Christine Stoddard
Thirty Pounds in Three Months

On August 8, 2016, all 5’1 of my Salvadoran flesh and bones weighed 115 pounds.
My weight was documented, though I am myself undocumented.
This doctor accepted all patients, including ones whose parents stopped communicating with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services
when she was still in lacquered pigtails, watching Topo Gigio on Saturdays.
The doctor’s office quoted me the same rates any documented person would pay,
but, sometimes, I still wondered if the office manager would call the police to cart me away in my hospital gown, nalgas flailing in the faces of passersby.
I did not harbor much trust or even hope, given that I was always second-guessing where to dock my ship next. Was it safe to live here another year without papers?
I worked for an auto repair shop, taking my weekly salary in cash, which my boss skimmed off the top from overquoted jobs that clueless customers also paid in cash.
But if my boss fired me, where would I work next? Who would hire me without my papers in order? Who would pay me as well as this seedy little business paid me every week to keep their office in as tip-top shape as I kept my ship? How would I feed my son? Would I have to return to El Salvador, which I had not seen since I still thought Papá Noel was real? Since I was too young to appreciate the lorocos in my pupusas? These questions were etched in my psyche, as common as asking what the weather was or if I needed to go to the grocery store. But the news made them multiple. With each tweet, each meme, each sound bite, I gained half an ounce.
I became less mobile. I sat on the sofa, hugging my son as I scrolled through my phone as a reflex. In reality, I was barely aware of his presence. I mainly thought of him when hunger hit me. No, not hunger, simply a need for food. The election spurred my oral fixation and I had to shove whatever snack, however unappealing or unnecessary, into my mouth. He said. She said. Back and forth ad nauseam.
On September 8, 2016, all 5’1 of my Salvadoran flesh and bones weighed 125 pounds. I might have noticed if I weren’t so preoccupied. Instead, I boiled more beans after work and obsessed over the latest immigration scares, as if my fear could change anything. All that changed was the fit of my clothes, especially pants.
By October 8, 2016, I had to buy new clothes as urgently as I needed to visit the doctor. That was how I found myself dialing the doctor’s office from the dressing room of a discount department store. I wept as I spoke to the receptionist.
The doctor could not explain my weight gain. She only asked questions for which I had no answers. Normally, I had answers to questions, but suspected pirates would raid my ship at any moment. Surely I could not respond to “Who are you voting for?”
with “I am an illegal alien and cannot vote even though I have lived in this damn country most of my life—25 years—but that’s how it is because the law is cruel.”
The doctor promised to run a few tests and get back to me. I heard nothing.
By November 8, 2016, I did not recognize myself with 30 extra pounds on my frame.
My face was bloated, my hands were fat. Yet as I watched a map of the U.S.
blush until it glowed red, I knew I wasn’t suffering from cancer or a thyroid condition. And I knew that it would take me four years to lose the weight,
though I might be slimming down por allá because of the new administration.

Christine Stoddard is a Salvadoran-Scottish-American writer and artist who lives in Brooklyn. Christine also is the founding editor of Quail Bell Magazine, as well as the author of Hispanic & Latino Heritage in Virginia (The History Press), Ova (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), and two miniature books from the Poems-For-All series.

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J. Bradley
To the frog-faced men who use the word cuck as a knife

There is such joy when your wife tells you
how this week’s stranger opened her
like a love letter, when she says “yes”
after you ask whether he left anything behind.

You can’t blame her for finding men thicker than you
in all the right places. Your skin flushes
when you compare the scale of their parts to yours.

She always comes home to you.
While she sleeps, you count all the teeth marks,
bruises, and handprints. What they don’t understand
is that some men need to feel small
in order to be men.

J. Bradley is the author of the poetry collection Dodging Traffic (Ampersand Books, 2009), the novella Bodies Made of Smoke (HOUSEFIRE, 2012), the graphic poetry collection The Bones of Us (YesYes Books, 2014), illustrated by Adam Scott Mazer, the prose poem chapbook It Is A Wild Swing Of A Knife (Choose the Sword Press, 2015), the flash fiction chapbook No More Stories About The Moon (Lucky Bastard Press, 2016), the novel The Adventures of Jesus Christ, Boy Detective (Pelekinesis, 2016) and the Yelp review prose poem collection Pick How You Will Revise A Memory (Robocup Press, 2016). His flash fiction chapbook, Neil, won Five Quarterly‘s 2015 e-chapbook contest for fiction. His story, “Kyle”, was selected for Wigleaf‘s top 50 (very) short fictions for 2016. He is the curator of the Central Florida reading series There Will Be Words. He received an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University.

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Pat Schneider
Hope Is Not a Thing

God, I bow down.
I don’t understand.
The world we love
strains to the point
of exhaustion.

Mercy thins, hope
is not a thing with
feathers. It is a gold
trinket in a crow’s
nest, out of reach.

Teacher, teach us.
We have been here
before. The story’s
end is hidden in
a cloud of future.

Our minds fail us.
Assail us, O God.
The world falls apart.
The only hope now
is the human heart.

Pat Schneider‘s most recent book is How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice (Oxford University Press, 2013). Her work has appeared in Chrysalis, Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal, Minnesota Review, Ms., New York Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, Sewanee Review, The Sun, and Thema, among others. Pat is the founder of Amherst Writers & Artists, an international network of workshop leaders who use the writing method described in Pat’s book, Writing Alone and With Others (Oxford University Press, 2003). For her work with underserved populations, Pat has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

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Marie Coma-Thompson
Asses

Magic, do as you will
and let the beaches fall
into the asses
of the people

and let the speakers
have their voices switched
for nails and high-pitched
drones

and let the rocks
fill up with water
and soften at their edges,
and I say

I will throw you.

I say

You will be a legend to
all water
balloons

and I say

I’m closing my eyes now, and
let’s see
who you hit

Marie Coma-Thompson lives in Louisville, KY where she teaches Kundalini Yoga and attends graduate school for clinical mental health counseling.  She has been a featured reader at the Speak Social reading series as well as a featured emerging writer at the InKY series. Her work has previously been published in Maudlin House.

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Timothy Liu
Ode to Barack

When I knew
he wasn’t coming

back, I didn’t

wash the sheets
for over

a year, his scent

mixed with mine
until that too

became so faint

it retreated
into memory

like everything

else I had
to let go of

as I stripped

our mattress
to make room

for whomever

else might
want to

fuck me harder.

Timothy Liu‘s latest book of poems is Don’t Go Back To Sleep (Saturnalia Books, 2014). He lives in Manhattan and Woodstock, NY. Visit timothyliu.net​.

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Julie Marie Wade
Décima: November 8, 2016

How the weather channel describes a particularly devastating storm;
Reminiscent of decimals, which we know are preceded by wholes and
followed by fragments; Also, a Roman goddess of Fate; Also, a poetic
form in which one four-line stanza introduces four, ten-line stanzas 

Here is the beach by early light, here the gulls dragging
the sea’s dark garnish across the plate of sand. Every surface
smooth as finger-tips now, mirrored, then smudged, then
picked clean again by crows. The stray voices commingling:
My cuticles have been giving me fits! and Did you say vendors
also have to pay to be part of the showcase? Then, this surprise
of vultures: their brown wings pulled tight as curtains, their
talons wet at the water-line. How they hunch together like monks
in common prayer. Shyly, and from some distance, I admire them,
their willingness to wait and wait for the rotted thing they want.

At lunchtime, messages blinker in my inbox. We want your
feedback!, Quick survey to help us serve you better!, and Sanou Bello’s
missive marked as spam: Dear friend, I hope you are fine over there in
your country. How this greeting strangely warms me, makes me
want to inquire: Is it Bello, like “bellow”—a scream carried on the wind—
or “bay-yo”—a handsome man? Instead, I water the plants on the
windowsill, one moody orchid, three good-spirited ferns, and a
sober cactus. We still have not decided where to keep the beloved cat’s ashes, moved so often now, they seem to be everywhere. Later, I type and then delete: Dear Sanou, I cannot say if I am fine until tomorrow.

Before Chinese takeout on TV trays, we lay supine and practice being
dead. The teacher instructs us to spread our limbs wide: Nevermind the sand’s small upheavals! To no good end, I picture castles made all day by children, their pails primary blue and red; then, how the tide came in, flooding their moats, drowning their turrets, and how, just now, we flattened the last of their enterprise. Breathe. We are playing dead but not holding our breath. When will the world ever make sense? Stars flicker like unread messages: whole galaxy pending in blind carbon copy. On each of my ten antsy fingers, the moons start to rise. What a stupid question that was: Of course everyone pays to be part of the showcase!  

Sleep comes hurricane-rough. In the wind, I hear my own screams. Then, the world turns quiet, and I’m strolling toward Grandmother’s house. Even her chimney puffs, storybook-style. In the kitchen, I find her as she always was, stoic at the sink, washing dishes. Grandma smiles, insists I wait right there. When she died, I asked my parents if she left me something, perhaps her painted shells. Nothing, they said. Now Grandma returns with a German shepherd, straining against the leash. I never took him out for a walk. I regret that now, but I’ve been saving him, all these years, for you. Then—I promise this is true—she tells me his name is Anger as she ties the taut loop of leather at my wrist.

Julie Marie Wade is the author of eight collections of poetry and prose. She teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University and reviews regularly for Lambda Literary Review and The Rumpus.

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Hilary Sideris
Real News

1. A White-Tailed

single-antlered
Harlem deer

seeking a mate
in Jackie Robinson

Park is dead. The buck
became the subject

of a heated back
& forth over its fate

between our mayor
& governor.

2. Rescue Workers

shatter Suburu
windows only to find

a fake widow with roses
on her gown, blemishes

down her arm from too
much sun. Her owner,

a CPR instructor, curses
cops but goes uncharged.

The chief’s relieved to
make it known that no

white woman froze in
his chic town & if one

did, his men would
notice & respond.

3. I Wondered,

said Beddal,
churchwarden

at St. Thomas of
Canterbury, why

Mr. Michael would miss
the midnight mass,

his garden decked out
as it was with Christmas

lights we could see
from the bridge.

Hilary Sideris is the author of Most Likely to Die, poems in the voice of Keith Richards (Poets Wear Prada, 2014) and The Inclination to Make Waves (Big Wonderful, 2016). She lives in Kensington, Brooklyn. Her new chapbook, A House Not Made with Hands, inspired by Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, is forthcoming from Poets Wear Prada.

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Elizabeth Macklin
Shanghai Mahjongg or Something

The living face and voice and pulse only
at last hold humanity together.
—W. Whitman

Let’s play some Mahjongg,
let’s play some Shanghai Mahjongg.
Let’s play some online Shanghai Mahjongg
in our online-solitaire kaffeeklatsch,
where Action brings good fortune,
or can—even in Red Dragon–Hard,
one rung down from Ninja–Unbeatable.

But line ’em up. A prayer for the post-election,
says somebody posting a “Long Walk Home”
in the News Feed, as if to remark Who we are,
what we’ll do, and what we won’t.
And so we retreat—not into anything easy
but just into Red Dragon–Hard,
a craven occasion to try breathing.

As out in the real world they desperately try
to construe us. But we live in this one,
and wanted only to slow down.
A gross, 144, of pleasing tesserae: contemplation,
a way of seeing a chance—something
to do. Then doubling back to consider:
Any reason not to?

And: Action brings good fortune!
Or only a 68—stopped short—a joke
of the algorithm: so constantly so
it’s close to a consolation. Or a passable
42, when you sense how you might’ve learned
something, or witnessed at last—
possibly learned.

We cannot unhear what we have heard,
says the Governor early, adding:
Protect the ship. It was as if
we could solve the problem,
here in Red Dragon–Hard,
alongside the algorithm that calls itself I,
placed in a bomb like an unruly child.

There are no more moves. This game is over.
You can Start a new game from the top left menu.
Here’s something to do. Any reason not to?
All you have to do is know what to do
this time. Two Flowers, two Green Dragons,
and deal with the rest just a short while later.
Then it will have been done, just after that.

Elizabeth Macklin is the author of the poetry collections You’ve Just Been Told (Norton, 2000) and A Woman Kneeling in the Big City (Norton, 1992). She translated the Basque poet Kirmen Uribe’s Bitartean Heldu Eskutik (Meanwhile Take My Hand), published by Graywolf in 2007. Her work has appeared in The Nation, New England Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, The Threepenny Review, and The Yale Review, among others. Her awards include the Ingram Merrill poetry prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, and a PEN Translation Fund Grant from PEN American Center.

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Joy Ladin
Make America Great Again

Put on your best shoes—
mine have holes in them—
and let’s make our country great again.
I’m not talking about the election.
America has been waiting over two hundred years
to be better than its citizens,
to color outside our color lines,
to rise, once and for all
above our festering hatreds.

I’m not talking about the election.
It’s time to put our ears to the ground and listen
to America rehearsing its declaration of independence
from its thirst for dammed-up rivers, its loneliness for the frogs
that are harder and harder to hear
when spring comes again—America wishes
it could stop missing them—
from the wildness of its fires, from its adolescent passions
to screw whatever it can.

I’m not talking about the election. The election
was America feeling restless, hopeless, achingly bad
about the robots running its factories
and the opiates writing its prescriptions
for how to stop hurting when you know
you will never stop hurting again,
the election was America choosing
what it never wanted
and wanting what it never had,
its hands were busy rigging its systems
to broadcast its recurring nightmares
as widely as possible
in the hopes that those of us who truly love it
will wake it up at last.

It’s time for us, America’s mismatched halves,
to make friends in real life, off the internet,
it’s time for me to put on your shoes—
mine have holes in them—
and for us to walk, if not together,
at least in the same direction
and buy America a beer
and get teary about our childhoods
and heartbroken about our futures
until we are sure, one hundred percent,
that we will go in the morning to our different jobs
with the same throbbing in our heads.

It’s hard these days to tell truth from lies,
to remember the fertility of the plains
and the sunburnt hands that work them
while riding crowded subways,
to remember the towers of tiny apartments
filled with people, old and young,
worried about paying rent
while we are logging forests we hope to God
don’t have spotted owls in them.
But we all remember how to love,
and we long to be forgiven
no matter how hard
we find it to forgive,
we still watch shows whose heroes—
we still have heroes—respond to fear
with courage instead of hatred.

I sometimes remember, you do too,
to say “us” instead of “them,”
so there is no reason for either of us to fail to respond
to America’s personals ad,
running on every horizon:

Middle-aged country—
preferred pronouns “we” and “ours”—
seeks a few hundred million people
who love sunrise, sunset, shining seas
and all the land between them.
Must be willing to shoulder two hundred years of baggage.
Must love dogs, children, diverse eco-systems,
a living wage for an honest day’s work,
clothing the naked, lending a hand.
Must speak both country and city.
Don’t bother to reply
unless you are willing to listen.

Joy Ladin is the author of seven books of poetry, including Lambda Literary Award finalists Impersonation and Transmigration. Her memoir of gender transition, Through the Door of Life, was a 2012 National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her work has been recognized with a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, among other honors. She holds the Gottesman Chair in English at Yeshiva University. Her poems and essays are available at joyladin.com.

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Lonely Christopher
San Francisco

I used to think that I could draw
and drove a car across the eclipsed
face of the thespian deserts
in a star system so far away from home
that our burning manticores fled
from the harm of a thousand space rats
and worlds died and suns were born
in a way that destroyed human concepts
of time, in a way that recalled the portal
that I once sucked ooze through
when I was first learning how to travel
and fuck for my life.

Lonely Christopher, Brooklyn-based poet and filmmaker, is the author of several movies and the books The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse, Death & Disaster Series, and the novel THERE (forthcoming 2017).

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