Let's Set Some Poetic Intentions
Breaking poetry by Ed Granger, Adam Malinowski, Kayla Berkey, Remy Dambron, and Donna Doyle
Dear Reader,
What is it about the New Year that leaves everything feeling—burnished? Whole skies are glossed, rain or no. Creative avenues emerge cleared of ancient debris. The future arises: a bright and inviting unknown, its hope as inevitable as darkness ever was. And I hope that this year one of the things I can offer you is poetry that keeps you grounded in the possible.
This week we've got stellar beginnings. Ed Granger takes his pen to the country's see-sawing financial woes. Adam Malinowski leads us through language that has become deeply familiar in the era of American child internment. Kayla Berkey brings us fierce meditations on the body's right to be believed. Remy Dambron muses on the paradox of a Justice Kavanaugh. And finally, Donna Doyle's recalls that the last year left some of our worlds a little smaller.
All good things,
Elle Aviv Newton
Editor
Poets Reading the News
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To A Trader Perishing Daily
By Ed Granger
A bull. A bear. A year from there to here.
Whoever rings the morning bell, it tolls
for you to ditch stocks for commodities,
or maybe that new school for sommeliers
on lower Broadway, where you’ll take the black
and wield your tastevin against the wights
insisting Chateauneuf-du-Pape with duck
won’t mean Seppuku for the chef. Some nights
Trump’s tweets do get to you. You wilt right through
your Ferragamos, scrolling downward, then …
A bear. A bull. A week’s bebop to blues
and back. An elegy. An ode. Aubade gone
badly wrong. Whatever today is called,
you’ll ride this tiger until you get mauled.
Love is A Voice I Cannot Spell
By Adam Malinowski
cluster-bomb
so beautiful
my fire
my lower left hip
a remote base
erect metal barriers
the Sonoran Desert
is a trace amount of lead
an infected wound
love
banned in all countries
in custody of dehydration
injurious
you know it in your heart
I set my soul on fire
near my jaw
there are makeshift shelters
steel columns
& harmful bacteria
a mother’s love
in spite of itself
yet I cannot hear
I will die from kidney failure
emptied of meaning
we are sirens
bodies unrecognizable
24 hours after death
pulled over in a lawn-care trailer
A bulwark
which cannot be named
which contains trace amounts
in the backseat I hold
these stones
its war traced
part of me indefinite
and remote
sepein love
or, to “make rotten”
can be a beautiful sight
the wall of an open-air prison
where we had our first kiss
given water and access
to bathrooms
a part of me
my toes they shake
& there’s activity
in a mother’s hands
spread across
a constellation
of concertina wire...
Editor's note: Above is an excerpt. Read in full on our front page.
My Body
By Kayla Berkey
1.
Boys will be
boys, right?
Boys will be bodies.
Or my body
will be boys’.
What happens in
boys stays
in my body. Will
boys be in
my body whether I like it
or not.
2.
Dear dad(s),
do you believe
my
weighed-down body
groped body
boys on
my body with
one hand
silencing my
body
is trying
to scream.
3.
Sugar and
cunt ugly bitch
believe my
body
hears.
4.
Let me say my
own body —
body of
water
milk body
blood
body.
My fluid body
can be
(say it)
good.
Say it
all at once. I
believe
my body.
Hypocritical Oath
By Rémy Dambron
your honor worked his tail off
yale graduation
your honor was ambitious
power aspirations
your honor exposed himself
masculinization
your honor has accusers
confirmed affiliations
your honor in denial
sexual violation
your honor will politicize
conservative infiltration
your honor strictly partisan
republican salvation
your honor on the offensive
defeminization
your honor will provoke
death threats and relocation
your honor will play the victim
self-intoxication
your honor not on trial
clear fraternization
your honor will be righteous
seething indignation
your honor will gaslight
enflamed administration
your honor submits his calendar
self-corroboration
your honor has poor temperament
protocol abdication
your honor will object
elitist reputation
your honor will have accomplices
divided congregation
your honor will prevail
sham investigation
your honor will be promoted
theatrical confirmation
your honor will set precedents
dismissing allegations
your honor will act with interest
self-preservation
your honor will abuse his influence
judicial fragmentation
your honor will rule for decades
supreme abomination
your honor will be above the law
predetermined inclination
your honor will find a loophole
technical legislation
your honor evades 83 complaints
dismissed by relocation
your dishonor proudly accepts
disgraceful nomination
your honor stands for justus
whitemale domination
The Far Side of the Moon
By Donna Doyle
After you die, the news goes on
without your commentary, obituary
buried between stories, pebble size
joys you carried and Sisyphean stones
you pushed against. Now your unrest
comes to rest under a granite headline,
remains cradled deep in earth’s aching.
What you would not give to rise again
in fury, kneel in lament, to live once more
in a world beyond repair, mourn everyone
dying, cast hope and votes toward 2020,
and linger in every second’s loveliness
like perhaps you are now, with Chang’e
roaming around the far side of the moon.