The ground will swallow you because it is hungry
—Tayve Neese

All my life I wished to be the abanderado,
enter the ceremony hall, the flag resting on
my shoulder, my hand holding firmly
and softly the flag’s pole like a child’s hand.

I never dreamed of being a patriot, just a boy
preoccupied with the attention of adults.
At that time, in my country, the ground
would gorge young bodies.

Democracy was feeble, ignored like a poor man.
I still wonder why I felt the flag was so important,
perhaps it was the hope that my triumph
would help my parents to fight less,

before I learned the ground will swallow many,
before the ground swallowed them too.

*

Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires, and adopted by New York. His poems appeared or will be appearing in The American Journal of Poetry, Hanging Loose Press, South Florida Poetry Journal, Louisville Review, The Wild Word (Germany), and Otoliths (Australia), among others. His work received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. His chapbook,  “Contraband,” was published in 2022, and he’s the Guest Editor for The Banyan Review’s Spring 2023 issue.

“The districts of this [proposed] city could correspond to the whole spectrum of diverse feelings that one encounters by chance in everyday life. [….]  The main activity of the inhabitants will be CONTINUOUS DRIFTING/DÉRIVE.  The changing of landscapes from one hour to the next will result in total disorientation. [….]  Later, as the activities inevitably grow stale, this drifting will partially leave the realm of direct experience for that of representation.”

-“Formulary for a New Urbanism,” by Ivan
Chtcheglov, as translated by Ken Knabb

Safer, then, to mow with a scythe
Once syringes sprout from a city’s fringe,
Though the people in the storm drains
Know swallowing glass is perfectly safe

With a stomach full of food. When they leak
Into the surface world, we mine their bodies
For fuel
******* and art: Nudes, like mandrakes,

Await the harrow; still lives a steady string
Of drips. A head’s single dreadlock is teased
Into a purse, and the mouth stuffed with keys
And phone. Over gums, Her tongue navigates

Unhindered: “Track the moisture from
Incontinent pipes and carry me home
For the birth.”
************* Under a clerk’s gaze, Her clothes

Fade to newsprint, withdraw into
Magazine racks; what, in the 80’s,
Was the stained glass of neon, what,
In early 2000, was a pool of DSL bleeps-

And-a-whirring, now decays into cotton
Blastoma-wracked mattresses,
**************************** the AI
Artwork of the damp underground.

Soaked, Her blurry form lapses
Into technicolor for the clerk to mop up.
In the drains, a fetus scales this Mother’s
Spine, gasping through decay.

*************************** In the drains,
Sharp edges soften into soil: The over-
Turned bucket rusts through like a corpse
Lily’s maw. Fluid and vast the undercity,

With valuables and fashion unrecognizable
Amid a vocabulary of molten barriers;
In this dérive a child gestates within Her avant-
Sonder, and crowns

****************** inverted, feet
First and second and last, to clog
Tunnels as the surface world reverts
To childhood toilet training. Foundations

Relax. Phone signals and literacy all fail
*********************************** at once:
The convergence of the slouches towards
Slides by on grease as we plead for Her mercy

And comprehension: O Siri, is this bum sick
Or high. O Cortana, map of potter’s labyrinth.
O Alexa, what does my lawn
************************* Say about me.

*

Christopher Munde’s first poetry collection, Slippage (Tebot Bach, 2019), won the Patricia Bibby Award, and his poems have previously appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Blackbird, The Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, Third Coast, West Branch, and elsewhere.  He is a graduate of the University of Houston’s MFA program and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize.  Presently, he lives and teaches in western NY.

To be clear, this is my third eulogy, first time
Disputing a transaction, but G_____’s hidebehind,
As he called it, is among us here. Raised in the factory,
Its seasons turning pistons, it crawls the corridors
Gnawing men into money: casket light

As a debit card, remains so sparse they’d fit
Within a handshake. How I see it, what’s left
Of G_____ rests well within the public domain:
Counterfeits strangle this wreath: photos: mementos
Mŏro. Paraphernalia filling in the gaps. Mourning:

Pure pyramid scheme. Until it’s too much, and we gaze
Into our watermarked palms. Understand, tonight
It will redo us on top of our shadows. That’s its language;
A grind inarticulate, it manufactures like we pray:
Manu-, as in hands, the shadows they gesture. How

We bailed G_____’s fingers out of pauper’s jail,
Then glutted that hidebehind with flowers and photos
Until it grew too vague to describe from your pews,
Like hell squared or NASDAQ bleeding:
Consider this eulogy a harrowing, as in carrying home

On hooks, to be cleaned in the sink like a baby
Or a fresh catch. How police dragged its habitat
For a sample so small no God would bother suing us
For looping it, though all rights revert to Him
Upon publication. Omni-, as in ambi-, as in

-Dextrous, -guous, -valent. Consider the absent form
Credit, and learn the legalese to collect what’s yours. This,
To be clear, is my third eulogy, and those are often more
Arrogant: You’re all free to celebrate small blessings,
But I, steeped in bodiless breath, will be charging by the word.

*

Christopher Munde’s first poetry collection, Slippage (Tebot Bach, 2019), won the Patricia Bibby Award, and his poems have previously appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Blackbird, The Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, Third Coast, West Branch, and elsewhere.  He is a graduate of the University of Houston’s MFA program and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize.  Presently, he lives and teaches in western NY.

a dream is a door thru which the dead pass—

we’ve learned little from what ruptured in the rearview
what muscle memoriam lurks in the tongue to inflect the naming
of what we think is new, not borrowed, like earth
like time, like executions and their encores. i feared for my life
when i heard the lick of the flame, like a ruler against a palm but tenfold
and amplified, louder than the call to prayer
louder than the church bells—

the fire chewed up the same mountainside
it did a generation ago when futures melted down to history
and the stories hardened into spoons—

the arson incinerated the thicket and roasted the chickens and rose
to the town on top of the cliff but it never leapt six feet across the road—

still, my room where i lay my head—

where i strike my myrrh on the lip of a candle—

where i fan my hair’s lavender spray over a pillow as offering to the night—

it fills with smoke in the daylight
and somewhere, a crack—

a tree falling—

a door kicked in
by a combat boot.

*

Jess Rizkallah is a Lebanese-American writer and illustrator. Her book THE MAGIC MY BODY BECOMES was a finalist for The Believer Poetry Award and won the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize as awarded by the Radius of Arab-American Writers and University of Arkansas Press.

i’ve lost my mind at swan after swan blooming
outside the window of the northeast regional. convinced myself
it meant i could control the sun and my menstrual cycle. but the mind
is not lost, it’s just replaced with meaning. the wasp burrowing into the fig
to lay her eggs. the brain an inverted flower waiting for pollination. we mistake
anything sweet for fruits. anything pretty for a miracle. blood is honey
and we hum ourselves to sleep about it *** then years later we’re like what
the fuck. that was crazy, i went crazy. one time a psychic said to me
do not be afraid to lose your mind, baby *** i’m afraid to lose a lot
of things because i’ve lost so much already, like my hair and various beads,
stones, tax forms, you, the will to 2 live laugh luv haha text it *** jk i lost cell signal
and you can lose my number *** i’m not mad at you i’m just really so bad
at texting back (and also i’m like dropping hints that i want you
to write me love letters.) i want you to write me love letters *** which before
the apocalypse, i would’ve expected this deep desire expressed to be my hubris but
turns out in america our love letters could save the u.s. postal system. one dollar for a stamp
another dollar to isr*el to bankroll the violent dispossession of indigenous palestinians
from their ancestral lands. he loves me he loves me not. that’s not romantic that’s a fact.
inevitable, but so is the fall of every empire. what’s romantic is the baby blue eyelid
of a mourning dove who doesn’t fly away when i lean close enough to identify
that its eyeball looks like a melting easter colored m&m i could just pluck
and pop right into my mouth. *** but i haven’t lost my mind again not yet. just
the meaning i once attached to these birds. or maybe not the meaning
but the excitement at the optimism of this meaning. actually, meanings are like birds
they roost then fly away after a season. next year they land somewhere else. closer
to the horizon of my awareness, a speck on the gradient atmosphere. an errant glitter fleck
on the left cheekbone— last night’s make-up alerting everyone in the dunkins
that i’m on a walk of no shame. the distant swan song still playing long after the swan
has died. like the light from a star which may or may not be dead. we are sadder
about stars than we are about birds even though every bird i’ve ever seen
before like three months ago is most likely dead. but still, something hatches
in my brain at the flutter of wings *** the avian connection to angels, to dinosaurs,
to prehistory and my chicken sandwich. *** meaning is the many winged henchman
of time. have i been repeating “meaning” too much ? no no. *** i have been invoking it.
there, fixed it. and now i’ve mentioned the poem inside the poem like a good little arab
who knows you’re always watching. this type of repetition and exposition: frowned upon
in mfa workshops. but mfa workshops are full of zionists and i am full of blood
and shit, which i hereby sever from the meaning of non-credibility, and tell it 2 you
objectively: i’ve finally started bleeding again. on the eclipse, actually, which
makes me nervous because i think we’re supposed to lay low and hydrate
on eclipses, and That’s IT. *** lest we fuck up our whole shit. if you’re related to me Stop Reading Here
no for real please stop i’m trying to be brave and honest in conversations around
my body. hot girl summer hot girl life yes i’m a year away from 30 and so far
have only merged with men on new moons, full moons, post tarot readings + joints—
most recently, an eclipse *** followed shortly by blood. i’m like jay-z on a loop
nervously watching the sky wishing on dead birds because i can’t see stars in boston.
except when i’m in jamaica pond staring at moonlit kneecaps i’d want to draw
but nothing else. so, too distracted to notice the stars unless they freckle skin
i’m too afraid to touch. when i described my first time to a friend, they said *** jess i think
you cast a spell on him, ha ha! *** no but say sike right now i secretly fear that perhaps
i did. you can’t accuse me of doing anything like that on purpose tho
because my purpose would never be anyone leaving. wow
i killed the vibe again. i lost the thread again i lost the love in lieu
of losing my mind. oh is that what the record-keeper meant?
oh so it was about love. whys everything about love
even when the house is on fire and we’re trapped inside.
the ocean i mean. the world i mean. my body i mean.
and me high up in my head looking down
at the scene. now he’s saying to me it’s okay, come
out, let go. you’re so hot.

*

Jess Rizkallah is a Lebanese-American writer and illustrator. Her book THE MAGIC MY BODY BECOMES was a finalist for The Believer Poetry Award and won the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize as awarded by the Radius of Arab-American Writers and University of Arkansas Press.

The open road always begins somewhere else,
Not so open. The story begins with the absence
Of story, a recollection of childhood illness,
A room with the shades drawn, fever, adults
Whispering as they shut the door. The hero
Will cross deserts and picture-book mountain ranges,
Ride through the snow on horseback or sip
Small glasses of liqueur with a countess, will
Know just the right moment to lock eyes
And touch. When he returns home, he vows
To be discrete, but memoir abhors discretion,
Revels in climbing over rooftops like Giacomo
The Venetian, to escape and move on. He is
Five years old, and they wake him because
The doctor is here. The black bag yawns,
And a hand withdraws a hypodermic. There
Are pills and blood tests, bored aunts who read to him
From Charles and Mary Lamb, who fall asleep with
Their mouths open, heads dropping as they speak.
The memoirist sits in cafés drinking absinthe with his
Well-known friends. He doesn’t like the taste but won’t
Admit it. There’s a fly in the water pitcher, and the woman
Across the room refuses to notice him no matter how
Loudly he speaks. He tells a story about being robbed
In New York, his attacker running away. It seems
To him that no one is paying attention, or perhaps he’s
Told the story before. He can’t remember. Taxicabs
Turned off their lights and kept going. Byron swam
The Hellespont despite his club foot and had the bad
Luck to die from wounds in battle. The road
Isn’t as open as it appears. Cellini made art to earn
The pope’s forgiveness. The memoirist changes hotels.
That one was drafty. You could hear the water closet
Drip from down the hall. What forgiveness exists
For crimes that never happened? His memories
Are lies, mechanical inventions, automatons that
Dance or play cards. There was a gazebo, a wet cheek,
A kiss that flattered only the teller, not the tale,
The lips reluctant and closed. The automaton
Requires a wind-up, then begins to dance, shifting
Its metallic weight from one foot to the other.

*

George Franklin’s most recent poetry collections are Remote Cities (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions,
2023), and a dual-language collaboration with Colombian poet Ximena Gómez, Conversaciones
sobre agua/Conversations About Water (Katakana Editores, 2023). Individual publications
include: Solstice, Rattle, Matter, Cagibi, New York Quarterly, Sequestrum, Tar River Poetry, The
Threepenny Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. He practices law in Miami and teaches poetry
workshops in Florida prisons. Website: https://gsfranklin.com/