Masthead

Editor’s Note

Dear Readers,

It’s hard to know exactly where one is going, nor is it even simple to know where one has been. We trudge through life, tackling one obstacle at a time until we find ourselves in a strange, new place, not knowing how we got there. How has our world changed? How has it changed us? Which part of ourselves do we carry, and which parts do we leave behind? Have we even really changed at all?

That’s where we find ourselves in the issue: moving. Throughout the issue, our contributors travel through places, presents and pasts. From the start, Roger Camp takes us to Brazil where we find it alive and dynamic—pictures in motion.

For Sara Iacovelli, we move through time, stringing the calendar year with narrative, lyrical and reflective. Maria Llona Garcia gives us a glimpse of all the things we carry in our pocket as we search through our lives and our selves. For Angel ZiXuan Xin, we navigate through memory, both historic and familial. And the photography of Christopher Lucka also brings us to our own time and place, showing the importance of acting in our immediate present.

This presence of mind is what we find in the work of the brilliant young poets in this issue. This year, the Poetry Society of New York inaugurated our first Youth Poetry Contest, inviting poets 18-years-and-under to share their voices. Our winners—Kassidy Khuu, Emma Hoff, and Brian Chan—express a maturity beyond their years, showing us the power of knowing where you come from, who you are, and who you are yet to be.

More than self-reflection, these poets and artists take us somewhere beyond themselves, because locating oneself shouldn’t be the same as standing still.

And we hope, dear readers, as you explore this issue, you will perhaps find yourselves moved.

Until next time,
Leon Barros
Natalee Cruz
Editors-in-Chief

HOW TO HELP

Abecedarian Where They Name the Boy

Absence first: raise him
blind under a quilt of cosmos—
canopy his body with fireflies,
demanding a pair of half-paled
eyes and a fantasy
from an unfaithful
god. They’re wary enough of curses and hanging lightning. Still, it’s not
heresy or hell that frightens them.
In a year, the boy will cling to his father’s arm like a
jail bar, waiting to be
killed or
leveraged against the sky. The titles have already been written:
man breathing man; man who transforms; man
named Sacrifice; man vs. post-man. This is the part where they
open the boy like a casket and the emptiness becomes
proof of a ghost. The storm is still
quiet enough for the unwed
rain to be tasted—the
salt of filthy magnolias and
thunder.
Under a different night the boy would’ve been
vindicated long ago, but today he
wears the fingerprints of men and scrawled
X’s on his collarbones. Today they paint him in
yellowed light and feed him to the sun. He becomes
Zenith but the name is brief—swallowed in a vein of the split, soundless sky.

COSMIC COCOA

when the moon gets juiced
it’s illegible on earth
where we need cups
and more antioxidants
sparkle burp forward
than our superest
super fruits could ever
dream since no gravity dilutes
these dusts of various hues
that sieve themselves before
each color coagulates
constellation style kept fresh
in her darkening side suspended
guarded from horny olympians
by diligent three-eyed newts
who duskly coat it all decadent
with their chocolate slime

COMMON AS CORNBREAD

gotta believe
past lives exist
if you wanna
make this one
bearable with all
its gossiped glass skies
and kept receipts
swallowed whole in
semi-abandoned
totes trying so
hard to move
through
slow motion hell
even our larks are unhappy

IN THIS POEM

our hammock harbors
no skirted skeeters
despite it always being
dusk adjacent and all limp
dick cigarettes are rescued
from an unbranded tote
not unlike that plastic bag freed
from branches it’s seen cycled
across generations of brake screeches
subdued as a willing L
by hourly church bells
having abolished all police there
bloom hibiscus smoothie lilies
we offer you secondhand
stoned sparrows too
for less lonesome rocking

ABUNDANCE RITUAL

TAMAGOTCHI

Pantoum for my Mother

“Trust your anger. It is a demand for love” -Natalie Diaz

She tried to jump onto the neighbor's balcony
from our apartment on the fourth floor
the night was clear to see
there were many reasons to flee but not to put the blame on him
in the aftermath of a fight over filetes empanados

from our apartment on the fourth floor
  the night was clear to see
my brother and I were scared and young
in the aftermath of a fight over misplaced shoes
she woke us outcrying and smeared her fury on our faces

My brother and I had no opinion
I believe she believed this illness had ravaged her 
air, play, affection, autonomy 
and woke us outcrying and smeared her fury on our faces.
Imagine him, ill and alone, I try to imagine him 
married to her surrender and torment

I believe she believed enduring lovelessness was her duty
There were many reasons to flee but she cooked and made the beds.
Imagine him, I try to imagine him married to her anger his fear 
her fear his silence
his anger her fear
his fear her silence
trying to jump onto the neighbor's balcony, 
that night from our apartment on the fourth floor

The Edge of SPanish

There’s a flower at the bottom of the sea
and the waves carry its petals to the shore.
Good luck to anyone who walks the sand they litter,
mingling with the pebbles and sea glass.

We’re all wrapped in languages we don’t know –
they pour in through the vents, trapped inside flowers,
tongues raising on vowels,
slipping past the teeth, a gentle c.

No red roses, no thorns, only these
delicate faces perched upon stems once green,
now turned a yellowish-brown, overused
and all the more beautiful for being abused
by the powerful water.

El mar nunca duerme – how hard would it be to just
say? It’s easier than to admit the swelling of your mouth
around these words that open like doors. Like songs,
except the notes change based on the voice.

The whole world changes, and there is no way
to warn them except in your native tongue which no one
wants to pursue, yet tries to learn. Teach it to me now,
they say, but leave after a word. The sea has listened
for a long time now – it remains mute.

It will not teach the secrets that have walked along
its body and its back, not caring that they will be
tossed around the thrashing surface. Look!
It’s going now. The sea is disappearing. El mar se ha ido.

annual Review

Apophenia in Wet November as We Search for Meaning

My friend tells me that he likes the rain & that it is falling proof that we are collectively alive—&
as we stew, fruit flies fed full on this Monday, it becomes the cold, decaying womb where we hide. What

does it mean, do you think, that water unravels into fog? When Achlys stumbles past above us, her
body a fleeing liminality, hit her & run. bite the bullet ‘till your teeth crack & grip the gun. But

I don’t even know if she intends for us to scrape out the light or become it. So I watch & do neither. The
once-warm concrete is a clamped mouth; the white stripes are wounds, before the blood work. Drowned,

the street tightens like leathery sinew stretched over the hips of a drum: the carcass of something. So,
I tell him that I disagree, think things through & of the umbrella forced open in my kitchen, its

iron ribs splayed like the legs of a neutered animal, drained clean of water & shaking. It
seems I think this is a story about loss & unhandled holes when really, it only just chronicles living. Well,

perhaps those two sunken tragedies are more difficult to divorce than I give them credit for. I
swallow them both to breathe, & to die, of course, I joke as we trudge around the corner. But

once New York is dry again, it will be the same maze as before the flood, so why not resent it then? This
bloated conversation is ironic & lame, & I want to know who made me a creature then left, bared

me down to a Metrocard, M Train, & a curse to live Plato’s allegory in a city with no opaque walls. I
am knees-deep in walnut shells of asinine glory, & the imposition that we are less flammable is small. I

mean, it has no bearing on the vicious taste of the honeysuckles we will dissect next season. So
in the meantime, find another wandering wild boar to sate & maybe throw a boat to herd me in, just

a little something to not fall through while I drink the rain which is really just the space between us, &
perhaps a wall ornament to boot, some sand-faced Medusa, to make me seem dangerous & less afraid

NO KING’s ON PRESIDENT’s DAY

Re-Enchantment #16

Another Garden

Songs of Myself #1

ANGEL’S BATTLE

Bloodletting

[AUDIO TRANSCRIPT]

So If you're best friend is [Redacted]

And you grew up with [Redacted] [Redacted] [Redacted]

Then how come you ain't end up gang banging with them

Ok

So 2 things

1. I was a good kid

2. I'm not quite mentally stable

See what would of happened is

Either i would of joined the gang

But not been able to properly put in pain

Be violently valuable

Or I'd of been the most volatile Villian

The belligerent bar

Aye man Yall doing a lot of fighting with fist

Why don't we start firing arms

Make them shoulder

the brunt of my trigger finger

Red handed

Paint then town red

Red dead redemption

Show em how my cowboys

Be bop

If we throwing up big B's

Let's batter bash break hearts of mothers

Too hot headed and hurried trying to mimic what i saw on TV might of arrested our development

Maybe when the time is thrown in front of me I'm not as tough as I thought, maybe I'd tell

Maybe reflect a rat

Irredeemable

Reputation Irreparably damaged

So i stopped at the red light

Put my car in park insteada ride

For the set

or Seth

The Egyptian God murdered his brother Osiris or Ausar

And thousands of years later the set still murdering his brother the mythology plays on

Cain kills abel (able)

Bodied brothers everyday

We drilling shit but not building shit

Villian shit

Killing shit but not militant against who our villain is

Spilling shit oh my God

But not remembering Wayne said there's no ceilings just

Remembering wayne said su woo if you banging

Gang

hanging with the homies

Like we wasn't hangin from them folks trees

U wanna smoke me but revolt please
Maybe if Diddy did it u would

If puffy passed u a backwood would you puff pass or would you pass?

Not now i mean like when you was a boy

was you bad?

Would you take a big drag if you was given 1 more chance?

Cus i seen kids who was not g

Scream g-unot when Game and 50 beefed

And that was the first time they ever heard of Blackwallstreet

See I'm a fan of listening to gangsta music aye

But I've seen the Lox (locks) put on the byrd gang and Id prefer we fly higher than that

My era of hip hop fostered a different kind of B boy

No cardboard when they spin

My gen don't pop n lock

They locked in gen pop

When i thought

Of banging

Nothing i could say but no

If i caught a body

I...I I couldn't let it go

I'm not good with guilt, grief, or graveyards shifts

I don't wanna put in work

I've hurt

Ive felt loss

I don't wanna cause 

I don't wanna war

With mine

Inside

Ones already going on

While they fought
Dem
on
blocks

I fought
demons
Lots

Government plots

Psyops

False flags from the red white and blue

Funny how often those 2 outer hues fued

You know I'd bet the middle one

thinks it's pretty funny too

4: An out of round homage to what I call home

After Sappho & Anne Carson

[It is mid-autumn. So the crescent coils into
a ball of entangled arteries/veins. At the dinner table
we feast on boiled pig livers & chicken] heart1 [s.

Men spit wisdom into the ashtray. Talk revolution
& war & chew the lotus seed filling with their mouths open.
Let gunpowder burst from the dark cavern where
their fathers hid & their fathers’ fathers smoked opium
for winters until family is surrendered
for rice & war waxed into a unit in time.

The women trust time & ] absolutely
[nothing else. For like the moon, we bleed
& blossom until the sun sags our bosoms
with his accomplice: In America,
they call him Gravity/John/ Thomas
& they call us Communists.
For as early as] I can [remember.

Pain in my culture is shared. The geometry of
the dinner table ties scattered dots
into a rope. Like sisters & brothers we drink
to the way our monolids wane in union,

falling victim to our mothers’ jester/
syllables of a foreign tongue.
To understand] would be for me [winning
a lottery & catching the last train to New York City
before the blizzard hits. Flushing is lit

on fire] to shine in answer [to
our ancestors– on the other side
of the moon/ war. Gaping] faces [match wit
with craters/bombshells fit the mold
used to sculpt mooncakes & fold lanterns.] [Out of
round circles] having been strained [by massacres/
hate that grew taller than Maple trees & stains of
red which we call home.]

1. unbracketed fragments cites Sappho’s fragment 4, translated by Anne Carson

Hypotheticals: A tribute to Lesbia

After Catallus

Suppose the sparrow is dead/
dying/limping in the park
between your legs before
molting its chipped wings, shrinking
into a vase depraved of soil &
sunlight that rains. Suppose over time the mouth
of the vase grows into a worn out valley
until its walls erode & clay shreds
into paper flakes. Now, the flower is bitter

& naked. Winter’s breathiness attacks her
until she wilts, slips off her petals
as if they, when stitched together, bloom
into a satin nightgown. Let her roots spin,
stir Let Nothing be the witness
of their demise. Let her give

the sparrow a hundred kisses
& a thousand more, until hate finds its
solace in passion. For what is hatred
but love stuck in a bottomless pit
of dirty laundry & love buried/
dying/ lining up for cremation.
They are the same man & it is the same river