FIRST MEMORYby Timothy Liu
My mother in a stupor,
stumbling down
the hallway in panties
soaked in blood—
my hand leading her
back to bed.
ANONYMOUS by Timothy Liu
MAKE ME JUMP INTO THE AIR by Cat Richardson
After David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream”
Listen you’re a moonage marvel,
a Bowie from the Bayou with a snake
in your pant cuff. You carry an electric
swamp around you like a cloak
of wet stars.
Skinny legs, I’ve seen you leap
over cars without a running start.
I’ve seen you become a diving bird.
You dipped into the water and came
up with a flayed goat’s head in your
claws. Picked the flesh off, you did.
Start a fire. I’ll send smoke up
to the smallest gods.
That might not sit right with you,
friend, you’re a complicated
little splinter, but get low with me:
I’m an alligator I’d make fine
leather goods. You’re a space invader
so set me loose in the pulsar’s pool.
Keep your toes sunk in the bog
bottom. It’s the only way
to lose this freak parade—we’ve
got a long way to go before the ground
reaches the sky, and you’re all
I’ve got in this radiant swamp.
Listen to Cat Richardson’s discussion of “Make Me Jump Into the Air” below…
A POET FORGETS HIS LIBRARY by Cornelius Eady
For Jack Agueros
Look at all those lovely books.
What are all those books to me?
Words are wriggle-fish in an endless sea.
I over-hear them talking,
Sometimes I think
They’re talking about me.
All this time, all this time
All this time at sea.
They say it has no memory.
A poet forgets his library.
Something was written long ago.
A voice I should know says it was written by me.
Something like a hymn, almost holy song,
Some face on the cover, but they’ve
Got it all wrong.
Tell me what this nonsense
Has to do with me?
All this time, all this time
All this time at sea.
They say it has no memory.
A poet forgets his library.
My name they say, is a man beloved,
A man with a printed history.
Here I sit, and here they try
To read it back to me.
What’s this accusation?
The hell is poetry?
All this time, all this time
All this time at sea.
They say it has no memory.
A poet forgets his library.
Words written by: Cornelius Eady
Music composed by: Bernie Heveron
Vocals: Cornelius Eady
Guitar: Marvin Sewell
Everything Else: Bernie Heveron
Listen to the song “A Poet Forgets His Library” below…
Cornelius Eady describes his hybrid music/poetry project and the specific inspiration for “A Poet Forgets His Library,” dedicated to Puerto Rican poet and activist Jack Agueros…
STRANGE GOSPELS by Cynthia Cruz
I was locked in the linen closet, lost
In ruffles of gingham tatters and my sky
Bleached hair. I wore the
Paper crown. I wore the flimsy red
Tiara. I let them
Pin them wings on me.
The palace, I say, is burning.
And snipers masked in mandarin felt masks.
In my room, I can hear them
Breaking off of daddy’s ancient CB:
One day she’ll be a looker.
Someday, a knockout.
But all I see when I look in the mirror
Is a bright blue sky filling with F16s.
Listen to Cynthia Cruz’s reading of “Strange Gospels” below…
THE ANGELS by Maria Hummel
They have not come for you. They will not blister
the day with light and swords. The room remains
a room, and not a portal. The syringes
hold no messages, not even plain
emptiness. The food trays, when you eat food,
rattle if I move them, and, if left alone,
sink beneath the ice of grease. The good
doctor is pregnant, and strokes her own
belly when she speaks. In a thousand years
no one will remember any of this.
The hospital will be a ruin. Your
tubes twisted in a dump, or burned. But if wrists
are stumps, hands are trees; I lift yours to learn
how the wind moves. Hold them to know where it turns.
DEAR SUBURB, by David Roderick
Some blunt hammering set me off,
that and the teeth of a saw.
I left behind my sweater,
the remains of a sandwich, my camera,
some paperweights, my lament. I left behind
a few weak coals I’d blown alive.
This happened somewhere
off one of your forgotten roads,
just past a farm stand where customers leave
a little corrugated shed
with the smell of rotting corn-silk in their clothes.
The important fs are focus, flatness, and frame.
As I walked toward a harvest
of photographs you vanished
in the pinhole just beyond
my reach, like an owl in its darkest seat.
Listen to David Roderick’s reading of “Dear Suburb,” below…
AUBADE IN PIECES by Victoria Lynne McCoy
Even as I deliver my body
to the subway’s tenebrous mercy,
I cannot un-know this:
each time daylight invades
our limbs, the sun marching
its restless armies up the sheets,
my love will put entire states between us
and there’s no telling
when the map will tesseract
itself to bring him back.
~
Always his breath that first
breaks me. His chest a hum
of lightning bugs. Lethal
little darlings. His fingers
swarm my thighs. He leaves
teeth prints to miss him by—
Praise this skin
its miracle cells, their blessed
forgetfulness.
~
Under my pillow, a mason jar
where I collect my name
each time it burns his mouth
open, fireflies
in the summer porch of him.
I pin their wings down.
I sing to them of the hour
before the wolf comes.
Listen to Victoria Lynne McCoy’s reading of “Aubade in Pieces” below…
MAP (7) by Ye Chun
7. Olympia, Washington
The Pacific Ocean shovels coals in the distance.
My drunk friends drop pebbles at me as I lie
on the couch losing water. Be happy, be happy, be happy.
I’m trying to see spring sprout, mountain that smells like green apple,
grass younger than me, to see the pink sweater
I wore when the sun sprinkled pink dust and I practiced
xiang gong to make my body fragrant,
not the speeding lines of the steel tunnel,
a hand gridding its fingers on my ribs.
I’m trying to breathe, to reach water or an address.
In the white house
with white windows
who spends the night?
The dead say: don’t
talk so loud
I can hear you
even before the words are said
In the woods
there is a bird
whose feathers
have every color
in the world
You’ve seen it
You’ve gathered
every name of it
in your throat
MAP (5) by Ye Chun
5. Lhasa
Seeds tier in a pomegranate.
Sweat beads convex-mirror corners of a night.
You pick up a piece of coal from roadside,
wrap it in a blue and green checked handkerchief
and give it to me: What makes you feel warm?
In the Himalayas, a snow leopard
spins gold in early morning. I tie a prayer flag
to a balloon and let go. Its little feet step through clouds
and rain falls on the white stupas, the hind-scalps
of prostrating pilgrims who say: om mani padme hum, om
mani padme hum, om mani padme hum…
Buddhakapala
(Skullcup of Buddha)
presides over
twenty-five deities
two hands
holding his consort
(Citrasena)
four hands
his skullcup
chopper
ceremonial staff
and drum
In the dancer’s pose
(ardhaparyanka)
he stands on a corpse
supported by a lotus
MAP (4) by Ye Chun
4. Shenzhen
Streetlamps imitate stars.
Stains on a hotel ceiling imitate mountains, boats and ruins.
…either do great good or great evil,
the journalist, 23, says. We walk
along the low brick wall into a park. A palm tree
stops us and deepens the ocher of our faces.
A stone bridge shapes an ellipse with its shadow. We
don’t have much to do so we press each other’s body.
Is a compass a moon bringing a finger to its lips?
A mosquito net
with a crimson mosquito
A roach crawls beneath the net
onto her right leg
My leg feels odd
she says
It’s broken
her algebra teacher says
It’s broken
her chief-editor says
It’s broken
the legless beggar says
It’s broken
the manager of Human Resources says
It’s broken
her snoring lover says
On the wall a map
of cherries and water paths
MAP (3) by Ye Chun
3. Zhongzhou, Luoyang
This area is between brown and purple.
All the apartment buildings look the same.
I need to lie down, call out
your name to one of the black-barred
windows. In the most crowded market,
my classmate is selling embroidered pillowcases and lingerie.
If you appear, I’ll make you look at me balancing
the sick little invisible animal
on my head. I love the sweet numbness of dusk—
we glow before vanishing.
Lay out the grid
of roads and wards:
Align the northern part
of the western wall
the middle stretch
of the eastern wall
and a road that comes
in Gate VII
turns west
and heads south
nearly reaching
the course of the Luo
Align the other roads
the southern part
of the western wall
most of the northern stretch
and the surviving part
at the southern end
of the eastern wall