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An Unobservable Force Will Never Reveal Its Face by Brianna Noll
I thought the invisible
hand of the market
a velvetine fist,
viridian and calculable
like vectors of rain
in a dark winter.
I diagrammed its force
on the bedsheets
when I couldn’t sleep
so it was always
with me—a flutter
of huge wings
that would block
out the sun if they
weren’t so invisible.
I began to listen instead
to the wings of the hand
of the market, -
To Childbirth, by Jasmine Bailey
In our hava nagila,
my chair tilted into fire—
you savored my burnt hair,
the way I look
compelled. What didn’t I give
that you asked? That’sa rhetorical question.
I presented the dowry
of nerves, muscles, blood,
a hope chest of napkins
no longer white.The chrysanthemum
is more than chlorophyll and cellulose.
But a woman on the rack,
a woman in love,
is a secretless animal.*
Jasmine Bailey is the author of two poetry collections from Carnegie Mellon University Press: Alexandria (2014),
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Five poems from “Nomad” by João Luís Barreto Guimarães (translated from the Portuguese by António Ladeira and Calvin Olsen) Artwork by Anthony Ulinski
In the photographs of others
I am present in the past of lives I
have no knowledge of (men who saunter to the north
women who are headed south) in
photos
that tied me to several foreign cities
where my face remained retained
by mere chance. A photo is memory
(like a map
is voyage)
in them I’m anonymous at the corner of
a scene
just because I crossed that square
at that time. -
Devil’s Parlor Trick by Charlie Clark
It is only now that you recall the emperor
scorpion he at parties would take out and with
two open hands on the granite kitchen countertop
bait into stinging him the pain the gag once the tail
stuck in raised up until like eight scrambling
ends of lace it hung from the thick pink turning
purple at the puncture and like chirping fan
blades the laughter in the windless air of the airless
little kitchen coming from the heady smear of faces
to whom nothing lasting had been revealed
watching what he’d done be undone be gently
shaken back into its tank and how he allowed
each to test the pulse of the darkened ring already
growing stiff there in the center of his hand
*
Charlie Clark studied poetry at the University of Maryland.
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Two Poems by Phoebe Reeves
Part One, Question the Sixteenth: Works of Truth**
There are fourteen species of silent star,and the species vary according to generative power.
A woman cannot perform divination, knowingthat blood and the dead answer. But think—
the soul appeared through a woman who wasa witch, just as the images of things
are called by the names they represent. -
“ode to summer” by Cheyanne Anderson
every time I go onto my balconybare feet on dusty cementand look down the streettowards the subwaytowards the markettowards the road straight to the beachthe air gets a little warmerand I can feel the spring preparing,about to pass me by
_
and I hope I’ll make it out in time to buy a new sundressand a pair of sandalsbecause summer somehow always catches me by surpriseand by the time I’ve thought to embrace the way humidity sits on skinthere’s a bite in the air and it’s gone again
_
I keep dreaming of ways to catch it
like a firefly in a jar
(only temporary)
so I can see it up close
so I can remember to notice the sweat on the back of my neck
and the proof it serves
that I was alive that day
so I can skip down sidewalks
so I can lie in the park
so I can chill another bottle of wine
so I can kiss and kiss and kiss
so I can forget to put on sunscreen
so I can walk until my feet ache
so I can embrace the way my hair frizzes from my scalp like a crown
so I can fall in love in ways I’m not sure I deserve
so I can remember to admire the way the fire hydrant down the street
(somehow always breaking open)
washes away cigarette butts and receipts and regrets
and makes a babbling brook on Bushwick streets
just until the repairman comes on Monday
just until I can bring myself to open the jar and let it go
and whisper well wishes into the first breeze of autumnmy heart is too big for this bedroom,
