here are some things you can’t unsay and we both have to live with that
With the memories of the lake retreating from the shore, the cobwebs
are a different way of tracing time. And listen, I know that
I look different than I used to, I look you straight in the eyes
the creature I am, having always been, is a kind of feral
wanderer with nowhere to go. Press your hand against the glass:
create a palm of constellations by which we can learn a new way
of looking. Light the match, stoke the fire—I’m not afraid of
whatever comes after. These words, small tinders of
hope. I use them to warm my hands, to see in the dark
to light the way through this thicket. I mean to say
I’m not afraid of what I might find in this new place
and I promise I will gamble carefully with my call to you
Like how your voice still turns me luck casino
62. Patty Williams + Devika Parmar
Like how your voice still turns me luck casino
Our blind love was never all or nothing,
small wins that kept us both coming right back
where sweet comfort was like an addiction
until that same comfort turned us both cold.
Shivering and alone, goosebumps find us,
these telling blimps on our skin like morse code
revealing our history, can't ignore
who we've been, what we've done, how we went wrong,
hedging our bet, that true love never dies
and while we both left the gamble behind,
into my heart's treasury there I placed
memories of you and me like winning chips
so I’ll take our good fortunes to my grave.
63. Hannah McConnell + Emmett Lewis
So I’ll take our good fortunes to my grave
To be planted like seeds beneath the earth
Their fingers reach for inverted cities
Like roots that feed the hungry above them
Our wills and wisdom torn into scraps
With hope to nourish the soil and feed
And I’ll think of a cold November dusk
Growth hidden, ready or not here we come
When you uncovered your eyes and spun around
A few extra rotations for good luck
How long have I been crouched behind azaleas
A home of sorts, fragrant, safe, and evolving
As years pass we go on brooding and
How long would the chicken lay around here?
64. Tina Morrison + Zamboni Funk
How long would the chicken lay around here?
The dread, its heaviness keeps her in place.
And who should tell her to stand?
When strength she needs resides behind locked gates.
Locked out, locked in. Who can tell anymore?
Light lost its power to penetrate through.
Away and alone, she recalls herself
On the days when she was blinded by blue.
In flight of fancy, on imagined wind,
She dreams to be lifted, carried away
Her body lies still, but she does not miss it
Digging, flapping, laying, pecking, all day
Out now she goes, and in her absence
I think about parameters, and yards.
65. Cecile Forman + Christina Lancaster
I think about parameters, and yards
Neatly divided in rigid one-way paths
paved with stones from our mother's garden
carried one by one on our bare backs
Wisteria climbs overhead, carrying messages
From here to there to way and all over there
telling strangers how much they are missed
Still, one must follow the rigid one-way path
losing sight of all things new
Blind even to the nearby peril
I soldier on, I won’t give up, I do what I must do
Counting the steps, deaf to the siren
I have nothing left to fear, except
the wicked wire fence and the blood smear.
66. Danielle Cleaver + Tabitha Baca
The wicked wire fence and the blood smear,
Threaten silently, predict my future exists here.
To wonder- Is there an alternate?
Black ink and blank pages alone, alleviate
Make way for hollow thoughts, mere
ghostly windowpane reflections, not quite mirror.
What a path I’ve begun
My sentences start to run
Unimaginable speed, beyond the paper lies
The places I long to be, my heart flies
Leaps into the unknown, cries
In hope and memory of brighter skies
sinking into prediction, barred
All our afternoons with sunlight marred.
67. Amy Palen + Cierra Martin
All our afternoons with sunlight marred.
What funniness there is to find
In low clouds drifting brightly on parade
as if attached by string this textured sky
Lifts us together - basketed, ballooned
Like the ones in black and white film
Light and dark and old and young at once
From our mouths escaped those clouds
And from our feet the grass grew long and rooted
Were we to grow as one, inflated love
Perhaps we would have left these days behind
With soiled sheets and linens damp
Back then we lived like sunshine - but today
I can live like the chicken, coop or not.
68. Meredith Starkman + Priyal Panchal
I can live like the chicken, coop or not.
Boil my own eggs, jammy inside.
City's falling sky, roof-proof coop in doubt
what you can see with your eyes. Hold on,
chickening out? What heart yells, do. Boil eggs
until they're hard if that's what you feel like. Or don't.
In shell-safety days, we eat in masked plates
and shallow bowls. Today is yesterday with
or without time's toll, jerked to halt with jolt
of fear. Pain is not cracking fast enough.
Once it does, there's no reverie. We'll walk
through memory like chicks, just hatched.
To lay an egg... past's present in future
Small breakfast, close quarters, less purposeful
69. Allison Hatley-Kong + Nessa McCasey
Small breakfast, close quarters, less purposeful
schoolwork and Zoom over the table
the sun came out to brighten the day
a ritualistic rising, weather the only variety
Still it remains cold
The birds visit at our barred windows
and chirp and squawk at me
we are the ones in cages now
Perhaps there isn’t anything real anymore?
Only simple chores of survival
And the words we write
The brevity and fear of snuck trips to the store
Running a red light on the way home,
Free-range became more like an afterthought
70. Magdalen Radovich + Simone Meunch
Free-range became more like an afterthought
as we carved out the root rot, the house’s riddle
swept under the bed, laziness converted into efficiency
while we’re bred to weather the sting of enclosure.
Our fingers have forgotten the fabrics sewn together,
electric silk of fox fur, hawk feathers. Hands poached
by hope and worn from years cracked in drought.
Our bodies roughed with shadows, stitched to obits
wearing life’s expiration tag tucked under one arm
as though it were charmed, when really we’re put to plot
like potted petunias wilting without water or shade.
We file our days: knitting needles to film sequels,
counting the eggs in our basket, and collecting their return,
we question if our roof hen is legal.
71. Allison Sylvia + Bernadette McComish
We question if our roof hen is legal
if the compost we hide in black bags will return to elements
or become conscious, a landfill of people
all wanting one thing— to make it through.
Stacked in plastic we will emerge, we will
shake oil from feathers and fly into neon sky
we soar, fearless, hungry, without our ghosts
but our bones, and our blood hold the weight of our humanity.
We will return to our Mother’s front lawn
share a laugh thru a window - behind a mask
wash our clothes in bathtubs, hang them outside.
There’s a line of questions strung from when to why
and if we fail to answer our mouths will be left
Round and loud and proud and lacking eggs
72. Jackie White + Helen Kaplow
Round and loud and proud and lacking eggs,
I march into the day—unfed, alert.
Leftover wine beside my bed, with meds,
I drank and tried to swallow last night’s hurt.
Inside my stride, the prickling silence feeds
Impatience with the present and my itch
For pushing with spring’s early sprouting seeds
In mutiny against life futureless.
What’s one more kind of war? And on which side?
A patriot and rebel are the same
When hunger strikes the stomach and the mind—
All emptiness, with no one there to blame.
As nature gives no reason, only will,
We eat endurance till we’ve had our fill.
73. Emi Bergquist + Anna Winham
I feel stupid for contributing nothing
for departing unduly, for starting
with gumption and promise, then deserting
what I had promised we would compose
like dust settling and rock eroding
the undoing of an action is just as effective as
sweeping it under the rug and calling it history
class. Read an old letter one day and feel
the flooding sunlight on your back
repeating those words you once knew by heart:
the psalms have a way of never leaving your bones
and the desert will coat you like a second skin.
I relate to finches building nests with broken twigs
but birds do not question, birds do not beg.
74. Nick Adamski + Keighly Baron
But birds do not question, birds do not beg
the bird thinks my pockets are made of bread
and seems to think pecking is a way of asking,
what do you have today? an empty purse, a full mouth?
The brass animals line my desk, and on the mountain the green of spring is whispering a story of arrival
It feels silly to point them toward the window, as if to say,
look and look and look, everything in the world is coming back to life
even your little legs, you brass trinket, memory of trot.
I can't believe the whole world is collapsing again, it's so
cyclical, I almost laugh. Instead
I’ll call my father the inventor and tell him
I tried to make something of my own this time.
And just like always, I’m climbing again, onto the roof of the sky.
Winged idiot, so cautious and trusting
75. Dulce Talbot + Jeannine Baker
Winged idiot, so cautious and trusting!
Tethered at the talon to self-inflicted corruption.
Ages of faltering flights and misguided paths
have depleted your will and scattered your strengths.
While distantly dissolving, reflections reveal a surrendering self;
remembering spilled cups of tea on nights spent alone, cowering, unable to sleep.
Witness that which creeps in the cracks of your mind, and then float, seeking grounding.
The weight of your presence enters itself: a cold stone sitting vigil in a darkened cave.
Hardened and damp, surrounding demons slithering upon secret soil.
How did it come to this? Cornered and pecking at pieces of freedom?
Once caged without consciousness, your mind is free to wander if willing.
Who knows what might happen--there are whole rooms waiting for you to design them.
Land softly and tip toe quickly; the canvas has been cleared.
How much land can you really tend to?
76. Pheobe Lifton + Mridula Kidiyur
How much land can you really tend to?
Wet coffee grinds the muck of morning thoughts like compost
How much mending does mother earth really need?
Trees crowding together, rocks that don't want to move
How much of the air is really fresh?
Wind down the hill into a valley, trees applauding
How much of the water is really pure?
Creek river highway you can see through, not by accident
How much of the animosity caused can be cured by nature?
In the backyard there's half a moon and sometimes a sun between cloud drifts
How much of the wildlife have you really preserved?
Waiting to break the yoke i listen to two blue birds say to each other:
How to be true to ourselves in this time? And at what cost?
How much has the bird already lived through?
77. Nils Peterson + Merry Aronoff
How much has the bird already lived through,
goose “winging north in the lonely sky”
seeking a home
where water is clear and skies are blue?
Yet turbulence takes a toll.
Wherever this old bird thinks to fly
higher and higher it dodges the fire
of what has been and will be – desire.
That bird stays the course
the one that does not run smooth
landing like a lion,
a robed winged wounded lion
still able to radiate, for
it's too cold yet for bare skin on the earth
78. Stephanie Berger + Jackie Braje
It's too cold yet for bare skin on the earth
yet warm enough for the fruit to rot
For the ice cream cake of my youth
to melt into a steady mirror, a steady
lake where frogs gather, almost as if
orating a new testament to progress
amending nature's constitution with
tender care for water and its width.
There is reason to celebrate, even
after the cake is gone or after we
give in to the season & can no longer
raise our hands in joy it is possible
to raise one steady hand in hope
So all of us are shivering save one
79. Sarah Quigley + Stephen Franco
So all of us are shivering save one
Who leans into the wind and swiftly soars
Broken by the skyline hunts a red foe
As shadows grow, so does her coaxing moan
Buy the farm, buy the farm, devilish smile
Till this soil, sow your seed, taste my plump fruit
Then it rots, decomposes and poses
We fly before it sprouts and sinks its roots
Green pushes up and sprouts unbroken height
Unfurling giant leaves above our heads
The wind, vicious wind, pockets of delight
Catching our wings, we rise once more in flight
Clouds fold and twist amid the breath of life
And gathered with the deer we look upon
80. Francesca Cooper + Victoria LaFlamme
and gathered with the deer we look upon
the fields, years of fear and silent woods
where spiders sew new webs with secret pockets
where the sunrise seeps into the horizons
of all our misremembered yesterdays
as a new spring brings life from under the leaves
we lay our weapons down atop the dew
quietly surrounding feelings of the unknown
our hands reaching for roots or silken strands
refreshing to find comfort in something familiar again
the dirt is cold on our cracked and creviced hands
that only time has seen only perceived with a naked eye
we kneel before each other and cradle tiny corms
loose gestures trail bright crocuses along