You beg for more and are given an empty mouth to feedin giving, we make space to receive. You beg for more and are given an empty mouth to feedin giving, we make space to receive.
Meditations in an Emergency by Neha Malik breathe breathe breathe
Meditations in an Emergency by Neha Malik breathe breathe breathe
Let your experience dictate your words no oppression by definition let it come with feeling knowledge is only useful when rooted in compassion.
Let your experience dictate your words no oppression by definition let it come with feeling knowledge is only useful when rooted in compassion.
“Birth”
by Neha Malik
When we enter this world
We do so screaming
In unison with our mothers
Our first language is emotion How quickly we forget.
The miracle of life is a violent one –
I ripped through my mother like a parasite nearly killing us both. Blood staining every inch
Of the hospital room
And our bodies Hanging between life and death.
Split from her belly
Like a chick emerging from a cracked egg born to the world, if not for violence, forever unknown.
In your destruction, there is creation
Tear yourself apart
At the seams And be born anew.
Free Palestine
by Neha Malik
In 2013, a child testified
To an empty Congress’ echo
“I do not love blue skies, I now prefer grey ones.
My heritage, a testing site
For Empire’s crimes
Those are the days the drones don’t strike.”
How can I be an artist And not reflect the times?
Timeless, Nina Simone
Today, Gaza, Sudan, Congo War abroad and at home
Uncle Sam’s never been my friend Customs always rough for the wrong kind of Asian
Denied publication for
Even mentioning Palestinians-I feel like Jay-Z
Saying no to the Smithsonian, You need me I don’t need you
When the skyline of the city changed forever were you terrified, because you realized, you were just like us?
Flesh and bone and blood?
My God said she made us different
So that we may learn from one another
She gives heaven
To all our martyrs
Killed by my tax dollars, and a country whose biggest export is terror
Oppression is a crime
Worse than murder
Peace, the will of the people and the land
Said the man, Pharoah Sand
Hum Allah Hum Allah Hum Allah Rivers to flow where borders fall
InshAllah
Pray the trees breathe the youth grow old And the elderly, free
byJessicaHarding
Who would’ve thought our dance would be the epicenter of my wo
Your musings of “don’t make me “did you get cuter?” “she’s a good “away with you” “my sweet” would be part of my heartbeat, that i would see little you hoping seeing the shields tethered around “I don’t need anyone, i can do it, words that many echo from an in ro share more.
Who would’ve thought i’d see the leader in you, the helpful in a moment of needing to be helped and the anger in feeling trapped, in anyone knowing better for you than you that you don’t know.
Counting the drops
“Grandm
Your Brain reads molasses ink splats, Which memory plays out within you? Which language do i decipher and do you? Will it ever be the same? Is this where we set anew? Or is this where we go askew?
I haven’t fully accepted, nor will i, that this is you… that this version is stabilized.
her’s Stay”
A triliogy by Jamie Lazan
You holding my arm side by side child and grandma both children as we hold on and reverse roles but tenderly arm in arm: bowing over in being silly you laugh worse than jimmy fallon, the way you stand up for mom and make sure i treat her well in moments when we cant see eye to eye, you calling daughter mom in small moments and us holding each other heart to heart with big love.
And how does she feel, our toto family member? As she rolls around in dew-sprinkled grass? plump and jolly, pink tounge out –living moment to moment, Are you still there? Do you fill her mind?
Do you feel comfort as we call out for josie and gra Are you still there? Do you know what’s happenin My heart stretches then shrink is it hard to listen? It hurts - theres so much i wan so i write it here i swell and i write i smile and write
I’m here. I’m still here.
You're safe Y d
“For my Mother, In the Storm”
Come here, lay your head on my heart. Let the tears fall quietly no need to hold the sky up right now.
I’ll wrap you in my arms like you once wrapped me, and we’ll breathe through this slow, soft, together. You don’t have to fix it. You don’t have to be strong. Just sit with me, watch a movie, and rest your heart awhile. I’ve got us.
One Who ”
“ I a m t he
By Jamie Lazan
ByJamie Laza
GoodnightMoon
the body
By Jessica Harding
remembers
i give permission
T h e B o d y R e m e m b e r s b y J a m i e L a z a n
By Jamie Lazan
a r i n a r a
MIn my mind, you are iconic, Always classy and well dressed Boldly staring at the camera A young Sofia Loren Opal necklaces, White Diamond perfume, Lipstick shining red And the flowers of your namesake Cultivated by son’s hands: “You can tell that God made these” And you, goddess of your kitchen Fresh mint and basil plucked from tiny backyard plots to season hallowed dishes Each one conjured in succession seemed effortless, the work of a magician or a Strega: Pizzelles delicately iron-forged, dunked into coffee, baptized in Hail Marys; Ricotta pie and limoncello, Easter sacraments; And fresh pasta, homemade meatballs rolled between your palms like rosaries, in Jordan rivers of your marinara daily blessed.
Not realizing till later
The blood that laced it all With newfound hindsight vision
My womb clenches and tongue chokes upon the secrets: veal-calf memories
striating those meatballs
And the human babies lost, Raw postpartum aches you swallowed
Tucked demurely into handbags, folded smoothly in the batter of a world misunderstanding the precariousness of melting pots ; we struggle to blend in.
Never let them bubble over, Never let them scorch and spit
Never let a war bride’s fealty surpass allegiance to adopted land
We’re all thieves or borrowers or stewards
Of this ageless ground on which we stand. Love enfolded with enabling When that rose-sustaining son’s addictions, theft leached the life from your foundations
Still you never had the heart to kick him out, we know displacement
Making something out of nothing is our culture
And our women’s curse and gift.
Not knowing till I knew myself The war you must have waged within your body:
Daily bullets bit for beauty, Tremors rippling through the garden, Worry simmering on every stovetop, thinly masking rage And the pain you fried and coated, dipped like fritto misto But all the happy family lunches couldn’t mask its taste.
Last woman standing, Sharing those same flavors, I plumb roots
Of family trees gone fallow, left neglected cut too soon
Like grandpa’s burlapped fig I face each Winter as blight threatens to spread upward, choking creepers marble walls of mausoleums
closing in: You at 81 Mom at 61 Am I next And why am I the one To undo all these damned ancestral knots?
But when I call, I know You’d bring down the whole table Countless generations rushing in to aid me and to claim me Living heir, beloved daughter of survivors’ legacy, whole and complete. You ground me as I’m spinning as I’m bleeding under dancing ‘round and blessing all the places where I’m seated; Sit beside me till I’m able to feel it for us all, However long it takes to heal us all.
collagebyEmilyCordes
I offer up this poem for you, A bloody Valentine
As we drain cups, spill tributes
Feed the soil for the dead, soak up the sauce that lingers and fight like hell for all those left behind
Each day your voice reminds me: look around me and stay true
My marinara blood runs rivers ebbing, flowing, leading back to you.
I took a tumble in midair, Support systems were flimsy: A Lycra sling encasing me
A yoga mat below A permeable membrane between head
And hardwood floor
The last week spun in circles:
Tricks executed, turned, one, then another; What’s one more?
I asked myself
But accidents occur
When we’re not careful
Harnesses can slip
And lines can blur
And nets you thought could hold you
Aren’t rigged that way (maybe they never were).
Acrobat’s by Emily
Though vises gripped my cranium
I cried less from the pain
Than from confusion; A not-uncommon change-of-season sight
When March madness descends, Rams butt their heads, And pressures rise
Unlocking secrets lodged in hips in Pigeon Pose Or Child’s
Tears thaw
And wash the glass shards from my eyes co-mingling like the rivulets
With melting snows And undulating tides.
Cordes
At least this time I’m supine, It’s the dead that float facedown
An upgrade: laid in gutter, Facing skies.
Acrobats can lose their grips
And gymnasts get the twisties
Survival swings in balance
When we opt For solo flights
We take the lone wolf trope as canon, easily forget
That when we play the Hanged Ones
Caught in the throes of chaos
Or suspense
We don’t need to be martyrs
For the causes we half-value
Or rebels lost without one
Knights errant With no kingdom
But our own lives To defend.
I f ll
Perhaps arachnid penance
For the hubris of believing
That our gifts exist in exile, Or a paradoxic blessing
An aegis silver-lined
Self-spun but shared in making By the hands of the Divine
Our armor and our sackcloth
An emblem to remind us
That, for the worse or better, We’re creators
Of our own stories and lives
We can select the characters and setting pace and time
And craft our webbing gracefully
Fine-wrought, fine-tuned and built to fortify us.
Memories of that night
Reverberate in snapshot flashes:
The sky’s percussion, counterpoint
To driving salsa beats
Our feet flew like the raindrops
So fast we could outrun ourselves And only just perceive the threshold, narrow as a jaguar’s eyes, Between palapa shelter And the jungle’s symphony.
When lightning bolts strike flesh
Survivors bear the tattooed branches; The skin remembers everything the mind cannot contain. Our bodies form a travelogue of each embrace and every scar; our cells Rosettas to decipher Tongues of wind and rain. My same heel that pounded rhythms, steeped in grace of blue Pacific, just a year before, fragmented, broken dreams on sprung wood floors
Bottled Lightning by Emily Cordes
We bow before the moments That ignite our veins, electric, Dispelling the miasmas of the ego ’ s fevered dreams, Unpack the contradicting truths
Stashed deep in hearts and pockets: That we are shining dust specks, Countless worlds spread out beneath us.
But ecstasy’s not limited
To peaks of awe and spirit, The joys of earth are here for all to taste:
The mango ’ s nectar dances
Over each tongue, indiscriminate; The breeze prickles each goosebump And caresses every face.
Peace signs flash from bandaged wrists, and oceans cauterize the stitches we ’ ve endured, created, blood debts paid, forgiven, evermore.
Kaleidoscopes and glass shards and rose windows live incarnate, Divine potential whispers in each tiny grain of sand.
Though the oceans may divide us and the cliffside rocks may threaten, Lungs and footsteps’ songs will echo, March, scream, breathe for those who can’t.
For lightning can’t be bottled, Dying captive like the fireflies, The radiance within our souls must be distilled to share: The angels of our nature And the beasts of our survival
Must fight in just ferocity And nurture in fierce care.
May each of us remember, when our fragile vessels falter, when our sanctuaries crumble, when all hope has disappeared: The darkest nights of spirit Can ignite fresh sparks of wonder, And our pulses’ trembling thunder Will remind us: You Are Here.
