Hair Care by Deven Carkner

Plastic teeth shake their many little hands with my scalp
Our first meeting they come waving a white flag
Disguising their true purpose:
To find and to kill all hair hugs

Exterminating so many little embraces is painful
Their carnivorous fangs bite into the bunches
Tearing at angles
Something foreign
destroys my natural tangles
They said it was for my own good
To teach me a lesson about being
beautiful

My first word was “Owie”

She oversaw the procedure when I was young
As years passed, I took over the position
I got used to ripping myself apart every morning
People liked it
Straight, long, and damaged
I forgot to cry when it hurt

Did you know that hair-pulling is the number one cause of dementia?
Or that balding is an exponentially increasing phenomenon in young things?

Rapnuzel has a lot of hair
I bet it takes her all day
To get through her curls
They say she is trapped in the castle
I think she is too tired to walk down all those stairs

I was taught to buy things on sale.
When I was 13
Rumpelstiltskin said he would spin my hair
for half off the usual price.
I was famous for a week
It took me two lifetimes to pay the imp’s fee

When I was 27 my best friend had an x-ray
Shaving it all off felt good
Much more efficient than pulling out each individual hair
One at a time
I’d never felt so close to her than those days before she died

I have a daughter now
I’m trying to teach her healthy hair care
I wonder what she will see in trapped princesses and deals with imps
I wonder what her first word will be

Earth Day poem by Daniel Lampert

I let the Earth down
because I got lunch and dinner in to-go containers,

just so I could sit outside,
on Earth Day of all days.

I let the Earth down
because one time I killed a squirrel,

I whacked it with the thwart of a canoe
because it had gotten into our food.

I went into the woods for 10 days after that.

I let the Earth down
because I wrote this poem on my laptop,

because I even wrote this down in the first place.
A good poem is a passed down poem.

I let the Earth down
because I once ripped up a woman’s garden,

hydrangeas, daylilies, and rhubarb,
so she could sell her house. Daylilies

come back if you don’t get every last tuber.
She died at the end of the summer, so her son
sold the house and summer was over.

I let the Earth down
because I go on my phone when I wake up,
because I go on my phone before I go to bed.

I let the Earth down
because one time I biked over a chipmunk,

it darted between my spokes. I still don’t
know if I hit it

because I didn’t turn back.

I let the Earth down
because I haven’t washed more dishes

than I have eaten from.

I let the Earth down
because I saw a wildfire,

my coworker started it sure, but
at least he was out there. I was

too weary to help, so I watched
over the children. When the fire
hoses had charred through and soot
still stained his ears, we paddled

to the smoldering burn site, and I learned
that you can get pulled over in
a boat, even in a canoe. We paddled

back, our patrol puttering
behind, the sky was soft like a loon’s
call. I sat in the dining hall with
my boss, and I could hear fire crackle

from across the table.

I call to tell you I'm in love by Olivia Cao

You’ll be glad to know that the magnolia tree in the front yard has lived
to bloom again. Google said it wouldn’t last the winter,
especially after dad trimmed the branches when he knew he wasn’t
supposed to, but I finally took your advice and bought one of those burlap bags
and I think it’ll see another equinox.

I remember you told me that falling in love is a lot like learning to peel a clementine:
patiently and messily and falling apart in your palms with bitter pieces and sweeter juice
that turns Sunday brunches at the breakfast table the color of an orange creamsicle

I’d like to think I’m getting better at it, this whole falling in love thing
I don’t need your help writing twenty-five versions of the same text anymore
(actually, I might just get you to take a quick look at this one)
and I said “hi” and “how are you” before class this morning like a normal human being
and I think you’d be proud of me;

I unwrapped a clementine in a single strip today
the peel sits on my desk, unraveling and imperfect and impossibly beautiful
and maybe it’s all this talk of flowers or
the Febreze hitchhiking on the tailwind of a spring cleaning or
the scent of magnolias that were never supposed to live and survived anyway
but I could swear it looks like it is blooming.

How to Look at Poetry by Anonymous

1. Read it. Let your eyes grow lazy on long stanzas, let them skip to the last line, or the line that says “Taco Bell” because you actually were just eating a crunch-wrap and you thought this poem was about grief. Confuse yourself. Read it again. It’s stranger than you think.

2. Underline all the words you have never heard before. Don’t use a dictionary. You don’t need their meaning here, just as long as you can string a sentence. Consider their comparisons; their dialectic capacity. Decide what you want the words to say and make the poem mean it. 

3. Use an encyclopaedia and see the places the poet packaged their mother in Mesopotamian mythology and protozoa. Ok, now use a dictionary. We call color by their names (phthalo blue yellow ochre) but the words alone won’t make you see it. 

4. But how do the words feel in your chest? Notice the knot in your neck when you read the line about time. Thank the poem for how it unravels the tension you didn’t know was already there. 

5. Listen to the line breaks — the em dashes; the poem’s holes; nothing is more real than words. Take a deep breath and remember the last time you did not say what you meant.

6. Return to the title. Do you know now what the poem’s about? Did the title lie to you or tell you gently to read the story just differently enough? What does a name say about who you are — how to read you?

7. Read it again, out loud. A little alliteration goes a long way. Read it slowly so the vowels sound like prayer. Read it quickly so your lips beat like bongo drums. Pace yourself. Read the commas.

8. Read the poem on stage, at a karaoke bar. Read it on the plane, on the loudspeaker, while you wait on the tarmac and everyone cheers. Pretend to be a substitute teacher and read it in your old kindergarten classroom. Shout the poem at your husband to prove he doesn’t listen. Whisper the poem in his ear and hope he hears it. 

9. Check in with your poem. You have known each other long now but she is not the same as she once was. Neither are you. Grow old together.

10. Tape the poem to your bathroom mirror, the poem that reminds you of yourself. Write a letter to the poet and ask where they found your reflection. Ask if they liked writing your poem, or if they disliked keeping it in. 

11. Circle the sentences you would’ve written differently. Can you tell where the poet was raised, or if their father loved them or how much? Can you tell if they went to undergrad, and if that is where they learned how to write, how to be published? 

12. This poem traveled a long way to you. Do you know who posted it on what app, who bound the hardcover? Do you know who lived this poem? It is okay to be a visitor in someone else's pain. Consider why you got to read this poem. Consider why you had to. 

13. Pretend the poem is yours. Take all the words and rearrange them. Say the same thing back, like a game of telephone. We are more alike than you think.

14. Write a poem about the poem. Make the war metaphor about your best friend, kind of. Throw it in the trash and bless the can. Start again. It will get good once it’s about you and also everyone.

15. Take your love, your guilt, the second time you rode on the back of your babysitter’s bicycle. Type up the unfinished product and wrap it in a bow. Give it to her. Tell her: see step one. 

No more hills here by Ryan Yim

You are
unknowable.
I asked about you. They
did not know. You were a newsman
once. Then a company man once. Then
a rich man once. Then an old man. You were
an alcoholic. Undiagnosed. You would feign deafness. You
would frown. You frowned most of the day. And smiled at us. You
laughed when you saw me. I wonder where the metal in your mouth went. You
were cremated. But you had a burial site. I think. I did not linger on the photo my father
sent me. I confirmed that he looked sad. That your wife wiped her tears. That the crowd to see
you was small. You are unknowable. You did not let us see you when you suffered. You often
told us to go. You had your cake and did not eat it. You lived by your blood sugar. You did not
enjoy cake. You enjoyed wine. You were stubborn. You went to church. Until you stopped. You
cried when you prayed. Until you stopped. You lived long. You said so yourself. You lived far.
You said so yourself. You were quiet. You liked Pavarotti. You liked radio. You liked flat caps.
You wore checkered shirts. You made blunders. Father called them that. For your sake. You had
a cane. You refused a wheelchair. You fell once. Blood leaked from the bridge of your nose. You
breathed heavily through your mouth. I grabbed a stranger’s phone and called for father. I
thought you hated me. You did not remember. You were gruff in your wedding photo. Your
sharp eyebrows. Your stiff frame. Your frown. You did not recognize your own son
in his baby photo. You did not remember my name. You were there.
Somewhere in the tan hills. I remember you when I remember them.
Brother told me we buried our kings there. You remember him.
He looks like you. You are unknowable.
I do not know you. I love you.
When I am home again.
I will see you.
And ask.

The Knight by Siomara Luna-Garcia

The armor, when it first came,
was stiff—unyielding as the bones of the dead,
a second body I didn’t ask for,
but now it bends with me,
its weight a familiar pressure,
like a hand on my shoulder
that’s always been there.
I’ve learned to breathe beneath it,
learned to forget the way it tightens,
as if it knows I’m not the man I should be.

They call me Sir—
as though the title could scrape the blood from my hands,
as though it could make the air lighter,
cleaner,
less thick with the smell of bodies,
rotting in the fields where we leave them.

But there’s no honor in this steel,
no grace in the way it crushes the air from my chest
each time I draw the sword
and watch the blade disappear
into someone else’s skin.
It is soft, their flesh—
softer than I expected,
the way it parts for the steel
like the earth opening for the dead.

They speak of kings and banners,
but I see only the red—
how it stains everything.
It follows me,
crawling through the cracks of my boots,
clinging to the edges of my cloak
like a stain that refuses to be washed away.

At night, I sleep in the woods,
away from the eyes that know too much.
The stars blink through the branches
as if they too have seen enough
of men splitting open like ripe fruit,
of mouths gasping for air that doesn’t come.

The wind whispers names I’ve forgotten,
but they remember me,
their voices circling like vultures
over the fields I’ve left behind.

In my dreams, I am unarmored,
bare-chested,
walking barefoot through the mud,
and the earth beneath me shifts—
wet, soft,
slick with something darker than rain.

I look down,
and the ground is crawling,
heaving with hands,
fingers clawing through the muck,
grasping at my legs,
pulling me down into their grave.
I try to run,
but the hands hold fast,
dragging me into their cold embrace,
flesh peeling beneath their grip.

I wake with their nails still in my skin,
feel their touch beneath my armor,
as if they’ve followed me here.
The weight of them,
the memory of their flesh,
presses in,
presses deep.

This morning, as I donned my helmet,
I found it—
a finger, lodged between the plates of steel,
its skin pale, wrinkled,
as though it had been clinging to life far too long.
I don’t remember how it got there.
I don’t remember the face it belonged to.
But it curled in my palm
like a secret,
like something I once knew but lost.

I tried to drop it,
tried to bury it beneath the soil,
but it clung to me,
its nails digging into the soft of my hand,
the way the dead always do—
refusing to let go.

By nightfall, I’ll ride again,
the sword heavy at my side,
the wind pulling at my cloak like a curse.
The armor will hold,
as it always does,
but beneath it,
there will be hands—
clawing, scratching,
tearing at the man who hides inside,
until nothing remains
but steel and silence.

Domestic Bliss by Scott Sorensen

Poetry is the woman I married eight years ago,
When she was young and I was strong
And we both had ripe problems
To slice into together.
Now we’ve got three kids and a mortgage,
And I don’t hold her like a newlywed anymore
Because that’s not what we are.
We are dependable lovers,
Work 9 to 5 and leave with a peck on the cheek lovers,
Live our lives and climb under the covers when the kids are asleep lovers.
Most of the thousands of nights we’ve slept side-by-side,
We’ve read our books,
Turned out the lights
And fallen asleep.
Some nights, though,
We still stay up and tell each other
Everything.