ANOTHER COMPRADORE

by Akua Lezli Hope

Original photo at Esquire

Stop talking about him. Stop giving him play.

Turn your back. Make him disappear

off our feeds, our tvs, allay our fears

Let the diseased thing fall in the forest, unhear

Let the one hand not connect

with either cheek or other hand            no sound

Don't believe and thus disempower this winged,

wicked thing so that it unappears—

don't cheer it back to flickering life.

Don’t untie its knots or reinterpret its betrayals

Don’t crown its crap with gravitas

Toss holy water on it. Make it melt away.

Stop all attention allowing it to last

Best left alone, shunned, rebuked, undone,

its name I will not say

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator and wisdom seeker using sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, & wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music, sculpture, & peace.  A paraplegic, third-generation New Yorker, her honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, NYSCA, SFPA & Rhysling & Pushcart Prize nominations.

ON "FLICKERING" BY YOSHIO OKADA

by Jenna Le

“Flickering” Box with Sprinkled Design of Jellyfish, 2020, by Yoshio Okada

Wood box decorated with

gold and silver lacquer

on a polished black lacquer ground

with shell inlays and shell overlays

depicting the coin and ribboned-hat shapes

of jellyfish, 

those invertebrates prophesied

to engulf the ocean entire

if climate change continues unchecked: 

if this is how we must die,

well, Yoshio,

this wood box of yours

would at least make a beautiful coffin

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011); A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), a Second Place winner in the Elgin Awards; and Manatee Lagoon (forthcoming from Acre Books, October 2022). Her poetry appears in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and West Branch. 

FIRE INCANTATION

by Miriam Steinbach

    oh, bitter flame     run
run until you find home again     I know
you tripped over your own skinny legs
behind your mother’s church, knee caps crowned with
     shards of glass     I know
     the sting     I know
the swig, then scorch of vodka trickling over
bare bone, the taste of
     copper and salt     I know
     the screaming days     I know
     the flickering rage     I know
this isn’t death, this is a reset
life will breathe again,
in our garden of ash


Miriam Steinbach is a college student and poet based in Salem, OR. She enjoys being outdoors, playing cello, and posting poetry on her Instagram (@baldmilk).