April 4, 2023 - “Eyes / blinking; a forever night’s sleep” by Jordan Myers

Mornings are a flash of orange
and blue and grey. Everything
sprints towards us then we sprint
towards everything else. Fast —-
in a moment the city unravels
then ravels itself again - - - eyes
blinking; a forever night’s sleep
followed by an eternal dawn —-
somewhere within the blooming
abyss stretches West 4th Street . . .
take a deep breath, exhale & rest
3 nights / watch 4 and a half years
run by —- Broadway, & West 23rd

April 2, 2023 - Michael Leifer’s “Heat Lightning”

“It’s just so beautiful.”

Even though I was alone, I had to say these words aloud, watching heat lightning illuminate patches of the evening sky, segments flashing between visibility and darkness like angels in heaven snapping polaroids above the cloudline. I felt the distinctive slack-jawed, slouching feeling of awe; a yielding sensation like a house caving in: strawberries falling apart in sugar or the first time a girl holds your hand after high school, you’re dizzy and the world spirals away in ashes of life.

“It’s just so beautiful,” I thought, watching the white streaks of antimatter paint landscapes on the sky’s black canvas.

My thoughts normally roll like currents, sometimes clear and brilliant as polished steel, other times fused together like deformed twins or a radio stuck between stations and picking up chatter.

Severity and mercy, smoke upon flame, Eden and the primordial moment of transgression, a primal time at the center of my existence, what holds and spins in my direction; pagan blessings through brown lips and the taste of iron; buffalo liver in the mouth of an Osage Indian – droplets of the blood mixing with the Mississippi, red fading into brown, carried in muddy swells, snaking along the cape.

Buzzing flies and the stench of death; a field of slain buffalo, hideless and rotting in the sun with their tongues cut out. The New Madrid fault line and the winter of 1812, the ground gaping open with spires of sulfur. The Mississippi river flows backwards, inverted like a Satanic cross. Swallowed by the earth, the victims leave no trace and funerals are held over empty caskets.

These summer nights in Cape Girardeau are like walking through hot soup, but the air outside is sweet, smelling of humidity and flowers it reminds me of a girlfriend’s naked skin, bathed in the soft light of the room I kept in my parents’ old house, since destroyed; her warmth, her scent and the face that reminds me. The way touching her arm felt like the most erotic thing in the world, the way a flowery aroma is carried by a humid Missouri night.

“My body is a house I place inside the storm,” I whisper to myself with my eyes closed. If I say it enough times, I’ll stop being afraid. If I keep saying it, I will be able to do anything. I repeat it like handholds in stone and I’m climbing the face of something jagged but my body remains in bed.

Culture’s fruits on the tree of life and annihilation hangs from wisdom. Oh hear them devils, these thoughts with eyes, these words with wings, these locusts that cross the ocean. These thoughts that roll like thunder, these scathed bits of memory, how a man can burn so calm and bright, my love strikes like sickness. Dreams ring like music in the black sun of a memory entombed and forgotten. I hear nothing. I hear nothing, for now is the summer of sleeping. Days are spent unseen, unheard, broken, narcotized and fading. July burns outside my window, but inside me is winter, alive and beating. For now is the summer of sleeping. Now is the summer of sleeping.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Michael Leifer graduated Fordham University in 2022 with a degree in journalism. His first assignment as a professional journalist was in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

February 11, 2023 - I cross the street and find the sunlight . . . by Jordan Myers

Outside of Alfie’s I stand along Ninth Avenue. There’s sunlight everywhere. I’m left in the shadows, wanting a table outside ––– a space to eat and breathe in peace and away from the brunch crowd huddled inside beneath the speakers and around the bar.

“It’ll be a few moments, we’re not seating outside yet,” says the maitre’d. I wait. I wait, I wait, I wait. The buildings cast a long shadow across this side of the sidewalk and Manhattan keeps swirling all around me. I stand still in the way that I imagine time does during a good meditation ––– everything held within a split second, again and again.

I walk back inside –––– “No, no,” he says, “outside is for reservations only. We’re not seating outside.” “Okay,” I think but do not say. A little agitated, I head west, cross the street and find the sunlight, grateful that it was waiting for me there the whole time.

February 10, 2023 - “The Truth Stings” by Rahil Najafabadi

THE TRUTH STINGS

I only ever realize how ordinary a person is when I listen to them talk about themselves. Their words that translate into insecurities in my head are actually facts about who they are. They are telling me who they are. I magnetize them sometimes. Not to investigate, but to worship instead. I thought loving meant forgiving, but now I know it means forgetting and walking by, in time. It’s too much to be invested when you see half of the art. What am I giving away?

February 8, 2023 - “The Person I Forgot” by Rahil Najafabadi

THE PERSON I FORGOT

When I was walking, from my day job
to my night shift of evening meditation,
the person I forgot began walking with me.
I was in a dimension––I had no face,
no shame in being colorless yet loud.
I thought working to death was the answer,
I forgot my belongings on my way home.
I worked myself away until coffee was joy,
trains were walking me to bed, but I was
doing something. In my mind, people’s
names were interchangeable. Everyone
is the same. The person I forgot didn’t
leave, didn’t die, but they don’t breath.

February 3, 2023 - “Moving in Circles” by Rahil Najafabadi

MOVING IN CIRCLES

I look at the time and the last things you’ve said.
I think of them when I’m alone, I go down a path
full of scribbles of memories––things I don’t like.
I keep believing I’m getting better, but the holes
in my story leave room for bad air to get in.
We both thought this was gradual growth,
the way we improve when we move in circles.
There’s no linear way I can’t let go, without
feeling my body is a crumbled piece of paper.
It ends, the struggle, and I know it will come back.
Because knowing is better, forgetting is a line.

February 2, 2023 - “When it’s this quiet, I wonder where I am” by Elizabeth Lerman

When it’s this quiet, I wonder where I am. It feels impossible, almost, that there is no other sound, no voices, no music from next door, and I can’t help thinking, when I’m out here alone, if there is something I’m missing — a reason people have tucked themselves away, like the cold, or the time, and disorientation drips during these hours, when I am wide awake with all the suspicious silence, but then, after a long while, a few streets and a world away, a car honks, a dog barks and life slowly starts to sound the same again.

February 1, 2023 - “The Picture of My Friend” by Rahil Najafabadi

THE PICTURE OF MY FRIEND

Is one with many layers

Like the photo album

That has multiple photos

In one slot. She’s strong

But vulnerable to connection.

There are threads between us.

Strings and electrictity bonding,

We think of how emotional we get

Even though she hides behind the stitches.

I see her eyes and know who it is,

But when I look closely, into the portrait,

I see myself and every woman I’ve ever known.

January 31, 2023 - “Local Girls” by Elizabeth Lerman

“She’s not always like this, you know,” one of them hisses.

“Yeah, she’s really not,” another one insists, her whisper hot in my ear.

“Please, please let me out,” the sad one sobs from inside the closet, but the lights flick off and she shrieks, then sobs louder.

I step forward, needing, then, to open the door, but a leg shoots out and I stumble, cannot catch myself and my face meets the floor with such unforgiving force, I have to fight to find my breath. I taste blood and my tongue finds the divot in my lip where my tooth has bitten down hard. I watch the two of them watching her, waiting for orders, or a reason to live, but she is watching me and she’s waiting too, wanting, so badly, to see how I will handle the hurt. I wonder what she would do if I stuck my own leg out and fell over again, slamming the same side of my face into the beech wood. I want to shock her, I think, want to look her in both eyes and say I can’t feel a fucking thing, but instead I stand up, spit blood and shrug.

“See you tomorrow,” I say and the three of them are silent. I smile wide and step into my sandals. From somewhere inside the closet, the screaming has stopped.

January 27, 2023 - “Life is a Crime” by Rahil Najafabadi

LIFE IS A CRIME

On the eve of death, a night winged lullaby
comes to us who are awake, to say goodbye.
There are many of us on the streets­­––we crawl
together. We become the shadows of the crows,
our white brides that come to mourn the crowd
of girls who never wore that holy gown.
The legend starts counting the days of a dictator
once the white crow takes the place of the dark.
They owe us thousands of healthy women,
hundreds of heads they are holding like wooden
souvenirs, decors of their death halls.
I came to this land to die for my people, I fall
for the same lie of patriotism every time.
But this is more than a desert and a shrine,
I deserve the whole Persian Gulf for my bridal shower.
I need the equator to open and suck in these killers.
Life after bedtime is a war disguised as a game,
they took our big, beautiful eyes, they erased our names.
My name is your name. Our names are secrets,
Messages that can’t be unsent, like steps
that cannot be taken backwards to the past––
To the time where life is a crime after
we wake up from the fog of living in a nightmare.

January 26, 2023 - “A feeling that never really formed” by Elizabeth Lerman

I have such a nagging need to know a feeling, to write down a reaction when I am right in the middle of it, like I am scared of forgetting it while it’s still happening, like I want to prove it was felt in the first place, but I think you have to live something to remember it, which is funny because sometimes I feel like I remember lots of things I haven’t lived through, like I’m hoarding someone else’s memories, packing them away in a box where I keep them in case I want to revisit a feeling that never really formed. I wonder, a lot of the time, if I am making it up as I go along, the sinking weight of what I felt in all the moments I can see but not hold.

January 25, 2023 - “In Our Tights” by Rahil Najafabadi

IN OUR TIGHTS

The night breaks easy and clean, the streets
too filthy and filled with long red shadows––
Heating my sheets again so the gunshot wounds
and the stinging pain of a forty year old revolution
feel like the sharp night that judges us, in our tights,
our scarves on our shoulders and our hair splitting
the air. These men are afraid of my hair, my skin,
but most of all he fears us all late at night, liberated,
dancing like a bunch of birdies about to die in our lace tights.

January 24, 2023 - “Everything is going wrong but none of it is real” by Elizabeth Lerman

The knot in my stomach stretches towards my throat and there is something soft in the way now, something that wants to be seen, sometimes, at least, and I am so lonely lately — maybe I always am, but there’s been more room to feel it, more space to fill with something like longing, and I love most things about my life but when the feeling comes, when it creeps up from behind and breaks itself over my head, I get dizzy and drained and I want to cry but I can’t, so instead I sob in my dreams. I sob about everything, really, everything. There, I cry because he doesn’t want me, because my parents won’t pay attention, because I am late for the wedding and have nothing to wear, because no one will walk with me, because good things happen in a horrible way, because it is getting dark and the dog won’t come home, because the guinea pig got out and a gator got her, I cry because everything is going wrong but none of it is real and it feels good, I think, to scream like that, to throw myself down on the floor and wail because I want to.

January 21, 2023 - “All the People” by Rahil Najafabadi

ALL THE PEOPLE

I contain them within me like paper boats in dry land.
I have studied every person except those who are perfect.
Why bother? It’s easy to stick with the faux moments
of all the people than a lifetime of a stale person who stares
back in the mirror. It’s too long to handle, never-ending
and unsure. I believed in being one person in many dimensions,
but not all the people inside me agreed.

January 20, 2023 - “wearing your maroon sweater / you’d ask me about home” by Jordan Myers

In the spring we’d drink orange juice & vodka
on your fire escape / wearing your maroon sweater
you’d ask me about home . . .  Milwaukee I’d say:
we watched the Bucks on Saturday nights
in high school; Ray Allen’s Bucks, like ‘01-02.
Some nights, when we were both feeling bold,
heavy with wine, we’d climb up to the roof
and just stand there for a while. Please remember:
if you ever asked me anything, I always tried my best
& if I ever had a response, it wasn’t what I meant to say

January 19, 2023 - “The road is dark and she is still going too fast” by Elizabeth Lerman

The road is dark and she is still going too fast. She becomes a teenager the moment she crosses the bridge. She slows and tries to match the speed of the song. She listens and smokes and thinks of the body in her bed, thinks of his face in the morning, when she crouched down to kiss him, when she bent herself over him and whispered “goodbye”. The moment it left her lips, the word settled somewhere in her stomach. It sat there as she walked out the door, sat there still, as the plane carried her from him to here, and now, on the silent stretch between Lillian and Elberta, goodbye sleeps soundly in her guts, stirring softly as she drives, as she smokes, as she tries, very hard, to keep the wheel straight and her breath steady.

January 18, 2023 - “Things I Didn’t Ask For” by Rahil Najafabadi

THINGS I DIDN’T ASK FOR

They are plenty, the unimagined light and the new part
in the sky that breaks the night unevenly. The new year
started without me ending the last with a deep breath.

I know the cycle of knowing and forgetting, yet thinking
that the absence of truth fills in the time between us
is like walking too early before the sun touches the ground.

Perhaps the sound of uncertainty will cease––it is silence.
I need to hear the winter trees greet each other even in death,
with the cold air between them like the time between us.

January 17, 2023 - “Some of This We Said” by Elizabeth Lerman

In my dream last night, I was missing my ring finger. 

Oh?

Sometimes I think I’m scared of everything.

You need to relax.

I’d like someone to worry with.

Stop talking.

Is every moment meant to hurt this much? 

Try compartmentalizing.

What day did I decide to ruin myself for you? 

It was night. 

Right. What night? 

I don’t remember. 

Every time I see you, we start over.

January 13, 2023 - “Before I Leave” by Rahil Najafabadi

BEFORE I LEAVE

I’m in a place I don’t recognize. The trees, the air,
the dusty snow that suddenly keeps me from going outside.
This woman, I don’t know her name. This house is broken.
Everything is just an object until another time comes
and everything is replaced. This is life, this is what happens
when things lose meaning. But imagine if the world had
no standard, no routine. Nothing will change before I leave.
I think when we live, a part of us slowly dies. Over people,
over wins. The truth is, none of those people or things stay until we leave.

January 12, 2023 - “Words and what they mean” by Elizabeth Lerman

It doesn’t happen right away. It takes a while for you to make me feel like I am starving, like I am never hungry, but then when I eat, I can never get full. You didn’t rearrange me until I let you and I always forget, but when I make myself remember, when I read back things that were said somewhere they could not be swallowed, I want to scream — see, you started it, but I’m not sure who to scream it at. I want to say to someone, mostly you, if you would sit still and listen, that, actually, there is no mystery here, no unfueled, unrequited wanting — only response and reaction, hooks, lines and several sinkers, really, only words and what they mean.