Poetry
Drying Time
by Richard Berwind
Tobacco silos beat
In red dashes
Across car door windows
Indicating the closeness
Of destination.
They dry in Massachusetts
Heat haze highways
As green gardens
Flourish in soy and in
Sunflowers.
My grandfather used
To grow sunflowers like
He used to smoke cigars
But now his bones are too
Fragile to dig into the Earth.
I witness the garden shrink
Along with his body,
The rows emptying to
What he can manage
To take care of.
He passes down Amaryllis
Telling me it will flower
In the winter, and if the
Stems grow too long, cut them
Off, they will grow back stronger.
Maybe one day,
I can travel back north and
Show him a flower cultivated
Through renewal, but for now,
Tobacco rules my vision.
Deutschland
by Amy Jarvis
You are ambiguous—
a distance, an enrichment,
we travel across you caverned &
sprawling—gentle remembrance. The earth has greened
over (since all the horror here) & everything
has kaleidoscoped—
buried roots reaching & stitching—new beginnings.
Unspooling—the
act of sewing self into / brand new earth. A synonym for
rebirth—a renaissance of growth— a fist / unclenched,
this testament of youth.
everything is
brighter here, after cinders— 71 years of
sparkle / your future
iridescent, the
sky blossoming—blue & growing. If I stare
long enough,
it anthropomorphizes—an incarnation
of hatching butterflies. A pink lung breathing
after / years of ash & ache.
Thoughts on the Falls
by Jordyn Taylor
Annie Edson Taylor was
the first woman,
person,
to survive going down Niagara Falls in a barrel,
barreling, barreling, barreling,
down the monstrous Falls, she
escaped bleeding but survived, though
Joseph Avery wasn’t so lucky,
going over the Falls,
18 hours of struggle
gone in a slip,
barreling, barreling, barreling,
down, though
this time there was no barrel:
just a log and the water and the
Falls.
When you go to Niagara Falls, you are confronted with
sad stories and survival,
recordings and retellings,
horror and honor,
rapids and radiance,
boats and bodies,
mist and The Maid,
museums and memories,
tourists and travelers,
barrels and barrels and barrels,
Why is it always a barrel?
Giant Falls loom over you from either direction,
Canada or US,
doesn’t matter;
they’ll pull everyone in the same.
when I stand on the edge I can’t help but think of
falling over,
in my head, I don’t survive, but
Annie Taylor did, and we have the same last name...
The last time I was here, I stood on the boat that was
in the center of the Falls,
Maid of the Mist,
blue ponchos making us blend in and
stand out at the same time,
I wonder if that’s how they pick out the people who Fall off but,
nobody Falls off the boat.
I am mystified, but
now I feel like capsizing.
I see a glimpse of someone Falling over the side but know
they’re not actually there,
what if we got stuck
what if we succumb to the Falls too,
what if we are just another story on a tape, but
there’s no barrel on the boat so now
there’s not even a
chance of
survival.
During the day, I see
rainbow(s) over the Falls,
beauty a thing of massive power,
they scream and thunder
I think they’re singing,
their beauty tries to mask the blood that seeps through its water
but it really is beautiful isn’t it?
At night,
lights project onto the Falls,
making them even more beautiful than during the day,
but why light up something that was already stunning?
I am mesmerized,
knowing that no one is going down right now,
just tourist gasps and
ahhh, they watch the colors and
oooh, they just changed and
wow, they’re gorgeous,
it really is beautiful isn’t it?
Watch the colors
barreling, barreling, barreling.
a tourist trap of natural beauty.
at least you don’t get fined for looking,
just for plunging down and
Falling,
just make sure you survive first.
Doors of Dublin
by Alyssa Bower
What the doors of Dublin don’t tell you
is that the streets
hum harmonious and indifferent,
inclusive of the world
but apathetic, nonetheless. They’ll push you through the sights.
You’ll swing trim corners and scuffle bridge slats,
dodging trippers just to stumble after
a busker on the quay and a beggar
twice as soon. Span Ha’penny and breathe Liffey; and then you’re
swept into hens on their way to the
Temple, bleeding green beads on to the
cobbles they misjudge. Sit for a moment
on a stoop and survey your street-corner throne.
Take in the trad, and make friends with the
knocker until you can’t hear any
longer and passerby exclamations turn into
the beckoning of home, anyway.
Estelada
by Alyssa Bower
My sister tangoes in Barcelona,
drink in hand, a musky, dark-haired
man trying to pull her attention
from the fuchsia sangria
to his wet and waiting lips.
She’s sweaty, bobbing relentlessly
with the pounding Spanish club beats.
Outside, the streets glisten
and shine in Euro-splendor,
moon rays cascading
across cobbled roads and stray balconies,
dripping off the Sagrada Familia.
Some alleys hide from view, strewn with
riot revelry. A man on a corner
sits draped with the flag of Catalonia.
He sleeps, even as my sister traipses
delightfully by, clutched by
the beauty of a city
she’s a stranger to.
Bustle
by Aiyona Hayman
after Paul Celan
the bustle moves us forward
links recht links
genau
we’ve wrestled a step or few
the bustle moves us backward
under immigrant pen
a-sher becomes ash-er
we’re hidden across migration
the bustle moves us
genau
we ghost across country
our tongues bustling
in our tired mouths
die Hauptstadt
by Aiyona Hayman
S-bahn soothes me
screeching down trails in yellow
I always pick corner seat
Here: perpetually floating, yet
I still yearn to know what I weigh
doors open once pushed,
once das Licht ist grün
As strangers in die Straße stare
I travel in the night
approached for a kiss,
I sneak between a sliding door
& smell the flesh of crocodile drugs
a rotting wheelchair,
ich liebe Berlin
S-bahn ringing like a singing bowl
through the pitch,
she cannot recognize
her reflection in die Fenster
a wine weekend
chewing challah, cheeks full
Adel says he would pinch them:
click — - — yes
& tick — ° — no
with a folded tongue
behind teeth and judgement
my tattoos, my bare skin:
totally haram
I wish to be celibate, but
it is too late
your aura doesn’t allow
for abstinence
the first skyscraper was built in Yemen, out of mud
what oxymorons to speak? my rhetoric wrapped
around pillar: beloved Brandenburger Tor
staring at green chariots I replay
your knees bending repeatedly
on prayer mat
ich vermisse dich zu sehr
‘iinaa aftaqadk kathieran
you remind me that I am
Ma shaa Allah
& this places Ein Stern
upon my heart, so gelb
at the gate endlessly reminded
Mittwoch
by Aiyona Hayman
in the ink of ache
body becomes charcoal
dissolved into empty space
a Gropius-Bau black pond
installation suppresses joy
yearning between pillars
a cavity is pressed into heart
wallah, du bist so suß
in hollows I find Sie
our insides
radiated with laughter
habibi, help me not
to misremember bitte
nicht ubereinstimmen
by Aiyona Hayman
our wounds
will blossom
in the distance
but because
we’re adults
we’ll work them away
we are/ where we’ve come from/ what we now miss/ displaced pair in flux with a flat tire/ if this
is true/ you are your Yemeni mother/ if this is true/ i am Appalachian alfalfa/ i am you/
zusammen/ we wallow/ mismatched
call me/ unqualified/ but what sense is derived from this?/ i dial/ for your smile/ pretend to be
more religious/ wallah/ ich bin ein Juden/ and Muslims can marry/ people of the book
Three Movements
by Aiyona Hayman
after Ana Mendieta
(I)
The silhouette becomes a shadow of our flesh. In the reduction of matter, we are
consumed in black, reduced to an outlined curvature of what was once skin.
Ana Mendieta pressed her silhouette into the earth.
Her flesh caked in the sand her silhouette lives in
& is washed away by shore.
Her body & mine are similar; shaping and being shaped by a soil sifted around us. A
perverse notion of what it is to be a citizen of such.
(II)
In my central Pennsylvania landscape, I am tethered like a silhouette to its outline, a
shadow to its host against the sun. Yet our silhouettes don't stretch like shadows & I am
pushing so hard into the Earth.
My sisters’ silhouettes
scatter like a first seeding
fingers crossed, but not all will germinate.
Ana Mendieta covered her silhouette in tar & feathers, a punishment of permanence.
She managed to return to Cuba for her body, for her landscape.
(III)
Ana Mendieta's body was flung from a window. Carl Andre pushed her while the critics
noted how she fell. Her silhouette splattered and stained the sidewalk.
Unlike the earth, her imprint was not welcome to live there.
Even though, one would think
that such a fall would produce
enough pressure on such an impact.
I envision my sisters' silhouettes among fields,
rising from swaying cornstalks like hollowed husks
& I hope they allow their bodies to travel with the wind.