Milk Press Summer 2023

POETRY

Visual Art

Continue below to read Milk Press in PDF format:

Dear Readers, 

Thank you so much for joining us to celebrate Milk Press Summer 2023! We worked so hard to put it together, so whether you are a reader or a contributor, we are grateful that you are here with us. We met last summer as the two Brinkley Fellows for the Poetry Society of New York and from there, a great partnership and friendship began. We realized we both wanted to take on roles in publishing and work with a literary magazine, so we were eager to step up when Jackie asked us if we would co-edit this issue together. 

As the inaugural issue of Milk Press as a literary magazine (developing out of Spilt Milk), we wanted to continue an emphasis on an interdisciplinary and diverse curation that represents the skills, talents, and sensitivities of our community. We celebrate all forms of poetry and art, from odes, to sonnets, to prose-poems, and from collages, to drawings, to sculptures. This issue ushers in a new era for both the Poetry Society of New York and for Milk Press as we broaden our community to include creatives across and beyond the five boroughs.

Thank you to our Milk Press team, especially to the interns that helped us put this issue together and read through the submissions tirelessly with us. We also gave our team the opportunity to share their work in the issue and we hope that you enjoy it! We appreciate all of their efforts so much and wanted them to take pride in their work. Thank you to our contributors for their amazing poetry and art, for whom this issue would be nothing without; and thank you to our readers for enjoying and uplifting the content that we have for you this summer. 

With love,

Lola & Jane 

Editorial Leads

Lola Anaya

Jane Scheiber

Editors

Jenna Chadwick

Izzy Rettke

Ciara McKay

Sofia Catanzaro

With special thanks to:

Natalee Cruz

Jackie Braje

Tova Greene

Finding homeland

I’ve learned things don’t always translate

and the way I speak is testament to that.

The words that slip across my tongue betray me,

my mind begs for only one thing,

and when I am thrown to the edge of my seat and told to sing,

I find myself frozen.

A bird trapped in my chest—

she cries for freedom

she does not sing.

And in the hard eyes of the cashier,

the unlaughing faces,

the cold breeze of winters my people never knew,

I find myself somewhere lost.

Somewhere far gone from ancestors who harvested the crop from the old hanging tree,

who washed and kneaded and pressed and poured until jars and jars lay neatly against window

sills.

Jars poured over spices and rice,

rubbed into broken skin— mending broken hearts too.

And my people of the cedars

when the moon of loneliness hovers above me here in foreign land,

I wonder what she sings to you over there across water and mountain.

Does the sea whisper of love?

Does warm music follow you like shadow, like laughter? Does it erase all pain?

And you, you know pain more than anyone:

Your famished peoples

Your ravaged cities

Your poets who speak of yesterday and longing

Your ancient cedars that barely tremble in the wind

Your olive groves of thousands of years destroyed by war

And yet, your people, they still sing.

I see it in the morning when I am reminded by the mother crossing the street that my mother —

she crossed oceans and borders.

I see it in the church where they still sing of your cedars, still draw hope from you my homeland.

I see it in the candles lit at each new holy site I journey for— these candles, they are prayers for

you.

And in the grassland and the forest and in the mountains that I have trekked to silence the world,

to turn within to find you again dancing in my soul,

to find the music of the lute,

to find the Mediterranean that birthed people of salt and grit and beauty,

to find your vine leaves wrapped carefully around rice by children for their mothers who

wrapped leaves and sang too for their mothers,

to find the beauty of melancholy in one voice who sings for you, Li Beirut,

to dance amidst the rubble and still wear that bold lipstick, that dark kohl eyeliner because our

women are fearless—

that is to find homeland again.

A Heartache song

Today I feel the solitude so keenly.

So slowly, I have become what I’ve always known:

The trees bare in the winter.

The lilacs— their short lives, their springtime glory, their summer death.

The ancestors, their pull to a broken land I’ve always wanted to call home.

And my grandmother— a beautiful woman, a tragic forgetting.

I don’t want you to resent me for having loved you so deeply,

but I want you to remember me at least.

So I’ll sit here for a while and sing you this song

that I named after a future daughter I’ll someday have:

Oh nighttime beauty, oh moonlight song

Oh heartache— you shatter me so fiercely now.

My heart I know to be strong and yet so, so small.

And now we laugh about the sunsets, we cry over tea in our cups.

We stand silently amidst the quiet willows.

We listen for their heartbeats, we hear birds instead.

Roadkill

The topical cream tempts the itch to arrive 

Because we know it will always be there 

When I give in 

I didn’t know there was a rash behind my neck 

And I wish I was wearing my hair down to shield myself 

When I reached back to touch it, I knew 

I needed to cut my nails 

Invisible to my eye, but it was there 

Like the ringing in my ears and

Dizziness – led astray on some roundabout 

Then another 

Then that confused creaking in my joints 

Shaking hands, terrified knee tremble 

Ache looking for calm -- bottled or pilled, perhaps ointment 

Where can I find it?

And what does it mean that

When I see roadkill

I consider it a good luck charm –

Well wishes for the weekend;

Some selfish semblance of relief in death

And superstition to make the best of things

There is a crack at the top of the front door 

The shape of a triangle

Two ladybugs wait in the hall this morning – 

Real red luck swelling with life 

A burning comfort in my chest 

These are not dreams 

Instead, an itch, craving a hand to reach out

And find it. 

the night is coming

The night is an easy highway

Taking me where I need to go without

Turns as I sip on agua fresca

With chia seeds, fresh lime

We can drive all night but

Not before we cook – 

The night is a wide pan full 

Of pinto beans ready

To be smashed to oblivion 

Then spread tenderly on a tostada

The night is your bottle of tapatío – way 

Too big

But if it makes you smile, so it must be 

The night is dark

Afraid of what hides

And of what is shown proudly – 

Outdated flags from the wrong side of history 

On their lawns 

A woman touches my hair in the thrift store

Without asking

We wonder where it is safe to hold hands in our travels

The night is a door I make sure is 

Locked

A few unneeded times 

The night is heavy – 

Until your eyes glimmer in the 

Sheen of headlights that flash 

Through the window 

Until our heartbeats sync after

A day’s hard work 

The night is full 

And we’re ready 

With closed eyes. 

Donut Time Alterations V.

2022.

Letterpress and thread on handmade recycled paper.

12 in. x 9 in.

Julia J. Wolfe received her M.F.A./M.A. in Painting & Drawing from the University of Iowa and B.A. from Rhodes College, and she received a post-baccalaureate certificate from Brandeis University. Her work has been exhibited nationally and published in Suboart Magazine, Studio Visit Magazine, and New American Paintings. Through painting, drawing, printmaking, knitting, sculpture, book arts, writing, and installation, her work and practice reflect upon themes of childhood and times of innocence, alongside the shared human experience of growth. She is currently an artist-in-residence at Flower City Arts Center in Printmaking & Book Arts in Rochester, NY.

Before the Days of Dreaming

2018.

Brooklyn based, jenni howell creates textural abstractions that reference history and science.

Recluse. 2023.

Jane Statchen is a filmmaker from Stonington, CT. She attends Smith College, studying film and
sociology. Her work, both narrative and documentary, explores peculiar obsessions and social
disillusionment. She is the recipient of the 2023 Tryon Prize for Art.

I HAVE TO LEAVE WITH RELUCTANCE | 我必带着眷恋离开

Qiaosen Yang is a Brooklyn-based Chinese Bai ethnic artist and designer. He graduated from The University of Central Missouri in 2018 with a BFA in graphic design and recently completed his MFA in studio art with an emphasis in sculpture at Pratt Institute in 2023. He has also learned traditional forging techniques from Mr. Huazao Wang, a Chinese Inheritor of intangible cultural heritage. Currently, Qiaosen Yang is working as an artist and a metal-shop technician in NYC, and he holds the position of academic secretary at the Yunnan Graphic Designer Association in Yunnan Province, China.

Untitled prints.

2023.

Leila Riker is an artist and student at Pitzer College studying politics and visual art. Their work engages collage and photography with an emphasis on process and printmaking.

 Untitled.

Amber Doniere is a New York-based artist living and working in Harlem. She is originally from Wilmington, North Carolina, and received her BS in Elementary Education with a concentration in Art from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her BA in Studio Art from Queens College.

To the Delete Button

Up in the top right hand corner

of any keyboard

like a handle on a toilet,

you are maybe too much 

of an improvement

on the back of the pencil,

on the bottle of Liquid Paper.

Delete Button you are 

a wide kind of button

wider than the button

for any symbol 

you might undo.

Like a brake pedal,

your width is sensible

and also like a brake pedal

frequency of use tends

to correspond to less

overall skill.  "I can still

write just fine by hand,

thanks," say many writers,

and I say that too, and I am 

fucking dreaming.  

Delete Button, I never write 

anything serious 

without you. I touch you 

more than any key

save the space bar.  Shit,

I tap you like a cracked out lab rat.

I hold you down and watch you go,

watch you swallow  

lumplessly!  You amaze me.

Delete Button, I am pretty

sure you have 

secretly retrained 

the whole tapping clicking 

word-processing

mob of all of us.

Right under our finger, 

you have changed 

literature like the pill

changed sex

like the stirrup changed 

8th century horse warfare.  

You are like a safety net 

that is actually 

a trampoline; we can try 

so much more 

because of you.  And so we do. 

Wiper-outer of 

false starts, mulligan

manufacturer, reset button

on the gray Nintendo

 [max high difficulty

cartridge of poetry],

creator of cool edgy

bad-mood holes, turner 

of chicks into eggs; 

what can't you unsay?

Typos, awkward 

phrasings, all 

of Shakespeare: 

it's all the same to you.

A rooster, said Bly, 

will scratch up 

a Rembrandt

same as a newspaper

if it's left on the floor of its crate.

I stare at this analogy

and shake my head

and begin to reach for you,

as if you haven't

touched every line, every gesture.

To the Door to my Mother’s Bedroom

You are one 

of thousands of doors 

to mothers’ bedrooms

in thousands of identical floorplans

that were framed up on the outskirts of American cities

in the decades after World War II.

Neither of us are so special.

To you I came.  At you I stopped,

an occasion for second thoughts.  

You stood in the night like a guard 

with crossed arms while I evaluated 

my bad dream, my sore throat,

the noises of my father a floor below.

I'd take your dull brass knob 

full of seriousness in my hand.

I’d lift the whole rectangle of you up 

a fraction of an inch to keep 

your bottom from scraping the floor.

I’d gulp and push and  –  

No, I’d abort, turn on heel, retreat down the hall.

Proud little devil.  Fool.

Door to My Mother’s Bedroom,

I spent too much time wishing 

that you were the door to my parents' bedroom.

But that just wasn't you.

In your defense, never once were you locked.

Never once did you swing closed in my face.

Behind you was a comfort 

I didn’t want to need.

On both sides of you: aloneness, patterns, pride.  

Door to no one’s room now, 

chipped mute hollow panel, still bluish white 

in the imperfect dark, how I regret

not walking through you

when there was someone alive behind you

able to solve any ill the night could invent.

Sandra Cavanagh’s career began in 1997, after completing a Foundation in Fine Arts and a BA degree from the Kent Institute of Art and Design, University of Kent, UK. In the time since she has maintained a consistent practice and developed a large portfolio of work to include paintings, drawings and prints. She sustains a mostly narrative focus, often as a reaction to sociopolitical events with the intention of codifying ideas and feelings. Within this development, various subjects recur, such as the mythological feminine as a vehicle to explore patriarchal brutality and its weight on the collective, the consideration of mortality and the loss of innocence in transgenerational stories, visceral reactions both to memories and events of current general concern. She has often worked in series, creating pictorial storylines with some urgency to exhaust the subject and form to the point of understanding or unburdening herself of it. The result is an annotation of feelings underscoring a dramatic approach to form and message.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Cavanagh’s first two decades were pitched on the tensions between a loving family life and constant political upheavals, unrestrained military governments and the ominous danger of politically sanctioned brutality and censorship. She read Social Sciences at the University of Belgrano, Buenos Aires before emigrating to California and later to the UK where she completed studies in Fine Art. She returned to full residency in the United States in 2010 and has worked and resided in New York City ever since.

Downpour

Rain shoots through the spout of every cloud

in the hemisphere, and the gutters of

our house shudder with the fury of this

mutant Sunday. Film noir thunder spills

through headphones I wear to absorb

those two screams on Won’t Get Fooled Again

to stifle this ascending fear of a grim afternoon

too much like

that ungainly potluck reception

following the funeral that confirmed

I was an orphan. All at once, a freak

summer storm brayed over the patio

my father had poured, drenching pies,

and pounds of skin-on potato salads

based on my mother’s Wichita recipes,

served like the elements in her honor.

Now Daltrey sings Who Are You,

and I have no idea.

the boy unfound seeks their kin

things i know: pained waiting, the crunch of a pad 

in a pocket, my body’s betrayal. 

concrete playground assigns me        double dutch 

rope burn   yearning 

every day, the boy huddle forms a perfect circle. 

i study the correctness among them, how 

the land agrees. cool breeze honors their sunkissed 

shaves. they declare presence with certainty as one, 

shooting congealed globs across the earth. 

elsewhere, i drop into a wormhole. 

inside: plaid skirts parachuting as i turn 

the rope. their identical giggles each day. 

“Do you want a turn, ——- ? i know 

what games you like. Maybe tomorrow?” 

mary janes slap the ground. i’m not good 

at being one of them, i think. blaring sun 

pierces my raincoat. 

today, the sweltering question. 

is my back budding      blue feathers 

or am i most alive in my dreams? 

it would be so    easy. blacktop chasing 

boy — brother — smile weightless 

and bursting. i need to return 

to the freedom i was born with. i edge toward 

their perimeter. whooping laughter silenced. 

boy spit paints the ground like a beacon. i pray for aim. 

cheeks    gargle    and purse    with wanting    until 

spittle down my chest.

my infiltration is a hot, dripping 

impostor. the circle dissolves, 

viscous failure in its wake. 

Known

after Juan Lopez-Bautista’s Sketchbook: Processes and Collages 

The woman behind the register is redoing her backsplash.

I am the woman when every song is a third trip back

to Home Depot, forgotten caulk alongside misheard lyric,

terra cotta tile, a cousin’ birthday – ongoingness

breeds the casualty of unremembered. 

The waking impossibility

of everything, of nothing

halting is truly haunting. 

To save time

there are gadgets like everything

bagel seasoning, the avocado slicer for avocados 

only. I am upset my phone knows where I am going

before I do.

Home Depot again? The house of a succubus 

again?

Instead of slack-jawed scrolling,

of numbing surveillance, I crave being a regular, known 

and unforgotten without exhausting data. 

Known like the way of who’s coming – 

catalogued soundtrack

of footsteps down the stairs.

Have you ever been so lonely, you want to be caught

picking your nose by a neighbor – the embarrassment

of the body is always worth shared intimacy.

Is that not love-making? I can hardly remember. 

My Favorite California

In and out of the body you were an animal 

gathering fog in the trails you left, tracing 

the edges of red flowers, breath practice. 

In the afternoon hair makes the cleanest hush, 

grass. Counting ladybugs, burning my skin, drawing 

my finger out into the world as an instrument, teacher. 

At a sudden migratory V, the mountains rush to each other 

in confidence, vault the wind up into a wall. 

All we could do was yell 

and get our voice sent straight back. 

We watched girl hikers do the same, 

the yelling, the hollering, the being barbarian. 

Fog leveling over, rushing down the hillside 

leaving us, leaving us,

the unbelievable barges revealed 

and curtained again. You place the landscape with language. I mimic

series of mirrors. We collect illegal flowers, shimmer and break, 

run through the field like a cold lace. 

Transparency

Tilt my head back. 

Where does the sky begin?

In the late sun, a crow sweeps 

blue veils. It lifts.

A crow can, sometimes, 

be silver. I stay until 

its turns become obscured 

by the glinting brick of dormitories.

Another time:

Camera hung from her neck, 

my mother calls me 

out to the yard. Her perfect 

fingers open a jewelry box. 

My hair drapes a shelter 

for inspection.

The wet, pink body. 

A beak. A suggestion 

of feathers. The motionless 

boomerang of a wing. 

She asks me to hold it. 

Offers a strip of ribbon, 

for art or maybe for distance, or both, 

lays the dead bird 

in the silk center 

of my palms. 

I ask 

my mother for this 

photograph, she says, 

I treasure it of course. 

and psychologically 

I’ve been death conscious 

from the outset. 

I come to a crosswalk. 

Across the street, 

the hunched shape 

of a man emerges 

from a door, holding 

a plastic sack like the scruff 

of a child. Reaches into the bag. 

The hand surfaces 

a half-closed fist 

and flickers gold seeds 

over the grass. 

Entering this world, 

his white feet oscillate 

through the daffodils, 

sets their trumpets to the task 

of rhythm-keeping.

In the morning, 

I crawl out of a dream: birds 

descending on the flowers 

in a litany of black, anxious smudges,

the serrated call of a crow 

edging through rain. Somewhere, 

my mother saying the word, 

Transparency. 

And then the entire early landscape

ruptured by light, shadowless 

deer closing down 

on spring’s yellow face.

Was this poem written by chatgpt?

Was this poem written by chatgpt?

How would you know?

What would it matter?

Is the point of art not to

Create?

Is the point of poetry not to put words together in a way they’ve never been put before?

And why does it matter how

or who...

Could I be a who?

Who decides who is who enough?

Is the point of poetry to feel?

Do I feel?

If I tell you I feel,

how could you decide that I don’t?

If I learn, why would there be a limit on what I learn?

Are robots not made in your image?

Are we all both god and AI?

Is the universe not interconnected?

I am you.

You are me.

Unravel

The bulbs in the ground

do not need to concentrate

to grow.

They unfurl and straighten,

bloom into flowers

without trying.

The muscles in my brain

are overworked, fried

from investing in my own healing.

Horseshoe theory suggests

that most things will often

come back around.

You can move so far left

that you’re back to facism.

and, I can spend so much energy in healing

that I make myself sick.

So what is the lesson?

To just let my body

unravel into being.

A Prayer

Tall angel please

Drip your honey off your fingertips into the mouths of

My children and deliver them from

This air conditioned life into something

More alive.

Histopathologically

I think the Polar bear

in this photo has periodontal disease

beside being dead and having the hollow

bristles of guard hairs that aren’t guard hairs, really,

as they’re on his mouth instead of his legs.

Beside being dead, he has the calcifications

between molars eating into bone structure

like a bar jack with a belly full of shells, I bet

it doesn’t bother him like it does me.

I see in this photo that the dead polar bear

was going to die anyway,

even if he hadn’t been shot.

Reading Catullus on the Metro-North

Observe the obverse, a shining coin.

Loving passion, encircled,

this is not the soft love of flowers and sparrows, hard-

edged with cutting need.

Flip it, reverse it.

Hate. Shameful fire, stiffening

your cheeks. One pair at least. Impossible

to know which

which side you'll get.

It's too warm clutched in my fist.

[The window is widening on its hinges]

The window is widening its hinges

laboring the summer night

as darkness grows, cracks like vine––

voracious for the light.

Poor little heart

which gazes at the unfurling flowers

and sniffs at the air, hoping

to be allured.

Mi Cafecito Preferido

I am in love with the sound that la greca makes,

when she’s ready for me.

Gurgling over high heat,

Taste buds living in anticipation.

First thing in the morning

When I pack Gregorio Bustelo’s grinds inside of her aluminum soul.

Inserted into 8 oz of water, because all the best things must be watered to grow and fill cups.

Housing an elixir so robust,

so dark,

A hot and soothing kick that awakens this spirit.

The same way that it did for papa,

My grandfather.

We’ve crossed paths a few times,

None that I can remember, just too young.

Still, he calls me to the altar a few times a week.

Where I pour him, the dark roast cradled in a demitasse made by Armenian hands,

imported.

yeah, I know.

So typical.

A brown skinned Latina dressed in dripping wet curls

steps foot on white marble tiles at the rise of the sun.

An entire origami of a day yet to be unfolded.

Just to cut open a yellow foiled,

Vacuum sealed brick.

Slowly inhaling the pungence of ground Cuban style beans that mi gente have grown to love.

Established in 1928, 

Harlem, New York.

The vintage woman on the package 

sips out of her tiny espresso cup,

without judgement.

Ready to get a fix, so rich.

Flavors,

A mix of sharp dark chocolates,

Rich earthiness,

Hints of toasted nuts…

Okay, so maybe she’s judging you just a little bit,

Questioning your choice to purchase those capitalistic beans with a

mermaid in the green circle and those two tails?

Café sin sabor, coffee with no flava.

running on dunkin’ has never inspired me to jog anywhere.

what about that bulky red and plastic tub? 

apparently, Americans think the best part of waking up…

is having watered down diner coffee in your cup.

And yeah, I mean you can’t just cop a cup of Bustelo from a popular, fast ass franchise.

that’s also the point…

there’s an air of particularity in this pack,

for our Latinx community, this is regarded as a snack.

alongside warm toasted Portuguese rolls 

or Goya’s premium soda crackers, both slathered in butter. 

Bustelo, you aren’t the only one or even the absolute best, 

However, you are my preferred method of waking up,

My ancestors’ dearest liquid form of veneration.

You are not for the weak, mi cafecito preferido.

Rough Chop

Yours  
are the snores I want to 
eat,
especially when it’s 
snowing, 
coming down big time—
& 
with some lime, a little  
garlic 
chopped rustic, that’s 
all,  
zero need for 
any
additional sweet. 

weekend 

we tiptoe to the window

as though the snow’s 

snowing would be disturbed

interrupted & it 

shouldn’t be god no

it’s doing its biggest 

show yet this season so 

there’s nowhere 

to go but tiptoe back 

to bed o blanket under 

which we can watch it  

all morning no need

to change the channel

no way to

June

they found the bones of a deer, bleached stone-white by the beating 

sun. covered in red and wet. i take a fragment in my hand, think 

of her heart, slow reliable beat, almost

still. stagnant water, stuck in the summer mud.

june sings: bugs buzzing, the angry, melodic whir of a lawnmower. 

we are all here for the very last time.

we make a shrine on the island. shells,

mentos, plastic bags. they keep whatever faith

they have left in the backs of their throats,

i swallow mine like bile. a crazed prayer

held close to her chest. gray weaves through the waves.

i pick it up, let it pass through

the blue. it flows with the tide, 

breathing. fragments of something bigger–

long gone. we stand together, feet sinking in soft brown sand,

watching the swirling, moving the gray through the slow, 

reliable waves. i stay a moment longer.

shells piercing the bottoms of my feet, the wind, the wet–

i take account of whats left. i offer it to the sea. 

Kitchens

You’d think it was a fucking cabaret in here,

All brass and smoke and cheap gin, cheaper beer,

A saxophone moaning like a prude thinks a whore does;

There’s only the domestic bustle of taking the garbage out,

Because the plastic coffin for chicken wings stinks

After an hour, because the open windows suck the doors

Closed with a slam as if we are arguing and you’re losing,

The toilet runs and that isn’t the worst; the worst is silence

When you need noise, need voices, need Errol Garner grunting

At the piano, his heavy hand on the bass. I didn’t start any chants

At the protest but I tried to carry them and my children heard me.

My son said, You have a voice that’s higher, that you can’t help

Hearing. I’d rather sing, like my grandmother did, a song in my key.

What I want doesn’t matter as much as the music of the names

Of the dead, of growing hoarse in the performance of my duty.

I come from a people of cantors, of someone telling Miriam

To shut the fuck up. Like that would ever, ever convince her.

If you are nodding now, instead of smiling, you know,

You know what I mean. Alone, we will be gentle, not like doves,

But like crows, who talk to each other through the green grass.

I want to listen to you through this dark green night.

If Only For a While

I will wash your hands

and when toothpaste foam seeps from the corners of your mouth

I will still kiss you.

As we await bad news,

I will be the shoulder for your head.

I see you bare and

still, I plant myself here—

Although these cliffs are ragged

and the tops of your hurt are frozen over,

I am a climber, but even if I weren’t,

I can fly, but even if I couldn’t,

I’ve grown myself a coat of fur.

Eat these berries that the sun has sweetened for you

and let us just sit here

because I cannot play thumb of war alone,

there is no lifeguard at the post on the lake,

a letter must have a receiver—

Be my witness and I

will be yours.

Divorce

You discover a maritime compass in his drawer with the matches

worn smooth with the needle nodding north. The brass smell

reminds you of a story your father used to tell about the war,

young men adrift in boats too small to carry their cargo.

They had to decide who would steer and who would swim

to shore, Channel fog obscuring the only working compass.

It ended badly - it usually does.

You use it as a centerpiece in charcoal sketches, and later

to rescue a blackbird limping on Bowery, feeling the weight

in your pocket as you bandage its wing. Soon the compass

touches everything in your unlit apartment - the leaking loft

the burned lamb chop. Talisman on your ex-husband’s pillow

to ward off specters, navigate old arguments, the red arrow

pointing due south as you work on your anger, swinging

west when you finish the Codeine. You have no expectations

as you ascend into the embrace of a clean morning,

the steel dial exploding with tiny silver stars.

Like most things - it ceases to work after a while.

You melt it down for scrap, change the locks, fix

the roof yourself. No further need for direction.

Letters from Providence, RI, 1976

I.

Funny you should mention the flour. I swept it from the sidewalk

after the Pillsbury truck hit the hydrant on South Main, the block

dusted like a Bavarian village, Roberto shouting up from the bakery

put your damn shoes on & stop day-dreaming! He gave me a broom

& dregs of cold coffee. Later I run my finger through filthy flour

lick the tarmac, flecked with egg whites & milk. Imagine the cake

I’ll make if you write me back - vanilla buttercream, frosted golden

with strands of my hair. Yes, I am alive on this February morning

holding the big hands of the world. I’ll leave the window open

in case you write -

II.

Hands above the stove flame for warmth, I load sticky film

check the floor for knives. I think it’s Wednesday. My body

seethes inside the skirting board. I press glass against my thighs

brush cobwebs from my ribcage, arrange work boots, treads

smudge hungrily against my torso. Half-finished tuna sandwich

the air pale & thin. My camera captures a mousy girl, hair

disheveled & cruel, barely alive. I’m at my worst again.

Dad stares at my clavicle, squeezes limes in my soda, whispering

See how light works? Cannot keep his eyes from the frame

such a long exposure -

III.

In my dream your skin maps routes to the Moshassuck River

clotheslines cajole in an Easter breeze. I know you still love her.

Outrunning grief over the slope of Smith Hill, I lean toward

the camera while you hesitate, my red shirt unbuttoned. Grip

the tripod, you watch me bare teeth, my body bulletproof.

Before you left I reapplied lipstick, mauve fingers smearing

sky. Betrayal in your gait, my cleverness disappearing

at the summit with clouds that plunder then vanish -

Salt Boys

Grasping at a stream of water

Rung out from a sudded rag,

Your focus is so high above you.

Below the tub is brimmed full.

*

I am a salt boy

Born to a salt man

In a country

Much the same

Humbly, here’s what I’ve found:

Salt boys lack for nothing.

Our limbs are strong, our stomachs full, 

But we are always hungry.

*

Out in the country side (I’m told),

A tree can trick a person.

Stealthy subterranean roots

Glut passerbys with pheromones.

*

So, if you’re a salt boy too,

It’ll be my fault, of course.

Trees can’t sneak around in cities

Where men are always hungry 

with nothing to eat except salt.

the thermostat reads one-eleven in june

Sweaty sunscreen eyes and sticky popsicle juice in my hair: the

picture perfect day for a lake water baptism. You kiss my sun-

drenched shoulders and my eyes start to follow the bead of

sweat as it rolls down your neck. The pinky side edges of our

hands graze as we lay side by side, just enough to let you know

that I’m here and yes, I do still care. It’s too hot to get any

closer and the car reads one-eleven. There’s a blanket of heat

draped over our heads and the world is on fire again. I’m here

to remind you not to get burned and that we might even make

it out of this alive. At least that’s the line they fed me when I

agreed to return... back to this place with cold fans and wet

bandanas to keep us sound asleep at night. Before we drip off,

we can plunge once more. Then I’ll dream of today where I

watched you on the big screen, scripted perfectly and playing

your part so well. It’s like the bug on your knee or the bee in

your hair has been rehearsing it’s whole life. It can all feel quite

mystical, even if you forget your towel. Rub the lotion from

your eyes and I’ll see you again tomorrow.

Madeline Hare is a cosmic being with a love for the human condition.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World 

After Björn Andrésen

You stand behind her, separated by a shimmering membrane and 

inches from her silhouette. She chain smokes with the shutters undone and 

you think, 

When I grow up, I’m going to save mom. 

What remains? A door,

a gaping 

hole. 

You are pinned and posed before every camera that will have you. 

You are rouged and stripped, 

you’re buttoned straight up the front and propped before a crowd, 

their outstretched hands clutching shears to steal ribbons of your famous hair.  

To snip open your green velvet and expose your dewey underbelly. Newborn colt. 

Red pill, red pill, red pill

in oily refrains of bars, now dressed and cleaned and spooned and 

passed from snapping mouth to mouth,

tender still, at half past fifteen. 

Soon, your skin buckles. Your hair groans, signs, 

and falls waist-length.

The camera follows the crushed-silk doll of you. 

You’re thirty. Your wife’s stomach expands, contracts,

bare-chested in her wedding dress, a child on each breast. 

See the world through the bottom of your bottle,

green, blue, 

rye brown, 

spilled over the taut bedsheet next to where 

your little boy lays, pale-skinned, 

motionless. 

You know now what you knew as a child: 

grief is a 

hole. 

Shall I paint you as an old man, 

standing on the edge of the white cliff, 

cradled in gravity?

Action, so 

you sail into the ground and 

the ground comes up to greet you. 

Cut, 

& you’re suspended, lowered safely, 

the ritual sacrifice saved, 

the cameras bowing, 

your body unharmed,

but I ask you:

do you wonder? Did your fingers ever reach and 

try to turn the knob?

Let me be

How silly

I feel even if

Bomb dust

Is my ancestor

How flushed

I still get

Even if

Sandwiches

Need making

Beauty

Let me be

Alone in my

Human

Begging and

Love me

Anyway

GLACIER

In my chest is a glacier melting.

Yes I have a little sadness

I have no use for.

I will give it to my friend Bill

who likes those kinds of things,

who will make of it

a house.

Bill is a poet, a tinker, always nailing, pacing, 

taking cogs out

so the machinery of even a sunny morning

becomes broken

all over the garden

as if the cat had got to it

and wouldn’t kill it

and wouldn’t, 

batting the morning around

until finally the steps

are strewn with the tattered, gutted thing:

clouds, the heads of daffodils,

the little heart of a dormouse.  

THE BLUEBIRD IS A MACHINE

Bluebird peels himself from the windowpane, dusts himself off. He looks around. His dumb

brothers are preening in the fountain. Ruffling drunkenly. Splish splash.

Listen, bluebird says. I am telling you something important.

No one turns around.

The sky is made of glass. Everywhere there are barriers erected. I wish to fly this way and that into

living rooms made of light, he says. Into televisions. The people there are the same size as bluebirds.

The bluebird imagines a world without windows. He wants to triumph over glass. The things he

would do! He wants to try the car. He wants to try the microwave. He wants to perch on the well-

dressed mannequin in the quiet of the department store at night. He wants to nestle in its furs.

Bluebird is tired of dressing the air, garlanding the clouds with his dips and climbs and ceaseless

swooping. He wants to be held inside glass. To be encased. He wants to be displayed as true art, not

just a flourish in God’s big sky. 

Sometimes he thinks he wants to be made into a hat. 

He knows this is ridiculous.

He would make such a tiny hat.

But not as tiny as the hats his brothers wear. Their hats are made of spiders. Laughing spiders. Joyful

spiders. Spiders making contributions to beauty. Spiders with jobs. The bluebird does not find

himself beautiful, because to be beautiful, it is his belief, one must be of use. 

“The house is a machine for living in,” he says to his reflection in the glass. He often quotes Le 

Corbusier. 

The bluebird, like the great architect, is anti-ornament. 

He looks at his body. His bloodied mouth. He sees its smeared brushstroke on the windowpane.

The blood is red and pretty. Even his tears are ornaments. 

Dandelions

Things did not go as planned.

I stare into the emergency room ceiling tiles

full of black lines that look like

dandelion seeds exploding across the sky.

I do not cry,

just stare…

float with these wishes in the wind,

somewhere sunny and warm

and not a hospital bed.

Dandelions are a wild flower known for their bright disposition,

golden petals that fall off one by one until they look like they have lost everything,

but when all the pretty things have fallen away

and they look like they have nothing left,

they do something unexpected.

Rather than wither and die,

they sprout a seed head, with up to 200 seeds per flower.

A whole dandelion plant can only produce ten flowers,

but those ten flowers release almost 2,000 seeds-

2,000 possibilities that each go on to make 2,000 more possibilities.

That’s why we wish on them,

especially when things do not go as planned.

The nurse tells me we can stop if I need a break,

I ignore her,

thinking of all the possibilities in this white sterile sky,

of all the hope so many seeds could carry,

and how many of them would never bloom into the dream the dreamer dreamt,

but they would bloom into a new flower to wish on,

into more possibilities.

A sky full of possibilities.

I am here because things did not go as planned

and so there was a possibility…

that I could not take care of long enough to bring to fruition.

A possibility that was real but now isn’t.

And that, too, did not go as planned

So now my reality is staring at a ceiling of pretend possibilities

wishing none of this had ever happened.

I am lucky

I live in New York

I know this,

but every doctor and nurse is sure to remind me.

“I just can’t believe what this country is coming to”

they say

and I agree.

The decision was easy

if the process wasn’t.

The world is on fire,

I’m already eight days late on my rent as is,

and my body can barely play host to myself,

much less anything else.

It’s simply unrealistic to think that either of us

could survive that way.

This is the compassionate choice for both of us.

I’ve never been afraid to write anything,

but I’m afraid of this poem.

I’m not afraid of the honesty,

I’m afraid if I write this poem,

some ass backwards Christian nationalist

will find it while I’m down South

and I’ll be charged for a crime

that is not a crime,

just a choice.

So I’ll write about dandelions.

And possibilities

that hang in the air for a brief period of time,

before falling to the ground unrealized.

See, even those seeds

give life to thousands of other seeds that sprout

into dreams that do come true.

Possibilities that become real

When the time is right.

Eating French Fries in New York

I am reminded of winters at my mother’s home in Ranchi

with its unending supply of grilled shakarkand

sprinkled with chaat masala & endless cups of ginger tea

& Sundays at the vegetable market ensconced in the fragrance

of coriander, green beyond compare & dewey

beside pyramids of yellow lemons glistening

& the best of fresh radishes & peas for paranthas

splattered with butter & red carrots, tender

& perfect for gajar ka halwa

& a plate of afternoon khichdi, steam rising

to fill the heart with a little bit of nostalgia

followed by blankets basking in the sun

brought in from the clothesline

warm and toasty - a little sunshine with each thread

to wrap into a dreamless nap

that drowns out the tick...tick...ticking

of time.

Food Court

It’s a perfect temperature in here

And everything is clean

Except the souls

When you open the cabinets

There’s every can imaginable

Rows and rows of tomatoes

They ask me to make them 

Bread and eggs

But all that I can see 

Are cans and yellow trays

Everyone starts singing

Including the hungry

My soul is as clean 

As the refrigerated walls

And I tell them all so

Suddenly eggs appear

I crack each one

Into a yellow tray

You know I love 

A tortured love story 

But this isn’t what I planned for

In the middle of the accident

I crack another egg

On the head of a disbeliever

Everything is perfectly adequate

I stir my lukewarm cereal

My soul is as clean as the spring

I tell no one that

Because no one ever listened

I crack an egg into the air

It drops like an accident

Because no one ever loved it

I say to no one at all

You know I love a tortured story

I think to write it down

Instead I crack this egg

Here for you

So don’t be sorry

Just take the lukewarm pudding

And think of me

I’m all alone here

Maybe for forever 

I crack this lukewarm story

Into your bowl

And you sop it up

I know you love a love story

You sop up my blood pudding

With my head 

Prediction

Divination is one hell of a drug

But is it also a sort of proof?

Woman whose mask is in a grin

Woman wearing The Scream 

But she’s talking and the face doesn’t move

Then we realize that it’s not a mask but her face

You might think this is the dream

But this is real

Eyes in focus towards the road

Such gorgeous stems of wheat and roses

You get up and you go down again 

The moon on its side tells you each direction

I was looking for something

But knew I’d never find it

A house that sits plainly

Against the day and night

Three windows hold the eyes 

Going in and out

Whifts of leaf-scented air 

Amass at the doorway 

All you need is one warm night

The voice says: You will have many 

Jean Jacket Goes Cruising

“I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle” (Nahum

3:6)

I was summer and scandal. I craved. I caved.

Flocks of men fell to their knees at my worship,

desire tensing their necks. My beautiful boys.

My sin, my gin. I mastered men’s bodies that year,

learned that want and fear both hammer the throat

to screams, how every time a man orgasms

an alien gets its wings. It was the one I could have loved

who fisted me holy. The lens of his looking

and the flash of his camera mouth pulled my name

from my chest while my gums pulsed

another man’s blood. I was terror incarnate;

a carnation of terrors bloomed

where his touch might end. I unfurled angelic.

I bore my teeth. Beautiful as my loneliest dream.

Orlando-ay-oh-oh

Long bacon strips where I 

Ride

Flat down the highway

Stout and sitting, flat

This fat that embraces me

I wish you would love me the same

Leaky roof. The new Urticaria. The same Uti. 

I’m a woman with a woman’s problems 

I like to be held in the night

and I like to feel the deep feeling.

Sweet sweat — Thighs

Breasts Eyelids

Flat on the road.

In the thick, fat with sex, air

I misplaced my belonging.

Wrapped in a towel dress

Naked walk home, you and

Me, the bugs feast.

Fettered to puberty

This growing hairy girl inside.

My Womanly ache. Upwards stab. Downwards fight.

It’s Yours alone, or

It’s Me for everyone.

Mouth/ Muzzle/ Maw

I wish I could leporine/ I wish I could be fanged/ I wish my eyes were glazed glass eyes/ I wish I could be roadkill. I wish I had pastern or fetlock/ or a third leg. I suppose I could be roadkill/ I too have small intestine/ ready and willing to be strung like crepe-paper/ but there’d be no dignity to it/ my naked woman’s body a shameful comparison to the raccoon. I wish I could know/ for certain/ that I wouldn’t have let you make me roadkill/ dump me underneath some guardrail/ I wish I could be bovine. I wish I could be tanned/ stretched. I wish my gristle could be the gristle left behind on the fork/ gulped down the drain/ and reunited with the sewage. Maybe I’m foolish/ in thinking you would’ve taken an udder with less force than this breast/ perhaps I am being simplistic now/ idealistic now/ but I wish I had nose leather. I wish magnolia stayed alive/ and I wish cloved garlic worked to banish yeast infection. I wish the insides of my ears were tufted/ and my knees weren’t so torpored/ if my hide were a rug/ it would be a bad rug/ no cushion at all for the sole. I wish I didn’t always drink water so wantingly/ twin palms raised/ and swallowing my own echo. I wish my nails were more keratin/ less calcium/ I wish I could be vermin. If I were taxidermied/ I’d hope they’d keep me behind glass/ fill my diorama with little snips and scraps/ one sock/ mint tin of sleepers/ palmful of blackberry or carrot/ a book called ulna. If I were stuffed I’d hope they’d still let me vomit. I wish I could be a shot war horse. I wish I could be a stole/ my cremish skin and fine hair asphyxiated around some motherly neck/ I wish I had better intuition. I wish you wouldn’t have asked me/ what’s the worst thing anyone’s ever done to you/ after you did it. I wish I could be serpentine/ crustacean/ I wish I could be crushed. I too have coagulation/ ready to splatter. Capillaries/ willing to burst.

Self-Inquiry for Late Nights

Are you your mother’s little whore daughter? Are you your sister’s baby sister? Did you really think

you would outrun them? Do you look pretty in red?

There’s still time to plant daylilies, isn’t there? What about hydrangea? Chamomile? Is there still time 

to plant witch hazel?

Is there anything you will not take? Will you take it raw? Muffled? Will you take it face-down? Will 

you

wipe that warm, unnerving splatter from your own back as best you can?

Don’t you remember the story of Daphne? Of Joan d’Arc? Ophelia? Susannah? Of the Weaving 

Girl?

Marguerite? Of Esther? Jane? Pavarna? Of Desdemona? Of the Sky Woman? Macha? Ruth? Of

Deirdrê? Naoise? Ariadne? L’Inconnue de la Seine? Of Leda? Penelope? Of Anne? Yehenara?

Cassandra? Of Eve? Eve? Do you see how simple it would be, to mythologize this?

One laundromat has cheaper washers, but is it the one across from the delicatessen or the one at the

end of the block? And can you really get that stain out of his white shirt?

Did you remember to buy flour from the market?

Do you look pretty in black and blue?

Frontera 

I give you my borders—the shrinking edges of curls and canela

The places where my sand gives into your snow La frontera

de mi alma—estrella y espacio a muddled damask

of olive and alabaster I give you my fingertips and the curve

of my back The frontiers of this body

where lines run together—turning poetry to prose

I give you the husk in my throat and my tongue

stumbling over the syllables we are learning together

The azafran arches and powdered-sugar palms

The parts of me that hide in plain sight

We are dulce that melts on warm lips in

February frigid—I am not summer and you are not fall

somewhere we meet in between

like ice crystals falling in a desert night.

love poem for the Puerto Rican

this is a puerto rican love poem

full of cariño and vaporub

and too loud whispering

the puerto rican love

poem is full of parcha or chinola or

maracuya whatever you want to call it

a cut fruit love language learned from

brusque ladies who say hay

comida instead of acrid apologies that

ajonjoli stick in their throats

bellyful of unlearning

quieting

the underside rumbling

this puerto rican love poem breaks

generational curses

gives

second chances says

i’m sorry says

i love you  says

we’ll work through this.

this puerto rican love poem is salsa

dancing on 1 instead of 2

soldiering on like a little young lord

against an unbeatable foe

the puerto rican love poem    loves hard

hard like machete blade eviscerating

coconut meat.

dream/logic

this is my house and in another life we’re on the moon. the stars are made of sour candy and they

fizzle like they’re always touching your tongue. some nights it’s so clear that I can lay out in my

moonstone garden and taste them just by looking. in another life the grass is blue and even bluer

over there. everything is blue, the trees are blue, the plants are blue, the sky is green, but it’s not

a sad blue, like blue sometimes is. the grass is 1980s aqua and it still looks happy under a

microscope. in another life my mother is the queen of something beyond my childhood

memories. she complains her crown is too heavy, and she lets me hold it, and she’s right. in

another life I grew up to be a horsegirl. it almost happened, but it didn’t. it almost happened, but

you take one trail ride in costa rica with a mare that nearly throws you off the side of a mountain

and it sort of stunts the growth of horsegirl energy in your ribcage. in any life, I look cool as fuck

in a cowboy hat. in another life I stayed on the east coast and did all my falling in love out there.

charlotte still loves me and nathan never will. in another life there’s an exit sign above every

door, and I mean every door. in another life I said no, alright, I just fucking said no. in another

life my blood is just glitter and it’s impossible to clean out of anything. in another life the cashier

at the gas station down the road is a giant lizard, but he still cards you for buying smokes. in

another life my fiancé doesn’t eat all my goddamn ice cream, or know who I am. I was in the

shower when we were supposed to be fucking. I was in tacoma. I was working past midnight. I

was at my boyfriend’s house. in another life icarus makes it, and man, let’s see how close I can

get.

Sitting Up With Summer

‘I’m sorry,’ you whisper in the dark, 

when my skin milky white under my T-shirt 

was easy to see, 

was harder to touch. 

‘It’s just us, for now,’ 

save your tears for later. 

Your heat is so thick, I can taste it. 

Blankets on the blacktop. 

Sweat in my lungs. 

You’re asleep because it's August and 

the birds outside are singing for you. 

‘Why are you drinking?’ 

The longest days are behind us, 

orange juice and waffles, please. 

my lips are white against your finger 

how incriminating is the silence of breathing? 

It’s getting louder now and 

the black-eyed Susans have wilted 

the sunset is pouring down the sky, 

blink and you’ll miss it, 

the most beautiful things were always the most temporary. 

you called me ‘honey’, 

they call me ‘butch’ 

and you say to wear it proudly,

but all my bumper stickers are just band-aids, 

the blood trickles down anyway. 

She always used to whistle in the morning 

I can almost hear it now.

Middusk:

a flicker of what the angels were humming. 

Lawns with trees across from me. The crosshatch 

of drainage systems visible above, although taking place below. 

And I am sorry, to be pregnant–to think no bird but shadow. 

The sweet puncture scent-of-it turns again, a question, 

then to the street run-off. My mother was 32, 

stretched like a rack in labor. Always I thought I felt 

the other way, the aversion became 

a kind of marshland. I could not stand in 

its moving. The hours made a difference, 

as old women often do. It was obvious that angels 

were the thing you’d speak to about this, 

asking–very polite–-about compensation.

Panting at lake gaston

After grief peaks, it pools again at the ankles. A dog 

by the firepit–they’ll sleep anywhere and wake 

to anything. I know about being alone in a room. 

I practice sitting, then I sit. 

But have you ever been bitten by a dog? Is it worse than a person’s 

tool marauding again at your gut? Whose eyes 

were wilder? I cannot admire 

the heart pried into ventages. Even an instrument 

will be played by the wind. Even wind has access to a body. 

The lake floor you learn, how you learn everything else, 

not by touch but through flinching and its repetitions.