There is hope on the corner of Sacramento and Arguello by Teddy Press

I saw it in the smile of the
cute barista with the frizzy brown hair
(the gums are what sold me)
who poured my drink--I complimented
his Chuck E. Cheese rainbow tie-dye
croptop and he, too, understood that life
IS actually a musical and he burst 
into song—the Chuck E. Cheese theme song.
And I smiled as I opened the door and the bell
chimed in harmony and I couldn’t stop myself 
from skipping on the way home.

There is Hope.
Well, she’s in Cincinnati now.
Hope is Audrey’s dog, she
moved there for her senior year
for a car (she never got it) but
I think she’s doing better now.
She’s a total gym rat and
Remy would be jealous of her fresh cut strawberries
and her special garlic mac and cheese.
I miss her. Sometimes I call her
and send her photos of things I find pretty
and she does the same. I think she’s really pretty.

THERE IS HOPE,
written in bold, white, sans-serif slapped 
on a rusty plaque on the posts of the Golden Gate Bridge.
I swear San Francisco is the most beautiful place to live,
I crossed the bridge while clutching a can of cold
coffee as cars whizzed past my ears. 
I grasped the metal-braided rope supports. 
In my mind, I made a shrine 
for the chief engineer. I could fly! (well, walk)
across the bay, and I became an aerodynamic
puzzle how the wind circled my torso and cheeks
like vector tendrils.
And peering over the side of the bridge, I looked
down to the sailboats and back to the stanchions
and wondered how one could let themselves
splatter paint over this beautiful glimmering
rust with their guts, I wondered
how we arrived at this gate, this entryway, this passage
and it became necessary for us to install rusty
telephones and I cried; I was shaking
And I swear it wasn’t the bridge shaking me.
We/they placed these safety nets, and suddenly I understood
the character I hated most in high school.
Holden was holding me and he was catching the children,
and from the bridge, the poppies on the mountains
shined golden, and I
could have sworn that they were rye.

Land and Life by Angelina Scarlotta

A petrifying paradox plagues the ambitious small-town native,
Who is so filled with love for her home and yet has no greater desire than to leave it. 
Standing in her yard (Or is it a forest?), dandelion stems and dark soil between her bare toes,

Starlight swallows her like the bulbs of a blazing marquee printed with celestial showtimes;
Cricket song choruses in her eager ears, echoes of a creeping and crawling city;
Maple trees scrape the sky with soft splinters—forever growing, never reaching.

She is doomed, she thinks, for a life of striving for the future and longing for the past.
She may never roam so far that the green peaks of her mountainous cradle escape her view. 
Though, perhaps, there lies comfort in such a curse.

Her childhood home sits upon the edge of a tectonic plate,
Where earth slipped away to carve the cliffs over which her sun rises each dawn.
To grow up is not to grow apart: that knowledge reassures her, in a restless sort of way.

Glaciers, creatures, and people leave valleys, trails, and footprints in our wake.
We move onward, over land and life, with direction not limited to a simple forward or back.
Between scarlet leaves and against blushing cheeks, the well traveled wind whispers, Return.

Someday I’ll Love Elaine Mei by Elaine Mei

after Frank O’Hara/Roger Reeves/Ocean Vuong/Dean Rader

Someday 
I’ll love Elaine Mei
the way a dictatorship loves its elections
or perhaps I’ll love myself the way
Mr. President loves Coke
the way Coke loves 
Don’t worry
be happy!
because happiness is not 
a butterfly it is
a warm gun
a cockroach wedged in the drain
stubborn
imposing
wholly inconsiderate
of the space he takes on the subway to work
Someday
I’d like to take that space on the subway
I’d like to buy the world a Coke
look Britain straight in the eye
and clink our bottles to the red sky
but do not be mistaken
this is not camaraderie
this is not friends being friends
this is dominance
this is the prisoner’s dilemma
this is my empire against yours
Someday
I am afraid I’ll love myself
and mistake it for self-love when in truth
I have gone too far
because doesn’t it feel good to have a love that’s gone too far when
you’re used to a love that struggles to go the distance

a “my love is better than your love” kind of love
an “America spoke and they chose me” kind of love
because wouldn’t it feel good if America chose me
tell me
why do I need to beg
why do I need to get on my knees
for my country to choose me

Poetry Series by Kelley White

Powerhouse

--Canterbury Shaker Village, NH

Pipes and gears, great wheels to spin
painted red and yellow like warnings:

that wonderful thick paint! Still vivid now
in another century. Turbines. The water

wheels are all gone. But one mill house sits
snug, but for a little drip drip and moss

on the walls, its old power replaced
by the clanging new. And the fire, the firetruck, 

bell silenced, wait nearby.

Trustees Office

--Canterbury Shaker Village, NH

Two men.
Two women.

Equals.

Dwelling across the lane.
Of the Village yet a bit 
Not of Us.

Trusted to meet the world’s people.

Clocks and desks and the new electric lights.
A telephone.

The world comes to us through them.
To buy and sell.

Here are the ledgers kept:
Careful ink.

Now, though we are all gone to ground,
Still this is.
Our store.

A Generational Portrait as Skipping Class in America by Mia Nelson

yes, there is a difference between record and revel
and I’ve always been comfortable with
one & not the other. Some animals wait
out their whole lives belly down in sweet grass
hoping it doesn’t rain. In north carolina
this week, a man won the lottery with
numbers from his fortune cookie & I
want everything to work that way––
I’ve always believed in the God that gives
and if I were one, I’d never make anyone fight for anything
either. Meaning, everything is a sign. Like the day
our state’s football team won the superbowl
and the mayor gave excused absences to every public school
kid in Denver. When a day like that falls in your lap,
you gotta run the numbers. It’s blasphemy
to not start the car engine and drive to that
horizon of people, dressed in orange like
our very own midday sunset. Audrey
used to tape calculus notes to her ceiling,
so even in sleep she could count incalculable
things. Unfathomable now, but there was an everyday
where I made bouquets of black inked notes instead
of eating and hoped I didn’t fall asleep driving
hair-soaked back from swim team after three hours
of half-drowning the sweat of school and other people’s
spit from me. A lot of living that felt like watching
because I didn’t want to be there. It’s almost always easier
to be made of eyes instead of hands & that’s the one thing
I know I am not alone in. We are all still standing ankle
deep in some midnight colored water catching a chill
because its the way it always is. I think we might as
well call it dystopian every time a fifteen year old rolls
her eyes at a bomb threat or sends I love you just in case
because that is the kind of break from school we’d usually
get. An interesting thing about Colorado is somedays a woman
tweets about making another Columbine and other days we
win the superbowl. Have you ever you called a life a life
until you lose it? Until then it's just a long blue thread to
some imaginary almost-summer day when you can just breathe.
Sometimes, I close my eyes and will my body to forget everything
that doesn’t want me to live & I skip class over and over again.

Greek Grammar is a Love Poem by Valentina Jaramillo

I am new to Ancient Greek, so my vocabulary
is necessarily limited. 
But I can construct simple phrases:
I sacrifice to the goddess
and we hasten to the marketplace.
So far, this has been plenty.
Today, I learned passive voice and imperfect tense. Now
I can say the book is being written by the poet.
And she used to guard the tent.

 I’m told Greek nouns and verbs recognize a third kind
of “number” called The Dual.
The Dual serves for pairs of things.
As I practice my translations,
I read first in Greek, then English.

 Σπεύδουσι τῇ αγορᾷ

They hasten to the marketplace.
It occurs to me that Greek is a language riddled
with couples hastening to marketplaces
and to countrysides and into tents.
So, I rewrite my sentence,
the couple hastens to the marketplace.
What lovely markets those must be, but mindful of overcrowding.

I’ve heard it said, every letter is a love letter.
That every poem is a love poem to something.
I think, perhaps, the Greeks originated this idea.
Every sentence is an ode to the potential for two-ness.

The two of them go to the marketplace.
The two of them offer sacrifice and do not steal.
The two of them stand guard and continue to draw.

Soon I will know all about those two
in the marketplace, and the declarations
they must have occasion to make.
Perhaps one will say I sacrifice to the goddess of the countryside.
Perhaps the other will say the book is being written by me in the tent.
And each will understand the other’s meaning
in the language of eternal hastening.

I might say I used to hasten to the marketplace.
The poem was written by me.
For now, this should be plenty.
A harmless act of mimicry.