135 – April 2024

by Julián David Bañuelos

We Were Born

broken backboards cracked asphalt
hubo momentos I chose to ignore
&
wounds I thought healed
this is a curse without a spell
dime algo
is the darkness
rushing y’all’s bodies and tearing apart

stories and fables passed down?
In your endeavors
I am the key.
Not the rain but the will to stay alive
I should not be so numb to all this grief.
We were too young to ever really know.

Julián David Bañuelos is a Chicano poet and translator from Lubbock, Tx. His poems and translations can be seen in The Cincinnati Review, The Hopkins Review, The Latino Book Review, The Common, and many more. His unpublished collection, Las Cancioncitas, was recently selected as a 2023 National Poetry Series finalist. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. You can find his work at www.juliandavidbanuelos.com

by Jacob Griffin Hall

The Waves

It’s not up to me
to decide what moves you—

the waves, the broken glass tucked in
and ready to sleep. It’s a birthday party

and I’m drunk, watching the water
lull the gulls to drift. Seaside

I can’t help but think
that there’s time enough to touch

the future. Can’t help but touch the future.
I’m ready to be washed

and to wash with you, if you’ll join me.
I’m ready for the glass

to catch up with us, waves at our ankles,
in rhythm with the music, and rising.

Jacob Griffin Hall was raised outside of Atlanta, Ga and lives in Columbia, Mo, where he teaches and works as poetry editor for the Missouri Review. His first collection of poetry, Burial Machine, won the 2021 Backlash Best Book Award and is available with Backlash Press. His poems have appeared in 32 Poems, New Ohio Review, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, New Orleans Review, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere.

by Jill Mceldowney

Lemon Tree

The worst part— there is no genesis
in which I earn the blush white of the lemon this exquisite

guilt, grief, my circle of bitter light. What happened?

I did everything right.

I did everything right religion, ritually, and still I've fallen

so completely into the teeth of my depression, the reality
surprises me.

It hurts to live waiting
for the axe to fall,

and the axe never falls.

Jill Mceldowney is the author of OTHERLIGHT (YesYes Books). She is the editor and founder of Madhouse Press. Her previously published work can be found in journals such as Prairie Schooner, Fugue, Muzzle, and other notable publications.

by Ryan Dzelzkalns

Historicity

The night was one among many, creeping through the blackout curtains
percolating against chicory on the balcony. The sun still getting ready.

You have learned to move so quietly here, morning shade of dawn.
Page of a book turned by wind. You’ve been dreaming in French again,
the fantasy where you understand others. It’s not that you keep to yourself,

but rather nowhere will take you. Maybe language is better left to the birds.
Save the many places inside yourself for silence to settle. Your exception was Riga

where your body bent to song. Made praise the cold beet soup in Bastejkalna Parks.
Made peace along Aleksandra Čaka iela with a gift of tomatoes from your cousin.

There, the pavement seduced your shadow. There, the dill met well the cream.
You were one among many, stranger and yet not strange, Latvian even

if you could not say your own name. Maybe the language is better left
to the ghost of your grandmother’s tongue. Her memory like a crystal vase
in which all the flowers wither. What if history were just a pronoun

for what you needed her to be? Center to pull your water, face to show your face.
A city you could walk after dark. Not because it’s safe, but because it’s alive.

Ryan Dzelzkalns has poems appearing with Catapult, DIAGRAM, The Offing, The Shanghai Literary Review, Tin House, and others. He received an MFA from New York University and was awarded the Wendy Parrish Poetry Prize. His writing has been translated into Latvian (the language of his grandparents) and has been anthologized in a handful of collections. He was a recent Fulbright scholar in Tokyo, where he still lives. Read more at RyanDz.com.

by Michael Agunbiade

Before your body must fly

you must first know about the grief

which drowns the voices of birds.

the way a boy carries home

in his mouth

as river of broken bodies.

how man is often made to believe

what will punctuate his bones with joy

& not the consonants of his pain.

like lost birds, i can see how much

you yearn for home.

your hands trying not

to hold the night

because the last time you did

silence got hold of your voice

while darkness thirsted for the light

inside your skin.

you thought of running

but there is no safe place

to run to in this country.

not even the mouth of your father

where you got to know of hate,

how memories are ashes of the body

that once wrecked in fire.

Michael Agunbiade is a young Nigerian poet who writes from the small hole of his room. His works have appeared or forthcoming in Afrimag, Brittle Paper, The Shore poetry, Kalahari Review & elsewhere. In 2021, he was longlisted for Nigeria Student Poetry Prize (NSPP).