SPELL FOR ELSEWHERE
An angry bleat urges me to fasten the seatbelt, metronomic click
of the blinker punctuating its screech-song. The windows are down
& the rain drips onto my thighs. It brings me back to the body
in spatters. On the highway, I let three people merge & not one
waves. I am out of wiper fluid again & get lost on Ward Parkway.
A different me is silhouetted in the lit windows of every house I drive
past – me: reading a book, me: making dinner, me: alone staring back.
A. N. DEJESÚS is a proud second-generation Dominican-American poet and technical writer working out of Kansas City, Missouri. Her poems appear in the Los Angeles Review, Permafrost, Bear Review, Cider Press, Luna Luna Magazine, and the Best of the Net Anthology (2019), among others. She has recently earned a Master of Arts in English Literature and Rhetoric from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She was the recipient of the Helen and Emily Nguyen Creative Award and attended a fellowship at Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing.
Read more by A. N. DeJesús
Author’s Website
Poem at The Growler (audio)
On Twitter at @amand_nah
These captivating poems dedicated to Keats and Lucie Brock-Boido pay equal attention to the visible and the invisible worlds—and seem hauntingly comfortable in both.
It was growing dark in the garden. I felt, suddenly, enormous, as vast as the night. I could see all the way to California, where two little girls dragged their unwheeled suitcases through a cavernous airport
I am waiting for you. Part of my wall /
will need to go to get you in. It will /
never heal. This is how they’ll find me, /
small, perfunctory, unfit for a king, but /
I’ll hold it all
We moved along, discussing this injustice. It was small in the larger scope of the war, and all-consuming for one woman
ATOMIC CULTURE is a curatorial platform founded by Mateo Galindo and Malinda Galindo. They collaborate with artists on site-specific projects that reimagine the outlook of our cities.
Women love to dance with him, my mother said. /
He’s so easy to follow. But those women /
never had to clench against his slaps and rages.
After the Interior Ministry basement, the second place Rita bombed was a plastic surgery clinic, without hesitation, and I say without hesitation because she blew it up just three days after the ministry.
God unlike the stories, never casting out /
a child, unloosing the sky
Unlike other vehicles, not once does the man ever slow or stop to offer a ride. Not once must the dog shift from the front-seat view of the road’s horizon to share space with the children they pass.
As 2021 speeds towards its conclusion, we’re excited to inject some real quality into the proceedings: our harvest of incredible poems, stories, essays, and interviews.
