of stars and I have known you
but who listens
to you? Even
still there is
no vitality
in your breath.
Be still I advise you
to grow wide to
leave your neighbors
to kill anyone
with your same
first name. Prepare.
We have buried three
stronger than
you. We have made wine
from their voice
box and now we are so
terribly drunk.
–Christine Kanownik
We dove into the still waters,
delved too deep–
The waters were muddied
by the thickness of blood,
and we were stopped.
In our tracks, the dust settled
and all clues pointed towards
death. But signs are always arbitrary,
they lead to X, which only marks
the spot where an embarrassment
of riches was buried.
–Sharmi Cohen
When they program our phones to our brains,
I want to be sure they give my eye camera
the right prescription. Full on focus like my eyes
can’t do. I fell in love because I saw you clearly.
Saw the yellow house where this inevitably ends,
with my blood on your hands. You’re a monster in
reverse. A peach tree about to bloom. Take me under
and tangled in roots. I revolt at being buried, but do
love arms so.
–Lauren Hunter
Memory is not an agent that deals in smoke.
Smoke is a benign appetizer for the funhouses of hell.
Hell is an opulent locomotive in its sulfuric and fanged plumage.
Plumage is a culture unknown to sand.
Sand is a sinister compound for this landscape of loss.
Loss is something we cultivate in our forest of invisible elms.
Elms who sing in a void whose kin has no culprit.
You were on the way to meet me
when I died a meter from your arm.
You saw the photo while you rode here.
Looking at my naked body.
I made a flipbook with a lemon
dividing you and me by time.
I took a bath to bring my chill down
& surrounded my body with thick blankets.
I made a flipbook rocking back and
forth staring at a Georgian calendar.
The closer you were to me, the more I’d die.
It took a month for you to get here.
It took a month for me to die.
–Amy Lawless
Duncan has died and they
are huddled on each other
crying openly as Macbeth
talks about the tragedies
inside his walls
They are rending their clothes
And later
when Lady Macbeth
sleeplessly
walks her hands stained and
screaming throws herself
against the floors
Those very same people
will huddle each
with an empty crate
they will pack her voice
and carry it off the stage
Leaving her alone in nightclothes
–Michael Wilson
Oh honey! Oh raspberry! Oh orange!
Oh sex! Oh bloom! So open!
Oh love! Oh age! Oh fuck!
–Hayley Heaton
Words Are Mighty 