April is National Poetry Month, so SPACE is revisiting the 2021 Poetry Hotline project by making the recorded poems available for all to listen to. The hotline was a screen-less remote experience in the middle of the pandemic, available to anyone with a cell phone or landline. It offered listeners direct access to poets across the nation and their visions for the future. The Hotline’s goal was to highlight the importance of poetry to speak to us in times of change and upheaval.
The 2021 Poetry Hotline leaned on art as both balm and bravery for the road ahead. These poets offered words of respite, reflection, radicalization, or regeneration to any caller, anywhere, when they needed it. Now, SPACE is making this available to all once more.
Featured below are poems from Alessandra Nysether-Santos, Arisa White, CAConrad, Eireanne Lorsung, Myles Bullen, Myronn Hardy, Stacey Tran, and Shelley Wong.
by Alessandra Nysether-Santos
sweet strawberry-pickin’
hair-braidin’
freckles-on-the-tops-of-your-shoulders-kissin’
women
in fits of tinkling slap-your-thighs laughter
between dandelion afternoons
and citronella dusks
paradise is some sunshine and rainbows
some musical thunderstorms
with gorgeous displays of heat and sweet, yet
no scorching gaze to burn these garden bodies
into rigid rows of hedges, stunted
branches sharpened into defense mechanisms—
we are flesh and spirit
without spite
tracing each other’s silvered stretch marks, inquiring
the names of such sparkling rivers, admiring
delicate purple veins and dark spots
even the sun can’t help but shine on
this vast wildness flourishing
flourishing! everyone is just
as woman or fat as suits them
and here we are as a daisy chain—
behind me her tender fingers working through my thick hair,
my cool hands squeezing another’s untangling shoulders
as their sweet lap holds the shaved head
of still another woman whispering
you are loved
you are loved, you are
loved.
by Arisa White
These COVID times silently growing my nails and cuticles long. Wasn’t it just last week . . . or two weeks ago. . . God, these feet need a soak and scrub.
My youngest sister told me, “You have the best toenails out of the family, and that’s not saying much.” Out of shyness and shame, I wore socks the first time I had sex. Years later, a lover holding my foot said, “Luckily, you’re tall, ‘cause your toes are far from your face.” I took my foot back.
This expectation for feet to not show the wear of your labor, and I’m from a big-foot family. Most of the time, especially the women, could not find their elevens or twelves, sometimes wide, and so you take that half or full size smaller because I’m so tired of not looking cute—
A shoe with feminine colorways, a fatale stiletto, something fashionable that will take the kerning from my toes, teach me to numb my dogs with dirty-dirty martinis.
The comedian Gina Yashere, on her Instagram account, documents her time sheltering-in-place, and around day 30-something she talks about needing a pedicure. Shows her foot, dry and crusty heel, and overgrown brittle and bruised nails. Regardless if it wasn’t her true foot, it was still foul. I haven’t watched her Corona Diaries since.
Why wait for a pedicure to clip and clean your nails, pumice and lotion your feet? Not asking anyone to participate aggressively in the beauty industrial complex, just daily grooming to make visible the ways you show up for your own care.
Gina Yashere is in a romantic situation with Ninja and my wife gives me lip when my nails start to do damage. I’m slicing her shin at night and stabbing her bicep when reaching for her tit. These little moments of injury in my attempts to be close, touch, conserve and raise heat.
I want that heat. Don’t want to be sorry because I’m being lazy, especially when I’m more than aware when it’s time to trim and file. Soles, for some days now, snagging the sock along. Big toe hitting on the shoe. And the scratch on my forehead—me putting on a sports bra.
My mom always wanted to know how Coko, from SWV, wiped her ass. With candy-colored fingernails, measuring at least half a foot long. We could be in the car, in the house, wherever a radio or TV had SWV on blast. My mom had to mention that “The nails curl up, so how’s she even scratchin somebody?”
First time meeting this acclaimed poet, I too was distracted by his long fingernails. I stared at his hands, asked, “Who are you?” Emphasizing the who, like where your people come from and what they taught you about your nails? My friend assumed I knew who he was.
Few years later, I attended a summer retreat and met his partner. Wondered if she liked to be scratched good. His sandals, his toenails reaching beyond the beds, root-like. This man, I realized, is growing himself tree and his woman, sylvan fever.
They, a brutalist kind of love. Their nails husbandry. Raking backyards, weedy pits, worms, slugs, insects we cannot name. Ecstatic. All their crescents black with earth, hirsute top his soil, rogue particles flutter spiritually, them beasts in clover grass.
Who taught me?–not much. Keep them short. Paint them on special occasions. Push back the cuticles. Vinegar kills fungus. Support your arches. Keep them dry. And then this story about my Uncle Butchie, who died of AIDS, avoided the army because his feet were too big and narrow, applied fresh lemon to his toenails.
I did this at times. For this memory of him. For the beauty I imagined of him. The intentionality from the moment of selecting lemons. Cutting it into eighths, the zest, the lemon in the air.
I took five wedges back to my college dorm, that spring semester my freshman year. It was the first time of my uncle’s remembrance. I rubbed my toes until covered in pulp and juice. Another along the heels, those callouses necessary to modern dance.
Even now, when life gives me a pandemic, I let the citrus do its medicine.
GOLDEN IN THE MORNING CRANE OUR NECKS
by CAConrad (See the poem as it is intended to be laid out on the page)
in a past life I was
a little fish who
cleaned the
shells of
turtles
a dream
helped me
remember their
deep voice of thanks
many nights I heard sharks waiting
for the tide to draw me near
when the calendar runs out
it feels lucky another awaits
all I have ever wanted was to
forge the English language into
a spear and drive it into my heart
between leaping and being shoved
no lonelier place to put my faith for the
swinging motion inside the dance we share
don the extraordinary suit for this ordinary day
take our time studying trees to imagine the
nests we would build if we were birds
I ask all
you talented
people spending
many creative hours
perfecting killer drones
guns and bombs to please
know we are waiting for
you on the other side
of art in the no
kill zone
by Eireanne Lorsung
Hello you have reached we will reply
this voice mailbox is no in order to
serve you please leave your monitored
or recorded Hello Hello Hello
Can you hear me out in interplanetary space
in intermitochondrial vastness can you hear
me in clouds of breath in nebula do you hear me
does this voice come through
Hello you have reached in the order it is
received in order to serve
please input your date please listen
carefully options have changed
The lilies of the field have no telephony
the sparrows resting under the eye
of God do not answer a bell ringing
in a farther room ashes disperse
through air unresponsive to the nearly
human voice coding irreducible Each
as date of birth zip code bar
code genetic sample Hello
Hello this is what is the date of
birth can you confirm after
the beep this call may be we are
calling from calling for press three Hello
Can you hear me in our public parks
our libraries across our diminishing
commons in our watershed your
body and mine taking up parts
per million: plastic lead PFAS
mercury here in the gravity
of our shared life you are dust and I
Éireann Lorsung
am dust potentillas lifting in the front
yard their five leaves your hand
on the bus window in the encampment
your absolute dignity you traveler
Hello what tethers us to one another
by Myles Bullen
People get close when you catch a ghost.
Everybody wants to feel spiritual.
Stranded abandoned in a stand of trees
Searching for complacency
but this weathered vein creeps urgency
Self-care is an indecisive mouth who is well-versed in self-doubt
Sacred glitter blooming life surrounded by worms, rotting decomposition, and wet dirt
Soft landings, sweetest streams, sunny-side up mindfully managed
Witnessing beauty with tired eyes might help us get some sleep
but we might die in our dreams
Aging like an almanac forecasting unforgettable
An optimistic point of view is the smartest thing you grew in the garden of your mind
Still hiding bruises, I’m afraid of what I’ll find
Being guided by a guillotine of guilt will get you killt
Look at everything we have built
imagine brighter than you dwellNight sky stars staring
Looking for the perfect match
Phosphorus
sunken posture loves lost in a
drunken passion
When the point is to be pointless
we are nothing other than our choices
Miss tingling hands admire candlelight watching flames dance
leaning into lilacs
edging before the climax
kick drums and hi-hats
eyelids a time lapse
every step decisive
every thought breeds potential
If words can
really build worlds then
love language is essential
and dreaming
dreaming of a body to occupy
call it mine
live inside
and remember what it’s like to feel alive.
by Myronn Hardy
Forgive us for bells of which we listened those we didn’t. Forgive us for ourselves as ourselves.
Forgive us for causes effects.
Forgive us for loving the thing we say we don’t.
Forgive us for seeing not seeing.
Forgive us for hoping for the thing we couldn’t say.
Forgive us for disbelief.
Forgive us for shock.
Forgive us for hiding everything.
Forgive us for imprudence.
Forgive us for getting what we want.
We are what we want.
Open Season
by Shelley Wong
Of nervous ardor — of arboreal delight — stemmed bounty, bouquet tumbledown —
Of arrows & their Eros, a sticky web, honeyed, stirring a forest, spiraling messages from branch to branch
The swollen cream-colored buds of the southern magnolia tree: one blossom blooms overnight like a skirt splitting in the heat
Of as an echo, as is each season, in which we are always praying for water, where the ocean exceeds herself & fire season is now & always
Of being among the trees as an apparition, to withhold the transformation
Of being abuzz among florals, choral in their scents — spiced jasmine deepening the cerulean twilight
Of flight — a male Anna’s hummingbird hovers in hyperflutter, presenting his magenta sequined throat
An exhale — a breaking down — a release —
Desire as an awakening, you dart as if winged — exhausted lusting for a luster, glittering for a gleam
Startled by the body, its capacity to know without language, its return as rehearsing
Of gentleness — that feather touch — a flame that flickers & traces the air with its vanishing
Of the breath between us — that we may meet & close the distance —
IT SEEMED THAT WE HAD TO DIVE IN TO HAVE A LITTLE EFFECT
by Stacey Tran
We assemble diagnoses of the days that mediate our outline. Those insecure pledges were revelatory. As ordinary as rain is to the walnut tree. The more sensitive the light, it exposes even us. Every seam has its own emergence, but not every seam has something to show off. Beyond the gulf a yellowish gain. A gathering of deductions made by airing out legacied expectations. Minor chords motivate the progression toward a center. The attic was a glimpse of a devotional galaxy. Salmon slip out of a flood as we suspected, a standard account of refusal. The sentence grew long and packed a feast. An attempt to appease the ongoing corruption. A crowd of people eating bags of boiled peanuts. A movie set in a sugar factory. What can a dose of rainbow not repair? The act of decorating defends virtuosity. There is a poem glaring from beneath the rubble. We scrapped our ambition to protest the penny, the hostage, the reporter, the party, the spoiled, the tower, the deficit, the balance. Throw it all off. The orientation of home is no longer defined by a river. It became an illusion and then we were held temporarily by pottery. The public became a fog, a facade of reversals. As if the defeat of absence or crisis must be defined. A goat grazing among the forget-me-nots heeds its keep. A game played with cherry pits after school. We mimicked the mess of illegibility. A motion, a creature, something in air, opaque with rules. What stains a random decision has no advice. For sermons exist, war prisoners exist, the state and its lice exist. A disgrace of declarations up for auction, a record of glaciers, budgeted dreams, censored love. Now onto the work of a true excavation.
Poetry graphics by members of Pickwick Independent Press.
