Sean Thomas Dougherty: “Hanzi in the Rain”
I think I'm tiring of auditioning. / I'm not dancing for bread anymore.
Audio Feature: Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer
"I was thinking a lot about human mortality and environmental catastrophe, and how we all are momentary in the world"
Audio Feature: Luke Johnson (Shō No. 3)
“This poem is one of many calls and/or responses to the poet Megan Merchant. Our co-authored collection A Slow Indwelling comes out Fall 2024 from Harbor Editions and deals with a father and mother wrestling through cultural violence, the fragility of childhood, the preciousness of a parents love, and the beauty and pain expressed through the natural world.”
Audio Feature: Megan Merchant (Shō No. 3)
This poem is part of a larger epistolary exchange, "A Slow Indwelling", with Luke Johnson, and will be published this fall with Harbor Editions.
Audio Feature: Andrew Payton (Shō No. 3)
My father came to this country / through the womb. My mother, too. // Their mothers and their fathers, too. / But somewhere behind them: a crossing.
Audio Feature: Ally Ang (Shō No. 3)
Today, my heart is working / remotely. I watch it thump / and thrum reliably behind / the blur of a computer screen.
Audio Feature: Dare Williams (Shō No. 3)
I’m not good at holding / anything real // the glass the weight these night- / blooming jasmine
Audio Feature: Cass Garison (Shō No. 3)
I share an arm rest / with a stranger who has desires // too.
Audio Feature: Bunkong Tuon (Shō No. 3)
I can tell you about strength. / How the sun warms our skins. / How the moon turns tides.
Audio Feature: Sean Thomas Dougherty (Shō No. 3)
I think I'm tired of auditioning. / I'm not dancing for bread anymore. / I'm not paying your fee.
Audio Feature: Cassandra Whitaker (Shō No. 3)
I split into two and the wolf split into four and we kept dividing
our greatness until I matched the air and the wolf matched the earth
Audio feature: Alfonso Zapata (Shō No. 3)
I sling myself up those stairs / with all the other tired men because //
who am I to refuse the slap / of hunched playing cards
Audio feature: Ellen June Wright (Shō No. 3)
Sometimes I forget I came from the Earth / from the rocks, from the spongy moss // was a home for all the squirming, crawling / slippery life that lived under me.