April 10, 2022 by Elizabeth Lerman
I keep myself awake, most nights, nurturing a feeling of fear, a small tickle of terror that isn’t really as bad as it sounds. It’s a familiar relative of the panic I felt as a child, when I would wake in the dark and lay still, thinking about the large window in the living room, the one looking out over a yard that came alive with light if it sensed something treading on it. I thought, if I stood there long enough, and stared at the lamplit street, I would see something I was not supposed to and then it would be too late to turn away. I am back there now, most nights, watching out the window, witnessing a world of bad, wishing I had not looked. I know I am living in two places at once, seeing more than I am meant to. I know someone is walking towards the window and I know that, most nights, I scramble to shut my eyes tight before the lawn lights up and I see something I can’t forget.
April 8, 2022
I Followed a Ladybug
- Alexandra Pauley
Today, I followed a ladybug. This wasn't a planned adventure, scheduled on the Google Calendar, but a spontaneous choice that literally sprang up in front of me. I had just begun a walk through Central Park, inhaling the refreshingly crisp Spring air, while admiring the colorful flowers beginning to bloom, when a ladybug dared to land on my button nose! Stunned as I was, I managed to remain still while crossing my eyes in an effort to bring her into focus.
With a grace I didn't see coming, she spread her vibrant red outer wings, dotted with black spots, then her hind wings, and lifted off my nose like a ballet dancer. She traveled a few feet, then touched down on the lush green grass. The contrasting colors brought a wide smile to my face, and that was it. I was hooked.
Her six tiny legs carried her up, down, beneath and over, blades of vivid grass, and crispy leaves, at a pace I hadn't expected. Like a solider on a mission, she moved forward by some internal compass; ever seeking. A few minutes passed this way when a spunky chocolate lab sprang across her path, sending the grass from which she clung, into a whirlwind!
Once again, her wings sprang open, she drifted upward, and held her position in the breezeless afternoon, like a hovering helicopter. She paused at my eye line, and I kid you not, dipped her head to me, before sailing off into the lush North Woods of the park. I lost track of her before long, but the feeling of companionship lives on. We shared a moment, that ladybug and I. And although we will never see each other again, her kindred spirit resides in my memory.
April 6, 2022
AWP 2022: A New Beginning for Writers, Again
- Rahil Najafabadi
Last month, I was lucky to participate in AWP 22, that was held in Philadelphia, PA. Each year, the Association of Writers and Writer’s programs holds a conference in a different city, where writers, editors, students and faculty unite to celebrate their field. Many panels are held and a graceful book fair ramps up the excitement.
As a poet, I felt quite strange on my way to Philly. To be clearer, I was quite discouraged with my work before leaving. Amid a writer’s (poet’s) block, I wasn’t sure my work informed my identity, or vice versa. I felt confused with how I defined myself, as a poet. As a Persian born poet writing Persian poetry in English. But something changed once I was there; I was in the right place, really.
Being among writers always gives me hope. I’m very young, and therefore many crossroads present themselves to me. It wasn’t until the last day of the conference that I felt confident about pursuing the craft of poetry. I attended a panel about American Sonnets—a poetry form I’m most fluent in writing and reading. I gained a lot of insight, but also a lot of encouragement. I met many poets I admired from states and miles away, and had the chance to see people who cared about a genre, a form, a style I cared for, which is quite profound.
This is why poetry readings are necessary. This is why it is important to be back, to be present, to attend readings in person.
April 5, 2022
Untitled. First Date Meditation. #1
- Tori Ashley Matos
The night before a date, I think about which person I’ll drag out of the closet—don’t laugh—and introduce to tomorrow night’s first kiss. Is it the leopard bodysuit and black heels? Should she throw on a leather blazer or is that just fishing? Is Joy Division and an as yet undecided jean more of a third date kind of nonchalance? Is it the kind of outfit you discuss your anxiety in? Do you discuss anxiety at a bar? Everything about dating is ineloquent and unoriginal, but writers somehow still write.
I’ve checked the weather. It’s supposed to rain. A strappy satin sandal at a 50 degree angle from the body, on the corner of 42nd and 10th at 11pm, under a drizzle that lays just so on a cheek or a lip, just before he puts me—gently, chivalrously—in a taxi is an enticing vignette, but the satin. And maybe that’s really all this is, anyway. A series of daydreams: tableaus and disappointments. I mean, its a first date on a Wednesday for fuck’s sake. I’ll likely splash into an nondescript Uber in boots too big for me and that’ll be another person I’ll shove back onto a hanger with a bad name. Didn’t work, address in post.
There’s nothing stopping tomorrow from making magic. Fuck what you heard, but it can happen. You can let a boy who’s taller than you with a delicious mouthful of a name chase you up a flight of stairs to see Washington Square Park from above. You can let him take you home, stumble his way on top of you, and hear him thank you for the ways your eyes are maybe the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. You can remember, in detail, the first time a man called you beautiful in his bed. When you’ve only ever been 20 and hot, you feel finally like a woman.
So, I hold out a little corner of me for hope. Nothing too crazy. Just a morsel of maybe. Right next to my fear of murder and rape. Somewhere adjacent to just normal, endearing embarrassment at existing in a body. Just underneath a trembling, searing certainty in my own youth—full lips, wet pussy, and eyes that look good from above and below. It might not be love. It usually never is. But daydreams and disappointments can make you fall a little bit closer until you just fucking trip. And there it is.
April 3, 2022 by Elizabeth Lerman
I am thinking about reflection and all the surfaces we spot ourselves in. Uncanny, always, to catch a glimpse of the person you are going through life as, to see your own eyes etching a scene of someone staring back at them and both of you have it now, that feeling of being watched, of being seen from somewhere outside yourself and so when we hung mirrors on the trees it was to say to one of those selves, stay here a second, stand still and look, and I wonder if, when I turned and walked into the woods, someone did stay there, back pressed to brown bark, and kept on watching as I went.
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.