Issue 7 // poetry
Three Poems // Harris Guevarra // trans. by Bernard Capinpin
“They stopped reading books, gazing at the stars, digging up whatever else they wanted to recover. They danced with the skull, sang it songs, composed poems of praise, they no longer had any contempt or disdain for whoever plots to erode the reason for their existence.”
Pulled Pork // Iyana Sky
“Never do I bring up all the black men and women
dying across these streets; never do I mention
their children gunned down in Paw Patrol beds.
Instead I learn appreciation for your precious soccer”
Penelope Novak
Richard Vyse
Three Poems // Romeo Oriogun
“See, a prison is a body begging for her scars to be touched tenderly.
Father, behind the bottle of gin the whip still lies.
Even in the dark what shows us the way is another body.”
Three Poems // Ally Ang
“in your suburban Connecticut town, your father
wears his accent like a scarlet letter, A for alien.
a cop places his hand on his gun & tells your father
to go back to his country, a country
that tried to kill him before his tenth birthday.”
Three Poems // Chanel Brenner
“I see the way his face lights up,
like Lambeau Field on opening night.”
Three Poems // Sarah Wetzel
“It's dawn and it seems from the window
where I watch him that there could be
no portrait more sad and lonely.
Seagulls wheel above the pier
where three fishermen cast their rods.”
Zhimin Liu
Jane Odartey