There is Not Enough Desert by Attiya Khan

It was not enough that you cut in front of me in line
Wearing your blue business suit with a bluetooth in your ear,
And that when I told you, hey, my aunt and I were in line here
You said “that towelhead is supposed to listen to men anyway, right?”
And when I got in your face, spitting, my face maroon with rage
I was the one told to “keep it respectful” by the cashier with blonde hair

That was not enough.
It was not enough that the day after 9/11, policemen broke down 
The door to our house in Southern California and
Twisted my father’s and uncle’s arms inside out, face to the 
Floor because how could men with gold chains and thick, dark hair
Be men who went down to Santa Monica beach to drink beers and hit on women and
Play volleyball even if they liked cricket more. 
To see the blood drip down their faces in front of a child who only knows
The men she loves smell of pennies and there are taxis parked outside
That need attending to,
To hear them whisper “jao, jao” through cracked teeth,
To see the slices in their brown skin from metal restraints tightened
Only to learn after some walky-talky-ing that these were just brown men
living in a brown apartment in a brown corner of shit in a city 
Whose sewers were overflowing with the blood and spines and aortas of brown men

That was not enough.

It was not enough to comb through our mountains and kill us with your guns,
Playing target practice with our children’s heads and then come onto your CNN and MSNBC 
To talk about how freeing us from ourselves is the duty of the American soldier
Because being alive and brown is a fate worse than death.

It was not enough to raid our mosques. 
It was not enough to violate our men in Guantanamo, and in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan, and in Palestine.
It was not enough to rip our women from their gardens and stick them in Al-Hawl to shit in the hot sand.
Rivers of our blood and our bodies lost in the ocean

That was not enough.

Somehow I cannot believe that it will ever be enough
For us to attend your universities and collect degrees that
Force us to pretend there are two sides to every slaughter.
Or get a fancy government job where every week they will say
How valuable my diverse language skills are
Because even my mother tongue cannot belong me to alone and
Every breath on American soil must be either sacrifice or treason.

Your ancestors ripped the gold from our foremothers breasts and I cannot forget.
As long as the Kohinoor diamond is in Queen Elizabeth’s house and 
I have to see her grandkids on Vanity Fair in the corner store 
I will not forget at the museum or the coffee shop or on the sidewalk.
I taste blood in every last cup of tea
The taste of pennies in every herb, every spice, every drop of ocean water.

We are not civilized savages
Who will forget the road of bones upon which you have traveled.
With God as my witness, we are waiting, we are watching 
At the grocery story, in Palestine, in Southern California

Look over your shoulder.

There is not enough desert 

For us all.

bar harbor, maine by Abby Mans

i’m sitting by the seashore in the arms of a boy i’m worshiping 
the sky the breeze is a humming lullaby in my ears
(the boy should stop talking)

he’s checking his watch he’s thinking 
about getting high, getting me
high enough i’ll let his rough hands touch 
my body high enough i won’t cry
(why would i cry)
(why shouldn’t i cry)

he’s whispering in my ear let’s go tugging my hand toward the forest
we’re returning to tree-canopied darkness
i’m blinking a tear-filled morse code goodnight to the stars
(sweet dreams)

he’s tearing apart gear in the tent in the car he can’t find
rolling papers he’s asking do i know where they are
i’m shaking my head i don’t know i don’t know
(stop, please)
(the boy hates that i don’t smoke) (the boy thinks he can change my mind)

he’s getting angry i’m getting scared
(where have the stars gone i’ve never hated the trees before)

he’s throwing things where the fuck are the rolling papers
now we can’t smoke (thank god) it’s too dark i’m crying he snaps
i’m so tired of being so fucking compassionate all the time
(as if he ever was)
i’m curling into a ball i’m trembling
i’m learning what love isn’t

(the stars would never hurt me like this)

American Edges by Carter Welch

~ for a Minnesotan couple in Siuslaw National Forest

An American rainforest, a wild place where flora and fauna grow tremendous, 
droned a Forest Service tour guide
I give tours, too, so I know the lines you hold in front of visitors 
to yank a gasp from their gnawing esophagus and deflate 
their internet knowledge
but I don’t give those kinds of tours.

In a government-owned hotel, we spoke to 
a woman in a Hawaiian shirt and a man in white jeans
he told us, the world, it’s a lot smaller than you think
she said, Minnesota, it’s not quite far
most the time, in fact, you carve your own route
yes, even in Duluth 
yes, even in Duluth! the man laughed
I didn’t quite get the joke 
my mother introduced her hollow laugh and
they kept going. 

Bass and salmon painted the cottage wall
vague potentials of vacation! and paradise! 
rolling from scaly jaws 
a bicycle trail at the beach 
so, when you walk on it, you feel sage horns on your back
and in the chimney rock landed a grey pelican 
lost, it seems, mistaking Paradise for Newport 
he dove into the sea and did not taste salt. 

 On Tuesday, they were on the restaurant balcony
the fog encircled the rocks
there was no telling the contours of this place
closing my eyes told more 
they came toward us
they said hello
Duluth’s genie song roared cold
and I prayed those American edges
covered the scar on my arm.

Excavation by Eliza Dunn

On Sunday, we walk through the woods to the river—
my cousin Evie, just turned five, and the dog, yellow lab now stiff-jointed and slow. 
Evie’s hand in mine, she hums, and I help lift her over stumps and loose stones. 
Today, the river is wide-bodied but smooth, carving gently, patiently at its shores. 
I choose a flat, sunny rock and pull my knees beneath my chin to watch as
the dog leaps in, paws first like a puppy, soft head shaking river water everywhere. 
From the shore, Evie watches: the dog sinks her nose into river, blowing bubbles,
and brings up a rock between clamped jaws. Tail spinning wild circles,
she runs to riverbank to drop it there among the pine needles. 
When I look back to Evie she is already wading, picking her way
along shifting bottom. She bends down, tongue out, and pulls a rock 
from the river. I watch her wobble over, all grass-stained knees and bright
purple rain boots. She holds the rock out to me, slick and glistening.
It’s heavy, so she cradles it in two hands as she drops it onto shore
with the dog’s. She wipes her hands on her back pockets and wades back in. 
I have been told we have the same eyes and turned-up nose and suddenly it is me 
in the river, water streaming past my legs, another old dog splashing nearby.
How I want to tell her how precious this moment is, how light-soaked and fleeting. 
But they are working quietly, the old dog and Evie, moving their rocks from water 
to earth, and I let them. I watch their pile grow, picturing what would happen
if they kept going, kept reaching again and again into the current 
until the riverbed was smooth, stripped of rocks. I can almost see it: 
world turned inside out by their faithful work. 
River bottomless and unfolded as the sky. 

On Leaving by Mia Nelson

I read somewhere that pleasure is an accurate measure of freedom
so when I smile in a way that means two please
or wear sandals knowing I will be walking through fields of mud
in the rain, or when I let a near stranger run & run his fingers through my hair,
I am trying to get free.
I am trying to be the dress I wear in the wind,
how it opens like a hand stretching up after an afternoon nap,
or I am trying to be the wind
& how it shuts the pages of my book
and brings the smell of spring closer.
Sometimes I think I must be beyond the age
of surprising myself
but then I tie my hair back
& I re-read your letters
& am not moved.
I open the window,
wake up on my spine instead of my belly,
get a new song stuck in my head
& see how I am most myself
when I am least myself
like how snow becomes visible to me only
when it’s disappearing.
The body, I am trying to say,
is a season between seasons,
the denouement not the apex,
the pleasure of a walk home in the dark
so much more than the party it is leaving.
By which I mean:
I was never yours up there
in the sudden tragedy of the destination, the end, the peak.
I mean you never turned the faucet just a little bit warmer
while I was washing my hands,
or kissed my neck from behind or turned the song up
right where it needed to be turned up.
It was either everything or nothing & mostly
it was nothing.
I was nineteen when you asked me to marry you the first time
& somewhere down in the valley
was my real body
in a downpour

getting free.

"I Hate Boys" by Tate Greene

It is two-thousand and nine
Barack Obama is president
And everyone says he will ruin America

But you are dressed like a cowgirl
Wearing your friend's sparkly belt
And a rhinestone jean jacket,
The boots that your cousin gave you 

Your mom is scared when you steal her lipstick
And your dad does not ask you 
To play on the church basketball team this year

You play with the girls
And hate yourself

For being a boy

Self Portrait as an Incel by Teddy Press

There are approximately seven gay
men at this Godforsaken school
in the trenches of New Hampshire, and,
lacking touch,
my body has assumed the shape of an incel.

What does it mean to be shaped like an incel?
My back is hunched, crippled with the weight
of a belly full of middling cookies and a backpack
crammed with RA-provided condoms. My pinky is bent
(from holding my phone) and my brain is shrinking
from terminal onlineness.
Maybe incels look a lot like monks. I shaved my head and wore
a bedsheet to class, dared to stop talking.
I can’t eat in front of boys anymore.
Instead, I go to CVS and collect junk food,
store them in my cheeks like nuts.
When I scurry back to my cave,
I am depressed, I wake in the night
and chow down on corn chips. The
crumbs stick to my neck beard.

When I do talk, I’m such a verbal whore.
I’m feral, I’m fiending, I crave attention
from grown ass dudes twice my age.
We’ve come a long way down.

There are times when I do see the light.
I walk the pond.
The trees bend down to whisper to me, they play
tricks on my ears, they’ve started to corrupt my
sense of self: I think my ego has allergies,
it’s red and swollen and puffy, blood is flowing
to it, but everything is blocked and my eyes
can’t help but water all over the place.

Once upon a time, I went on a date with a boy who told me gingers made him really excited.
I went on a date with another boy who told me I’d have no personality if I treated my anxiety.
My last date was with a boy who told me I could afford to lose some weight.

Once upon a time, I went on a date with a boy
who told me he loved me. You know, monks
are different from incels because it’s all voluntary. They’re volcels. Their mind is not clouded. Only
now, with my shaved head, can I see that I
was wrong, and I was able to love from afar, to
stand up straight, to
still love him from the trenches.