the boy with fast hands grows into a man with crooked fingers I crumble petals adorn amber feet almost out of grasp superstition our precious metal prove us the path ascension unsettles lesser men our language these crude tools there weren’t enough lessons on the levels we climb to remain completely unmoved the spirit catches midflight and confused flailing the speech in (or with) a chewed tongue bawling through the expanse does it amuse you an exchange on the wrong rung who with what poor service cautious of self I ask to what current could I be conduit
Bacchanal
After Rio Cortez
I sink my teeth into whatever bucks in the distance flocks circling dirtied dusk blankets the field growing too wild
for a scarecrow looking like they can be picked & carried right off this too small island a knot
not yet loose livestock made reversible under night’s watch I count grains in the heap wait consider naming each let them fall
between fingers then upturn my hand call what is left our constellation black canvas palm against stretched flesh Jasmine wants
to dance but a Jumbie ain’t got no feet to race to river’s edge a vanishing act a too broad smile slips & cracks in corners
Brian Francis is a Cave Canem fellow from New York City. He has a BA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in Poetry from NYU. He lives and teaches English Language Arts to middle school students in his native Harlem, USA.
There are names we forget to hold in warm embrace. In my grandfather’s mouth, Abọ́sẹ̀dé was a sweet song told in the language of my forefathers.
Language that crafts stories into names: Abọ́sẹ̀dé; she who is born on the eve of a new week. Language that speaks of origin and distant lands, origin that I struggle
to identify with. I search for these origins in stories and legends told in the deep tongue of my ancestors.
I want my tongue to dance with theirs to the juju beats of our land. We sweeten the union/ every utterance a moan of allegiance.
I beg my tongue to carry the pride in the accented pronunciation of Abọ́sẹ̀dé, to flow into rhythm with the high tilt of the letter ọ́ and the low hum of the letter é.
But my tongue’s first love spits out these tones in jealousy. This foreign bride brings her accent of colonization and twists ọ́ into o and é into e.
In his life, Grandfather called me Abọ́sẹ̀dé. His old wizened voice whispered this name in prayers,
prayers to guide me back home.
Olúwatamílọ́re Ọ̀shọ́ (Frontier XVII) is an emerging poet from Lagos, Nigeria. Her writings negotiate sensuality, familial dynamics, and identity. She tweets @Tamiilore_O.
there was no need for lessons morsels ingested by ear
digested with love
are apples that fuel buzzing
around the mid-May maple
or mom in a house dress
printed with rose and lime butterflies
standing still like the streetlight that yawns
sodium sun to put us to bed
I can’t remember the words I knew then
cannot make this real
anymore than tell you if it was really butterflies
on her dress or cicadas breaking the air
did I cry to my brother joyously, 我也是蚱蝉!
almost certainly not but I want to have so
I might have had more to lose
than pollen off dirty knees look at these wings
I know cicadas are not the same as butterflies
but I too will turn like 天蚕
when I go to Kindergarten next year
II
read only yinglish
III
17 years of maple bred only silence
but a cycle on this American soil, roots of silver birch
gunpowder stolen in the blood
words locked in bones give birth to language
feed on necrotic xylem
unfold these wings and ride this railroad
this metaphor is mixed so mixed up
mixed up Mother Goose is so mixed remixed
the terms to explain how to hate us less
are also not minebut I thinkI think on them
as you pretend to think on The Lord
and they fillthey will fillstill they fillelastic collisions alias a standstill it’s not an Asian fetish it’s just racism China = bad as an axiom leads only to tautologies fill they fly half thoughtsflutter in your cheek attack with gross butterfly kisses this is not murmur anymore murmuration lock jawed no longer but to choose pick words out of this swarmit’s not buzzing it’s sirening not your words they turn to interrogate why you are so late you did nothing great there was no bargain but for comfort no heat you mammal you wouldn’t rather die fucking than be left a nymph in the ground up turn the sound up the nuanceand the timbredon’t matter thinkonit in stillness butthis brood this chewing flyinyourmouthwhenyouwon’t shut youryellowfacexiaolongbaohole flingeachscrap your therapist wouldbesopround right now in the madness inthemenance to be ashell nottheshell yet mademad madden madmadmadmadmadmadmad adam madmademadmadmad madmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmadmdma
…and drop
Roy is a queer, polyamorous, Chinese-Canadian poet living in Brooklyn where he works as a data consultant. He has had work appear in Prairie Fire, and The Windsor Review. He also has reviewed poetry for ARC and The Globe & Mail.
after The New York Times‘ feature on the second Chinese female astronaut
You asked if I was afraid of the sun melting my eye makeup. I had waxed enough to know beauty burned and some places were better left untouched—questions, like ingrown hairs, trapped under the skin in the wrong direction. My father named me after my brother but never made me wings, not wanting to admit to his own misjudgment: I did listen, and I flew better—oh the solitude I had, not being father’s favourite son, too loud, had Chang’e not been writing back.
The sun was too bright for my taste. I packed my makeup (but not sanitary products) and waited for the moon to wax, its murmur tickling my nape. Of Chang’e’s many stories, I knew she drank her husband’s elixir to fly to the moon just to escape the celebration sex after he shot down those nine damned suns. You thought she was running away from domesticity. Did you ask her husband to water their osmanthus tree, or if eyeliners helped him aim better?
No. So why did you act shocked as I ascended? Accuse Chang’e and I for deviance. We no longer need the safety of your approval. Now: my skirt, opening upwards; my breasts, anti-gravitational; the stars; the glitter on my eyes, free from your orbitary gaze. On a lucky day, when the moon is red from the beads floating around me, some of which spatter in your face, you’ll know I’ve shed your ill-fitting space suit.
The Tattooist (from CUTS: A Tattoo Lyric)
I let my friends’ children ink my back, a noisy, wild mess, somewhere between a playground and a bar’s toilet.
A boy slashed a drooping penis here, you see, slightly below my shoulder blade.
He used to doodle erections everywhere: his family’s house, his school’s wall, his own assignments, my sketchbook even though we’d just met.
So I told him, vandalize me with an actual tattoo gun.
His eyes were wide, hands shaky as he stabbed the machine into my back, forging confidence.
It was his first flaccid penis, and the last public penis he drew.
Tim Tim Cheng is a poet and a teacher from Hong Kong, currently reading the MSc in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh, sponsored by William Hunter Sharpe Memorial Scholarship. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Berfrois, diode, The Margins, Cicada Magazine, Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre Weekly Poem, Cordite Poetry Review, and Ricepaper, among others. She is working on chapbooks which explore Hong Kong’s landscapes, as well as desire and rituals through the lens of tattooing. She translates and writes lyrics at leisure. timtimcheng.com.
and you with your birds, your grace, and disgrace, your streets of Mercy, your talking to God, your la de da; how, when I was sixteen, I snuck from the library with you, smoked under so many trees, my mother and stepfather concerned I’d sink into the earth, throw myself in front of a train, and haven’t I, this cold meat, cooked three days ago, tupperwared, how I’ve sliced and peppered it, combed your letters, imagined you were the one who stopped for the ponies, Anne—were you?— and I’ve been meaning to forgive you, like how surely I’ll want others to forgive me. What is unforgivable? What does it matter once we’re dead? This meat from the cow bought with cash from the butcher the night it rained, the night before the night I drank too much but drank plenty anyway. To rinse the blood, cut off the fat, heat the pan, hear the sizzle, Anne, and then not eat it in one sitting. I’d like to be in your Ford drinking martinis with you. The coroner said, it was either suicide or natural causes. What’s natural? This stone plate to rest the meat to microwave for my husband, Anne. Jean said, living was the brave thing, but didn’t she live in dreams? This endeavor. The steam. The waiting for the beeping. I’m hungry, too, and haunted. Will slice it into bite-sized chunks, call for him, give what’s left to the dog.
Nicole Callihan writes poems and stories. Her books include SuperLoop and the poetry chapbooks: A Study in Spring (with Zoë Ryder White, 2015); The Deeply Flawed Human (2016); Downtown (2017); Aging (2018); and ELSEWHERE (with Zoë Ryder White, 2020). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Kenyon Review, Conduit, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. Her novella, The Couples, was published by Mason Jar Press in summer 2019. Find her at nicolecallihan.com.
A man says, I am handing you the knife. I reply, I am receiving the knife. My grandparents and mother drive to the ER for fear. They don’t make it back. On I-24, a 21-vehicle-crash comes— with no injuries. Then two people wreck and the interstate too croaks. With whom I grieve very much alive, I play chess with a computer, a stale, check, or fool’s mate, a bird’s opening. A pawn, one knight threatens me, loss or draw, and I don’t develop my pieces. I’m made defensive. The bishops attack me. Sometimes, the knife’s placed on a table, and I wait four minutes before I grab it.
Urge
You don’t understand: I was praying to die, mud in the shower, the shh happening like an earthworm, potash in the manure, its pesticide in the urine, tears. I would rev a saw to my bedrock, the nitrogen running. I would pray, dry out, and see a cube in the mirror of dirt with a towel around it, mold on the head, the pit. Exodus could’ve had me.
Prince Bush is a poet with poems in Black Warrior Review, PANK, Poet Lore, and more.
I want Idris Elba to handle snakes for me. Wilma Mankiller. Annie Oakley, maybe.
I only think absurdities in the absence of better options.
She wasn’t taking it seriously enough, not nearly enough.
2. Stay in the process. Be very careful.
Can I call her dreamy? It was a dream. And the snake. Slim, the length of a woman’s hand— a copper and apple-green lariat.
Can I call her enchanted? No more than I’ve been with moss, crow & bone. But she was only innocent (?) and let it
3. Stay very small, very frugal, very sincere—
slip, a glissade of venom and distortion. It swam toward me, soared on ancient wings. I breathed in epochs of air. It spiraled. Arced, each instant a ceremony—
4. The shock of enlightenment
Two needles, little scimitars pierced my shirt. It hung along my solar plexus, grim charm.
5. This is not the time to try something important
I pleaded, making a cave of my chest, bowing in terror, capture take remove remove this thorn I beg you child, ancestress—
6. Do not think about the future
Grinning. She reached for my silvery death, pulled it free.
Waterfall from Linen Paper
“Take the papers…Try to make something out of them that is more than you have now.” —Josef Albers, abstract painter, theorist, paper folder
The textbook says “proteins are the workhorses of the cells” and guess what? They do origami. Alpha helices become beta sheets, aka paper fans. From there: barrels, propellers, jelly rolls. Mine are filling garbage bags and dumpsters— my foot drags, I arrive in a slant. The artful contortionists in my brain have left the building. Or would, given the chance. They pleat and crease and nothing matches up.
Mountain, valley I can do. Crimps, petals, gate, stair, squash, cushion, rabbit ear closed sink reverse swivel I might be getting lost. Huzita-Hatori axioms & mathematics are screwing me over, my head is crammed with paper trash and it’s hard to get anything done.
Show your work, I say to my proteins, then forget how to take the next step forward. My hands shake. I don’t let go when someone offers to take my plate. I used to be codified, now I’m just confusing. Menger sponges made of playing cards, scattered on the floor. Where’s the chiyogami when you need it? Show your work faster, damn it.
Here’s what I want my operations to look like: the crisp rush of water, wet-folded and arcing like a woman in love. A polar sine wave, ice flow in motion, singularly beautiful.
It was taught at Bauhaus, later at Black Mountain. It can be learned but I need Mi-Teintes watercolor paper pulp-dyed, cotton, fine grain on one side, honeycombed on the other. Maybe.
Here are three boxes by a patient recovering from brain surgery, folded from pages of their medical chart. Precision is key and there may be a thousand ways to say that including elegant and efficient. I shake and zigzag down hallways this side, that side, this side, fuck. Laughter, when I don’t bust my ass on this ice.
Lisa Creech Bledsoe is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. She is the author of two books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019), and Wolf Laundry (2020). She has new poems out or forthcoming in Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Chiron Review, Otoliths, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, among others. You can find her at her website, appalachianground.com
TW: paranoia, failure, existential dread, tangled neurons, fangled neurons, viscous boundaries, dystopian landscapes, parallel universes, unspeakable horrors, heavy breathing, breath-holding, death-beholding, go away go away, I told you not to enter, what the fuck is even wrong with you?
did I say unspeakable horrors? because we’re going to talk that shit and it’s going to be nothing because words can’t capture unspeakable horrors
how to enter your lover’s brain to perform maintenance and exorcisms in a corny plumber suit looking like the clown you are to dust cobwebs and scribble a note: “please take out the trash x”
how to speak with utter conviction in front of a grand jury of the past all jumbled up in REM sleep and twitchy hypervigilance and it all contradicts you (as in, me)
how to enter your lover’s brain and get the hell out (abruptly, without trace preferably in one piece)
spoiler alert: you don’t, you never do the melding of souls is final
how to love a messy clump of synapses that neuroscience pretends to fathom but you can’t understand brains with brains or with anything sans God the Almighty and she hasn’t been here in a long time if ever what fires together wires together lights tire fires together the wires: all tripwires
how to enter love with brains a disaster that makes no sense evopsych is rabid nonsense unspeakable horrors just wetware zeroes and ones inexact approximations of biological waste if you caught a molecule of trauma what would you do wear it as a necklace?
how to: you don’t, you never do so many cavities to lure you in but no exit, that’d be too easy
did I say unspeakable horrors? it’s going to be a long night
Maija Haavisto has had two poetry collections published in Finland: Raskas vesi (Aviador 2018) and Hopeatee (Oppian 2020). In English, her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in e.g. Topical Poetry, Wondrous Real, ShabdAaweg Review, Asylum, Eye to the Telescope, Shoreline of Infinity, and Kaleidoscope. Find her on Twitter at twitter.com/DiamonDie.
ASMR 99% of You Will Fall Asleep to This Confessional Poem
Posit climate change as the hand from a person’s warmth taken out of context and uploaded as healing over several types of distance.
The instructions are as follows: Relax. Be hypothetical. Her touch is the best metric for tired. Her mouth is a bubble ceaselessly replayed. I know everything she could tell me. Thank god I have a body to tell me that nothing has changed and nothing changes,
empathy as ambient noise in a video game
trauma as compulsive vibing
on the couch with a please-touch-the ache, tracing the dotty lines that are everywhere, things inter-measurable and commiserating. I say body but that’s never what I mean.
You could substitute other abstractions for it, make a variable of me, make gaping that explicit verbal arrangement we have to write about each other while our clothes and sheets dry. This is not a love poem because I have a sense of my body as both a solid object and a vulnerability, it’s a love poem because I kinda love it, the rapid simplicity of unit, of my atomic aura hovering around me like a factual tractor beam, and then the miracle of a hypothetical touch dissolves it all, dissolves me, distance refracted into dissonance of lazy invocations, an association who’s heels get stuck in the fresh-mowed neurons patrolled by the cop in my head, my mouth slack with its own sweet pollution, pollination of literal garbage in the sewers of the cities in my Brita water filter called “low-grade euphoria.”
I didn’t think I’d like being healed but I do. It’s surprising because there is no curse on my lips or stone in my eyes or any other clear demarcation of before and after. I am clotted full of thresholds that don’t lock, cured and recovered. Updated. You can measure the damage, but first you’ll have to coax it out of hiding. It cowers in the weeds of infinite growth, it trembles with deceptively original timing.
This is a terrible confessional, I’m sorry. I haven’t done this in a while. What else should I tell you? Someone builds houses, and the rent goes up. I’m fumbling the format for intimacy: it looks so like exhaustion here.
Jesslyn Whittell is a grad student in English at UCLA. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from Black Warrior Review, Lammargeier, b l u s h, and The Rambling.
i. i ask my girlfriend to pray for me & she pulls my name in a two minutes voice note throws me towards heaven & receives me with gratitude
i miss everything i worship: a. my God b. my woman c. my mother & grandmother d. the music flaming from rooms we bless with the heat of our bodies
the way i desire her body is the way anxiety desires me i am wanted by all the things that haunt me in my dream
my grandmother, my grandmother pulling me out of air
ii.
on a sidewalk on 7th street a dead cat is someone’s pet
in ibadan, a dead cat is someone’s grandmother
iii.
as a fine boy ko ye ko ni anxiety nau o ni everything to fe, o ye ko ma dupe ni
i thank my God who puts sunlight on my table who wakes me in the morning & offers me to trembling
who sits outside the apartment near River Landing smoking a stick of cigarette with menthol switch
who asks me how Nigeria is who, when i say dáadáa ni,
does not ask what i mean
iv. there is little i can tell you, the anger is towards the door that never opens inside me; i make eba in the morning & vomit everything later & when my mother calls, she asks why i’m thinner than h/air
v. 1. where will all fear go when god takes over the city? 2. whose gratitude will drive the lambs into the swine? 3. what am i without the dream where i am gasping for air? 4. what name do we give the fire that eats my fingers? 5. my mother beads a basket & fills it with water, 6. who does she mock if not her son that cannot hold water?
v. they laugh at me when i run in the blues of morning.
they laugh at me when i run in the grey of dark.
i hear their shadows & dream of their socks
v. a lizard crawls towards a car & the driver halts.
i’ve witnessed a car run into a pack of boys walking tiredly from school.
v. your god is everything that lets you come inside. mother, lover.
this trembling is not without a destination. i dance towards fire—
fuck memory. fuck everything.
Adedayo is studying for MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop’23. His manuscript, The Morning The Birds Died, was a finalist in the 2021 Sillerman Prize. His chapbook, Origin of Names, was selected for New Generation African Poet (African Poetry Book Fund), 2020, while Vegetarian Alcoholic Press published his chapbook, The Arrival of Rain in January, 2020. His poems are published or forthcoming in World Literature Today, Frontier, Iowa Review, Boulevard, and elsewhere. Adedayo is the Editor-in-Chief at Agbowó: An African magazine of literature and art. He is the editor of New International Voices Series at Icefloe-Press. Adedayo edited Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry.
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