California Hills in August BY DANA GIOIA I can imagine someone who found these fields unbearable, who climbed the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust, cracking the brittle weeds underfoot, wishing a few more trees for shade. An Easterner especially, who would scorn the meagerness of summer, the dry twisted shapes of black elm, scrub oak, and chaparral, a landscape August has already drained of green. One who would hurry over the clinging thistle, foxtail, golden poppy, knowing everything was just a weed, unable to conceive that these trees and sparse brown bushes were alive. And hate the bright stillness of [...]

Of a Certain Friendship Elsa Gidlow  Odd how you entered my house quietly, Quietly left again. While you stayed you ate at my table, Slept in my bed. There was much sweetness, Yet little was done, little said. After you left there was pain, Now there is no more pain. But the door of a certain room in my house Will be always shut. Your fork, your plate, the glass you drank from, The music you played, Are in that room With the pillow where last your head was laid. And there is one place in my garden Where it’s best [...]

One Girl Sappho translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti                                          I. Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, A-top on the topmost twig, which the pluckers forgot, somehow,— Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now.                                          II. Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is found. Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear and wound, Until the purple blossom is trodden into the ground.

Bird in Hand Jasmine Gibson Being asked to move into time To places wishes and daydreams  Into rivets and seams Being asked to move back into categorical understandings of regrets In order to fight against disintegration  Carrying a placeholder for liminal spectrums Reading somersaults into lecture Move me, unmove me place me unto y’all’s metaphoric understanding  of the dreams which have yet been realized Wish unto me, unfurl around, open Gasp gasp gasp  Cry out, there are ways of understanding  that leave indelible marks onto membrane surfaces We should all be so lucky to exist  To not function The eyes, cease [...]

I want Jordan Jace I want to write poems for construction workers and dreamers For revolutionaries For deadbeats and those on the low I never want to ask please fix us all I want for us to want to patch every heart and pave every road and destroy every system that has ever left us broken. I want to sing like frank ocean, like wonder like sonder, like mereba, like the sea I want to recite the line Took the wretched out the earth Called it baby fanon, I want to call someone baby. I want to stop smoking because I [...]

I Ask That I Do Not Die BY ILYA KAMINSKY —but if I do I want an open coffin I am an American poet and therefore open for business Owls peck the windows of the 21st century as if looking for the board members of Exxon Mobil who who who who who Listen my beloved nothings your seriousness will kill you! But before you die my doctors have prescribed happiness God is a warm brick or a claw or the silence that survives empires An old woman in the rain with a pot of mushroom soup is one of God’s disguises. Her [...]

  I Could Be a Whale Shark Aimee Nezhukumatathil                      Bolinao, Philippines I am worried about tentacles. How you can still get stung even if the jelly arm disconnects from the bell. My husband swims without me—farther out to sea than I would like, buoyed by salt and rind of kelp. I am worried if I step too far into the China Sea, my baby will slow the beautiful kicks he has just begun since we landed. The quickening, they call it, but all I am is slow, a moon jelly floating like [...]

Diving into the Wreck Adrienne Rich  First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I [...]