The light came in flat under the clouds the
way it does sometimes at sunset in the winter,
projecting the gold of the suncatcher in the window
onto the cascade of her hair, and I realized where
artists found halos for their angels. Her
silhouette was holy in a way I thought I had lost
to God’s brutality, but the magic didn’t last longer
than the time it took for her to pull the blinds.

Later that evening, I tried to recapture the
moment in a photograph using a flashlight and
a mirror, but all I accomplished was to connect
the thinning patch on her crown to the hackneyed
landscape we’d bought at a motel auction.
You can’t force providence. You can only make
sure you are open to the gift when it is given,
the way the fish waited patiently for Noah’s flood,
then danced in the blue-green light, shadowed
by one lone boat and a feast of floating bodies.

---

Tom Barlow is an American poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in over 100 journals and anthologies including They Said (Black Lawrence) and Best New Writing and journals including Hobart, Temenos, Forklift Ohio, Redivider, Your Daily Poem, and the Stoneboat Literary Journal.

to my sons

Gather rotis for stray cows, scatter rice for the ragged crow
I’ve severed you from old ways, this is my sorrow

It takes practice to scoop daal with your fingers, taste spice on the honey
of your hot skin before you swallow, this is my sorrow

Rama scaled the ocean/Bheeshma died pillowed on a bed of arrows
Their ghosts in your marrow unstirring, this is my sorrow

In the bazaar you petted unblemished baby goats, you didn’t know
they were meant for slaughter, this is my sorrow

Exiled from a language where yesterday also means tomorrow
You wander thirsty with no tongues, this is my sorrow

I will be your compass, my bones are yours to borrow
My body your only true country, this is my sorrow

---

Yamini Pathak is a former software engineer turned poet and freelance writer. She was born and raised in India and now lives in New Jersey. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in Waxwing, Anomaly, The Kenyon Review blog, Rattle, The Hindu newspaper, and elsewhere. She is a poetry reader for The Nashville Review and a Geraldine Dodge Foundation Poet in the Schools. Yamini is an alumnus of VONA/Voices (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation), and Community of Writers at Squaw Valley.

---

This poem previously appeared in ANMLY.

March 12, 2019
The College Admissions Scandal:
Wealthy parents paid consultants
to cheat their kid’s way into college

And I laughed…
Silly me for drafting
“disadvantaged background” essays
so admissions would take pity on my poverty
when Dead Presidents write the best recommendation letters.

Scandal is a funny word
to describe known facts.

I’ve sat next to students
with the last names of buildings and departments.
Seats earned from their
parents’ gold-plated bootstraps
Born at the last lap, full ride without even seeing the track,
looking at us like we should be thankful we got invited to the race.

My invitation was a scholarship
a whole comma over
from my parents annual income,
but tuition free
isn’t the same as blank check

With scholarships, you are a
walking diversity brochure
must be photogenic for the Alumni Page,
make the melanin offset the racist mascot.
Still end up needing Aunty Sallie Mae
to navient through college.
My amassed debt so massive
I could’ve down paid on a mansion.

But who am I to not run?
I ran to make my parent’s sacrifices worth it
I earned a bachelors in resourcefulness
a masters in the academic hustle.
Now applying for a PhD in situational alchemy:
my thesis is on
turning recycled soda bottle deposits into doctorates.
And yet, my success always feels doctored.

Lori and Felicity are desperate housewives
trying to build Full Houses for their kids
but mothers crossing borders to build
futures out of factory work,
degrees out of green cards,
chances out of homelessness
are leeching the system

So when the scandal broke,
I laughed so hard that I could almost
drown out the loudness of my envy,
paid in full green with jealousy.

I wish for that level of certainty.
To know the grass will always be green
because generational wealth grew gardens
well before I was even
a seedling. The luxury of strolling
to the finish line.

---

Usman Hameedi is a Pakistani-American scientist, poet, and teaching artist.
Since 2008, he has competed in and coached for collegiate, national, and
international level poetry slams. Most recently, he was ranked 15th at the
2019 Individual World Poetry Slam and was invited to open the Final Stage
Slam. He has been featured on Upworthy, Huffington Post, Intima: A Journal
of Narrative Medicine, and the Story Collider: Storytelling for Scientists
podcast. As a scientist, Usman has contributed to academic and industry
laboratories with an array of research targets, including cancers and
neurological disorders. Of all the things he has done, he is most proud of
inspiring others to dream big and see the greatness within themselves!

I.

There’s an art to leaving.
Bags packed by the door,
the rough suitcase, the backpack.
You always have to be ready.

You always have to be ready
because the body wants
what bodies want, which is
to be touched. Desired.

Sometimes you can’t give
that to someone.
Sometimes the rain pelts
against frosted glass, and

you cry in the bathroom.
The rain falls harder.
Wind gusts curtains
across the sink.

II.

His body, caught
in mine. The sheets
blooming under us
like morning glories.

When I leave him,
it is a long time coming.
He knew from New Year’s
until September.

I would go.
I would go because his body
did not want my body, or what
he thought my body to be.

The Rousseau print
he gave me is hidden
in my mother’s closet.
I don’t look. I don’t need to.

It tells me everything.
It whispers his secrets
to everyone, including me.
It will expose him.

Don’t wait for her to leave, the painting
says. Don’t let her go.

III.

Bishop writes of losing.
I write about leaving, the way
the door swings in when
you run out. I don’t want loss.

It’s too complex, messy. The edges
ooze, a wound that blisters, infected.
Leaving is easier, neat as a napkin.
Tidier. One has more control.

I leave men behind like bomb
rubble, like city ruins, like floods.
I am never abandoned. The slate
is always wiped clean.

Never turn back. Don’t dare to.
Keep hurtling forward.

---

Louisa Schnaithmann is a poet living in the Philadelphia area whose work has been published in Menacing Hedge, Projector Magazine (in the UK), and Rogue Agent. Her poem, “On The Problem of Womanhood”, was nominated for Best of the Net in 2019.

for Devin

Cradling a bright hangover
on a friend’s couch, sunlight
stretching into the living room
from some open window,
ferrying voices in from the patio,
the smell of coffee crawling
into my nose like sluggish ants.
I could lie here under the weight
of my decisions and indecisions
under the unfamiliar shadows
of unfamiliar furniture until
I become one with this couch.
But I pull myself up the same
way the darkness pulls light
into the room by the fistful
and out into the day where
my friends have been cupping
coffee longer, listening to their
upstairs neighbor wonderfully
practice the saxophone at his
window three stories up while
a mocking bird, invisible in
the shifting leaves overhead,
fails miserably and delightfully
to keep up, to call back each
tune in its own way, its little
broken reflection carrying in
the wind, and it’s almost too
beautiful to bear but I bear it.

The only spot I ever order chicken at nowadays
Is where you can get 50 whole Wings for $23.99
Where the koolaid stay replenished
And the grease stains the inside of the cheek
Where they keep the seasonings simple
Lawrys/garlic/pepper/chili powder/cayenne/a pint of salt
Ain’t no sauce that ain’t hot, which we mostly bring for the fries and the catfish.
A place where the kitchen taste as good as a homecoming
I learned how to say my father’s name from his mother
She held the R in the pit of her jaw like a neck bone
BeRnard
And if that don’t speak love into the frying pan, then I have gone my entire life unfed
What I learned most about staying was from my mother’s Mac and cheese
My sister makes a lemon pound cake for my grandfather at thanksgiving
And she starts to morph into my grandmother
So I’m here
Where the food taste like the knees don’t quite bend the same
we used to chew the gristle off the bone and in turn it came for our joints
Here
Everything comes with a side of coleslaw and a piece of bread to soak up the grease
Here, where nothing speaks to us more than the after service dinner
That must be what god meant when he called us family
If I cook for you, it’s only to say I care
If I use a little extra butter, It just means I love you
It’s how my grandmother showed me
I was taught how to create family in her kitchen
I promise I’m still learning

---

Jason B. Crawford [He/They] is a black, non-binary male, bi-poly-queer writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. In addition to being published in online literary magazines, such as Wellington Street Review, Barren Magazine, The Amistad, and Kissing Dynamite, he is also the Editor in Charge for The Knight’s Library Magazine. His chapbook collection Summertime Fine as a Short List selection for Nightingale & Gale.

Sometimes I retrace my steps
I reread old letters
We shared together
It’s fantastic to say that I miss you tremendously
Yet not at all
We have separate lives
With different people
Different storylines
You
Are no longer the oxygen I breathe
I don’t think of you when I wake up or when I brush my teeth
I don’t exercise for you
I don’t do my makeup or brush my hair,
Hoping I will run into your beautiful face
I retrace my steps
But I do not get stuck on an old text
I try not to overanalyze every mistake I made
Because negativity drives me insane,
And I’ve gone crazy for too long.
The strings have been cut.
My fingers touch the thread,
Praying it will connect again
But hoping it won’t.
Hoping I’ll be strong enough to fully let you go
Because there are scars on my paper skin
That scream your name when I look into a mirror.
I didn’t mean for this to happen—
To fall so hard that my bruises develop bruises
And my blood vessels become fleets of ship sailing through my system.
My skin will turn into steel
Reflecting the amount of armor I must wear to protect myself from remembering you.
I will retrace my steps but I won’t follow yours.
Instead,
I will remember the rise and fall of your chest when you slept.
The peace after hardship.
I’ll cling onto you
Until I forget how to hold on.
Then,
I’ll lose everything.
And gain relief.

Pain is an Archangel

Pain is an archangel

Visiting flesh

Announcing divine

Events in our lives.

My Archangel Sends His Assistant

A paper cut has ruined my day,

A small slit to my finger.

There’s bigger things I could decry,

But small pain tends to linger.

Fox Mulder was too sensitive
To tell Scully the truth. It’s out there
on Netflix. He should have stopped her
from wearing those boxy jackets
and too-long skirts. Scully,
he could have said. Scully,
they do you no favors.

He cared more for greys.

Nancy Botwin was too insensitive
to really go for Andy. You might think
she was sensitive and holding back
because Andy was her brother-in-law
but we are talking MILFweed
and suburban baronesses
and spankings in limousines Nancy.

She cared more for selling weed.

In/sensitive? I’m neither one of those.
I’m numb. I’m dumb. I ask questions like
how did you like the book, or
would you like to talk about this tomorrow, or
I just turn on the TV and write a story
based on a show I saw another time I turned it on.

I care more about metaphor, Fukushima, and sorrow.

my letter to you was a mouth
& I want it propped open

I imagine you under
the planet I am under
so we have something to discuss

where your lovers went
when they discovered their aliveness still intact
is none of my business

I am under oath
to not sound so strange

when I feel strange
I put on black & start to whisper

when I speak
I am watching the sky
so it sounds like crying

I can’t seem to focus
without essential oils
or my hand on your aura

once during a bad winter
I indexed cloud formations
until everything once more resembled
a great tattoo

I proclaimed this booth of ours
a winter booth
& you, mine

I felt for your knee in the booth
& looked for something significant

feathers are found in the street
with startling regularity
& this helps me immensely

god said turn around
but it was a cruel joke

good one, god, I said
but the sun didn’t set

when the moon came around
I confused it with our planet
& felt burned

when I couldn’t help being in love with you
I walked down a long road
with a stick of dynamite

I wore a cheap dress
I imagined you complimenting

we can talk about the sun
now, I said
but nothing happened

just ghosts of me
loving my body
& not knowing anything else