Like catching water before it’s been blessed
no less holy, no less sacred;
Would a certificate change a thing? Or
has all of this land always been
stolen? Sneakers pounding the soil, soreness so sweet
and so ancient, this movement, this fire to
ignite a storm, a deluge of transient
pigeons, all fleeing the city in unison
What do they know that we do not?
the hurried fear, a deep bright wisdom
in thick droplets whipping my cheeks, as
I stare up at the world from this well, this
whirlpool of ideas that feel like my own,
a sacrament stolen nevertheless
22. Matthew Raphaelson + Stephanie Berger
A sacrament stolen—nevertheless,
a body can be resurrected without bread.
The bread helps, the flour on our faces
rivers our veins with blood at the kitchen table,
at a confluence of progeny & the new
names I have for what I am becoming.
In paintings, we still gather even though
the loaf only ever rises with the bodies
& their numbers & the sun, climbing.
Now, every word I say must be essential,
every crumb made flesh & drop of wine
made paint, like the bread that is the body,
to recover what's been taken, we must rest & so
we spend hours of lead with eyes out windows.
23. Kenji Liu + Vicki Vertiz
We spend hours of lead with eyes out windows
and burn the freeways, all swervy and puffed
Thank you for not throwing me away because I have made a mistake
I'm an orange peel, a scallion, a resurrection of coyotes
invisible tricksters disarming school boy terrorists
and slashing the tires of their boom boom trucks
I would do anything to fix it. Dive into the hole, my cabrona two-way mirror
while tiny emergency checks go crawling to the bank
A reimbursement of labor, valued in reverse
Why haven't you worn a mask for me yet
The guayabas were not ripe enough. Yet all of me is blooming
and fuck 'em, I'm allowed to sit here and break
Is daydreaming contagious?
Can’t sleep, can’t wake, can’t shake
24. Gary Studley + Xavier Vasquez
Can’t sleep, can’t wake, can’t shake the fear
there's way too much & yet not enough,
even the cemeteries have closed, our mourning non-essential,
streets stripped, save for coughing bags & pinball dogs streets filled, every awning a ruin of intimacy
and in those face-up dominoes, upended shot glasses
an unending pending, communion now wrought into inches,
every gesture wanton, any friend a priest,
we, body of hesitation supplicants of proximity
prize up bar-grills, entreat from windows,
my feet are trapped in one season
but ready is the kerosene to bring on the next,
lethal trend my hands the kerosene,
my hands are a threat even to heroes
25. Frank Dominguez + Devyn Manibo
My hands are a threat even to heroes
I don't know how to fill the empty space
One palm over mouth, the other outstretched
I remember life the way the lost remember home
Remember home? The way she filled you up?
Obliged to conceal myself, avoid forbidden acts
Oozing out and back from my center now
As if I stepped through the other side of a wardrobe
In my long coat, ankles exposed to rain
Halfway between a nightmare and endless weekend
Unpredictable pour, thrashing, humming
Like a morality play I don't understand with Netflix
Piled under my eyelids, a heavy rest
but in uncertain climates, skies are clear.
26. Tara Jayakar + Heidi Andrea Rhodes
but in uncertain climates, skies are clear.
which is to say, belly up you crush of virion throngs—
let's glow with the sun on our bright faces, all home
bodyhome and bedhome, peoplehome grow
honeybee! when has the crush ever not been forever?
I confess my crushes to the long hours of the day, I bear the weight:
honey turns suckle, water turns melon—what doesn't make me wet for other
waiting is a way to want. winter taught me that.
each ancestor in my thigh says i want you to win;
every honeybee waves a pollen banner, hums us into fruit and yes
so, yes. the world made different is again the same world.
if our bodies atrophy, it is only the crushing of room for the bloomparade, the century's great wilding
is the same as the movement from me to we. take my hand, dear love, and dance:
we are heavy flesh. our bodies a trophy.
27. Teri Ketchie + Gregory Spis
We are heavy flesh. Our bodies atrophy.
Daily swims forbidden. The numbers rise.
Tale thrust underwater, lungs crushed, weight and wait
Fog burns off by noon and I fumble with grief
Days float away, I miss our secret motion
May Day! After we marched, we gathered flowers
I am Mother Earth, you are my Green Man
My daisy chain crown still whispers, Dance
In the ruins, we return from the detritus
of lives in limbo, frozen fragments of time
We gain as much as we lose, churning land as sea
planting deep seeds for the inconceivable
We will wake soon, return to our games
on feet so tender, our hearts back from forced leave.
28. Asa Johnson + Lydia Binotto
Our feet get soft; our hearts are on forced leave.
We spend the sunny days of spring inside.
Inside is outside and outside in,
But nowhere is there space enough to grieve.
Our grief creeps into our dreams
Like pre-dawn fog across a glassy lake;
It lingers...it lingers...follows us into the mist of our days
through which we wander, weary and half-awake.
Will the truths of isolation bring us to wake fully one day?
Or will we bury them in history?
Perhaps history will bury us along with our truths,
and future archaeologists will say:
They sheltered in place but were they truly safe?
Even the safe places remain a mystery.
29. Arthur Chan + Beatriz de Costa
even safe places remain a mystery,
the sorrel leaves turned towards ghostly clouds lit by the moon,
bright as it may be, the light of the moon left a shadow on my soul
brush and caresses of past dance partners, felt in that womb
vulnerable to their touch, just the memories bring me warmth
soft glow of a dawn,
just over the hills of the past, lies the field of the future
waves of grass, traveling in place, astonished by lover’s footsteps
they lead me to where my heart yearns for the most, the deepest corner of your soul
kneading together, our strands of inner time
moving in place yet time flies right past me
our gossamer steps now unweighted by isolation
lightly trailing behind one another, as we’re lead to peace and levity
in the places that bore our frivolity
days bleed, and when the stars appear, they grieve
30. Saki Wang + Teresa Mettela
Days bleed, and when the stars appear, they grieve.
Endless banter, gone with morning sunlight --
I've learned to cover memory unto shirtsleeve.
Fairy dust on wooden floorboards, aimless,
sits at the edge of my shadow, challenging my wholeness.
picked apart by the pieces of us. I thought
the light and stucco alone is enough,
but through the looking glass I see bodies,
a barrel of bruised pears, pried through the sniper-
moon, sending apologies to the sky.
The stars had never willed to be there.
Can you separate fiction from gospel?
A red-winged bird has sunk into the ceiling.
A firing squad would at least be quick.
31. Andreas Keller + Kate Ruebenson
A firing squad would at least be quick.
Aren't blindfolds more dignified than face masks?
I smell my own breath too often now, mixed with polypropylene fibers.
I smell the false sense of security in a cloud of Lysol and Purell
My fingers: in another time, pinched & prodded the physical, dry now, key callused, type tired
57 days in a state of emergency
124 days without seeing them, their septuagenarian chests against my thirty-year-old one.
How cruel to be forced to show my love by not being there for them.
Warm, white light, traded with the bright blue of screens in hallways, kitchens, imprinted on retinas
The TV always on, always on mute, always bad news
You practice holding the pages of a favorite novel, returning to sentences, significance
Anything will do, anything that is not a history book written by a virus
A virus another name for plot twist -- and
This is not a sentence, it’s a novel
32. Zach Polis + Clare Proctor
This is not a sentence, it’s a novel,
days flung to ceaseless winds without remorse;
gone, the time we lived life at full throttle,
now our plotted course, a hum, a rattle.
Outside, the earth’s rotating while we pause,
a CinemaScope of animals sing
of repossessing shrunken pockmarked shores,
inland woods and hillsides scathed, mythos burnt.
Inside, we are unfurling from our shells,
blankets draped, quick to catch distant visions,
And each of us composes our own tale;
take note the quiet feats of early light.
Boundaries will be crossed in pen and ink,
a film in black and white to watch when sick.
33. Brei Pettis + Veronica Morcillo
a film in black and white to watch when sick
these stories and songs are medicine
every open can gobble up nourishment
feed me, then leave like a thief through windows
move through the house of me, haunt me, hunt me
catch me in your teeth, grind my bones like
salt and pepper, the basic spice that flavors
and brings out the marrow in us all
you won’t be forgiven, but given still
a piece of plot and an ending without
being finished, though the reel is done, it
feels like more to come after the credits
the flickering frames freeze, light remains, beams
a moment trapped in earth like a fossil.
34. Alissa Babaeva + Crystal Davis
A moment trapped in earth like a fossil.
longing above ground; wells full of poison
A swelling vulnerability oozes through handheld screens.
no day safe. the air a carrier of ends
Death loomed nearby, his bones embraced warmed jars of ash.
the dead asked to dance and sent their selves wide
Their masquerade lingered like the foot of a Foxtrot,
“m’aider s’il te plait,” help me find the beat
The fervor caused a rhythmic curvature inked across silhouettes.
rattling and juicy, masses pour out of formation
They are the condensation stuck to silent storefront windowpanes.
they leave us a place we no longer share
They have abandoned us, they have been entombed.
What we now know, even ghosts are ruined
35. Ava Fedorov + Ian Winter
What we now know, even ghosts are ruined.
Heard between the floorboards
Like past footsteps of ancestors
We woke to find them lapping at saucers of milk
Crying over the mornings mist
We didn't wait for the sun to burn them away
We held them gentle in imaginations
Took selfies, tested viscosity, made careful documentation
Because if you speak they will leave
By the time you read this, for example
A hummingbird will have cried louder, hush
(Do you still have hummingbirds?)
(Do you still stay silent in the presence of love.)
Warning, this message will self-destruct.
36. Heru Smith + Amy Palen
Warning, this message will self-destruct.
So listen slowly as these words electrify your hair follicles
Bolting in like needles through your brain
While a deceitful voice whispers tasteful propaganda in your eardrum
Let the lemons linger. Can't you see?
That a revolution needs to be formulated from genuine thought
Steady hands and youthful voices.
Playing in the soil together so nature can watch
With eyes like gathering clouds
Therefore let's hope that connection will be end process to chaos
Like the outstretched arms of a thinning rain
Rain, that appeals simple like a warm kiss on the cheek
Clinging and connecting with itself --
How many rivers does it take to build a world
37. Alexis Wanzell + Mary Krontiris
How many rivers does it take to build a world?
One where you don’t have to drown to inhabit it
But just enough to turn her attention to the sails being furled
With little hope that they will guide her somewhere familiar
A time where she was nourished and pure
With kinder winds and a current that she claimed
“Close your eyes,” she says, for I have a cure
"that lives in riverbeds that are far from home"
My rivers flow that can’t be untanned
Speaks to me in prose, just like my grandmother who
Glistened wisdom in this world to roam
casting light over her path like still water in June
We have arrived as we looked upon to see a sliver
The towers of the great bridge wade in the river
38. Joe Elliott + James Richmond
The towers of the great bridge wade in the river
Unbudging in their murky pleasure
Overwhelming, inescapable the wave moving forward
Of commuters following her spine homeward.
Strangely the shadows, overpowering the heart and mind,
Without substance our very substance grind
The naked world virally entrapped
By mounting fears enwrapped.
The great bridge in the certainty of time
It’s spectral elephants parade above the crime
Where the towering towers wrestled like giants
In unbending titanic moves defiant
Invariably treasure plucked; now in outstretched loss
never to take a step, they stand so others may cross
39. April Goldberg + Jo D.
Never to take a step, they stand so others may cross
cross the center cross the center
A labyrinth of paths, a multitude of dangers
go go go go
Look inward and onwards whenever there's doubt
the corner behind, the corner ahead
Past masked strangers, eyes of fury
eyes pregnant with desire
Tittering on the edge of insanity
taste it, can we still taste it
Flashbacks of disco balls glittering strangers' beaded sweat
the colors are vibrant but the music has stopped
Left standing in the grey street alone
strings of light invite us to its pageant of traffic
40. Jackie Braje + Kate Belew
strings of light invite us to its pageant of traffic,
full stop, the slick monochrome of street
I repeat, it is snowing in May, it is snowing
all over my eyelids but my head is a fire
I put my pedal down to this floor
in a bizarre surrender. Speed is also
a way to slow down. Trust me
when I place your hand on the stick shift,
that I am asking you to take the wheel
for no one other than yourself. And when
I turn the radio up to drown us both out
of time and space, the marchers will
fall into their parades. My mother always said
the cavalcade erodes as much as it erects