All My Exes Hate Me
it’s a big gross world and
i don’t know what it wants from me
close my eyes
listen to lo-fi remixes of brazilian disco hits
beats hit like waves
and everything smells so salty
i am so damn salty

Exhuming Luigi
God, we were drunk the night we exhumed your ferret
from the dirt in the grounds of your old school. We
drank mudslides and white russians until the bartender
dimmed the lights and put all the stools but ours on
the bar, the chairs on the tables. Stumbling into the cold,
on a chorus of “Life’s Been Good” and “Marian the Librarian,”
thinking what a good idea it would be to dig some bones
from the dirt.

I Am My Own Savior
Somedays I take my pills gladly, with hope
and juice to wash it down, and other days
I glare at them until they get caught in my throat
and I hate myself for feeling like they’ve failed me
already. Somedays it’s 85 degrees in Phoenix
but I’m caught under feet of suffocating snow
with no one to pour salt on my flailing body,
like drowning all over again, but so weighted and cold
I’m dragged to the earth’s core.

Ode Et. Al.
We still pray to the old gods
changing of the guard:
deity in that solemn face of the ancestors.
Help me through [the moon light]
We still pray in Quechua, Aymara,
Lacandon, et. Al.
Affinity –see the shoulder width of those keloids
scars on the backs of African slaves [marks the above fight]

Golden Shiraz
Everyone here lives in the past
In a golden age of bliss
Living in our own versions of the past
Living in a version of what it all meant
Ghosts of what once was
Before the revolution
Before the loss
Before we packed our bags and left
Before, before, before
When we were all made of gold….

Man of the City
Put red crosses all over my calendar
jam my luggage
til ‘tis too heavy to heave
I wanna be sure I won’t leave

Prepare hot meals
anything warm
for our factory-stomachs
let us first lounge & rest
in the shade of our jungle-lounge
hidden away from the omnipotent eyes
of our western lives.

Forest Nocturne
this drama hums birched, blue,
and pine behind winter-closed doors
where raccoons and rabbits still.
i remember the evening’s autumn
cathedral when amber light
massed in prayer above. i
played over the under of your body.
don’t think Nietzsche would be
angry because under
i explored this penumbra’d path
round a temporary pond jewelled
with drake and hen lusty
in spring swell—winter’s death
finding level.

Beloved Mother
What I want to write
is that I am
and I can not stop being
I want to give back everything you have given me, mother.
And thanks to you I am far away again in New York
But I’ll be fine. Do not worry
A poem for you, mother
is the least I can do
turning my love into words.
Here’s a bit of me and you

It rained in your day today
for you mother. I am ashamed
I can not give you more.

Page Leland’s prose poem “Portrait: Woodbury, Indiana” is a poetic journey of narration, rhythm, and metaphor in three stanzas with lines such as these: “When we close our eyes, the sky rips open, sounds like bones breaking”; “Pass the time by searching white clouds for a sign of something divine—“; “9 pm, when the sky is dead and black and the moon is only an outstretched hand away.”

Claudia Glenn’s poetry envelops a quiet nostalgia, but in “Nana Stares Out the Window” nostalgia becomes wisdom: “Every morning the bird returns/And every morning she is greeted/By the wonder of a child/Who just saw their first snow/And the wisdom of a woman/Who decides to make a snow angel/Knowing it could be her last.”

Read “Solar Subjugation” or “Sun-Shattered Bird” by Toni La Ree Bennett and heed the poet’s warning of humanity’s demise on Earth: “And as eons pass, our descendants, if we have any,/will look back at our broadcasts and streaming/and twitters and posts and smile wistfully/at our childish excitement.”

Emily Wong draws poetic sustenance from nature’s presence. Whether in “Moths,” “Meet Me At the Stairs,” or “Change Will Come?,” natural metaphors ground the poems: moon becomes an “empress,”; dawn “the birth of light/after a long misty night,”; and day when “the light is bland,/and the colours don’t dance.”

You can’t escape the pathos that permeates Tabatha Jenkins poetry. In “Grape Jelly,” pathos mixes with reality and evokes tears: “You only have a little while left/before your mind tethers off/ and signals for the end./They’ll come with good intentions/and very little patience,/they’ll only hear what they want to.” True poetry extends pathos to life.

Conversational in style, James Knapp’s poetry revels in irony in “Dimensional Detachment Therapy”— “I walk around department stores/in my pajamas”— and employs the consequential in “Silver Linings”— “Somewhere/past the flickering/yellow light I know/you’re waiting for me.”

The sense of touch is valued in Somnath Ganapa’s poetry: the poems resonate whether the subject is Van Gogh, the beach, or the piano. An example of this gift in “Beginning Piano”: “I gingerly lifted her upper lip with gentle fingers,/ Revealing white and black teeth underneath./Back straight, reverent fingers on middle C,/It was my first time.

The concrete image is principal in August Ritchart’s poetry, but don’t mistake it for simplicity, as the image absorbs meaning. See “Visiting Hours”: “You mailed me an Easter basket this year/Inside were some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups/The special egg-shaped ones/I ate them/And these eyes can’t see far enough outside myself to know/ Which parts of me are your hand-me-downs.”

Sandeep Kumar Mishra tells stories in his poetry but he never abandons the poetic line. “Pebbles” exemplifies the skillfully crafted narration and metaphorical voice: “But patient jeweller of tides;/Volcano-born, earthquake-quarried,/Heat-cracked, wind-carved,/Death shapes compact among the rocks.”

Conjoining the language of music and the agency of poetry, Sara Marron ponders the depth of humanity’s touch. It reverberates in “Some Privileges”: “Putting my arm around your waist, taking your backpack from you to descend the subway/ platform, walking:/In relievo, sotto voce; subito triofale/A direction to make the melody stand out, voices in undertone; suddenly/triumphant.”

There is no escaping the gentle, fully in control poetic voice of Jerrice J. Bapiste. No matter the theme, her poetry blesses with meditative meaning: “My heart knows a deeper/truth. I open/the bag let some air in,/place the stone on my/wooden desk, remember/my mother loves me when/eyes tear up at sunrise/ at the old monastery.”

Rebecca Larkin knows the powerful play of irony, nowhere more so than in her poem “Get It Together”—personification and metaphor as vehicles: “We’re all rooting for him/ TO GET IT TOGETHER,/He’s basically a tree that had its feet cut off/And its nose washed out by acid rain/and its leaves of personality waxed up so hard/they can’t photo-synthesize.”

The Ladies of the Hour The ladies sit in rigid chairs, hands crossed in skirt-covered laps. A silent room made loud by expectations. Miss Understanding smiles [knowingly] but never speaks. She fears the labels- foolslutbitchuselesswoman- but can’t live with the judgement. Miss Take quietly steals bagels and donuts from the untouched serving trays sitting in the back of the room. Miss Behavior watches and frowns, though secretly envious and so …

Smoked oysters, red wine, and Darla’s brown skin open to air in the middle of changing her shirt. I’m drinking whiskey, playing old songs— the one about the girl we want, the one who left. The woman outside watching the fire she built might not be as pretty, but her white dress and black hair dance in these mountains. The railroad strike is over, the harvest is coming north. All …

I.
The green chair was the width of a three-year-old
so when stretched horizontally across your legs
I was perfectly encapsulated by its soft, mushy arms and you
you put cherry blossoms in my curls