POSTS

María Lysandra Hernández

byelingual

having two or more languages is a       cock       fight, beaks       snap ping       at       each       other’s
necks for the domain                   and trained       only for that     they only want to see              blood
and feathers, whether that means           life        or        death,              no ifs, ands, or buts; tampoco
quieren                 dudas,                 quejas                 o         peros–              pero…when   people  ask   me
what language i think in, i tell them    i                            think                 in                           dreams,

with no policing of language                     or fear of white canons amputating our limbs that grasp,
uphold, embrace, and carry our families and countries           limitations conclude our           selves.
we seldom speak in fear of our tongues being corralled          and caged.        see,       my        mother
always told me to     ar     ti     cu     late     my words when i spic out my mind
                                                                                                                                                           that the gringo
teachers won’t like if i’m late to enter discussions about        me.        the first professor to diagnose
my speech problems was         yt         they diagnosed me with             Too-Many-Words,

from different sources              fighting for conquest of my     brain and tongue            remember      to
cite sources in MLA!
  she told me          the amalgamation of languages was a                f o u n t a i n
not  of youth,   but of proof of   my country’s   resilience.   if only my grade school teachers were the
same way, instead of enforcing                     inglés                     and                     Spanish.         i         could
barely banish one language when one whispered in my ear the answer to a question,                 or
when the other mumbled poetry that insisted to be spit              out.               outside           of          my
country, people only ask for my           first         and          last name            but how will they know

                                                                                                                                        i     carry     my     mother’s
with me wherever i go? i also inherited her universal language of laughter and dance           her
kindness          her poise         her  habit   of   getting   so   enraged,   when   anger   bubbles   to   brim,
neither she nor I can identify whose mother to shit on,               what r’s an s’s to scrimp and save,
what other way than to summarize a hurracounous rage with a savory and all-encompassing
           puñeta                 i not only mutter                carajo                     or                     hijoeputa,           but
yell out
                                                                                      FUCK.

Li-berate-ion

noun. (plural: inconceivable)

the act of being on the loose, a tightening of the noose, being unchained
              and lacking every possible possession except for a ripped Bible
              that’s bloodstained and muddles passages like Exodus 6:6;

synonymous to unaffiliated, poverty-stricken, unlucky, inconceivable;
              see Chile, Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela
              Examples:
                            See, L’Ouverture’s version of liberation only gave his
              people a quavering economy;

                            Communism doesn’t birth liberation in the crib of an uncivilized
              country, but rather spawns chaos.

related to those-countries-that-were-ungrateful-of-the-Crown and
              those-who-read-Marx; see Guevara, Che.

antonym to hegemony, capitalist, unified, civilized, etc.

too expensive, unattainable, we’ll become Cuba! communism will run rampant, do you really
want that happening to you?

 

María Lysandra Hernández is a BA Writing, Literature and Publishing student with a minor in Global and Post-Colonial Studies at Emerson College. She was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She is currently the Head of Writing at Raíz Magazine (@raizmagazine on Instagram), Emerson College’s only bilingual and Latinx-run publication. Her work has been published in Raíz Magazine and she can be found on Instagram at @marialysandrahern.

 

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Agnieszka Gabor da Silva translates Anna Adamowicz

peeling off

the hairless skin that isolates me from the world
is a few millimeters thick
(thicker on finger tips
thinner in elbow pits)
the only contact with the world I have is
through membranes of mucous (glass, opal)

through here you can come in
lay eggs
come out

a fruit fly is isolated from the universe
by a golden exoskeleton
complete with a pair of wings (opal, glass)

the fruit fly hit the space
pierced right through it
the fruit fly can roll its eyes inward
to see its own chromosome

I am in contact with the universe
through the red eyes of a fruit fly

Tumulus the mole builds a house underneath the cemetery in the town of Szklary Gorne

moving through the water with the shovels of his paws,
sliding through claylike layers with his missile-slender body,
patiently pushing soil out of the soil.
work results are beautiful and good: a moss-carpeted bedroom,
a pantry full of earthworms with slashed nerves.
time to dig a well, says Tumulus
and he drills down, more swiftly than a gannet, his rough fingers seeking humidity.
but instead he senses emptiness. a feeling alien to moles.
cold, bitterness, failure fill his nostrils. a hum,
impossible to mute, arises in his head.
carefully, he enters the musty coffin, crawls,
curls up into a ball under the ribbed vault.

crossing over

philosophy is a ponderous column polished over thousands of years
which always lacked a capital but soon
it shall be capped by

Laika, a soviet scientist and astronaut, the pride of the nation.
she has just reached Earth orbit (perigee of 211 km,
apogee of 1659 km) on board Sputnik 2. soon
she will share her reflections and the microphones fitted to the capsule
will capture every word she says.

first lap
cosmos abandoned basement
tastes of iron rod

second lap
stars rocks hurt my paws
can’t hear any others

third lap
home a hard capsule
cosmos streets of Moscow

fourth lap
my name is Kudryavka
I’m a soup made of dog

recitativo of a tapeworm stuck to Maria Callas’s intestine

for O.F

I can hear her sing
this is my body which I love and I don’t which I love and I don’t which I
hate

I soak up the bitter night mantra
rough Greek words cut glass pane
I grow

when you’re up on stage
it’s not you they applaud
oh Violetta, Tosca, Norma, Aida
but the ribbon in your guts that
squeezes your waist from the inside
I made you into a slender fruit
from the tree of the knowledge of bel canto and brutta vita

beware
my children are thriving in your flesh

systems. dissociation

the most beautiful organ is the brain
enveloped with meninges, covered with the cranium can,
fitting in its tracts stability, drive,
and identity, which you must rip off like a used
band-aid, uncover the wounds for the salt to corrode.
you’re all salt, my love, and you must
fall apart; out of your body Europe will
precipitate a golden residue, where
lead, silver, consciousness dance together

Ksenia Bolotnikova recalls Holodomor

in nineteen thirty-two, sir, there was nothing left.
no crop, no potatoes, no farm or domestic animals,
no wool, no sickles, no flails, no passports, no wagons,
no roads, no stars—we ate everything but the knife.

the spring was cold, windy and rainy. one day,
from the water collected in the hollow of my cheek a devil emerged
assuring me that once I eat my daughter,
I will throw up everything:
the crop, the potatoes, the animals, the wool, the sickles, the flails,
the passports, the wagons, the roads, the stars—
I will turn the whole world inside out like a pillowcase
and the famine will be over.
my daughter will come back, too, safe and sound, so no loss there.

the knife was left uneaten in fear that its blade would reveal
the shame hidden in-between the folds.
the hand, unstopped by the angel
(if an angel came down, sir, from the heavenly sky to Sofievka
we would’ve eaten him inevitably, not even caring for
plucking his wings), a hand, twenty-seven
tiny fragile bones shining through the skin like a firefly,
the hand slit the throat.

go ahead and tell them, please,
to give me some bishop’s wort rootstalk.
for all these years I have been trying to throw up,
save Ukraine

 

Translator’s note:

The poems by Anna Adamowicz talk about the kingdom of Animalia but, surprisingly, it is not the human species that constitutes the main focus of her work. Although she does describe in detail a series of biological systems found in the human body, she dedicates a lot of attention to the world of insects, arthropods, reptiles, worms and, finally, mammals, where we can observe things from their perspective. In the background there is Europe, sometimes as a place or an organism.

Apart from allowing us to witness the world from such a distinct position, Adamowicz’s poems play another important role: they give voice to the voiceless. In this way, we are able to observe Tumulus the mole building a house or accompany Laika the dog in her short and tragic journey into space.

Moreover, Adamowicz also gives voice to those who never had a chance to speak up. One of her poems talks about Ksenia Bolotnikova, a young Ukrainian woman who lived during the man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s and who murdered her own daughter with the intention to feed her son and herself. Ksenia’s powerful confession enwrapped in Adamowicz’s poem is an attempt to describe the horrors of starvation without any traces of judgement because—who would dare to do that?

The biological aspect of Adamowicz’s texts was a meaningful lesson in how to translate a poem without making it sound like an encyclopedia entry. While the author incorporates biology into verse in the most harmonious way possible, as a translator, I often found it challenging to recreate the novelty of her perception as well as her carefully crafted poetic language.

Another difficulty I encountered is related to the choice of poems to submit. Adamowicz covers a wide array of themes in her volume by touching upon biological, environmental, historical, social, and cultural aspects of the world. On the one hand, I wanted to give the reader a sample of each of these factors; on the other hand, I could not help but translate the poems which affected me personally, hoping that they will likewise appeal to the reader.

 


Aga Gabor da Silva graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she studied Lusophone Literatures and Cultures. Aga also holds a Master of Arts in English from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. Her first translation from Polish into English—two poems “Tights” and “Buttons” written by Bronka Nowicka—was published in the Winter/Spring 2019 issue of Lunch Ticket. Aga currently lives in sunny New Mexico with her family. When she’s not busy chasing after her three-year old, she translates literature.

 

Anna Adamowicz was born in 1993 in Lubin, in south-western Poland. She is a poet and a laboratory diagnostician. Her first volume of poetry, Wątpia (Doubt), published in 2016 by Kwadratura, was nominated for the Gdynia Literary Award and won third place in the “Browar za debiut” (Beer for Debut) poll. Her second collection of poetry, Animalia, was published in January of 2019 by Biuro Literackie, and a few poems from the volume have been translated into Hungarian, Slovenian, and English. You can follow Anna Adamowicz on Facebook.

 

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Calvin Olsen and Antonio Ladeira translate João Luís Barreto Guimarães

The painter of Altamira

The
painter of Altamira (in the darkness of the cave) knows
the shadows he sees on the wall
are real. For him the real and apparent
are indistinct
for he knows the shadows undulating on the wall
are (in fact) bison
passing in front of the cave. Ten thousand years
will have to pass twice
before another bearded man can affirm
something different and in another cave
(by the light of another light) rethink
everything
from the start. But for now they are shadows
(with the profiles of bison) that
the painter of Altamira copies all over the cave –
asking the stone gods that they
may reproduce
so there’s never a shortage of shadows (and
for that matter bison) to hunt
and eat.

O pintor de Altamira

O
pintor de Altamira (na escuridão da caverna) sabe
que as sombras que vê na parede
são reais. Para si são indistintos o
real e o aparente
porque sabe que as sombras que cintilam na parede são
(de facto) de bisontes
que passam defronte à caverna. Será preciso que
passem duas vezes
dez mil anos para que outro homem de barba afirme
coisa diferente e numa outra caverna
(à luz de uma outra luz) pense
tudo
do início. Mas por agora são sombras
(com o recorte de bisontes) que o
pintor de Altamira copia por toda a caverna –
pedindo aos deuses de pedra que elas
se multipliquem
para que nunca faltem sombras (e já
agora bisontes) para caçar
e comer.

The motion of the world

Through the church door I’d hear people’s prayers recited
like someone’s times tables. I wandered the world and
(listen:
it was funny) the more I wandered the more
I had it right (life
itself seemed like it wanted to hold
onto me). In a world gone belly up
bats are the wise ones –
I came back from the world and never admired
the return
(the color of the sea was the same
the light in the sky was the same
envy was exactly the same). Seen top 
to bottom
each illusion is small –
through the school window I’d hear times tables recited
like someone’s prayers.

Movimento do mundo

Pela porta da igreja ouvia dizer orações
como quem diz tabuadas. Eu errava pelo mundo e
(escuta:
era engraçado) quanto mais errava mais
estava certo (a
própria vida parecia que me queria
preso a si). Num mundo de pernas para o ar
os sábios são os morcegos –
eu regressava do mundo e nunca estranhava
o regresso
(a cor do mar era a mesma
a luz do céu era a mesma
a inveja era a mesma). Vista de cima
para baixo
toda a ilusão é pequena –
pela janela da escola ouvia dizer tabuadas como
quem diz orações.

Wild apples

More than the first verse I am unsettled
by this: who provides
the second one? I scan the world with my eyelids
(opening and closing my eyes)
to select is to exclude
to exclude is to understand
to understand is to preserve. Each poem written is
an opportunity
like touching someone who without warning
shocks you
(a fish bone in your throat) nails
scratching on a black board. Creating poems is like
stealing
wild apples
(you’re expecting sweetness but what you taste is
acidity). Inside the poem:
sounds
(around them: white space)
silence put to work.

Maçãs selvagens

Mais do que o primeiro verso inquieta-me
o seguinte: o segundo
quem o dá? Escolho o mundo com as pálpebras
(abrindo e fechando os olhos)
escolher é excluir
excluir é entender
entender é preservar. Cada poema escrito é
uma oportunidade
como alguém em quem se toca e sem que se conte
dá choque
(uma espinha na garganta) a unha
num quadro de ardósia. Fazer poemas é como ir
roubar
maçãs selvagens
(vais à espera de doçura mas o provas é
a acidez). Dentro do poema:
sons
(em redor: espaço branco)
silêncio a trabalhar.

Translators’ note:

Professionally, João is a doctor of plastic and reconstructive surgery, and he’s a perfect addition to the long line of physician-poets. His poetry has been published in anthologies and literary magazines in Portugal, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Macedonia, Mexico, Montenegro, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States (and probably a few more I’m not remembering). He and I were introduced by my mentor, Robert Pinsky, who knew of my ongoing work translating the collected works of the late Alberto de Lacerda. I immediately loved João’s voice: it is inclusive without being pedestrian, and his often-tongue-in-cheek tone is very engaging. He’s also incredibly adept at packing ideas and emotion into a concise poem (almost nothing he writes goes beyond a single page), and the first-person narration puts the reader right in the middle of the action.

These three poems come from Nomad, João’s tenth book, which attests to his popularity and success in his home country of Portugal and abroad. He gave me the opportunity to work alongside Antonio Ladeira to translate the collection, which is an honor in and of itself. We are thrilled for Anomaly to be the first journal to publish part of our work—there is plenty more where this came from.

– Calvin Olsen

Antonio Ladeira was born in Portugal in 1969. He currently lives in Lubbock, Texas, where he is an Associate Professor of Portuguese and Spanish at Texas Tech University. He holds a Licenciatura degree in Portuguese Studies from Nova University in Lisbon, and a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California in Santa Barbara. He has published five volumes of his own poetry in Portugal and two books of short stories in Portugal, Brazil and Colombia. He is also a lyricist for Jazz singer Stacey Kent.

Calvin Olsen’s poetry and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Asymptote, The Comstock Review, Ezra Translation, The London Magazine, and The National Poetry Review, among others. A former Robert Pinsky Global Fellow and recent Pushcart Prize nominee, Calvin now lives in North Carolina, where he is a doctoral student in Communication, Rhetoric, & Digital Media and the poetry editor at The Carolina Quarterly. More of his work can be found at his website (www.calvin-olsen.com).

João Luís Barreto Guimarães was born in Porto, Portugal, where he graduated in medicine. He is a breast reconstructive plastic surgeon and author of ten poetry books, the most recent of which are Mediterrâneo (Mediterranean, 2016), winner of Portugal’s António Ramos Rosa Award for Poetry; Nómada (Nomad, 2018), which was voted a Book of the Year by Livraria Bertrand (the oldest bookstore in the world); and O Tempo Avança por Sílabas (Time Advances by Syllables, 2019). He is also a chronicler and a translator, mainly for his blog Poesia & Lda.

 

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Jason Hart

Art in Revolution

 

Jason Hart is a visual storyteller based in Dayton, Ohio. His narrative works have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Ink Brick, Illustoria, and elsewhere.

 

 

 

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Turandot Shayegan

unwound

you are woman in your full frontal
rearrange me stranger, so that i am un-deceased                 and i can snap your little        blue
body between my thighs and mold your        beet-flesh into my child’s                   navel.
you were         too many whores for the apocalyptic. it is to be risen.

palate-eater,               why do you                  dare chew the meat of my                  mouth you are
too much inside of my stricken, i       am unpinned. i wish i could               peel back the sleeve of
your womb.                                                                 and be one with your crevices

you are a type of persimmon             so irrefutably orange it would be for dionysus a pound of
cathedral if you broke like the green brand of rasputin in my paper capsule for fringe swallows in
your air from my spine pocket

there is unlikely but it is too many for restoration.

i am for neanderthal a clean-maggot. it seeks my skin paper and un-lulls. that is a creationist in
escrow. i am unwound.

 

Turandot Shayegan is a student from Los Angeles, California. She was recently named a 2019-2020 finalist for the LA Youth Poet Laureate. Her poems seek to deconstruct and disrupt traditional notions of grammar and syntax, exposing the raw materiality of language as a form of new expression. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in filling Station and Drunk Monkeys, amongst others.

 

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Juliette Givhan

Gossypium

I have a joke for you
               What is the only plant that grows
               When you feed it blood?
                                                                                   The cotton tree.

Did you laugh?

I’ve been thinking a lot about 
ancestry lately,
as I’m stuck still in the trap 
of an existential early 20s.

I’ve been thinking about who I would have been 
on the continent,
if I should do like the diaspora— 
pledge my allegiance to an idea of home
I’ll never be able to corroborate— 
claim Ghana, or Nigeria or Cote de Ivoire 
as the place before the chains

(my last name is French, after all.)

I took Anthropology in college
and my professor told the class that
Ancestry.com, really any DNA testing kit,
was full of shit,
and a door closed
and my heart broke
all over again.

There were two white people
at my family’s Christmas last year.
They were the only people who got
23andMe kits.

In the first creative writing class 
I ever took, the teacher asked everyone 
to go around the room, 
answer what our names meant
what story they told

Givhan… where does that come from?

Slavery. 
I’ve been thinking about the ancestors 
as I write a book influenced 
by myths from a country that colonized 
a good chunk of the world, 
ones I’m familiar with 
because they were what got taught.

I think about them 
when there’s an uptick on Black twitter 
of posts saying shit like:

Buck up y’all, they’re dancing in the Kingdom, filled with joy at what you get to do
without them chains. Make their sacrifice worth it. Make them proud.

(or whatever fits in 120 characters.)

I took a class on African Religion
and almost holy disregarded the units
on Catholicism and Christianity, 
preferring the flavor of the ATR tales, 
like the one where a chicken 
helps create the world:

Obatala climbs down a gold chain
and scatters sand from a snail shell. 
He releases the bird to go bat shit—
wherever it kicks
a sandstorm of hills and valleys follows—
and the world began.

(I think I should stop eating chicken)

I like to think of the Orishas as my ancestors
when the flesh and blood reality
of historical violence
on bodies that look like mine 
starts to consume me.

I think of Obatala and the black cat
brought to a creation myth—
whose only job was to curl up beside him, 
keep him company in a new made world—
and I see a way of life 
where I don’t have to be alone.

I think of Olokun livid as fuck, 
drowning half the new made world
because a man was too stupid 
to ask her permission 
to enter and terra form her kingdom—
and I don’t feel the history 
of Black women powerless,
raped and separated from their families.

I think of Shango and how fucking sick
a Black god of thunder must be—
Static Shock meets John Henry meets Jesus

(but obviously not white-washed Jesus) 

and I feel strong knowing
he could beat the absolute shit 
out of Zeus, if it came to it.

But then I think of the golden chain 
Olorun allowed Obatala 
to hang off the edge of the sky 
in the first place—

find myself shackled 
to the same kind of narrative.

So I’ve been thinking 
about ancestry a lot, 
but also about theft.

The continental kind. 
The kind so huge it can’t be replaced by reparations

(though it’s a good fucking place to start)

The kind that has punched a hole
in the fabric of this history,

a loss so permanent it’s opened a pit in me 

that no number of stories could ever fill.

 

An Homage Of My Father

I.

My mother told me once,
when I asked why I never knew
Alabama soil. Blackness. The richness 
of my place on this earth
in this tree,

a story about walking with my father 
and the truck that drove by 
and the people inside who slowed down
to throw bricks at them.

I asked Did you throw them back,
teach them a lesson?
and her mouth said the no her eyes couldn’t,
busy as they were saying something 
in a language I didn’t understand then,
horrors I couldn’t pronounce as a child 
in a dialect unused to the flavor of lynching,
my white teeth in this black mouth 
unable to let the knowledge of death 
slip through its gaps.

II.

My father is as Black
as I like to imagine the soil
in that place we were taken from.

III.

The things I know about my father,
are that he used to go to movies with friends,
where one person would buy the ticket
and let the others in through the exit

that he learned how to drive using a friend’s car
because no one in our family owned one,
used to cheat at cards, palm them,
have one up his sleeve to rig the game,
that he walked 5 or more miles a day
to get to a bus that would take him
to a segregated school,

that he grew up using an outhouse,
no indoor plumbing,
and that his parents were sharecroppers,
his father died young.

I know my father has a bad back
from teaching soldiers
to jump out of helicopters,
that the VA hospital gives out cortisone shots
in the years it takes
between insurance claims and surgery,

that he joined the Air Force to get out
of a South so deep and dark,
he still won’t talk about it,
won’t acknowledge that some part of me
is curious what part of her
might belong down there
with the ones who never left.

I know my father had a brother
who died in a motorcycle accident
one who’s a trucker
one who calls occasionally,
another that totaled my father’s car
while he was deployed in Germany,
another that stopped on a highway in Seattle,
threw the car with my mother and my father and himself
into reverse, to take the exit he’d overshot

I know he still talks to Shirley
and one other sister, Ernestine, I think,
that another sister died
unknown.

I know he married a white woman,
had three brown daughters,
that he takes care of four cats
and puts money in my account
when I get scared I can’t afford
to be alive,

I know he didn’t tell my mother
about his family reunion
two summers ago,
that he was silent as she yelled at him
when I let it slip.

IV.

I know that some kid called him a nigger
at his job
and that if I could,
I would rip that fucker apart
tear the word out of his throat with my teeth
scratch our history into his body with my nails
and it still wouldn’t be enough

to keep it from happening again

to erase the trauma of all the other times
he’s been called something
I can’t protect him from.

V.

When I told my father
about getting kicked out of a class at OSU
to make a spot for the white students
who hadn’t gotten in and complained,
he said, Hang in there, kid

because he knows better than I ever will
that you can’t be Black in this country
without having some part of yourself
lynched—

VI.

My father is Black as the soil
I like to believe exists
in that place we were taken from

and he makes me cry
sometimes,
when I think of all the bad things
that could happen to him
for existing here.

VII.

My father is Black as new earth
in an old world we never got to know,
and I thank the god he still believes in
but I never could

that he is my father.

 

Juliette Givhan is a poet and MFA candidate at Oregon State University. She completed a BA in English with a minor in African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. Her writing explores popular culture, memes, myths, and the intersection of identities—all in an attempt to learn how to survive as a Black queer writer in America.

 

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Angelique Zobitz

Full-Throated

You must be thinking of my grandma’s people. 

Must have me confused
 with someone else. 
I see the resemblance.  
But I’m not the one—

won’t be  

compelled to cradle
every word on my tongue 
behind the caging of my 
teeth only birthing

Black ass bon mot babies 
for your pleasure. 

Bite my tongue? 
I’ve heard, hold your peace, 
& requests that I stay calm
(& maintain the illusion of peace. 

Recall, we’re all happy 
if we’re quiet.)

Bitch, 
please. 

My people trapped sharp
words in the esophagus, 
dulled them down on the concrete 
slabs of solitary confinement 

sacrificed in silence
while carving in the throat

I was here 

bold subversive graffiti 
scrawled in the night.

The fumes of their words are why
my throat is dry from how often 
I refuse to choke gag reflex
fix my mouth.

If you only knew what 
I want to say when you utter: 
temper your temper

as if a soft word makes palatable misery 
as if tongue separates the bitter from sweet
as if it is my party trick to swallow back the bitter pit
as if tying my anger into knots like a cherry stem—

Woo—Ma’am! 
Bless. 

I am not my grandma’s—

Child, that generation put
up with what they had to. 

I never learned how to sweet
and swallow bad produce. 

To fix my lips for long, 
never rouged them red,
in replacement of bloodlust. 

I too want words 
soft on skin soft on psyche
lapping softly in my inner 
ear revolutionary love words, 

like: you matter. 

Until then 
I let sing, 
every word. 

 

In Love We are all Intrepid Explorers and Cannibals

I.

In my treasure chest of infinity boxes—
earrings made from the luminescent

light of his eyes, scent a cherry pit 
on my tongue, the freedom to take 
up space behind my ear,

worship in the temple of my round belly, 
fingers that glance along the dimple in his back,

his teeth striping electric over, under
and between where my ass bisects into cheeks,

he moon tides between my thighs, 
remind me of hollows between his toes
ripe for plucking—

universes are open for exploration. 

II.

He and I consume one another 
a curving ouroboros, slick

and primordial, a daisy chaining
organism, closed loop of two,

we claim and conquer in the name of  
leave forensic evidence on our tongues

savor skin as soft and salt laden
as butter pecan ice cream

sipped from God’s own mouth.

 

Angelique Zobitz has work in or forthcoming in Sugar House Review, The Adirondack Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts of the African Diaspora, Yemassee Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Poets Reading the News, So to Speak, SWWIM, Rise Up Review, Rogue Agent, Pretty Owl Press, Mom Egg Review, and Psaltery & Lyre amongst others. She is a Spring 2019 Black River Chapbook Finalist and a two-time 2019 Best of the Net Anthology nominee. She lives in West Lafayette, Indiana with her husband, daughter, and a wild rescue dog and can be found on Twitter and Instagram: @angeliquezobitz.

 

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Ashely Adams

An Ode to My Breasts Featuring Purgatorius unio

On my chest slopes a continent
old, smelling of sun-baked grass,
its prairie rooted in my sternum. 
Here, in the darkness of my ribs, I carry 
first mother, someone like possum, my stretch marks a border
where she shed scales for fur.
She laughs at our new carnivores and their sloppiness, 
chitters, Child, look at the way they butcher
the fat from the meat. Make a glass talon
of sweet trill and word. 
Still, careful, careful.
We both know the dinosaurs 
never died, just changed.
I tuck my head into the fault line underneath my neck
where she buried herself,
thank her for showing me when to hiss 
or bear my belly like the dead. 
Bless her for teaching me 
how to turn sweat into milk.

 

The Ark Will Not Save the Eurypterid

You push your finger into the sand,
say—here is where we will clean the ocean.
Drain all the saltwater from the world,
use its orphaned film to write
our God-given names.
We are like lobsters;
it is right to eat our woman.
It is time to live on the land.
                                           And we will tell you—
                                                                                               you can’t preach the mud off our backs,
                                                                                               turn our truth ugly with beauty and orders.
                                                                                               Can’t sing down our walls of mucus
                                                                                               and you were right,
                                                                                               we are arthropods
                                                                                               but not lobsters to be buttered and boiled.
                                                                                               We are sea scorpions,
                                                                                                            making footprints in boulders
                                                                                                            making a salvation of carapace
                                                                                                            making a god of ourselves
                                                                                                                             making
                                                                                                                                     the first thing, benthic,      
                                                                                                                                             and it was good.

 

Ashely Adams is a swamp-adjacent writer whose work has appeared in Paper Darts, Fourth River, Permafrost, Apex Magazine, and other places. She is the nonfiction editor of the literary journal Lammergeier. Ask her about the weather.

 

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Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

If Nameless Fields Could Sing

We expected to find it 
alone, just us in that sun 
under the evergreens 
among Zbylitowska Góra’s 
enclosed grass plots marked 
with names and towns 
for Poles, left nameless 
Hebrew text for Jews.      
Instead, we walked into a forest 
of flags growing wild 
without roots. Young boys 
with Magen Davids draped 
heavy, blue stripes over white. Boys 
with yarmulkes and prayer shawls 
and heads covered and arms wrapped  
in each other. So many young boys. A few 
older ones. A rabbi. Two boys helping 
another walk. A disabled boy. And another one. And then 
that singing. Singing
                                        rose like smoke. 
                                                                              Dai dai dai
dai dai dai
                                            dai dai dai dai. 
And one of those boys 
                                            wailed.                              Wailed as the rest sang.    
Rocked and wailed. And they surrounded 
the site 
where children 
are said 
                                            to have been shot. 
Nameless and gone. The grass. Wild flowers and bright
butterflies. Neon green and white amid purple blooms.
                                                                    And the flags.
The singing. The wailing. The rocking. The air 
heavy with prayer. And a smaller group of girls. 
Shoulder to shoulder, dressed in flags too and some 
carrying stones and some one another and most 
crying and some just standing. 
But that boy’s wail cut 
through huddled bodies. 
The boy carried by other boys. 
The boy who didn’t need 
the facts. Who needed 
to wail. But we are not
crying or tearing off our clothes 
or lighting candles but I wish
we were. Wish I could have joined them. 
Sang and swayed and 
wailed. Wish that
was what we had come to do. To linger 
with the unnamed on their soil. To mourn. But we 
came to learn
the facts.
                              To know that 
                                                               on the first day 6,000 were shot. 
                                                               2,000 Poles, 8,000 Jews, and at least 
                                                               800 children by the end of the second.  
That the monument reads
                                                                “Polish Citizens” 
                                                                and forgets
                                                                ethnicity. 
We came to know 
                                                                 the dates  
                                                                 and times 
                                                                 and numbers. 
To listen. But not to wail. 
To hear. But not pray. To learn 
without feeling.
To look for light 
in the break between the trees, 
where evergreens turn black 
against the high-noon sun
and wailing becomes song 
becomes prayer becomes
all that’s left of god.

 

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach emigrated from Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six years old. She is the author of three poetry collections: The Many Names for Mother, winner the Wick Poetry Prize (Kent State University Press, 2019); Don’t Touch the Bones (Lost Horse Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 Idaho Poetry Prize; and 40 WEEKS, forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2022. Her recent poems appear in POETRYAmerican Poetry Review, and The Nation, among others. Julia is the editor of Construction Magazine. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and is completing her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Philly with her two kids, two cats, one dog, and one husband.

 

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Oli Isaac

every summer i am reminded sunburns on the back are the loneliest sunburns

i am going to break my phone 
so people can’t hear me but i can still hear them 
and i will hear them speak with their eyes closed for the first time

looking      needing     willing        towards a banister in the darkness 
a therapy session number passed around south london bathrooms
a contemporary confession booth trapping each insecurity inside a trembling voicemail
your voice cracks           your silence dangles

one night i see you eating up breadcrumbs your parents left for you
i join you and we’re doing this together 
you’ll say it’s funny how creases in our fingertips tell us who we are 
but not how far you can run when your past has a head start 
nor the amount of breath you can reach in and steal from someone.

i wrap myself around your waist           rest my head to your stomach 
to hear what futures you have been swallowing           plans fermenting in the last five minutes 

the sieve we inherit         before i broke my arm balancing on the fence
tyre tracks left a divot in my hands that felt uncomfortable for anyone to hold

the light at the end of the tunnel reaches your face 
in the backseat next to mine on the car ride home at 3am        
i ask whether you can smell the burning and you kiss me on my temples
to remind me that you know the weakest spots of my skull

 

Oli Isaac is a multi-disciplinary artist, based in London, who works across poetry and theatre. Their poetry explores the tension of growing up with a speech impediment & trying to access language to navigate their queer and non-binary identity. Oli co-leads Clumsy Bodies, a trans and disabled-led art duo. They are currently part of Soho Theatre’s Writers lab, and are Roundhouse Poetry Collective alum. Author photo by Suzi Corker.

 

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