Poetry / Abriana Jetté

:: They Say It Makes the Heart Grow ::

 
Where does desire come from? When my husband
and I come together at night, I swear, I crave nothing.
I am so content to spend hours inside trusting
what he wants to watch on the television, it’s boring.
Others call it happiness. This is marriage, the working
at being bored. Running out of milk and washing floors
and then doing that again. Once more. An occasional walk in
the park, but most of the time, the yearning for something more.

When he and I are together what is there to crave?
It’s when we part that I begin overheating, feel as if I
might stop breathing and don’t want to be saved.
We all have something strange that keeps us high.
I bet we couldn’t change our vices if we tried.
I want my husband most after we say goodbye. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

What pleased me at the end of this poem was its con­nec­tion to Perse­phone. Even when I’m not try­ing, my poet­ry finds a way back to the Queen. Some­thing about her unset­tled nature excites me, or, it excites that voice writ­ing my poems. In my fab­ri­ca­tion, Perse­phone and Hades are rav­en­ous, pas­sion­ate, mad for one anoth­er when they are togeth­er, but when they are apart, well, when they are apart, they are hap­py. When I think about Perse­phone, I think a lot about the ten­sions between hap­pi­ness and desire. How­ev­er, I wasn’t think­ing about Perse­phone when I wrote this son­net. Its ori­gins are much, much more ordinary. 

One, two years ago, a late Mon­day morn­ing in late August, my hus­band takes his time going to work, so the usu­al Mon­day rou­tine is slowed down. I’m antsy to check my email. He wants me to stay in bed. Even­tu­al­ly, he gets up: brush­es his teeth, gets dressed, makes a cup of cof­fee for the road. We kiss good­bye. He shuts the door, lock­ing it, as is his habit. 

The room is silent and large and emp­ty, and I didn’t care what these emails are about any­way. He is gone, so I want him back. 

So I write about it. 

Equal parts ordi­nary and Perse­phone. That’s what accounts for this poem.

Born and raised in Brook­lyn, New York, Abri­ana Jet­té is the edi­tor of the anthol­o­gy series Stay Thirsty Poets, as well as a poet, essay­ist, and edu­ca­tor. Her work has appeared in Plume Poet­ry Jour­nal, The Moth, Riv­er Teeth, Seneca Review, and many oth­er places. Her research inter­ests include cre­ative writ­ing stud­ies and alter­na­tive ped­a­go­gies. She cur­rent­ly teach­es at Kean University. 

Poetry / Joshua Weiner

:: Stay Put ::

Row houses sharing walls 
mice moving like noises 
stirring between them 
getting ready to do something 
 
on the corner lot 
                               old crone 
sweet once 
                     a really fine girl (neighbors say) 
living right 
                     in the same spot 
her claim to the street 
going back longer 
stronger than any of us 
 
how many decades 
before she felt that 
voice 
               fire up 
for the first    
lick at kids 
just walking by 
 
witchy speech 
from a porch under her still 
paint chipping curling 
beneath gutters hanging off the roof-line 
disappearing faster 
than we were 
 
until she did 
intestate 
without heir 
 
subsequent squatters 
there for electricity 
running summer fans 
chased off by the ward rep 
 
at last sold off 
now reno hammers 
finish 
               what memory left 
 
dust clouds billow 
pushing time out the door 
an open mouth 
 
from the sidewalk 
                                   you hear axes 
killing drywall and crowbars 
for speed against wood 
 
old hurt piano 
alone out front 
for the first time 
                               feeling the sun 
penetrate to the spring steel 
waiting 
for the new blue 
dumpster 
 
I’m 54 
rounding the corner 
too heavy by a stone 
I think I’ll make it 
feet lifting like tiny 
hovercrafts 
                      scanning 
the treetops. 

(2)

The street is Cathe­dral Avenue, run­ning east-west in Wash­ing­ton, DC, and named after the Nation­al Cathe­dral that crowns the inter­sec­tion where the tar flows north and south along one of the capital’s main arter­ies. You can kind of see it from the side­walk out­side the house; well, no, you can’t, real­ly, but you know it’s there, and you know that its tow­ers and pin­na­cles are encased in scaffolding—part of the ongo­ing repair fol­low­ing an earth­quake in 2011 that loos­ened the stone angels and sent a 350-pound finial on a 20-sto­ry drop where it speared the ground (some­one some­how dug it out that very night and trucked it off, to do what with?). Maybe it’s the scaf­fold­ing on the front and back of the row house four doors up, erect­ed recent­ly by the crew hired to gut it for a com­plete re-do inside and out. Final­ly. After years of wait­ing in legal lim­bo cre­at­ed by a fraud­u­lent inher­i­tance claim, the dilap­i­dat­ed house, a house in despair, pur­chased in state auc­tion, is now get­ting flipped for a quick pen­ny. What’s brought you out­side, though, is the music, the crew blast­ing today’s pop from speak­ers plant­ed in the front foy­er and fenced-in back­yard. It is dri­ving you insane. A sense of mild des­per­a­tion push­es you to enter what is now a ful­ly oper­a­tional con­struc­tion site full of young steel-toed men attend­ing to a dozen dif­fer­ent tasks at once—knocking out walls, rip­ping out wires, pry­ing up floorboards—they’ll leave the treads and ris­ers on the stairs for the time being (the time being?)—intent on strip­ping the main inte­ri­or down to the studs and fram­ing. Walk­ing in, you feel the ener­gy of restora­tion, of light and space and the death of rooms. A son­net los­ing lines, drop­ping rhymes. Ghosts of dust are being released, mute mem­o­ries, lost and home­less, (though thanks to some parent’s fore­sight she nev­er was) of a child­hood, ado­les­cence, adult­hood, the long slide into demen­tia, the crowd­ing maze of dis­turbed thoughts and emo­tions unmoored from the objects of a life-sto­ry. And the Cathe­dral, when will those 40,000 pounds of stone return to their places on the tur­ret, the but­tress­es strength­ened and the transept façades, the slen­der pin­na­cles again make their points, ornate, goth­ic, ris­ing to their tapered dis­ap­pear­ance in the sky—I could be a grandfather!

From the writer

:: Account ::

The house on the cor­ner, aban­doned in death, sold in auc­tion, and get­ting gut­ted for a quick flip, was clear­ly a poem—I walked past it many times on any giv­en day and felt anten­na tingle—but where to begin: it was the lit­er­al site of a social and famil­ial and exis­ten­tial his­to­ry, but not mine, with a new future in its ren­o­va­tion, also not mine. Or rather, only a very small part of it was. It felt big enough to claim me, but I need­ed the house to some­how speak up. When a crew came in to haul away its belong­ings, I found the piano stand­ing on the side­walk, in the sun for the first time maybe ever in its life, proud and vul­ner­a­ble, a singer now silent; I had my object, the point and por­tal of an entry. Draft­ing fol­lowed quick­ly from there. Two years lat­er, I start­ed to write an “account” of the writ­ing of this poem for Tyler Mills; but what I end­ed up writ­ing instead turned out to be a sec­ond part to the poem, in prose. It also came quick­ly (maybe because I was in the mid­dle of teach­ing a sem­i­nar on the prose poem). Time and mode altered my per­cep­tion; I stood in a dif­fer­ent place now, and saw it all anew. It was a per­son­al felic­i­ty to go into the sub­ject again and find a per­spec­tive on so much I had left out; it rarely hap­pens that way after such a peri­od of time since last pen to paper. I feel the luck of the first cast and the return of the sec­ond, a small gift. (As a teacher, one is always learn­ing one’s own lessons …)

Joshua Wein­er is the author of three books of poet­ry, most recent­ly The Fig­ure of a Man Being Swal­lowed by a Fish (Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press, 2013); he is also the edi­tor of At the Bar­ri­ers: On the Poet­ry of Thom Gunn (Chica­go, 2009). His Berlin Note­book, report­ing about the refugee cri­sis in Ger­many, was pub­lished by Los Ange­les Review of Books in 2016 as a dig­i­tal edi­tion and sup­port­ed with a Guggen­heim Fel­low­ship. A chap­book, Trumpo­ems, is a free dig­i­tal edi­tion from Dis­patch­es from the Poet­ry Wars (2018). His trans­la­tion (with Lin­da B. Par­shall) of Nel­ly Sachs’ Flight & Meta­mor­pho­sis will be pub­lished by Far­rar, Straus and Giroux in 2021.

Poetry / Donna Vorreyer

:: Grief Questionnaire ::

 
          1.   How do you characterize your grief?
                     a.   an entire pan of brownies
                     b.   The Cure on shuffle
                     c.   the elongated drip of honey into tea
                     d.   blankets pulled up, no shower for days

          2.   Is your grief lapis or indigo?

          3.   With what tools do you access your grief?
                     a.   pick ax and shovel to split bedrock
                     b.   “Konstantine” on repeat in the car
                     c.   old photographs in a cardboard box
                     d.   tattoos of flowers and clocks and stars

          4.   Is your grief engorged or hollow?

          5.   What are the intentions of your grief?
                     a.   to make you cry in a Target aisle
                     b.   to question each minuscule decision
                     c.   to guilt you when you laugh or smile
                     d.   to comfort in a language you do not speak

          6.   Is your grief an arrow or a bow?

          7.   Your grief comes mostly:
                     a.   in the last car of a long freight train
                     b.   in mosquito bites on your elbows and knees
                     c.   in contrails drawn across the evening sky
                     d.   in costume dramas on a small screen

          8.   Is your grief hush or bellow?

          9.   Describe your grief in less than two hundred words. 

          10. Rate your grief on a scale from one shoe to a flock of birds.

:: Philosophy 101 ::

 
I look up to trace my father’s portrait 
in the stars, make it a constellation, bright 
enough to illuminate the dark corners 
of the path I walk too close to dusk 
with the sun sinking fast, make it smile 
on the forest in spring, its new green, 
its messy floor, ferns unfurling 
from nautilus to broad frond, slow 
opening like the sweet groping of hands 
on skin, one ear tuned to the creaking 
of a door, the rest of the body orchestral 
with nerves, flushed electric, close to but 
not quite the engulfing awe of an unspoiled 
landscape, large enough to hold every breath 
I’ve ever taken, like the exhausted exhalations 
of a nine-hour hike through the cloud line, 
forest, glaciers, a valley pure white, the trail 
erased by snow, at the end soaked and shivering 
but so alive and if Kant and Descartes 
had seen these things, I would never need 
to ask why I was here, why he was gone, 
I would cry O stars, O spring, 
O body, O mountain, my father’s 
face shining in every single part. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

In the months fol­low­ing the deaths of both of my par­ents, I con­tin­ued to receive com­mu­ni­ca­tions from the hos­pice orga­ni­za­tion that had assist­ed us near the end of both of their lives. These ques­tion­naires and brochures, meant to be help­ful, were not. They attempt­ed to neat­ly shape grief into a series of steps or box­es to check off, offered plat­i­tudes and med­i­ta­tions, and often made me feel worse rather than bet­ter. They made me ques­tion whether my own unpre­dictable, pow­er­ful, and often sur­re­al expe­ri­ence of loss was “cor­rect” or “nor­mal.” I start­ed to write poems using the tools of ety­mol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, and even the famil­iar ques­tion­naire to cre­ate my own explo­rations of this com­plex jour­ney with lan­guage and ideas that felt more famil­iar, more pre­cise, more relat­ed to my own. In the realms of invent­ed nar­ra­tive, dis­con­nect­ed imagery, and stream of con­scious­ness, I found a sort of relief that seemed tai­lored to me. Every­one expe­ri­ences grief dif­fer­ent­ly, and these poems try to cap­ture a bit of the fluc­tu­at­ing nature of my own emotions. 

Don­na Vor­rey­er is the author of Every Love Sto­ry is an Apoc­a­lypse Sto­ry (2016) and A House of Many Win­dows (2013), both from Sun­dress Pub­li­ca­tions. Her poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in Rhi­no, Tin­der­box Poet­ry, Poet Lore, Sug­ar House Review, Waxwing, Whale Road Review, and many oth­er jour­nals. Her third full-length col­lec­tion is forth­com­ing from Sun­dress in 2020. 

Poetry / Kanyinsola Olorunnisola

:: talking to this socialist chick at the lauryn hill rap party while wearing very real diamond studs & wondering for how long this drink will last till i turn the colour blue & start running my borrowed mouth into the gutter. dumb blunt guts & all dirty things crawling out of unacknowledged wounds. ::

bring on the apoc­a­lypse already. if the class war does not hap­pen, i’m riot­ing. i thought we brought our pitch­forks & knives to eat the rich. there are hun­gry black ghosts inside of me, loud & starvin’. why twit­ter cock­block­ing those of us who get bon­er at thought of chaos? just words words words no action. words words words & hot takes that no cut blade, no cut flesh, no call unto blood. make we cut the flesh of dem streets & make the bitu­men bleed out it black blood. we bleed­ing. i bleed­ing. yeah, i def­i­nite­ly agree. we should total­ly go pipeline protest. my import­ed Eng­lish no co-oper­at­ing today. no stand still. no play the immi­grant game. the good immi­grant game. we dying here. we bleed­ing. i bleed­ing. band-aid no save us. nice hair. i said nice hair. i said i like your hair. no, these dia­monds are fake, i am mock­ing the gaudy dis­play of excess wealth. thank you, my lin­guis­tic flu­en­cy decides when to come on. like a switch. it’s a cop­ing mech­a­nism. i doubt they will send me back alive. i am no for­tune teller, i just know some things for a fact. so, should we like…get a room or something?

From the writer

:: Account ::

“social­ist chick” is heav­i­ly inspired by the elec­tric poet­ries of Danez Smith and Hanif Abdur­raqib. It is my exper­i­ment at putting my black­ness before every­thing, even lan­guage. I want­ed to express the very real expe­ri­ence of non-native Eng­lish speak­ers, the way the lan­guage can some­times get out of hand, the way the lan­guage can be woven (even ungram­mat­i­cal­ly) to con­vey the mean­ing we want at that moment. The major motif run­ning through the poem is a pre­ten­tious dis­course around per­for­ma­tive socialism—a ter­ri­ble trend I have encoun­tered on social media late­ly. My poet per­sona, despite wear­ing real dia­monds, pre­tends to be one of the strug­gling mass­es to avoid lib­er­al ostracism. I want­ed the theme to flow seam­less­ly through a very casu­al par­ty conversation.

Kanyin­so­la Olorun­niso­la is an exper­i­men­tal poet, essay­ist, and writer of fic­tion. His works have appeared in Gertrude, Pop­u­la, Bode­ga, On the Sea­wall, Bom­bay Review, Kala­hari Review, Gyro­scope Review, Arts and Africa, African Writer, Brit­tle Paper, and else­where. He is the author of the chap­book, In My Coun­try, We’re All Cross­dressers (Prax­is, 2018). He was short­list­ed for the 2019 Kof­fi Addo Prize for Cre­ative Non-Fic­tion. He is the founder of Sprin­NG, a web-based lit­er­ary move­ment seek­ing to break the bar­ri­ers young cre­ators face in the writ­ing com­mu­ni­ty. He lives in Lagos, where he is hard at work on his nov­el man­u­script. Say hel­lo.

Poetry / Shara McCallum

:: Ae Fond Kiss ::

 
become Nancy
                                                            when thieved to Jamaica 
you made her 
                                                            Nancy immortal 
in your paean 
                                                            to love and parting 
from the start 
                                                            she must have 
seen the severing 
                                                            was inevitable 
must have known 
                                                            dark despair 
would always benight 
                                                            must have heard 
beneath your words 
                                                            what words 
in that place never 
                                                            could be coaxed 
to sing if ever 
                                                            you loved her 
what did your love 
                                                            for her mean 
what use 
                                                            to her your tears 
pledged sighs waged 
                                                            in vain 
in the end 
                                                            who paid 
best and dearest 
                                                            in the end 
I ask you 
                                                            for whom 
did fortune grieve

:: To a Mouse ::

 
She sutured your last breath.
For years, you feared the houghmanie pack
would snuff your scent, but at the river,
at the end, she was the breath grazing
your neck, the arms laying you down
into your watery grave. And you saw,
in a flash of final sight some are gifted,
the weight of the choice you’d made,
how your love had increased
her portion of cruelty. Then,
your silence was the silence
of regret. This is the debt, the only one
you could have paid, I wish tendered.
This is how I need to imagine your life
flickered out. But every time I resurrect
the scene of your death, my wanting
is not enough. I cannot halt the vision
dissolving. For ten years, you mourned
your unsung genius, your rotted ambition.
Ten years you tipped your ear away
from her, toward Scotland—distant music
you husbanded and whittled to song,
wagering everything on the past,
as if its recovery could compensate
the present. And I,
in a present you failed so utterly
to imagine, how if I take you in,
do I not retrod the broken path
of your life? How can I—must I—
claim you as kin and bear knowing
you glimpsed divinity
in the smallest of creatures, lit
the animal soul—and spoke
nothing of her suffering?

:: The Choice ::

 
who made my mind 
                                                            unfit 
for all I’m told 
                                                            is my soul’s 
true nature 
                                                            what half-mad half-fed 
idea be planted 
                                                            in my brain 
by what 
                                                            if any gods there be 
and how may I be
                                                            worthy 
of all required 
                                                            worthy of her 
and the memory 
                                                            of those still yoked 
how now could I 
                                                            be still still be 
without sound 
                                                            be ever-hushed 
when phantoms come 
                                                            ringing round 
when smoke 
                                                            is wreathing 
the fields the fields
                                                            still burning

From the writer

:: Account ::

The poems includ­ed in this issue are part of a forth­com­ing verse sequence, No Ruined Stone, that took root five years ago. In the win­ter of 2015, on my first vis­it to Scot­land, I learned a lit­tle-known sto­ry about the poet Robert Burns: late in the sum­mer of 1786, Burns had active­ly planned to emi­grate from Scot­land to Jamaica, to work as a book­keep­er on a slave plan­ta­tion on the island. “Book­keep­er” is a mis­nomer. The men who held the posi­tion were respon­si­ble for dai­ly over­see­ing and man­ag­ing the work per­formed by enslaved Africans. 

I car­ried that sto­ry about Burns around with me, like a sore or gap in the mouth one’s tongue keeps find­ing. At the time, I was liv­ing in Lon­don and often walk­ing the streets of that city, feel­ing the lay­ers of his­to­ry beneath my feet and all around me. I don’t remem­ber the exact date, but some­time in that spring of 2015, out one day and walk­ing, the ques­tion occurred: what would have hap­pened had he gone? This kind of ques­tion most often falls right­ly to nov­el­ists, belong­ing to their wheel­house. But being a poet, I nonethe­less felt com­pelled to ask poems to do the work of responding. 

 Inex­orably, this ques­tion led me only to more and returned me to some of my ear­li­est and ongo­ing obses­sions and vex­a­tions: with Roman­tic poet­ry and the his­to­ry of the 18th and 19th cen­turies, the Eng­light­en­ment, women’s rights, strug­gles to abol­ish slav­ery, mis­ce­gena­tion and pass­ing, absent fathers and moth­ers and coun­tries, men­tal ill­ness, and migra­tion and exile. What result­ed is a book-length sequence offer­ing a spec­u­la­tive account of the past, voiced pri­mar­i­ly by a fic­tive Burns, who migrates to Jamaica, and by one of his descen­dants, a grand­daugh­ter and white-pre­sent­ing black woman who migrates to Scot­land in the ear­ly 19th-cen­tu­ry. The sto­ry is not true nor auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, exact­ly. But it is tied to truths of my per­son­al and fam­i­ly nar­ra­tive as well as the foun­da­tion­al nar­ra­tive of Jamaica, a coun­try birthed by the tec­ton­ic meet­ing of the Amer­i­c­as, Africa, and Europe.

From Jamaica, Shara McCal­lum is the author of six books pub­lished in the US and UK, includ­ing the forth­com­ing verse sequence, No Ruined Stone, a spec­u­la­tive account of Scot­tish poet Robert Burns’ migra­tion to Jamaica to work on a slave plan­ta­tion. Her recent book, Mad­woman (Alice James Books, 2017), received the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poet­ry and the 2018 Mot­ton Book Prize from the New Eng­land Poet­ry Club. McCal­lum is a pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Penn State Uni­ver­si­ty and on the fac­ul­ty of the Pacif­ic Uni­ver­si­ty Low-Res­i­den­cy MFA Program. 

Poetry / Thomas March

:: Room 360 ::

 
          Paris, IXe Arrondissement 
          L’Hôtel R de Paris 
          2017–

Again the late light of August—again 
Paris and this room, just as we left it, 
are new again. We could believe no one 
else has slept here since we last closed the door 
on this other life that is ours alone. 
We reenact our claims on the mattress— 
who gets to be closer to the bathroom 
and who feels the first breeze from the window. 
Cash commingles on the mantle—we share 
a closet again, combining our clothes 
as we used to. We wear our black and white 
tight t-shirts, jeans, and simple shoes—we are 
not here to make a show of being here, 
breaking out in wide American smiles. 
The first few days, we wear out the clichés— 
cafés, cathedrals, and couture; Montmartre 
to Montparnasse; Poissy to Père Lachaise. 
We widen our familiarity 
until what remains is just a city 
to rediscover as itself—knowing 
all cities have been ugly once—as we 
have not always been kind to each other. 
But we always find comfort in the warmth 
of Parisian formality, in streets 
made for shadows, just off the boulevards, 
and in bed, eating McDonald’s again 
before dawn, smelling of grease and Hermès. 
Tomorrow, walk me once more to the grave 
of Oscar Wilde, and we’ll pray for us all 
and the time to reclaim this life—again. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

I wrote the first ver­sion of “Room 360” in Feb­ru­ary 2019 as a sev­enth anniver­sary gift for my part­ner. He, an archi­tect, made a beau­ti­ful draw­ing for me. We were sav­ing our mon­ey to return to Paris in August. We would be stay­ing again at the hotel I had found the first time we vis­it­ed togeth­er, in August of 2017. It was a small hotel in the 9th Arrondisse­ment, halfway between the Palais Gar­nier and the Place de Clichy, recent­ly ren­o­vat­ed and ele­gant­ly designed, sleek­ly mod­ern but warm­ly inti­mate. We were there for only four days, in room 360, and we were very hap­py.  

At the time of that first stay in room 360, we were already liv­ing in sep­a­rate cities, after liv­ing togeth­er in New York City for years. Although we vis­it­ed each oth­er often and trav­eled togeth­er a few times a year, being in this room togeth­er felt like a return to cohabitation—only now in a place that was ours alone, shared with no one else in our lives, in a city that we could claim, how­ev­er briefly, as our home. It was a fleet­ing sense of renewed, shared domes­tic­i­ty that deep­ened over sub­se­quent, longer stays.  

We returned to room 360 in August 2018, this time for a week. We walked between 15 and 20 miles a day, let­ting our curios­i­ty and hap­pen­stance guide us on jour­neys that were more like explorato­ry dérives than the errands of tourists. Toward the end of that trip, we vis­it­ed the tomb of Oscar Wilde, where I deliv­ered a note­book full of mes­sages of homage and grat­i­tude writ­ten by friends. As the ceme­tery was clos­ing, we snuck back to the tomb, weav­ing among the mau­soleums to avoid the secu­ri­ty guard who was loud­ly demand­ing the depar­ture of all vis­i­tors. There were no tourists there this time, and in the pri­va­cy of that sacred place, I asked him to mar­ry me. He accept­ed.  

By the time of our most recent return to room 360, this time for ten days, I had already writ­ten this poem. I made an edit to the end of the poem, where I men­tion return­ing to Wilde’s grave, replac­ing the word “again” with the phrase “once more”—leaving open the pos­si­bil­i­ty of yet anoth­er return togeth­er, but aware that this might be our last. On this vis­it to the tomb, to com­mem­o­rate our engage­ment, the only notes I left were my own, express­ing grat­i­tude and pray­ing for guid­ance and inter­ces­sion, as I imag­ine one would pray to a saint. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Oscar Wilde is not the appro­pri­ate saint to peti­tion for sen­si­ble rela­tion­ship repair.  

And that was to be the last time we vis­it­ed room 360 togeth­er. It can be dif­fi­cult, when a thing ends, to under­stand how it was ever real—and one can waver between extremes of aston­ished dis­il­lu­sion­ment and a vis­cer­al urge to believe. When I return to room 360 this year, it will be part pil­grim­age and part recla­ma­tion. Maybe he will return one day, too. It is still a place where some­thing impor­tant was—something inim­itable and only ours. What­ev­er else may be—or come to be—true, I can remem­ber him, smil­ing over his shoul­der as he leaned out of the tall open win­dow as soon as we arrived, and I can believe that his joy there was real—and that mine was too. 

Thomas March is a poet, per­former, and essay­ist based in New York City. His col­lec­tion After­math (2018) was select­ed by Joan Larkin for The Word Works Hilary Tham Cap­i­tal Col­lec­tion. His poet­ry has appeared in Belle­vue Lit­er­ary Review, The Good Men Project, OUT, and Pleiades, among oth­ers. His reviews and essays have appeared in The Believ­er, The Huff­in­g­ton Post, and New Let­ters. With painter Valerie Mendel­son, he is the co-cre­ator of A Good Mix­er, a tex­tu­al-visu­al hybrid project based on a 1933 bartender’s guide of the same name. He is also the host and cura­tor of “Poetry/Cabaret,” a bimonth­ly “vari­ety salon” at The Green Room 42 in New York City that brings togeth­er poets, singers, and come­di­ans in response to a com­mon theme. www.thomasmarch.org @realthomasmarch

Poetry / Virginia Konchan

:: Memoriae Aeternae ::

 
I love Jesus, I said, to explain.
I’ll be your Jesus, he said.
Hit me, I said. He hit me.
Hit me harder, I said.
 
He hit me harder, dislocating my jaw:
I cried out in pain. He removed his hand
quickly, eyes twin wounds of concern.
It’s ok, I said. I asked you to.

There once was a body, here,
and now there is no body.
What does that mean? 
What does that mean, to you?

Sappho herself wrote of eros:
it’s as if the tongue is broken.

We prowled each other
like cops and robbers
for weeks, static between us
rising from generated electricity.

So what if subjectivity is reducible
to performance, performance
to narrative, narrative to anecdote? 

So what if I almost forgot
to call you my home?

The etymology of queen is prostitute. 
The etymology of king is king.

Lord of Lords, let me die,
and then, in dying, ascend.

Muse, let me stay forever
in your arms: to the last
paradise, memory, let me in.

From the writer

:: Account ::

“Memo­ri­ae Aeter­na” was born out of recent read­ings and mus­ings about the role of mem­o­ry in the his­to­ry of lyric poet­ry, from Mnemosyne, the god­dess of mem­o­ry and moth­er of the nine Mus­es (whose name derives from the word “mnemon­ic,” mean­ing remem­brance), to the dif­fer­ences between epic and lyric mem­o­ry. The for­mer is more col­lec­tive in nature, rely­ing on a rhapsode’s use of poetry’s repet­i­tive, mnemon­ic devices to cel­e­brate the deeds of a tribe, and the lat­ter, a func­tion of the mod­ern nation-state, requir­ing dif­fer­ent mech­a­nisms of legit­i­ma­tion such as affirm­ing the poet’s unique sub­jec­tiv­i­ty. The lyric poet, thus, since the Renais­sance, also attempts to forge myths, but these myths are more indi­vid­ual than col­lec­tive, and often require the poet to search her past to build a per­son­al his­to­ry endowed with con­sis­ten­cy and mean­ing (William Wordsworth’s The Pre­lude is an exem­plar of this lyri­cal work of self-mythol­o­giz­ing, build­ing bridges not just with one’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal his­to­ry but those of col­lec­tive his­to­ry, and Mar­cel Proust, in fic­tion, as well). In my poem, I begin with a dia­log­ic con­tem­po­rary inci­dent in media res that prompts the speak­er to trace back through lyri­cal and his­tor­i­cal forms and gen­res of love and con­flict­ual ten­sion (Judeo-Chris­t­ian, Sap­ph­ic eros, West­ern noir), but it’s the poem’s incit­ing inci­dent in the first stan­za, act­ing as a kind of flash­back device or trig­ger, that gives the speak­er the abil­i­ty to exit the scene of pas­sion and return to mem­o­ry. So while mod­ern aspects of gen­der and gen­dered vio­lence may seem to col­or the poem, for me it is more about how the speak­er, through engage­ment with the oth­er (who con­sents to play “Jesus”), can then come to terms with her own per­son­al mythos, choos­ing at the end of the poem to priv­i­lege the work and bliss­ful sur­feit of mem­o­ry over the white male ascen­sion nar­ra­tive (suf­fer­ing, death, res­ur­rec­tion) she had for­mer­ly believed was the only path to “sal­va­tion.”

Author of two poet­ry col­lec­tions, Any God Will Do (Carnegie Mel­lon, 2020) and The End of Spec­ta­cle (Carnegie Mel­lon, 2018); a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, Anatom­i­cal Gift (Noc­tu­ary Press, 2017); and three chap­books, includ­ing The New Alpha­bets (Anstruther Press, 2019), Vir­ginia Kon­chan’s poet­ry has appeared in The New York­er, The New Repub­lic, The Believ­er, and through­out the US and Cana­da. She lives and works in Hal­i­fax, Nova Sco­tia. 

Poetry / Alicia Byrne Keane

:: Lace, ear drums, hexagons ::

 
I am trying not to eat all the little chocolates in my room. 
I think if I take a breath it will work, remind me I can 
Be content swallowing light, another lie. We woke up 
In the blue dark, watched your garden tumble away 
Like my mother’s dream about a hole in the tarmac 
Beside the porch. The grass falls in steps, swollen by 
Shadow, the lake is a stitched laceration, and I am 
Envious of your purple lip liner, and that you would 
Have the foresight to apply such a thing. I fell asleep 
Watching the Gilmore Girls, resurfaced headachey 
Three or four times, like a fall into snow, in which you 
Feel slivers of dampness at your wrists and the world 
Goes flat. There is a click of billiard balls in the room 
Upstairs, muffled and narrow. There is a lamp painted 
Yellow and poised as if listening. My ears ring in two 
Parallel frequencies, roads that stretch, and I remember 
A motorway cutting through wheat fields, and running 
Towards, or away from, a patch of forest on the horizon. 
A ghost fizzled in my shoulder like a twist of fabric, 
Another source of hassle I’d need to potentially address.

:: Bar stools, Jesus Christ ::

 
Sometimes at night beyond the glassless apertures of the smoking 
Areas we see a new building rise like a tooth, looking torn, 
Plastic flaps in the wind from uncovered parts and I watch myself 
Walk the length of Mount Street in dim, continuous glass, I used 
To rest in the spaces between words in basements, applause felt 
Like silver balloons or the abrasive bubbles in Fanta Lemon. 
 
There is a big wooden spider in the bar with the vague name 
There is a big wooden tree somewhere else, you are meant to 
Take pictures of it, I read an article about this, a city of anterooms 
Polished and resounding, there are so many cavernous lobbies 
You can go to the bathroom in, if you so choose, if you walk with 
Enough of a purpose, and there are tents angled on the canal. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

I began writ­ing this series of poems in response to a piece writ­ten by the author Claire-Louise Ben­nett for The Irish Times. In it she describes ado­les­cence as a time in which you are expect­ed to “estab­lish your­self strong­ly and neat­ly in the minds of oth­ers.” [i] She dis­cuss­es her own first for­ays into writ­ing as born of a reac­tion against this social pressure. 

From the list of objects Claire-Louise Ben­nett describes writ­ing about when she was younger, most of which don’t include humans: 

Moths, pylons, flat grass, porce­lain, wind, lace, ear drums, hexa­gons, night, glass, wolves, vio­lins, char­coal, reflec­tions, cre­osote, dan­de­lion clocks, thun­der, stars, bar stools, Jesus Christ, blood, emer­alds, bears, death, ice, leather, ban­is­ters, fir trees, limpets, pea­cocks, corn­fields, clay, high win­dows, smoke, vel­vet, foun­tains, scare­crows, ros­es, milk, frogs. [ii] 

In the first shaky days of 2020 I decid­ed to take this quote from Ben­nett as a form of writ­ing prompt. All of the titles of the col­lec­tion I wrote—four of which can be found in this submission—derive from images in the above quotation. 

These poems are the prod­uct, I guess, of a sort of “Claire-Louise Ben­nett chal­lenge.” Maybe this is a con­se­quence of grow­ing up in a city in which peo­ple buy the exact lemon soap from the exact phar­ma­cy men­tioned in a book by a man who will not be dis­cussed. I don’t know if peo­ple act with the same fanati­cism toward female authors as they do male ones, mix­ing the drinks drank by the char­ac­ters in the books, repli­cat­ing their flâner­ies. Maybe I am just look­ing for injus­tices. But I think I am right, at least partially. 

I thought that if I wrote about each of the things Ben­nett wrote about I would become less con­cerned with social demands, reori­en­tate myself in a child­hood world of look­ing at things for their strange­ness. And maybe this would also some­how make me kinder, less has­sled the way you become when you have decid­ed you are seri­ous, direct­ed. My inten­tion was that through some­one else’s words I would become more myself. 

The poems did their work, in my own head any­way. Writ­ing them helped me, as Ben­nett dis­cuss­es, “to keep ratio­nal­i­ty and pur­pose at bay, to pro­long and bask in the rhyth­mic chaos of exis­tence, to remain adrift from the social con­tract and lux­u­ri­ate in the mag­nif­i­cent mys­tery of every­thing.” [iii] And hope­ful­ly through this form of with­draw­ing I have also become—in anoth­er way—some­how clos­er to the world, more of use to the world, recon­firmed in my awe of things and in a bet­ter posi­tion to help. 

[i] Ben­nett, Claire-Louise. “Claire-Louise Ben­nett on Writ­ing Pond.” The Irish Times, 26 May 2015, https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/claire-louise-bennett-on-writing-pond‑1.2226535.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

Ali­cia Byrne Keane is a PhD stu­dent from Dublin, Ire­land. She has a first class hon­ours degree in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture and French from Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin and a MSt. in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture 1900-Present from Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty. She is work­ing on an Irish Research Coun­cil-fund­ed PhD study that prob­lema­tizes “vague­ness” and trans­la­tion in the work of Samuel Beck­ett and Haru­ki Muraka­mi, at TCD. Her poems have been pub­lished in The Moth, Entropy Mag­a­zine, Impos­si­ble Arche­type, and Poet­head, among oth­ers. She has per­formed at Elec­tric Pic­nic, Body & Soul, and Lin­go Fes­ti­val, and has had two spo­ken word per­for­mances record­ed for Bal­cony TV. 

Poetry / Jennifer Givhan

:: The Monster ::

orders some­thing with pumpkin.

the woman in the Star­bucks at the table beside me sell­ing her house in three days & mak­ing a 30k prof­it is bummed bc she has to split that with her par­ents & hus­band & dairy flares her aller­gies & she’s doing good deeds in the com­mu­ni­ty or the pri­vate school where her kids go I couldn’t tell if she under­stood the dif­fer­ence & every word from her mouth feels like bs today like some priv­i­leged shit though I too am dairy free & I bs with the best of them I’ve lied to my ther­a­pist on intake bc con­text takes time & my insur­ance only pays for an hour which means I don’t have time to explain why I moved a thou­sand miles to live with a mar­ried man so I smoke­screen like I didn’t know he was mar­ried till I got there & the ther­a­pist agrees he’s a lowlife.

beyond the cof­fee date the sta­tus update the hour­long I have to myself between fer­ry­ing my daugh­ter to appointments—the bright­ness of the yel­low in the bosque leaves this fall. gold, truth be told. vibrant sul­phur. though they’re dying. sea­weed washed up on the shore before we moved back to the desert. the red­dest, the most beau­ti­ful, meant death, & the stench, o that fuck­ing stench. & the addicts on their bicy­cles fer­ry­ing their dis­ap­point­ments into the for­est beyond.

how part of me wants to fol­low them the way I fol­lowed my old addic­tions to Texas.

there’s cheap­er tile at Lowe’s or some bs hard­ware store & the Christ­mas Eve par­ty at the ren­o­vat­ed house of the bs lady beside me in her most­ly bs jog­ging suit.

& I can’t dis­like her, you know. I would lay down my life for her, I’m fair­ly cer­tain. if I know any­thing about myself. if I cut past the insur­ance hour & the bs desire to make you desire me, that old desire swelling up, always, from a girl­hood I’d give any­thing but poet­ry to pot­tery barn into a bs house, that old desire to expose my breasts for they were the first thing men want­ed of me—12 & breasts swelling their cher­ried cakes, two per­fect things I could offer. as those boys-to-men on their bikes mak­ing deals like the man who dealt my life & my children’s lives & I let him, of course I let him, man I’d first loved when he was a boy who want­ed once more than the cher­ry-red things sprout­ing from me. as the but­ter bright trees. dis­like is a mir­ror I’ve eaten.

if a mon­strous crea­ture came through the ding­ing door, & it was her or me, a dog­like crea­ture, a jawed, nasty beast. fanged or some­thing. gourd-chewing.

I would want to pet it.

or swal­low it.

if the woman were my daugh­ter I would die so she could run.

And isn’t my daugh­ter the parts of us I love.

if I could cut through the bs, I would go up to the woman & say You are my daugh­ter & I will save you from the monster.

& this, my loves, is why I write you these poems.

:: we feel good when we do what we’ve evolved to do ::

& I’ve evolved to love you. Yes, you. I’ve just spo­ken with a grasshop­per on a lilac brush his mut­ed eyes like a mask his face one I con­ceive must be hat­ted when he dreams & I want­ed to share this with you, I had to write a poem for you because my heart believed you’ve been scammed too have been sold heal­ing crys­tals that turned out to be grav­el from the snake oiler’s own slick dri­ve­way. This world. Can you imag­ine we live in a world with the word hon­ey­suck­le? The dog in the back­yard uproots the root­ed veg­eta­bles & gnaws on the dead varmint. The sci­en­tist explains our gullible natures as evo­lu­tion­ary trip­wires. Don’t feel ashamed, dear­hearts, you believed in some­thing more beau­ti­ful com­ing your way.

From the writer

:: Account ::

These poems both come out of the same desire to mend the gap, to find the spaces of inter­con­nect­ed­ness and hope, in spite of the ways our brains attempt to trick us with their evo­lu­tion­ary hard­wiring or their social con­di­tion­ing. I’ve bat­tled depres­sion and men­tal ill­ness most of my life now, and yet I long to remain in this world. At my best moments, the real­iza­tion that any spir­it here could be my daugh­ter, and that I stay here for my daugh­ter, these are the moments I’d lay my life down for, by which I mean, stick around. Wait and see what hap­pens. Rel­ish in the word hon­ey­suck­le. Now in a time of social dis­tanc­ing, it’s per­haps more impor­tant than ever to con­tin­ue dis­cov­er­ing, with child­like hope that renews every­thing, that when we face the mon­strous, we’ve also evolved to love each oth­er. The kids and I have been learn­ing triv­ia about neu­ro­science, and I’m learn­ing how not to be angry at myself for the risks I’ve tak­en, the impuls­es I’ve fol­lowed, the signs I’ve believed in, when it all came to noth­ing, when it all crum­bled around me. These days I’ve been singing quite a few Bea­t­les songs, and when­ev­er the beast comes bar­ing its razor sharps, I try some­thing so cliché as love—and it still works. 

Jen­nifer Givhan, a Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can writer and activist from the South­west­ern desert, is the author of four full-length poet­ry col­lec­tions, most recent­ly Rosa’s Ein­stein (Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona Press, 2019), two chap­books, and the nov­els Trin­i­ty Sight and Jubilee (Black­stone Pub­lish­ing, 2019 and 2020). Her work has appeared in The Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Poet­ry Dai­ly, Verse Dai­ly, POETRY Mag­a­zine, The Rum­pus, The New Repub­lic, AGNI, Tri­Quar­ter­ly, The Nation, Crazy­horse, Wit­ness, South­ern Human­i­ties Review, and the Keny­on Review. She has received, among oth­er hon­ors, a Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts fel­low­ship, a PEN/Rosenthal Emerg­ing Voic­es fel­low­ship, and New Ohio Review’s Poet­ry Prize, cho­sen by Tye­him­ba Jess. Givhan holds a master’s degree in Eng­lish from Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, Fuller­ton, and an MFA from War­ren Wil­son Col­lege, and she can be found dis­cussing fem­i­nist moth­er­hood at jennifergivhan.com as well as Face­book and Twit­ter @JennGivhan. 

Poetry / Grace Gardiner

:: Sentence Diagramming: One-Night Stand ::

 
You tell me about eyes 
                                          my monstrous blue
          I want 
hurting 
                    to look away & toward 
                                                     carpeted floor
                                                toward twinbed blooming under
                                                                                         the lights’ 
                                                            spindle-shaped bulbs
                                                                                              under
                                                                                      the circling
                                                             purr & fizz of the fan
                                                                                              under
                                                                                      your hands
O
your hands darling
          hands
                     stripping off this bed
                                           before us 
                                                 throw comforter topsheet
                     stripping off those clothes
                                                 mauve suit pants
                                                 buttons peppered down rayon
                                                 undertank striped white-hyacinth
                                                                          & vein-blue  

                                                 briefs shimmering
                                                      green-then-black
                                          off you
Your hands 
                     help me
                     strip me too
                                           out of shift cami spandex
                                           out of even my ankle socks
                                                                       petal-thin
                    my body hurting still inside
                                                 the ropes
                                         of its skin
                    my mind
                         threaded
                                      with you
                          Will 
you stop
            ever      Will 
you start 
            Here
       Touch your tongue to me
                                           at the throat’s caving
                                                 notch
       Crush
       Fuse

       Fill me

            in the pit 
                          where
you learn 
       then lift 
 

:: Sentence Diagramming: Watching You Smoke ::

 
                                                                      The porch door’s windowed glass bites back against the light
                                                                                                                               the afternoon
                                                                                                          the yard chartreuse
                                                                                                                 with sun: 
                                                                      so I can see you through
                                                                                     the green- 
                                                                                 then yellow-bending blue
                                                                                                   though I know
                                                                                                                 you won’t see me
                                                                                                                         don’t see how
                                                                              I lock open my eyes
                                                                                                   my lungs
as you draw between pointer finger 
                                       & thumb
                                                                            the cocked cigarette
& blow out a thin cylinder of smoke
                                down-colored cone of breath 
                                                                              ash 
                         like a reverse gasp
                                          through the small spooned curve
                                                                 at your bottom lip. 
                                                                                                    Your mouth Os a damp ring
                                                                                               I’d like to slip 
                                                                 on each puckered part
                                                                                     (finger 
                                                                                     nipple
                                                                                     tongue)  
          of this body’s concentrated hum
                                its oxygen-rich
                                           in-&-out 
                                                            filter of blood
my own hot
                taut
                         font. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

In her poem “Poet­ic Sub­jects,” Rebec­ca Lin­den­berg writes: “Some­where between the sayable and the unsayable, poet­ry runs. Anti­dote to the riv­er of for­get­ting.” Ever since encoun­ter­ing these lines, they have become both a mantra and an affir­ma­tion of my own poet­ic prac­tice.  

In a recent con­ver­sa­tion with a dear friend and poet, I said that, while I may be “some­where between” an extro­vert and intro­vert, I tend always towards exter­nal­iza­tion: I am an exter­nal­iz­er, and poet­ry is the mech­a­nism by which I exter­nal­ize and plumb what is “sayable” and “unsayable.” Stressed, play­ful, and shift­ing syn­tax that is hinged to and unhinges the line is my num­ber one craft tool of choice to (un)lock what I can and can­not com­mu­ni­cate about: sex and grief, trau­ma and desire, pain and ecsta­sy.  

In these poems inves­ti­gat­ing the pris­mat­ic threshold(s) of sex and desire, syn­tax, cou­pled with both sound- and word­play, is the divin­ing rod I thrust over the body to seek out what is buried and bur­bling beneath: what can and cannot—what will or will not—rise to the poem’s surface. 

Grace Gar­diner is a British-Amer­i­can non-bina­ry poet and bur­geon­ing inter­me­dia instal­la­tion artist. They’re cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a PhD in Cre­ative Writ­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri, Colum­bia, where they live with their part­ner, the poet Eric Mor­ris-Pusey; their eel hound, Gem­ma Ray; and one too many brown reclus­es. Find them online at pearlsthatwere.tumblr.com.