Poetry

hey alice above us only sky hey alice and it’s crystal clear and blue like texas is and isn’t like the day on the scaffold burning hands as we all took it down together hey alice remember all of us our signatures on the wood walkboard we’ll never throw that one out, i promise hey alice remember when i almost passed out that one time remember the show where my glasses broke

Art by Alexa Cruz Abaca Can we be bitter without setting our futures aflame? I shampoo my hair in the garden. Someone tells me to send a letter to everyone I had ever talked bad about. They return marked with black ink. I trace the outline of my veins with scissors. Who would I be if I was not me? A mirage? A reflection? A ghost? This is for my future children.

Tender flesh I wish I could touch, But when I see, I seize in disgust. So heavy compared to lean, I am unclean. Formerly crystallized but now undone, Skin folding in origami with deep creases, Scars sincere, a period piece.

I wish I could brainwash myself. I wish I could drop dead. A knife up the thick blood vessels of my throat or a serrated stab through the gut down to spilling intestines. An acceptance that I can no longer breathe when submerged in the ocean’s serene deathly oscillations. Oh to have a whim to carry on only plays out into self destruction. I want to be free but I can’t pin down exactly from what,

You wish I were in your image. Soft and delicate crevices, but stone and sculpted angles where a stomach and thighs should be.\ You want me to be tender and warm, an ample bosom to fit your desires. What I want is to fit my own gaze. My body, soft in all the wrong places, scars gently outlining where breasts used to be. My body isn’t an object to be

I play my family’s piano out of tune because it’s been out of tune for as long as we’ve had it. I never learned any actual chords or how to play properly, but I kinda like it that way. I like the idea that if broken keys still make sound, they can still create music. Broken thoughts and fragments of ideas become lyrics and rhymes that others can relate to. Some of them listen through broken headphones that only work on one side, but still carry symphonies.

The trees show me their bare branches Gnarled, raw The cold bites through my resolve A crow’s caw Sounds in the pale blue above Love like winter Barren and biting But it will never splinter The frost in my chest Will it melt and let me rest? The world outside is so dark The last thing I want is a sense of hostility Instead, vitality In the beginning threads of spring

The boiling water rises Whistling of the kettle shrill My eye lies on the prize There will be an end to my chill Color blossoms in the mug Sumptuous stripes of steam Quickening the internal tug Put to my lips, a floral dream Soft, cushioned fields of lavender Against the rose’s cutting thorns I can’t turn back the earthly calendar And escape their mounting scorn There’s an urge in me to unwind

in the wake of it all, after capital’s fall: i will lie down with you in the garden we’ve grown with our sweet picnic lunch and there we will eat the baklava made in the kitchen we’ve shared with our family found amid the tumult; and if: you wish it i’ll teach you how to count the stars as many above as ways you can teach me to roll out the dough:

Content Warning: Fire, Capitalist violence

Content Warning: Capitalist violence

Downy hair of the earth overtrodden in crushed dense wandering tracks—flesh of earth shaped by the imperfect impressions of travelers on whose feet travel worlds Cutting shifting tracks with days passing and passing lives, lives that slip away like mud washing from a disaggregating trail like displacing sediment along wending riverbeds Sense of place not my own placelessness abides in the places I pass through unbelonging thrives where I fail to inhabit

Content Warning: Gun violence

The morning dawns and the sky bleeds red. Orange and pink hues flash across the sky as\ sun breaks from under the cloud cover. I watch as gold shimmers in the light. Hope is like a miracle. I think of a man we all praise dropping bombs onto weddings and thinking this’ll change I think of poisoned water and I think of mass graves. Of stolen land, and people, across rolling seas.

From the moment I entered this world, my parents knew I was a delicate rose. I was the first flower they planted on their own, and although their parents didn’t teach them to garden, they did their best to gently tend to the growing thickets of the rose bush they so thoughtfully sowed. As I grew throughout the changing season, I did my best to weather the storms that constantly plundered through the garden.

Everything we do is an offering these days even my spits a gift to the ground to the plants and i bury the end of my blunt while i’m thanking the trees like i’m blessing the dirt like this the only ritual i’ll stick to And everything we do is an offering So i’m still trying to watch what words come out my mouth and Choose which thoughts i listen to more carefully

I don’t think death is as beautiful as the poets say. Yes, there’s something pretty about dead roses and rotten fruit, mice skulls and bones, but I’m reminded of how easily skulls can split, or how easily bones could break, and in my heart, there’s another funeral and it’s raining. My head is rushing to meet the frozen ground, but I should be prepared for it. It’s nearly taking me three separate times,

Where’s your karma? I fell victim to nauseating torment Have you even had dirt under your fingernails? You dragged me halfway across the world Why have you stayed still above me? We’ve both experienced red But in such different ways Choices, choices, choices But you made the wrong ones Choices, choices, choices You penalized us with guns Choices choices choices You left us with none Choices, choices… voices Why has yours become the most rotten one

Art by Misandry this is land of the free, and home of the brave, we love you as us, and give you a grave. we’re a welcoming country, you’ll live the dream! while we work behind the curtains and screens. make America great! keep America white! we’re killing your future who have tried to fight. we give money to the rich and bombs to the poor, and disease to families and kids to wars.

Art by unknown He has come down from his ivory tower Only to climb up another in the Windy City To blow smoke up your ass, but no longer mine Another school insulted by his name and time His reign of terror in Eugene, Oregone but not forgotten, Has reached an abrupt end Wicked, green, witch of the Northwest Good riddance! I’d wish you the best, if it was off with your head

Art by Monty i have looked into the future and hate who i’ve become. words spill off their tongue like honey while cotton catches in my throat and chokes me from the inside out. i want to warn them, tell them that people will only deceive you, don’t go into that car, you won’t come out the same, something in you died that day, all the advice i wish i had taken, i don’t remember being this selfish, maybe i was mistaken?

Content Warning: Abuse, Sexual assault

Part of a series on latin american poems Originally Written by Elicura Chihuailaf In this earth live the stars. In this sky sings the water of imagination. Beyond the clouds that rise from these waters and these soils, our ancestors dream us. Their spirit—they say—is the full moon; silence, their beating heart.

Part of a series on latin american poems Originally Written by Subcomandante Marcos I Build yourself a rather concave sky. Paint it green or brown, earthy and beautiful colors. Give it a splash of clouds to your liking. Carefully hang a full moon in the west, let’s say about three quarters up its respective horizon. In the east slowly start rising a bright, strong sun. Get men and women together, talk to them slowly and with love, and they’ll set off on their own.

Part of a series on latin american poems Originally Written by Jurge Luis Borges Chance found them in a strange age. The planet had been parceled up into different countries, each provisioned with loyalties, beloved memories, and an undoubtedly heroic past; with rights, grievances, and peculiar mythologies; with brazen forefathers, anniversaries, demagogues, and symbols. This division, the work of cartographers, made wars auspicious. López was born in the city that stands by that immobile river; Ward, on the outskirts of the city through which walked Father Brown.

Content Warning: Racism, Trauma, Abuse, Sexual assault

Part of a series on latin american poems Originally Written by Tracy K. Lewis You from your steering wheel and me from my books, we dialogue, and in the Guaraní language we are strained by five hundred years of rain and fallen leaves and five thousand of dust, two nighttime continents, a whole Milky Way of mute space, until from the dregs of such divergence there arose something shining like the sun of Capricorn, caustic like red earth against blue sky, and sure like the slow ascent of the earth toward the Andes to the west: an honest companion.

Part of a series on latin american poems Originally Written by Ariruma Kowii The forests are losing their vitality Their dialogues are agonizing, losing their clarity beginning to fall silent Their dreams crumble to pieces and silence begins to reign. Its song the song of the birds is faint and discordant, their hymns where will they be heard? The air arrives tattered, exhausted and delayed The rivers watch us with bitterness and desperation The entrails of the earth, nourished by poison, begin to expire The plants no longer bloom with fervor with the same enthusiasm as yesterday Tomorrow, fearful its face pallid and its body malnourished runs the risk of miscarriage Tomorrow, tomorrow is in danger tomorrow tomorrow runs the risk of never arriving tomorrow depends on us and so it is fundamental to recover our reason for being it is indispensable to care for its pregnancy to ensure that its delivery goes as it should that its child is born healthy and vigorous and that we all can lull it to sleep in our arms and christen it with the name of: Humanity!

Part of a series on latin american poems Originally Written by Hugo Jamioy Juagibioy We are not people from an alien world longing to keep living; we are not people from a land from which tomorrow they will say we left. We are not a people brought from other places, our roots are here. We are men of the trees, we are a people, we are a community born of the depths of the earth,

Part of a series on latin american poems Originally Written by Hugo Jamioy Juagibioy If there is a paradise in these Indian lands, why isn’t there one in others’ lands? A solitary paradise suffocated by a space where violence, narcotrafficking surround it and little by little destroy it. A paradise where peace once reigned among its inhabitants, where respect and tolerance were the pillars of life. A paradise that today is only

if i got sent to war- is it a fun fantasy? inserting yourself into places you don’t belong i call it - seeing the privilege of the oppressed while it’s not there am i wrong? this belief, this idea, a sense of community found in the very place, you’re not supposed to be It’s like, white saviorism yet taken to this max When it’s not about you, you make it an act And as much as you claim otherwise Doing this detracts

The titan’s madness leaves us undone. The worker’s slaughter; The bosses having fun. Tall towers, falling down. Small soldiers, Walking into town. Hanging heads, cheering crowds. Kingdoms falling, with king’s heads in clouds. Planes soaring, bombs burst. The crowds roaring, The deathtoll’s new worst. Volunteers marching, with paychecks in blood. Nations Falling, Corpses laying in the mud. Seven million, Dollars a Day. For jets to make, corpses in a new way.

O the trees! O the trees! Cut off at the knees - they reach for the sun no longer, you know. Now they serve the interests o’ capitalists As catalysts to subsequent selfishness. Our plunder for lumber and popsicle sticks; The well-calculated blowing of mountains to bits, for the profit from coal, bituminous are far more dangerous than any terrorist hits. For it was Abraham Lincoln a-sittin’ and thinkin' that our fall would surely come from within.

While you’re going jogging or running, Its all in your mind Its all around you, its makes you want to, bleed out the eyes They put the pictures in all the magazines, Expecting all to see They put the pictures there, To be in your mind Its all bloody insane, Like a sadistic sign, They want you to act, think, And be the same Its all bloody insane, INSANE, Its all bloody insane,

Come on Come on, The whole world ‘round, Everybody Get together, The whole world ‘round. It’s you and me, The whole world ‘round, It’s everybody we see, The whole world‘round. Move past the killers, The whole world ‘round, Move past the drillin’ The whole world ‘round. Bikes for everybody, The whole world ‘round, Together for peace, The whole world ‘round. We are talkin’ freedom, The whole world ‘round, Abolish the citizen prison,