Clarification Card: The Spiral (“The cigarette is pretext: smoke rises from within”)
By Hari AlluriUnless you’re practiced as a lola’s wrinkles,
do not flip the lit side of the yosi in your mouth.
They developed this skill in war and carried it
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Ode to Jacob Blinder
By Janlori GoldmanHis face stared out into the living room
of my grandparents’ walk-up on E. 13th.
After they died my father hung him
We
By Deborah A. MirandaThe people you cannot treat as people
Whose backs bent over your fields, your kitchens, your cattle, your children
We whose hands harvested the food we planted and cultivated for your mouth, your belly.
From “Shadow Poems”
By Jennifer FoersterThe war appeared to be coming to an end.
The no-name people not yet taken
left their crops for summer’s drought.
Hope is a Bruise
By Dasha Kelly HamiltonPaintball pellets batter shoulders
and thighs at 190 miles per hour
I count the purplish bruises and
smile at the post vision of us toasting
Music Arises from Component Parts or The Dream of a Clarinet
By Tobias WrayOnce done,
my father pulled
the instrument apart.
The Where in My Belly
By Kimberly BlaeserScientists say my brain and heart
are 73 percent water—
they underestimate me.
Equinox
By Tamiko BeyerDear child of the near future,
here is what I know—hawks
soar on the updraft and sparrows always
return to the seed source until they spot
Hull
By Lisbeth WhiteAt the end of the field are tracks
train metal iron sound called whistle
to me a blare that splits air before it