"Turning Forty" by Kevin Griffith

At times it's like there is a small planet 

inside me. And on this planet, 

there are many small wars, yet none 

big enough to make a real difference. 

The major countries—mind and heart—have 

called a truce for now. If this planet had a ruler, 

no one remembers him well. All 

decisions are made by committee. 

Yet there are a few pictures of the old dictator— 

how youthful he looked on his big horse, 

how bright his eyes. 

He was ready to conquer the world.

Ride

After that dickbag in the landscaping company truck buzzes me while I pedal above the wet white line, I turn off Rt 6 and head toward the canyon. The path is quiet, but the clouds beyond the canyons, above the wide, white mountains, are filled with thunder and lightning and rain, and so I do not stop to put in my new wireless earphones even though I had wanted to listen to music on this ride. Instead I pant and swear into the 20 mph headwind, my quads straining even to move my bike downhill. At the crest of each hill I think surely I've nearly reached my destination at the construction site on the far side of the new bridge, and each time I am dismayed to realize that I'm still miles away.

Until I'm not, and I coast to a stop at the white-orange fencing, drink some water from the glass kombucha bottle that's been enjoying the ride of its life on my bike's downtube, and slip the headphones into my ears. I don't have signal and for some reason (it feels so weird to write) Spotify won't even let me play the albums I've previously downloaded, so instead of listening to The Gilded Palace of Sin I find myself in a muted, introspective world of my own, akin to slipping into the underwater wonder of a lake or a bathtub or a swimming pool.

For once there's no headwind on the return trip--the storm is at my back now, sweeping in from the east--and I bike the 10 miles home in less than 25 minutes, swerving around ground squirrels as they sit and stare and scamper and loiter and mingle and haul ass across the path. As I pull up in the alleyway behind my apartment lightning zigzags across the navy blue sky and thunder claps so hard that the thin walls of my apartment, once a two-car garage and still not at all fit for human habitation, shake.

After I greet Hanna and Wilson and stretch on the carpet I call the landscaping company, where the young woman receptionist apologizes profusely for the driver's aggressive behavior. Oh it's not your fault at all, I tell her, and she laughs with relief. I just want people to stay safe out there, ya know? 

Gotcha

Perhaps I'll prepare the salad in a large saucepan. Eating kale chips and watching the candle burn. My therapist says I deserve to be happy


Yeah always I get rusty. Where would I be if I stayed inside the river at all times?


Don't worry about the money you'll make it.






Everybody telling me I can do it. I know. I can do so much. It's the "it" that's bringing me to my knees, teary-eyed and begging, looking for signs in the appearance of the great blue heron, behind the series of robins hopping along the path in front of me, at the tail end of the wide, languorous snake slithering into the sage beside my right foot



Be with what is. One of the many things I've been telling myself. I've been surprised to see all the pain in my life, and also the possibility


Another one: stress-free living. A pandoraparabolapandemicparadox? Maybe. I'm not stressing about it



Hasn't had a drink in seven months nearly, what a difference sobriety makes. how much easier it is for each of us to be with what is. still I flinch every time he asks the question.


made with REAL vegetables

the next time there is a ring on my finger I want it to stay there until death do us part. that's how much I want to believe in love



How did I get to this place?


I don't remember writing that.

I am eating the chocolate made by my very dear friend.



Last night so many of my friends appeared for the spontaneous vegetable grill down by the river, I wore a homemade paper crown and they sang me happy birthday and I thought, I have friends who know me and I deeply love each of these people and then this morning I woke up thinking my heart is so full 


home


This weekend I will go camping and rock climbing and hiking and maybe throw a little disc golf before building a campfire and sleeping underneath the stars with my dog in my new webbed-ceiling tent. Fuck I'm so grateful!



My heart tells me so many things how am I supposed to listen to all of them

"I'm not a religious person but" by Chen Chen

God sent an angel. One of his least qualified, though. Fluent only in

Lemme get back to you. The angel sounded like me, early twenties, 

unpaid interning. Proficient in fetching coffee, sending super

vague emails. It got so bad God personally had to speak to me. 

This was annoying because I’m not a religious person. I thought

I’d made this clear to God by reading Harry Potter & not attending

church except for gay weddings. God did not listen to me. God is

not a good listener. I said Stop it please, I’ll give you wedding cake, 

money, candy, marijuana. Go talk to married people, politicians,

children, reality TV stars. I’ll even set up a booth for you,

then everyone who wants to talk to you can do so

without the stuffy house of worship, the stuffier middlemen,

& the football blimps that accidentally intercept prayers

on their way to heaven. I’ll keep the booth decorations simple

but attractive: stickers of angels & cats, because I’m not religious

but didn’t people worship cats? Thing is, God couldn’t take a hint. 

My doctor said to eat an apple every day. My best friend said to stop 

sleeping with guys with messiah complexes. My mother said she is 

pretty sure she had sex with my father so I can’t be some new 

Asian Jesus. I tried to enrage God by saying things like When I asked 

my mother about you, she was in the middle of making dinner

so she just said Too busy. I tried to confuse God by saying I am 

a made-up dinosaur & a real dinosaur & who knows maybe 

I love you, but then God ended up relating to me. God said I am

a good dinosaur but also sort of evil & sometimes loving no one. 

It rained & we stayed inside. Played a few rounds of backgammon. 

We used our indoor voices. It got so quiet I asked God 

about the afterlife. Its existence, human continued existence.

He said Oh. That. Then sent his angel again. Who said Ummmmmmm.

I never heard from God or his rookie angel after that. I miss them.

Like creatures I made up or found in a book, then got to know a bit.

From "Onset" by Kim Addonizio

it’s spring   

and it’s starting again, the longing that begins, and begins, and begins.

March 8 (Content Note: SA & DV)

It is fitting and devastating-I-mean-fucking-soul-shattering that the poem the poetry magazine has decided to feature on International Women's Day is about rape. Because what will resonate with all women, they must have asked themselves, the ones reading this in England and in Africa and maybe a few in Asia or Eastern Europe and certainly much of our readership is from the USA--what do they all have in common and the answer is rape. The answer is the knowledge of what it is to feel violated and afraid. In varying increments, of course, and with varying levels of intersectionality. Let's send out a poem about rape and call it a day. Or maybe they were taking a stand. I don't assume their intentions. I read what is written and what was sent to me on International Women's Day, a day when I am meant to celebrate myself, a day when I am supposed to think about the grandness and greatness of women, and here I am thinking about rape, my own, my friends', my aunts', the women I've counseled afraid in the dark in the middle of the night, their breathy voices finding a few brief moments of sanctuary on anonymous phone lines whispering please don't hang up and me staying steady promising I won't. I'm here with you. I'm not going anywhere. But of course I was never with the them, not in the flesh, and it's the flesh we're talking about aren't we? and when they hung up the phone and turned he might be standing there, behind them with a lamp in his hand, ready to bash their head in.

And I'm thinking about how he understands none of it, husband, how he has no idea what a day like International Women's Day can mean, or what it might mean to find in my inbox a poem about rape on International Women's Day, or how that might cause my brain to start thinking about how many hands I have fought off me, the times I didn't, how much work and how long it has taken me to return to my body, how I still struggle to stay there, why I couldn't let him touch me sometimes, why sometimes fantasies feel safer and so I think about other people I look out the window at the falling snow, I stare at Wilson's cute little face until I feel like some semblance of myself and as I settle back into my body I feel once again that I am a woman, this is a woman's body, and some would equate that with rape, and at times I have equated that with rape, I have felt like nothing but raped, and also this body is soft and strong and flexible and resilient beyond fucking belief I mean she has been through a lot and here we are together, I walk through the world feeling strong, my body is stronger than I ever knew it could be, and there's a correlation, isn't there, because even though it's taken a while here I am, a woman, sitting with and in myself on International Women's Day, talking about rape and not defined by it, no never defined by it you asshole, thinking about all the women walking around feeling strong or feeling weak--it doesn't matter--sitting with and in themselves today, thinking about the grandness and the greatness of womankind.

From "The Architecture of a Love Poem" by Alexandra Peary

the heart had such a fancy elevator

              that it started to look like a bird cage