In the quiet hum of
rows and rows and rows
of white screens,
their light simulated
in faces, eyes, glasses of the hoi polloi.
And also in the smell of you,
amongst the rows an intoxicating
scent of dust, memory,
earthly and incompletely human—
the contribution of the heavyset homeless
who bring the street with them.
Today I found the back hallway, unaccountably
leading into the front hallway, like a Penrose
staircase in a painting, and I began to wonder
is this art? No, it is just a vacant vestibule,
but it is mine, and I begin to wonder if it exists at all.
White on blue arrows demarcating, nonfiction,
archives below, further down, inexplicably, magazines.
Where the newspapers are, nobody knows.
Above me, in the atrium, I am struck anew by the
daylight through the panes of the skylight, four-sided
and devastating, as if I have never seen the sun before.
You are almost too much, as I slowly uncover you,
mapping you, until I know you, just as I am.
Angel C. Dye
Her
this poem is for her
stitching up wounds from twelve years ago
out of her teens and still unsure if she goes
both ways
hating birthdays cuz they’re reminders that
she’s closer to death
at one point she wanted that
cut/purged/hurt herself in an effort to forget
she was herself
this poem is for her
in a clinic for the third time with a womb
he suggested she turn into a burial ground
but the real tomb is her heart every time
he knocks her down cuz she don’t understand
why she still loves him
this poem is for her
married/divorced/remarried/single/alone/
reclusive/elusive/polyandrous/straight/gay/queer
here
this poem is for her
too narrowly defined and more than meets the eye
too easily denied and more often dismantled and untied
than uplifted and inspired
this poem is for her
wherever it finds her
and i hope she writes her own version of it
when it feels right for her
Tapestry
There are dangling threads and strands
frayed and loose hanging around the hems
of my skin.
Two knotted a long time ago then ripped to
shreds and were never able to mend.
And I am their tapestry, their crooked
cloth, their patch on ripped knee jeans
and snagged shirts.
Sometimes we all tangle into each other,
and I feel one’s blue-black eyes the same
way I feel the other’s doped veins and venom.
They are separate ends of the same bolt of
fabric, and I am all that joins them now.
Sometimes I want to be my own, not theirs.
I am them even when I hate it.
Hate hanging on to what I think is their
regard for me by a thread.
Hate safety pinning the pieces they’ve left
me with just to make something wearable.
I am wearing too big and too small skin that
they draped and stretched over me when
they felt like it, and now I am old enough to
tailor myself into whatever I want to be.
Of course I will have to washboard bathe the
rags I have been for twenty years,
but once I am wrung out and hung to drip dry
I will soak up sun like it is all that can revive
the colors of my cloth that have faded.
And I will wear the two ends of my newly
stitched garment, and their knots and
tangles will not strangle me
but they will make me whole.
Inquiries on the Meeting of Birth and Burial Ground
—for Sybrina Fulton, Lesley McSpadden, Gloria Darden, Geneva Reed-Veal, and every mother who has buried a stolen child
Have you ever asked her what it’s like
carrying stillborns in her womb?
To know her seeds are flowering
only to be snatched up like weeds?
Have you tried to look past her eyes
and into the empty space carved out in her soul
for ruptured membrane and crushed bones?
If she told you would you understand
how bathing babies feels like readying to
wring out bloodied clothes?
How nursing her children foreshadows
breathing resuscitation into their bodies?
If she said she expects the doctor to hand her
birth and death certificates on the same day
would that mean anything to you?
Does it make her heroic or insane
to birth children who might never
reach adulthood?
Is her heart home or hearse to her lineage?
Can she hear hope rumbling in her belly
over the sound of barrels and bullets
midwifing her fear?
Will she hug and kiss
or eulogize and bury her future today?
Will her motherhood always be marked
by questions and memory?
Symphony in D
When darkness enters you
there is no way to push back its hands,
groping and grabbing at yet undeveloped chords,
stroking and stealing the naïveté of prepubescent melodies
Darkness has a familiar face,
gentle, welcoming, reassuring, childlike—
friendly
Your insides clink and clatter
like maracas, tambourines, high hat cymbals
but your music is crashing to a crescendo
you cannot control
You have never broken a bone before,
still you are certain that darkness has
fondled fortissimo fractures all over you
And by the time your notes and clefs
rearrange to sound beautiful again
nothing is fine-tuned enough to undo
darkness’s cacophony
Beauty in Her Marrow
Inhaling paradise feels like kissing
the glass partitioning forever and the end.
Amethyst rain pirouettes through begging vessels,
and she is fifteen minutes freer than five seconds ago
shrouded in superhuman flight.
She hovers
over thirteen-year-old yesterday;
flashes of women who look too much like she
entwine their trembling fingers with hers
teaching her how to b r e a t h e .
And the air up here is glorious—
white, shining, sparkling ‘til it glares, ‘til it blinds,
bounteous and aromatic enough to choke
her into unconsciousness.
Breath is heavy, heavy
when it is a relevé and plié gasping through her pulse and ribcage,
somersaulting to a sudden scream,
when it is the soundtrack to her priceless transaction.
Selling and buying she knows.
Colliding and collapsing she knows.
Shatters and splinters she knows.
Even redemption and renewal she knows.
But does she know that there is air yet more divine than this?
The clouds gathering for torrent and storm around her cyclone
can grand jeté too.
Though she is looking through lenses
r />
fogged and blurred by ragged breathing now,
once she is ready to collect the cracked and calcified frame
meant to hold her upright,
she will again see the beauty in her marrow.
Contributor Notes
Emma Atkinson lives in Houston, TX. Her hobbies include making chapbooks, reading about demonic possession, and taking too many photos of her cats. Some of her writing can be found on themighty.com and the 2015 Pooled Ink anthology.
Angel C. Dye is a poet and spoken word artist from Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas by way of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Currently she is a senior at Howard University studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing. She is passionate about using poetry as a medium through which she questions, explores, and makes sense of the disparities in the communities that she represents as well as to approach liberation and communal healing.
Poet and Arts Educator Laura Gamache earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in 1993, and directed the UW Writers in the Schools program from 1993 to 2003. She was a Jack Straw Writers Program fellow in 1999 and 2002. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, nothing to hold onto. Her poems and teaching essays have appeared in many print and on-line journals. Her band, Feeble Prom Date, is imaginary.
Chris Haug is a father, husband, and teacher. His poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in places like Silk Road, North American Review, Harpur Palate, Punchnel’s, and Potomac Review.
Lawrence Hayes is a writer, arborist, and deer fencer living in Pawling, NY. He studied with the poets Charles Simic and Mekeel McBride at the University of New Hampshire, where he received a Masters Degree in Poetry Writing in 1981. He has had his work published in The New York Times, Water Street Review, Aegis, and other small magazines.
Miranda Cowley Heller grew up in a family of artists and writers. She worked as a magazine editor and book doctor in New York before moving to California. She was head of Drama Series at HBO for a decade, developing such shows as The Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood. Miranda is on the Board of PEN-USA, and is a member of the Los Angeles Poets & Writers Collective. She is currently finishing her first novel.
S. E. Ingraham writes from the lip of the Arctic Circle, the 53rd parallel, where she and the love of her life share space with two Pugly dogs. Among the topics Ingraham feels compelled to write about: quitting mental health consumerism, endorsing peace, and witnessing unspeakable social injustices. She gets published...some...she wins awards...some. She has to write. She does. More of her writing can be found at soundofthewordnight.blogspot.ca
Nicole Lachat is a Canadian poet of Peruvian and Swiss descent. Beyond borders, she is a Bunburyist at heart, and a recent MFA graduate of New York University.
Erin Lehrmann, knocked out by wisdom teeth painkillers, snoozed all the way from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Baltimore, Maryland. Although she does not remember unpacking her belongings (or dropping her dresser on her mother’s foot), she very consciously chose to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art and to remain in Baltimore, where she works as a poet, painter, and art educator.
Amy Nawrocki is the poetry editor for The Wayfarer and the author of five poetry collections, including Four Blue Eggs and Reconnaissance, released by Homebound Publications. She is the recipient of numerous awards including honors from The Connecticut Poetry Society, New Millennium Writings and Phi Kappa Phi. She teaches literature, composition, and creative writing at the University of Bridgeport and lives Hamden, Connecticut with her husband and their two cats.
Alexa Poteet is a poet and freelance writer from Washington, DC, with a master’s degree in poetry from Johns Hopkins University. Her poetry has appeared in Reed Magazine, Lines + Stars, PennUnion and NewVerseNews, among others. She was also a semifinalist for the 2015 Paumanok Poetry Award and a 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee. She has enjoyed staff positions at the Washington Post, the Atlantic and the National Interest.
AJ Powell is a once and future teacher who raises her children, serves on a school board, and attempts to write in the wee hours of the morning with varied success.
Ricky Ray was born in Florida and educated at Columbia University. His recent work can be found in Fugue, Esque, Sixfold, and Chorus: A Literary Mixtape. His awards include the Ron McFarland Poetry Prize, a Whisper River Poetry Prize, and Katexic’s Cormac McCarthy prize. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, three cats and a dog. The bed is frequently overcrowded.
Kimberly Russo is an English teacher in Aurora, Colorado where she resides with her husband, Tony, and her four children (Nick, Audrey, Grace, & Maritza.) Kimberly spends her free time gardening & bird watching. Much of her writing is dedicated to Marriage/Family, social issues, including the perpetuating inequality among genders/race, and the stigma associated with mental illness. Her poetry has appeared in River Poets Journal, Open Minds Quarterly, and PDXX Collective.
Sarah Sansolo is a graduate of the American University MFA program. Her poetry has recently appeared in Adanna, Big Lucks, and VIATOR, and will appear in an upcoming issue of District Lit. Her fiction has appeared in Flaunt Magazine and her nonfiction in The Rumpus. She was a finalist in the 2015 Bethesda Poetry Contest. Photo credit: Anna Carson DeWitt.
Gisle Skeie (born 1974) lives in Norway. Theology, Literature, and Philosophy studies at the University of Oslo. Works in a non-profit organization concerned with international Human Rights issues. A handful of his poems have been featured in Little River and The Writing Garden (both US). Some of his poems and song lyrics in Norwegian (as well as music) have been published/recorded/broadcasted nationally.
Keighan Speer recently received a silver key and an honorable mention in the annual Scholastic Writing Competition. A favorite quote by the poet Charles Bukowski: He was asked what makes a man a writer? “Well,” he said, “it’s simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.”
Bruce Taylor is the author of eight collections of poetry which has appeared in such places as Able Muse, The Chicago Review, The Cortland Review, The Nation, The New York Quarterly, Poetry, Rattle, and on the Writer’s Almanac. He is the recipient of awards from Fulbright-Hayes, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bush Artist Foundation. He lives in Lake Hallie, Wisconsin with his wife, the writer, Patti See.
D. H. Turtel lives in New York City.
Holly Walrath is an author, freelance editor, and the Associate Director of Writespace, a nonprofit literary center in Houston, Texas. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in Pulp Literature, Abyss & Apex, Silver Blade, and Literary Orphans, among others. Holly currently resides in Seabrook, Texas. Find her online @hollylynwalrath or hlwalrath.com
Cynthia Robinson Young currently lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she teaches in the Education department at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. She recently moved to the South with her husband and eight children after living in the San Francisco Bay Area for over thirty years. She has been published in journals over the years, including Radix, a 1970s Berkeley street paper. She is currently working on a genealogical book of prose poems.
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