Arc | Issue 12

The field is (where I will break apart) be free

Anne Gregory

The bedroom air is warm vinegar. My mother’s eyes flutter open and softly close, the blanket slides to the floor. She is breathing. I close the door, it sighs open. Squinting into the white sky of noon I walk out across the front porch. The screen door slams, bangs once and shudders behind me.

I am not this house

With the cool air of the forest on one side, I hold my arms wide, long grass tickles my flat palms. I’d been watching the cows watch me back for days, swat-swat with their tails, sounding out the low moan of cow complaint. Sometimes I’d start to forget they were there, and then I’d think of those giant shiny eyeballs, big enough to hold in the palm of my hand like a frog.

I am not the warm summer air

Just one fence to climb over. My plan, if a plan at all, was to draw close; run my hand down the flank of a warm neck or two, sprawl in the mist of hot cow breath, lay my ear against their cagey ribs, mingle my limbs with theirs.

I am not the cows

I saw the silver wire showing off its sharp shiny bows but plans were already decided: I would submerge in herdness. Ducking under, all swagger in my big thumpy rubberboots the first bow caught my hair and pulled my chin up sharply.

I am not the field

The next barb chewed flesh from shoulder to elbow leaving a wake of white-then-red, a mangled bloody furrow ready for planting. With grass stuck to my pale legs I held my arm together with one hand, surrendered myself back to the porch, skinned and unfielded.

1

Lock

Connor Watkins-Xu

Wherever you go, there you are,
a curse illuminated in therapy

years ago when I shared songs
that captured me. What remains?

Windows and long leaps, walls
for sale, the marginalia of my life

that will rot well beyond. The drum set
that raised me has become a portal for

another down-south escape, leaving
a dusty concrete tableau in my mother’s

storage unit. Each move, a census.
Wrinkled shirts are the first to lose,

weeping from bottom dresser drawers,
tied up like a school of fish and tossed.

Next are the things you hoped you’d
have space for at the next place. Perhaps

you do, but they’ve lost their means.
When it weighs, almost anything is easy

to leave behind. But there are those books
and useless tchotchkes we box up,

no matter the cardboard disrepair
and mold. What makes us of them?

In Maryland, I bought an overpriced bike,
tested for a moment on an old man’s street,

then handed over the cash. Had I been paid
for a poem? I rode it about twice before

I had grown too tired and remembered
the electric rentals that lined the boulevard.

Is it still there, watching the others coast
in and be walked out like grandmas

with stories to tell? The bell rusted. I forgot
the combination, left the whole ensemble

locked to the green complex rack out back.
I think I think about it a bit too much.

2

Focus: A Letter Toward My Teenage Anxiety

Isaiah Diaz-Mays

My therapist said I have attention deficit disorder.
Undisciplined neurons leap from thought trains to
emotional steamboats and back. I’d say I’m rather
normal, and only formed a close bond with distraction
after valorous wars with anxiety, depression and fear.
Sports taught me grit
cartoons molded my imagination
music transported me to alternate realms
art displayed the wintry world outside my city
harsh truths reflected in sapphire waters.
Had it not been for distractions, I would’ve drowned.
Your diagnosis makes no sense to me,
nor do the excessive names on these tubes of medication.
I’m supposed to come home with mud on my shirt,
cuts and bruises scattered across my fragile body like
graffiti. Basketball courts were a shield from cocaine
transactions outside my front door, the door next to the
elevator that reeked of urine and marijuana. I dressed up as
a Gryffindor wizard for Halloween despite the costume’s plastic
packaging clearly displaying white boys, exclusively. Yet still
I practiced Harry Potter spells by my lonesome in the sala
because Black boys contain magic, too. I’ve always been rebellious.
I’d turn the volume up on Hey Arnold! reruns late at night to
siege the roaring sirens of the streets, praying for my friends that
stood tall at bleak corners with aching stomachs and sweaty palms.
The only difference between us lies within the mediums we chose
to channel our focus. I can’t help but wonder, if their families had
good health insurance, would you diagnose them too?

3

Marooned

Jessie Holmes

Here I am detritus, washed up
Sea-smoothed and foreign bodied
Eating the dirt of this landmass
As to more accurately prove
My intention of
Assimilation

Crocus-ed, purpling frostbitten
Crooked pinkie toe, crumpled
Jumble of static elbows,
XX chromosomes,
Cumbersome imported
Tongue

(With its associated taste buds)

Curled foetal, as whisper thin
Egg shell, speaking of
Strung capillary webs rather
Than scrambling this assembled
Yolked iconography
Golden?

If, when bike spilt
Broken, my gums bleed fjällbrynt
Will my blood set the scene
For a field of sugar beets
In lieu of english
poppies?

4

Two Faces of Nairobi

Moseka Ntiyia

Nairobi stretches across the land,
A city torn between two worlds.
In the east, the dust never settles,
Where the air is thick with dreams and hunger.
I live here,
In the narrow paths,
Among the voices that call for change,
But rarely find it.

You, Runda, sit on the western side,
Where the air is clearer,
And the roads lead to quiet gardens.
Your gates are tall,
Guarding a life untouched by the noise,
A life where the days pass without a struggle.

Nairobi holds both of our faces,
One growing from the ground,
The other blooming in the sky.
But it cannot decide which path to take.
Here in Kibera,
Hope rises from the rubble,
A hope that is always hungry,
Always reaching for more.
And in the stillness of Runda,
The days pass without question,
Like a river flowing calmly,
Never disturbed by the tides below.

We are bound by this city,
But separated by the walls we built,
The ones you never see,
Or perhaps, refuse to see.
But I feel them every day.
I am Kibera,
And you, Runda,
We are two sides of Nairobi,
But the heart of this city beats alone.

And still, Nairobi watches,
Wondering if the gap will ever close,
If the dust will ever settle,
If we will ever walk together,
Or remain divided forever.
Just waiting,
Maybe for me to rise,
Or for you to fall.

5

A Sea of Seas

Kirsty Mac Dougall

(After Aracelis Girmay)

You and your reflection are the secret
to drawing a perfect circle:
a full moon
or crescent in your singular form.

You perennially take third place—
stuck
between two stick figures mirrored,
yet you chime together in melodious rhyme.

One must let out a violent hiss
to say you aloud,
yet you curl up the lips
in the universal expression of happiness.

You sound like an ocean,
and you’re in every ocean ever written.
You also sound like the function of the eyes
and function in all functions.

You form the archetypal arc
in the circumference of a circle,
while you stand steadfast
at their respective end and beginnings.

You also start
cat
cap
car
can—
as commonplace as the common noun.

But you’re captivating with your cadence—
the very essence of every essence.
Without
you,
we
would
never
come
half
circle.

6

Axis

Sofiya Ivanova

I am just a deadbeat daughter
who only calls god
when she needs a favor.

Seconds
tear through me
like bullets.

Happiness is the moon
dancing across the sky,
glancing back at my car with a
teasing, silvery smile—

My playmate in a game of tag
I am destined to lose.

(Destined, too,
To keep trying.)

I found out you committed suicide
the day I got my wisdom teeth out.

As my jawbone turned into sawdust
and my gums seamed together with surgical string,

I strained my swollen cheeks with a smile.

What I mean to say is

I am lucky
to be a suncatcher
being hit by rays of
pain.

Death
is a neighbor
I share a yard with—

I wave to her each morning,
on my way to plant flowers
where the bodies are.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am no stranger to
charred garage doors and
smoke-suffused clothes and
insects slithering under folds of skin and
waking up screaming and
leaking taps and
bloody towels and
skid marks on roads and
the dull thud of dirt hitting a coffin and
exploding pigeons and
murdered heroes
and and and

Maybe we are just ants
scurrying beneath the ridges
of god’s shoes.

But each time I fall while skiing,
struggle to get back up,
reach for the stick a few feet away—

In every timeline,
in every universe—
Someone else beats me to the punch.

I swear,
those outstretched hands
extending ski sticks to strangers
are what’s keeping the Earth
on its axis.

7

Finnish Hands

Carol Mohrbacher

“Finnish Hands”
My hands used to look like my mother’s
Strong thick fingers from a working life
A few old white scars
And a tiny mole at the base of my thumb
My mother died a decade younger than
I am

at this moment

sitting in the sauna
Surrounded by steam and memories,
I see hands not my mom’s
But my grandmother’s
Thinner, veinier, decorated with age spots.
Paper thin skin with the finest wrinkles.

The heat and steam
force sweat
From my wrinkled brow
“Enough,” I say to no one
And leave the cedar-scented hot cocoon

Go outside
To sit in the cool air
And feel my hands cool and dry
Wrapped in the pockets of an old terry robe
Looking for all the world
like a grizzled Finnish woman

8

The gift of betrayal

KM Kramer

 —at first, a fisted sandcastle
wreck. 
My bare feet plant
on the beach edge
quietly beside the ruins.
The ocean gathers rhythms
to reveal. Rising 
with the heat,
the sand smelts 
orange
and the grains grind smooth,
cooling into—
(clarity):  a looking glass.

9

Roll the donkey’s screech to pulp

Nicholas Veerapen

Pink lavender, a typewriter typing,
the brightness of clover suddenly emergent.

Blue skies cloak the glacier’s frozen white water,
the pristine junkyard of fighter jet wings.

I let it fill the space I leave for you.

If this cherry orchard holds
your blushing cheeks;
the call to prayer,
your fox tongue waggling;
sullen meadow rising,
your desire for rest;
then I see you in your aspect
daring.

I resist the call of your name,
smile, and with my arms extended,
roll the donkey’s screech to pulp.

10

bar joke.

Alec Siek

A cow walks into a
bar and I am
there too hey want me to moo-
ve over I said as the cow took a
seat and the cow began to
weep and then it

left ashamed I turned to
go but a Barstool stopped
me. You’re a tool it said you’re a
stool said I and then I
kicked His legs and
He kicked mine and
said I saw you insult the divine.

You support sinners I
snapped.

So did
Christ said the
stool and
I wept

because a barstool looked more like Christ than I did.

11