BathHouse Journal 25
Surveying the Border
BATHHOUSE JOURNAL 25 TEAM
Patrick Flores-Scott
Editor
Elizabeth J. Mitchell
Consulting Editor
Carla Harryman
Faculty Advisor
“Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown
Surveying the Border
Thomas Dunn
Let us begin at the point of first contact
⎯⎯⎯
Edwin Torres
transfer point
we have crossroads we’ve known
crossroads that have shown us the way
where we see what passes
for direction for solace for action
we've seen what lies obscured countless
warnings with breathless songs
at the outstretched indifference
of mankind our crossroads
paved over by repetition layered
by equation our actions re-lived
in voices we’ve heard before
relegated to history by inoculated falsehoods
our transfer points will never fade
bound by fate to repeat forward
the engine fired how nebulous the deity
in charge of the coal house
to dare the crossing its emblem
our breathless hearts — the horses
of our emotive present
⎯⎯⎯
Matt Reeck
Shibboleth
The men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied,
“No,” they said, “All right, say, ‘Shibboleth.’” If he said, “Sibboleth,”
because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and
killed him at the fords of the Jordan.
Judges 12.5
_______
Where is Sanctuary?
Each word uttered renders others mute. Each story began in earnest
ends in misbegotten silence. You thrust forward your left hand to shake.
Shibboleth.
You think bartering is the best way.
Shibboleth.
Clothes worn backwards. Shoes on hands. Laughing when they recite
their litanies. Crying when they pass the spike through the hyena’s heart.
Shibboleth.
Administrator of Difference. Here where things are done. These
sentence-times.
Shibboleth.
All the mercury gathered from the mines. All the streetlights bandy in
the night wind. Ms. Fortuna has reduced her working hours. Now the
Fog Man fills the theater’s wings with pacifiers & blankets.
⎯⎯⎯
Sazia Afrin
migration, a movement
⎯⎯⎯
Roberto Bedoya
Dust and Violin
“‘I will lead you up to the border. There we will part’ …
And he added: ‘Where is the border, O Stranger, unless at the end of ourselves?’”
-Edmund Jabes
Death border
placed near
bye
Hindered thought and sense
Being with paradox’s line
Wait and write
“prickly pear strange”
I say “I”, remaining so – world and intoxication
facets and loss
Imagine a magic show
Exploding citrus blossoms
Light seizures of real rooted in
dust and violin
flower badger and food city
transformation, and after that
Figure
Swilling mash of vowels
Wind and want
Washes
Summer rain and ambition’s cage
Thirst
A la, slow and low
Tucson and Consequence’s
Baked asphalt and dirt
Souped–Up and Pumping
Car through it all
Pronouncement’s thunder-prints
Desert underbrush
Oh, rattle man
Oh, snake and spiders
-put it on the table
The own
laws of alongside, that emanate
- for Maribel Alvarez
⎯⎯⎯
Jasminne Mendez
Machete: Look
It matters what you call a thing
— Solmaz Sharif
It isn’t easy
to look
at what I have
cut. Which is to say —
wounded
from the body
of a tree
or a woman
or a child.
Which is to say —
lean in &
over & learn to live
without.
Which is to say —
want.
A limb.
A phantom
pain. A cold
sharpness
where the blood
or the blade
remembers bone.
Which is to say —
map
what I have done
for war &
for cane,
for borders &
for land,
to lovers &
to home.
Which is to say —
look
the other way,
there is always more
to see.
Machete: Look originally published in Split this Rock: The Quarry
⎯⎯⎯
maryhope|whitehead|lee
Vecinos
⎯⎯⎯
Matt Reeck
Jersey Dreams
walking the dawn Jersey housing estate
suburban manicured lawns smelling of phosphate
beneath the high-voltage lines pulling current up the coast
out of my village neighborhood in the city
the world so strange
freefall into American normalcy cars / strip malls / McMansions
dreams of capital
awoken from nightmares (even on vacation) a bombing of a stadium
an airplane flown into a train station separated from my daughters
still waiting for someone to tell me the source of my anxiety
Manifest Destiny?
*
hai bhagwan hai Allah
did Kabir tell you the story
of the beggar-king who lost his shoes sliding down the rainbow
built on the backs of the poor
at the end
when he saw his naked feet he cried so bitterly
he was declared mad
then deposed
hai Allah hai bhagwan
the beggar-king who picked mites
off the backs of rats
but refused the grace of the humble
Kabir
tell me when I’ve reached
full virtue amplitude full ample pulchritudinous maximum
I’m still a fool
who can’t see the road through my glasses
I’m looking up too far into the sky
*
half a life ago I drove these streets
a newborn man memories spark
each road recalls like in a half-forgotten
language the person I was
passing places that stay in the mind names
in bones / rib cage / muscles
I vibrate a loose shell
a mute gong
who would recognize me now
each wound of adulthood each blessing
my soul hanging akilter in its slot
⎯⎯⎯
Owólabi Aboyade
My Self-portrait #1
after Adam Zagajewski
I live in a decaying city and sometimes talk
With strangers of resurrections and other strange matters.
Half my day passes.
I see three elements in music: rhythm, silence, and shame.
The fourth is too painful to record.
I listen to lyricists and read poets who teach me
How to clap back. And when. I yearn to chat
With great philosophers; to follow a burning
Idea passing from hand to hand (flyers,
Websites, photography unexpected, the open note
Floating back over the ocean).
Maybe I will see half a century.
I like deep sleep, when my broken body ceases,
And leisurely walks through the neighborhood
With a young, gentle pit bull by my side.
Sometimes in museums, the ancestors
Whisper to me. Cooling waters pouring over pains: Asé.
I love talking with my wife.
Beside me buildings crumble or smile
Or both—a variation of perfection.
Black boys race up the street
Like fast cars or shooting
Stars. Am I still young? Someone else is always younger.
My father emails me regular updates
His anti-corporate philosophies,
The metaphysics of infidelity.
This country once freed its unpaid laborers. I wish
A thousand thousand liberations to follow.
How can I help in this?
I’m neither an invisible man, nor a black boy,
Not a tuff guy, as others have written
Before me, just a being of light and spit,
and yes, i am learning the ways
of those who blaze & bloom
below the surface their struggles,
like this life, belong to
all of us
⎯⎯⎯
Alisa Golden
Drawn Lines
Please Come By and Enjoy Shopping with Us. The pale green flyer thuds in the mail slot for the
Estate Sale down the street, advertising beautiful women’s clothes and art and rugs, and don’t
worry we are asking people to be sensitive about parking on your street.
This is the line between knowing and not knowing. This is how I find out that my friendly
neighbor has died, which is four months after the passing of her old dog, the low-to-the-ground
dog who used to take an hour to walk around the block. Sometimes I would join them. This is
when we used to talk. She began picking up trash during that hour, hoping to be helpful, she said.
She told me how she had worked for a group in the seventies before abortions were legal, how
she picked up women from the airport and drove them to clinics early in the morning or late at
night. They were so young. They had no money. That fear is over, we thought. For fifty years we
didn’t have to think. We had no way of knowing that service might ever be needed again. Dusk
and dawn. Before and after: drawn lines. A tug of war that is not a game.
I walk by her shaded house just before opening at eleven, and the fidgety, murmuring line holds
at the door and snakes onto the sidewalk. I scan faces for familiarity but see none. “I knew her!”
I want to shout. “Be respectful in there!” But I walk on, stomach hurting, saying nothing.
I collect what I know, use that knowledge as a ticket forward. Her line becomes a shadow, then
vapor, then a moving memory, and a call to act again. For the abortion law, the line stretched,
then broke when it was overturned, not broken by women claiming their own bodies. I ask, what
happened? The mending can only start with a piercing. At each end who knows how big a hole?
At home I look up “heaven” on a map app, and am given the choices of an acupuncture clinic, a
crêperie, a costume store, and a bakery. If only. Quietly I say: May her memory be a blessing.
Drawn and erased: lines redrawn, again, again, again
⎯⎯⎯
Amirah Al Wassif
The same old story
Every time I start to laugh
Somebody invents a new way of laughter
I run to the closest mirror
Burying my swollen face
Counting my disappointments on my fingers
No music in the background
Only the cracking of my bones
Do you hear it?
I see you on the walls
Your purple face waving
Like a curse
I put a hand on my right chest
Singing as if the world dissolved
Between my knees
In this story
Adam didn’t eat the forbidden fruit
Just Eve who did
He was busy
Creating a sudden plot twist
God upstairs
Watching in silence
In the mirror
I see your favorite song
Turned into a worm
Crawling toward my belly
Your face
Without features
I ask you
Are you hungry?
You ask me
How did you survive?
And the rest is history.
⎯⎯⎯
Laynie Browne
From: Antidelluvian Sonnets
In the quiet of the quiet
Face of a girl behind globes
Of flowers forgets she is
Singing as she assembles
A mermaid on a table
Gardenia and sandalwood
Preserve a photograph
Pass—a list of names
Without nuance cannot be added
Addled with fear of being counted
New vitriolic billboards
Dawn of excruciating silence
Borders catastrophic with more than one narrative
Enlists the art of human sentience
⎯⎯⎯
Candace Hill Montgomery
Mother and Child Foppa
Degradation shoved in halfhearted hard foot
bop hymning pasture unsuspected dry ness
arms ringing pleasant static living inn erotic sweat
snake rover next flight’ll give hunter cold night
stiff wonder tired of know longer friends no
use know course no clinic tut tut cute no village
left faintest tutu #2 elevate health one beautiful
red oar or fear wait another consequence be nought will
tube scrawl hill scramble daub fill in affectionate world black mark e t ‘s
funk back taste discussed instead all hands bunk
deck mate mamba bank series unaccountable lug
fluffed up well ok spiral maybe maple shug lavish bank luck
samba good fortune cost coursed thru duck tale party’s over kale
moor temptation throne pussy pond life talkin' gangsta twist walk weather
glorious tasey tastier deliver butter Tuesday
crime domestic vulgar lime nastier necklace
weigh in deadlier haul def left lazier behind jug
head lick brazen pull back thumb ride right motion glug collide right
me on project duck flip a tide cannot number waves under today’s
tight drunken drip dreezy way breeze on dreezy
sleazy breezy rode away amused clean then came back
loopy sleeve up Jesus reality will fortress identification
lower jug bang mugger crazed 4 love go see Zendaya
no wonder 3’s leftover hug need a mother f her motion
mug up coasted over whiffs coincidence coffee hit it children gag
quit drinking chip tooth minus bill let’s go sea derrida thoughts
fig it lick it berry lit lock it change aqua color then there’s Foppa
alternative lip sug fit it in on rug load plant bee be forget it
2 in decent honey quick she a sudden notice
moten F - degreer expect an expert bombing tree
bear friends suspicion there sound shrank back
nothing less antique about tit tyranny change
do right snake bite the breast dun it lost it wander right when accosted
ask how broke down is aloof it cost me profiler notice
and provoker lasting cancer smote outside complex hitch caster loop gip
or was it just nature insidious ’ throat bit candy lickables delish
paddock liking cinnamon toasted beings happy 2 escape indescribable cut to chase
begin host waist limit better attention face beauty the idea of
gimmie dat dare who cheers the songless skinny bear what’s to swing
speech 2 dam damned be bee it serene sincere need
hit it rule of law wet swear squares in fitbit classic
air out cork tongue thieving cotton wad it in false dry up
foot loose order fancy car bottle big toe painted brittle
model quarter feint resentment component
roll it instead that bread scroll middle unroll
fish holdup story bowl weevil theme
wee wee covid hold it look as if unlock unloaded
canvas chapel folded heed hot degree jolted good bloke
howl’s so delicious mold that bowel decree oh 4 me salad
a + ruin- free bee 2 ruin ous wander inn braid thee free caste
nature as sins physical farmed out fancy free prance in
g drug me gushing george inn two be bled out see
a cow maybe three too salty 2 loud moo moo
moo cue crowd all cross goats uneasy smelt wrong how gluey
micro parts I’m hoping kept alive smokey gnarley drop by mic bye’s
swell butt wide wow adder scatter rounded on hide bow snake around
roe away row haste slander burnt dark salmon gray sea whiter evolution one day away
collar crime hatter buy bye toupee pointe toe line
point tow lower poser climb on toaster court jester
child gagged fatal nuisance tea bad reaction doe c doe average hoe
revenge eye sea open envelope dig withdraws
tan shoe go 2 protocol school'd's mule
familiar bow shoo shoo nope fiddle
load resolutions shrewd go riddle confident
in shoe pretend giggle punch peach aging
biggy nose grope hose the closest Pharisee knows gets load
rest first fisty cuff small fistula augment come in
est better 4 desultory bullying us landing ho sow u know
justs’ in trouble medal on sweater stuck on hard bagel
nasty carpet trouble double nature’s bubble ejaculation
claw foot thru wall ah weather standing tall
struck flow and sienna dough causa there’s dew under bigfoot
wet scarlet crow strained leaps too mind dry 2 greedy Kant fool me
needing gleaming virgin itty sew bitty blow snit
on a dime close in phantasmagoric on that whine
that me2 find choice a mind good frame a fine
form on girl decline that all right there incline
on declines a doe a deer a female deer willows
a a sixties engineer sinks in bond disappears castration in time in time settle down
organ calms left foot on reticent portrait on shore remain there
doe open remain in obscure circus closure door 2 time reign rain
soldier on that drunken recital crime steel away spree
take mow time thyme down down bare fact shriek
rake rake a plan aches 4 image fake hymn much
good wine big cigar clear spot upon cleft spit
cellar ashe oft severe nah tiff provide tiff
distant tennis bleed at least riff break salad of cut
nexus analysis drug induced no texas wed in woke
a woke walk away feud upward weed 2 fed fool edge a need a soul curves
Ruth’s truth the troth’s riveting at ending a roust expected
thunder clapping embedded trap best of the ponderous dam
damned lightening spared breaking joiner inner paving a weiger
a slayer a future Mayor contract hugely borne day tripper sayer no hay mown
knight performs all ready dark barre next day wrongs
ambiguous coveted mark in place his mother
cooperate mate it is its this thus this what thus
wipe away fudge Beethoven rogue rhett to play errr
handsome knot tryst twist man into violet mess
n abreast display a terrified flower stick up sweat it oboe cray
a moment of care self interest dared remorse sautéed never sweated
red oar melody broke a page break food speak into punis
summer time stealth walk away horse belted
manners a tone in 4 dew again subject brings disaster home
that white gauge on plasters platter form meet
proportion peanut zone portion finger gag gag bring home
plate intermingle pastel cross grate blue lone narrower bridge
drape plan hat sneak in fragrance engage cheats
establish sudden figure ball could it be thrown
open mantra slows wind calls cave stick moten moan star window
amma flap crunch back rosa glass crucial open piano position
black cone 2 zone blown out neithers recounted word laugh raze a capitol
steadily brow beaten sall on sill I swear ukulele pluck homing mouthwatering
cheetah playful dill wander bird bill full insect
cede exceeding pill inn metaphysical worm
the seed in camisole mac dreamy turn Rome
can u make me unprocessed biggy
omelette rope necklace trim gold plate
for all uni discuss yolk’d earning stammer
bet enjoys tease ache if jowls left
burning alone chuck pluck more at jet sewn
owl screech bone operate cow
fetch’d pity wildlife hamlet pour foam like form gravy off book phone
capt hook let poetry loose panic plunk head at sunset
feeling ram at it mate dis honest crate open beast only
hold back catlike polyrhythmic insularity that darned
towel darn dread that precocious wake yawning
head inn wake a bud powell bombshell honing in
ted dithers butt letters nearer sheep treasure
passion ricochets will warranty warranted horns goat
smithereens denied river touching squiggle Delphic oracle
succeedin' motorized eagle wiggles wigging out tingles
panther finagle dogma at border bled details wed in wee kouda
Korda blown literal whala 2 pieces wood pleases churchified
friends regurgitate anna amen sorta a warm up pew seeded a lead
in dirt pipe appears hoarse receding rotted carrot tops absent drear
remand ants only y motions nearer the motens 2 oily circus elders clear
chaos sit inn in ballywho move on tie remit where incredulous
buy pull out red cloth sigh then silk arrives un
bin’d opens Burt gone orange auditorium caroling cringe literally tims
hid den shot up rocket slow u can dig it nose wins raw fig lits’ simple
glassy eyed grommet puffs rocket exquisite
check off contemplate concert doff cloche overcome
moment ah fiber can relief be hack’d composed
fancy over stocking face contacted crow
sand rocking rocket slows mad watching at its spraying Michelle
my bell sure at becoming slacker contract beetles one or the other semolina
buy the brains dozens in spite of nations lack
socket to tack inn endless lack found tit michelle
my belle balloon pop or nothing windy well gutters
naked’s so how limp bout it been dun
felt like fourth wall tell don beforth stored bell tossed fingerprint onto
door fine news rockets in subtle foreign policy rings python
rosy shoes finesse klonking confused hare dozey african bling
sting lost indigo stocking sack a lapis trim excised weed possibility
shift withering cost kicker off k balance boss a what
confusion Tolkien cost us disarm wash kidder dry off
dye bidder profiler bray eat all them tentacles
fried lost knockout understanding octopus alarm a friend disarm
I say lay lady lay bi May division’s warming Dylan’s
tip trip out sparkling wine poor long green pole
up & down champagne pricing high wall asks water what happened
crime’s taken off hat trip up bean cycle lip over
buy new lip blip nose flip in pottery fall 2 entwine
eye caress finger dirty messa pink eye on crisp breast
call off discordant unherd disorient point too summons loyal
Connecticut chicken foist off off off cale
visit slaughter house escape overblown sale broccoli
rape d’chicken toss in silent divorce whine at folk stay
lost a cut above’s two close love mouse pad dial over easy
switch blade cold roast hover over dye twitch golden
beagle clover at gates no fixer hovers escape stalker most likely
flag whisperer whippers fugue of rusty toasters
indifferencers the buoyant milliner trace
can can the y catch can a worm deserves bring in
bringers bragg turn old mother hubbard
b’s gold bring me your cloven your vinegar
soaked you’re sagging tired fired undesired
white yawning hope enlightened hungry your petulant your subtle
ceded foaming your dumpster fire cord the dumber
the better tassel leaning over caddy 1st devastation lately Kant
read shake relative native chain your reads 2 red in bed
jack’d her up the devil of a letter ifin tah say whack read
grated handful gala envelops I reckon taters good 12 minutes
4 sailors light tropics inn
bring me your dead your homeless love matches
your maids descriptives fated inspirationals catch-on
catchers expectant batters battering hell
cult devoteès sleuth devolver’s Herculean snob door
closers revolvers berets green on inside arrivers late 2 subtlety
holders of revolvers awkward dancers in uppers
whose blue nails fade to black sail risked fake
felt downers her torn clothes wander inners windy
spaces bling ting hounding hounders murderous
civilization bound wan city lippy kippers
butt 2nd dipping Liddy was whas whas double
chinners drip battlers weight in on questioners
who says hit brown land high rent man
what’s too much brown suit connect arguing with Agatha brown
nosing peril cattle dots dash 2 much little written sands whirl wedge
much deeper inners use a pecker sand off wood drake love winters
sandy fannees hut hut herd in envy enough shally
burt u still there knot sandy enough shilly mittens 4 Burt’s the green perp
enuf sinuous curt burnt thread enuf know it don’t mean flirt too heavy
unheard perpendicular summer capture campaign in
elevator hot sis a bunch heard clang clanging
hide war the darker stuff nerve eye puff don’t question veggie
ride or die where muff the prairies puff’d up
finally gallant’s smeared amber wish it were
we’re here at end hit wein in tumblestein
weed where urinal mean altruism bin gone glare
knot at frontal bust enuf nuff unlit mannequin glove
hard slap fit sky cloud sigh back in damp fresh red oar flush fingers
fashion a compose archangel’d gloat got jug straight mug 2 head
fly going round & round black n gay guy coming round
lost woman lose own soul sole sound lost angelic finicky bound
slipper behind self kicker fore boding line dye drive 4 subterranean
soft hide hid smile ball held in surge tight inverse womb
un holy boom shaka leisure burying droop icon thigh
rejecting guy at side definitive thigh leaves
slit myth carrying Artaud container myrrh hiss later no blood no brainer
stir Augustine daring deer salty terror hearing dear god of poor
smooth bronzer over I snooze U lose equator quit breathing
sled frankincense grip local carious explode space
commotion erase dizzy nearing us cup chin
concerning nonverbal stress catch tubers
etch and kill barriers forcefed bird caught baraka mute sunlit drift wood
none but the crow iffa koi runaway slow lit hit perspiring root useful
lotion'd sledge hammer lows hits runway marriage ivy response
avarice block 2 carriage conviction grope dew impromptu
Harriott creation oh af mudcracked licking twit golden
assonance free link splendorous dicky sordid twitch sweet
tissue wipe nothing sable hip a shell oh my folly
fem bitch fern bark millionaire hurt
witch close in the foil fold' weeping forego dense rock
stout cheesy teet wet nursing tender nest
and repeat thought fly off ant fish wild
but you haven’t even wiped bite welcome home reflect yet mosquitoes
lobe pull out as expected cheep black grope hope get aways grape quick
will look see substance roll dejected hard to say postpone mash
‘baby’ once again ball borne slow to educate engage in predicate
encounter twin too late 2 kiss keep drippy painting dreaming slir ain’t stir
fry the great lid spare dropping paradoxical steel out back inn window
schemoanamary tassel left faint coo coffee
Thai another day giving bee knot gone oar red
slay be electric helpful drift sculpture over Ai rat
rant make n many a splat a sepulcher reform bi dat reseedery lounge on
squelch mugger bee a spectacle on to South Africa tether moisten finish darkness n
another aspect come back after all that matte sun scorching take a run mugging
undecrypted brilliant doorway open clatter harp brokedown
fall sheer brisk moment headway tall string
matters trumpet along limnination broke cause
mad hatter tragic quote volition head away plussy body parts plummy which
sound best like d equals dummy classic enslaved
Plussy close brain wave a weight enact edgy
Fergi context eulogy mutilate enemy black eyed peas exempt
January Coltrane a whisper too puffy unlike snake who departed
mate’s hissy rip fitty let peace arrive grip love inky tide
awry fine order gone greedy fish adder dye four lbs.
sadder potential river creation take subaquatic
dry grass or un mic oar dnice hat take off twice mice n minnie
stayin' alive fatter native john c. hive waiting what does example
look like cynical phat summer shape matter look like dot blather shaking
check out side touch Christ alive meant only a cold blame
slither close on ur withers happy to abide false same
improvise dye mince a die ull be fine soften tongue a border
round subway one heart tress springs quarter roll in
chaos begun began begine aflutter buy focus water
lay aside dirty egg bee farther flint bee its honey
f 4 flutter flower ream afield meme teal king mist
wash away heel toe zeal deal with shot wheels varnish’d in
robotic coitus domestic less quaint lotus pass given reign
full throat eddie the pastel certainty doggie gimme gone styles note facts
fact of matter shot circle grout pebbly grunt
jumblie many singular keys louts declaim harmony
lotus empty positive smell men defamed'll cost
vortex crane actual mumbless
rain oughta stay inside vote lost pistil pistol
botch canvas bench lightening beauty dye liminal cactus drink
analytical ratchet beauties seminal screaming evil Athens you a criminal
arise transitory journey without a word help us forget
also dye the homespun ire
running everywhere limited lime is only one gardening hymn
dedicated 2 the unsullied aesthetic of the former Him
⎯⎯⎯
Edwin Torres and Stephen Vitiello: sound, music, recording
Immigrant Earthling
⎯⎯⎯
Patrick Durgin
On the Equator
“Moonlight in the valley is before and after history.” Reading the Groupo de Arte Callejero’s
memoirs, you notice these militant street artists of Argentina’s 1990’s-early 2000’s popular
rebellion do not define themselves as countercultural. Like Gertrude Stein, an iconoclast is always
on behalf of the people. The Group’s images, in their words, “come from a ‘political being.’” There
is every reason this worrisome analogy between postmodern artivists and a modernist
hermeticist, hemispheres apart may yet be exact, until we can really say what distinction there is
between a deserter and a fugitive. How you answer is the answer. An iconoclast is asking what
counterculture can only refute. What distinction is there between extermination and justice?
Take the example of Stein after the liberation of France. As the premise for and predatory
architecture of the Marshall Plan is contrived and handsome G.I. Joes mingled in the meadows
and staggered over cobblestones, she who festooned her imponderables with images of a
phenomenological being then makes two texts: one translation of speeches with forward full of
oblong praise for the Vichy collaborationist general Pétain; the other, “Reflections on the Atomic
Bomb.” Taken together, they could constitute the prediction of a new era—an era of flaccid
nationalism—compared to parodic but faithful hero worship, in which she had long indulged—
soft nationalism underpinned by mutually assured destruction—could constitute a critique of this
new heading without destiny, this diffuse metropole that laments as well as it forgets, this
unlikeable consumptive: Paris, United States. Could Stein’s finale constitute a critique of
constitutions? All just to say that once the great temper of experiment detonates the next phase is
its inevitable dwindling, only spent embers for heat. All sorts of things become possible amongst
the ruins. The money can flow tastefully out of view of the innocent. You wake up one morning
and the street signs are altered. There are twice as many, all point in one direction and reading
“Here live genocidists.” The Groupo de Arte Callejero has been here, preparing for an “escrache,”
creating a “living map” of the neighborhood’s power. Federal pardons cannot assure the impunity
they seek to award to those responsible for the disappeared. Those responsible remain, hidden in
plain sight. Former clandestine detention centers are tagged with mock signage and the
genocidists’ neighbors informed and organized to finally oust these beasts. The logics of social
condemnation and workaday traffic flows are linked by an icon. (A red octagon cannot mean go.)
Flushing out genocidists is the future of the north, too. We will need to know all about both
seaming together the remains and circling the war pigs. The whole world will need to know soon.
⎯⎯⎯
Sazia Afrin
untitled
⎯⎯⎯
Kelley White
Borderlands of the Snake – Highway
Borderlands of the Snake
hair in feathers
her bath of milk
her bruised pear
bees circling sweet whispers at dusk
rising winged bodies
gone
one red tree
that failing
sky
Highway
He had fallen, nose, lips, cheeks wounded,
caked with gravel from the road and dust
around the shiny fragments of broken glass
and we lifted him, our hands combed glass
from his hair; you took off your shirt, wiped wounds;
I found a little bottle of water, cleared dust
from his eyes, though the wind still blew dust
across the roadway, whistled through glass
left standing in the windows, the car’s own wounds
glass reflecting his wounded face caked with dust.
⎯⎯⎯
maryhope|whitehead|lee
Adobe Soils
⎯⎯⎯
Naomi Ortiz
Borderlines
It doesn’t matter
if I ask
when we are sitting side-by-side driving down Speedway
or over dinner in the stale heat of Sun’s final rays
His story always starts
in the fields of Texas
with the ways he was useful
In his story of self
there is:
before crossing
and after
Between
toy guitar, Nana, father left behind
and small hands picking bone-white cotton to fill an ever-empty coffee bag
Is a split
what is allowed to be real
or not real
Still, I want to know why
I inherit breath that is not strong enough
to carry story past lips
a rigidity
a stubborn streak
that means body can endure
what the soul cannot speak of
⎯⎯⎯
Thomas Dunn
Should’ve kissed you
⎯⎯⎯
Laynie Browne
From: Antidelluvian Sonnets
I sent those greetings—why I stay in touch with the unreachable
Remote glint of empty cavernous non-dimensional rooms
Summon and commune as if I had no inner persons
To consult—lately I remind myself—I'm here
First I secure the foxes mask
Then I turn to my hyphenated
Unsewn subjects—we sat around
The perforated lakes and I reminded
You how to thread the sky
Of a beetle with hissing bread
I could not arrange the memory with birds
But could only show you with fingers and water
One tiny motion the mind completes seamlessly
And then miss the place you fly with ineffable guides
⎯⎯⎯
Dimitra Kotoula
translation by Maria Nazos
Blue
after Paul Auster
Not
in the rapture of flames
or the furor of beauty
but—
Between death and dying
what was it glowing bitterly
and bitterly
bound itself to the gazing eye
the profuse bleeding
of a momentous blue.
I want you to feel this blue
color of negation, utter devotion
and nothing else
how it lived inside me all night long
the cruel agony
for nothing else beyond this
and how it grew spreading within me
becoming these words within me.
I want you to feel this blue
color of loneliness and uncertainty
and nothing else
while the air and earth inflame
a sudden blooming
in the irate atmosphere
a swirling in the churning air
that rests nowhere.
I must tell you all about it
I must name this affair for you
since this night is that very color
and that something eternal
which we had forever lost inside it—
Impossible to hear it any longer.
Our language drifts us father away from what we are
every word another place
something that moves
eloquent and adept
more fervently
than the blind eye.
And nowhere among these words we can rest.
And nowhere among these colors resides this blue.
And nothing begins with its mere naming
not even these words
that I keep saying to you -tonight-
strangely emotional
drifted away by this blue
how it has grown inside me
a tender lavish power
spreading from within
and
these words could give you nothing
but the pure contemplation of a color.
And these words could give you nothing
but the volatile horizon
where we refuse to believe
that they had failed us—
As if these words have never been.
As if this blue never was.
⎯⎯⎯
maryhope|whitehead|lee
not waving
⎯⎯⎯
Matt Reeck
Finisterre
Ill limited, not easy to describe, limn. Illuminate the text with shiny lights,
music, fish that revolve up and down, around and around, fins and stars
at the merry go round. In place of the word list, lumber through the
forest in still trees. Douglas, Cedar, and Willow: three kids at the bar
drinking Shirley Temples with Raven, their mom. Eyes are her fancy, a
fine stare, fin-de-siècle Finisterre. In Korean, ddangkkut (땅끝), land’s
end: a town, seaside, where her husband disappeared on a fishing boat,
where lightning plays overhead amid the cries of the ferryboat dead
ribboning across the water’s coat.
⎯⎯⎯
Edwin Torres
my travels in the not seeing world
I
one's experience with navigation, allows a deeper sort of water, a chance for unexpected retrievals,
gathered, between the un and its knowing, a memory, between a fulcrum's decision, the arc re-scissors its
pattern, familiarity crosses the lingual, elements enter porosity, in a motion that returns, to the servile
enigma, the retracted longspur, to the shaved inherent, the wrecked arousing, beckon mud its bottom,
leave undone the orbit, before its arrival, before the entanglement of crash-making, to sense spatial-
making as a career, where the experience, of presenting experience, for survival, burrows beneath
applause, sublingual paramour, the bribery of a shaming biscuit, a crescent moon as the only audience,
lifted, between the un and the expected, to build one's indigenuity, along a softer sort of removal,
effortless library, it is in distance, where one's experience with navigation, allows for a deeper sort of
fissure, between the mathematics of pore-making, a fragment's collision
II my arrival
my next shape - my final
shape
this world
emerge with me
in quiet percussion
where fragment - takes shape
as
the one between - a third
fragment
us
the pulse - we percuss through
as
motion - how far
from motion
does distance
emerge - as earth
unraveling
to the ones that call us
we are
unseen - until we are
unheard
my edge - is - my motion
my distance
this world
the next
shape
between us - emerge
with me
my surface
The Artists
Owólabi Aboyade
Owólabi Aboyade is a Detroit-based writer, hip hop MC, and cultural worker who organized for environmental and climate justice for almost two decades. He is Geez magazine’s Writer in Residence. Owolabi’s poem in this issue will be included in his chapbook, Lee,Young Lee to be published by AWE Society Press in 2024..
Sazia Afrin
migration a movement – untitled
Sazia Afrin is an artist, writer, and a dreamer. Her creative endeavors are rooted in a love for stories and driven by a desire to understand the people and the world around her visually, poetically, and intellectually. She enjoys drawing and painting in her sketchbook, reading, and thinking about the making and unmaking of identity.
(Sazia Afrin’s work in this issue is excerpted from her zine. Please see: Exile Garden of the Uprooted: A Zine About Migration and the Right to Move.)
Amirah Al Wassif
Amirah Al Wassif is an award-winning poet. Her collection, For Those Who Don’t Know Chocolate, was published in February 2019 by Poetic Justice Books & Arts, and How to Bury a Curious Girl, by Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company in 2022. Her illustrated children book, The Cocoa Boy and Other Stories, was published in February 2020. Amirah’s poems have appeared in several prints and online publications including South Florida Poetry, Birmingham Arts Journal, Hawaii Review, The Meniscus, Chiron Review, The Hunger, Writers Resist, Right Now. Her poem “Hallucinations” was nominated for the Science Fiction Poetry Association and Fantasy Association’s Rhysling Award.
Roberto Bedoya
Roberto Bedoya lives in Oakland Ca. His essays “Creative Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-Belonging” ; “ Spatial Justice: Rasquachification, Race and the City” and “ “Poetics and Praxis of a City in Relation” has reframed the discussion on US cultural policy to shed light on exclusionary practices in cultural policy decision making. He is the author of The Ballad of Cholo Dandy, a poetry chapbook (Chax Press), and has contributed poems/essays to publications about visual artists James Luna, Daniel J Martinez, Dario Robelto, and the artists group Postcommodity. He is the recipient of the United States Artist 2021 Berresford Prize.
Laynie Browne
From: Antidulvian Sonnets 1 – From: Antidelluvian Sonnets 2
Laynie Browne’s recent books include: Practice Has No Sequel, Intaglio Daughters, and Letters Inscribed in Snow. She edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel. Honors include a Pew Fellowship and the National Poetry Series Award. She teaches and coordinates the MOOC Modern Poetry at University of Pennsylvania.
Thomas Dunn
Let us begin at the point of first contact – Should’ve kissed you
Thomas Dunn is a multi-media artist, poet, and experimental filmmaker from Midland, Michigan. A proud graduate of Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Thomas is a Cave Canem Fellow and is completing his MFA in Writing at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Patrick Durgin
Patrick Durgin is the author of PQRS (Kenning Editions, 2013) and The Route, a collaboration with Jen Hofer (Atelos, 2008), and three artist’s books. He teaches philosophy, visual culture and literature at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Alisa Golden
Alisa Golden is a writer and artist who has worked in a used book store, an art-supply store, and as an adjunct professor teaching bookmaking, letterpress printing, and creative writing around the San Francisco Bay Area. Her writing and art have been published in Blink-Ink, FRiGG, Diagram, and Ravenna Triple (#22), among others. She is the author of Making Handmade Books and editor of Star 82 Review. www.neverbook.com | www.star82review.com
Candace Hill Montgomery
Candace Hill Montgomery is a Queens-born artist now based in Bridgehampton, Long Island, whose decades-long career has spanned a wide array of media and approaches: painting, photography, installation art, public interventions, video, poetry, performance, and fugitive combinations thereof. Among many other awards, Candace has earned fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, CAPs, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Resent publications include, Muss Sill, with Distance No Object (2021), and Short Leash Kept On, published by Materials Press UK and Berlin (2023). Recent and current exhibits include a solo show with performance at Blank Forms Gallery in Brooklyn (through May 2024), and sculpture in the Leiber Sculpture Garden (on exhibit May-Nov 2024), Hollybush Gardens Gallery (opens June 2024), and the Sylvester Manor (June-October 2024).
Blue, translated by Maria Nazos
Dimitra Kotoula is the author of three poetry collections and the recipient of the prestigious Chartis Prize. Her work has been translated into thirteen languages. Her poems, translated by Maria Nazos, have been published as a book-length poetry collection, The Slow Horizon that Breathes (World Poetry Books, 2023), and in journals including Columbia Review, Mid-American Review, Denver Quarterly, Anomaly/Drunken Boat, World Literature Today, New Poetry in Translation, and Copper Nickel.
maryhope|whitehead|lee
Vecinos – Adobe Soils – not waving
maryhope|whitehead|lee lives in the Salt River Valley in the northern Sonoran Desert. A descendant of the ship, she resides in the weather of the wake.
Jasminne Mendez
Jasminne Mendez is a best-selling Dominican-American poet, translator, playwright, audio book narrator and award winning author of several books for children and adults. Including the middle grade novel in verse Aniana del Mar Jumps In (Dial) which received the 2024 Pura Belpre Honor Award. Her other books have received prizes from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Writer’s League of Texas and the International Latino Book Awards. She is an MFA graduate of the creative writing program at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and a University of Houston alumni. She is the Program Director for the literary arts non-profit Tintero Projects and she lives and works in Houston, TX.
Maria Nazos
Blue (translator)
Maria Nazos’ poems and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Mid-American Review, Denver Quarterly, Florida Review, New Ohio Review, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. She is the translator of a collection of poems, The Slow Horizon that Breathes (World Poetry Books, 2023), from the Greek poet Dimitra Kotoula and the author of PULSE (Omnidawn, 2023). She can be found at www.marianazos.com.
Naomi Ortiz
Naomi Ortiz (they/she) is a Reclaiming the US/Mexico Border Narrative Awardee and a 2022 Disability Futures Fellow. They are a Disabled, Mestize poet, visual artist, and author of two books living in the Arizona U.S./Mexico borderlands. Rituals for Climate Change: A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice, offers potent insights about the complexity of interdependence, calling readers to deepen their understanding of what it means to witness and love an endangered world. Their non-fiction book, Sustaining Spirit: Self-Care for Social Justice provides informative tools and insightful strategies for diverse communities on addressing burnout. www.NaomiOrtiz.com
Matt Reeck
Jersey Dreams – Shibboleth – Finisterre
Matt Reeck is a poet, translator, scholar. A Guggenheim Fellow in translation, he has had poems published recently in French (remue poems; laviemanifeste), in Hindi (sadaneera), and in The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions, Interim, and Black Warrior. His translation What of the Earth was Saved from the Hindi of Leeladhar Jagoori is forthcoming from World Poetry Books.
Edwin Torres
transfer point – Immigrant Earthling (with Stephen Vitiello)
Edwin Torres’ books include Quanundrum: i will be your many angled thing (from Roof Books, awarded a 2022 American Book Award), Xoeteox: the infinite word object (Wave Books), Ameriscopia (University of Arizona Press) and editor of The Body In Language: An Anthology (Counterpath Press). Poetry fellowships include; Arts MidHudson, The
Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The DIA Foundation, and his current inter-disiciplinary ecopoetics project, “Feel Recordings In The Evershift,” received a 2024 NYSCA Individual Artist Grant. Anthologies include; The Difference Is Spreading: 50 Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems, New Weathers: Poetics from the Naropa Archives, and Poets In The 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement. He is a poetry adjunct
professor at Columbia University and is currently living in Beacon, NY.
Stephen Vitiello
Immigrant Earthling (with Edwin Torres)
Stephen Vitiello is a sound and media artist. His installations are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon.
He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Creative Capital award. Vitiello is a professor of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University. www.stephenvitiello.com
Kelley White
Borderlands of the Snake –Highway
Kelley White has worked as a pediatrician in Philadelphia and New Hampshire. Poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle, and JAMA. Her most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) Recipient of 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant she is Poet in Residence at Drexel’s Medical School. Her newest collection, NO. HOPE STREET, was recently published by Kelsay Books.