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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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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. -
To California, Wine, Politics, Turtles, Nihilism, and My Heart, by Adam Scheffler
After Kenneth Koch
What a jumble,
I don’t know if it’s a good idea to have all of you here
Especially you wine and politics!
Though you my heart and turtles go together always
And even politics and turtles sounds good.But in any case here you all are:
I wake up and my heart is holding you all like a shopping cart
Full of hasty impulse purchasesWith California sticking out the back cartoonishly
Amidst the wine it’s known for
And politics snuggling next to but never quite touching nihilism, -
University Town by Michael Homolka
Up steep hills which crack open like pebblesthe green-black ocean wandersin the form of a human among low squat
brick facades old typewriter paperand armchairs subconsciously withinlost as all academia to self-absorption
hands in back pockets inquiringof the psychological grass whether it perceivesitself to flow uphill mostly or downJoycean that is to say or Virginian
Sorting stackfuls of family photos
most of which it plans to toss out anyway
between existences the brainy seaweedsoaks up all possible inferences
as to the ocean Whether literal or metaphoric
whatever anyone believes in whatever
way they believe it : it’s the opposite*
Michael Homolka’s collection, -
“Social Distances” by L.B. Browne
There is a manwearing dark glassesand a blue paper surgical maskin the fluorescent sun of the grocery store.Hey buddy, 6 feet!a young woman shoutsas he backs up, nearly touches her,outrageous,she does not seethe white cane he slides in small arcs at his feet,tip tapping the waydown ravaged empty aisles.
There is a womanwith a 3-day-old coughand a nasal drip that runs down the back of her throat,
