Poetry Summer 2021 fiction all issues
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Cover
Diana Akhmetianova
Monique Jonath
Viscosity
& other poems
Alix Christofides Lowenthal
Before and After
& other poems
Rebbekah Vega-Romero
La Persona Que Quiero Ser
& other poems
Oak Morse
Incandescent Light That Peeks Through Secrets
& other poems
George Kramer
The Last Aspen Stand
& other poems
Elizabeth Sutterlin
Meditations on Mars
& other poems
Holly Marie Roland
Clearfelling
& other poems
Devon Bohm
A Bouquet of Cherry Blossoms
& other poems
Ana Reisens
In praise of an everyday object
& other poems
Maxi Wardcantori
The Understory
& other poems
William A. Greenfield
Sometimes
& other poems
Karen L Kilcup
The Sky Is Just About to Fall
& other poems
Pamela Wax
He dreams of birds
& other poems
Mary Jane Panke
Apophasis
& other poems
a mykl herdklotz
Mouettes et Mastodontes
& other poems
Claudia Maurino
Good Pilgrim
& other poems
Mary Pacifico Curtis
One Mystical Day
& other poems
Tess Cooper
Airport Poem
& other poems
Peter Kent
Congress of Ravens
& other poems
Kimberly Sailor
White Women Running
& other poems
Bill Cushing
Creating a Corpse
& other poems
Everett Roberts
Hagar
& other poems
Susan Marie Powers
Canada Geese
& other poems
Rebbekah Vega-Romero
Look at My Skin
Look at my skin
in the sun:
My limbs are stretched & strong & aching
in the good way
with each pounding step.
The shadow of a ripening green branch bobs on the wind
crossing dark stripes over
cinnamon dusted warm milk.
In the bright patches,
the light catches tiny hairs
and the freckles glow gold
like a map of my secrets.
Look at my skin
in the night:
Stiff & drenched in sweat,
awakened by the twisting in the deepest part of me.
The hand I place on my soft home
seems to glow in the dark,
marking me like the alien-freakshow-notright-geneticmutant
I was am will be can only be,
the ghost of his long dead abuela
come to visit shame on my brown father.
Look at my skin
in the mirror:
Under my eyes, so thin
almost blue.
My features are draped in a cloth
that was not cut for them,
and it is beginning to unravel at the seams.
Green Velvet
There is a trunk—
Well, it’s a plastic tub these days
—Pero let’s pretend it’s still the cedar trunk
my parents sold when they divorced:
A trunk in my mother’s bedroom closet,
filled with custom, handmade cupcake dresses,
every texture & pattern more exuberant than the last.
The hands that made them are long gone
the girls that filled them are all grown.
They look like miniature vintage gowns
for princesas mas pequenas
circa 1957
Pero they are really from the ’90s:
You see the woman that made them
crossed an ocean & survived Communism
Who were we to demand
she also update her taste?
Looking through this trunk of my birthdays
Y los cumpleaños de mi hermanita
it’s like holding her brave & steadfast heart in my hands,
el corazón de mi abuela,
my sweet & vulgar Bubba
(As a baby I couldn’t say abuela & it stuck)
The woman from whom I get:
Afro curls & curves—a shape that passed directly from her
to mi tia & then somehow blossomed on my hips at age twelve;
A seamstress’s hands—long & nimble fingers
that are already knotting up at the joints
though my knobs are from typing rather than stitching
and the thin skin over the knuckles is milky blue
where hers was the warmest nutmeg;
An immutable heart—the sort of loyalty
that can bear operatic wrongdoings
and still, improbably burn with laughing, luminous love.
My favorite piece is the one we made together
for my sister’s sixth birthday,
she took a drawing of mine & with her inimitable brujería
breathed into reality, stitch by patient stitch:
A dress.
I don’t remember most of my childhood
Pero yo me recuerdo la tienda
filled with fabrics & the smell,
old with dust & new with unmade stories,
and the way the green bolt of velvet felt
to mis manos like the grass under my feet in Prospect Park.
Velvet, green velvet:
I remember sitting at her feet
stitching pearls on the puffed sleeves
while she hummed melodies I can no longer trace.
Velvet, still soft in my arms:
I remember her measuring tape
against my shoulders & down my back
flicking feathers of light
where the dress would embrace me.
Velvet, heavy despite its cool silk underbelly:
I remember her hand,
grabbing my crotch to say
“Cuidate eso”
and then resting on my heart to add
“Cuidate eso.”
When I hold este terciopelo verde
I pretend I am holding her hand
and we’re halfway to a world where I remember her tongue
and she hears the songs I am singing with mine:
A world where she can still give me
inappropriate advice, for this unimaginable heartbreak
and I can show her how the fashions have changed
but velvet is always in style.
La Persona Que Quiero Ser*
I’ve been so many people
some days I wake up & I’m not quite sure who I am anymore.
I shuffle step by aching step from the bed
(god I sound as ancient as the redwoods
—more like a grandfather than a maiden by the day)
to the bathroom, to sit & piss away
the nightmares still clinging to mi culo,
to put off that moment when I stand to wash mis manos
and am confronted with mi cara:
Who is she?
Ruby Reb, where did you go?
Esa cara is one I don’t know
y sus ojos, yes, they are dark like mine
pero que vieja, tan triste, como una bruja!
Where is the sexy mamacita
whose nickname was puta?
What an oxymoron to call a child a whore!
Y por que? What was my crime?
My crime was being born
of a love so electric it was illegal
in several states until I was a teenager.
How can I mean to be any one person
when I am born by definition
a liminal being?
I do not & have never belonged:
Not to one person, not to one home,
Not to one race, not to one nation,
No, not even to one God.
I was born out of many & so I am many
like old Walt, if you put an electrode to my temple
and tried to trace the fault lines of my being, you would find
a contradiction in terms
si, se puede, go ahead & try it:
I am large, I contain multitudes
y la persona que quiero ser
es una mujer que no conozco.
Sometimes I wonder if I broke the mirror
and used the shards to peel away this pale white lie
I was born into,
Would I step through a portal?
Like Alice, would I find something more
on the other side of the fun house mirror of mi piel?
When I splash mi cara con un poquito de agua,
and place the plastic slivers of focus into mis ojos
I recognize la cara staring back at me:
The person I meant to be when I was twenty-three
(she always was a tardy little puta)
She frowns at my distress & blows me un besito.
I take it in mi boca to chew like gum
throughout the day:
The person I mean to be, siempre, so far away
from the person I have here & now
and the person who brought me here from there:
We all exist in the space between
and there is no breaking the glass without
drawing sangre
to mark the change:
La cicatriz is the place where once
a threshold wound bloomed.
*A play en español on Dolly Chugh’s The Person You Mean To Be, an evolutionary homage to Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”
The Light-Born Daughters*
The light-born daughters of black fathers
(who never knew their fathers
except to sit on their laps
when they visited once or twice)
go to the back of the closet to trace
the brilliant & vulgar sketches
their white mothers kept
even years after they both found other lovers.
The white-passing daughters of black fathers
born of the late, trophy-collecting marriages
(who watched their mothers’ eyes fill with tears
when they were asked about their fathers)
download the DNA-inspecting cell phone apps,
spit in a tube, send it out,
wait interminable weeks for permission
to learn the code of their missing fathers.
The well-spoken white-presenting daughters
of black immigrant fathers
(who long since changed their foreign names
and pressed their Afro-curls straight to match
the ivory & roses of their skin)
collect the lives of their fathers,
their radical, Black fathers
in stories told by aunties & ex-lovers
and ancient newspaper clippings & legal judgements.
The aging, white-assumed, childless daughters
(who spend the best years of their lives
hiding from & chasing their resentful dark-skinned fathers)
trade chess strategies & song lyrics with their lonely fathers
asking always for absolution from the great sin
of being born in the reverse of their image,
a reminder of how this country
might have kept their secrets sacred, if only
the DNA coin flipped the other way.
*(After Liesl Mueller’s The Late-Born Daughters)
The Unborn, el Sueño
Mija
Tu eres el sueño que me inspira
When I want to despair
You breathe for me
Mi corazón
Tu eres el sueño que me inspira
You infuse with light
The spaces between my ribs
Mi vida
Tu eres el sueño que me inspira
In my mind’s eye
You make my vision new
My child
You are the dream that inspires me
Cuando el camino es duro
Y mi corazón está solo
My love
You are the dream that inspires me
A volver al centro del escenario
Cuando sería más fácil sentarme al margen
My world
You are the dream that inspires me
A seguir luchando
A seguir escribiendo
A seguir respirando
Tu eres el nuevo sueño que vivo para ver
And I promise to keep moving on
Until we meet
Rebbekah Vega-Romero
is a triracial Latina bruja, who resides in her native NYC with her familiar, a black cat named Artie. A YoungArts award-winning writer, she graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor’s in English and Theatre. Rebbekah has performed at theatres across America from Boston (A Civil War Christmas/Huntington) to Seattle (Maria/West Side Story/5th Avenue). She is the producer, writer, and star of the forthcoming short film “The Question.” Rebbekah hopes her work will inspire other mixed-race girls to realize that “there’s a place for us.” Visit her virtually at www.RebbekahVegaRomero.com or @RebbekahVR.