POSTS

from 18000 Silk Road

There exist certain strains of joy seeming only to arise when art is created or consumed. This thought is prompted at a red light by a song from the early 2000s that sounds as though recorded in a violent wind. Its circumstance is impartial—my meal first and later my waste. A friend creates custom clothing for fruit, places the outfitted fruits inside dollhouses in familial configurations (sitting together at a table, sharing a bed), and surveils them ‘til they rot, livestreaming through liquefication. She tacks the stained, tiny frocks to peg boards as homage.

That we could speak through ourselves to the sources of our pain, sound converting to touch. As a child, I rifled through drawers in pursuit of community: clips mingling with yarn, stamps, matches, and capsules. I haven’t seen my friends in years; I read their books so our love won’t atrophy. On someone’s porch at 4 a.m. we watch a man swap out letters on the church marquee:

YOU ARE THE CAUSE
OF YOUR SELF

I felt underqualified. Never knew what to do when I was free, so I wrote poems that were laws to protect myself. I was unaware they had magnetized me to my death.

 

 

 

 

Wisdom’s ballistic, repulsive: standing in a crowd I vomit, bodies scatter

He draws my body as the earth and installs his drawing on the outer half of my right eye. I find the image grandiose and try ignoring it, but when I stop rubbing my eye I see I’ve torn the paper—a young couple I passed on the street crawls out of my lower abdomen, lays side-by-side on my pubic bone.

What future could I possibly give them?

Heat. The chin tucked down to preserve it in the neck. Oils the imagination, or the mechanics of the image—a broad blue sky encrypting, folding into itself again and again

Passing one another on the street: “no problem”
I feel drunk. The binding element vaporizes
Obviously I am drunk, wading through traffic
All the dogs want me, they veer toward me on leashes
Ownership’s excrement
on the sole of every flexed foot

Eventually they move along. Can’t bear not to. Time blows through the trees, rustling money. Their wrists aching holding nothing—piece of shit wrists, bundle of wet sticks rotting from the center. The car cold and lonely, a small red light blinking inside.

And wasn’t it him who told me my name? Your name is Decidua, mother of the fallen, he said, exhaling a fat bong rip. I was called otherwise; door to my left burning bright (first song I ever heard)

First I was made out of clay
Then fired into brick
Depended upon
To shatter glass

Heat is precision. Movement. A hand rubbing the back in circles until something dispenses.

 

 

 

 

What is the most effective medium
for your life?

Written into the world: you have dreamt
of injury; you will search
for the face
that injures you cleanly                         and without compromise.

The forensic artist who draws her brother in every composite sketch
is a practitioner of algorithm, indivisible from her hand’s stammer.

A sensation of being touched
as the voice speaks to you.

 

 

 

 

In a project called NO RELATION, another friend takes family portraits of unrelated adults and children. Participants travel to his home; they’re introduced and invited to join each other for a communal meal. After dessert, he asks the group a series of questions: tell me about your family; what does the word “family” mean to you; how do you feel when you spend time with your family; what are your relational titles as a family member (parent, sibling, grandparent, cousin); tell me about a person who isn’t related to you, but who feels like family. Participants answer each question one by one. They’re driven to the shoot location, where he reads them a prompt he wrote in his head on the drive. To avoid listening, the children sing incessantly. To begin speaking, the adults form their mouths then hold their breath. The process of posing participants is—if I’m wondering— collaborative.

“Now that the project is ruined,” he says, snatching his keys midair.

 

 

 

 

The high-rise balcony offers a generous stage for rotting desire, accelerating one’s experience of the past, present, and future in such painstaking synchronicity that time itself becomes septic. What is the half-life of such a condition? One looks to the street for answers and gets sick, sending down a representative in place of their body, a space taken and to veer from, to walk around.

Sometimes I have to drop

one thing off. A coin, clip

or dish. A tack driven

through a stack of paper, representing a wish for order

undermined automatically

by having hands.

Still, I’m called into daylight

to represent myself with my chosen object.

Pill wearing off, show my stomach

in public. I cry on the train

and a woman holds my hand, rubbing

her thumb over the meaty spot

between my thumb and forefinger.

She gently wakes me

before getting off at her stop. All

in silence. That jar filled, lid

spun tightly. Thinking that I might

feel less worthless if I converted

my thoughts to music. Someone spits seeds

through their railing above me

and I kick a little dirt down

from a broken planter.

Attention paid

where attention was due, that far-

feeling countenance. And nothing

after.

 

Lily Duffy’s poems have appeared in APARTMENT Poetry, Bone Bouquet, Yalobusha Review, Dusie, TENDE RLOIN, and The Journal Petra, among other venues. A chapbook, Sour Candy, was published in 2018 as part of Really Serious Literature’s Disappearing Chapbook series. Originally from Maryland, Lily currently lives just outside of Denver, where she is an MSW student at Metropolitan State University of Denver and interns at a domestic violence shelter. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Colorado Boulder. With Rachel Levy, she edits DREGINALD.

 

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Brave and Tiny Scholar

for Brandon and Lisa

Calm becomes the trombone, absolutely night; by nights the arrows go.

Hold my foot. For you, I dream a mountain; call me scorpion or scholar.

Suddenly, a year becomes alright. Smaller gods arrive to kiss your paw
then your brow. Scorpions arrive; melodies arrive.

Babies pull a book off a shelf. Her name is Yumi; call me Panda.

And I go, forty scars, absolutely dry; war around my ears. Smaller
clouds arrive, and I am brave, tiny Panda, scorpion of queens.

 

The Kiss

Walk with me, anon,
arresting thunder.

Should I leave?

The way a siege—
What blossoms underwater?

Should I wave?

For you, breathy rose of peach—
Sink us down, a throne.

It has to be—Eros.

That your birthday
led to bombing of a city.

Soon, I shower.

Bus on fire—
Both work out of time, locust.

Yesterday, I walked.

Thorn and nettle disappearing—

 

The Kiss, Again

Upstairs, the bus on fire held a hem of dress,
peaches after peaches. Soon, the water
infinitely red. I was burnt; surface, charged.

Soft as noun, birds anon parted glass
announcing limb by limb, going places.

Just, as now, in mouthing, when a mine
hath detonated, bodies recollect as one,
the shape of one who sees in her, returned.

 

Across the Willow [Salix Babylonica]

Anon two boats by dusk, rivers peal
     currency of moss.

Bells, vanilla, soft as water. There,
      I touch what’s mine

Fractures speaking, stones forget
      their nature.

               i.

Once correcting course, I walk across the bridge.

Returning—     Gibbons branch
     creating sound

               ii.

     Younger ones          in ways of written
                                                                                      lore—

                                     saying             isn’t grief
                                                 splits when diving down.

               iii.

Earthen shrapnel—          Were the barracks touched
     by vine, kudzu cities gored? How do I write
     on genocide, the after this, anon?

               iv.

     I want to make a prism, less so, white.
     Swirling, gibbons stuff their mouths.

Canto: peaches dry
monumental crimes.

               v.

Anon—     The sun reframes a night—         Sleeping
     parts       are walking—       Bells.

Anon the goat is led.
     You make a field around you slaughter.

Vernacular—     Rebirth—         Syncopating
     upside down—

We had a month to speak
     yesterday.

               vi.

     Anon, removing
to its end—

               vii.

     Wasn’t I     your grief          passing through
an umbra wheel
                                       in two
     conversations, raised along your ramp?

               viii.

      I saw the maple
first of all
                  was fir          collecting, therefore

         red
     scraped across her knees.

                                          Were I
          final, daughter            lyric
     passing a hold?

          The ship is passing
     under.

 

Sophia Terazawa is a poet of Vietnamese-Japanese descent. She is the author of two chapbooks: Correspondent Medley (winner of the 2018 Tomaž Šalamun Prize, published with Factory Hollow Press) and I AM NOT A WAR (a winner of the 2015 Essay Press Digital Chapbook Contest). Her poems appear in The Seattle Review, Puerto del Sol, Poor Claudia, and elsewhere. She is currently working toward the MFA in Poetry at the University of Arizona. Her favorite color is purple.

 

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The only thing I want to kill

is my dying day

but ijọ́ wo ni *Mákùú òní kú?
when will die-not not eventually die

I devour my decision to dilapidate
into the pocket of the earth

you call me village boy because
I’m used to swimming in rivers

if I dive into this white man’s pool
who knows if I might become
soluble in water

before I meet my crush
I do not want to have dissolved
like grandma’s aunt at her 103rd year

they made an obituary
to the demise of a life well-lived
I am in no mood for arguments
let’s just toast to a lie well-told

we are here at the mortuary
where they waste time preserving wastes

boring how interesting we try to make life
even when it keeps kicking our asses

the sarcasm in embalmment
like, we couldn’t save your life
now let’s save your body

before we continue
permit me to write an elegy
to the forgiveness
of the gravedigger who cracked
a joke during the burial of my mother:

even though my soul is a label to
the shadow of the darkness you dig
it could still hear the song of snares
or what is this life if not a joke
on the joker; a master comedian?

by now young cousin wants to know
what the word crush means

I stammer. I say it’s more
like your dream car?
that dream job, a dream happiness?
a beautiful wish, like love,
a rainbow you can only see
not touch

in my mother’s body
the doctor found a euphemism
a dangerous lump worth removing

what you do not know will
never fall as tears off your eyes

I crush.
on her death bed. I god.
I promise her things that are
not mine

like, say, don’t worry
everything’s gonna be fine

 

*Mákùú: means Die-not. It is one of the names given in the Yoruba culture, to children perceived to be Abiku (children predestined to die young), in order to pacify them to dissuasion.

 

The inviting architecture of grief

bearded as you are
you don’t know beans about
how to be a man

all you know is to cry like whatever
you can think of

because the doctor is a businessman
the matron is not your mate
& you’re helpless & you are not rich
& your mother is dying
& the government is nobody’s pallbearer

now every time you want to
see your mother, you see a tomb
but you still do not understand

until 4 years later
when the wounds came fresh. First,
slow, like a concubine sneaking
into an inner chamber,
then hard, like the hammerings of a blacksmith

when gloom is a garb around your heart
& grief is an unlit room
with opened arms, saying:
come, my son, come to daddy

 

Trust Tonji is the winner of the 2018 edition of the MLK slam competition, organized by the US Embassy in Republic of Benin. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Rattle, Agbowó, Voicemail Poems, Ethel Zine, The Friday Influence, Eunoia Review, Prachya Review, Synchronized Chaos, Kalahari Review, African Writer, Praxis Magazine, and elsewhere. Send him a tweet @TrustTonji.

 

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It’s Ongoingness

I write my eulogy on the ceiling of my bedroom so I never have the impulse to look up. Cremation is forbidden but where else would I go? No darkness from the ground will put me to rest. Allah lütfen let me lift this body to the moon. The skyscrapers poke holes into the night & before I close my eyes. Before it’s time to leave I sit up under the covers & remember that no one wants me today. I turn the sun off; she leaves without trying to convince me otherwise. Allah, how do I grow now?

 

I Think This Is The Last Love Poem

When Arabella laughs it feels like
allah’s prayer in my heart

I look at her in light that
took many years to get here

& maybe that fixes all the bad
all the things that keep us awake at night

or maybe it reminds me of the future
which always keeps me awake at night

I hope I am making sense but look,
maybe this isn’t actually the last love poem

Maybe this is just the first & all the rest
were letters I was too scared to call letters

& now is the right time to tell her
about when I dreamed we were superheroes

except we called each other superhomos
& she had a purple cape that matched her suit

We made the world safer for queers
& punched transphobes in the throat

& Arabella, what I’m trying to say is
would you like to try to stop hating the world with me?

 

beyza ozer is a queer/trans/Muslim person living in Chicago. beyza’s work has appeared in and is forthcoming from Poetry, The Offing, the anthologies Subject To Change: Trans Poetry & Conversation (Sibling Rivalry Press 2017), Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket 2019), and others. beyza is the author of FAIL BETTER (fog machine press 2017). They are a recipient of the Windy City Times 30 Under 30 Award. beyza is manuscript editor of Critical Inquiry published by University of Chicago Press.

 

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What If God’s Wrath Is In The Little Things We Suffer?

For a while I lie here sobbing, channeling the empire of my body
to an enclosure that mutes the thought of sound.
An unplanned stillness rocks the boat & presses to open wounds
once sealed with a prayer.
The town is asleep & the moonbeam that settles into the room
is a generous offer to keep back the dark.
The glow rushes in, representatives from the kingdom of stars.
I wash myself in the pool of shine,
adore the form the sky gives me & polish myself with acceptance.
Sometimes I fear the dark, this widespread contamination of light.
Somewhere far away, bombs cough up more dead bodies
& we rehearse a new dirge at the roof of our voices.
Somewhere near a drunk is swimming for his life
in a puddle generated by his own vomit.
What if God’s wrath is in the littlest things we suffer?
I don’t know what else to request in the temple of prayer.
Sometimes I want the world sentenced to a crucifix,
mouth crowded with screams & voices gifted with fear.
Dear world, give me your hand that I may sleep upon
& add my weight to the things you break the air for.
God, give me a sleep with dreams for company
& a cradlesong to write poems about.

 

A Simple Wish

Picturing birds jump from tree to tree, I imagine myself with wings, God’s own arms. The world doesn’t know how I feel about flight. How my limbs ache for an appendage to cross clouds. I sit here in a morning patched with light showers. The darkening of the sky forbids anything to leap into the air & swim with feathers. I sit without the trace of a lover’s touch & imagine a time when I laughed freely. I locate a wine bottle & wet my tongue with a sip. I worry about the birds while the world says they aren’t human enough for the effort. I think about branches, trunks & other troves to build a nest. Perhaps I have no need for a ceiling with paint for company. Perhaps I need the sky for a ceiling, God for company.

 

Michael Akuchie is an emerging poet from Nigeria. He studies English and Literature at the University of Benin, Nigeria. He is the author of the micro-chapbook, Calling Out Grief (Ghost City Press, 2019). His recent work appears or are forthcoming with Impossible Task, Collective Unrest, Nitrogen House Zine, Sandy River Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ghost City Review, TERSE, Mojave Heart, Kissing Dynamite, Burning House, Neologism Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. He is on Twitter as @Michael_Akuchie. He is a Contributing Editor for Barren Magazine. Sometimes he writes from a busy town in Lagos, sometimes a tired village in Benin City.

 

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This is a Comb

This is the president tweeting. This is my fake, white tree. This is my name spelled correctly. Someone complemented me. Then I got dissed. There are ghosts slipping between my fingers. They are wringing their hands. I want to hole up in my place and never come out. I want to call my ex. Here are some bitches who think they’re punk rock. When I say bitch it isn’t gendered. This time. Here’s a sock without a match. Here’s a person who really doesn’t care. Here’s a person who wishes desperately to care, but most of all, to understand. This is someone showing me a poem. This is me feeling shame. When the poets talk I want to participate. Here I am trying to participate and exaggerating myself as a protective measure. It is still me, but performed. The realer me sneaks in: I’m getting pissed and trying to stay cordial. The ghosts are drying their hair. I am under water. I want to come up for air.

 

Leila Ortiz is a poet and social worker in NYC public schools. Born and raised in New York City, Leila currently resides in Park Slope. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Tinderbox and Apogee. Leila is the author of two chapbooks, Girl Life (Recreation League, 2016) and A Mouth is Not a Place (dancing girl press, 2017). She is a Journal Editor at No, Dear Magazine.

 

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