Summer Poem: Court Castaños

Magic Breathing

BY COURT CASTAÑOS

We didn’t have fireflies

flickering summer’s arrival song

in old jam and jelly jars, and I wish

I’d seen them rise from the tall grass

mistaken them for sprites, magic

breathing. We were washed

in the orange glow of the street

lights higher than we could ever imagine

climbing with our rough hands and

thick, summer feet. By June

you could crack an egg on the searing

tar of your road and watch it blossom

sunny side up until the slap

of burnt yolk sent you running

to the cool relief under

the maple tree, where the sun

couldn’t find you and the light

was mashed to cool green

like grass that’s been bruised

and tugged loose by dancing feet

in holy sprinkler water.

As a kid I could chant all

the priest’s calls and responses, sign

the cross over my small body and

say Grace five-times-fast,

but in the young nucleus of my soul

I knew the real power was in the count

to thirty on a moonless night while the

street exhales it’s last fiery breath.

My body in flight to the cavern

in the arms of my orange tree

where my heart would howl

in ecstasy as I praised the dim glow

of the street lights and the holy

sanctity of bare feet running

in a pack of wild kids, playing

hide and seek in the dark.

Donate: The poet requests that donations be sent to RAICE’s LEAF Fund. The LEAF fund ensures that children coming to this country can receive quality legal representation both in detention centers and once they are released. In 2018, our specially-trained team provided ongoing legal counsel to 400 children, and more than 4,500 children received training to help them understand their rights here in the United States. You can donate via this link.

Court Castaños has work currently published in The Nasiona and the San Joaquin Review. New poems forthcoming in Boudin, of The McNeese Review. Castaños grew up adventuring along the Kings River in the San Joaquin Valley and now resides in Santa Cruz, California.

Summer Poetry: Max Kennedy

Paramount

you’re a folk fiddle
in a hound’s-tooth coat
you stand eaten
in the hot wind
tumbleweeds cling to your
last words
drain as i cut
the melted rope
holding us together

you always read
faster than you wrote
sang like your mother
danced wildly like your father
in the summertime
fell like me
you talked the big talk
as if
walking weren’t a weapon
where you’ll end up next

cross county lines,
scream double-time—
a paramount decision
the water’s too deep in the well
to crawl back up the side
snakes lay in your bed
where i left my good ring—
lucky for you
i have plenty of jewels
sitting around
waiting to be used

Last year in July

It’s almost July now
Somewhere close by,
Windows shift at night
Hot sidewalks pulse
Through my veins
Somewhere close by,
Scraps of fresh fruit lay in empty cardboard boxes
Crystallizing the gutter water beneath them
In sweet rhythms
That have accumulated in my mind for weeks

It’s almost July now
These streets feel of paper
The threads of my t-shirt
Melt to a tile roof
Littered in pomegranate seeds
And scraps of fresh bread
Taken from market on the corner
Across from that bar we met at,
Something about the weather this time of year
Makes my body think of yours
Remember when we met last year, sometime in July?

Max Kennedy is a recent-ish graduate of SFSU’s Creative Writing program, where he studied poetics and playwriting. He has been published in a few print and online magazines, such as Xpress Magazine, As Of Late, Ramblr Magazine and Yes Poetry's ebook The Queer Body. He works in Los Angeles as a content creator and creative copywriter for top beauty brands. 

Summer Poetry: Jessica Reidy

BY JESSICA REIDY

Sub Napoli: ode to the skeleton bride of the catacombs

In the search for orange
blossoms I dug my trowel into raw soil,
stirred, and felt an aching in the fort.
The earth at Napoli is the blood
of Vesuvius; the dust of mummified bodies
rubbed with oil of myrrh, smoked
by incense; and ripe tomatoes.
Worship these skulls, nameless as children,
their faces shed for their remainders. Pray
to anonymous rib cages so they do for you
what you do for them. A film
of cinder dust coats the long-gone tongues.
I am you, they chanted

in piles of volcanic mud, in blazing
catacombs. In the orange light
petals tumble and crown the bride taken
after her conjugal rites, her cheekbones
sharp and white, her sockets stuffed
with gentian from well-wishers, from pilgrims.
Young women asked her for blessings, find me
a husband—bring me the luck you lost. Does death
give you the broken pieces to give away?
I am you, she replies.
Blossoms turn up their stamen faces
all ash and oil down these understreets.

Jessica Reidy is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor. She is the winner of the Penelope Nivens award for Creative nonfiction, and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in Narrative Magazine as Short Story of the Week, The Los Angeles Review, Prairie Schooner, and other journals. She’s a Kripalu-certified yoga instructor, offering yoga and creative writing workshops. She also works her Romani (“Gypsy”) family trades, fortune telling, energy healing, and dancing. Additionally, she is an artist and art model working with a number of artists and studios in the city. She is currently writing her first book.

Summer Poetry: Emily X.R. Pan

BY EMILY X.R. PAN

Missed Dance

I wander over cobblestones

dreaming idly of lips

brought to life in mirrors

Is it a slash of lipstick

or pomegranate seeds

dripping those underworld promises?

Deep inhale night

leads me across a bridge

they say the Seine has a stink

Exhale exhale all

I got was the smell of stars falling

out of love

But rewind

first we met dancing

our eyes made the greeting

I smiled at the long dark hair

the pair of red lips

over his shoulder

He thought my glittering teeth

were for him

they always do

I love this song he said

twirled me like a doll

until I was dizzy and she was gone

In the morning light

my teeth were not the dagger

I kept on me just in case

Under the sun we kicked

our naked feet

across guitar-string grass

He pressed his mouth to my ear

to drink of me

and all I thought of were her silver shoes

Emily X.R. Pan is the New York Times bestselling author of THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER, which won the APALA Honor Award and the Walter Honor Award, received six starred reviews, was an L.A. Times Book Prize finalist, and was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, among other accolades. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Visit Emily online at exrpan.com, and find her on Twitter and Instagram: @exrpan.

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Summer Poetry: Dallas Athent

north carolina

driving thru the balm,

cutting thru the night,

i am a local girl.

i could really live here.

crickets give a familiar sound,

north carolina,

could be anybody’s home, really.

his lap is my house,

when i’m young, i am silk.

he falls in love at 3 o’clock.

and i’m pulling into golden corral,

making memories of a dead dad and buffets.

i could really live here,

could be anybody’s home, really.

montecito hair

is long and ends in a clean line.

it asks for no forgiveness

on the tan girl, tres mince,

who never wants to know u.

:::a palm in the sun:::

florida’s gone

and i’m looking back thru the window.

bye girl. it’s all by your girl.

the things from your childhood:

thick stained rugs,

dewey soda with a straw,

neon fish on a t-shirt,

tapioca pudding,

all of my little ponies,

sink into a tepid sea.

Summer Poetry: Adrian Ernesto Cepeda

BY ADRIAN ERNESTO CEPEDA

Her Pool was Glistening

I missed her whistling, 

seductively spreading 

the soft of splashes 

enticing me to follow her, 

my Rosa, her hips already 

glowing in the water, lips 

savoring to devour each 

and every drop, I could tell 

from those shivering blinks 

her moonlit eyes loved softly 

undressing me, slowly, I glimpsed 

the giggling sips of her white 

wine breath, behind me, slipping

I felt her pool was spinning—

I wasn’t ready but she pushed 

me in towards her deep end, 

Rosa’s tongue caught me elongating 

waves as we shared bubbles 

of chlorine even deeper luna 

kisses radiating from her bikini-less 

skin. I could feel her sea diver 

taste buds reigniting underwater, 

deeply intensifying our midnight

swim, closer I felt more than just 

a mouthful of sips, I saw her face, 

the first-time glimpsing Rosa 

spreading her fountains, gushing, 

ready to splash her softest mystery, 

she was my guide, we moved 

instantly swimming deeper—

finally, I listened to her faucet 

eyes tidal me closer; ready, 

wanting— skinny dripping, 

she softly leaned while nakedly 

instructing, pointing to her

softest garden, curly glistening

summer, I could feel Rosa

shivering a whisper—

“let’s go inside…”

Lovers alone wear sunlight

You kiss the back of my legs 

and I want to cry. In the heat 

of her hands I thought, this is 

the campfire that mocks the sun.

yours is the light by which 

my spirit’s born: yours is 

the darkness, as long as the sun 

exists, your name will exist

like a sun-filled window, 

there are souls that you feel 

to lean forward to, your belly 

the sun seed I planted in 

my chest.“Her Spanish 

sounds like sunlight drying 

a wet shirt. She’s delicadeza

She was a pure spirit, easily 

susceptible to emotion, one 

moment she’d be crying, 

like sunshine after a shower.

Isn’t it enough to be out 

walking together in the sunlight?

through a window, which I 

stand in, warmed, the sun 

comes out of your body like 

a fruit. I had been lost to 

you, sunlight, and flew 

like a moth to you, sunlight, 

Oh, your love is sunlight

[But] Is it love, the way 

you toss your head and 

create the sun? If you 

are the rising sun, I am 

the road of blood. And 

there is, for me, no difference 

between writing a good 

poem and moving into 

sunlight against the body 

of a woman I love. Oh, 

your hair is red-gold, red-

gold, your skin is like

sunlight on snow. He 

smiled, and his face was 

like the sun. The first 

summer was pure happiness.

I was experiencing another 

human being, I was barefoot 

in the sand so fine, it was as 

if it breathed beneath my feet.

It was as if I were living within 

soft walls of sunlight and desire.

references above

1  E.E. Cummings, “unlove’s the heavenless hell and homeless home”
2 Shauna Barbosa, “GPS”
3 Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
4 E.E. Cummings, “silently if, out of not knowable”
5 from a wall relief on the West Wall in the Chapel of Rameses I
6 Federico García Lorca, source unknown
7 Octavio Paz, “A Tale of Two Gardens”
8 Eugene Gloria, “The Verb To Lick”
9 Gustave Flaubert, in a letter to Louise Colet
10 Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins
11 Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist
12 Homero Aridjis, Blue Spaces
13 Hozier, “Sunlight”
14 Stimie
15 Octavio Paz, “Motion”
16 Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
17 Tennessee Williams, “The Mutilated”
18 Madeline Miller, The Song of Achille
19 Liv Ullman on Ingmar Bergman, Liv & Ingmar

Adrian Ernesto Cepeda is the author of the full-length poetry collection Flashes & Verses… Becoming Attractions from Unsolicited Press, the poetry chapbook So Many Flowers, So Little Time from Red Mare Press. Between the Spine is a collection of erotic love poems published with Picture Show Press and La Belle Ajar, a collection of cento poems inspired by Sylvia Plath's 1963 novel published in 2020 by CLASH Books. Adrian is an LA Poet who has a BA from the University of Texas at San Antonio and he is also a graduate of the MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles where he lives with his wife and their cat Woody Gold. You can connect with Adrian on his website: http://www.adrianernestocepeda.com/

Summer Poetry: Emily Uduwana

BY EMILY UDUWANA

Last Day of Summer

Magenta took my hand

and she pulled me deeper

into the hedges

that guarded

the white columns

of her parents’ suburban hell

and we laid with our hair

spread in halos

over fresh-cut grass,

and we laid in a meeting

of manicured lions

and leafy green poodles

and those skinny pink flamingos

her mother insisted on keeping

in their cul-de-sac front yard,

the yard where we stayed

to see the sun flee on its way

out of Southern California

and where I ran my fingers

over the soft skin

of her inner arms

and asked how she ended up

with a name like Magenta

and where she waved a hand

at those skinny pink flamingos

and where said,

too many vodka sodas,

and where she said,

maybe what they really wanted

was one more lawn ornament.

Sticky Sweet

Your mother brought fresh lemonade

in sparkling crystal glasses

but you dipped a finger in the pitcher

forgotten on a backyard table

and you dangled your nails

over my waiting face,

let sticky sweet droplets fall

on the bridge of my nose,

and you said, she never adds

enough sugar

and you drank deeply

from my cupid’s bow

and from the edges

of my eager mouth

and you said,

that’s much better.

Emily Uduwana is a poet and short fiction author with recent publications in Miracle Monocle, Eclectica Magazine, and the Owen Wister Review. She is currently based in Southern California, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in history at the University of California, Riverside.