Elegy

 we
 kill by devaluation
 ad(s) tell us who’s worth something
 junct(ion) of
 professors in a meeting…

Because why not? Why not take the smashed pinecone 
of my life, render it in purple? Why not dream of…

By Martha Silano

By Grisel Y Acosta

A mournful, reflective poem lamenting the loss of someone or something.

The brutality of those two men
                                                 who broke into her apartment
and murdered her boyfriend,
       ...

Here, the sentence will be respected.

I will compose each sentence with care, by minding what the rules of writing dictate.

For example, all sentences will begin with capital letters.

Likewise, the history of the sentence will be honored by ending each one...

1.
La cogida y la muerte

A las cinco de la tarde.
Eran las cinco en punto de la tarde.
Un niño trajo la blanca sábana
a las cinco de la tarde.
Una espuerta de cal ya prevenida
a las cinco de la tarde.
Lo demás era muerte...

1

The Goring and the Death

At five in the afternoon
At the stroke of five
The boy brought the white sheet
at five o’clock
A basket of lime all ready
at five o’clock
The rest was death and only death
at five o’clock

Wind carried off the cotton balls
at...

I couldn’t be who I am
today if it wasn’t for you
being dead. It was time
for glitter, nail polish, and locs.
Glitter in my nail polish.
Glitter in my locs.
You wouldn’t have
loved me loving myself;
my joy rendered
inconvenience.
Sucked teeth keeping me
your grandson.
My love for...

1
The cyclamens have a hard time
breathing in July.

The sun ravages them and earth
is too dry.

Still, try remembering March light
and the tight

deep-buried bulbs that somehow
do not die.


2
The children are scattered
like weeds.

The children are scattered dust-colored
dirt-covered

like weeds. Mid-summer grey reigns,
and rain

exists not...

In the south we are busy now
slaughtering each other, there's no time
for flowers––

Slowly summer will
scalding pass, autumn will
arrive unnoticed.

If only rain would come to
send us all indoors––
There to stand

at ruined thresholds and
watch the yellow sky
weep and weep

for all our dead.

then the clouds rolled in
young is the night that is to say
a cellophane softness ensued
which blew across the sky like wisps of straw
their firearms—a job well done
young is the night

and when the circus tent begins to blaze
beneath the eyes speak...

where
do you find
strength
to climb
down the hill
to your lover’s
grave

what
do you bring
but thirteen years
of memories/

how do you deal
with his death
when your gasps
loom
in the autumn air
like circling crows
spasms rock
your body
like squirrels
shake the scarlet oak
& purple dogwood
branches
while through the buzz
of a helicopter
the roar
of an...

notebook
divine love is so.
invisible.

notebook
november 1. all souls day. rimbaud-o. go
to hell. picasso knows. how he really fucking
knew knows. where can he go now.

notebook
picasso hoax: don’t nobody tell when he dies.
continue let time continue and move like myth.
till suddenly somebody rings...

Who keeps the owl’s breath? Whose eyes desire?   
Why do the stars rhyme? Where does
The flush cargo sail? Why does the daybook close?

So sleep and do not sleep.

The opaque stroke lost across the mirror,
The clamp turned.
The polished nails begin the curl...

If  I claim this poem presents the tundra
swans we saw at first light, you might,
wrongly, think of  Yeats at Coole.

Or 9-&-50 other suppositions. In fact,
the blue slate of this lake reflected formerly
some blockchain constellations. Alas

now for mimesis; a star necklace...

Because all energy went into making him breathe
dawn was not noticeable

though on the beach it was bigger than anywhere
else, awakened stars stowing away in sand,

low-tide sparkle of a cosmos the sea will take away,
subtraction is basic, the boy's body when...

I have not ever seen my father’s grave.

Not that his judgment eyes
have been forgotten
nor his great hands’ print
on our evening doorknobs
            one half turn each night
            and he would come
            drabbled with the world’s business   
            massive and silent
            as the whole day’s wish   
            ready to redefine
            each...

                         Remember when we almost drowned in ’03, the woods
            so thick we only knew the rainstorm by sound of thunder
and violence of the...