LETTER TO A 19-YEAR-OLD REVOLUTIONARY

After Diane Di Prima

When I send a text message asking how
the interview went or how the resume
is coming along, you do not respond.

I try to reassure myself: This is normal
for you. You’ve been working overtime
at a job you hate. Maybe you stopped

for a beer on the way home. It’s the week-
end after all. On a good day you don’t carry
your phone. On a bad day, you ignore it.

But I worry, my favorite young anarchist.
I worry I’m colluding with the enemy,
selling out and selling you short. I ask if

you need help with repairs on the old van
you bought with cash. I ask if you’ve looked
at apartments with your brother yet. I make

excuses as I sacrifice the planet—for you,
I tell myself—as if you could outlive her.
But surely, she can take more hits than you?

I say this as if your fates were not so
intricately entwined. “There’s no such thing,”
you assure me, “as ethical consumption

in a capitalist society.” You say this to leave me
off the hook. I appreciate the pardon, but I
worry about you, working for too little pay

with scant protection. Forgive me if I wish
for you a good home, if not property, clean air
and water, your doctor bills paid, and for “America”

to finally mean something. You still keep
me up at night. No longer with a cough
or cry in the dark—no sudden light

in the hall. It’s been years since I could pause
by your door, lean into the jamb and listen
to you breathe. You took over my dreams.

I am grateful. Whatever I have
is yours. My phone is on.
Call me. Ask anything.


David J. Bauman has written three poetry chapbooks, most recently a collaboration with his son Micah called Mapping the Valley: Hospital Poems (2021) and Angels & Adultery (2018), both from Seven Kitchens Press. David has recent work in New Ohio Review, Crab Creek Review, Blood Orange Review, and MacGuffin.

 

THE NEW APARTMENT

We had no trouble finding it.
The door was unlocked so we walked right in.

The outdoor staircase was beautiful.
We both loved the view of the Hudson River.

You would be busy with something else in the morning.
I took care of all the paperwork.

Even after I was awake for a long time, I did not stop to think
that we had decided on this apartment in a dream.


I HESITATED BEFORE THE MYSTERY OF YOUR ABSENCE

There was no warning in the mirror.

The world had halted.

Alexander’s famous horse began to dance.

My hands were full of grapes. Servants surrounded

me, carrying platters of snow from the Caucasus.

Alarm bells rang, gendarmes came running. The hour

was late. I lit a cigarette. You appeared before my eyes.

 

FOUNDATION

you almost choked on that wild golden

apple we found on a tree next to a field

growing out of the foundation of what

had once been a farmhouse overlooking a valley

a hundred and fifty miles from here

 

Michael Cooney has published poetry in Badlands, Second Chance Lit, Bitter Oleander, Big Windows Review and other journals. His short stories have appeared recently in Sundial Magazine, Bandit Fiction, Wilderness House Literary Review and Cerasus Drunk Monkeys and his novella “The Witch Girl & The Wobbly” was published by Running Wild Press in 2021. A second novella, “A Good Catholic Girl,” was published in 2023 by ELJ Editions. Michael has taught in public high schools and community colleges and currently facilitates a writing workshop with the New York Writers Coalition.

 

EQUATING

Brown man stands before a river. If brown man stays
on the bank, his body would stretch 1,885 miles from
where his shadow starts. These dimensions make it so
he wants to put his skin in touch with the current.
Two distinct worlds become possible inside him: 1)
brown man either drowns, flailing and gulping down
water or struggles against the riptide until he swims.
In either world, the river’s heartbeat, a race between
light and water, whorls through his ears. In the river,
his body might speak. Might say struggle. Might say
move through the unsayable chill. In his mind, he
wants to jump. In his heart, a faith diminished. It is a
stone-like plummet before rising. Let’s say he doesn’t
make it. In the river bed, asleep, the sediment eroded
upstream is a soft grave. The body, curled. The body,
graced. In this mouth, he is not devoured. Alone
again, not just his body, but his name. There is no one
to mourn him, but plenty of water. Let’s say he
survives, finding a strong stroke. How long would it
take for the current to carry his darkness to new soil?
His darkness, the sum of the sun touching him all day.
Warmth and light. His skin, divided by these two, is a
gliding shadow under the skin of the water. This
calculation consumes. And the roar of the river is
there, too. One hundred or more decibels as close as
he is. Twenty five birds perched in an elm want to
doze in the afternoon. But they scatter. Brown man,
who is still on the bank, multiplies this twenty five by
two, a body and a shadow, and 50 seen things move
where the horizon thins. He takes that number and
extrapolates those lives now touched by their beauty:
infinite. He cannot think in these terms. His feet and
shadow equal dust. 

Eric Cruz is poet and teacher residing in San Antonio, Texas. He is the winner of the Pecan Grove Press Chapbook Contest for Through The Window (Pecan Grove Press 2002), selected by Palmer Hall. His poems have recently appeared in Carve, Gulf Coast, Leon Literary Review, and Zocalo. Cruz received his MFA from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson.

 

GRINDIN’

I didn't really know what my parents did until a few months ago,
the terminology of construction worker a familiar
answer I've housed beneath my tongue.
On a car ride home once though,
my dad elaborated on the giant air conditioners
in buildings they’ve helped install.
H-V-A-C mija, I remember him telling me,
defining the acronym of his job,
hanging the letters up in walls of my mind,
decoration for future greetings
I could remark upon.

My parents wake up at five in the morning
to grind everyday out.
Ironing out their neon shirts
that’ll enter the washer at the end of the day
full of soot and insulation,
and shaking out their faded jeans
before lumbering into their exhausted ancient vehicle
driving unpredictable minutes and hours to their
never guaranteed job.

They've worked all over,
At universities close and far away from home,
hot shot hospitals,
And big business buildings.
Summers, they come home with shirts stained to their ends
in sweat,
hair clinging to the back of their necks,
hands already stretching towards their shoes
to relieve their feet
Of the burning inferno of grade A safety boots.

I think a lot about city I live in, that carries
markers of my parents' work. Of the
college applications sitting on my desk,
the halls my parents walked through
to work so that I could walk them later to learn.
I think about the ghost of my parents labor
lingering in the freshness of the air that cools my body
when I step into a building.
Of the men and women with brown skin
that looks like mine
that heated up during long hours
to help me stay cool.

Gracias, I tell the air.
Que dios te bendiga, I tell the artificial wind.
When I see my parents, I hug them,
kiss their hands and rub their shoulders,
the love of my actions carrying all I cannot say.

Sooner or later I’ll be talking with a stranger,
listing my hobbies on a whim
and spilling my dreams out like water.
When they inevitably ask me what my parents do,
the term HVAC mechanic will gurgle its way out of my mouth,
existing proudly in the spaces between.


Haile Espín is a Mexican-American writer from NC. She has been previously published in Apricity Magazine, Blue Marble Review, Valiant Scribe, Azahares, and elsewhere.

 

MY LAST MEMORY OF HER

I’ve never known her sparse, sunflower hair to be this shiver white.
She grips the silent cigarette between French tips, cane bearing her
muted frame, shuffling toward the Cavalier buried under decayed leaves.
Crouched crescent over the steering wheel, door open, she starts the car
but doesn’t touch the clutch. Play Elton John. I load the sheer disc.
Her wisteria voice wavers along with “Benny and the Jets.”
Eyes scrunched, exhaling waning lyrics, she tamps out embers, an ode
to her diagnosis. I shoulder what’s left of her weight as we walk
the jade path to the hospice. With panting breath, my grandmother whispers,
I’ll see you soon.


Ebani Filbert holds a B.A. in English from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She minored in Creative Writing and Journalism & Media Communications. She served on the staff of 13th Floor Magazine for three publications. Her creative nonfiction piece “The ACT: A Test of You” was published in 13th Floor Magazine in 2023.

 

KINDLING

                    —in memory of Li Guozhong

Clouds move over the tall reeds
Silky rays pour down the foggy harbor
You had stood there, carrying a long lens—

led us birding in a Monet’s painting
You abruptly crossed the time’s gate
When the sun passes the lighthouse

your laughter still echos into the knee-
deep shore where our tripods once stood
When snowy owls return to the island where

you showed us how to find their
wonder & leave them undisturbed
I hear you whenever a bird is calling

 

Xiaoly Li is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship Grant (2022) recipient. Her poetry collection, Every Single Bird Rising (FutureCycle Press, April 2023), was a Zone 3 Press Book Award finalist. Her poetry is forthcoming, featured, or anthologized in Salamander, Saranac Review, Spillway, PANK, Chautauqua, Rhino, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for: Best New Poets, twice a Pushcart Prize, four times Best of the Net. She lives in Massachusetts where her photography has been shown and sold in galleries in Boston. Xiaoly received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and her Master’s in computer science and engineering from Tsinghua University in China.

 

BURT REYNOLDS

I once turned around on the Florida Turnpike
and drove all the way to Pompano Beach  

to see if I could meet and maybe get an autograph
from Burt Reynolds.

Turns out the radio commercial said something
about boat rentals.

Though I had the day off I was not interested
in spending it at sea.


Norman Minnick is the author of three collections of poetry and editor of several anthologies. Most recently, he is the editor of The Lost Etheridge: Uncollected Poems of Etheridge Knight, which has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems and essays have been published in The Georgia Review, The Sun, World Literature Today, The Writer’s Chronicle, Oxford American, and New World Writing, among others. Visit www.buzzminnick.com for more information.

 

AMERICAN JUNIOR HIGH OR ON BEGINNING TO FIND A WAY

...one nation under God...


When I left the Church, I was in seventh grade.

I’d learned, for one, there were three popes at once;
for two, the papacy had been passed down
to lines of bastard sons; and three, about
the wars waged in His name, like the crusades,
the opposite of what His teachings were.

I started to become ridiculous,
maybe ridiculously serious, 
in a quiet way.

I had to forge my own, well, not beliefs,
but tenets, concepts I held to, would trust
enough to allow them, when in doubt,
to hold me. (I had learned some French by then,
tenir—to hold, and knew what tenets were.)
The old beliefs and faith had been exposed
as fickle friends, passed down, for the most part,
only for self-styled “Christians” to wage wars;
for Puritans to massacre and thieve;
my current country, not declaring war,
to turn into a murderer of masses
of freedom fighters throughout Indochina,
on college campuses, and on our streets.
I knew not what those tenets would become,
but knew what one could not possibly be:

So I never said the two words “under God”
aloud during the morning pledges of
allegiance. Something about separation
of state and church, but also, I would not
invoke His name to fuel a rabid fear
and rationalize the scourge of a regime.

The twelve-year-old I was, and thirteen, was
confused about a lot of things, and did
not know what to say—said nothing—but would
not use in vain the name of God, and risk
not just what may have been a blasphemy
but also what seemed at the time clearly
a blacker sacrilege—complicity.

One day Breonna saw what I was doing.
Or not doing. Not saying. Asked me. And
I told her. Three days later, she began
to do the same; we went to the same church.
Soon all the Catholics joined in, in the silence.
Then Trayvon noticed. Ditto, then, the Baptists.
Eric brought the Episcopalians. Michael,
the Congregationalists; George, the Lutherans.
By spring, the whole class stood in silence and
let Mr. Shepherd say the words himself.
All the words.
And some of us, O half I'd say, instead
of placing our right hand over our heart,
bowed our heads with our hands embraced, as in
a prayer for the country, rather than
a pledge to just an inert piece of cloth.

Now, one day Mr. Floyd the janitor
was in the hall and walked by just as we
were standing at our mixed attention. George
was his kid, and was in our class, so he
explained it all to his dad. Soon, not only
Mr. Floyd, but the whole custodial
staff stood in the hall outside our room for
our silent pledge. I noticed two or three
kneeling, even, sometimes on just one knee.
In a minute, it would be over, and we all
went about our day. For that minute, though,
we were as one, in truth and peace and hope—
and maybe a spot of integrity.
At least it felt that way, those last few months
of seventh grade. Not that it made a difference.

Nevertheless, I look back at that kid,
at all us kids, at what we have become,
what I’ve become, and can now say: the way
we were back then, the way I was, was something
else. Would that I were—we were—again.

 

James B. Nicola’s poems have appeared in the Antioch, Southwest and Atlanta Reviews; Rattle; and Barrow Street. His full-length collections (2014-2023) are Manhattan Plaza, Stage to Page, Wind in the Cave, Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists, Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond, Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies (just out). His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice magazine award. He has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller's People's Choice magazine award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and ten Pushcart nominations—for which he feels both stunned and grateful. A graduate of Yale, he hosts the Hell's Kitchen International Writers' Round Table at his library branch in Manhattan: walk-ins are always welcome.

 

SOMEWHERE THE NIGHTJAR

Here in the suburb, I miss whippoorwills
singing their cruel names all night.

Their call is glass, the canning jar
I kept at my bedside in summer,

gently tapped with a pencil
to make captured fireflies turn into stars.

Nightjars were my comfort in darkness.
Sleep does not come easily

anymore. I keep straining to hear them,
but there are miles and years between us.

Am I being too sentimental, thinking
of sitting in the yard with my sister,

twilight a blanket around us?
I remember owls and frogs and the creek

restless on its way toward something greater.
Tonight, my sister is in one city,

and I’m in another. I don’t know
what she misses. Even the Luna moth

clinging to the storm door appears wistful
as it listens to the cries of some far-off other.

 

ELEGY FOR THE FREE WORLD

Somewhere, someone close
to where I am right now

has taken to the streets;
has taken to a life of prostitution; taken
to poverty and penniless philosophy,
sleeping in the darkest, most unpopulated places;

taken to games of stickball and tricks of skateboard;
taken to sodium light shadows;
to running away
from a father who would raise a hand;
to having nowhere else to go
but sidewalks and gutters and alcoves and alleys;

to rioting for the right, any right,
just to say―my life has value―
I am equal to you.

Yes, somewhere
the sun has put its foot down
on a craggy shore; where someone’s ancestors escaped
the persecution of gods, vengeful gods
who can only survive on sacrifice;

where children hide in bathrooms just to stay alive;
where men and women live and die
by the gun, the goddam gun.

And somewhere else, someone begs
a miracle from the moon,
which cares for nothing and no one;
the moon that watches women being raped,
like my friend in the entry of her own apartment;

the moon that gathers refugees of war
into suffering, small tents where people dream
their unforgiving dreams; the moon
that can’t keep up with the sun;
that can’t keep a lover from dying;
that can’t find its way in the dark;
that can’t make anything better,
no matter how much you wish it could.

And here, here is where I make love
to the only person who ever seemed to understand; 

here is where I give up
praying to an unresponsive god;
here is where I march from sidewalk to street to sidewalk to street
to tell the world I am not like other men;

where I’m not like other men,
even when they carry torches,
even when they call out names
trying not to panic when the end of the world is near;
yes, here,

here is where I take you into my arms
and walk with you into the dangerous, cracked, and ruined streets.


David B. Prather is the author of We Were Birds (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2019), and he has two forthcoming poetry collections: Bending Light with Bare Hands (Fernwood Press, 2024) and Shouting at an Empty House (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023). His work has appeared in many journals, including Prairie Schooner, The Comstock Review, The Banyan Review, etc. He lives in Parkersburg, WV.

 

BALL

I find a ball.
It is blue like life.
When I kick it I
Understand that
Somebody died.
I try with all
My might not to
Kick it again but
My foot is a
Volcano spewing
Ash into the
Scared air.


SUNLIGHT

Waste words with me.
We will change dry into
Not even a little bit wet and
Everyone will understand it better.

 

Dominik Slusarczyk is an artist who makes everything from music to painting. He was educated at The University of Nottingham where he got a degree in biochemistry. His poetry has been published in various literary magazines including Fresh Words, Berlin Lit, and Home Planet News.

 

CITY BEES

I didn’t take down the scaffolding tonight.
What’s your hurry? When you dip love
into nectar, honey becomes a crust.
Beneath each kernel of control is a cob
of cost. I mistook your cut hydrangea
for a match. Once,
I approached her without clothes
but she didn’t even ask how I was.
I wouldn’t have told—
I, too, was high. On life.   
Did you set fire to the car? Nowadays,
people don’t even hang up.
Or wear pants during meetings. 
Spontaneity? We were so poor, I thought
McDonald’s was a real restaurant.
Better slow than sorry.

 

Kenton K. Yee’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Plume Poetry, The Threepenny Review, TAB Journal, BoomerLitMag, Terrain.org, Hawaii Pacific Review, I-70 Review, Constellations, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Rattle, among others. A PhD in theoretical physics, Kenton writes from Northern California. Follow his poetry news on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scrambled.k.eggs/