to be a woman is to be that thin casing
in which knowledge is embedded
in thick knots of sausage-wire that
coils against fair skin, sweet skin,
kempt skin. kept thin and malleable
bruising and tearing and fit to burst.
Hecuba died a mother because
once new life had seen the inside
of her, the messy sprawling tubes
and wires of her, it was all she had
left to be. oh, the towers of troy crumbled
around her but she keened a cry
for her children alone.
let the men play at war
women only play at bodies.
but she was a just caricature of a
womb, wailing the wide walls down.
and I have seen the woman knowledge
of my labyrinth of cell-swelled cords,
and I have seen the woman cries of those
who no longer have a choice.…
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Lamps drip sour light and mercury
carrying sounds of erosion
roaming through pipes and three-story cities.
Everywhere is the lessened trickle
of Heaven through bare metal
tickling the gutters, wetting the lawn
sputtering the candles, leftovers
of lovers. I hate this word, it’s the one hiding
behind the drapes, skin wan on the covers.
The air breathed into the window
is heat-heavy, hallowed. Sieved through
lacy silk embroidered with geraniums
my mother grew, effortful. The dregs
of this are summoned every other month
to the whimper of the mourning dove;
this love. I don’t speak of anymore
for I am so sure it’s missing from
the cooling departure of faces on rain;
one more reason to shutter the windowpane.
– Zachary Dankert
Author’s Note: It’s funny: many, many months after I’d written this poem, am I really so sure that this love is missing?…
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I.
Waste-whipped, we climb—
facing away from wind impossible
when wind gusts from every angle
eddying tiny tornadoes
a white out winter.
This isn’t winter though; it barely
was. One storm then gone but
the air keeps dry and silent
and bone joints crack. What was
once flexible has stiffened
like a starched bleached board.
II.
It had gotten better.
How is it now much worse.
III.
Back in ’02 hurt seemed precious,
longing a hobby, and loving a vice.
Now we measure time by decades
to save what little we have left.…
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A man offers us directions in French, vowels
and consonants served on a platter
of smiles. Trains click past. Stations
are cards shuffled, threshold after threshold
offering its chance. We count the stops
to Champs-Elysees.
Mornings are commuters with strollers
and briefcases. Paris afternoons
are smoked down, crumpled cigarettes
dropped in gutters. We trudge back to Montmartre
through placards for braided hair,
a smell of coffee and piss,
young people crouching in doorways.
We buy bread and cheese at the boulangerie.
At Du Vert au Vin, wine
winks from the walls,
fish in an aquarium. I keep thinking
of that corner of the Metro,
subterranean and damp, where a Syrian family
begged from a blue tarp. The woman
behind her veil, the man lying on his side.…
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When they opened/ the tomb of the Chinese terracotta army/ supposedly they were brightly colored/
armored in red and turquoise but only for a moment before the newly introduced oxygen ate away
the paint
The way the old men who live on the plains will talk so casually about drowning surplus kittens/
alongside, when it’s going to snow, and which barbed wire fences need mending
This is the kind of thing/ one would always seek to recapture, don’t you think?
The airlessness,
All those colors, the ghost escaping into the sky
– Nate Maxson…
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So many lost.
Rain vanishes
As if rain never
Existed.
My dual wombs,
Empty-basined,
fill with heat.
My slashed through
Languages,
Shattered bloodlines.
Diaspora, voices
Outstretched and
Stretching
Into future tenses.
In stumbling mist,
My twin tongues
Taste our future.
My rubble-voiced blood
Consults narrow odds
That open like dancing,
Improbable oceans.
We will exist
As rivers run to seas.
Fresh and salt.
Mingled and mending.
– Karen Poppy…
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I
March has come to the hills outside Bologna;
the snow melts slowly here beneath San Luca.
II
A mild breeze dances among the dark pine trees;
whispers resound in the Fosse Ardeatine.
III
A cold rain falls, falls cold above Bassano;
the Brenta flows on, on over white stone.
IV
Fields blush—blossoming poppies at the roadside;
each bloom a wound that history scraped open.
V
A woman hesitates beneath the portico;
a canal glimpsed from a forgotten window.
VI
In Longarone the dawn’s breath is strangled
by the past; infants dashed against the rocks.
VII
In autumn the wind whispers in the piazza,
a boy picks up the scent of chestnuts roasting.
– Eric T. Racher…
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