National Poetry Month : Beatrice Szymkowiak,

 

The End of April
                        after “April” by M.S. Merwin

When rain has stopped falling my eyes will go

blind with soundless
salt my hands

fumbling empty air
will crumble

into sand grist scattered

by continuous winds longing
for a lone

drop
of your tears

 

 

 

 

Beatrice Szymkowiak is a French-American writer and scholar. She graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and a PhD in English/Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of Red Zone (Finishing Line Press, 2018), a poetry chapbook, as well as the winner of the 2017 OmniDawn Single Poem Broadside Contest, and the recipient of the 2022 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry for her full-length collection B/RDS, published by the University of Utah Press in 2023. Her work also has appeared in numerous poetry magazines. 

National Poetry Month : Renée Sarojini Saklikar,

 

—used to be summer—

 

excluded the colour of my skin, back then

summer was bleached blonde, white flesh

summer was beer and low-slung cars

summer was Camaro and two-seater, hot tunes and streaming hair

summer was Crescent Beach, and Crescent Beach was a thing—

          Kim’s yellow polka dot bikini, my parched throat, brown face,

          skinny body—my summer stuck out—

my summer was headache and glare,

no Ray-Bans, squinting past fear looking over my shoulder, unsure—

summer hissed at me, where you from, not around here—

          and my summer stayed silent, downcast, not fitting in.

All my memories cascading dry as dust,

          sand tossed, seagull chased, running

away—summer, you mean girl, always laughing and me, each breath

          just trying to get through the blaze of days

          unfinished, close to the ocean, unwanted

waves, banana scented, coconut flavoured, pina colada, raucous and salty—

          summer, used to be I tried to be a part of you:

summer, now everyone pretty much hates the way you’ve become:

          scorched kisses, your heat dome suffocates, no tan marks, smoke billows

and I can watch from the sidelines, shade hunter, no longer alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Renée Sarojini Saklikar is the author of five books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her poetry, essays and short fiction have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. Bramah’s Quest is the latest volume of her epic fantasy in verse, THOT J BAP, The Heart of This Journey Bears All Patterns. She was poet laureate for the City of Surrey 2015–2018 and volunteers for Event magazine, Meet the Presses collective, Surrey International Writers Conference and Poetry in Canada. Renée Sarojini teaches creative writing and editing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and hosts Lunch Poems at SFU. Find out more https://thecanadaproject.wordpress.com/

National Poetry Month : George Shelton,

 

 

          Undressed

Sprawling, effortlessly—got to,
in the swim pool, cause
heats me up and chips my scabs, you notice my flaws when I speak my whizbang
gizmo theories to save
the world.
My tongue’s a petal for gleamy raindrops, not a lounge for bugs or wan
words. And cooling, I’m sad my tears
for others, which impress,
are lost in ripples, but I imagine it’s
you nip my toes underwater. Your undressed notions
of my slippery complexes
eventually relax my face quiet,
in bright day and late night’s natural rotation. See me in that
back-and-forth light and dark? A lanky-sentence
man who once pronounced at length, often started up
cubes to pump out endless squares. What's all one’s pleading
worth? Well, friendship rescued me, what
you said and did. What to do: Visit a friend's planet—
leave a speck.

George Shelton lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. His poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Spork, The Iowa Review, Flashquake, NOON, International Times, and the anthology category (published by Cue magazine).