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“The sounds / coming out of our mouths / communicate— / as the poet said— / before they’re understood, / but that’s only half the truth. / See, my mother and father, / years ago, signed / on the dotted line, which is why / I am here and they are there,” writes Piotr Florczyk​​​. Of lush gardens, Alina Zollfrank says, “My forefathers and foremothers made it look effortless. ... But here I am now. I effort. More, not less.” 

As the rights of Americans, particularly women, POC, and queer poeple, continue to be threatened and stripped, we know that life isn’t automatically better for each new generation. That we need the continuity of older wisdom. That effecting change is probably a battle we’ll always be in the middle of fighting – and even this language is militaristic, when what most of us want, and persist in daily, is peace. Yet sometimes, “freedom / is something you can just take: walk off their foundations, let their ceilings crumble” (Anne Champion).  

"Everyone’s orbit is a scythe, exact, ripping the invisible" (Richard Lyons). The big energy of taking on chaos and absurdity is often best channeled as movement: “You think about those before you, your ancestors, the Tongva soil rooted in struggle and bloodshed. How you are still here—resisting, protesting, taking up space, and doing it dancing” (Heidi Lepe). And I am incredibly excited about the flow and aliveness in these pieces; a triumph of youth and song over terror and silence, like “shouting hazzanas at the Pleiades,” a line from Frank Horne via Anne Moore Odell.

“I forget where to be afraid. This has all happened before ….. show me how to love across fear. Not despite it, but letting it blow on your back. I want those I love to be unscathed by this solemn country. I want enough time in the war to run to them, planting flowers in my wake” (Isabel Lanzetta).

In several poems, music, along with desire, are juxtaposed with death. For example: “My heart is in sync / with riffs and rivers. / Now it is jazz. Now it is / rain. Now it is free / verse” (Melanie Perish). “I’ve got a gothic house / for a body, haunted,” writes Rita Tiwari; “desire is a villain, / …. Always darker, / tasting of mineral— / rough as a first draft, / brighter than champagne.”

And poems like those of Julien Strong, who asks “What would you wish for if you knew / it wouldn’t turn on you?” are rich, incomparable mouthfuls: “Dig out the pit / that’s not stone after all / but a heart too easily swallowed.” 

There are more wonderful writers I haven’t yet mentioned—I hope you enjoy checking out their work below. 

Thank you for reading!

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