Martijn Jacobs, Hayley DiRenzo, Devjani Bodepudi, Sara Aultman

ANTICIPATORY GRIEF

Haley DiRenzo

The sadness of knowing we were losing the family dog 

was terrible in itself, but my father’s anticipatory grief –

his ear pressed down on the hardwood floor as he lay 

beside her crying, constricted throat strangling his words 

every time he spoke of her – was somehow more painful. 

I wanted only to hold my own sadness buried deep 

within my chest like a hot coil ready to spring at anyone 

who rattled me. But that is not how loving beings works. 

We both love the dog, so once she is gone, our grief’s

tendrils will find each other and braid into the other 

demanding to be seen. This is already beginning. 

We cannot escape the ache that other people’s pain 

roots in us. We cannot carve out just enough space 

to cradle our own broken ribs. So when the dog dies, 

I will miss her, but I fear more the raw charged wire

of my father’s exposed soul ready to electrocute 

if I get too close. The same as when his mother died 

when I was a child, and I did not break until he held me,

voice cracking and saying I was the best thing to ever

happen to him. His face alive with the new reality that 

one day we too would lose each other. 

IF ONLY SHE KNEW, THOUGH SHE DOES.

For Malika Booker   

golden shovel-

Devjani Bodepudi

Some days she slips out from my

fear of others perceiving her. Mother

she sing-songs you’re so paranoid- though she knows

vines in her pitcher climb like pain.

We make a tale for a poem a

singularity to relive the sorrowful

portraits of songbirds feathering gospel

nests of cuckoos while we click-clack type

in empty rooms tomorrow she will hear of 

her name, Heart-Song mangled in pain

threatening same-same to make a

point until they forget to stare

or twitch voile curtains peeking through

not caring if it makes me sad opening each

likelihood like boxes of mimicry at night

while fanning opalescent dreams into eyes

before the saddening, before the blackening

after the lightning hope 

during the near misses they

hinted at, choosing to know they and we are

only playing at being alright

whilst waiting for her in my mothering pain

HOW TO MAKE YOURSELF LUMINESCENT

Sara Aultman  

Take two quartz stones and smash them 

together—don’t you dare blink away, go on &

bruise what deadened centuries had patiently shaped. 

Watch every crystalline cathedral-lattice get interrupted 

by monotone hymn: torn apart, ionized, martyred,

cracked like the wasted dawn hour. 

You hate when I say your father’s suit 

hangs on your shoulders like a grave.

Thorns spike your tongue when you mock 

my low-heeled flats, which you know my sister gave to me.

See how those finger-splayed fractures

bear the briefest glow through unfeeling rock? 

Two bodies destroying each other 

for a blink of tender suffering shared together.