Ask Me About Birds

I feared the dense
purple sky of not being
able to sleep.
Clock ticking
rushing.
You woke up
and you stayed up with me folding.
Folding an origami crane
out of loose paper.
Pressing deep into the table
and creasing the paper,
so we could remember.
Triangle into
square into rhombus
into birds. You had an
appointment with the embassy in
San Francisco early
next morning
but we folded paper until it gave up
being paper.

Ask me about birds
and I’ll tell you about the ones that travel
oceans.
Ask me about birds
and I’ll tell you about my mother.

By Emi Maeda

Biography:

Emi Maeda is a high school poet from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She writes poems in Japanese and English, but when she is not writing, she is crocheting and watching TV with her sister.

Five Burros

Five burros graze aimlessly
in front of a rusted tin barn
built by my grandfather,
some 40 years ago

Five burrros who have
no understanding of the history
they stamp casually over–
or all the creatures who called this
little plot of land home

Generations of hogs, flocks of
chickens and guineas,
too many cattle to number,
and even more horses

Four generations of my
own family who tilled, sowed
and lived meticulously
from this little field,

These five burros
will never know

and yet,

Somewhere out in high mountain peaks
several thousand miles
from the old tin barn,
a meadow misses five burros,

A home,

That I will never know

By Cody Baggerly

Biography:

Cody Baggerly is a graduate of East Central University, where he majored in English and Literature. He has been featured in three volumes of ECU’s literary journal, Originals; in 2020, 2021, and 2022. He also served as editor of the 2022 volume and has had work featured on The NoSleep Podcast. Cody currently serves as ECU’s Communications Specialist for their Marketing Department.

border baby

on the border of here & there
bastard children of spain
swept under the rug
by guadalupe herself

on the border of black & white
swimming through gray areas
across imaginary lines
lined with razor wire

on the border of are & were
new tongue grafted to the old one
beaten black and blue
forced to forget

on the border of us and them
the fruits of our labor produce the sweet juice
that drip down the sides
of white mouths
staining their marble skin
and porcelain teeth

By Julianna Salinas

Biography:

Julianna Salinas is a Texas-born Mexican-American poet and nonfiction writer based in New York City. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College, where she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets University and College Poetry Prize and the Louis B. Goodman Creative Writing Award.

When You Tell Me

//when you tell me the first time you saw light was when you unfolded scrolls of tragedy in my eyes / I want to morph into a papier-mâché mask //when you tell me the first time you tasted dice-sized-happiness was when your lips grazed mine / I want to plant yellow flowers in your garden // when you tell me the first time you wondered at the silky-feeling between your thumb and trigger finger was when you touched my skin / I want to offer myself as a torn, intricate lace to a tailor // when you tell me the first time you realized time was a façade was when you spent an hour plucking red, rosy petals beside me / I want to scratch my thumb on red needles / pour my blood into your soft skin / and whisper, ‘drink of me till you thirst no more.’ // when you tell me the first time you saw pain so carefully hidden in nirvana was when you paid attention to the details of my laughter / I want to bury my voice in your palms / that you may offer it as burnt offering to whichever god you revere // when you tell me you love me and I am nothing but light to you / I want to pour into you the purest form of my soul for this metal burden I carry within / but your porcelain sky is much too beautiful and perfect to be tainted by my undying, gloomy aura//

By Testimony Odey

Biography:

Testimony Odey, also known as Temidayo Testimony Omali Odey, is a Nigerian storyteller, writer, creative, YouTuber and filmmaker whose work has been published in various magazines and journals such as Brittle Paper, Rising Phoenix Review, Poetic Africa Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a one-time judge for the African Teen Writers Award and has been shortlisted for the global Writing Ukraine Prize and African Human Rights Short Story Prize. She’s a recipient of the Nigerian Prize for Teen Writers Awards, African Teen Writers Awards and Wakaso Poetry Prize. She enjoys living life with lots of light, love and a sprinkle of delulu.

PITY FOR THE SUPREMACISTS

Your insecurity empowers us
with each poke our swagger grows
pride of legacy, royalty of the past
raised the land beneath your feet.

You look to dismantle us
your dread fuels our power
liberating the rage in our hearts.

Explosions of anger met
with doubled-downed discernment
qualifying your truth,
not our truth.

Soul dust ingrained in the earth
bends to our will
lifting us one by one

Generation by generation
fortifying our future
into fruitful ascendency.

By Nichol Ronée Bourdeaux

Biography:

Nichol Ronée Bourdeaux is inspired by the popular singer-songwriters of the ’70s. Her simple and playful poems are meant to be read aloud to experience the melodic expression and tone. She hopes her writing opens an accessible doorway that welcomes a broader audience to other women-of-color writers. Most recently, she published her debut poetry collection; I’m F.I.N.E.: fucked-up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.

Ithaca

Walking in the dark of a new moon
you said that we still make shadows

& if every light has its weave mine lies
somewhere between moth wings &

a lost mitten. Given it took Odysseus
ten years to reach Ithaca there are

at least a hundred reasons not
to get Zen after dark: home-

sickness being the feather forever
strummed against the ribcage,

your heart a split arrow &
your body a busted compass

quivering to the siren song of
ill-kempt lungs & croaking frogs.

If every light has its song
mine lies somewhere between

a ship’s dirge & a hacksaw.
Recall there is no sea-change.

That between port & starboard
lies a shining, distended corpse.

Just breathe: my chest expands,
tattered sails turn wind to fact

filling in the ever-swelling gap
between the world & me.

By Christopher Cherney

Biography:

Christopher Cherney is a writer, film director, photographer from Cleveland, Ohio, who currently lives in Valencia, Spain.

Birds

How many more? He is pinned
between pedal and pavement
little wrist by little ear, we peek
through chain link, try to find his eyes
try to see if he knows like he must have known
when the pavement rose and the air gave out
around him, rubber soles scattered into
stillness, crouched on glass shattered under
cars filled–or battered–by baby black holes
little dark empties that could swallow us whole
a truth we all know, the way he all knows that
he is being left to face the alone the way
a bird knows to dart when it flies past low
and close, snaps your eyes shut, sharp
inhale you clutch until danger has passed, not
like a boy who knows to hold his breath
until his lips have grown cold between feathers, hot
sting his palm, hot spills candy wrapper
and tissue, hot descend from the sky invisible
hot until they are ricochet, sting hungry
for a blood that pools on cotton jersey
but does not run
does not turn toward them as we do now
peek through lashes, through screens uncensored
willing the nest empty, step from behind cement wall
try to find their eyes, their little dark empties, and
ask them how many birds it takes to carry a boy away.

By Joan Barker

Biography:

Joan Barker is a writer who lives in southern Maine. In 2021, she penned a series of op-Eds advocating for US government accountability on the issue of vulnerable interpreters left behind in Afghanistan, a place she lived and worked in 2018. Her poem Hometown has been selected to appear in the upcoming issue of The Alembic. Barker’s writing is anchored in a firm belief that all people deserve to live a life of dignity.