Affection by Emily Jungmin Yoon

Affection

We watch the moving topography of brutality, the red slopes

and orbs mapping deaths from virus, from fire, from firearms.

It feels impossible to think redand visualize beauty and yet

red roses are splashed all around the city, so brazenly alive

that they stupefy me. People stop, pose, take pictures

of their loved ones under the mess of flowers.

I love the red beak of the rose-ringed parakeet even after I find

the threat they pose on the land I live. Affectionmeans both

     fondnessand disease.

Words reflect the world, which is to say nothing makes sense.

If we say only civilization can finishthe world,

does it mean to completeor destroy? If we say the world might

     weather—

to endure or wear away?

Blueberries for Cal by Brenda Shaughnessy

Blueberries for Cal

 

Watching little Henry, six, scoop up blueberries

and shovel them into his mouth, possessed.

 

I’m so glad I brought blueberries—wish my kids

could/would eat them. Cal can’t; Simone won’t.

 

Henry’s sisters Lucy & Jane took turns feeding each

other goldfish crackers and sips of juice.

 

Arms around each other’s neck and back. Tiny things.

I wish my daughter had a sister like that

 

and my son a nervous system that let him walk

and munch berries. Sometimes I can’t bear

 

all the things Cal doesn’t get to do. I want to curse

everything I can’t give him.

 

Admire/compare/despair—that’s not the most real

feeling I’m feeling, is it? I feel joy in Henry’s joy.

 

Blueberries for the child who wants them.

There’s all this energetic sweetness, enough to go around,

 

to give and taste and trust. More than enough.

For Cal, too. I want to remember this.

 

My children seem to subsist on music and frosting.

Where there’s frosting, there’s cake.

 

Where there’s music, someone chose to make a song

over all other things on this earth.

Shahid Reads His Own Palm by Reginald Dwayne Betts

Shahid Reads His Own Palm

 I come from the cracked hands of men who used

           the smoldering ends of blunts to blow shotguns,

 men who arranged their lives around the mystery

          of the moon breaking a street corner in half.

 I come from "Swann Road" written in a child's

           slanted block letters across a playground fence,

 the orange globe with black stripes in Bishop's left

          hand, untethered and rolling to the sideline,

 a crowd openmouthed, waiting to see the end

           of the sweetest crossover in a Virginia state pen.

 I come from Friday night's humid and musty air,

           Junk Yard Band cranking in a stolen Bonneville,

 a tilted bottle of Wild Irish Rose against my lips

           and King Hedley's secret written in the lines of my palm.

 I come from beneath a cloud of white smoke, a lit pipe

           and the way glass heats rocks into a piece of heaven,

from the weight of nothing in my palm,

           a bullet in an unfired snub-nosed revolver.

And every day the small muscles in my finger threaten to pull

           a trigger, slight and curved like my woman's eyelashes.

Fence of Sticks by Deborah Digges

Fence of Sticks 

As I was building a fence of sticks I heard the question,

Weren’t there times worse than this for art?

Weren’t there those who, rather, bristled were they understood,

who worked alone, the manuscripts thrown out or bled beyond the margins.

I was sewing the wire between the pine and sycamore,

tightening the warp with willow and forsythia, some just in bloom.

I thought of those who’d rather hang themselves than call truth heresy.

Upon whose deaths the citizens rejoiced.

They who burned everything.

Those who died longing to say more, whose heads rolled singing.

I was strict with myself, worked long past noon.

The gloves made the weaving hard so I wrought barehanded.

So many pages ending _____, or neatly numbered, or written across the mind.

Those for whom art was not an occupation.

Indeed some never wrote again after what war or famine. Some wrote of nothing else.

I gathered the climbing roses’ whips almost impossible to fit,

that made a lovely spiraling pulled taut, resisting,

each section a stay against the ocean of dead leaves.

A wind came up, the early heat unnerving. Those who refused to make it easy.

They who’d be damned to change a word. The way it came to them

so they would claim. The way was given. How heavy the lengths,

year after year, of pine boughs, Christmas wreaths brown to the bone,

red ribbons like a shout, like an embarrassment,

the holly sprigs still sharp as thorns. Those who died having said too much.

Or who must stop every few lines to dip the quill. They who ran out of time.

Those who ripped folios from the classics.

The boxwood leaves, like oaks’, hold to the bough.

You must strip them by hand, yank the twigs backwards.

I took an ax to the twisted yew, blow after blow, and still it tore.

Its sap ruins this page. I had to pull myself away to write is this not happiness? 

Boy coming out Gay going far to Lady way to Queer by Rickey Laurentiis

Boy coming out Gay going far to Lady way to Queer

 

I confess the Trans is dangerous. It leans provocation

On the teeth of the mind: an idea, to kill all other ideas? like Category,

Order, Line? Suppose the Problem of the Century still

be the Color Line since the Problem is, increasingly, the line?

I walk my far lyric to self. Was I gay or trans, when? Will

I Rickey or Key? The Danger be if Trans willingly tear up and confuse all

Surfaces, & neat embankments and leveed cities sufficiently

keeping one hood from another, what else? If you Look

at me liking what you See-are you Gay? Fag? Distinctions Bi? What am l

going toward once a Boy-going-gay (never Man) coming forth to Lady,

(few deny) for Queer's umbrella (gained) for Dreamed

Queen (all gained) to What else? Tho if I be Queer should Women who snarl

Love at me be lesbian, are Men who throw want at me straight? Carl,

I was gay my whole twenties & do I miss it but I miss the staying gay

after tongues kiss, that little Bottom Shame glossed in that name, Bottom.

Now Gay to Queer Miss to Dream to Trans,* all nice. Tho trans will suffice.

On the Thirtieth Friday We Consider Plurals by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

On the Thirtieth Friday We Consider Plurals

 

At the border, a flock of journalists.

A sacrifice of tires burned behind us.

Beneath the picnic tents, a funeral of families.

What else will we become in Gaza if we gather,

if we carry our voices to the razored edge?

We were met by a gallop of prayers,

clamoring recitatives puncturing the shroud

of humid air. We were met by a delirium

 

of greetings, peace-be-upon-us surreal

between embraces, the horizon locked

and loaded. What is upon us

will require mercy. Let the plural be

a return of us. A carnage of blessings—

bodies freed from broken promises,

from the incumbrances of waiting.

Under Limestone by Richie Hofmann

Under Limestone

 

It rained in fluted torrents,

the earth smelled of manure.

It was like desire

entering and possessing you quietly.

We undressed.

The sun through the windows made shapes

on the couch I lay face down on.

Our jeans were soaked

and wrinkled on the radiator, our socks heavy.

Then your eyes were opening a little.

Then you could hear the mopeds starting up again.

When it was dry enough, we found a small bistro

where we had prosecco and fries,

and took pictures of one another in our damp clothes

under trees and buildings

of the hated regime.