Tony Mancus and CL Bledsoe
Collaborative Poem #1

Don’t be fooled: the dodo is playing
the long game. Faith walks into a bar
and steals Science’s seat. Given the current
moment, Science decides to hide as matter.
As a matter of fact, so many things begin to
hide in their forms – lakes as the drawings
in maps, an organ as a pipe in a painting with
the words that describe it as not the thing
it’s supposed to be. Reason as an upvoted
celebrity cameo. The secret no one wants
you to know is there’s nothing secret
anymore, just things you’d rather not
have to see when you’re trying to watch
Star Trek reruns. Who cares what Klingons
get it as long as the corn stays popped
and the wireless doesn’t drop in the middle
of one of Patrick Stewart’s more contemplative
moments? There will always be things outside
of knowing. For example, what happens
to popcorn in the middle of a black hole?
When will it be my turn, my daughter’s turn,
my mother’s turn to make Trending News
Happening Now? What they don’t tell you
is that the caloric value of the average human
body is far less than a boar. What they do
tell you is how to identify what you’re supposed
to be afraid of. Popsicle sticks in summer can
easily be choked on, the patterns on the
trapper keepers could cause a lazy eye, too
many hens and the roosters won’t crow when
it’s sunbreak. Don’t worry. They’ve got Band-
Aids with your favorite extinct hominids
on them. I’m wearing a homo ergaster
on my knee and a homo sapiens on my elbow.
I’m eating a chicken that tastes long-dead.
Its bones are piling up like fingers in the threshing
machine. I mean, some days I can look right through
anyone’s skin and see that they’re drying out, too.

Tony Mancus is the author of a handful of chapbooks. He lives with his wife Shannon and three yappy cats in Colorado and serves as chapbook editor for Barrelhouse.

CL Bledsoe is the author of seventeen books, most recently the poetry collection King of Loneliness (lulu.com, 2017) and the novel The Funny Thing About… (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, 2018).He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter and blogs at How to Even… on Medium (with Michael Gushue).

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Judith Skillman
Above the Law

Allow Lady Justice, Justitia,
wears the blindness of impartiality,
that the Egyptian scribe’s heart is weighed
against the feather of truth. Allow a set
of scales, a blindfold, and a sword. Who else
never favors the rich or the poor,
the strong nor the weak? Mr. President,
the evidence you have given stands

on its own. Set your lawyers the task
of explanation. Tell them what to say,
as you tell your crime family, allies
all—it is your title sets you apart.
Still, does the Lady’s sword gives you a case
of nerves? Justice can be swift and final.

Judith Skillman is is the author of Premise of Light (Tebot Bach, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Seneca Review, Cimarron Review, Zyzzyva, and other journals. She is the recipient of grants from Artist Trust and the Academy of American Poets. She is a faculty member at Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington.

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Paul Buchanan
The Negro a Beast in the Image of God

“America is more our country…we have enriched it with our blood and tears”
—David Walker, 1829

This land is my land, not your land.
From Atlanta to DC to New York
We built this place!
You raise your voices in denial
But our Earth speaks in blood and tears.
She can’t hear you.

“Negroes are a perishable Commodity. When you have an opportunity dispense of them for gold.”
—Humphrey Morice, 1730

If we’re still here, perishable
After all of the decay you’ve put us through
What does that make you, Humphrey?
You are rot, and we are wrought from time’s pressure.
You traded humanity for gold.
Does it keep you warm?

“There has been one bright hope to cheer me in all my troubles, and that is to be with you.”
—Harriet Newby, to her husband Dangerfield Newby, 1859

He will love you till then, Harriet.
When he joined Mr. Brown’s war, he was thinking of you, of the kids.
He wants an eternity of bright new days, but
The bullets have other ideas.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you his last words:
“Harriet, I’m

“I was soon put down under the decks…with the loathsomeness of the stench and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me.…”
—Olaudah Equiano, 1789

Hell is a slave ship.
A 6-foot tall space fitted with shelves
People stuffed in between, unable to stand for months.
Imagine the air choked with disease.
Imagine calling for your last friend and hearing no answer.
Heaven is a slave ship packed wall to wall with masters.

“Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”
—Maya Angelou, 1978

They gave us gifts.
A gold coin. “This is what you are worth.”
One fivefinger. “Eat this and grow bright.”
Two mirrors. “Watch out.”
Three swords. “Fight back.”
Last, enough anger to collar a god. “Live, better than we did.”

“Let the people see what I have seen. Everybody needs to know what had happened to Emmett Till.”
—Mamie Till-Mobley, 1955

I saw him, you know. All of us coloreds have. I went to the exhibition to pay my respects and
ran into the laughter of the whites in line. Having fun.
I wanted to speak up but he sat up in his casket. Wolf-whistled.
Eyeball still hanging out the socket, head split front and back, exit wound face, unreckonable.
“Shut up,” he said with no tongue. “Let me die.”
They didn’t hear him.

“All men are created equal…with certain unalienable rights…whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
—Declaration of Independence, 1776

Choose.
Noose or chain?
Amendment or abolition?
This declaration will not stand in this land of shallow graves, because
We are the People.
We are coming home.

Paul Buchanan is a sophomore at Swarthmore College whose work has received the John Russell Hayes Award and appeared in Swarthmore’s Visibility magazine. He finds inspiration from the people around him, notably his sisters, his mother, and his peers in the Swarthmore writing community.

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Charlie Leppert
Justified

To preserve the complex formatting of this poem, we are presenting it in PDF format. Click here to access the document.

Charlie Leppert’s work has appeared in Mind Over Gender, The Labyrinth, and the Validation Project, among other websites and publications. He has been awarded the Stephen W. Chung Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and a Center for Peace, Justice, and Reconciliation Scholarship from Bergen Community College. Leppert is queer poet and student from northern New Jersey whose poetic work focuses on queerness, the complexity of American identity, mental health, faith, and resistance.

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Gregory Luce
An Unquiet Life

Poets who write mostly about love, roses, and moonlight, sunsets and snow must lead a very quiet life.
—Langston Hughes

I want to get back to writing about thunderstorms
and the sky painted with Monet clouds,
or that color the sky turns
right after the rain stops, or the broken
melodies of catbirds erupting
from deep within bushes,
or that electrified feeling I get
riding the Metro with Dolphy or Mingus
pulsating in my ears, or the way
lights reflected on the river
remind me of my lover’s face
after we make love.

But these days when I imagine clouds,
they’re always dark (and Jesus it feels like
it’s been raining all summer). Birdsong
still makes me run to the window or stop my bike,
but the joy flies away as fast as the birds themselves
and soon I’m back to brooding and scowling,
so entranced by the scroll of outrages
unrolling on my screen I forget to look up.
My headphones can’t drown out the angry chatter
rattling inside my head.

And everywhere I see handmade signs and torches,
people walking around with clenched fists
muttering through clenched teeth. Each day’s headlines
are more bizarre than the day before, and lately
fucking Twitter rants contain more poetry
than I can dredge up out of my battered,
fatigued imagination.

So I write: Try to keep it real, stay awake
even when my eyes feel like they’ve had
thumbs pressed into them. Write when
my head pounds, about to burst
like an overripe fruit, when anxiety
shoots its shocks, when the pen feels
like a baseball bat in my quivering
fingers. Just write.

Gregory Luce is the author of Signs of Small Grace (Pudding House Publications, 2010), Drinking Weather (Finishing Line Press, 2011), Memory and Desire (Sweatshoppe Publications, 2013), and Tile (Finishing Line Press, 2016). In addition to numerous journals, his poems have appeared in the anthologies Living in Storms (Eastern Washington University Press, 2008), Bigger Than They Appear (Accents Publishing, 2011), Unrequited: An Anthology of Love Poems about Inanimate Objects (CreateSpace, 2016) and Candlesticks and Daggers: An Anthology of Mixed-Genre Mysteries (CreateSpace, 2016). Recipient of the 2014 Larry Neal Award winner for adult poetry, awarded by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Luce is retired from National Geographic, works as a creative writing instructor for Writopia Lab, and lives in Arlington, Virginia.

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J. Bradley
Curry Ford and Bumby, 1994: Orlando, FL

(Class Secretary) Minotaur’s adopted father pushes an open pack of cigarettes towards him. A book of matches are entombed beneath the cellophane. All of them, his adopted father says. (Class Secretary) Minotaur regrets being caught smoking in the boys bathroom. He tried explaining it was his way of fitting in but his adopted father slapped the words out of his mouth before they came out. (Class Secretary) Minotaur takes out a cigarette and the matches, As he lights the cigarette, he thinks of ways of hurting his adopted father for breaking his promise of never laying a hand on him.

J. Bradley’s most recent books include No More Stories About The Moon (Lucky Bastard Press, 2016), The Adventures of Jesus Christ, Boy Detective (Pelekinesis, 2016), and Pick How You Will Revise A Memory (Robocup Press, 2016). His poems have appeared in decomP, Hobart, and Prairie Schooner, among other journals. He was the Interviews Editor of PANK, the Flash Fiction Editor of NAP, and the Web Editor of Monkeybicycle. He received his MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University.

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Brian Sonia-Wallace
State of the Nation

To preserve the complex formatting of this poem, we are presenting it in PDF format. Click here to access the document.

Author’s Note: On election day, 2016, as part of the #poetsatthepolls initiative that I founded, I wrote personal poems for voters and concerned citizens throughout the day at a polling place, and through the evening at a voting party as the result of the election became increasingly evident. This poem is a collage poem of 10 works I created for other people that day.

Brian Sonia-Wallace is the author of I Sold These Poems, Now I Want Them Back (Yak Press, 2016). He has been the Writer in Residence for the Mall of America, Amtrak Trains, and Dollar Shave Club, and also creates typewriter poetry installations and shows for large clients from Google to the Emmys. As a teaching artist, Brian guest lectures at UCLA and teaches K-12 students throughout LA County in partnership with Get Lit and 24th Street Theatre. Brian holds an MA from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, with a thesis on community voicing projects.

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Ergene Kim
When the Clocks Stop Ticking

I was never taught what to do
When the clocks stop ticking.
Do I hide among the
trashed magazines? The
ones shoved under the Man’s
Buried doormat, the ones unseen,
The ones deemed unworthy.

Do I hide among the pages
of my books? When the clock
stopped ticking at 1984, Orwell
said to me—
I told you so,
I told you all.
and I beg for forgiveness from
the shelter of my library.

Or must I crawl into the hidden spaces,
the ones written between the laws of
our Land the ones that tell me and others
and us that separate is equal that
glass ceilings are invisible that no other
people came before the ones that live here
now that no one else may come it’s
Forbidden Restricted Immoral Illegal that
we are the people but not everyone
is Human.

Ergene Kim’s poems have been published in the New Jersey Live Poets Society and the Plum Tree Tavern. She is a high school student in San Ramon, California.

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Chad Parenteau
Crisis Actor Jesus Tanka

As written in the
book of Alex Jones
Crisis Actor Jesus
though sacrificed regularly
never truly dies.

Chad Parenteau is the author of Patron Emeritus (FootHills Publishing, 2013). His work has appeared in Tell-Tale Inklings, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Ibbetson Street and Wilderness House Literary Review. He serves as Associate Editor of the journal Oddball Magazine.

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Paul Buchanan
Black Flood

Sometimes, when I look around
I see the truth bleached.
Ancestors snake into my mouth
Their venom stains my voice.

You don’t want to leave
The Dream. Are our spines
Comfortable? Nesting on our backs
Must be hard for you.

Things won’t even out but,
We’ll get it back someday.
The rage we’re born into
Will roar in their ears.

Mourn the dead in whispers.
Scream the old sorrow quietly.
We’ll wake the bloodless devils
By saying nothing at all.

You won’t sleep on us
Not for much longer friend.
We’ll get you back someday.
Back to this global night.

Our soul wants your blood.
We’ll do this your way.
Forgiveness won’t wake you up.
It’ll be the hard slap.

It’ll be the silent gunshot.
It’ll be the hissing rope.
It’ll be the ghost whisper.
It’ll be the pale chain.

We’ll force your eyes open.
It’ll be the black flood

Paul Buchanan is a sophomore at Swarthmore College whose work has received the John Russell Hayes Award and appeared in Swarthmore’s Visibility magazine. He finds inspiration from the people around him, notably his sisters, his mother, and his peers in the Swarthmore writing community.

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