I AM NOT ALONE: THE DAY AFTER THE 2024 ELECTION

by Guillermo Filice Castro

José     our delivery man

drops off a package

José who of late 

has begun calling me 

by my given name

not the shortened version I usually offer 

to those who cannot roll their R’s

Oh what are you bringing me today? 

I ask José in a way befitting our 

developing chumminess 

jovial (I suppose)

workplace banter

José responds with a feisty What’s up Papi!

“I’m bringing the vote that made us win,” he adds.

Takes me a second or two to process that.

“Us?” I say as I sign for the soft pack. “Win?”

The reality I was keeping at bay 

swoops right back down

claws extended open beak 

letting out a hellish screech

the reality that filtered into my sleep

last night 

as if water through strata and monsters

as votes were being counted:

The sweaty

bald man  a cross 

between a comic book villain

and a Bond baddie

in whose servitude I seemed to be

genuflecting and smiling as I fanned

the villain’s ego with nodding approval

as he pulled me into his chest

squeezing out my breath

José     who the other day told me 

he had a daughter 

(I’m thinking of his daughter)

and once tried to serve 

in the military 

smiles and pops back 

into the freight elevator

Us? Who’s “us”? 

All I do is smile back, 

parcel in hand, 

doors closing.

Guillermo Filice Castro is the author of Mixtape for a War and Agua, Fuego. His work appears in many journals, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and featured in The Best American Poetry 2023. Born and raised in Argentina, he lives with his husband in New Jersey.

ON EL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

by Catherine Gonick

spirits shed like gasses 

   from the bodies 

 

of our ancestors, 

   children, and others

 

we have loved 

   like to put on costumes 

     

adorn their bones

   wear jewels

 

and red flowers

  tune up guitars

 

They rush to gather

   at the elevator

 

press the button

  for the noosphere

 

that earth-space full

  of our continuing

 

thoughts, private

    and shared

And when the door opens

and the operator calls

 

      going down

      going up

 

      getting off

      getting on

 

the spirits know

  they can go anywhere

 

that we are thinking

  today of them

 

remembering and waiting 

  for them to join us

 

for a fiesta without borders

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in a wide range of literary journals including The New Verse News, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and forthcoming in The Orchards Poetry Journal, as well as in anthologies including Grabbed and Support Ukraine.  She works in a company that fights global warming.

THE ANSWER TO THE WHY-DOVES

by Alejandro Escudé


Prince reminds me to be my own prince.
The stage-man and the music he stood behind
like a god, the gold, the purple and the purple stars
under which he danced—

his music was not music when I was a boy,
it was a cathedral under which we dreamed of music,
the sound was not sound but a voice we rode
like a current of wind-guitars—

such is the way with poets; we recall
not the awards, but the bravado that protected us
from the mean people he spoke of, the cold,
the elevator that threatened to break us down
and did not, because of him.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

COLORED

by Sanford Fraser
 




Alone on the elevator
I press the ground-floor button.
Just before the door closes, you step in.

I turn my head
keep my eyes on the sinking numbers
and feel the floor falling.

In the street, we raise our  arms
to hail a cab. One slows, passes you,
stops for me.

A bilingual edition of Sanford Fraser’s first book of poems, Among Strangers I Have Known All My Life was published by Editions Tarabuste, France 2007 and by New York Quarterly Books, New York 2010. Tourist, his second book of poems, was published by New York Quarterly Books in 2009.