Poetry from Issue 15, 2021-22

Yoon Jin Kim

to take the edge off memory

forget or
death of memory or
dīs remember without space is
disremember without re-petition is
dismember or
pulled apart from the center like
a pitted stone fruit is
a seed extracted from
the womb like
a migrant released or
some body carried away or
transported over space time like
the sun pulled down

Gentle Ramirez

Name for the Order?

Winner of the Editors’ Award in Poetry

I change my name each time I place an order at Starbucks
And my pronouns are sweetheart, sweethearts, or they,
My sun pickled skin be my superpower—&
gets me double take at Whole Foods, keeps me
invisible.

Invisible like the streets of the Bronx,
like the burning at the border,
like the water that doesn’t hydrate.

My whole time at Starbucks I drown in diuretics
the way capitalism destroys me yet I keep showing up.
Bloodthirsty and vulgar—I am thinking about living,
I am thinking about surviving, I am thinking about what
Is going to happen next.

Oftentimes captivity, I mean caffeine, makes me feel like
There is nowhere to run, and I am in no shape to try.
I keep being voluntarily constrained, to learn civility from colonizers,
where right and wrong keep my iced cold brew black.
The cashier marvels at my transformation every three months,
Loves that I keep my black hair blend illegal,
That I keep the barista guessing, leaving the
Americanos ground and confused.

I don’t need to be named in this country that don’t know freedom.
But I do need two shots of espresso over ice to stay woke
I do need these batteries until the revolution starts.
So that eventually I’ll give them my name,
Myself, myselves, myself.

Caleb Willett

that same spring i learned
to refer is to forget
daydreams, coriander

chickadee whistles
cracking on barn-door echoes
stir the air to snow

can i see the web?
it’s only tangible through touch.
widow or recluse?

fall came, sweet basil
slowed down my nervous system
first then not at all

whip-poor-will, like that!
you say as i approximate
the mourning dove’s mourn

leeches ring-road shale,
water lily, putrescence
sunfish sunbathe by

think you think like me?
think you think you think like me?
think you’ll wait and see?

Tiffany Leong

Memento Mori, Mother

I knew the acridness of acetone before I knew the scent of her skin,
Ma, I called her Ma . . .
The nights which my troublemaker kid-body
imprinted the cracked-leather couch,
waiting, I waited, for the sound of Mother.
Hours dug into the cushion,
drowned out by a TV tuned to
a pixellated pipe dream.
Ma came in midnight,
bent-backed, cracked soles
chemical-fumed, sandpit eyes, hollowed soul . . .
Not a word, not a single word from her worn mouth. A hand threaded
through my thin strands
and warmth touched my forehead off-screen,
where Ma’s chipped nail polish carried the emptiest gleam.

The day I turned thirteen I was product of
sweaty palms, Justice lip gloss, pimpled summers.
A heat coiled in the pit of my hairy stomach.
The day I turned thirteen Ma told me I was too dark, Only boys could
be dark.
When I bled for the first time she tore my jeans apart, stinging sweatclang
of a sink slick with ink—
this sting, this sting—
how much farther could I play the part?
Emerging sea-beast, a girl’s hide—
how was I supposed to know the female phoenix
meant panties drenched in peroxide?
She held me, she fed me; the only scent I knew of her: bleach on my
arms and the boiling pot,
clearance-sale lotion and my baby brother’s snot.
The day I turned thirteen I thought I was a woman,
how Ma wished I was a woman.

To spend your last years among rusted vents and pity flowers and my
fingers smoothing the crinkles of your gown. Dated magazines,
peeled mandarins, red pills on trays.
When I leave the hospital it is dark, and my flesh purpled, so it must
be me, the one who decays.
You were right, Ma, I’m rotten work—
A corpse was born on my wedding day;
it was buried under my veil.
You were right—about men and my strife;
I couldn’t handle that I still have dreams
about your kitchen knife.
Sliced apple froths in my palm,
the scent of an end which impregnates
aches
lingers.
We who slip into sterilized silence.
Ma, our hands never touch, they retract at the skim, So I think they
never will
Ma, I get so sick of you sometimes, I feel sick around you, So I hold
my breath,
so you hold my breath . . .

Poem by Ada Limón, Guest Contributor

Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her book Bright Dead Things was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her work has been supported most recently by a Guggenheim Fellowship. She grew up in Sonoma, California and now lives in Lexington, Kentucky where she writes, teaches remotely, and hosts the critically-acclaimed poetry podcast, The Slowdown. Her latest book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, was published in May 2022 by Milkweed Editions. She is the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States.

How We See Each Other

I forget I am a woman walking alone and wave
at a maroon car, assuming it’s a neighbor or a friend.

The car then circles the block and goes past me five times.
One wave and five times the car circles. Strangers.

It is the early evening, the fireflies not yet out,
I trick the hunting car by pretending to walk into

a different house. I am upset by this, but it is life, so I make
dinner and listen to a terrible audio book on Latin American

Literature that’s so dull it’s Dove soap. Violence is done and history
records it. Gold ruins us. Men ruin us.

That’s how the world
was made, don’t you know?

A group of us, to tune out grief every week, are watching
dance movies. Five women watching people leap and grind.

Every time I watch the films, I cry. Each week, even though
we are hidden from each other by distance, I know

I am the first to break into tears. Something about the body
moving freely, someone lifting them, or just the body

alone in movement, safe in the black expanse of stage. The body
as rebellion, as defiance, as immune.

Aracelis writes to tell me she’s had a dream where
I am in Oaxaca wearing a black dress covered with animals.

In her dream I am brushing and brushing my hair with a brush
made out of animal hair. There is a large mirror and a room

full of books.
History comes at us through the sheen of time.

I write back, Was it ominous or was it hopeful?
She says, The word I am thinking of is “strong.”

I kindle the image in my body all day, the mirror, the brush,
the animals, the vast space of the imagination,

the solid gaze of a woman who has witnessed me as unassailable,
the clarity of her vision so clean I feel almost free.

Eka Savajol

wetlands

every night i dream
simply that we lay down together

your hair becomes tall grasses
your body stretches out becomes

the shallow water below
in turn
my tongue moves as a bird
diving to catch a frog

i wake up half-drowning
from the puddle formed while dreaming
in the humidity i sweat rain

unable to fall back asleep,
i hope at least you taste me now
as your perspiration
comes rolling in
the shape of a dark cloud
perched on your upper lip

i hope at least our restlessnesses meet,
sweat running down the incline into sweat
slow-moving deltas converging into the marsh

but i know you are far
watching the hills undulate
behind the churning stomach of traffic
the summer so hot,
you mistake

the brake lights creeping up the highway ramps
for wildfires

the summer so hot,
my name evaporates off your tongue

here i don’t remember the last time it went
a day without raining
lightning rips the sky apart
it falls to shreds

i drink and drink
the water rises mud bites at my feet
needing dry land i search for your mouth
but all i see are rows of teeth
alligator eyes
winced at the sight of me the thunder rings
like a dinner bell
ushering me to eat from your hand
my hair wet drips in front of my face

unable to see i kneel
unable to come up for water i sink further
no matter how far i cast you away
you return and i am the one pierced by the hook
the gash curved into a smile

from above, i could see your shoulder
as the smile of a boy eyeing me across the diner
as the mustache i’d never see again wiped dry
as the ache that comes from near-constant genuflect
from above i could see the wetlands
as fields of wheat being watered
instead of as endless marshes

Maryam Khalifa Al Shehhi

I Don’t Want to Write a Qasida Using Your Language

Note: these poems were written in 2021 for the class Foundations of Literature II: Novel and Lyric. They have been revised and edited in 2022.

I want to write a poem
that has its own identification card
half Arab, and half Arab
has no religion, no faction

Consider this a naked poem
using a language of its own
belonging to its definition
of Arab nationalism (pre- what you call “colonialism”)

Instead of your twenty-six letters,
i’ll use my alif, baa, taa
with flowers on top of each
and dancing letters in your so-called Harem

This poem will break your narrative -
of women in jilbabs and men in kandoras*
both will be naked, twenty-eight letters—
and countless diacritics later

No, it won’t sound like preaching prophets
nor will I speak about furious camels
it will stand in battlefield, naked,
fully embracing its own being

You’ll see my naked poem dancing,
on music that won’t be familiar to you
with a language you won’t understand
Helwa ya baladi, watani habebi, mawteni mawteni*

Take some guesses,
familiarize yourself with my letters my language,
my poem
my music
my identity
my nationality
my belonging
my existence;
(pre-colonialism)

may my language haunt you, for 1001 nights (and days),

Amen

Helwa ya baladi, watani habebi, mawteni mawteni*
I don’t want to write a poem using your language, but I am.