the cavalcade erodes as much as it erects
dirt and dust swell, a little less road, a little less of us
so what—shut up—xerox this mess with your original face
and shed (please) that mask before I fall for a partial view
the bough done broke, hunty, there's a big ol' kink in the gyre
best to sink deeper then, darker, where the sharpest shells lie
outfit—taxidermy frog bikini, wellies, aluminum trident
find the circle where we chanted our old names into rot
river mud, coprolite, rootling! earthworm, amber water, helgramite! spring rain, swimming beaver, nettle flower!
spit salt water in my eye, leave me stung, singing mother, squinting skyward
the noble switch—the oracle has left the building for the open air
up here the vastness oppresses more than offers answers
keep the quiet in your skin, unlearn everything
the gowns of the sun are thrown on the water
42. Carissa Finneren + Sarah Ghanta
The gowns of the sun are thrown on the water
Its shimmer calls you to come, wade in and collect
Luxuriate in the warm caress of the waning tide
Let snowflakes from past winters melt away, its spring
The green buds push forth out of barren branches
Cherry blossoms reveal beginnings aplenty
Full of possibility and pregnant with bounty
Its petals join the swim and drop alongside you
To remind you of the fleeting moment
What was sought after is now savoured
the moment is passing and the sorrow comes
Swimming through here slowly, keeping an eye on the sky
that low grumble reminds us of dinner left uneaten
What do we trade to travel along skirts that stitch shores together
43. Karen Link + Erika Kielsgard
What do we trade to travel along skirts that stitch shores together?
Is it an abbreviated breach in the mask of modesty through which winds blow?
Or about face signals the pigeons recall
Until desperation overcomes reticence
The direction of the dust relocates our difference
Its residue solidifies imagined footprints
Belonging to rocks skipping eternal life
All sails farther from a heedless hand
Where the aperture shuttles more than light
Defenseless is a posture we abhor
Broken cords wave from early lampposts
The distance between joists too far to hold
Composure. Isolation intermittently strikes
We can join them, but we cannot make them touch
44. Rina Rich Langer + Seetha Govindaraju
We can join them, but we cannot make them touch
What's in a touch anyway, if they are still able to gaze?
To gaze at the swallows in May's early days, diving against a blue sky
Transported to memories that have past, lived in like they would always last
Each twist of the wing a reminder of hands entwined like delicate silver rope
Threads weaved with care and caution ensuring a sturdy hold
On patterns of wind and light and days of tiny, intimate joys
Oh joyous mundanities! Cementing cracks on the exterior
With an upward glance at black feathered wings or a look at her brown eyes
If a picture can say a thousand words, his eyes fixed on hers hides no guise
Freedom is watching the fading circles fly upwards towards tomorrow
The light is all but gone yet my closed eyes hold yours in place
We will follow the swallows in devout silence above the stars
The moon drops its ladder of light to transverse the viaduct arc.
45. Audrey Lee + Allia Abudllah-Matta
The moon drops its ladder of light to traverse the viaduct arc
and climbs down to earth; a humid, teeming place. We saw him
psychedelic face mask, brown skin, green-eyed, in blue rubber gloves
like an astronaut, his crisp space suit only now a hospital gown.
slow motion breath-one two three hold, out two three cough, spit, & release
& the moon descends. we are wondering if he is sick, we are wondering
if he can see the moon, feel the sun, taste coffee, & butter pecan ice cream
if he has ever watched the deep, foaming ocean water swirl around his brown limbs.
smelled the atlantic salt-water night wind, crispy & cool, swirl & whine
the night the moon climbed down its ladder of light, in this fevered air, he was here:
he was witness; we hold leaky lungs heavy & scorching in pandemic blood,
we, diseased things; if he is not sick, he is something closer to hope,
and he, pushes moon fever, holds the heat of words & breath
that we may climb the sky with our legs and wheels and eyes.
46. Marc Polite + Vera Linder
that we may climb the sky with our legs and wheels and eyes
and reach heights unexpected, viewing all transpiring below.
And let the transpire be borderless, let masks become invisible
As we see and recognize the humanity of all
it is a human-rearrangement, what is proof that Never changes
A needed reset, a reprieve from what was deemed normal
not allowing universal pardon, we will bring all our stories
Telling our truths to sympathetic ears and open hearts
distilling meaning into verses, voting for a poetocrazy
endorsing only what makes us whole, and is healthy
finally retrieving the w we were missing, time to abandon the hole
to live freer and find a way out of the malaise
giving touch back to our skin, voices back to our streets
while boats are wings that drift and glide beneath, never staying still
47. Richard Krawiec + Nicole Arocho
while boats are wings that drift and glide beneath, never staying still
the river continues to press against my ribs, slowly emerging
and merging with time and light until
the wings have sharpened into motors for evolution, a continuous
convergence of need and desire, spin and drift, forward propulsion
Here I am, over the sky, a bird without a song
without voice to call you in the spiraling darkness
I use my body to remember what I am for, what I am capable of
life is an ephemeral vehicle of change, the flowers tell us,
the animals tell us, the mountains tell us slowly, the sky tells us too
when the song is taken away, write a new one, become another
that's how people learned to fly and dive deep in the ocean for days
the machines we make generate electricity to light our way
on the water they were born for; from us, for us, of us
48. Eleanora Hyde + Edwin Torres
on the water they were born for, from us, for us, of us
I imagine the moment life starts, as one tiny cell
one tiny us — I’ve been moment in movement
since before our stories were written down in hieroglyphs
I’ve been written, I’ve been down
down the Nile in a basket, but never abandoned
skin sage meridian — my hands on my head, what space between
exists millions of vibrating cells like ancient stars
what isolation — this, that gave movement, its skin
folded over time, wrinkled and reborn anew
I just stepped outside, it’s all still there
same sun, same moon, recycled daily,
as me, of me, my ancient artifice — beckoning, one tiny outside
the arch stays so we may go, it spans beyond so we may connect
49. Bobby K. Washington + Jordan Bell
the arch stays so we may go, it spans beyond so we may connect
Connection that bends time and blends character
stretching careless and sanguine over everyone's heads
Hoping the sky isn’t falling onto our laps
we drink tea and look up in anticipation
Above all the debris clouded with fear
the future continues to lurch into the station
Gathering as freedom seems near
Our wits, loose change, and spears of sunlight
Taking a toll as we try to brake loose
Into a future that incessantly arrives
As Familiarity is key in steering the road ahead
We wonder as the bones of the world cough:
How many bridges does it take to cross-off the world
50. Keighly Baron + Francesca Clerjeune
How many bridges does it take to cross-off the world
X used to mark the spot, we use graphs
When we stop and listen, the world we seek to travel already lives within
The peaks and valleys of where we've been
Turn into crystals residing in bottom of dales
There are multitudes in the facets and the faces
Eyes glaring into multi-universes
all contained in carbon, all contained in me.
Pulled by tides, dangerously calm like the blue seas
Bargaining with the ebb and flow of phases of the moon
Sometimes we look for the itch just for the satisfaction of scratching it
Searching for metaphor in our own lines, written yesterday and tomorrow
As a soul light and delicate wishes in a field of dandelions
Like how this poem would be in tercets if it weren’t so screwed
51. Francesca Berger + Vijay Ramanathan
Like how this poem would be in tercets if it weren’t so screwed
My days once traveled out to foreign ports
Like how our nights burn away our intimacies
I chased mirages, sure ecstasy hid somewhere beyond
Like how broken promises are forgotten in far away lands
Untethered from all responsibility who am I
Like how delightful my life can be held in your embrace
And so returning to where all my cares belong
Never to be a threefold affair, always one heart too many
My steps trace and retrace a path back to you
Like how your pipe dreams disperse love’s appearances
Like how I trace and retrace patterns on your skin
Lines converge mounting the waves of your pure joyful pulse
Like how a late night whiskey apothecary becomes
52. Gabriel Cleveland + Jackie Braje
Like how a late night whiskey apothecary becomes
blurrier each sip, jar filled with tips,
teeth filled with ambrette seeds, the muskmallow
scent turned to stench, a never-ending hospital trip.
I only learned how to sing in three colors, all blue --
robin's egg for waking
cerulean for joy
midnight for mourning. Where should I put it down, this bone-ache? This heart, arteries like roots beneath the wildfire-scorched forest, suspended like a suddenness. For 45 days I have watched Spring unfold beyond my reach, homebound for the rabbits, the deer bones lost to the snow back when isolation could break on a steaming cup whim. I liked you best basket-woven and piecemeal– How wild lavender, wide wild the fields between this moment and then.
53. Sharon Mesmer + Katerina Canyon
How wild lavender, wide wild the fields between this moment and then.
How wild the glowing coals that wheel smoke against the window.
Here is where you find gravestones that were carved for unloved men.
Here is the gloom of hills and hollows.
My mind wanders through gusts and gallows without rest,
My throat keens with all the world’s sorrows.
My eyes tread up a tree and rest atop a blazing phoenix nest —
Instead of wings I find ghosts of old emperors that catch and press.
Then surged within me a grief for the death of martyrs and villains,
And the old world spoke to me in the language of beginnings.
Its words were dressed in winding-sheets and Shrouds of Turin,
But the words were the wings I’d sought, and gave me flight.
Those ciphers took me above the dark world of graves and aberration
— How the insomniac city took sleeping pills to quiet
54. Samantha Plesser + Magdelen Radovich
How the insomniac city took sleeping pills to quiet
we shut our minds off to the soothing lull of breaking news
swaddled in the inescapable haunting of our mind's relentless recall
Counting sheep shift over to number dead,
how many tested, those infected
Nightmare sweats don't wait for sleep in the Age of COVID.
Though the lights are dark, we remain the city that
Never sleeps, keeping a constant vigil, bearing silent witness
like a parade of ancient gargoyles
on the parapets of a threatened fortress
How many eyes have watched
how many empires turn to dust over time...
Yet we turn a blind 21st Century eye to the present
this is the deafening silence of going viral
55. Cristina Baptista + Adeena Karasick
The deafening silence of going viral
has settled in my ribcage, feasting as a harpy
on sorrow on my lung tissue, on the heart.
There are more echoes here than I remember.
Four chambers become caverns, strange music
—and I know I’ve heard it before, but tried to forget.
Lie with me in the ferocity of discordance
and I promise to whisper of things that never hurt.
Lie with me in the stain of erasure
and I will fill every gap with the gesture of cupping air.
Gasping in the ferocity of mourning
a life reduced to twilight and memory, rusted
scripts, scars, skin soaring --as if
you’d like nothing more than nothing from me.
56. Anees Hasnain + Carla Cherry
you’d like nothing more than nothing from me
and what greater toll could you extract?
family, hand-in-hand in prayer,
moments of intimacy we'll never get back.
cushioned in the voice, lips, arms of my love,
I lose my footing in our sweet reverie.
light azure sky. crisp, clean air in my lungs,
flooded with the potential of memories.
virginal-spined books. the ova of poems.
handsome words offer solace you won't.
the rosebuds of hope in my heart and head
gather vowels, consonants to gift you, but I don't.
sirens wail. ravens caw. robins perch. sing low
between the noises of demolition too early outside my window.
57. Caitlin Cacciatore + Lindsay O'Rourke
between the noises of demolition too early outside my window
and the cacophonous rattle of the train as it rumbles by
I can still hear the broken beat of your heart machine;
like a clock it chimes out the hours, singing a lament at noon
the last hour I held your limp hand before they made me leave you
our two heavenly bodies spinning out of one another’s orbits
ethereally reaching for each other
forever striving for greater heights
I feel your absence in the abyss
of the mountains that have risen between us
of chaos and terror and uncertainty;
I try to keep between the fluorescent lines
to ground myself once more,
begging construction workers to stop for your healing
58. Emi Berqguist + Kate Belew
Begging construction workers to stop for your healing
feels like asking these bare walls for answers
which I have written my own on in finger paint,
removed the long of obedience to glorify the color rebel
which is the same color as broken glass or
soot from fields we burned to fertilize someday's crop
which says something about potential hope and also
how willing we are to starve when all we've harvested is
the plant grown on the water of tears. I know
the land I come from is rugged and I don't care about
being perfect anymore. I need to say I am sorry
for wanting to be right instead of trying to be better,
a strange turn of fate. I believe we are always changing
like that’s gone now. Like how isolation. Like how gold
59. Yasmine Chokrane + Theresa Senato Edwards
Like that’s gone now. Like how isolation. Like how gold
presses into the firmament at the day’s climax, and how iron
lungs, almost defunct, creep their way back into history. Hold
my bloodied ones, in pulmonary protest, respiratory revenge, so
drenched laughter replaces masks, gloves, and isolation trends.
And voids replace ant colonies — inverted black holes consume
my rib cage, like how gold can almost take the night’s chance
and graze against its image, peeling at edges. Is that
shock gone now too, home blending so tightly into everyone?
I’m cold. Are you cold? Does your blood also redistribute every
spin from the centrifuge, every knitted arm each hour on your loom?
A blanket fashioned from gossamer. Temporary heat constructed from nothing.
Tired from hobbies without really moving, so we danced. Like how
you might have if it weren’t for all of the everything.
60. Amy Palen + Cierra Martin
you might have if it weren’t for all of the everything
all the talons in your arms; the empty birdcage in
your grandfather’s home. what a broken wing
for a feather girl to try and fly away on.
it was never so much about the wind,
but still I blame those limp and quiet breezes
their cruel words which coat the trees
and smothered all the things you might have said
hardly would your roots extend far enough
to reach me through those woods of oily fog
had i taken the time to draw a map
would we have found each other as before?
your heart may be the tracker of time, yet
there are some things you can’t unsay and we both have to live with that