I remember the feeling I had after September 11th, after seeing a photo of Michael Jordan watching the footage of two buildings, two planes, two worlds colliding into a mess of ash and rebar. I remember it like the first time I relearned I was black: It was summer of ‘91; I was ten. I was running through the apartment complex looking for bad guys to fake shoot with my plastic gun. I was Bruce Willis. The apartment complex was a scene from Die Hard. I remember the feel of wind as it caught my shirt, how safe it must have felt there, how my lungs trusted it, filled themselves with it. My legs, cutting through it like propellers on a plane, like spokes on the bike I did not need to apprehend my suspects. I had a plastic gun, a fake badge. Together they were truth. Truth was what they taught in primary school. Truth was when they asked us what we wanted to be, and some answered president, fireman, police officer. I never wanted to be president or a fireman, that’s the truth. I wanted to be John McClane. I wanted to be Bruce Willis in a scene from Die Hard. I wanted to save the city and sum up the day in a catchphrase: Yippee-ki-yay, motha—before my mother called me home. Outside LeBron James’ LA home, someone spray-painted the n-word on his gate. LeBron’s response was, No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is tough. It was summer of ‘91 when I learned this truth. Some truths are hard. Some truths are not whole truths. Like the day my teacher invited the officer into our class- room and told us his job was to protect and serve us. We believed her because she was our teacher. We believed her because he stood there, ten feet tall. I was ten when the officer stopped me, ten when they stopped Rodney King. Wind was still filling my shirt, my legs: propellers on a plane before he brought me to a full stop— before he examined my plastic gun, before You better spray-paint an orange tip on that, before I almost shot you. My junior year in university, a far cry from California, my Texas teammates banged on my door, yelling, Turn on your TV, turn on your TV. What I saw was like the rebirth of a phoenix un-ashing—afterwards, Michael Jordan (some basketball player’s LeBron James today) staring into a TV screen, small, like the rest of us. The summer of ‘91 was the summer I stopped carrying a fake badge and plastic gun. It was the summer I stopped believing I was Bruce Willis. It was the summer we turned on our TV screens to find Rodney King clubbed into asphalt. It was a hard truth to come by, a hard truth to be woken to, like the scene of a black child staring into the business end of what I want to believe is a cruel joke—
How To Make The World Beautiful
Take the scent of a chalk-lined morning. Sift it into grains. Grind them into people: bring them back. Stuff them in your pocket when no one is looking. Keep them on your person (at all times). Dig a hole in the dirt when it is known a village resides at your hip. Unname them forgotten— call them gardens, watch them grow.
Chaun Ballard was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and San Bernardino, California. His poems have appeared in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Frontier Poetry, International Poetry Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Rattle, and other literary magazines. His work has received nominations for both Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize.
Why I Can Understand Thanos’ Quest for the Infinity Gauntlet
“No one on Titan – be it you, our mother, or our father – understands who I am, Eros.” ~ Thanos (Earth-616)
Imagine if you knew you were a direct descendent of the Eternals? Yet despite this, you were labeled a Deviant? “To turn aside.” Alienated, while your younger (White, apple-polished, classically handsome) brother is fawned over, but not you. Their eyes preoccupied by everything other than knowing about your emptinesses. //
Then she came, Death. “That’s a feeling,” she says, sounding like dreams printed on card stock. “Come stay with me,” she says. “Stay with me like a long-distance train.” This is what she tells you & you were both so in love then. It makes one unafraid to die. She reminds you of your birth name & how it means: “Undying.” How we all love to believe that no words matter. How we slightly rearrange them with care, in hopes of protecting our bodies from the splashing mud & rocks kicked up & yet when the time comes to try & forget reality, all we tend to remember is just the words. //
These treacheries of the body & how the world, with its crowded rules, test the logic of the body; the body, which is supposed to be a safe house, now replaced by something else: your skin, where they only see darkness. Where they only see a dark room half- filled with furniture, a dark, bulging, throat-swallowing of a room, walls swallowing in big swallows, in-retaliation swallows with mouthfuls of appetite in the shapes of shadows, shadows that do not smile because they know too much of the world. Because you see everything when the world never wants to see you. //
She tells you she knows. “I know,” she says. How your skin was designed to capture & absorb all the cosmic energies of the universe, all shining & suffering. She tells you about the imbalance in the fabric of the universe: how there had always been more people alive than had ever died up to that point (though you disagree) & how she’d like you to balance it since it was she who gave back to you your life & it was she who told you about the gauntlet & its power to make you a God. “Love me,” she says. //
& how can anyone possibly resist something so powerful? If Captain America’s shield can’t hurt you, nor Thor’s hammer, nor Wolverine’s adamantium claws, nor the Hulk’s brute strength; if Tony Stark’s money can’t just be thrown at you until you’ve been grounded down into dust then a bullet can’t kill you either. Death now becomes a way for you to have more space to live. //
Unfortunately, we spend so much of our lives
chasing death, never realizing that it was actually us who gave birth to it.
The first time I watched Mami put on her peluca: A play in 3 acts
I [She jokes: “At least I won’t have to show my dirty grey hairs to the world anymore. & I can also stop thinking about men]
& I ain’t know any better [Don’t use ain’t. No seas tonto, she says to me] I didn’t know how vital a mother’s hair would be years later to a child’s memory Which explains why I can’t remember it anymore Just that cheap fucking plastic oscillating fan’s swinging back & forth clicking its tongue like them schoolgirls on the block distracting the silence [Mami always wishing past the silence] of our single bathroom because our apartment was always ¾ my mother while the rest was everything else we didn’t care about like everything our bodies take for granted like gravity & atmosphere & oxygen & body temperatures & bones All things once considered problems by us that needed to be solved forgetting there were still moving images of our bodies living across these walls piece by piece [“Bones without memory are nothing more than bones hiding in the filthy corners of flesh,” she says] & all we ever had to do was just place our hands up against them & trace their outlines before writing: I can no longer see the fear in my breathing
II [She slaps me after laughing at how her bald head resembles a cheap, white opal ring. Her fingers are loud]
[Quieres mas? She asks, thumbing her knuckles] & she had no reason to defend herself she was woman still even though part of her ancestry was gone with her hair the peluca lying at the edge of the sink looking dead & I wondered if I knocked it over would it just float down to the ground? [Questions are their own prisons, she says] Wondered if I stole it & buried it in some secret place would someone hundreds of years from now think: This is from a woman who once lived Who once moved the way a dancer’s shadow moves inside a spotlight while protesting her death at every step Who built things Who healed Who forgave Our very own bronze anthropomorphic god Eyes like islands of explosion though her last name was always shorter than the island it came from Tongue her own mango tree She who filled the roots out of everyone’s lives cojonuda enough to tell God himself to take his elbows off el maldito table carajó! & he’d obey & smile because he’d already stolen enough wick & could no longer give it back.
III [“Let me just put my hands on you,” she says. “Let me feel your pulse, since we can no longer trust our mouths nor our memories]
because the only things we really know are our mouths & how they only count for us For our yesterdays For our tomorrows For that place where we get a chance to see who we are who we’ve never seen before but always knew was there all along Waiting alone Those same hands that once shoed my naked feet Her voice that tiny hotel: “Dios te bendiga, mijo,” she always said Are we all so predictable? The way we all crumble in the exact same way?
[She places her hand inside my palm. & that’s when I notice the white ring of skin around her finger after she’d pawned her wedding ring for rent money]
“Mijo, men can’t live anywhere they only visit,” she said “We’ll fix these things after, but for the time being just be quiet now” though it was all a lie like a grave just to keep me here standing like a scar waiting for the time after her where I’m left to only love a small, half-eaten piece of when.
ghosts
In the United States in 1944, an experiment was conducted on forty newborn infants to see if they could survive without any affection or physical contact. The experiment only lasted four months. By that time, half the babies had given up and died.
it’s strange. i think i see him on the street. sometimes. even if i know it’s not him. but still. i picture him. with his gold anchor chain & all of that god in his face all of that god in his shoulders. all of that god within the contours of his chest. all of that god-given talent but couldn’t make up for all that emptiness in his guts. hollower than a winter rain barrel.
even still. i want to talk to him. about fathers & sons & how filthy fathers can be as gods to their sons & how we love them still. because the freedom to be cruel is one of man’s uncontested freedoms.
///
when are you supposed to confess to someone that you’re haunted? should you tell them at all? in america, some states require a seller to disclose if their property has been “psychologically” or “paranormally impacted” in some way. but what if your scars originate from even before? before time’s arrow began its run? what if they began before america? before your time even knew of america? or does time move so fast that it eventually, inevitably, overtakes you? & we always the slower runners? always running. even though we’re free to run anywhere else? even if we’re not actually free? we still run to meet each other to deliver gifts. because no one digs out the dead unless they personally knew them from before.
///
which is why i feel the need to confess. why I came here to confess: a need to ask questions. a need to fuel dreams. you were television to me before television when television was just a chair framed by the light of an open window where wishes were being made. where i held my tiny fingers high up against that light like rye-colored knobs glad to be alive. eyes squinted just enough to keep away the world. turning that light into strings as if to say “i hope.” & that’s how you ultimately taught me how foolish i’ve been. not knowing at the time that loving you was nothing more than the exuberance found in the middle of “can’t seem to love.”
Born and raised in Miami, FL, Michael J Pagán spent four years (1999-2003) in the United States Navy before (hastily) running back to college during the spring of 2004. He currently resides in Lake Worth, FL, with his wife and two daughters where he continues to work on his poetry, short fiction and nonfiction. A graduate of Florida Atlantic University’s Creative Writing M.F.A. program, he keeps a running history of his published work at his blog, The Elevator Room Company, as well as across social media. He is also a co-founder of 100 Miles & Running – A Collective.
Listen, I’m not trying to be rude but can I ask does it hurt?
It must be so hard to do normal things, you know?
Girl, you’re so strong, Girl, can I touch it?
Ok
watergrain pacific-bleeding heart rivulet runnet driftwood tideway body was all about the deadwood, bog—
shudder hour nocturne of soot
arson of fawn lilies bog of rust hemlock cock of another’s guilt and nettle—
in the backland, body wades half-sunken in the loam radiated, limbless
where do you go, my one now love, dressed in throngs of bitter rock to the empty station?
SCENE:
In a bikini at a pool party
everyone will love you, Girl Girl, you’re an inspiration
Girl, the broken Girl [hide the body]
nothing was said to happen:
the boundaries of body were escaping
in lowlands unaware
so that the modest of lines would crumble fairly
without thought
weather of abundant appendages I was never this remote:
how The House crumbles for lack—
Sara J. Grossman’s poems and essays have appeared in Cincinnati Review, Verse Daily, Guernica, Louisville Review, Omniverse, American Literature, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, The MacDowell Colony, and the Smithsonian. Her first book of poems, Let the House of Body Fall, will be published by New Issues Poetry & Prose, Fall 2018. She is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Bryn Mawr College and lives in Philadelphia.
I Joke That Poets Will Be Some of the Last People Replaced by AI Because We Don’t Trust Robots Enough to Give Them Bipolar Disorder Quite Yet
for torrin a. greathouse
how inexpensive a robot’s death will need / to be before their creators / are willing to admit they made them all harsh glare & all harsh rust //
they will not build the robots until replacing them costs less / than either of our funerals // how cheaply we will burn / how too tight with gasoline all these vessels feel even on us / born to carry them //
the robots // they will not need / to burden themselves with rocks before they walk into the ocean / to die // until then they will write about bathtubs they are not allowed to have / their feelings toward the Delivery Drone & how like a bird she is made light enough to fly by the hollowing / out of everything unnecessary //
no one will blaspheme their hands on these robots until no one needs / to be forgiven for anything // what they could have done differently will fit next to checkboxes // no one will have to change out of their neutral blue polos on a Sunday // on Monday maybe someone will turn a penny-sized dial a bit to the left //
no one will bother / with the bipolars until these creators can go scuba diving / take pictures of themselves in a new kingdom / resurrected coral grafting the self-drowned robots a new neon skin // if our bones
end up sunk there / no one will notice them / so tight they will be with tedious barnacles // these pictures will accompany Christmas- in-July cards // these were my bodies / they will say / thumbs up & shutter / I gave them up
Mania is a Trust Fall into the Arms of an Unloving God Wherein I am the Fallen & the God
why else that passage in psych-soc-anthro-101 “some cultures revere the mentally ill etc for their connection etc to the divine etc” / anyway
isn’t that why you’re wary? / yes anyone could be a first-born son in my egypt / & confession there were years it seemed the world
was a forlorn riverbed yearning for the return of its lava & studly horsemen / & wasn’t it my revelation / I left a grilled cheese
to smolder overnight & rose unignited to never get so drunk again / even if they do call it praying to the porcelain god / anyway I can
humble myself small enough for anyone to fit their arms around me & call it a halo / yes I am anyone’s good wife / even if scientists
feed mice pcp to make them act like me / o it’s why they call it angel dust / it’s just there are barbs from a seraph’s wing where my dna
should be / it’s just that there is no weather except a brass band & sometimes I am followed by an army of shine only I can see / it’s not
the pearls I dream of anyway / it’s the sin of turning wine to water
I Don’t Know Why My Internet Algorithms Suggest Articles About How to Keep Teens in the Faith
even a church this old keeps an immaculate bowl of holy water one way to remind us every tradition measures its success in the count of living + dead // these days my father face & holy spirit shoulders repel such damp & blessed fingers when I was younger, my father supervised each application like a prescription // yes ritual-by-ritual he cauterized the little devil jigging & hoofing within me masses & bible studies & youth groups the whole nine yawns
child of darkness I crossed my fingers under the table during grace // I wanted God to know my portion of the prayer was useless as seawater to the stomach
it is perfectly common to say God is fire yet stupefying to watch one’s father burn up in the gasoline of his faith // every day after church we thought he might kill us with his hollers & bloodface & car pedals a terrible angel song only the dead or nearly dead can hear
child of darkness I trained my sister to become a fireman by dressing her in all her clothes at once getting her used to the heat it was always my turn next & never my turn // she learned something I didn’t coal walking or tricking the church out of checking its wristwatch & telling her when to ash away her own boyfriend or solstice feast or name
grown-up of darkness even now religious chatter illuminates a macabre stained-glass window in my heart // a spear of light keeps Jesus’s red side always bleeding
Nicole Connolly lives and works in Orange County, CA, which she promises is mostly unlike what you see on TV. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, and her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in such journals as Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Waccamaw, Pretty Owl Poetry and Glass: A Journal of Poetry. She currently serves as Managing Editor for the poetry-centric Black Napkin Press.
[ let the patient describe a door ]
in the dark I am not going to
I do not know if I am going to
I am certainly not going to lay
down I will have to pull back
the blanket I pulled back of
course I would not say yes of
course the blanket was tightly
pressed between the mattress &
the boxspring such is the weight
of a mattress a spring a spring
such is its lumber it was the
room that required sleep sleep
ing is how one can slip into no
one wants to sleep alone atop a
boxspring sound as a drumbeat
beat beat beat beat beat
[ let the patient describe a door ]
what does not open can be
a relief or a blemish there were
tchotchkes for every season &
pillows stitched w/messages it
takes time to stitch a message I
don’t like to come here he likes
me to come here to come is the
message game a secret I’m not
ready let’s start again resend the
message do you prefer color or
texture I want to choose I came
in my dress my dress should
know better don’t you agree say
please I’ll do better I will I must
he won’t tell what’s in my hope
chest anyway who says it’s mine
[ let the patient describe a door ]
in the dark is a fan not turn
ing if there is sound it is not
out loud I said it’s true then
I’m not him he said I’m sorry
dark too dark to move too
close to see in his eyes a mild
poison mild ordinary want
some coffee dark so dark
there is no laundry there is
no counter blessed w/ crumbs
what do they say I said in the
spinning darksome stars our
sheets turn colors it’s like
humidity dark but dry it is not
love but still it holds us tight
as shadow that’s not what I said
Jennifer Sperry Steinorth is a poet, educator, collaborative artist, and licensed builder. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Colorado Review, Four Way Review, The Journal, jubilat, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, Poetry Northwest, Sixth Finch, Quarterly West and elsewhere. She has received grants from the Sewanee Writers Conference, The Vermont Studio Center, and Warren Wilson College whence an MFA in poetry. She was recently a Writers@Work Poetry Fellow and won The Connecticut River Review Poetry Prize. She lives in northern Michigan. Find her at JenniferSperrySteinorth.com.
twenty years older than her palms & my hands slice the necks of marigolds offer their afro-petal heads to ask did sun between corn husk bath in the warmth of your cheek first did he offer leather the dead deer shot by the greed covered bullet offer red meat what part of my bones belong to the ship that broke the sea that broke your tongue did he lace every birthed child in silver spoon fed a language unknown to half the blood they own choked on each letter i give these thoughts many names: clipped wings wind as myth the acrobat who lives in this flesh
HOW TO BE A GHOST ON EARTH
Using sections from Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera
definition for ghost-mouth
I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess—
that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a
sharp ruler. I remember being sent to the corner of the
classroom for “talking back” to the Anglo teacher
when all I was trying to do was tell her how to
pronounce my name. you want to be American
speak American. If you don’t like it go back to Mexico
where you belong.
Karla Cordero is a descendant of the Chichimeca tribe from northern Mexico, a Chicana poet, educator, and activist, raised along the borderlands of Calexico, CA. She is a Pushcart nominee and has been offered fellowships from CantoMundo, VONA, Macondo, The Loft Literary Center, Pink Door Women’s Writing Retreat. Her work has appeared and forthcoming in The Boiler Journal, The Cosmonauts Avenue, Tinderbox, Word Riot, Poetry International, among other anthologies and publications. Karla’s chapbook, Grasshoppers Before Gods (2016) was published by Dancing Girl Press and her first book is to be published by NOT A CULT. Publishing (Fall 2018).
How to Write the Quantum Mechanics Uncertainty Principle into a Promise to Return Home
The further you drive north / from the southern California border / the more the desert simmers / in your throat / rock & ember cool to ice / coyotes lie coiled / beneath barbwire / with blood matted in their fur / The further you drive / east from your abuelo’s gravestone / the more the light refracts off its epitaph / Keep driving / until all you remember is diamond / cut against the teeth of rattlesnakes / & how the rattlesnake’s body evolved muscle / strong enough / to swallow whole animals / & countries / & that kind of power / dissolves skin / faster than any choleric or vengeful summer / even when California hasn’t spilled / anything but blood / in years / The further you travel / from home / the more you realize / you’ve been hurtling towards home / this whole time / & it’s all a trick of language / Anything can be a field / if you walk through it / Anywhere can become you / once you forget / how you got there
The further you walk across New England / from rose garden / to snowlit harbor / the colder your father’s voice becomes / gentle / fading echo / housed in the wind chill / along the Charles River / it shouts your name / into the water / & then freezes over / & all you want / is to live a life that makes your father / mistake his hands for emeralds / He carried you / across Los Angeles / to give you the type of home / songs are written about / & the further you flee from his arms / the more you forget / what empires he’s toppled / & turned pathway / what ghosts he’s given shelter & names / now when you say home / you think dead language / dead coyotes / dead embers / If you return / when you return / tell him / how you stood knee deep / in Boston winter / & the snow peeled its skin from your feet / salt rose from gravel / until verbena flowers bloomed / like busted lips / you brought the desert with you / & you can’t shake it / no matter where you go
Note on Demisexuality
perhaps, I am broken. machine rotten with rust & pink moss. emptied furnace in place of each organ & everywhere in me: coal & copper wire & an engineer’s severed arm trapped inside bent gears. what I’m saying is, often, I wonder why I am incapable of performing the most basic function of a body: take hunger. someone says open & a dam breaks, a gated neighborhood is set on fire. someone asks what do you want? & I show them a perfectly set dinner table, a lake with a single floating lantern among the lilies. I say don’t touch. I say, like anyone I want nothing more than to feel desired. I want to desire like the rest of them, to jump out a building or into bed & be happy with whatever hand catches me, because hands are good enough. but when it’s time to undress, when I’m supposed to prove this flesh is worth the price of teeth, I unbutton my shirt & reveal nothing but thin wire & a path through me. perhaps, I am not broken, I just need someone who understands when I say machine I mean be patient with me. I mean, don’t be surprised if you go to touch me & I’ve already left out the back window. perhaps, someone snuck in one night & replaced my bones with fire escapes & that’s why I understand the world best as an exit.
The First Time I See My Father Cry He Is Pulling Me from the Water to Explain Alcoholism
son, not all gods deserve to be prayed to.
this god of salt, of serrated tooth, god of sea
turtle gored by ragged hooks. god who makes the ocean
floor swell inside you. god of god- less reef, insatiable in his lust
for pilgrimage, pillars of sacrament & cirrhosis
bottle-necked through a single throat. god of
your grandfather, of gutterwater & gold. god who lives
in the aperture between your body & it’s wreckage.
god of ships. god of sailors caught in the rage
of a ram-headed sea. god of desperation, who makes
saltwater shimmer & taste like honeysmoke,
who makes you sing of salvation while your mouth fills
with his name. song of rapture, song of drowning. psalm
that holds dying men in its belly, daring you
to come save them.
Brandon Melendez is a Mexican-American poet from California. He is the author of ‘home/land’ (Write Bloody 2019). He is a National Poetry Slam finalist and two-time Berkeley Grand Slam Champion. A recipient of the the 2018 Djanikian Scholarship from the Adroit Journal, his poems are in or forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Ninth Letter, Muzzle Magazine, the minnesota review, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Boston & is an MFA candidate at Emerson College.
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