St. Monica Contemplates a Harm Reduction Strategy

Remember when you were young, Auggie
When Uncle Carl would unscrew the jug of Paisano

And dose all the little cousins
With wine to chase their milk?

Remember when you used to stand behind the counter
At Claudio’s how all the other mothers would stumble

Stuck on your blue eyes, black hair
Immaculate fingernails?

Remember all those nights you didn’t come home
Mornings I flew with eyes pressed closed to light another candle?

I know I should have looked—
But I didn’t want to find you

Curled up at the feet of some angel
Your veins bared and froze.

Now they want to bring you in, serve up Grace
Clean needles and a bowl of pasta e fagioli.

I always believed it takes a village but I fear
This thing may be the death of us both.

Biography

Gaetan Sgro is an internal medicine doctor, “girl dad,” and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine where he directs a program in the medical humanities. His poems have appeared in The Bellevue Literary Review, Glass: Poet’s Resist, Blueline, The Healing Muse, Apiary Magazine, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, Best New Poets 2016, and other fine publications.

Empty Space

A collaboration with Etheridge Knight based on “The Idea Of Ancestry” Empty Space

1

The 47 black faces stare back at you. Taped to your prison
wall. Did they come all at once, a cousin arrived with a shoebox,
or maybe it was the hat box your grandfather kept; pictures rooted
next to never-used-one-way-bus-ticket up north, or did they arrive
in drips, a picture from an aunt, and a few from your mother
before she stopped visiting.

Picture of your father; young. Had he posed: a wooden platform,
ironed suit, same he wore to his brother’s funeral,
or was it a picture of him with a fishing pole; bluegill suspended,
hanging, dead now. You remember the glassy-smooth rocks
under churning water and the way your father’s right hand crushed,
flattened the head, blood marked on rock. Both your grandfathers are dead.
It was grandfather Davis who came home bloody, his scalp bruised and bent,
battered pulp-flesh, beer bottles splintered in skull. He went into the Clarks’
yard to get his grandson’s baseball. Your aunt left you candy in flower pots
said it sprouted from soil or draped like fruit from trees. She still looks for
you every Sunday. Nieces and nephews: they stare back. You know
their style. Do they know yours? Sprawled on your bunk.
Your five-year-old niece never licked vanilla ice cream from your finger.
She smiles at you; the only one that smiles back. You are all of them.
They are all of you. They are farmers. You are a thief. You did stand
in rows of cabbage, feet cracked in compost, your rows always 12 inches
apart. If you bent now and placed seed in soil what would
come up? The earth doesn’t know your hands anymore.

Empty space. You are all of them and they are all of you. Grandmother’s
bible with everybody’s birth and death dates cracked open,
the pages tattered, yellow-worn. She used to let you hold it.
I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

2

You hitchhiked your way from LA with 16 caps in your pocket.
The monkey on your back. Hills and red gullies of Mississippi crying
for you. Genes, galvanized; the call electric. It was laying next to your sister,
the black eyed susans and ironweeds nearby, that you heard the cicadas crooning
their trill; dobsonflies and may beetles never bothered you. Leaping now
and bucking up your birth steam, a salmon quitting the cold ocean,
or like the black carpenter ant carrying the leaf from the weeping willow
back to its colony, 40 times its weight, you squaring 900 pounds
over your head; a lumbering journey back. The monkey on your back;
its finger nails already clawed your neck, hands cling to your shoulders,
choking and retching in your ear. Grass under your feet, the hickories
and willow oaks not too far away. Did the eastern-eyed click beetle
remember you? Azaleas and trumpet honeysuckles send you
their smell. Cornwhicky in fruit jars. Your habit came down. You had almost caught up with yourself.

This year the gray stone wall dams your stream;
water, ancient as the Clavius crater on the near side of the moon shakes
and rouses your soul. You stare at the 47 black faces across the space.
You are all of them and they are all of you.

By Paul Conlon

Biography:

Paul Conlon is a poet from New York. He leads a creative writing workshop
for members of the Queens, NYC community and his poems have recently
appeared in the Newtown Literary Review. He is a K-12 educator where he
enjoys teaching English and theater.

a deconstruction of honey & candles & church

My mother taught me lessons in honey.

Imagine age five:                    she smeared it across my bare

back and told me to lay in the middle of a flowering field.

Burrs painted patterns of pink across marred skin, grass itched,

and I wondered what it would be like to sink into the

ground, absorbed and melting like the last candle on an altar. She

used to take me to church when I was younger, but I was never

chosen to light those sacred wicks as prayers hung low in the air

            like steam—it was always the priest’s daughter, and I

never understood why. We stopped going a year before, and I

missed those lines pews and stained-glass windows.

She made me lay there for hours until cutting canyons of ants

crawled up by back, attracted to the saccharine sweetness,

and they left their crimson bites behind.

if you attract men to you

my mother said

all they’ll cause is harm.

Imagine age twelve:                the cusp of teenage years, and it

doesn’t yet feel like a movie. I lost the knobby knees but

gained new awkwardness in my movements; lost the chubby cheeks but

gained weight elsewhere. Instead of honey sweetening my foods,

she replaced it with artificial creations: sweet ‘n low, truvia, splenda,

stevia, equal. Zero-calorie powders that never tasted ripe enough,

but she threw away all the honey, said my clothes were too tight and I

needed to maintain my figure. She pinched at my sides, weighed

and prodded Sunday mornings, calculated calories for the week. My tastebuds

            never adapted, they yearned for confection and love, and I dreamt of

caramel chocolate and hugs, but she gave me diets and cleanses. Workouts

            and routines, and the fat began to melt away and I thought back to

those alter candles, wishing my entire body would dissolve with the fat.

your body is a weapon

my mother said

learn how to use it.

Imagine age eighteen:             legal adult by name only, neither comfort

            nor ability. I still called my ex boyfriend every time I ran a load

of laundry, still looked up tutorials every time I tried to cook. She came

            to my room as I zipped the final bags, my new life across the

country contained. College: what a strange place to go. I had never been

            without her for more than a night. A flickering match lit up her

grave expression and she pressed the flame to the center of my palm. It

            was the same match from those old church days, the ones the

daughters breathed into candles, and as I cried out and a wound bloomed,

            I wondered if the girls ever burned themselves on accident. If they prayed

for healing or if that was too selfish of a need. She handed me a bottle

            of honey to pack and said it would soothe the burn better than

any medicine. I didn’t pray as she left but I ducked my head and

            imaged the words pouring out of my mouth, thick like honey.

hurt yourself enough times

my mother said

any no one else can cause lasting damage. 

first appeared in Kalopsia Literary Journal (June 2021)

By Natalie Hampton

Biography

Natalie Hampton is a rising junior at the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in the Creative Writing Department. She has been recognized at the National level of the Scholastic Art and Writing Competition and by the Harris County Department of Education, the Young Poets Network, the Pulitzer Center, and Ringling College of Art and Design. She serves as an editor at Polyphony Lit and Cathartic Literary Magazine. She has taken online workshops and classes with Iowa, Brown, Sewanee, and Ellipsis Writing.

Grief is a little animal that sits wanting in my chest

I’ve been thinking about it since I left you
Weeks ago-
Eating caviar on the blacktop parking lot,
Shucking oysters with a knife we’d bought inside.
I was leaving you to see my grandparents
For the last birthday they’d be alive.

It was salty and fishy, of course it was,
It slid across my tongue like an oil spill.
We laughed as we swallowed it down
Seawater soaking my shirt and stinging my
hands –
Where the knife had just slipped a bit-
While I tried to keep it from soaking
Into the car seat fabric
And to ignore the changing light

What felt like moments away from the dying.
I was eating to feed someone else’s starving
Body,
Relishing in the taste of ocean and tired joy
In your eyes
Trading stories and gifts and smiles and feeling
Alive together-
The first time in months we’d been able to.

So you know, I’ve been thinking about it since I
Left you
Parking lot caviar and the way you say my name-
A piece of hard candy that you’re puzzling out
The flavor of.
The highlighter yellow underscore on all my
Other thoughts-
Biting the inside of my cheek to keep from
Saying

I love you
I miss you
I hope you’re doing well
I think about you every day
I think I’d like to drive to your house and
Pick you up and run away for a while.
I think the air between us could become a living thing.

By Marty Miller

Biography

A long time amateur writer, Martin is a graduate of Western Kentucky University with roots in states from South Carolina to Ohio. They strive to pursue differences of perspective and mutual understanding through the arts.

Work Is a Replica of the Abusive Home

Molecules in the air conditioning arouse
certain sordid intentions, along the realm of
kidnapping, of bribery.

What business do I have here?
I am merely the monkey wedged between this custody battle,
detained inside the cooking pot.
My sweat is the condensation,
the fighter jets tearing down the crepuscular roof.
An earthquake simulates, triggers a tornado warning.

Ring away, fire alarms!
Poppy petals unzip their petticoats—
the homes! mere concrete,
hotbox the carbon monoxide. We are all in this together,
ordered to quarantine in its musk.
This is our reliable shelter-in-place,

for a grander apocalypse awaits outdoors, my love.
We could never comprehend what nature has to offer.
Our man-made facilities erect themselves with structure.

A brick, or several hundred, have ran astray, sure,
but learn gratitude, child— at least it’s something.

At least it’s familiar.

By Sammi Yamashiro

Biography:

Sammi Yamashiro began her poetry journey in high school and has had multiple poems featured in several anthologies (Train River Publishing, Sunday Mornings at the River). She self-published her poetry collection “The Peach Pit Mask”, which reached #1 in New Releases in Asian American Poetry on Amazon Kindle. You can read her writing on Instagram (@sammiyamashiro) or visit her website (sammiyamashiro.com) to find more of her work.

Violet is my Name

Don’t you dare tell it otherwise.
I walked into the fire with my eyes wide open,
my skin glistening with gasoline,
my hair dripping alcohol, my mouth full of sawdust,
and with cans of kerosene snug sweetly in my palms—
and it blazed—burned me through and through.
I would not pretend like those others do, and say
it made me stronger and wiser.
It burned me is all, until I was charred and crisp.
It burned me until I am cinder and dust.

You know. You know I listened when they said
that a father is a daughter’s first love, and I loved him.
I think he loved me. He was the first man
to praise the dull brown of my eyes, the timid tilt in my walk,
the gruff of my voice, the dark of my skin, the sour of me.
No one else would. No one else could.
When I looked to my mother, she put the Bible in my hands,
said God loves me. Said nothing else mattered; God loves me.
But my father, he watched my hips, the tiny curves of my breasts,
asked me to dance, to leap, to fall, so I did, like I was made for it.
When he offered the kiss, planted it in my heart
like a long overdue apology, I took.
When he offered more, I took.
I knew they used to be my mother’s and now they were
his wife’s and they should not be mine, but I took still.
I took his arms, his throat, his lips, his toes, his thighs
I swear I was looking for God.
It felt of God. It tasted of God. It looked of God.
The sweat on his forehead.
The scarlet on the sheets.
The bleak beauty.

But now I must leave. It ends tomorrow.
I am sick.
My belly grows.
I am afraid it would have his face and voice.
Then what would I say to his wife? To the people? To my mother?
So I must go. It all ends tomorrow
But you all must know:
Violet is my name.
Carry me in your hearts.
Violet is my name.
I am not asking for your pity.
I am not asking for your hatred.
Just that you see it as it is and tell it as it is:
I did not seek it but I did not resist it either.
Violet is my name.
I walked into the fire with cans of kerosene snug sweetly in my palms.
Violet is my name.
I choose you— you with your eyes on this solemn page
awe-struck, disgusted, intrigued, appalled—I choose you.
Remember me.

By Diepreye Amanah

Biography:

Diepreye Amanah is a senior studying English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her poems appear in Carolina Woman Magazine, the Health Humanities Journal of UNC, and as prize winners in the 2021 A.R. Ammons Poetry Contest. Her poem is forthcoming in Up the Staircase Quarterly.