Poetry from Issue 16, 2022-23

Daniella Pineda

Preface

A seventeen-year-old novice
wakes in Irving’s Gotham
thinking of poetry and a home.

Nurtured by your motherly ways—
unlearning, relearning—I learned
how to walk amongst them all. Your August sun
wrapped around my abandoned child,

I first saw you with naive eyes.
A dainty skyline full of promise. I longed
for a yellow submarine to take me in,
But it took me under.

I shed my skin for you:
“Land of simple-minded fools”
Make me new.

Eva Moschitto

On Looking for Camille Claudel and Finding a Different Lover

They say you can tell by its shape: Time
Is an O you slice into, so I guess all memory

Is violence. On our last day together, I
Said I like paintings that give you something

To swim in. This morning, I dreamed about Tetris:
All those perfect, Technicolor Ts, falling

Into place. I know. I’m not supposed to
Any more. Mom always warned me, it’s rude

To lick the knife. But I shared my gum with you.
And when the meaty burst of Juicy Fruit went

From your mouth to mine, was I
Too busy laughing to know there was

No way back? And I only ever played Tetris
Once. I went to the Met on Saturday but

I was too thirsty to remember that being lost
In the Met on a Saturday is a very cool girl thing.

I was just looking for the elevator when I passed
These miniature sculptures encased in glass.

The plaque Rodin’s Muses explained, This
Study of a nude woman, rendered almost

Abstract by enclosure, announces
The impenetrable mystery

Of the female form. When I woke up,
I wanted you to hold me. The sculptor’s hand,

Cast wrinkle by wrinkle, holding a woman without
A head. You can’t swim in sculptures like

You can in paintings, but I guess you’d like them
Better anyways. So. I know why all those short,

Ticking hands never clicked for me because
at a different museum (I don’t remember where

Or how long ago) I saw a bust of Rodin
By the artist’s muse and I saw her name

Carved into his neck. I know it’s rude but
I’ve always liked the tang of iron. Something

About how the blood bites back, about how
In a room full of soft-edged women,

She sculpted his head from memory.

Hadiya Qazi

Urdu Poetry—A Study on Translation

Poems in Urdu

Ghaib (Haiku)
Agar tumhare,
Enko mai, me ghaib ho
jao
Muje vahi chor do

Tumhari
Jese sooraj nikal nai ka
shaak nahe hai
Vesai hum dono ka
pyar mai shaak nahe
hai
Jese Chaand poori
raath raitha hai
Vesai hamaisha tumha-
rai Saath hu mai

Literal Translation

Being lost
If your
Eyes in, I get lost
Leave me there

Yours
Like the way there is no
doubt that the sun will
rise,
There is no doubt in
our friendship
Like there is no doubt
that the moon stays
I am too will be with
you always

English Translation

To be lost

If your eyes draw me in,
And I get lost
Leave me there

I belong to you
The morning sun has
no doubt that it will
rise,
Nor does anyone hold
any doubt in our love
The loyal moon waits
the whole night, and
with her, I will always
wait for you

Emerald Lin

What had I written in that postcard I sent you?

Something about everyone’s dogs on the sidewalk, or how the streets are numbered so
I’m not lost in the city. Anyway, it rained. The pavement glistens,
dark. Last week I bought a box of white peaches for $2.99
to keep summer for a little longer. I take out my winter coat from the suitcase
and hang it in the wardrobe, just in case.

That rainy day: watermelon shaved ice, the Norwegian cat with eyes
the turquoise of a great lake, popping our umbrellas in the rain
splashing each other wet.

I brought that umbrella with me; it opens clunkily ever since.

These days, we talk about your dental school and how Taipei grows wet and cold. But
one September day I was walking through thick green
when Clair de Lune whispered through Washington Square Park.
I stopped breathing. No one else did. Not the clamor or the sparrows,
not even the notes, unfurling slowly, uncaringly,
In plain air.

Poem by Victoria Chang, Guest Contributor

Victoria Chang’s forthcoming book of poems, With My Back to the World, will be published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Corsair Books in the U.K. Her most recent book of poetry, The Trees Witness Everything, was published by Copper Canyon Press and Corsair Books in the U.K. in 2022, and was named one of the Best Books of 2022 by The New Yorker and The Guardian. Her nonfiction book, Dear Memory (Milkweed Editions), was published in 2021 and was named a favorite nonfiction book of 2021 by Electric Literature and Kirkus. OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), her most recent poetry book, was named a New York Times Notable Book, a Time Must-Read Book, and received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and the PEN/Voelcker Award. It was also longlisted for a National Book Award and named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize. She has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles and is distinguished faculty within Antioch’s low-residency MFA program.

I Love the Whole World, 2000

When I look at the 16 blue strips, I too love the whole
world. But it is 13 days before September 11th. There
are three extra blue strips that I never know what to
do with. Maybe the three blue strips are meaning.
Agnes painted this a year before September 11th and
Gratitude in 2001. In 2001, there was a field, two
buildings, three planes. When I held my fingers up to
the sun, I used to be able to see

the veins. Now I can’t see them because the dead
bodies are still in front of the sun. The dead are always
gathering around something the wrong scale. Agnes
said it is the scale of the composition that matters. If
the painting has perfect scale, it moves you. The sky is
always the wrong scale. It’s not actually too large, but
it’s too small. The people on the plane are now the
wrong scale. Language is also the wrong scale.

Luna Radonjanin

Souvenir

Melted sugar, jag

ged caramel

crevices trace burnt black ice painted sun-
set copper. Etched silver
daggers break
the seal. Deep fissures divulge
memory’s tongue hidden beneath
amaretto floorboards, reveal
the citrus vanilla core
of Crema Catalana
and high school innocence, sweet
like pudding with a bitter crust, served
on Las Ramblas street
in the midst of––

cappuccino

a chocolate croissant

café con leche

a cacophony of language
converging conversation like honey
in the summer air, turned syrupy
reminiscence of a body
once thought to be stronger
than the sun.

Edgar De Dios

aruba/close to me

me and my therapist don’t talk anymore
i thought we were cool
had him on ig and everything
literally just blocked me
saw him pop the migos on his story too so it’s not like his phone broke

i scream really loud now
and people don’t interrupt me as much
pupils peck mine
ur ears need massages

im not out to get anyone
it would just be cool if maybe possibly perhaps my guys could eat too
we’ll bring our own food
just give them a plate

if not we gonna eat and fuck that usin ur hand as plate thing
hold these crumbs
pass ur own vacuum
u can’t mop carpet
and ur food taste like shit u got the recipe wrong
it’s adobo not salt and pepper

am i an artist.

let my saturdays be soaked in gold
tan linens
no more contacts i’ll get lasik
sleep with my windows open
doors unlocked
naked
i’ll run my hands thru a full head of hair

we’ll have so much more life to go

Manuel López Ramírez

Las ruinas circulares / Expecting

Winner of the Editors’ Award in Poetry

there is a river of crystalline water
which runs beneath our house,

then wraps around it.

in it float the tears of the woman in white who lost her bastard children
to the man who went to get cigarettes and never came back.
the river runs beneath our house, beneath the window I look at you from,
in the garden, with the lavenders,
which smell not of flowers but of mythical cigarettes.
my reflection in the window is mine and that of my great-grandmother’s
like starting points blend into finish lines,
like the water I drank is what filled up my breasts
and the flowers you smelled burst your cheeks into gardens of hair,
because it is what I learned and what we learnt,
written on the streets which keep us in eternal paths
and bring our future children to this same window,
where they remember memories which do not belong to them
but which orbit around them like planets

orbiting around themselves too,

moons orbiting around them,

they around themselves too,

circling them and me and them and you as
the river which runs beneath our house sings songs like sirens,
the melodies of peninsular claps and precolumbian flutes,
whispers that seduce us together and spin us round and
my bellies round and waters round
and lavenders round
houses round
people
round
beneath which and around which
there is a river of crystalline water
which runs beneath our house,

then wraps around it.