Bids slowly wish.
With camellias.
With rose hips bee
balm with honey.
By RALPH BURNS
We had to leave because someone saw my
father set his bottle down. Because
of something in us we leaned into one another
By TINA CANE
I woke up in a panic this morning thinking what if my love language
is granola? I found a quiz online but was too chicken to take it having had
Russian bots once read my face and place me alongside a woman holding a mango
or some bullshit in Gaugin
nothing exotic for me today
I’m halfway home to Bed-Stuy
when I feel the cervical cramp.
I was told they’d be getting worse
I came when you were born,
but soon the flying stopped.
By the time I came again,
we drove in private cars
By ALDO AMPARÁN
Is he a saguaro burning in the desert’s shadow—or a sidewinder’s tracks on sand—
Have I left footprints in the snow of his dreaming—
And if you have no coins or skyscraper,
then parachute from your mind into blossom,
Left untrained,
the bitter melon’s taken over
the mulberry, dusting it
Even if the sky collapses, there will be a hole in it.
Korean proverb
Our cat died before the towers fell.
I’m writing this from lockdown on a day
when the dogwood throws out its dose
of darker pink. The schoolyard