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DANIEL B. JOHNSONÂ Â Â poetry
Steel Valley Songbook, Volume I
Praise dead-end signs peppered with buckshot.
Praise shop windows shattered by rocks.
Praise the beige Pinto up on blocks. Praise playing chicken on Butcher Road.
The matte black Camaro praise, and praise the â71 Chevelle:
blessed be the boy who swerves first.
Praise pig wrestling, cow tipping, cock fighting, arm wrestling, and barn loft boxing.
Praise and praise the prom queenâs ass.
Sweet corn, rhubarb, apple butter, pumpkin bread, and blackberry jam, praise.
Praise the 606-pound squash at the county fair.
Praise bingo, scratch-off lotto, and bagging the limit.
Praise the twelve-point buck strapped to Jimmy Jonesâ truck, friends
in orange caps gathered around, beer can in every hand.
Praise Iron City Beer. Praise Red, White, and Blue. Praise Everclear.
Praise sniffing and huffing whatever is slapped with a warning label or without: whip-its, whiteout, model glue, copy toner, paint thinner, gasoline, and fat, black markers.
Praise the view at nightâ200 feet above the townâs steeples and oaksâfrom
the highest rung of the water tower.
Praise the urge to jump and praise the harvest moon.
Praise flat light falling on flat land.
Praise and praise the Cuyahoga caught fire. Blessed be the man who keeps his bobber in the water.
Praise the closed mill.
Praise the abandoned strip mine.
Praise the sign that reads DANGER: DO NOT WADE, SWIM, OR FISH HERE! Praise, in jeans shorts and ripped concert T-shirts,
the girls who swim anyway.
Praise the jackknife, gainer, cannonball, psycho, Zeeko, and belly flop.
Praise first sex in a wood-paneled station wagon.
Praise the dirt bike and turnpike. Praise the taxidermied pikeâ44 inches long and open-jawedâhung above the bar at Penn Grill.
Praise the Gin Mill, Side Door, and Hookerâs Barbershop.
Praise the butch, fade, mullet, Caesar, flattop, and buzz cut.
Praise the Steel Valley. Praise the Rust Belt.
Praise the Mistake on the Lake. Praise the City on Seven Hills. Praise
the Land of Drive-Thru Liquor Stores.
Praise the home of the Fighting Quakers, Potters, Bulldogs, Warriors, Indians, Dukes, Cardinals, and Mighty Clippers.
Praise and praise, forever and ever, the Rubber Capital of the World!
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SARAH GREENÂ Â Â poetry
Assembly
While the bombers were playing basketball
or smoking weed and powering up a level on Xbox, I was falling a little out of my tube top
down the street from them at Christinaâs Ice Cream, dropping my sunglasses, trying free
spoonfuls: rose, cucumber, chocolate, green tea.
Last summer, I still hoped a certain man might change his mind.
I swam. I watched The Bachelorette. The loudest noise was my neighbor once a week
at the fire hydrant setting a blue bin full of rinsed-out bottles down. Next door, all three triple-
decker porches glowed at 6 PM from solar lanterns. The bombers were not bombers
yet, just brothers, both younger than me, wrestling. I had some things on my mind, like
which sandwich to buyâwhile I waited, a very old waitress put up her feet.
She was wearing compression stockings. Last summer, the younger brother decided to grow out
his hair because girls liked it. The right lung of one of my friends showed a dark spot,
another friend called me in tears about a pregnancy she didnât want, I cried
when a third friend called, finally pregnant. I was happy for her. I traipsed in flip-flops
for some peach muffins, some iced coffee. Men asked did I need help carrying groceries? Men
argued, loud, outside the mechanicâs, about Red Sox trades. We were all very aliveâ
all of us and the brothers. Who cares? the bombers began to say, I guess, and then believe.
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DANIELLE JONESÂ Â Â poetry
Sometimes You Know before You Know
The neighbor who never smiles steps out
of his dress shoes in a parking space, leaves
their velvet mouths to soak, tongues still
lapping the milk-round bellies of clouds.
There are no clues, only pennies pressed
in fresh asphalt, smell of burn, black windows
reflecting the same sunken face, until one day
I see throughâsheâs surrounded by stacks
of folders to be filed. Destroyed. Sometimes
you never know. I wait for his bus to corner,
but in every dream I have he isnât on it.
Heâs always in the field they found. Sting
of a needle lost. The fruit he asked me
to name, there, rotting on the ground, grass
rippling with flies. I watch the creep
of vine on picket. Or maybe you become
the ghost youâre looking for. If only we
were home now itâd be summer yet, but noâ
the dandelion spores keep morphing into snow.
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SARAH C. HARWELL poetry
God Speaks through the Seals
The seals returned from near extinction
to rest and brood on a J-shaped brooch,
fastened, a mile long and a few feet wide, to nothing stable,
a breach that interrupts the sea,
that ceaseless and unworried sloshingâ
if you wear your glasses underneath
you can see what the sea is wearingâ
claws and weird blooming things
and tiny fish flurrying like exploded flowersâ
giving rise to words like marl and bight and others
that you rarely say, unsure of meaningsâ
but under there you understand you donât belong
to that which causes light to split
into streams, a fish out of water, and so retreat
to shore to watch the seals w...
