Sobriety & Statewide-Lockdown, Day Thirty-Eight by Ace Boggess The Body is a Glori ed Hotel by Andrew Buckner Stingrays Asleep by Dylan James SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG SONTAG Alive to Beauty by Ellie Fisher Lingering by Fariza Farid Memon In Every Sheepfold & 41 Kilometers by Gretchen Filart Perfect Disappearances by Paul Hostovsky Meet Your Maker by Roukia Ali Experiment — To Meet a Dead Lover by Shaurya Pathania
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The Other Self by Strider Marcus Jones
Ace Boggess Sobriety
I need a good relapse, a cradle. I need a return to old ways, Followed by the not-caring, not-feeling Hours of enchantment away from news, Thunderstorms, & the ignorant king Who says too much while saying nothing Genuine. I need (I say need because I don’t want it, do: a contradiction — Recovering junkies full of them) Relaxing pauses from America, the virus, Bigots, gun-wavers, death tolls, Wolf Blitzer, also, with his instant hyperbole Reading possible & thereafter saying Likely. You used to be a pillar, Wolf. What happened? I used to be A junkie, & look at me now, pining But not really. I wouldn’t go back To silence the critic inside. America, too. Look at you: shattered Windshield, token to a broken game. America, you’ve become a symbol For other symbols on top of symbols. What do you mean? I mean, I need To keep clean, survive. How about you, America? What will you do when It’s time to sober up or die alone?
Ace Boggess
Statewide-Lockdown, Day Thirty-Eight The apocalypse has A best-if-used-by date: Three days from now The lockdown lifts, doors reopen. Wish it were a joyous occasion — The wedding of a princess To herself, The end of a war we shouldn’t be in. Too many variables. Also, irrational beings on Earth. One spark burns a forest. One misstep pulls society down a well. Wouldn’t we rather rubberneck At the accident Than be a participant in it? I’m apprehensive We’re driving too fast on an empty road, & There’s a deer ahead. Its antlers Will shatter like Christmas baubles Bouncing off the hood.
Andrew Buckner The Body is a Glori ed Hotel
The body is a glori ed hotel — A mass of straining, struggling, Yet stalwart muscle, Connected epidermal islands, Fiery planets of unexplored sensations, A confounding, often confused internal cosmos Guided by the searing stars of instinct, faith, Hope, fear, and imagination — We are forced to facilitate, vacate By the all-seing, almighty God of expectation, time By society’s forced worship At the bloodstained altar of material gain, Its hivelike mentality, Its machinelike ability To make us forever stand in service, Warehousemen at the assembly line, Of producing the same bland, generic Culturally acceptable product For as long as this hotel Is in our name.
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The body is a glori ed hotel — Roof slumping, insecure, shaking By the gale force winds Of the irritated, swollen sting. The punching st of judgement Towards the curve of the mouth, The gleam in the eyes, The hue of the skin, The gender, abilities
Of the singular building, Our body, our esh, In which we are sole inhabitant, The singular palace in which we are born. Though the walls are frequently claustrophobic, con ning And the constant familiarity of our own company Is simultaneously too much and too little, Too routine and too alien, This glori ed hotel, our body, our esh, Is our shelter, perfect imperfections and all, For which we are custodian, defender, builder, Occupant, owner, manager, The beacon, the light keeper, all. We are the carpenter, architect. The interior blueprint designs are uniquely, Beautifully our own, In this body, glori ed hotel Planted proudly in the soil of self: A glorious, gaudy construction That we should be able to Freely decorate, illuminate, Facilitate, commemorate — A glorious, gaudy construction Which we should be happy To liberate, dwell
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Past the horizons of sight, sound, The physical plane, Into the aftermath of memory, The aftermath of grit, grain, pain, The aftermath of now.
Dylan James Stingrays Asleep
Storm-cloud delves like a faucet through my being. Receptionist dances with avors of seeing. On certain nights, with our circuitry, I swear I hear the world fall asleep. Brand new promotion, I’m tired like my thermostat. Wormholes and axes and scourges of men aunter. Pollution of life — family doesn’t give back sometimes. Find a nest and try to feel alright. I won’t be home for Thanksgiving this year. I’m sorry, I’m not guilty, although I think I am. Campaigns — seances — ancés — matinees; Phone sucking porridge brain. Bony sh, dead on beach, So far out of reach with an intact eye That glistens like diamonds inside the earth’s core When the water wets all of the roots. Ribs coughed up out of sand, Slimy sh-skin melts in heat, Creaking deceased like decrepit church oors While the knight mounts his horse.
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Rice in a spoon right by my mouth. Head calm and oating through these lights and sounds. I wonder what would be if these walls weren’t here, if the weight of the world felt like a lion’s amount.
My cof n lint feels like a cloud. I worked until the sun burnt out. I kissed her and she moaned with satisfaction. My dog curls up on his side, Sleeping by my own two feet. Thunder soothes from outside.
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I turn off the lights.
Ellie Fisher Alive to Beauty
In my notebook, I write fragments About things that make me feel awe — The way sunlight catches water, The way fallen fruit rests on the ground. Next to this list, I write words: Undoing, being undone. Lately, I have been thinking about my body, About the way it moves — It is disorientating, but within this sensation Is something germinal. I keep swimming out beyond the rocky outcrops Of childhood & adolescence. The water is below blood temperature. As it cuts, It reminds me that I must learn to live — With myself, with tenderness. & yet melancholy unfolds itself within me. I go walking, moving my body with an awareness That is the only thing I can do to curb this sadness. Walking, I think, is a lot like reading: The movement of limbs through space matches The movement of eyes across a page — Both soothe the bruises which bloom. When I go walking, I try to keep myself Alive to beauty: a secret between myself & myself.
Fariza Farid Memon Lingering
Laying on stomach, Observing painted nails Glistening under the rays of the noon sun, I listen for the sound of her arrival. My ears prick up at the faintest, smallest of sounds — The sound of the clock ticking in the living room; The hurried steps of someone who is clearly going to miss the bus; The voices of elated children playing catch; The buzzing of a y that has just entered through the window. When will she be here? The pot of chili on the stove is getting colder. The calls are not going through. Reheat. Retry. Repeat.
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I should wait a little longer, Hold on for a bit, Stay until the color of the nail paint dries, chips. The clock in the living room emphasizes on my waiting period. Time passes dully, knowing I will wait forever. It’s time to reheat the chili.
Gretchen Filart In every sheepfold
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A black sheep banished By meek lambs for breaking free Of a wooden fence While they stand motionless, Carotid arteries waiting to be severed, Shank cut so clean The esh mistakes a gash For a warm pat. So young that they could not remember It was the doting farmer Holding the knife.
Gretchen Filart 41 Kilometers
News: The Halo Space delivers the ultimate ight experience, taking adventurous souls to 40 kilometers above space for ve days onboard a strato-balloon. Minimal carbon emission, zero guilt for as low as €100,000. Forty kilometers — only a kilometer short of Gaza’s land size. For free people, 41 kilometers is a surreal ight to space. For Palestinians, home and a death sentence.
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The Halo Space delivers the ultimate ight experience, taking souls to 40 kilometers above space. Where do lost Palestinian souls go? And where are the free people ghting for their ight to rightful space?
Paul Hostovsky Perfect Disappearances
This poem is for all the writers writing. On their laptops, desktops, smartphones, legal pads, napkins, palms of their hands — desperate to get it down before it disappears like the phone number of the most amazing person you just met and have to see again — just have to — so you write it on your own skin and walk off into the world alone with the whole world in your hand. God help the writers in love with the words that disappear like disappearing trains you catch by running after them, losing a shoe, a hat, an earring, a spouse — a lifetime of chasing the disappearing words, breathlessly reaching for them, grabbing ahold and hoisting yourself up onto the caboose, entering the rhythm of those corridors moving through the world as you move through them, feeling your way, looking up and down and all around in search of that most amazing dream you dreamed and followed all the way here.
Roukia Ali Meet Your Maker
You were the best of self once. Face fresh as a newly struck match Of re that Prometheus did not steal from the Gods To be so easily snuffed. The darkness once wept to hold you, Its glacial tendrils burning in pained, retreating cries A combustion of ashes upon touching your spirit, Scattering away in hisses tossed to the wind. You were the best of women once; All felled by the temple of your words, A shrine of sweet, soft af rmations that Demeter did not bloom from her happiness For you to be tempted by the eye of blood, The dripping promise of pomegranates. You were the best of children once, Curious eyes compasses to great and dangerous adventures, A caution no better felt than the roguish grin That settled under the wide brim of your paper hat. Doomed be Poseidon and his raging oceans As you crossed the sea on nothing but your wooden raft. But he did not quell the sea for you to see, Only ships launched into indecipherable futures, Worlds that have not yet been mapped.
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You were the best of champions once, But you no longer care for the gold You see itting across your neck As if in mockery of the sun. Helios does not drive his chariot across somber skies To shine across the passing mists of your silver cheeks.
You were the best of stories told, But now the sirens’ voices sting with saltwater And in pity of your vacant wade they will not sing their songs. For you are the animal that stalks along, teeth bared, The Nemean lion destined to starve, as the world Solves your riddles. Oh, best of humanity, where have you gone? Oh, all that would have made you kings, Gods on earth! Had you kept the passionate, simple veins of life That so long ago, have you forgotten, Were gifted at birth.
Shaurya Pathania
Experiment — To Meet a Dead Lover Theory - A coin is not limited to two sides, its untold value is that it holds power; the power to transcend - space, time, being & worlds. It’s a common link between the breathing & the dead. Procedure & Observation - The few seconds when Moon aligns completely with Venus, a planetary parade is made, if you sit down on the soil under open dark sky, toss a coin high, in the air, with a candle lit & a tumbler by your side holding warm water, you unite the ve elements of nature. Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space, within you & around. It produces absolute silence; coin lands amid heads & tails; upright. You enter a void; it’s not the purgatory.
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Result - It’s a barren land with a stream owing of fresh wine, you locate your dead lover across it, shocked by you for diminishing the reality & being; they smile at your sel ess-sel sh effort to reach a metaphysical height for an uncertain glimpse, or a promise or everything in between. The lover shouts at you & warns, not to cross the stream, It’s not time yet, you ask questions about their last wishes, the last sleep, the dreams they had & you can’t stop inquiring, however, they deny you, all of you; they speak only about your presence in an unknown land, beg you to go back for the sake of shared love, so at last you agree to the dead, plan to return but insist them for an answer, a promise, if they’ll wait, until you arrive again. They smile big, almost laugh.
Strider Marcus Jones The Other Self
The other self, Abstracted in the press Of turned-down pages, Gets mucked up in the mess And shows how unlaminated age is. If nothing else — These nude notes Being played behind the curtain Where the stage is, By soloist strings And hermit woodwinds — Are far hopes Of uncertain Opening chords Calling out To the duet I haven't come to yet. And afterwards, If all those afterwards Could talk and kiss and spout, There would be No more misery — Move it out.