You fitted so snugly
through the window I opened wide for you.
Then you shut it with a bang giving me your back.
The shards, too small, took forever to gather.
I put them in that wooden bowl you made.
Then I bought shatter-proof glass,
lined it with black blinds that do not open,
so that I will never be tempted
to open the window again.
Makhosazana Xaba is the author of These Hands and Tongues of Their Mothers.
CARLIE HOFFMAN
I know it’s October because I wear / shoes without socks. The air is good / to me & I sweat less through my shirts. / Entire days of trees on campus, of stray geese / crowding the grass near the traffic / circle like groupies, as if / the honking cars were a rock band.
HANNAH JANSEN
At the laundromat the whir of machines, / whorled & busy, the pleasure & difficulty / of stillness Waiting, sockless, I aspire to be / the cross-legged woman reading a magazine, / settled into her corner of time I like her gray braid, / the way her skin sings.
MARÍA NEGRONI
No—posthumous—inquiry will manage—never—to see what I wrote. What I lost each time—to / discover what a home is: stiff body inside the openness it has created. No one will know how / much I insisted, how much I demanded—and with no defenses.
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