Wild Silk by Brian Russell

Wild Silk

  

out in the wild the kingdom

of worms spin in silence

in separation and live

to leave behind

  

what’s become to them

useless such as luxury

begins and again becomes

  

the meticulous work

it took to shape a pattern out of

patience wore down a continent’s

  

grasses into paths and passed

through dangerous terrain for what

for something so indisputably beautiful

  

you’d be willing to trade everything for it

you’d be willing to go to war to wear it

under your armor as close as anything

  

might get to your heart, it’s hard to believe

something so small so easy

to kill for even less could produce this dress

this red mess it makes of my senses

 

Ditat Deus by Eduardo C. Corral

Ditat Deus

  

1

In high school I worked as a bag boy. To prevent shoplifting my boss had me follow the Mexicans and the Native Americans around the grocery store. I was slightly troubled by this. So I only followed the handsome men.

  

2

I learned how to make love to a man

by touching my father.

  

I would unlace his work boots,

pull off his socks,

  

& drag my thumbs

along the arches of his feet.

  

When he slept I would trace

the veins of his neck,

  

blue beneath my fingertip.

He would lift me each morning

  

onto the bathroom counter,

dot my small palms

  

with dollops of shaving cream

so I could lather his face.

 

Here and There by Juan Felipe Herrera

Here and There

I sit and meditate—my dog licks her paws

on the red-brown sofa

so many things somehow

it all is reduced to numbers letters figures

without faces or names only jagged lines

across the miles half-shadows

going into shadow-shadow then destruction         the infinite light

here and there            cannot be overcome

it is the first drop of ink

 

Witness by W. S. Merwin

Witness

I want to tell what the forests

were like

I will have to speak

in a forgotten language

 

Planet by Catherine Pierce

Planet

This morning this planet is covered by winds and blue.

This morning this planet glows with dustless perfect light,

enough that I can see one million sharp leaves

from where I stand. I walk on this planet, its hard-packed

dirt and prickling grass, and I don’t fall off. I come down

soft if I choose, hard if I choose. I never float away.

Sometimes I want to be weightless on this planet, and so

I wade into a brown river or dive through a wave

and for a while feel nothing under my feet. Sometimes

I want to hear what it was like before the air, and so I duck

under the water and listen to the muted hums. I’m ashamed

to say that most days I forget this planet. That most days

I think about dentist appointments and plagiarists

and the various ways I can try to protect my body from itself.

Last weekend I saw Jupiter through a giant telescope,

its storm stripes, four of its sixty-seven moons, and was filled

with fierce longing, bitter that instead of Ganymede or Europa,

I had only one moon floating in my sky, the moon

called Moon, its face familiar and stale. But this morning

I stepped outside and the wind nearly knocked me down.

This morning I stepped outside and the blue nearly

crushed me. This morning this planet is so loud with itself—

its winds, its insects, its grackles and mourning doves—

that I can hardly hear my own lamentations. This planet.

All its grooved bark, all its sand of quartz and bones

and volcanic glass, all its creeping thistle lacing the yards

with spiny purple. I’m trying to come down soft today.

I’m trying to see this place even as I’m walking through it.

 

dream where every black person is standing by the ocean by Danez Smith

dream where every black person is standing by the ocean

  

& we say to her

                         what have you done with our kin you swallowed?

  

& she says

                         that was ages ago, you’ve drunk them by now

  

& we don’t understand

  

& then one woman, skin dark as all of us

                         walks to the water’s lip, shouts Emmett, spits

  

&, surely, a boy begins

                         crawling his way to shore 

 

April Snow by Matthew Zapruder

April Snow

Today in El Paso all the planes are asleep on the runway. The world

is in a delay. All the political consultants drinking whiskey keep

their heads down, lifting them only to look at the beautiful scarred

waitress who wears typewriter keys as a necklace. They jingle

when she brings them drinks. Outside the giant plate glass windows

the planes are completely covered in snow, it piles up on the wings.

I feel like a mountain of cell phone chargers. Each of the various

faiths of our various fathers keeps us only partly protected. I don’t

want to talk on the phone to an angel. At night before I go to sleep

I am already dreaming. Of coffee, of ancient generals, of the faces

of statues each of which has the eternal expression of one of my feelings.

I examine my feelings without feeling anything. I ride my blue bike

on the edge of the desert. I am president of this glass of water.