to write poems that inves­ti­gate mun­dan­i­ties that she would have noticed, often cen­ter­ing scenes on the lone­ly moment an old wound is remem­bered. Work­ing against reifi­ca­tion and over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of com­plex char­ac­ters, I hope to bring more ques­tions to con­ver­sa­tions about gen­der and men­tal illness.

Brooke Har­ries’ work has appeared in Den­ver Quar­ter­ly, Lau­rel Review, North Amer­i­can Review, Puer­to del Sol, Sala­man­der, Sixth Finch, and else­where. She was award­ed the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets Harold Tay­lor Prize, the Dorothy and Don­ald Strauss Endowed Dis­ser­ta­tion & The­sis Fel­low­ship, the UC Irvine Grad­u­ate Award for Excel­lence in Poet­ry, and the Joan John­son Award for Poet­ry. She has an MFA from UC Irvine and is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a PhD at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Mississippi.

Poetry / Jessica Nirvana Ram 

From the writer

:: Account ::

I’ve always want­ed to write about why I became an organ donor but I nev­er knew the con­text with­in which I want­ed to write about it until I reached a point beyond sui­ci­dal ideation. To look back at my thought process with clear­er eyes, with growth, helped me recon­tex­tu­al­ize this idea of offer­ing one­self up. It is pret­ty nor­mal in my poems to offer up body parts as metaphor so to think about it more lit­er­al­ly it was like see­ing through fog a bit. Like oh, I’m loved dif­fer­ent­ly now, I don’t have to sec­tion myself off for love. It is giv­en, freely and this love makes me want to stay alive. How lib­er­at­ing it was to reach the end of this poem and say: I want to live. There’s also some­thing about this form, the back­slash­es, that mir­rors the con­tent for me. This sec­tion­ing, like pieces com­ing togeth­er to form a whole, how there is no whole with­out the pieces. I’ve been writ­ing in this form a lot, it frees up my brain in a way tra­di­tion­al lin­eation can­not and I find myself arriv­ing more suc­cinct­ly at truths when I reframe a poem into this form. It both slows it down and makes it more flu­id to me, like rests in a musi­cal score, an addi­tion to the cadence, a notable beat. Some peo­ple con­sid­er this a prose poem and I don’t know that I agree. It feels fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent than a prose poem, and it isn’t usu­al lineation—perhaps then its own cat­e­go­ry? Either way, I enjoy tin­ker­ing with it. See­ing how it shapes my lan­guage. Unearthing it bit by bit. 

Jes­si­ca Nir­vana Ram is an Indo-Guyanese poet. She is the author of the poet­ry col­lec­tion Earth­ly Gods (Game Over Books, 2024). Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Hon­ey Lit­er­ary, and else­where. Jes­si­ca was a 2022–23 Stadler Fel­low, she cur­rent­ly works as the Pub­lic­i­ty and Out­reach Man­ag­er for the Stadler Cen­ter for Poet­ry and Lit­er­ary Arts. She lives and writes in Lewis­burg, PA.

Poetry / Justin Rigamonti 

:: To the Dog Who Wanted to Fetch the Moon ::

	
Whose human said, Pepper, baby, it’s too far,
we can only watch. Who wouldn’t understand
too far if you spelled it out. Who sees a ball
up there and longs to circle it, nose it, take it
in her mouth. Pepper, baby, it’s okay, I know
you won’t give up. Welcome to the melancholy
club. We’re out here nightly, gazing, longing
to lay a hand on her immaculate light. Would it
be cold, would it be hard? We know, and yet
you drop your ears, ignore your human like we
ignore the scientists—they say we’re doomed,
leashed to a small blue stone. It’s true, but look,
there she is, bone white, stunning. The god
of everything beyond us. And so we howl.

From the writer

:: Account ::

My near­ly fin­ished man­u­script starts with a poem about a game my broth­er and I used to play: we’d close our eyes and try to imag­ine we’d nev­er exist­ed. It felt like reach­ing out and touch­ing the cold, black sur­face of the void. And the ques­tion my book asks is what it means to desire any­thing in a life that might’ve nev­er hap­pened. To be a sub­jec­tive con­scious­ness that rose from noth­ing and will return to it and wants things in between: it’s a daz­zling, infu­ri­at­ing, and beau­ti­ful thing to be, right? Many of the poems in the book are son­nets because I love the sim­ple mech­a­nism of the vol­ta as a way of cre­at­ing a brief sense of clar­i­ty, “a momen­tary stay against con­fu­sion.” Which is also how it felt to watch the inter­net video of the dog that inspired this poem—the dog who remind­ed me so much of myself and my poems, lit­tle mam­mals whin­ing sweet­ly for some­thing utter­ly beyond them. Watch­ing the video con­soled me for a moment, soft­ened the cor­ners of my bewil­der­ment, and like a son­net, cleared the air.

Justin Rig­a­mon­ti teach­es Eng­lish at Port­land Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege and serves as the Pro­gram Coor­di­na­tor for PCC’s Car­olyn Moore Writ­ing Res­i­den­cy. He’s also the Poet­ry Coor­di­na­tor for Chat­ter PDX, Portland’s new Sun­day morn­ing cham­ber music + spo­ken word event. Justin’s poems have been recent­ly pub­lished or are forth­com­ing in Ploughshares, Hayden’s Fer­ry Review, Fron­tier Poet­ry, Amer­i­can Poet­ry Review, Rat­tle, Smar­tish Pace, and New Ohio Review.

Poetry / Caitlin Thomson 

:: FeelingWise ™ (patent pending) ::

	
In the impossible future you can order emotions, 
via an app like Uber Eats but for your heart. 

Initially therapists panic and announce a boycott.
They remind everyone that they have terminal degrees

and are focused on the long road of living, not the 
emotions felt right now, but on crafting a better, future you. 

After their initial panic dies down, and the early studies roll in, 
the boycott is forgotten. Their number of patients is unimpacted. 

They might even occasionally indulge in a discreet visit 
from the delivery person themselves.

Like any food delivery service the results are a bit 
of a mixed bag. They almost always don’t get nuanced 

emotions right. When you order a post vacation high, 
you tend to be left feeling over caffeinated.  

An order for the giddiness of first love generally results 
in a sluggish feeling of contentment.

Sometimes the orders get mixed up and you are left 
feeling righteous anger, 

while your neighbor across the street experiences euphoria. 
The hangover from both is brutal, 

and you are left regretting 
what you did with all those eggs. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

All of these poems were writ­ten dur­ing Nation­al Poet­ry Month 2024. I have been writ­ing with the same group of poets now for over a decade. Some I only know via the pri­vate Blog­ger account we all share, and some I now know beyond that.

I think most of my poems this spring, and late­ly, strug­gle with this ten­sion between writ­ing pure­ly about ideas and writ­ing about actu­al lived expe­ri­ence. I per­son­al­ly enjoy writ­ing just about ideas, hypo­thet­i­cal poems if you will, but the poems I’ve always been able to pub­lish are poems about ideas through the lens of personhood.

For a long time I’ve kept my hypo­thet­i­cal poems apart from my per­son­al poems, sub­mit­ting them only in the con­text of each oth­er but final­ly this spring I’ve decid­ed to acknowl­edge that my thoughts and ideas are as much a part of me as my lived expe­ri­ence, even if it doesn’t always seem that way.

Caitlin Thomson’s work has appeared in numer­ous antholo­gies and lit­er­ary jour­nals includ­ing: The Penn Review, The Adroit Jour­nal, The Fid­dle­head, Bar­row Street, Wrap­around South, and Radar Poet­ry. You can learn more about her writ­ing at www.caitlinthomson.com.

Poetry / Kerry Trautman 

:: Statistics ::

	
My blood created two daughters whose blood 
I fear for, now they are long dry from the fluid 

I floated them in. If statistics belong in poetry, 
let it be known that one in four pregnancies 

ends in miscarriage. None of mine did. But I would 
bleed a year away if it meant my girls could

keep whatever they want. An average US pregnancy 
will undergo 5.2 ultrasounds. A technician imaging 

my abdominal aorta once swore she could see 
straight through to the table, engrossed in how fully 

my pulsing vessel exposed itself. One in four women 
is sexually assaulted. I’ve never been. Have I ruined 

my daughters’ odds? Five percent of rapes in 
the US create pregnancy. Forty million 

MRIs are performed in the US each year. I want 
to see inside my daughters’ current and future bodies—

eliminate any anomalies, pain. One in eight women 
gets breast cancer. As an ultrasound technician 

hovered over a tumor in my left breast, I couldn’t seem
to convince the biopsy needle to find malignancy 

for the sake of my daughters’ breasts. My body is
old, but good could still be done toward its 

end. Like the music the nurse forgot to pipe into my 
leg MRI until I had only five minutes left inside. 

We all want to know how long until our luck runs 
out. There is resilience we don’t want to discover 

we have. My MRI shrieked and banged and 
robot-laser-clanged into my soft tissue, ending 

with five almost-lovely minutes of Miles Davis. 
My ultrasounds could not divulge future damage 

in me or in what I created. My MRI showed fluid 
ballooned around my joint. Lucky me—nothing broken.

From the writer

:: Account ::

Every­one talks about how much eas­i­er it gets to be a par­ent as your kids get old­er. And it is true, in a lot of ways. How­ev­er the chal­lenges they face become these very “adult” things, that we are still pow­er­less to solve for them. That sense of parental vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty nev­er changes. Our chil­dren are always these open wounds in us we need to pro­tect. In late 2023 and through ear­ly 2024, I faced some health issues—an ankle injury and a breast tumor (which thank­ful­ly turned out to be benign.) I also had my first colonoscopy in this time peri­od, which made it into an ear­li­er draft, but which I edit­ed out (you’re wel­come.) The med­ical pro­ce­dures I under­went had me think­ing about all of the vital infor­ma­tion we are able to dis­cov­er about our bod­ies, and yet how much we can nev­er know. We bear chil­dren, raise them, then release them into this world of vast unknowables.

Ker­ry Traut­man is a life­long Ohioan whose work has appeared in numer­ous jour­nals and antholo­gies. She has served as judge or work­shop leader for the North­west region of Ohio’s “Poet­ry Out Loud” com­pe­ti­tion annu­al­ly since 2016. Ker­ry is a the­ater-lover, and in 2024, her one-act play “Mass” received a staged read­ing as a win­ner of The Tole­do Reper­toire Theater’s “Tole­do Voic­es” com­pe­ti­tion. Her books are Things That Come in Box­es (King Craft Press 2012,) To Have Hoped (Fin­ish­ing Line Press 2015,) Arti­facts (Night­Bal­let Press 2017,) To be Non­cha­lant­ly Alive (Kel­say Books 2020,) Mar­i­lyn: Self-Por­trait, Oil on Can­vas (Gut­ter Snob Books 2022,) Unknow­able Things (Road­side Press 2022,) and Irreg­u­lars (Stan­chion Books 2023.) In 2015, Unknow­able Things (then titled Lean­ing Into it) was a final­ist for the Nation­al Fed­er­a­tion of State Poet­ry Soci­eties Stevens Award and a semi­fi­nal­ist for the Crab Orchard Series 1^st Book Award.

Poetry / AJ White

:: Elsewhere’s Rain ::

My father watches me drink from
the corner of the motel room—
his stubble his grey face
I don't know him
but for years he will
keep getting in—
he is grasping after
my hand hauling me
across the void
the earth drags through.

                    ✦

Indigo hillside tidal wave,
wet stars luring tongues out of my interior—
the moon's white eye,
milk grin—
sky's cold atomic bonfire,
starlight more cleansing than rain.

                    ✦

All that year I ran down to the river
hoping to sober
but waiting to die—
the river grew a mouth
& drank me, much later
I grew covetous & flew.

                    ✦

There is a gleaming
& a concealing in this life,
an inner &
an outer proof.


                    ✦

Great wheel of the world
with light-year spokes,
my planet an aquamarine
marble in a shooter's game.

                    ✦

In the gutter, under
my toe, softer
than anticipated,
chickadee.

                    ✦

Blue throat of daylight,
death's six-walled jade tomb.

                    ✦

If life is not a miracle it is
a profound chemical emergence—
yet so often daybreak disappears
all I know of life on earth.

                    ✦

Black door in the mountainside,
blue door in the blade forest—
white door interlocutor onto
red-door grey-flesh room.

                    ✦

Stop, & feel the planet in its death roll—
which is meaner, gravity or light?

                    ✦

When at last you departed from me
I became you, watched you bloom
in sadness toward me,
hid within pity's wide mouth
like a minor chord:
sovereign, defiant & true.

                    ✦

From a secret place, suddenly,
clouds become what you want to see.

                    ✦

My hands hymnal into cistern;
rainclouds blister into rain.

:: I Was Here Before & Will Be Here Again ::

From the writer

:: Account ::

Man, what isn’t in “Elsewhere’s Rain”? It’s a sig­ni­fi­er sal­ad spritzed with pet­ri­chor. It’s hon­est­ly a bit over-laden: per­son­al nar­ra­tive (I could take you to that motel room—the car­pet was wine red), col­or-the­o­ris­tic iconog­ra­phy, word­play, a dead bird, a line I took from anoth­er of my poems then gave to a friend then took back, a shoutout to Jean Valen­tine (as is the whole poem), etc. Elsewhere’s rain is one of my favorite phe­nom­e­na: the dark cur­tain of rain you can see on the hori­zon when it isn’t rain­ing here. My past life, my active addic­tion, looks to me now like elsewhere’s rain. I can see it, off in the dis­tance: an opaque, sta­t­ic haze.

Some of what isn’t in that poem is in “I Was Here Before & Will Be Here Again” because, you know, life is cycli­cal, and one day I might dri­ve back into that rain again. I hope not, but I might. Sor­ry to get exis­ten­tial, but it’s impor­tant­ly true. I have been through a lot and will go through it all again in some form, the good and the bad and the amor­phous. I hope the mid­dle sec­tion of this poem, which is the last poem in my book, where I allow myself to preach, once, briefly, is not too annoy­ing. There is much we do not know about why we are here. But I sus­pect, in terms of some unknown variable(s), our uni­verse is a test. Per­haps it is being run for the ben­e­fit of some­thing that no longer exists. Everything—your whole life—feels like a test because it like­ly, in some ulti­mate sense or degree, is. Data may well be col­lect­ed or col­lec­table at the universe’s end by some­thing, even if you do not think you will be dis­cern­able as an enti­ty with­in it.