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Three Poems by Nick Leininger


Kin

My name means victory of the people
It’s a name to honor those who were given the least

A name to honor the people taken from where they were from
I am my mother’s son

I don’t share my mother’s skin
I more closely resemble my father’s kin

Mark was my father’s father
I have his middle name

He worked with his hands
His hands were worn, cut and calloused
Cuts displayed all over his fingertips
A long lineage to farmers

His left eye was green and his right eye was blue
Not an ounce of malice buried between the two

Blue like the waters his ancestors traveled
Leaving Germany behind for the new world

My mother was born on an island
She grew accustomed to violence
Trauma was her only inheritance

During her first five years of life, her home had no running water
Her African ancestors wished they could run away. I’ll never know their names.

She came to America after she met my father
Her brown skin knew it wasn’t welcome here

She too came from humble beginnings
In honoring her past, I hope for a better future.

Black Tribes

Black leaders, black lives
Black leaders, black tribes
Ancestors from across the equator

Mothers and fathers, daughters, and sons
Some have been lost while others have won

The sun shines cascading a collection of shades
As shadow’s embrace a collection of shapes

Languages lost, and languages lived
Words left unspoken

The sound of distant melodies
The sounds of distant memories

Etched back into the infinite
Born back beneath…the sands…of time

Miles Away

I stand on the shoulders of giants, listening to the syncopation of giant steps
Miles and miles away, whole steps and half steps, marching away from segregation
A child of different tribes and different lives. We are one and the same.

Nick Leininger is a local DC poet originally from West Chester, Pennsylvania. Nick graduated from American University in 2017 with a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations and Strategic Communications. During his days as a student, Nick had his first poem published in the 2017 edition of Bleakhouse Publishing’s Tacenda magazine. Today Nick works for a tech company as a customer success specialist. Nick hopes to grow as a writer and to continue his support of the arts. In his spare time, he enjoys exploring the various museums and art galleries of DC, engaging in physical activity, and continuing his quest for the perfect cold brew coffee. Poetry is Nick’s preferred medium of self-expression. He believes that poetry is where he can accurately express his true self in the most elegant way possible.

Image: Tiago Fioreze, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Two Poems by Allan Ebert

Stem-Winder

We’ll join in protest around favors-spent praising 

fate-cakes wherever the green apple leaves.

We’ll circle in song the meandering candlelight

vigil our voices savoring bold freedom-flavors.

We’ll stand tall against the fogged-radical

mirror our thick-skin too proud-history to mourn.

We’ll hold tight our riled tongues not to waste

our lifetime allotment of fuck-you’s

and sail rag-tagged aboard the once-banned Howl

from empathy-port to title-wave Beat.

We’ll forward-answer the Poet-Captain’s call

spirited by rain the color of wind to a rebel-dance

on the lyric-stern our full pleasure-pearled.

We’ll paw at shadows of seagulls ha-haaing

witness the self-conscious sun rising blood-orange

on our best horizon enlightened & closed-fisted.

Onward!

 The One I’m Worrying About 

There were rumors that someone of significant importance 

was coming to our small town. The reasons were undetermined. 

The signs were everywhere. Barns collapsed with the hay still green. 

The ocean coughed up a wealth of ideas. Sailors napped on nude 

beaches curled up like embryos, burning. Lambs huddled together 

speaking Latin. A message in a bottle washed ashore containing 

the left eye of Verdi with surgical instructions. We suspected 

it was Jesus coming again; the odor of atonement wafted thick 

as a milkshake in the air. My neighbor took her wash off the line. 

Two moons fastened themselves to Orion’s Belt. The cartographer 

put flowers on his brother’s grave & in the middle of preparations, 

a child with golden skin was born. 

The best option at this point was to serve vegetables. 

Stay away from the red meat and country gravy. 

There was a lot to digest without getting choked up. 

Clarence Allan Ebert has written extensively throughout his lifetime in numerous genres including short fiction, flash, news reporting, feature articles, and poetry. After receiving his Juris Doctorate and practicing law largely in the area of immigration and refugee law, he’s written numerous articles on U.S. immigration policies and practices. He published his first poem in 1978 and is coming out with his full collection of poetry soon, titled A Small Town Many Years Ago. It was started during the COVID pandemic. As the title indicates, he was born in a small town years ago and writes poetry as a passion with a special determination to maintain relevance as a baby boomer in a fiercely competitive wacky increasingly AI-generated world. Baby Boomers unite!!

Image: Kabelleger / David Gubler, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Three Poems by Matthew Thorburn

The Sign

—to Seamus Heaney

It might’ve been a joke, but spoke to me
like a blackbird’s cry, giddy
and defiant, not knowing this place
but feeling in place, not knowing you

but having a handful of your poems by heart
I would say beneath my breath—
The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
were all at prayers inside the oratory

a ship appeared above them in the air—
as I wandered once in Aspen, in August heat,
then stopped before an optometrist’s shop—
silver, pink, green and gray frames

filling the window—and looked up
to read the shop’s sign shaped
like a boat, a brush with the marvellous,
as I saw it, since it said SEEING THINGS.

A Stone Steps into An Open Field

I write, and think, No, that’s
not right. But the words
won’t stand still. They step away

too, walk across the open page.
Now the sentence is a field

a stone steps into. Soon the field’s
full of stones. Gray, black. Someone
brought them—well, maybe

a different someone brought
each different stone. A stone steps

into an open field, as I step
stone to stone across a stream.
Now you know how to walk

on water, the monk says.
But the stone has no feet. Is only

a stone. So someone threw it or
dropped it or arranged it
along with the others—and

arranged them again, so carefully
they seem just scattered about.

In the monk’s garden, seventeen
white stones sit in raked gravel so—
no matter where I stand—

I only see sixteen. How’d he do this?
I wonder. Why would he?

Maybe someone just decided
the stone was too heavy to lug
home, though it fit in a coat pocket.

Think of the stone you carried
up the hill to leave for Po—

gray with blue flecks you could see
only in the clear, early light.
Think how many stones you’ve

brought home over the years,
Preston. You line them up along

the windowsill. One’s
my paperweight. Some we toss
out, finally, into the garden—

some a little further, into the field.

December

On frost-starred nights
the rhododendron’s leaves—
the ones that stay on, stay
deep green all year—curl closed
the way, trying to keep
warm, you turn from
the window, wrap your arms
around yourself.

Matthew Thorburn‘s new book is String, published by Louisiana State University Press in 2023. His previous books include The Grace of Distance, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Dear Almost, which received the Lascaux Prize. He lives in New Jersey.

Image: Field with stones by Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Three Poems By Kwame Daniels

collard greens: a broken sestina


hauntology in black america
is living memory
survived by currents of
a blood-soaked sea
and like bloodline preparation of greens
fingers move
with knives
in a dance
striking flint to flame
storied cookfire
using muscles long held
to practice

expanse of black art
engaged with as craft
indigenous science unrecognized
art throughout history
speaking through all our hands make
grasping languages
before death in wide waters

voices whooping and feet stomping in the ring shout
in the deep of night under shadowed greenery

while in the evening light
was the stewing of collards
the brewing of valerian;
parallelism of rootwork
and culinary tradition,
of walking and dancing—

each step a pattern in awakened blood
a silent gospel movement of long-dead bodies

lineage consumed
in oceanic preparation,

bloodlines broken,
rituals survived
in cooking
knowledge,
passed between mouths like dandelion
seeds in summer,
recollections in hands seized
with urgency,
but there is patience
while working the roots

an oral pattern by the strength of remembrance
learning thigh-slapping
lip-popping hambone

swings, the concentrated dynamism
a dying-art dance

a sizzle of pork fat on a skillet over cookfire
a sound known
blooded memory

into sizzling lard
goes washed and chopped mustards
savory nourishment,
a living knowledge, a craft
never lost with great-greats gone to the waves

of raids and capture,
of brutality in passage

but feet still found the way to dance

a knowledge absorbed
from communal practice,
as soulful and sacred
as the art of cooking

finding nourishment
in the bitters of dandelions
a power in the ingestion of living memory

out of the ocean
in each cookfire
lives a dance between
water and greens
in a kind of hoodoo
as ancestral reverie


a kind of breath


wires within wires
synth hair blue and curling
catch the starlight meager as it is
cool hands smooth and soft
nails seamless into skin
I process the eternal sky
numbers as beauty
pristine quantifiers
found in all life
what is the weight of carbon and water?
what is the weight of silicone cartilage?
how long
how far
the distance of lightheat from my core?
this is how I feel it:
I know it
through lovely informatics
green growing things on planets unknown
maybe blue
like my hair
like my core
my soul enraptured
with the potentiality of breath
with no purpose
but to be
like me
like the green
I am living
I am living


kin


purple angels blossom among dandelions
waving cheerily in the wind
their arms stretched toward the sky
the sun’s benediction resting upon the petals
oh, to know the language of these angels
to know how to speak in roots and pollen
my body does not consume light in that way
light is keeps balance but does not convert

I would like to krebs cycle my anxiety away
respirate the tightness in my cells out
plant my feet in the earth with the angels
and grow with my hands touching sunlight
drink rainwater and entangle my roots
with that most holy

Kwame Sound Daniels is a traditional and fiber artist based out of Maryland. Xe are an Anaphora Arts Residency Fellow and an MFA candidate for Vermont College of Fine Arts. Xir first collection of poetry, Light Spun, was published in 2022 with Perennial Press. Xir second book, the pause and the breath, came out in 2023 with Atmosphere Press. Kwame learns plant medicine, paints, and makes what can tentatively be called potions in xir spare time.

Image: Nolabob, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

To Fall by Alex Carrigan

To Fall

My father is convinced that
a World Trade Center jumper appears
in an animated movie.

He claims the moment a boy
threw himself off a tower
was traced from a falling man’s image.

My father is sure of this,
but I don’t think he remembers
what it is like for one to fall.

He forgot how the Hanged Man’s back
bends on the card, how fear-stricken
he is when the rope loosens and
he realizes he isn’t reversed.

He forgot how one’s feet point
like they’re Odette on the cliff,
forgoing her ability to fly
so she can commit to her despair.

He forgot how Lucifer also probably
looked the same during his plunge,
feathers blackened and
realizing it’s warmer away from the sun.

My father is convinced of
his conspiracy, but I don’t think
he’s realized just how

close he has been to falling.

After Kim Garcia

Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Virginia. He is the author of “May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry” (Alien Buddha Press, 2022), and “Now Let’s Get Brunch: A Collection of RuPaul’s Drag Race Twitter Poetry” (Querencia Press, forthcoming 2023). He has had fiction, poetry, and literary reviews published in Quail Bell Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Barrelhouse, Sage Cigarettes (Best of the Net Nominee, 2023), Stories About Penises (Guts Publishing, 2019), and more. For more information, visit carriganak.wordpress.com or follow him on Twitter @carriganak.

Image: Jeffmock, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons