Motif

Category: Poetry

  • A Conversation Through Poetry: Lebanese American poet writes of family, and culture, and of hope

    A Conversation Through Poetry: Lebanese American poet writes of family, and culture, and of hope

    Poet and illustrator Jess Rizkallah of Boston begins her poem, “in another dimension i am a good daughter” with:

    i wake up early / i sweep the floor / i put coffee on the nar

    my arabic is serpentine / through dirt / ready to strike / yet i slice

    apples in silence / as the men speak

    of revolution / i offer fruit / on the tip of a knife / i pull from my skirt

    when no one is looking.

    Arabic was Rizkallah’s first language, and the poet says it has shaped how she views the world. She was born in Massachusetts after her parents fled Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s. She learned Arabic from them, and English in school. Family and culture have always been a big part of her life, and a source from which she draws strength and inspiration. “It’s the reason why I write,” she says simply. Her first full-length collection, the magic my body becomes, won the 2017 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. Awarded by Radius of Arab American Writers and University of Arkansas Press, the prize is named after Adnan, a Lebanese American author and artist.

    “I read her work after I won the prize, and I immediately felt a kinship with her. She opened doors in my brain,” Rizkallah recalls. “And I wondered: How did I not know of her before this?” Adnan, who died in 2021 in Paris, also wrote essays and worked across such disciplines as painting, film, sculpture and tapestries. She was explicit in her political views and existential views, Rizkallah says, adding, “Her work is cosmic almost, but grounded.”

    when i am named beautiful i don’t ugly my shape / out of spite /

    “I write a lot of poems that are sort of about my own womanhood,” Rizkallah says, “I look at the expectations and pressures that I and a lot of women have faced.”

    i sing songs about what i want /

    only when i’m alone / i say ouch

    as soon as the sting swells / and

    don’t save the venom in my cheek

    for later / i accept the limitations of my body / but still refuse

    Rizkallah is comfortable in herself, and always learning. Being in a community with queer people has helped her in many ways, she says. “As time has gone on, the speaker of my poems is exploring a more expansive path. My poems engage more with this expanse.”

    help / to suffer in silence is saintly / so i won’t have to admit i’d never offer my eyes to god.

    Rizkallah says her poetry can be read as a conversation between nature and the world, and she frequently wonders how we can integrate that into working amongst and against hardships. “There are different resistances we have to adopt against legislation in this country and others, and against the genocide in Palestine. It is so easy to become hopeless in such a world,” she says. When she looks for where hope can be found, she finds that, “The answer is in each other, and in the world around us, through an integration of our spiritual selves into our political selves.”

    when someone says with admiration

    it’s as if you are a sister among brothers / i don’t

    scoff / in this dimension i am still better than / all the sons /

    you could have had

    “I’m always wondering about the connections between the body and self and nature, and what that means in a world in the midst of climate catastrophe,” Rizkallah says. In her work, she explores the possibilities of connection, making a better country, and a better world through love. She describes herself as an artist who writes, and sometimes recites. Poetry began as an oral tradition after all, she points out. “You’re using your body to bring your poetry into the world, through your expressions, not just pen to paper,” she says. Rizkallah remembers the first few times she got up in front of an audience to read her poetry. “It was scary, but awesome,” she says.

    “Doing the spoken word made me braver,” she adds. “I’m thankful to the New England poetry community and to its spoken word community.” At her readings, she gets the feeling that there are two clowns inside of her. One is a sad clown, and the other is a regular clown, she says. That inspired her to publish, and sell online, a zine of poems and artwork titled anyway, in which those two clowns are raging inside her.

    Among her works, she cites california in the summer and my hair is growing long as an example of what her poetry is about. It shows her core beliefs, with humor as a big part of her work, she explains. “It’s a poem that I return to a lot.” And what’s next? “Working on finding a home for my second book,” she says. •

    Rizkallah’s work can be viewed on Instagram @jessriz.art

  • 2 Poems: Tanya Young

    2 Poems: Tanya Young

    Writing Prompt in Which a Bird Looks Down at What I Call My Autobiography

    For Lucile Clifton

    Hey girl! Why is everything all covered in tarps?

    I see the shapes of a table 

    filled to the corners pressed 

    against all that canvas. Cornucopias

    hidden flavors and sound

    acid and salt all tucked and stuffed and stuck.

    I see you coming over some distant hill 

    You’re walking toward this space with your white

    paint and covers. Why can’t I 

    make out your face. Are you crying? Kid 

    are you grown? Woman are you bringing 

    anyone else with you? I need to know so show me. 

    I’m looking down and seeing the physique

    of sprawling rows lined up lilies and silver 

    mangoes and hand plates. 

    There are pearls in strands dangling out

    reaching from under their bedcovers.

    Bowls heaping with memory-sounds and sour.

    Cups and cups wanting to spill over. Pour a glass of light

    and swallow this rooms long shadow. 

    Hey! I see you coming over the hill and I’m waiting.

    Why is everything covered? I want answers. 

    Eat something and drink water and open the door

    And open a window and dust off your table and talk 

    to yourself out loud. Please describe what you see

    in vivid detail.  I want to hear it.

    I can’t stay up here watching forever. 

    Meal Offering

    I saw my mother’s ashes eaten 

    by her sister we spread

    them on a river in summer’s heat

    she let them go by bare-fingered 

    pinch and fling they drifted lazily 

    below a haze of mosquitos like oil 

    in a full sink sliding away in halos 

    she never wiped her hands 

    to purity later she ate 

    a white and gray like crushed clay

    or something meant to start 

    the soothing, chalk stalling.

    She ate without spoon, 

    or fork, or napkin

    just opaque tips 

    white and gray

    moving to 

    lips then 

    tongue then 

    throat she did 

    this until her 

    plate was clean. 

    I’ve never seen 

    a mouth consume

    in such

    a hurry.

    Tanya L. Young is a BIPOC writer, visual artist, and PhD student at University of Rhode Island. Her work is featured in publications such as Salt Hill Journal, The Amistad, New York Quarterly, and others. She is a VONA alum. Currently, she is a staff reader for TriQuarterly. She has also read for publications such as Frontier Poetry and Tupelo Press. Find her work at tanyasroom.com

  • Growth

    Growth

    The seas are wicked now like the thoughts in a crazy man’s mind.

    Soon the baby will sleep again so soft and innocent.

    In time the little one will grow, and learn to be furious at the ways of the world.

    But with maturity life will calm again.

    The child is simple and very impressionable.

    To man very hard to control, to nature very easy.

  • Local Art

    Local Art

    Somewhere in Providence there is a painting. I want it.

    *

    In this coffeeshop there are sculptures, which are flat and look like paintings but are not. Today I visited an art gallery, which is located in a building where I hope to live but many people want to live, so I can’t.

    *

    A baby wears a sweatshirt with a wealthy city’s name. The baby stares at another baby, who wears nothing. A man talks about oral sex in a foreign country. Two women fall in love.

    *

    Yesterday a woman said she did not like the pork I served. The meat was tough. In three months, I will no longer enjoy mother’s insurance. Last night, I argued with manager – once friend – about how to mix drinks for those who can afford them. He pulled an order from my hand, and I thought about a movie I watched once, about killer whales, harmed in tiny pools.

    *

    I want to create meaning. But I can’t. So I want.

    *

    Once, manager sent me a copy of poems he wrote, once. They were short and mourned his life’s romance. * Last week, I thought about falling in love. ‘Again,’ I thought, then regretted it. Love is difficult, I understand, but cannot confirm. I never knew it ‘again.’

    *

    I love the proletariat.

    *

    One woman leaves another. When they kissed, I watched, pretending to search for an outlet. ‘Stop looking,’ I thought, then, ‘Stop looking for an outlet.’

    *

    Last night I masturbated with face cream, from the national pharmacy. It was difficult – too smooth, and there wasn’t, I realized – too late, with regret, thinking of the man who fucked me last August – good friction.

    *

    Without meaning: death.

    *

    Local magazine. An advertisement. The next holiday: ‘Couples only’

  • The Un-Making of Wombs & Worlds: Understanding the guilt and grief behind the “monstrous” survivals of Black and Indigenous women as a means of enacting their agency against coloniality’s capture

    The Un-Making of Wombs & Worlds: Understanding the guilt and grief behind the “monstrous” survivals of Black and Indigenous women as a means of enacting their agency against coloniality’s capture

    Photo from Here Ends the World We’ve Known by Anne-Sophie Nanki.

    THE ABYSSAL WOMB, THE FETID WORLD OF COLONIALITY’S CAPTURE

    As the heavy sloshing of horses’ hooves grows ever closer, and the wailing of her child grows ever louder, she, an indigenous Kalinago woman fleeing through a mangrove swamp from her white husband’s plantation, makes a choice. Gently, slowly, she submerges the newborn’s head into the silty water. The crying stops, the hooves grow distant, and in that moment of stillness her liberation is secured.

    This scene is the climax of Afro-Caribbean director/filmmaker Anne-Sophie Nanki’s short film Here Ends the World We’ve Known, where a heavily pregnant Kalinago woman partners with an African man who has also sought freedom from White settler’s plantations on the Island of Guadeloupe. Set in the 1600s, the film is a historical fiction that directs the viewer’s gaze onto the omitted possibilities of history, and the ugly choices that were surely made by those attempting to survive the collapse of all that they knew.

    When I watched this fictive, desperate infanticide, all the air left my own lungs.

    Still, what was perhaps most jarring about my encounter with this film, was witnessing the other audience members’ responses to it in the QA session with the director that followed its screening. People cooed about the choice of actors and the technical expertise behind the film’s masterful appearance. Yet, none of them dared to ask about the choice to kill the child, or the mother’s own treachery along the way as she contemplated returning to the world of the white settlers. There was something about her actions that seemed too wicked to them, too unforgivable, too ugly to be questioned aloud. They did not wonder about how her profound grief and guilt shaped her path of defiance. What the woman did was monstrous, and what good was it to ruin a discussion of the film by talking about something we had all seen and all “knew” to be too horrible to discuss.

    This film, and the avoidant reaction to it from a largely white, educated audience, spoke to me about the unbearability and the unknowability of Black and Indigenous women’s struggles to survive in the colonized world, to those occupying privileged positions. That there is a willful ignorance that refuses to take seriously the “ugly” and difficult choices that Indigenous and Black women facing extreme violence in the Americas feel they must make. Many paper over the choices made by their “monstrous” agency because the actions of Black and Indigenous women to defy the deaths presented to them is too dissonant with the picture many want to paint of stoic, resolute women who graciously endure torment.

    Born out of the “womb abyss”(1), into a state of non-being in the western colonized world, Black women are rendered non-human. I extend the birth of Indigenous women to this abyssal womb, the womb of “western theory”(2), as Joy James would classify it. The abyssal womb is where colonialism and coloniality’s “death ethic”(3), to extract resource and exterminate the “uncivilized,” is germinated into. In this abyssal womb, this fetid womb, Black and Indigenous women are relegated to the status of objects of labor. In such status, Black and Indigenous women are unable to be conceived of, known as, feeling people capable of enacting their own will. And yet, it is precisely because of how Indigenous and Black women go about enacting their will that they become “monsters’” in the eyes of the abyssal womb. In feeling viscerally their subjugation and taking up means of getting free that those privileged in the abyssal womb dare not watch, Black and Indigenous women locate in their affectivity a “monstrous” agency that threatens to un-make the abyssal womb that keeps them captive.

    This piece seeks to understand the “monsterdom” of Black and Indigenous women as a politic of refusal, reinvention, and profound love. This is a politic born out of the visceral grief and guilt that moves Indigenous and Black women to rebel against the abyssal womb that attempts to dissolve them, and manifests in actions that while may indeed be ugly, sow the seeds for liberation.

    THE BIRTH OF THE END, THE UN-MAKING OF WOMBS IN THE LAND OF DEMONIC DREAMINGS

    You were all so shocked by our wailing
    You forgot that this was never permanent

                   “Did they forget or were they too afraid to see?” We had seen into a future too grotesque for you to fathom

    It was one where the world knew our Names
                  Outside of Black Outside of Indigenous
                  Outside of “the wombed things”


                        “The outside is never without the inside, the inside entropies to the outside”

    Do not run,
                  Our screams have reached the End of this world
    and peeled back all its corners
             There is nowhere to hide


                                  “To think, you were all the mask, you were all the abjection you claimed us to be”

              Here is the real magic, the one where We survived and carried with us the apocalypse

    Grief and guilt are both affects that underpin Indigenous and Black women’s lives in a manner that drives them to action. Black and Indigenous women’s actions from grief and guilt are meant to refashion the world in a manner that they perceive as alleviating harm.

    The use of “perceived,” is to soften the consequences of condoning every Black and Indigenous woman’s actions that comes from guilt and grief. Resisting the abyssal womb is perilous, it involves ugly acts that may “free” a soul but destroy a body. And Indigenous and Black women’s practices of infanticide, to ease the guilt of bringing children into a world of genocidal colonialism and enslavement, brings light to monstrosity that holds considerably less levity than what has been previously discussed.

    Lamonte Aidoo in his article “Genealogies of Horror: three stories of slave women, motherhood, and murder in the Americas” deliberately highlights that many of the choices Black women made to change the circumstances of the world surrounding them involved them acting in ways those in the abyssal womb may deem monstrous. Aidoo does not chastise the mothers’ actions, but instead acknowledges how the precarity of the abyssal womb brings about the need for grave measures of resistance.

    We witness across Aidoo’s article how Black women’s affectivity, grief, and guilt in bringing life into the abyss, brings her into action, albeit one that may raise accusations of true monster status. But in killing their children, they have brought into the world a new kind of possibility, one where those of her womb are protected from being rendered Black and forced into the tortured class in the first place. In the monstrous act of killing one’s own children to give rise to “flourishing,” we find the richest soil to plant the potential of the demonic model Jamaican Philosopher Sylvia Wynter envisioned. The need that grief and guilt bring to Black and Indigenous mothers, to end life to bring about a better one, is surely unintelligible to the abyssal womb’s way of knowing.

    We witness across Aidoo’s article how Black women’s affectivity, grief, and guilt in bringing life into the abyss, brings her into action, albeit one that may raise accusations of true monster status. But in killing their children, they have brought into the world a new kind of possibility, one where those of her womb are protected from being rendered Black and forced into the tortured class in the first place. In the monstrous act of killing one’s own children to give rise to “flourishing,” we find the richest soil to plant the potential of the demonic model Jamaican Philosopher Sylvia Wynter envisioned. The need that grief and guilt bring to Black and Indigenous mothers, to end life to bring about a better one, is surely unintelligible to the abyssal womb’s way of knowing.

    We witness across Aidoo’s article how Black women’s affectivity, grief, and guilt in bringing life into the abyss, brings her into action, albeit one that may raise accusations of true monster status. But in killing their children, they have brought into the world a new kind of possibility, one where those of her womb are protected from being rendered Black and forced into the tortured class in the first place. In the monstrous act of killing one’s own children to give rise to “flourishing,” we find the richest soil to plant the potential of the demonic model Jamaican Philosopher Sylvia Wynter envisioned. The need that grief and guilt bring to Black and Indigenous mothers, to end life to bring about a better one, is surely unintelligible to the abyssal womb’s way of knowing.

    The Un-made womb abyss blooms. It allows for the fully realized Becoming of Black and Indigenous women, as non-captives, who may begin to imagine a world where grief and guilt can finally take the back seat as the institutionalization of Indigenous and Black death and dying fades.

    These writings are pieces from Roebke’s full piece, along with endnotes, which can be found here: Motifri.com/unmakingwombs.

  • Black Luv: Poetry

    Black Luv: Poetry

    I dig you!

    Like the impassioned hands of a gard’ner

    surrendering to the earth.

    I fuxs with you!

    Like, the sugary, spicy blend of nutmeg and brown sugar in sweet potato pie

    Like, the buttery noodles wrapped in a soulful

    hug of perfectly blended cheeses

    The first dishes to disappear at a Black family cookout.

    We real cool!

    Like the richly decadent flavor of the dark

    chocolate ice cream

    hugging the edge of your butterscotch-stained

    plump lips.

    Trust me baby.

    Like how the agile circus performer

    whose every movement embodies poetry,

    trusts their trapeze to bring them safely to

    the waiting arms of their partner.

    Wholeheartedly & without fear

    I luv you.

    With every fiber in my earth-colored body.

    With every deep breath,

    every exhale,

    & every sigh.

    Don’t hurt nobody!

    With your intellect,

    so sharp you could cut down a room,

    with one word.

    With your beauty so fierce that you could

    turn the most fearsome lion tamed.

    With your strength,

    sometimes loud and sometimes quiet.

    Never aggressive but consistently strong.

    Go on, wit’cho bad self!

    Don’t let those who seek to destroy you

    steal your light.

    Let your essence shine through

    your cocoa butter skin,

    Blinding those who wish to diminish

    & claim you as inhuman.

    You go, girl!

    Ambitious girl!

    Beautiful girl!

    Strong girl!

    Black girl! •

  • Slamming Their Names Into History: Talking poetry & legacy with AS220’s Naffisatou Koulibaly

    Slamming Their Names Into History: Talking poetry & legacy with AS220’s Naffisatou Koulibaly

    Amidst numerous up-and-coming open mics in Rhode Island, the Providence Poetry Slam (ProvSlam) remains one of the largest and longest-running slams in US history. Co-founded in 1992 by nationally renowned author and slam poet Patricia Smith, ProvSlam is an undeniable example of how Blackness is an integral part of Providence’s lavish history. Over recent years, the staff at ProvSlam have been recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic while also recovering the cultural saga embodied in their work. I recently spoke with one of ProvSlam’s current Co-Directors and Youth Chair, Naffisatou Koulibaly, to uncover the reality of what goes into supporting an oral storytelling community of this magnitude, success, and longevity.

    A Poetic Partnership – ProvSlam & AS220 Naffi’s experience at ProvSlam highlights how they have harmoniously come together with local organization AS220 to protect and cultivate the art of spoken word. The Providence Poetry Slam is currently hosted at AS220’s Empire Street Complex, a bar and live performance space designed for local artistry and youth programming.

    Naffisatou started as a youth member of AS220’s after-school program, where she was first introduced to slam poetry and other forms of artistic expression. Her first performance was at fifteen years old, when cherished mentor Vatic Kuumba secretly wrote her name on ProvSlam’s open mic sign-up. Naffi went on to join the ProvSlam Youth Team and traveled with them to Houston, where they competed in the Brave New Voices international poetry festival. She remained involved with AS220 and Prov Slam throughout the rest of her teens and eventually stepped into a leadership role following the pandemic in 2021. Since then, Naffisatou has made great strides in reinstating the AS220 + ProvSlam’s youth program and generating sustainable resources to support its growth.

    Most recently, she earned a grant from Rhode Island’s Department of Art, Culture, and Tourism (ACT) to continue hosting workshops for local youth, primarily adolescents navigating the state’s foster care and criminal justice systems. These funds not only sponsor programs, but they create opportunities for creativity, connectivity, and healing. Naffi describes their work as deeply profound and appreciates the impact that ProvSlam and AS220 have had on her development as both a young person and a writer.

    The Vision for ProvSlam — Looking for Legacy

    The board at ProvSlam is exploring solutions to a common question amongst Black and brown communities in today’s world – how does one build legacy? As previous generations of artists and activists journey on to broader horizons, how do we sustain and expand upon the projects, knowledge, and genres that they’ve brought to fruition?

    This question becomes all the more suspenseful when we consider the additional dimension of how social media can be both a medium and an illusion for documenting legacy. How do we know that our work won’t vanish into the boundless void of the internet? How do we know when we’ve made a tangible, lasting impact in this digital age? Is spoken word an experience of distinctly that moment in which it happens, or does it have a prolonged life in cyberspace?

    I humbly argue that legacy does not lie in the past or the future, nor does it reside on our timelines. Legacy is a thread collectively woven through time. It is lodged in our day-to-day choices to demonstrate consistency, love, and community for one another, especially for those seeking these basic tenets of human existence. This is what sticks in our memories, and this is what we pass on. Accepting this narrative, ProvSlam continues to be an enduring example of what it means to cultivate legacy right before our very eyes.

    Notable Leaders in Prov Slam’s Lineage

    Chrysanthemum, she/her (Current Co-Director)

    As a co-director and programming chair at ProvSlam, Chrysanthemum is a pillar of the slam community in Providence. She is a wildly successful poet and live performer herself who was recently the first to earn the title of youth poet-in-residence for LGBTQ Writers in Schools.. You can see her perform live every other Thursday at AS220 as she hosts ProvSlam.

    Vatic Tayari Astahili Kuumba, he/him (Performer & Youth Mentor)

    Arriving in RI nearly a decade ago, Vatic has since dedicated himself to the flourishing youth arts and theater scene in Providence. He has mentored dozens of ProvSlam poets through AS220’s youth programs, and continues to lead civil activist movements throughout the region. Kuumba’s art and performances are ingeniously designed to provoke uncomfortable emotions that force people to face the world for what it is. His message sticks in the hearts and minds of the youth and now adult performers he has mentored over the years.

    Charlotte Abotsi, she/her (Former co-director)

    Defining what it means to be a successful administrator of the arts, Charlotte Abotsi has competed in several international poetry festivals and has received numerous fellowships for her work. After co-directing ProvSlam, she now serves as an engagement coordinator for the City of Providence Department of Art, Culture, Tourism, and is on the Board of Trustees for the Providence Public Library, demonstrating how we can be both participants and facilitators of local art.

    Devin Samuels, he/him (Former Co-Director)

    With a stake in dozens of the arts-centered nonprofit organizations across New England and the Midwest, Devin is a force beyond words. His work includes orchestrating DESIGNxRI, cultivating several youth poetry workshops and festivals across Detroit, and co-directing the Providence Poetry Slam. He now leads the New World Social Innovation Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School. His work reminds educators that empathy is the most powerful tool that youth can develop through mentorship and creativity.

    Muggs Fogarty, they/them (Former Co-Director)

    A multidimensional writer, performer, and vocalist, Muggs is a foundational member of the ProvSlam family. They are an eight-time representative of PVD at the national poetry slam and have coached youth and collegiate poetry groups at UCONN, Brown, and RISD. Their current endeavours include their solo loop pedal poetry project, which was nominated for Motif’s “Best Noise Act” of 2021, as well as their bodyworks services offered through Leverage in Providence. Their poem “October Diptych” was featured in Motif’s 2024 October issue: motifri.com/ october-diptych-poetry.

    Franny Choi, she/they (Former Co-Director)

    Franny spent the early years of their blossoming poetry career co-directing the Providence Poetry Slam after graduating from Brown. She has gone on to become a national award-winning poet and author. Now a seasoned performer and Poet Laureate of Northampton, MA, their current work explores themes of human existence amidst political and internal turmoil.

    Naffisatou Koulibaly, she/her (Current Co-Director)

    Last, but far from least, with about a decade of performing, volunteering, and mentoring under her belt, Naffisatou is a mighty champion of ProvSlam’s enduring commitment to enhancing its community through creativity. You can see her perform at local slams and open mics across the state, or you can support any of the AS220 youth showcases and programs that she facilitates. We appreciate her time and honesty in providing this interview.

    See for Yourself – ProvSlam 2024-2025 Season

    To witness history as spoken through the lips of local literary talent, you can catch ProvSlam’s open mic every other Thursday evening at 115 Empire Street. They are roughly halfway through their 20242025 slam season with the next qualifying slam on February 20th. The final Grand Slam is set for April 17th and will determine the 2025 Providence Slam Team, which will then travel to compete with other teams around the country. •

    To support their poets and youth programs, visit ProvSlam.org or follow @ProvSlam on Instagram.

  • Synesthesia/ My Bite: Poems

    Synesthesia/ My Bite: Poems

    Synesthesia

    First date/ Boy tells girl she is strawberries and mint and/ Sometimes
    music tastes bad/ His brother doesn’t know he is oranges/ The date
    continues point and tell/ What does the bartender taste like?/ The
    couch?/ Elvis?/ Madonna?/ She only doubts when he says Cher is
    cotton candy/ And purple is bubble gum/ She asks if citrus runs in the
    family/ If black bras are licorice/ If bananas taste too yellow/ Which
    Parts of her are strawberry and which mint/ Is every photo scented/
    Every party a tasting menu/ She wants inside his mouth/ To know the
    flavor of her bedroom/ Her favorite armchair/ The building cat/ Eyes
    licking the time off clocks/ Toothbrush reeking/ Oranges

    My Bite

    It’s true I’m not known for my bark.
    In third grade, Matthew Adams punched me
    and I bawled from shock


    not pain.
    My brother asked
    Why didn’t you hit back?


    So at fifteen when Travis Craven
    called me a bitch
    I gave him rabies.


    My teeth are sharp
    hackles high, my tail has never fit
    between my legs.


    When Matthew’s fatty fist
    connected with my face
    I proved Newton’s Third Law:


    for every action
    there is an equal and opposite re-
    action. I stood up


    brushed myself off
    for the second blow.
    It never came.


    Matthew still attends anger manage-
    ment, his apology letter
    framed with a daisy above my toilet.


    If I lift my nose high enough,
    I can see where his hand was shaking
    in the sign-off. •

    Olivia Thomakos is a teacher and writer from Ohio. She is a current PhD student at URI studying English literature and creative writing. She is author of Love & Other Cancers from Stewed Rhubarb Press. Her poem ‘What You Wish For’ won the 2022 Grierson Verse Prize. Her work can be found in Berfrois and Gutter Magazine among others. You can find her at oliviathomakos.com.

  • Work Crush: Poetry

    Work Crush: Poetry

    “I saw a dead body today.”

    You’re trying to fit two fingers into the plastic mouth of a bottle.

    At the bottom, crusted with orange sugar, the last of the Vitamin-C gummy chews. You need those two gummies like Catholics need forgiveness. It’s dark all the time and work lets out later and later now that fall’s turned to winter.

    The interjection comes from a newly arrived Étienne, all wrapped up like some proud Queen in his vintage Burberry.

    “A guy. Froze to death. I need to smoke. Don’t tell.”

    Gone as soon as he arrived, leather bag dropped carelessly into his office chair – some coffee-stained Herman Miller throne. Étienne sits across from you. He’s separated in flesh by a plexiglass partition – this partition full of sticky notes on both sides. “Kevlar.” “3pm.” “Change News Channel.” Impenetrable mythic communication, lost of any meaning, the second whatever task it previously referred to completes itself. Today is gift-bearing day. Your coffee is flavored with maple syrup instead of the customary Splenda. You don’t know why you did this. You don’t really know why you do anything anymore – desire is more a dull, untraceable hum than some revelatory angel’s choir.

    This is the last Thursday of the month. This is gift-bearing day. You and Étienne will stay three hours past the usual workday to take inventory of the various textbooks infecting your shipping warehouse. Halfway through the appraisal you’ll glance to him as though by accident and say something along the lines of, “I gotta get a soda; what do you want?” He’ll want what he always wants, which is a Dr. Pepper. “For the caffeine,” he’ll say, if you’re lucky and it’s one of those nights you two throw a few stones of conversation back and forth.

    Étienne is not your type. He’s coifed and aloof and too mighty because of those things. Usually, you’d think such a marriage of juxtaposed powers (yourself being ultimately feeble and pathetic) would be impossible – and that the attempt at combination would only highlight your own impotence. But all the time now it’s Work. It’s Textbooks. Who else do you see? Oh, sure, romantic thought might be applied every once and a great while to a stranger on the bus or to the supermarket clerk ringing up your Almond Breeze, but these are wasted wantings. They possess in their DNA the impossibility of completion. At least with Étienne, who is straight and slightly phobic, there is the structural (if not emotional) possibility of conclusion.

    You stare through the plexiglass at his leather bag – purposefully chosen and constructed as the rest of him. There’s a fridge in your garage that used to belong to your parents. In this fridge, shelf-to-shelf, you stock Dr. Peppers. Strawberry. Zero Sugar. Vanilla. Diet. At night, after you’ve come home from work (11pm, Midnight, 1am) you stop by the fridge, open its grinning mouth, and take a Dr. Pepper out. Your lips will pucker and you’ll say, “For you, man.” Offer the Dr. Pepper for an invisible figure to take. This is how you’ve become proficient at gift giving. A Corporate Wise Man.

    Étienne does not return from his smoke. His bag stays, lifelessly, on the chair. You arrange a shipment to Canada. You offer a discount code to a Vendor whose shipment arrived late. (Fault of Terrence, above you.) 5pm arrives. Étienne remains remarkable only in his absence. Outside the window it begins to snow – fat fistfuls of flakes touching down and draping the world, cleaning it. You can’t see this; the fluorescence of the office light makes the outside seem one black, swallowing void. 5:15pm. Wordlessly, you rise, button your puffer coat, and travel down to the Warehouse. Étienne’s bag, still heavy in its chair. 6:30 arrives. You’re halfway through the way, slow-going alone. You glance around. Nobody. Concrete and cold. Piles and piles of identical textbooks surround you. You might think it eerie if you had the ability to squeeze feeling from the scene, but you can only really think of the Gift.

    You take the elevator to the third floor, the floor with the vending machines, approach the buzzing altar of Pop. You need to buy the Dr. Pepper. This is known. It is not a question to you. You wonder why the ritual needs its continued repetition without the possibility of ending. Is it to practice? Or has the giving always actually been some twisted exercise in your own autonomy. You wonder, fleetingly, if the Dr. Pepper is not so much about needing something from the impenetrable Étienne, but the ability to contain (however briefly) power over him. The ability to be his desire, full of caramel color and phosphoric acid.

    You reach in your pocket for two crisp dollar bills.

    You forgot your wallet downstairs.

    The blank face of the Soda Machine stares at you.

    It keeps snowing outside.

    And suddenly you’re up to your elbow in cold metal and the machine is whirring and trembling around your arm – gasping, groaning. You’re feeling chilled, wet soda cans. Ginger Ale. Diet Coke. Orange Lime Twist. Elbow deep in the guts of an Azkoyen Group specialty. You wrap your fingers around a Dr. Pepper (you can see it through the glass) and pull. The machine tips.

    They find you the next day, half-dead and pink with embarrassment, murmuring something about a wedding feast. •

  • Generational Trauma: Poetry

    Generational Trauma: Poetry

    We are proud to be Indigenous to this land, As the desert is a desert with its sand.

    We are not from India, you named us wrong, Indigenous to this area, we’re Narragansett strong.

    We walk with you day by day unnoticed, because of the stereotypical looks, of what you learn in your books.

    We may say hello and goodbye, But we also give thanks to nature and the sky.

    You walk on our ancestors blood and bones, As you build your elaborate buildings and family homes.

    Would you build a home on your mother, father, sister or brother? Then please don’t build one on another.

    Many Treaties have and are being ignored, With the premise of the States own accord.

    We are not merciless Indian savages as your declaration declares, but a union of traditions, culture of people who care.

    This generational trauma makes some feel they’re not Indian enough, to fit the definition of all your Indian stuff.

    It’s important for you to learn the truth, speak and engage, to cure this never-ending, unforgettable rage.

    A desecration of a people once feared, a healing of people revered. •

    Hayley Harris is a Narragansett citizen with a deep passion for writing poetry and short stories, inspired by the powerful words of my grandmother and mother. Their love for written expression nurtured their creativity and encouraged them to explore my own voice. They work as the store coordinator at the Tomaquag Museum, where they promote Indigenous empowerment by selling art from tribal citizens that celebrates our culture.

    Photo of Hayley Harris- Tomaquag Museum.