Podcasts & Audio

Land Not Theirs

October 29, 2018 Essays, Issue 16, Issue 16 Essays, Podcasts & Audio

We are driving through downtown Columbus, away from the Greyhound station. I spent fifteen hours on a bus traveling from New York City to visit for Christmas, a holiday, my mother reminds me, that is not even about Jesus anymore. This is a thought she has reiterated over the years, yet it never prevented her from partaking in the holiday during my lifetime. The absence of a decorative tree and gifts reflected a lack of money, not a rejection of the commodification of religion.

Offstage, Christ

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By KRISTINA FAUST
Winner of the 2018 DISQUIET Prize for Poetry

At the meal with the earnest centurion and the woman full of pain, he wanted to say the lamb was delicious. It surprised him to love it as much as he did the blinking gaze of the newly sighted, but to say so didn’t suit the narrative that was running through his fingers like water.

The bed they’d given him for the lonely night was more than adequate for a man. Besides, he was now nearly sentimental about the roughness of linen and the funk of straw.

We Used To Call it Puerto Rico Rain

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By WILLIE PERDOMO

The rain had just finished saying, This block is mine.

The kind of rain where you could sleep through two breakthroughs and still have enough left to belly sing in the ambrosial hour.

Blood pellets in the dusk & dashes of hail were perfect for finding new stashes; that is to say, visitations were never announced.

A broken umbrella handle posed a question by the day care center.

Buscando un árbol que me de sombra

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By SAMUEL MIRANDA

In conversation with A Hill in the South Bronx, by Perla de Leon

Estoy buscando un árbol que me de sombra
Porque el que tengo me lo van a cortar
Coro de bomba

This building stands,
the last tree to be cut down
in a garden of brick and steel
made desert of rubble and dust.

Bounty

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By RICARDO ALBERTO MALDONADO

21 de septiembre de 2017: “pero estamos vivos”

One: home
Two: home dos tres dos tres two: Mother.

One lápiz. One pen. One ocean between us. Six: Home.

Handwork

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By TINA CANE

Lucid dreaming is not a job but a steady occupation

I do not have a big dream they are only little dreams

and right now I cannot think of one

My father read the paper while my mother scrubbed the floor

I pay a woman $100 a week to help me keep my house clean

Ode to the First Boy Who Made Me Feel It

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By DOROTHY CHAN

Oh, how I crave Bloody Marys at night, tomato and vodka,
kick of Tabasco, spices make everything in life a hell
of a lot better, or at least a hell of a lot more interesting,
and I think that’s what we’re aiming for, and maybe what
I really want is tomato soup, like Andy Warhol used to request

Red Light Roses

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By JILL MCDONOUGH

Josey picks me up at work in a car we bought
together, car she dug out of frozen slush for hours.
She picks me up and gives me roses. Valentine’s Day.

Breaking Night

October 16, 2018 Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By WILLIE PERDOMO

In that year of a shot to the head where were you the first time you broke night?

When you break night, you learn that one puff, under the right circumstance, can give you the right perspective.

You learn to pick up stories that fall & slip on the right side of knowing.

January’s Child

April 30, 2018 Issue 15, Issue 15 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By RANDOLPH THOMAS

When winter set in, they came
to see us with their baby,
a beautiful child about a year old
who was learning to walk
and stepped proudly
across our living room,
waved her fists and hands
and shook her straw colored hair.