a poem by morgan parker

Apology In Hopes of Men



These days I’m looking good.
Voiced over
with a glossier me.
Wearing giggles
to the knee, keeping
elbows off your lungs
and out of the dirt. Half-trying
to be secret, slip
into a room
unannounced. Glide softly
onto the couch and wait
for you to speak
first. Will you
hear me coming, pink
upper lip
to incense stick? Deep-cut
Aretha behind
the ears where synth
was planted once.
As a woman
I ignore what is
half-assed and full of water.
I understand
our troubles
passed down: I tuck them
into my loafers
and cross my legs. No complaints
here. I take my time.
I get excited
over time.
Hands to myself
as I am told.
No longer wonder what if
somehow a little mystery
could hurt. No longer swear
to god it’s when
I’m dead
I will shut up.

Morgan Parker is the author of Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (Switchback Books 2015), selected by Eileen Myles for the 2013 Gatewood Prize, and There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (Coconut Books 2016). She received her BA in Anthropology and Creative Writing at Columbia University and MFA in Poetry from NYU. Her poetry and essays have been featured in numerous publications as well as anthologized in Why I Am Not a Painter (Argos Books 2011) and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (Haymarket Books 2015). A Cave Canem fellow and poetry editor for Coconut Magazine and The Offing, she also contributes writing to Weird Sister and co-curates the Poets With Attitude (PWA) reading series with Tommy Pico. She lives in Brooklyn and at www.morgan-parker.com. 

a poem by elizabeth barnett

The farm


You write these laws
about the fields,
the woods.

They say no,
there are no men
living in the hollow

of the stream.
Or, a knife is enough
to keep them off.

(The law at night,
another circumstance.)
It says pull

a pale root
out of the ground
and hide it in your hand

until your fist won’t open.
And you do it
to be alright.

But you break
all over
like the law at night.




“The farm” first appeared in Slice 12 (2013).



Elizabeth Barnett's work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, and Sixth Finch. She edits the digital broadside project, Rove (rovepoetry.org).

a poem by matthew daddona

Tymbals


The cordless phone is baseless.
It rings and I don’t answer it.

I plan garden time instead. The phone
spreads its wings, or like a bulbous

plant, proves itself to the wind.
From out the trees,

cicadas lift like porch dust
and from where I’m sitting

I might just forget
the sounds made

from their abdomens,
the ribbed membranes like offshoots

of the flowers. I’ve forgotten
these sounds all winter

but now they’re back
and some tiny alarm

has been circling below like a harbinger.
Whenever the phone zings

I pretend the cicadas will answer it
and play back a memory

a hundred times over. No,
I have not yet unloved. No, I have tried

to bring you back.
The cicadas pass a message

through the leaves,
their indistinguishable vowels

cocooning, then cooing
like oms.

I want their wings.
I want the answer

to this silence
as a hum played to the masses.

"Tymbals" originally appeared in  Noncannon Quarterly.

Matthew Daddona is a founding member of FLASHPOINT, a jazz and prose improvisational group that has performed at many venues in Brooklyn and Manhattan. He has published poetry, fiction and reviews in The Adirondack Review, Gigantic, Forklift, Ohio, The Southampton Review, The Rumpus, Tin House, Bomb, The Brooklyn Rail, Joyland, Slice, Electric Literature, and Tuesday; An Art Project, among others. In 2011, he collaborated on a chapbook with poet/scholar Tim Wood, using Wittgenstein’s aphorisms as poetic conversation. He is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize and a Beatrice Dubin Rose award. He is currently at work on a novel, as well as a collaborative photography/prose project based on synesthesia.

a poem by sarah sala

The Dime Store

“The white pills could be what

they call placebos, dream stuff”

—Jackson Pollock

Such Desperate Joy

Anne Carson took a step

in her white leather winter

boots


eyes a drip-stain of ink:

a kind of acrylic spilt

from the iris


storm strewn snow

like shards of windshield

glass inside her hair


her bird a heart that would

not beat




Sarah Sala is a graduate of New York University's MFA program, and she lives in Manhattan. Her poems appear in Poetry Ireland Review, All Hollow, Leveler, Atlas Review, and Vending Machine Press.

a poem by t’ai freedom ford

past life portrait

circa Summer 1980


Genius isn't free; there's a great price to pay. And Richard knew it.
    -Jennifer Lee Pryor



When fucking is the family business
you got two choices: hide the bruise

of your shame and cry or look at it
square on and laugh until the bruise

becomes muse or keloided battle scar.
When your daddy is a motherfucker

you learn to remove your pinky ring
before you slap, so not to leave a bruise

or break skin—there is already too much
blood invested in this business when

your granny is selling your mama
and other women’s bodies you learn

irony and fucking becomes funny
as fuck except laughter sounds like bruise

and you grow up thinking of women
as sweet things to cop like candybars.

Pussy is neither exotic nor erotic
but rather ordinary as a bruise

and what’s a boy to do but collect
panties and cursewords in a house

full of blasphemous Jesuses ricocheting
out of the mouths of tricks—bruised

lips that do not kiss, just suck. What
the fuck you gone do but laugh?

And make everybody and they mother
laugh too so you don’t feel crazy or lonely—

And the laugh tracks start to loop lovely
like the women loop lovely marriage

after marriage every year like some sort
of odd ritualistic undoing of the bruise

of your daddy as pimp and Original
Motherfucker: origin of your laughter

the golden key to your happily ever
after—the records, movies, mountains

of cocaine and fuck and nigger empires
until you understand nigger bruises.

When the laughter turns to voices
that won’t turn off when the routine ends

and the cocaine only quickens everything
to a blur of fuck, you must confront the bruise

but grandma ain’t there to kiss away the hurt
cause she dead along with mama and daddy

so you pick at the scab, grab the rum to silence
the humming in your head with a cigarette lighter.

Poof! You remember running—the skin
tight with scorch   baffling light  and bruise

and the clarity is scary as hell
cause you realize the price of genius,

the product of your laughter
and your happily ever after awakens

you in a hospital room that smells
of bandage and damaged blues.




t’ai freedom ford is a New York City high school English teacher, Cave Canem Fellow and Pushcart Prize nominee. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Sinister Wisdom, No, Dear, The African American Review, PLUCK!, Vinyl and others. In 2012 and 2013, she completed two multi-city tours as a part of a queer women of color literary salon, The Revival. t’ai lives and loves in Brooklyn, but hangs out digitally at: shesaidword.com.

poems by christina quintana

Alchemy

When I think of you,

I write bad poetry

teeming with enough feeling

to turn it to gold

When I think of you,

I recall why love is important

down to the early morning resin

of chapped lips and no sleep

When I think of you,

I forget that it’s foolish;

I lose my sense of heartbreak;

I pummel through the stream of lights

as they shift to red,

kiss my hand,

and tap the roof of my proverbial car–

When I think of you,

I hear myself.

--

King or Queen(tana)


My last name
is different from yours,
though it looks the same

I see you—the little boy—
dreaming of sailboats and horses,
but becoming a doctor, instead;
covered up in other
with no way out

Oh, if I could take your hand,
you there, floating in sadness,
and tell you in perfect Spanish
that you are enough

No, your Jesus-colored skin
couldn't save you,
but it didn't make you wrong






Christina Quintana is a Brooklyn-based writer with Cuban and Louisiana roots. Her plays have been developed and produced in New Orleans, Atlanta, and New York City, and her poetry has been featured in Emotive Fruition, downtown poetry readings by New York actors, and is forthcoming in First Class Lit. She was a 2014 Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Voices Fellow in Fiction and holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University. For more, visit: cquintana.com

a poem by rachel j. bennett

Incompleteness


                       for Kurt Gödel


You are standing in an open field.
You said you would no longer believe
in signs until they come true, blue
sky not portent but blue sky, charts
the day you bought the boots less
important than their broken throats
and frayed laces. To the west,
a capsized horse. Above, a mailbox.
Open the mailbox. Another letter
from the land where you always
think you can live. You want advice
because you’ve forgotten what
you said about signs, the promise
of blood too great, stars laden as
bright camels. You will fall on your
sword because you always fall, but
to the east is a house made of
scruples. Strike the match. No logical
system can capture all truths. Eat
the jewel. No logical system is free
of inconsistency. Love is the memory
of diamond mines before anyone knew
there were diamonds and sparkling was
just the way water was in certain lights.
You are standing in an open field.
Each time the first time, easy to say,
hard to keep moving. Be brave.
You are perfect as a shock of wheat.




"Incompleteness" first appeared in Salt Hill Journal

Rachel J. Bennett likes fire escapes, the names for quarks, and gas station cappuccino. Originally from the Illinois-Iowa border, she calls New York City home today. Her chapbook, On Rand McNally’s World, will be released this summer through dancing girl press. You can find her near windows and on Twitter: @rachtree11.