The Great Cosmic Hum
“the hum you could never / obliterate, molecules buzzing, hum of 87 floors of refrigerators cooling, / hum that keeps the building in the sky”
Contest Winner
House of Prayer
“I praise once again, I symmetry / like the wings of a migrating bird, I repeat alhamdulillah / and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat, like the rokrok / of an egret.”
BRAIN HEMORRHAGE, EARLY FALL
By Madhur Anand
“Found a dead bird on the rented back porch on Rice Lake. / Found it. Not encountered it. More like: glad we did not / not see it.”
Surrender
“In the red brick room, my father cries. / His cries are small, lonely animals. / I carry them with me / like an inheritance.”
Aullo
“Yo vi las mejores mentes de mi generación destrozadas por remesa madness. / Starving. 10 cent. Maruchán. Limón y Valentina slurpin’ paisas”
THERE’S A RATTLE, SOMETIMES
“A strange earth / for this staggered colony of desperate valiant specks. There is / no there, here.”
I’m not one of those who left my land
“And then if not my death then my life will be fashioned like orchids / pouring from the windows, all of my friends catching me in nets.”
In Response to My Mother When She Says Hearing Me Read My Writing’s like Hearing God
“God // cannot be remission, the clear scan, a bell’s clang after my / last treatment.”
Huitlacoche
“Unhusk me if you must, call me / acquired, call me dirty, call me corn smut.”