In this life,
I was very minor.

I was a minor lover.
There was maybe a day, a night
or two, when I was on.

I was, would have been,
a minor daughter,
had my parents lived.

I was a minor runner. I was
a minor thinker. In the middle
distance, not too fast.

I was a minor mother: only
two, and sometimes,
I was mean to them.

I was a minor beauty.
I was a minor buddhist.
There was a certain symmetry, but
it, too, was minor.

My poems were not major
enough to even make me
a “minor poet,”

but I did sit here
instead of getting up, getting
the gun, loading it.

Counting,
killing myself.

Olena Kalytiak Davis

Even water
changes its mind mid-
drip from
the bearded
skull of a
streetlamp
strange to
be given
proof sound
comes from
movement
and noise
chaos—I
am the still-
fumed center
of the world
holding its
breath on a
burned thing
cooled

John Freeman

Every day at lunch the gray heron
canters down from her branch in the brook

leaving behind turquoise eggs. There were
two birds, but kids killed one with a slingshot, so

now she hooks alone, casting with her giant
beak. Stirring the water with a foot. The legends

tell of what revenge nature will wreak, we’ll
be torn limb from limb, they’ll feast on our necks.

None of this seems true of the heron in the
brook, using her wings to create shade, lure

small fish into the coves made by trash
visitors dump amidst the glades. Cans of Coke,

T-shirts, a dishwasher, an old skirt. It’s become
the breakfast table for her. And us, what are we for?

To watch, mourn, to exclaim gladly?
I’ve nothing to hunt, to trap, nothing

to own, walking these woods with a fading
map, miles from my suburban home.

The heron looks up, and seeing I am neither
prey nor threat, returns to her disguise,

vanishes again in the weeds, standing so still she
is simply a reed, a white bill, two eyes.

John Freeman

I stand before it
All that I own
What kind of heaven
would it be if
I couldn’t take you

John Freeman

Listen to what the air
is saying tonight

my friend, you’ve
been ashore a long

while, the time
for your sail

to fill is here.
We’re standing on

the verge with you,
take our arms

we’ll lift you into
this boat

you’ve been building
your whole life:

the beam-ends are
lined with your labor,

the arc of visibility
is clear,

everything that ever
was awaits you at sea.

Tell it to us when
we arrive

in due time, in ships
you taught us to sail.

John Freeman

Afterwards, my thighs and ass felt strong and wild like the dappled horse buttocks inside a Leonora Carrington painting.

Brenda Coultas

Seventeen suns rising in seventeen bedroom windows. Thirty-four eyes blooming open with the light of one more morning. Seventeen reflections in the bathroom mirror. Seventeen backpacks or briefcases stuffed with textbooks or lesson plans. Seventeen good mornings at kitchen breakfasts and seventeen goodbyes at front doors. Seventeen drives through palm-lined streets and miles of crammed highways to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School at 5901 Pine Island Road. The first bell ringing in one last school day on February fourteenth, 2018. Seventeen echoes of footsteps down hallways for five class periods: algebra, poetry, biology, art, history. Seventeen hands writing on whiteboards or taking notes at their desks until the first gunshot at 2:21pm. One AR-15 rifle in the hands of a nineteen year old mind turning hate for himself into hate for others, into one hundred fifty bullets fired in six minutes through building number twelve. Seventeen dead carried down hallways they walked, past cases of trophies they won, flyers for clubs they belonged to, lockers they won’t open again. Seventeen Valentine’s Day dates broken and cards unopened. Seventeen bodies to identify, dozens of photo albums to page through and remember their lives. Seventeen caskets and burial garments to choose for them. Seventeen funerals to attend in twelve days. Seventeen graves dug and headstones placed-all marked with the same date of death. Seventeen names: Alyssa. Helena. Scott. Martin-seventeen ab- sentees forever-Nicholas. Aaron. Jamie. Luke-seventeen closets to clear out-Christopher. Cara. Gina. Joaquin-seventeen empty beds-Alaina. Meadow. Alex. Carmen. Peter-seventeen reasons to rebel with the hope these will be the last seventeen to be taken by one of three-hundred-ninety-three-million guns in America.

Richard Blanco

Germaine, your poem this week is quite striking-so heartfelt and full of captivating imagery, right from the start.

I miss the sun replaced by fluorescent lights
flickering in my cell. I miss the sky, a kinder
blue than the sapphire police lights still
spinning in my memory. I miss the moon,
a gentler shine than the guards’ badges
as steely as their blue eyes piercing me.

You continue with even more powerful images that describe your isolation.

I’m smoke trapped in a jar, a star behind
a wall of clouds. I’m a garden of shadows.

Impressive. Your love for poetry during your college days really shows through. But I’m especially taken by the lines that confess your true “want.”

More than the sun, the sky, or the moon,
I want my son. I’ve become nothing but
want, but my want and I are locked up.

A powerful turn where you truly open up to the emotional core of the poem and begin speaking to your son directly.

Son: see my hand still tying the red shoelaces
on your silver Nikes. Taste the Rocky Road
ice cream dripping from our chins. Watch
us watching Batman on our lumpy couch.
Remember when I was your hero? Hear
us still singing our favorite hip-hop songs-
lyrics of lives we knew by heart. Remember
the plastic handcuffs you played with, not
the metal handcuffs that took me away.

Those vivid and tenderly rendered details really bring your son to life. They let me miss and mourn him as you do when you reveal that he died while you were jailed. You close the poem perfectly by grounding it in imagery that lets us feel your sorrow and emptiness.

Words are my only escape now. In this poem,
I turn iron bars into shadows I walk through
to see your eyes shine, hold your lifeless face
in my palms, kiss your cold forehead goodbye.
In this poem, I curse God and myself-wail
my amens, join the sobbing choir at church.
In this poem I turn back time, stop the bullet,
draw blood back into your body. In this poem,
I save you and you save me from myself.

Richard Blanco

Maybe you don’t remember, or don’t want to, or
maybe, like me, you’ve never been able to forget:
May 1979, fifth-grade recess, I grabbed your collar,
shoved you up against the wall behind the chapel,
called you a sissy-ass americano to your face, then
punched you-hard as I could. Maybe you still live,
as I do, with the awful crack of my knuckles’ slam o
n your jaw, and the grim memory of your lip split.

Why didn’t you punch me back? That would’ve hurt
less than the jab of your blue eyes dulled with pain-
how you let your body wilt, lean into me, and we
walked arm in arm to the boys’ room, washed off
the blood and dirt. Is that how you remember it?
What you can’t remember is what I thought when
our gazes locked in the mirror and I wanted to say:
I’m sorry, maybe I love you. Perhaps even kiss you.

Did you feel it, too? At that instant did we both
somehow understand what I’m only now capable
of putting into these words: that I didn’t hate you,
but envied you-the americano sissy I wanted to be
with sheer skin, dainty freckles, the bold consonants
of your English name, your perfectly starched shirts,
pleated pants, that showy Happy Days lunchbox,
your A-plus spelling quizzes that I barely passed.

Why didn’t you snitch on me? I don’t remember now
who told Sister Magdalene, but I’ll never forget how
she wrung my ears until I cried for you, dragged me
to the back of the room, made me stand for the rest
of that day, praying the rosary to think hard about
my sins. And I did, I have for thirty-two years, Derek.
Whether you don’t remember, don’t want to, or never
forgot: forgive me, though I may never forgive myself.

Richard Blanco

Forced to leave home, but home
never leaves us. Wherever exile
takes us, we remain this body made
from the red earth of our island-
our ribs taken from its montes–
its breeze our breaths. We stand
with its palmeras. Our eyes hold
its blue-green sea. Waterfalls
echo in our ears. On our wrists,
jasmine. Our palms open, close
like its hibiscus to love, be loved.

We thrive wherever we remain
true to our lucha-the hustle
of our feet walking to work
as we must, our oily hands
fixing all the broken beauty
we must fix, our soiled hands
growing what we must grow,
or cutting what must be cut,
our backs carrying the weight
of our island’s sands, our pulse
its waves, our sweat the gossamer
dew and dust of its sunrises,
our voice the song of its sinsontes
and its son nested in our souls.

Wherever the world spins us,
home remains the island that
remains in us. Its sun still sets
in our eyes, its clouds stay still
above us, our hands still hold
its tepid rain. We’re still caught
under its net of stars, still listen to
its moon crooning above its dirt
roads. We’re its rivers, the hem
of its coast and lace of its sierras,
its valley windsongs, its vast seas
of green sugarcane fields. We’re
our island’s sweetness as bitter
as the taste of having to leave it.

Richard Blanco