meditations in an emergency :: cameron awkward-rich

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

west virginia :: william brewer

Fall kingdom conquered first by bedlam,

then bedlam’s hunger—hush—heavy

in the air between the hills that crash

like waves into each other. What is a hive

without its queen? Thirst can rule, so can want.

A crown of needles, a gown of clouds she parts.

Bees in the streets below, their tongues

like hands reaching to the sky for an offering.

This is what want does, this and the raindrops

becoming pills in their throats, spurring wings,

all that fluttering the hum of a false heaven.

And who, through that, can hear a few wings

folding under the weight of death? It is too late.

Like timber, like anthracite, death is a natural resource.

The colony glows. The colony does its work.

only as the day is long :: dorianne laux

Soon she will be no more than a passing thought,
a pang, a timpani of wind in the chimes, bent spoons
hung from the eaves on a first night in a new house
on a street where no dog sings, no cat visits
a neighbor cat in the middle of the street, winding
and rubbing fur against fur, throwing sparks.

Her atoms are out there, circling the earth, minus
her happiness, minus her grief, only her body’s
water atoms, her hair and bone and teeth atoms,
her fleshy atoms, her boozy atoms, her saltines
and cheese and tea, but not her piano concerto
atoms, her atoms of laughter and cruelty, her atoms
of lies and lilies along the driveway and her slippers,
Lord her slippers, where are they now?

scent of orange blossoms: haiku/senryu :: teresa mei chu

this morning
weaving Chi in the garden
invisible ball in my hand


*


Halong Bay
battle distant memory
smoke from Gulf of Tonkin


*


did the atom
ever know its destiny
how our hands create?










A student asked me,
“Why do your people
believe in dragons?”


*


river birch –
undressing
in the wind


*


the solid bones of elk antlers
or branches of a limber pine –
memory










bobcat with mange
unwatered plants
also dying


*


mountain lion
her land, before ours
invasive plants


*


scent of orange blossoms –
memories of my late grandma
who planted this tree









yarrow seedlings
pop up a week later –
each moment a small beginning


*


stopped in my tracks
by a primrose blooming –
I, too, will overcome this


*


dinner
a bowl of rice and soy sauce
food to survive on


*


my heart
the Santa Ana winds today
branches fall to the ground

I’m not a virgin but :: melissa lozado-oliva

I want to appear to you in sandwiches,
water markings on the ceiling,
mold above the toilet,
patterns in woven baskets,
a scatterplot depicting
the correlation between people who
lick their ice cream & people who bite
their ice cream & whether or not they
lie about how many books they’ve read.

I want you to gather strangers around
the image of me because you’ve gotta
make sure it’s me & not a trick
your eyes are playing on you.

& I want the strangers to confirm your vision,
I want them to tell tales about me,
I want endless products in the shape of me
available in delis & on the side of the road,
I want to be the one Abuelita’s light candles beneath
& I want to be the picture on the candle, stretched out
& replicated, I want to be the one who gets daughters
into colleges with full rides,
brings the Go-Fund-Me page to completion,
gets shoved
into the backpack during the big flood,
gets hanged
from doorknobs in new apartments
as a sign of protection, as a sign that
whoever lives there is loved

I want everyone to believe in me eventually
but I want it to be you
who finds me, plain as day,
blooming among the flowers,
shining from the hill,
taking shape everywhere I shouldn’t,
obvious & made of light.

I once was a child :: victoria chang

I once was a child am a child am someone’s child
            not my mother’s not my father’s the boss
      gave us special treatment treatment for something
                  special a lollipop or a sticker glitter from the

toy box the better we did the better the plastic prize made
            in China one year everyone got a spinning top
      one year everyone got a tap on their shoulders
                  one year everyone was fired everyone

fired but me one year we all lost our words one year
            my father lost his words to a stroke
      a stroke of bad luck stuck his words
                  used to be so worldly his words fired

him let him go without notice can they do that
            can she do that yes she can in this land she can
      once we sang songs around a piano this land is your land
                  this land is my land in this land someone always

owns the land in this land someone who owns
            the land owns the buildings on the land owns
      the people in the buildings unless an earthquake
                  sucks the land in like a long noodle

i meet you still though never :: sarah white

I meet you still though never
fully formed like
a statue only a partially drawn
stream with one arm extended
to the bottom of a pool
the poem you and I
were working on when
everything went under water
drawings from a night
of little sleep fading
in the morning

What to do on land—
pretend a bottle
wends between the blues
of the harbor with a letter
I threw in
for you if you can ever
find the time

A stream
children swim in seems
to a grandmother
like tears and to a painter
like mirrors.

north wind :: mary ruefle

Cannot say I as yet
but am beginning to get the idea
by putting the tip of my tongue
to the roof of my mouth.
Am exasperated when
do not succeed.
So much is missing
from the middle of the day!
Despite my best efforts
at individual enjoyment
know the north wind doth blow –
one day as yet
the roof will come off
and perishable below.

life is a place where it’s forbidden to live :: jackie wang

All I remember is the coppiced terrain I crossed to find a house to rest in. Who is the woman lurking in the woods? A fellow traveler. I’m not used to seeing others. She is lost and I am lost but the difference is she is a novice at being lost, whereas I have always been without country. Without planet. When we happen upon a cabin I ask the house for shelter on her behalf. I’m aware that we come off as oogles but want to prove we are different by washing dishes. To concretize my gratitude. 

In the morning, before the others awake, I set off for the holy site in a horse-drawn carriage. The carriage has a detachable sleeping chamber designed so that a princely man can carry me supine whenever the horse gets tired. 

At sunset my pilgrimage is complete. The Asian market is a glass palace overlooking an airport. From outside the Palace of Snacks the products shine like organs inside a hard, translucent skin. As I take the palace escalator heavenward my eyes are fixed on an airplane parked on the runway. 

It is waiting for me. 

another poem on my daughter’s birthday :: craig morgan teicher

There must be soft words
for an evening like this, when the breeze
caresses like gentle fingertips
all over. I don’t know

how not to write darkly and sad.
But it’s two years today since
my little girl was born, cut safely
from the noose.

We meant nothing but hope;
how near death is to that.

Only children, only some children,
get to run free from these snags. She
was born! She lived and she grows
like joy spreading from the syllables

of songs. She reminds me of now
and now and now.
                            I must learn
to have been so lucky.

the ones who stay :: faith shearin

There are the ones who leave and the ones who stay,
the ones who go to war and the ones
who wander the silent streets, waiting

for news. There are the ones who join the circus
or go on safari: the explorers, the astronauts,
then there are the people who never leave

their first neighborhood, their first house.
Odysseus spent years trying to come home
but Penelope never left. He was seduced

by women with islands and sung to by sirens;
he held the wind in a bottle. But Penelope
slept differently in the same bed, weaving

and unweaving the daily details while men
she did not love gathered in her kitchen.
Her face grew thinner, her son grew taller.

Is that a journey? The ones who leave
come back with stories: an excitement
in their eyes. But the ones who stay

witness little changes: dust, weather, breath.
What happens to them happens so slowly
it seems not to be happening at all.

untitled (blue, green, & brown): oil on canvas: mark rothko: 1952 :: ocean vuong

The TV said the planes have hit the buildings.

& I said Yes because you asked me to stay.

Maybe we pray on our knees because the lord

only listens when we’re this close

to the devil.There is so much I want to tell you.

How my greatest accolade was to walk

across the Brooklyn Bridge & not think

of flight. How we live like water: touching

a new tongue with no telling

what we’ve been through. They say the is sky is blue

but I know it’s black seen through too much air.

You will always remember what you were doing

when it hurts the most. There is so much

I want to tell you—but I only earned

one life. & I took nothing. Nothing. Like a pair of teeth

at the end. The TV kept saying The planes…

The planes…& I stood waiting in the room

made from broken mocking birds. Their wings throbbing

into four blurred walls. Only you were there.

You were the window.

ever after :: joyce sutphen

What am I to you now that you are no
longer what you used to be to me?

Who are we to each other now that
there is no us, now that what we once

were is divided into me and you
who are not one but two separate and

unrelated persons except for that ex-
that goes in front of the words

that used to mean me, used to mean
you, words we rarely used (husband, wife)

as when we once posed (so young and helpless)
with our hands (yours, mine) clasped on the knife

that was sinking into the tall white cake.
All that sweetness, the layers of one thing

and then another, and then one thing again.

vespers [end of august] :: louise glück

End of August. Heat
like a tent over
John’s garden. And some things
have the nerve to be getting started,
clusters of tomatoes, stands
of late lilies—optimism
of the great stalks—imperial
gold and silver: but why
start anything
so close to the end?
Tomatoes that will never ripen, lilies
winter will kill, that won’t
come back in spring. Or
are you thinking
I spend too much time
looking ahead, like
an old woman wearing
sweaters in summer;
are you saying I can
flourish, having
no hope
of enduring? Blaze of the red cheek, glory
of the open throat, white,
spotted with crimson.

lapse :: dorianne laux

Poem beginning with a line from Gwendolyn Brooks

I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer. I
see the leaves turning on their stems. I am
not oblivious to the sun as it lowers on its stem, not
fooled by the clock holding off, not deceived
by the weight of its tired hands holding forth. I
do not think my dead will return. They will not do
what I ask of them. Even if I plead on my knees. Not
even if I kiss their photographs or think
of them as I touch the things they left me. It
isn’t possible to raise them from their beds, is
it? Even if I push the dirt away with my bare hands? Still-
ness, unearth their faces. Bring me the last dahlias of summer.

I wouldn’t even know what to do with a third chance :: kaveh akbar

I wouldn’t even know what to do with a third chance,
another halo to shake loose galloping into the crossfire.
     Should I be apologizing? Supposedly, what’s inside my

     body is more or less the same as what’s inside yours—
here, the river girl clutching her toy whistle. There,
the black snake covered in scabs. Follow my neckline,

the beginning will start beginning again. I swear on my
head and eyes, there are moments in every day when
     if you asked me to leave, I would. Heaven is mostly

     preposition—up, above, around—and you can live
any place that’s a place. A failure of courage is still
a victory of safety. Bravery pitches its refugee tent

at the base of my brain and slowly starves, chipping into
darkness like a clay bird bouncing down a well. All night
     I eat yogurt and eggplant and garlic, water my dead

     orchids. In what world would any of me seem credible?
God’s word is a melody, and melody requires repetition.
God’s word is a melody I sang once then forgot.

the little box :: vasko popa

translated by charles simic

The little box gets her first teeth
And her little length
Little width little emptiness
And all the rest she has

The little box continues growing
The cupboard that she was inside
Is now inside her

And she grows bigger bigger bigger
Now the room is inside her
And the house and the city and the earth
And the world she was in before

The little box remembers her childhood
And by a great longing
She becomes a little box again

Now in the little box
You have the whole world in miniature
You can easily put in a pocket
Easily steal it lose it

Take care of the little box

warning :: jenny joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

persimmons :: danusha laméris

This morning I looked out the window
and saw the small, translucent pelts
hanging from the boughs. For months, the birds
have been feasting: Flickers, finches, jays.
And now, the fruit finally cleaned of itself, laid bare,
light shining through the last scraps. Like the heart
after the gods have had their fill, what’s left
after our banquet of loss.

sparklers :: barbara crooker

We’re writing our names with sizzles of light
to celebrate the fourth. I use the loops of cursive,
make a big B like the sloping hills on the west side
of the lake. The rest, little a, r, one small b,
spit and fizz as they scratch the night. On the side
of the shack where we bought them, a handmade sign:
Trailer Full of Sparkles Ahead, and I imagine crazy
chrysanthemums, wheels of fire, glitter bouncing
off metal walls. Here, we keep tracing in tiny
pyrotechnics the letters we were given at birth,
branding them on the air. And though my mother’s
name has been erased now, I write it, too:
a big swooping I, a hissing s, an a that sighs
like her last breath, and then I ring
belle, belle, belle in the sulphuric smoky dark.

litany for the morning after :: zeyn joukhadar

The morning after the fever, we will stand in the sun and say:

Here is the before.
The phone will ring and the wind will blow.
The mistral will slam our open windows.

The morning after, we’ll pinch dust from guitar strings.
There will be sugar on the table. There will be blue-white cream.

The morning after, we will dance the dabke.
We will try to recall the softness of other people’s hands.
We will marvel at the whorls in the velvet of their fingertips.

The morning after will be violet and grey and the pink of fresh blood.

The morning after, we will pick the scab.

The morning after, we will pulse with unused muscle.

The morning after, we will cut our hair and cry at filled prescriptions.

The morning after, we will grow new bones and fresh skin.
We will stroke rasped throats. We will eat honey. We will forget.

The morning after, we will scrub the film of whispers from our walls.
We will hang talismans above our bedposts.

The morning after, we will try to be the kind of people who remember how to want.

The morning after, the bells will ring, and it will mean nothing at all.
We will tell ourselves not to think of the dead.

Learn more about Les Carnets de Camargo

dear j. :: kazim ali

It should be a letter
To the man inside
I could not become

Dressed in yellow
And green, the colors of spring
So I could leave death

In its chamber veined
With deep ore
I’ve no more to tell you

Last winter I climbed
The mountains of Musoorie
To hear frozen peals of bell and wire

A silver thread of sound
Sky to navel
Draws me

like the black strip
in a flower’s throat
meant to guide you in

I lie now in the winter
open-petaled beneath Sirius
I cereus bloom

in the beginning :: donika kelly

In the beginning, there was your mouth:
soft rose, rose murmur, murmured breath, a warm

cardinal wind that drew my needle north.
Magnetic flux, the press of form to form. 

In the beginning, there was your mouth—
the trailhead, the pathhead faintly opened,

the canyon, river-carved, farther south,
and ahead: the field, the direction chosen.

In the beginning, there was your mouth,
a sky full of stars, raked or raking, clock-

wise or west, and in the close or mammoth 
matter, my heart’s red muscle, knocked and knocked.

In the beginning, there was your mouth:
soft rose, rose murmur, murmured breath, a warm

cardinal wind that drew my needle north.
Magnetic flux, the press of form to form. 

In the beginning, there was your mouth—
the trailhead, the pathhead faintly opened,

the canyon, river-carved, farther south,
and ahead: the field, the direction chosen.

In the beginning, there was your mouth,
a sky full of stars, raked or raking, clock-

wise or west, and in the close or mammoth 
matter, my heart’s red muscle, knocked and knocked.

In the beginning, there was your mouth,
And nothing since but what the earth bears out.

chinatown diptych :: jenny xie

I.

The face of Chinatown returns its color,
plucked from July’s industrial steamer.

Dry the cup!
So we do.

Four noodle shops on East Broadway release their belches collectively.
They breed in me a hankering for family life.

Here, there’s no logic to melons and spring onions exchanging hands.
No rhythm to men’s briefs clothes-pinned to the fire escape.

Retirees beneath the Manhattan Bridge leak hearsay.

The woman in Apartment #18 on Bayard washes her feet in pot of boiled
water each evening before bedtime. But every handful of weeks she lapses.

I lean into the throat of summer.

Perched above these streets with whom I share verbs and adjectives.

II.

Faces knotted, bangs softened with grease.
The East River pulls along a thread of sun.

While Sunday slides in. Again, in those plain trousers.

How the heat is driven off course.
How one can make out the clarified vowels of bridges.

Who’s keeping count of what’s given against what’s stolen?

There’s nothing I can’t trace back to my coarse immigrant blood.

Uncles tipple wine on the streets of Mott and Bayard.
Night shifts meet day shifts in passing.

Sweat seasons the body that labors.

And in each noodle shop, bowls dusted with salt.

spring :: edna st. vincent millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

i am not seaworthy :: toni morrison

I am not seaworthy.
Look how the fish mistake my hair for home.
I had a life, like you. I shouldn’t be riding the sea.
I am not seaworthy.
Let me be earth bound; star fixed
Mixed with sun and smacking air.
Give me the smile, the magic kiss
To trick little boy death of my hand.
I am not seaworthy. Look how the fish mistake my hair for home.

little stones at my window :: mario benedetti

for roberto and adelaida

Once in a while
joy throws little stones at my window
it wants to let me know that it’s waiting for me
but today I’m calm
I’d almost say even-tempered
I’m going to keep anxiety locked up
and then lie flat on my back
which is an elegant and comfortable position
for receiving and believing news

who knows where I’ll be next
or when my story will be taken into account
who knows what advice I still might come up with
and what easy way out I’ll take not to follow it

don’t worry, I won’t gamble with an eviction
I won’t tattoo remembering with forgetting
there are many things left to say and suppress
and many grapes left to fill our mouths

don’t worry, I’m convinced
joy doesn’t need to throw any more little stones
I’m coming
I’m coming.


				


	



			
				


	

							
to the man who shouted “i like pork fried rice” at me on the street :: franny choi
			


	
	
	

			

you want to eat me
out. right. what does it taste like
you want to eat me right out
of these jeans & into something
a little cheaper. more digestible.
more bite-sized. more thank you





come: i am greasy
for you. i slick my hair with msg
every morning. i’m bad for you.
got some red-light district between
your teeth. what does it
taste like: a takeout box
between my legs.
plastic bag lady. flimsy white fork
to snap in half. dispose of me.





taste like dried squid. lips puffy
with salt. lips brimming
with foreign so call me
pork. curly-tailed obscenity
been playing in the mud. dirty meat.
worms in your stomach. give you





a fever. dead meat. butchered girl
chopped up & cradled
in styrofoam. you candid cannibal.
you want me bite-sized
no eyes clogging your throat.





but i’ve been watching
from the slaughterhouse. ever since
you named me edible. tossed in
a cookie at the end. lucky man.
go & take what’s yours.
name yourself archaeologist     but





listen carefully
to the squelches in
your teeth & hear my sow squeal
scream murder between
molars. watch salt awaken
writhe, synapse.
watch me kick
back to life. watch me tentacles
& teeth. watch me
resurrected electric.





what does it
                                    taste like: revenge
squirming alive in your mouth
strangling you quiet
from the inside out.