April 1, 2022
The round appearance of the golden water lilies,
Blue beneath the surface of water holding the lilies:
White ones blooming in the bold seed of spring
They were drafts slowly written in the winter wind
- Rahil Najafabadi
March 30, 2022 by Tori Ashley Matos
sonnet for everything that makes you uncomfortable about protecting black women
- tori ashley matos
“I am so perfect, so divine, so ethereal, so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission” — Nikki Giovanni
you have never oiled her scalp when she couldn’t sleep.
when she cries you wonder when she gone stop.
you live in fear that one day she’s gonna say
what the fuck she really means.
you cannot imagine a day when she might need you.
you know that your mama never lied
when she said she could take you out if she wanted to.
above all—she dreams!
what a godless way to pray!
and it comes at you fast
that maybe she is
the god you were taught to fear
and maybe to fight for her
is to fall helpless to your knees.
March 27, 2022 by Elizabeth Lerman
Sometimes the lake sits so still it looks like glass. A two-way mirror we only see one side of. The ripples reaching out towards the shore are shallow breaths barely breaking the surface. I walk slowly toward the last dock — the one hidden behind the boathouses, and think about being a child here. Still, even now, I step so carefully on my way to the water’s edge, eyes darting from side to side, scanning the path for snakes who, in summer, wound their way atop flat stones and stretched themselves out, as we did on wood, laying long and languid, limbs splayed beggingly beneath the day’s sun. Remember, my mother would say, in the face of our persistent fear, they are more scared of you than you are of them.
March 26, 2022 by Jordan Myers
Everything at west 44th
and Ninth Avenue keeps
moving, save those few
silent whispers, the ones
we sent by post, year after
year / in this new century
/ forever & a while ago
March 22, 2022 by Jordan Myers
It kind of made me laugh. The way you talked about wanting to fly to New York for a long weekend, and how we spent all night one night refreshing the page so that we could get the cheapest flight. It doesn’t matter how many stops, you kept saying, just as long as we get to New York, eventually. That all went out the window when you decided that the cheapest way to get to New York from Cleveland was by Greyhound bus, which was crazy to me. The bus was about a hundred dollars less and about seven hours longer. It didn’t make sense but after a night’s rest you changed your mind and said going by bus was the best way to go because the bus was the most direct route –––– no stoping or flying south down to Atlanta just to fly back north again up to New York. So we went to New York by bus; we went to New York by Greyhound bus, and the bus left at five in the morning, so my sister dropped us off at the Greyhound station at four in the morning. We stayed up all night playing go fish and drinking whiskey, so by the time we climbed abroad the bus at a quarter-till-five it was already bedtime, and we knew we’d make it to New York by that afternoon, which ––– the more that I thought about it, just made sense. It just made sense.
March 21, 2022
tori, 25, new york, 7 miles away
- tori ashley matos
it’s New York, they said. the largest of the original oceans. or maybe a great lake. salty and
populated. i am crossing the williamsburg bridge. it is finally warm. and don’t we always wish for
something to stir the cherry blossoms in march?
i have never been mud. i have never been ground into clay. i have given up on loving. not on love. i
am switching to soy milk. i am planting tulips. i am swiping left, mostly. i am still eating valentine’s
truffles. you say you can make me a martini, but mostly you say you’re not looking for anything
serious.
if New York is an ocean, where do the fish rest? you’re thinking of my thighs. you’re thinking of
what it might feel like inside me. i am thinking of how to make you change your mind. i wonder how
many ribs make a man. i wonder how many ribs i am. i swipe right. i keep score with my teeth and i
stop texting you back.
can we wait until a snake’s hour? speak of the savagery of us? foam at the mouth and carve initials
into concrete somewhere between here and the indent of two bodies on a warm bed? you’re almost
out of cigarettes. and i am two trees away from a forest. we share a container of blackberries. or, we
could share a container of blackberries. i swipe left.
tenderness is time consuming, love is patient, and the condoms in your wallet expire in a week. i
only write poetry about the absence of a need met. i’d never say it, but a part of me wants to be
consumed and you are not hungry enough. want to grab a drink? want to grab my ass? want to grab
the wind and make it a home?
i have never been mud. maybe i am silt. and the fish swim past, forcing me to meet them on their
way somewhere. New York, they said.
March 20, 2022 by Elizabeth Lerman
My spring jacket is older than I am and the sleeves are stained with memories I cannot be sure are mine. Sometimes I wonder where it started and how it ended up in the shop to the right of the river. It might look small from the outside, when you first find yourself at its unexpected entrance, but I swear the space keeps going and if you can stand the heat (one day I could) you will find rooms of recycled moments meant to be remember and I wonder, too, where this one might go next, when it no longer belongs to me and I think, maybe, it will find its way to another corner of time and fit someone there just as well as it did me, in this one.
March 17, 2022 by Jordan Myers
Sweetness and light both go fast. Sweetness carries a feeling, light offers up a sound. Both draw new equinox energies closer, calling April home with a whistle like Mr. Petersen’s every Sunday evening in 1996. drawing our basketball games to a close. Once was a shot clock violation. Twice was the buzzer at the end of the fourth quarter. A tie ballgame was a tie ballgame, no overtime, ever, not even once.
March 16, 2022 by Jordan Myers
One thousand shotguns go off at the same time
in my mind, the owl hoots the loudest at dawn
just before the day, the river starts rushing again
and I can’t understand the difference between
the sound of the birds outside my window in flight
and the sound of the first leaves of spring in bloom
March 15, 2022
The Drunken Night
I remember neglecting the opening reception but wine
spoke to me louder than any other friend in the room.
A sip into the night pulled me from the possible intertwine
of my thoughts with words ––– I stayed quiet, the doom
of my secret indulgence into the skin of your neck, touching
your eyebrow instead of a kiss because we are just a pair of
people. I mixed red and white that night, I was clutching
the tablecloth as my laughter poisoned the room and soon –––
All of us were contaminated. Wide smiles from the wine,
I posed as a happy person too. I injected myself into a thought,
a plant of one. A closely read and precisely written love letter,
one that I wrote and rewrote multiple times because of the small,
black dots circling the words from the rings of tears falling
from my dead, sleep ridden eyes. Goodnight: the drunk will drink
the drunken night.
March 13, 2022 by Elizabeth Lerman
It only takes a few hours of stubborn sunlight for the smell of summer to slip through the trees. I wonder, in the least scientific sense possible, what light does to leaves. I know there is an answer, but it is simpler than the one I’m after and I learned it once, in a classroom where stools met slick slabs of table and I took notes, I’m sure, as someone spoke of sun and how green things grow, but really, I only showed up when I felt like making her laugh. She took hard fact and made it softer, somehow, replacing reason with reverie, and my notebook, long buried, sat between us and held, certainly, a secret language about what it meant to bloom.
March 12, 2022 by Jordan Myers
I have watched pitter patter snow fall from the clouds all day today. Less descending
and piling up on the sidewalks, more floating and dancing through the air for a while
in a two-step with the wind. Everything outside turned grey today. There is a heaven
that comes with doing things slowly and with precision on days like this. Lingering
in front of the winter window for just a beat longer. Pausing for a moment in between
filling up the tea kettle, choosing an english breakfast tea, then switching on the stove
March 11, 2022 by Jordan Myers
I just remember we were walking south down Ninth Avenue at rush hour
on a Friday. You were carrying this black and white handbag from Madrid
and I was taking quick sips from an iced coffee whenever we’d stop & wait
for the light to turn. The walk signal would switch from a hand to a man
and we’d keep going again: south then east to Broadway then south again.
You wanted to see Union Square at sunset because you heard people play
chess, and if you wait for long enough you can sit down for a game. I thought
you’d just play for enjoyment, but once we got there you pulled a wad of cash
from the leather bag from Madrid, which you slapped down beside the table,
the cash. I think you said, try me, or give me the best you got, and I remember
not wanting to watch. I knew you could play, but I didn’t want to watch you
lose and have to hand over that wad of cash. And if you won, we’d be there
all night. Here, keep the money, I wanted to say. It’s spring, let’s keep walking.
