POSTS

lung volume

OPEN       as a window of a message      as a door to a daughter       as a line of
communication punctures     as mama can i tell you      something    as yes
looking up     from the window of the message       as yes you can tell me as
mama i need you to look at me   do this move     as don’t stop     looking as
one-hundred and six days and   counting             at home where the rule is OPEN
the door so i know you are safe in there       as OPEN         mama keeps the glass
coffin of each    message      window         ajar for her    daughter     to crawl 
inside with her         this fairy tale of life      outside this story of a woman 
who lived      with small men in the woods and stood    too close to a stranger 
so now she no longer breathes         OPEN as a vein to each question.               retract 
a little blood first and then       push through

CLOSE as a store we do not go to anymore as a lock the bolt
as nightmares set wrinkles in my unwashed face as a safety
measure as a minimum safe the word safe means secure the
word safe is a box that you can CLOSE to render something
you love distant from air & its many eager fingers. CLOSE
which is proximity and CLOSE which is proximity’s defeat
a clipped reel stop baby mama needs a moment yes mama’s
cheeks are wet you are okay we are okay come CLOSE to
me CLOSE to me as an anti-social distance.    CLOSE to me
       as a no               that never            names my face           

the morning OPENS with a monitor hemmed to my gut              this string of need.
i walk to the room where my children hit me.             she had a nightmare again.
this one about a deep fat fryer built into her stomach.             i cut apples and hide
the knife after.            our home is glass and breathing and this          is too much for
the children.           we OPEN our devices.               learning is a removal of thread
remote stitching back the broken skin            of another room.          i tell my girl
yes this is so hard and you are doing great               at being in this impossible. 
we are OPEN to the possibility of full in person learning this fall. full is a word
for drawing complete breaths. person is a word for the smallest coffin. learning is 
a removal of needle from glowing stone. fall is this, is what we do. an OPEN future
of obedience to gravity.

the evening CLOSES with this gut sunk
knuckle deep in worn claws to the sound of
constant urgency. whimper in the monitor i
walk a quiet hallway to the room where my
children hit upon notions of everything
somehow ending.              none of us sleep
we only CLOSE our crying for the day
that this changes. sometimes the whimper
never stops and i lie      alongside my son
until my breathing lets him sleep again
CLOSE to a candle for his fifth birthday
there’s an eclipse on           the fourth of july 
i don’t blame the sky for not looking not
even now, just to check on his sleep make
sure he’s still breathing.                                  

the function of a lung is to constantly undo its own work. 
closing to open. opening to close.

the function of a state is to constantly undo its own. 
too close to opening. barely open to closing.

a lung can OPEN 
the top hatch of the bar graph that has more death to name

a lung can CLOSE 
to a needle line of conversation, a heartbeat’s second wave

a lung can OPEN 
like a home for someone else when rent gets missed

a lung can CLOSE 
like a bank account when there’s nowhere left to bleed

a simile can mimic the work of a machine that breathes for the penultimate line
a word is not a ventilator because there can always be more of these

Jessica Lawson (she/her/hers) is Denver-based writer, teacher, and queer single parent. Her debut book of poetry, Gash Atlas (forthcoming 2022), was selected by judge Erica Hunt for the Kore Press Institute Poetry Prize, and her chapbook Rot Contracts was published summer 2020 (Trouble Department). A Pushcart-nominated poet, her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Entropy, Dreginald, Yes, Poetry, The Wanderer, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere.

 

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ZX Spectrum

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Sam Kemp teaches creative writing at the New College of Humanities in London. He’s an experimental poet who enjoys appropriating and misappropriating found texts and messing around in Photoshop. You can find more of his work at www.samkempoetry.com.

 

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Maybe: God

the existence of bad words implies good ones. you believe
saying yes is good even when you don’t want to. if there are
bad girls who curse and spit and sit like men then there are
good girls who don’t. you wonder if girls and words are ever
just those things without dichotomy. you spend a lot of time
closed—your legs and your lips—trying out goodness. god,
like any parent, will be very nice to you until displeased, you
learn. you say yes, you don’t have much space to take up
anyway. it is before the iPhone and you only have 200 texts a
month to use sparingly. you make each one count so as not to
spark a back and forth you’d have to pay for. never I feel only
yes okay sorry. all arguments cost you something. plus, you
learn, anyone bigger than you can tell you what to do. a boy
bigger than you says be a good girl, don’t say a word. you
reassess—there are no good words. girls are good when
silent and open at the command of someone bigger. god is
good, see how god is silent? you should be smaller than
everyone. parents, like any god, speak in parables. bad girls
end up dead or on the streets. they do not mention who killed
them, who closed their doors. your phone bill comes, rewards
your lack of questions. your parents call. you are scared to
pick up.                                                                                                     

II.

a good listener is just a bad conversationalist. so my
arguments with god are one-sided long paragraphs to which I
see read at [day/time]. I am proud to admit I speak enough to
have my phone determine my frequently used words. so by
now I can use predictive text to pray—
Hello
God 
Dammit 
I 
Am 
Still 
Trying 
To 
Talk 
About 
It 
With 
My 
Mother 
OK

 

Sanctity: An Exposé

           Historically¹, divorce rates have increased.² Thesis: like gym membership, marriage be seeming like a good idea at the time. Then after a while you look at it and go—ehhh. They look at me expectantly and say we are ending.³ I am wearing cargo pants and a tank top⁴ sitting on the edge of my puffy comforter. I wonder what this means in terms of dinner. This time I have nothing to say,⁵ though I have been through more devastating things.⁶ My father’s eyes are begging.⁷ I refuse, trying to look busy, I scan the app store for another virtual pet.⁸

¹ as of yesterday
² there’s one more divorce in this family
³ marriage
⁴ a phase, unlike the girlfriend
⁵ who would
⁶ in my lifetime, after the end of Webkinz
⁷ give me something
⁸ to hold on to

 

Jae Nichelle’s work has been featured in Vinyl Poetry and Prose, Muzzle Magazine, The Offing, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She was a 2020 Watering Hole fellow, and her chapbook, The Porch (As Sanctuary), is available from YesYes Books. Find her work on her website jaenichelle.com.

 

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THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH ON EUCLID DOESN’T SELL LEMONADE ANYMORE

I take the mosh pit, lime 
Juuls on hardwood, the nice 
smelling white girls wearing 
hoops just big enough 
to be questionable, tired 
metaphor of me limericking 
your belt loops. you speak 
like the halted development 
on Madison & a kidney 

is just an organ 
with an important job. in catechism 
they told us Saint Barbara 
fled her steeple, read 
all the forbidden books. the luxury 
towers on Park shimmer. we 
were told this was revolutionary – 
a girl cornering God 
in a cramped room, 
availing herself of him
 
in the dark. we watch 
cranes smear the horizon & 
a jellyfish, even when determined, 
is really just a blot of ink. I was 
raised to love resurrected things 
& the junior college across the street 
is full of juiceboxes, blue 
pens, puritan dreaming. like opium, 
you smile for no reason. like homily, 
I sing for us both.

 

MEMORY IS A SOFTWARE

func(fraction)	your grandmother is a quarter Armenian & your father once denied he was from Trablos. we are not really “Arab.” who is really “from”
func(weight)	I was always a skinny girl ÷ we fry yolks on pavement
func(loop)	desire is an old family heirloom none of the women in my wall approximately jacarandas on my dress
func(autopsy)	my mother in her emerald swimsuit
func(anaphora)	clothes are about waiting growing into the jacket coat sweats
func(Thomas)	jiddo the numismatist & me quarter the girl I should be ÷ I make odalisques in the mirror I cover my face in yolk
func(fraction)	I am an approximation of jacarandas
func()	clothes are about waiting my baptism name is Maryam
func(sacrament)	the priest wrings the solar system from my mouth

 

Maya Salameh is a poet fellow of the William Male Foundation and a 2016 National Student Poet, America’s highest honor for youth poets. She is the winner of the 2022 Etel Adnan Prize, through which her debut poetry collection, HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE, will be published in 2022. Her poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The Rumpus, and Asian American Writer’s Workshop, among others. Maya is the author of rooh (Paper Nautilus Press 2020).

 

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Crevice Letter

Done plowing the fields,
the ravenous farmers doffed a cadaver

from the low branches
of a tree outlining the sky.

Their faces left no traces
of wide mouths and widest eyes;

yet, they slowly veered around their heads,
cutlassing the air

with imagined thoughts.
The low gradient of sunlight, through the gaps

of thick leafage of trees, dappled
the forest floor in uneven streaks of pearly lights,

telling of the descending sun.
The letter in the crevice

flicked like a star.
Its angle—a part of the edge. 

On a spring tree, a squirrel would unnerve
the farmers with cutlass and hoes

draped over slack shoulder blades.
A nest emptied of home smelled of

decaying innards—
of a sparrow—devoured by a heron.

The men stayed for a while,
speculating what to do with the form

festered by the breeze—
contemplating the murder of crows over the body.

 

Onyedikachi Chinedu is a Nigerian poet. They are a 2021 HUES Foundation scholar, a poetry reader for Non.Plus Lit and Guesthouse Lit; their works are published and forthcoming in Guesthouse Lit, Anomaly, The Cortland Review, The Hellebore, Rappahannock Review, Midway Journal, and elsewhere.

 

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Land Acknowledgement:

Eno 
Miwko 
Walli

 

Visual Poem #1

_{Moore, Maurice. “Sissy Dat Walk”, Ink on Paper, 19in x 24in, 2021.}

Become! Bout 50-11 figures fill the center of the picture plane. Some be crouching, others duck walking and given dat femme realness. The lines are sketchy and rough through de mid sections of the figures. The line weight is thicc, but thin scribbly line flows throughout most of the figures connecting de ancestors to their descendants. This werk is done on tracing paper with the opaqueness coming through in the center. The top left corner of the paper is ligt with the bottom left & right plus the top right corner being darker. There are maybe seven hazy figures located in de center of de paper and spreading out. 

 

Visual Poem #2

_{Moore, Maurice. “Venus of Willendorf (Yeah, Baby, She’s Got It) (feat. Sarah Baartman, Martha Wash, Izora Armstead”, Ink on Paper, 19in x 24in, 2021.}

No, honey! Trust and believe dey all got it and then some! Six full figured Blackty Black Butch Queens are servin body fo dayz! Ain’t nann one miss no meals, and dats jus the way we like it! Body, ody, ody, ody, ody, ody, ody, ody! Ain’t dat what Meg say?! The piece was created using dat Drake light skint tracing paper. What about the line work you ask? Well, I thought it be thicc thighs save lives, but the way these contours lines are set up everybody is getting blessed today! Honey! Thick and thin black lines make up the faceless figures. These figures are given off sum major Venus of Willendorf vibes wit jus a touch of Sarah Baartman to boot. The figures take up most of the picture plane carful to not break the border. Not sure how to put dis, but the lines furthest out make the figures seem most rendered in a somewhat realist way, and as we focus our attentions toward the center of the picture plane the figures become mo abstract, and it’s a bit harder to pick out where one figure begins and another ends. The four figures dat make up the the left and right side of the piece appear to be standing or maybe dey are suspended in a large body of water. The figures in the center of the piece; well the lines merge and sometimes they seem to be reclining while other times dey be seated. Hell, maybe they doin sum reverse cowgirl poses up in dis drawing. The hands and feet of the figures are very loose and drawn in a gestural like way. It appears dat de person making the marks was drawing the limbs to jus give the viewer a hint of hands and/or feet. Or maybe some of these beautiful figures are meant to represent disabled bodies possessing different types of limbs or no limbs at all. 3 Snaps! In the center there are three or four sections that are a bit smudged maybe a couple half inches apart. Lastly, I know we said dat the lines were Blackty, Black, black however after closer inspection some of the lines at different points in the piece are grayish. Particularly where the figures genital and maybe crises or folds be. I know I said lastly, but the nipples are jus a black dots. Some of the nipples are a contoured oval shaped. 

 

Visual Poem #3

_{Moore, Maurice. “I Dreamed A Dream”, 19in x 26in, Ink on Paper, 2021.}

Would ya jus look at all dees beautiful ancestors gathered. All watching over us as they do! The piece was created on dat light skint tracing paper. I would say de image is presented wit de 26in” which is I guess the longways and the 19in” short side taking up de rest. Bout 24 or 27 figures are present and starting from de left going across the page are Black, Grayish contour lines. The figures attire is made up of people wearing wraps, skirts, cloaks, and a number to these folks have on headwraps. The figures faces, hands, and feet are completely black just like mine and yours.

 

Maurice Moore is currently a doctoral Performance Studies Candidate at the University of California-Davis. Moore’s works have appeared in Existere Journal, New World Theatre, bozalta Collective, Wicked Gay Ways, Queer Quarterly Magazine, Strukturriss, EX/POST MAGAZINE, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Decoded Pride, Confluence, Mollyhouse, and Communication and Critical Cultural/Studies. From 2011 to the present, the creative has exhibited at the Centre for Recent Drawing (C4RD) in London United Kingdom, Calabar Gallery in New York NY, Medford Arts Center in New Jersey, Christina Ray Gallery in Soho New York, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro North Carolina.

 

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Submarine

The music box was made of bullets 
in a defy-laws-of-physical way.
Whenever I heard a gunshot 
my dad would say, “oh that’s just your sister
playing her music box.” I don’t have a sister
and the music box is made of thunder and fingernails.
I miss my tongue. It’s cutting itself
on the rim of a soda can. I drink carbon
like water. I catch bullets like wasps.
I use duct tape on the hole 
in the wall of the submarine. The water
is coming. The water is already here.

 

Debris

Outside today I came upon a dead deer.
It was crumpled like the rubble of an old house.
What was the last thing you saw dismantled?
A question is a way of telling the reader
“I want to implicate you in this poem.” Sometimes,
a man selling guns comes to my door and tells me
I need protection. I can’t tell if he’s threatening me.
If he is then I will need to buy a gun from him.
A sign hums on a porch and it says
“It takes an average of 22 minutes for 911 to respond to a call.
It takes an average of 13 seconds for me
to fire my gun.” The sign is 
afraid. Forgive me for my realism, music box.
I only wanted to tell a fairy story and here we are 
in American again.

 

Perpendicular

The crystal shop is selling ammunition now. 
Bullets made of jade. Bullets made of sapphire. Bullets 
made of bone. Elk bone. Deer bone. Alligator bone.
Some of these are not practical but a bullet’s job
has never about practicality. The bullet is an instrument 
for puncture. How will you get to the other side 
of a canvas of flesh? Whose name will appear 
written into your skin when you wake up from 
from your last hallucination?

 

Robin Gow is a trans poet and young adult author from rural Pennsylvania. They are the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy (Tolsun Books 2020) and the chapbook Honeysuckle (Finishing Line Press 2019). Their first young adult novel, A Million Quiet Revolutions is forthcoming March 2022 with FSG Books for Young Readers. Gow’s poetry has recently been published in POETRY, Southampton Review, and Yemassee. They live in Allentown Pennsylvania with their queer family and two pug dogs and work at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. Check out what they’re up to at robingow.com.

 

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One Day We Will Go to the Beach

Antithetical, all in, I was hoping we’d go swimming. When I think of your body water, more than a raindrop, less than the sea, I find the opposite of floating. Still, there is a buoyancy about you that makes me want to duck. But I will try not to. This is all I have to offer, the trying. So that maybe we can end up with our stomachs exposed. One day, I’ll turn to you and show you my sunburn and you’ll say how beautiful.

 

Nora Rose Tomas is a queer writer based in New York City. They are about to receive their MFA from Columbia University, where they concentrated in nonfiction writing. Their writing has appeared in Lavender Review, Mantis, Small Orange, and What are Birds? among others. They are currently working on a book about sensations. You can follow them on Instagram @dr_sappho.

 

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underwater crown

i.
in winter i will unravel to invite 
your fingers on the back of my knee 
and the skin behind my ear. cocoon my body 
with quivering teeth                    tell me where 
you want mine. i’ll bite tenderly and leave 
crescent residue. 
                                                           drizzle me in sticky delusion.
i want to feel capable of intimacy. 
wait.
                                                           let me try again. trace a portrait 
on my leg with your jellyfish touch. fill me 
with wayward laughter. maybe i want to 
master the contour of your ear to be close 
to anyone except god. my sun-dried skin drapes 
over my skeleton. your bones won’t chime against mine. 
our rooms won’t echo back this connection. 

ii.
my room echoes back my imperfections. 
i catalogue my oddly formed joints (weak 
knuckles and knees and ankles). they are 
not meant to hold me                  together. gills 
conquer my neck. borrowed limbs settle into 
an arranged wreckage. i collapse           gently. 
become a monstrous metamorphosis. make a home 
of an aquarium.

this is what i think when you ask             to hold me. 
i am the marine exhibit in your fishbowl 
embrace. command me to imagine new am[phi]bitions 
for water so i can build a body                 worthy of
habitation to purge my prehistoric form. 
i make a fine spectacle for you to witness.

iii.
the underwater acrobat is a fine spectacle 
adorned in seafoam and nautilus shells. i tendril 
the sunken anchor. pirouette about its rusted body. 
the shimmering scales of my torso costume
my discomfort. desire is an act i perform well.

i don’t know how to let you hold me 
so i invent new tricks. name myself neptune. cleave 
the water to cluster your attention.   crawl 
across the ocean floor in front 
of an unblinking chorus. drink 
the moonlight with me.

the clownfish pity me. their mouths open 
in silent applause. or protest. 
i imagine 
they will grow bored of me soon. 

iv.
i imagine you will grow bored of me
and watch me wither when i fail 
to learn my body is natural.

i’m sorry.
i’m better at being alone. 

i’d like to be something precious
to you one day. crack my calcified
husk and kiss the softshell skin 
between my shoulderblades. 

please
                              be patient. i’m trying 
to sponge for you. 

your gilded tongue on my hip warms my skin 
moving against the cool ceramic of your bathtub.  

v.
the pearly water in our ceramic bathtub ripples.
you croon into my scalp. comb my hair. laugh 
at the uneasy croak in my throat. 

i have nothing clever to say sitting between 
your dimpled knees                       i imagine them 
in crooked flight and your hands fishhooking 
the sheets. i cross the silken cold to tangle my fingers 
in your necklace. smooth your velvet brow. revel 
in your lighthouse gaze under the bruise-blue ceiling.

i’d like to thumb your eyelids to understand 
the way you look at me. i want to enjoy it.
i am waiting for something to earn.

vi.
i am still waiting for something to earn.
i list everything wrong with me. my hands 
are too cold. my stomach puddles when i lie 
on my side. i hoard pillows and pleasure. 

forgive my tense muscles. i’m not used to being 
touched.                           the last person who loved me 
hadn’t figured out how to yet. i am new at this. 

i hide from you quite often. make myself small
in body and feeling. cover your eyes when i cum.
watch sleep cradle you beside me before i melt
into the sheets. 

there is no time that i allow you to see me.

vii. 
there is no time i allow you to see me.
aquatic ambiguity ornaments my body.
obscurity coats                surprise
                             drowns                  my dread 
                                            floods                    my mouth
from which my shame trickles.   

i know the way you look at my fossilized skin.
a modern relic                of decay. i do not remember
a time when i looked natural. alive instead of petrified.
fluid instead of jagged.

i wake beside you with newly formed scars 
illuminating my joints.               this is its attempt 
to pull a yearning from the murky depths of me. 
an urchin clumsily grasping at tenderness.

viii. 
i am an urchin clumsily biting at tenderness. my spines
converge at the point of touch. this is [in]voluntary. 
a defense mechanism.  i do not pretend to be soft.
capable.                            vulnerable.               i know 
i cannot be touched.
                                                          when unchecked
urchins devastate their habitat. 

do not misunderstand. i am not trying to do this here. 

i nestle into the dim corners of the room                         waiting
to be discovered by you.             i want to be a desirable thing
but unraveling is not easy for me. i hide my discomfort 
by pretending i can soften or twist. 

i’m trying to find an honest word to say to you.

ix.
i’m trying to find an honest word to say to you.
to be worthy of what you invest into me. 
you noticed my shoulders have become sharper
this year.        i am a marionette with locking joints
and a clicking jaw.
i wonder what you see 
when you look at me. what do you think of the venom
i harbor in my heart? underneath my exoskeleton. satin 
spine beneath coral.
the wetness below your tongue 
makes me feel warm-blooded. your dew-laced breath 
on the back of my neck unblurs my eyes.

i want to be wrapped around you without fear 
of us shattering. i try to imagine you touch me 
because you love me. or at least you’re trying.      
i promise i am too. 

x.
i promise i am trying.            i struggle with words.
i’ve never felt as sacred or permanent as i do
when you stretch across me.      i feel as if i were 
catapulted into the frigid air.                           flung 
into becoming.  i am not beautiful           but you 
draw a communion from within me so grand 
my skin thimbles. 
                                            you assemble our ecosystem.
i talk about the ocean because i want you to envelop me. 
your laugh illuminates your throat. brushes against 
my lips. i open and blossom. i am asking for a distraction 
and a moment of your time. how thrilling.

xi.
how thrilling to drift towards you. who 
welcomes my cold hands inside of you. 
for you i break open                     not apart. 
i only understand our time together when 
i lick it from between your fingers. traversing 
each knuckle and valley.             i am praying 
for you to engulf me. for us to become the tide. 
             rise                      together. 
                              fall                      gently. 
                                                                       into 
one another.                   our glassy moans streaking 
the skylight. soon i will give you all of me. pour 
into me through each of your fingertips.
i am always cold when you’re not here.

xii.
i am never cold when you are here.        hovering
over me.             your thumb on my chin as you paint 
my face in diligent strokes.                       an artist 
versed in my medium.                  i like how you see me. 
better than i really am. there is nothing beautiful 
or delicate here.                              only an urgency 
in the gathering of your hands at my temples. 
your rusted whispers.                 a warmth 
i am learning to swallow from the way you pull me close
and our mouths collapse into a grotto. 

xiii.
our mouths collapse into a grotto.
let me know a day when i do not camouflage
into the ocean floor in your presence. you are 
the first person who has treated my body 
gently.                with kindness. can you see 
why i want to give it to you?  
                                                         i spilled 
across a kitchen floor the first time
you saw me. stumbling. my legs clumsy. 
both of us full on laughter.         drunk.
buoyant.           you confess to wanting
to feel [big]. i trace my fears of visibility 
onto your speckled arms. we do not lie. 
we caress in a suspended daydream.

xiv.
we caress in a suspended daydream.  
today there is snow                      hiding us 
from the world. your godliness wanes. 
we move against each other under 
the numbed sun. burrow into the sheets. 
shadows flicker against the far wall.
they mimic our newness. our sheltered green 
amuses them.       
                                            i do not shrink 
from your grazing fingertips. i could explore 
your back all day. its skin like flattened embers 
against my frigid palms. we begin our wandering again. 
a helix of shivering limbs. a crescendo of watery breath.
in winter i unravel to invite you in.

 

February Spikener (she/they) is a Black femme poet from Detroit currently residing in Massachusetts. Her work has been published in The Wellesley Review, Paper Trains Literary Journal, and So to Speak: feminist journal of language and art. Ever inspired by their loved ones, their poems reflect how they navigate through the world and what it means to love and be loved. She believes that love is and has always been the answer and that the mastery of love is a form of survival.

 

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Drowning in 5 Parts

We have always been drowning—

With sweat.
With fear.
With debt.

How much for freedom? It’s a trick question. You can never pay enough. You will always owe someone or something.

Haiti paid France $21 billion for its independence.

Puerto Rico: How much can I pay?

US: Give me your land, people, language, food, culture, and flag. Maybe then we’ll talk.

Puerto Rico: No es justo.

US: Take it or leave it.

Our dreams are free.

We run like stray horses in the mountains. No light for good luck. Who
needs it anyway? When there’s no want of stars to give us lifeblood.

Sometimes, every so often, a tourist drowns behind a hotel in Condado. The ocean reclaims what it wants. Saying here is salt. Take that back in your suitcase. How cruel. How unkind. What does it come to.

*

I was taught to love water. Respect it like your blood. If blood is red, then water is nucleus red. Like ATP red. 

All things comes from water. All things return to water.

Turn off the faucet. That could be your great great-grandmother there. 

Is it possible to have too much water? Ask the trees. Like during hurricanes.

We should then love and fear water. How can it be both? A kiss and knuckle? Hug and slap? Push and all pull?

You’ve seen the drowning. Rivers of trees and earth.

Repeat after me. Repeat after me.

Water is my first love.

Me: I ❤️ you.

Water: I ❤️ you too.

What comes next? 

I thought you knew.

*

In the end, only water remained.

But even that was dangerous.

Look at Flint. Look at Standing Rock. Look at Puerto Rico.

What would the ancestors say?

How did we end up here?

They took our land away from us—
repackaged it with manicured lawns,
but kept the pillars and the names plantation and antebellum. Some gringo names that sound good when you’re showing off to the customer service representative. I live there.
Took our bodies away from us—
rebranded as one flashy r and b star and basketball player. We can’t all be like that. Even though many of us have dancing TikTok fantasies and think we’re Dr. J’s dunking twin. Nope. Just wounded ankles and knees. 

Where are we?

It’s June. Water is coming. Let’s hope it’s not too much. We’ve been drowning since forever.

*

What you say about water is what you know.

How can too much water be a bad thing? 

Isn’t it like love? Having a lot of love is good?

Ask the flowers that go rootless.

Ask the worms that get plucked by birds.

Ask the slaves wa ter wat er waaaa t er.

You don’t understand. It’s answer D on the test. All of the above. 

If hurricanes could speak. Give you the 5-star treatment at the spa. Tell you the comeback story. Which everyone loves. To forget the dry run drownings.

*

How you treat water is how you treat your mother.

Treat it kindly, gently.
Don’t abuse it.
Don’t take it for granted. 
It is not going to stay up late and wait for you.
Don’t let it run forever.
Even water gets tired and needs a nap.
Sing to it. Be sweet. Tell it how pretty it looks on a nice day.
Bring it flowers just because. Not the $4.99 cheap ones from Walmart. Something from the garden. So water would say I recognize my work. Thank you very much.
Take it to Splash Mountain and watch how people delight when crashing in chlorinated-with-who-knows-what wetness. 
Skip the museum though. There’s no need to see children slurp fountain liquid that is the wrong color. Water would demand better—How can I look like that? Where is the filter? Shakes head.
Go to church instead. A sprinkle across a baby’s bald head. Time to save souls. Don’t ask and how did the church save you? To avoid any stink eyes and pops upside the head. Remember to respect water.

Respect water. Always remember. In the ocean, don’t forget about the undertows. Don’t swim too far. The currents. Teaching you how not to drown. To breathe. Not to drown. Respect. Respect is a motherfucker.

* Ask the slaves wa ter wat er waaaa t er is a reference to M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!

 

Dorsía Smith Silva is a Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net nominee, Obsidian Fellow, and Full Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Her poetry is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, The Offing, The Minnesota review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She is also the author of Good Girl (poetry micro-chapbook), editor of Latina/Chicana Mothering, and the co-editor of six books. She has attended the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, and the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop. She has a Ph.D. in Caribbean Literature and posts at @DSmithSilva.

 

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