Pirenópolis, Goiás

by Kim Sousa

I hold him in my lap. 
We play I spy, making shapes
of the rocks rising out of the water:
eu vejo um grande crocodilo, 
eu vejo um grande nariz—
o que ele ‘tá cheirando? 
Seus pés? Mas que chulé! 
I kiss his toes. 
His curls tickle my face 
when he throws his head back. 
He smells like coconut oil 
and wet earth. 
I made him from clay.
I can only look forward,
to wherever the water rushes. 
To the single palm rising up
as the tallest tree
against a cloudless sky. 
I can’t turn back, to where he isn’t. 
The monkeys above me 
chitter a warning, 
and a procession of neighbors
breaks through the mist.
Just like that, the child falls 
from my lap and down
into the rushing water. 
Down to where a man drowned, 
pulled by the current. Held
under by something strong
and invisible as teaching 
a phantom child his curls 
make a crown. His wet footprints 
still stamped on the rocks
as past-future improbabilities.
To know the current is there, 
to choose not to jump. 

Kim Sousa (she/they) is a queer Brazilian American poet, editor and open border radical. She was born in Goiânia, Goiás and immigrated to Austin, Texas with her family at age five. Her poems can be found in Poet Lore, EcoTheo Review, The Boiler, The Missouri Review, [PANK] Magazine’s Latinx Lit Celebration, Harvard’s PALABRITAS, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection, ALWAYS A RELIC NEVER A RELIQUARY, is the winner of Black Lawrence Press’ 2020 St. Lawrence First Book Prize and is forthcoming July 2022. Along with Até Mais: Until More, an Anthology of Latinx Futurisms (forthcoming, Deep Vellum Books), she is the co-editor of the limited-run anthology of immigrant and first-generation poetry, No Tender Fences, which donated 100% of its proceeds to the immigrant advocacy network, RAICES Texas. You can find Kim at http://www.kimsousawrites.com and on Twitter @kimsoandso and @LatinxFuturisms.

by Kim Sousa

Today the planets say Don’t do: 
inadequacy, assuming the worst, 
erosion. And I have already slipped
into some antithetical ether. See, 
at the blackboard of this country, 
I’m clapping erasers and choking.
Erasing my own name. 
However it’s pronounced here, I’ll stop
pushing back. All my friends
are brilliant and American. 
My country was mined 
for its emeralds and my kin. 
I’m still coughing up dust and bone. 
Before the first star, 
the river dolphin is still a man 
and my tio still kisses every tomb. 
All the uncles before him underground, 
passing palm wine and sweet bread
between their blue-lit palms. 
How was it my forehead never 
was kissed by an ancestor—not holy
water, either. Before my mud 
was fully baked—a border. 
They say when we cross
over, we wake in The River. 
My pockets full of simple stones, 
unskipped. My memory unrecovered, 
redacted and stamped by Some Government Seal. 
What if my crossings are already spent?
Already, the dead in the leaves turn away, 
their sibilant voices now only wind. 
And the witch moth that lands beside me
won’t answer: quem é? 

Kim Sousa (she/they) is a queer Brazilian American poet, editor and open border radical. She was born in Goiânia, Goiás and immigrated to Austin, Texas with her family at age five. Her poems can be found in Poet Lore, EcoTheo Review, The Boiler, The Missouri Review, [PANK] Magazine’s Latinx Lit Celebration, Harvard’s PALABRITAS, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection, ALWAYS A RELIC NEVER A RELIQUARY, is the winner of Black Lawrence Press’ 2020 St. Lawrence First Book Prize and is forthcoming July 2022. Along with Até Mais: Until More, an Anthology of Latinx Futurisms (forthcoming, Deep Vellum Books), she is the co-editor of the limited-run anthology of immigrant and first-generation poetry, No Tender Fences, which donated 100% of its proceeds to the immigrant advocacy network, RAICES Texas. You can find Kim at http://www.kimsousawrites.com and on Twitter @kimsoandso and @LatinxFuturisms.

by Linda Umans

Slingbacks and clingy skirt
clop-clopping toward the train
seeing myself ridiculous,
dressed-up horse on a
dusty Sicilian road.

Rolling hips, sexual
interest an absentee,
not shocking these days, but
vivid for the sad ride home.
Too bad I’m just recalling
a Leonard Cohen lyric,
now mine, the horror 
and comfort of I’ll
never have to lose it again.


Still 
maybe 
many clouds to come
for me
in the C train container
before it becomes a coral reef.

Or maybe 
this imagined end: 

I can take a seat, 
be a George Segal figure
reading eternally,
while sea bass, bluefish, flounder,
mussels, swim
attach around.

Linda Umans taught for many years in the public schools of New York City where she lives and writes. Recent publications include poems in Spillway, Composite {Arts Magazine}, DIALOGIST, The Maine Review, Gris-Gris, The Broadkill Review, 2 Bridges Review, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Seneca Review, and pieces in Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood.

by Natalie Marino

That morning when the window
was so drenched with sun

we thought some things do last
forever, that our mouths

would not become
hard like bone.

Our red sleds rode
down  down  down

the slippery snow—
it was perfect

like California’s sweet
strawberries in winter.

Our bodies will remember
for us when we find our former

selves in the gray silence
of old photographs.

We will fill the empty spaces
with the loud colors of paper

marigolds.

Natalie Marino is a poet, physician, and mother. Her work appears in Barren Magazine, Capsule Stories, Dust Poetry Magazine, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Leon Literary Review, Literary Mama, Moria Online, and elsewhere. She also reads poetry submissions for Bracken Magazine. She lives in California with her husband and two daughters.

by Natalie Marino

for my mother, Cindy Marlene Marino

tiger stripes
made it halfway
between wild animal
and primordial tree.

You cut into
the red heart
of its flesh
and it called you

from the Mexican
summer, so hot
that the rain rose
above the street soon

after it fell.
You thirsted
for its cool water
even after

you were warned
of the dysentery.
Now the butterflies
start their migration

to fields of flowers,
leaving you alone.
You think back
to that season

of quiet eating
when no one
needed to discuss
the ends of evenings.

Natalie Marino is a poet, physician, and mother. Her work appears in Barren Magazine, Capsule Stories, Dust Poetry Magazine, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Leon Literary Review, Literary Mama, Moria Online, and elsewhere. She also reads poetry submissions for Bracken Magazine. She lives in California with her husband and two daughters.

by Jason Myers

For the girl groups of the 1960s
I give you praise. Their love-haunted joy
hurled, pled & pitched in perfect harmonies
puts a spell on me & my light-climbed days.
Ronettes, Vandallas, Shangri-Las alloy
the forlorn, odd, unexpected delights
of rejected boys & Saturday nights.
Though their cares appear small, I hear in each
aria about breaking up, going
steady the sum total of what we need,
why we’re made. To matter. To reach
into the dark, the hurt, the dumb – knowing
our failed flesh is your means of grace. You feed
us music, milk, holy bread, holy blood.

Jason Myers eats strawberries for breakfast and edits EcoTheo Review. He parents and partners in central Texas where he is a candidate for holy orders in the Episcopal Church.

by Hulian Zhang

Bit by bit
Bite by bite

The invisible was swallowing
I can hear it masticating

That must be the last intact part of my skin
Because from where I feel the pain
 
I was waiting for it to finish the last chew
I was waiting with an unprecedented peaceful despair  
 
Quiet so quiet
Slight by slight

Here comes a light
The warmth from my friends’ chests, the beating tide

Hulian Zhang (she/her) is currently a PhD candidate in Medical Ethics and Law at Newcastle Law School, Newcastle University (UK). This is her first time publicly sharing her poems.

by Hulian Zhang

The sky must be grey
I am hiding under my duvet

I hear it cries
Sounds not like a sunrise 

I am hiding under my duvet 
As if I were above the clouds 

I thought that the rain was irrelevant                    
But the pillow is soaked 

Clouds and darkness surround me

Hulian Zhang (she/her) is currently a PhD candidate in Medical Ethics and Law at Newcastle Law School, Newcastle University (UK). This is her first time publicly sharing her poems.

by Megan Burns


outside the lining of possible outcomes
tether dreaming, the way grass dances under 
the surface of water, and the film a poem, you attach
paper shreds to the end of the vent 
in your spaceship room, inside the vacuum 
what you desire is the rustle of leaves
a leaving of natural behind, it tried to silent
inside me so many songs of longing to bring
you back, when is lift off, we ask
and translate it to me
it’s already occurred 
it’s already happening 
we’ve already left this place behind

the way you get to throw off the cloak 
of being human in the end, a finale so big
it takes all of your breath away

Megan Burns is the publisher at Trembling Pillow Press (tremblingpillowpress.com). She is the co-director of the New Orleans Poetry Festival (nolapoetry.com) and has been hosting the Blood Jet Poetry Reading Series in New Orleans for the last six years. She has been most recently published in Jacket Magazine, Callaloo, New Laurel Review, Dream Pop, and Diagram. Her poetry and prose reviews have been published in Tarpaulin Sky, Gently Read Lit, Big Bridge, and Rain Taxi. She has three books Memorial + Sight Lines (2008), Sound and Basin (2013) and Commitment (2015) published by Lavender Ink. Her recent chapbooks include: her Twin Peaks chap, Sleepwalk With Me (Horse Less Press, 2016), Beneath the Drift (Red Mare, 2019) and FUCK LOVE: I’m sorry someone hurt you (Shirt Pocket Press, 2019). Her fourth collection, BASIC PROGRAMMING, was published by Lavender Ink in 2018. Her forthcoming collection is called PLURALITY.