A Black Body Stuffed in a Villanelle

Editors’ Choice: 2021 Sandy Crimmins Poetry Contest

One day, I’m going to be a star.
Immortalized on a t-shirt at a justice walk,
Momma pray that I make it to the squad car.

Bury me in my hood. I don’t want my soul too far
and save my voicemail for some rapper’s album, real talk.
One day, I’m going to be a star.

Spray paint my face on the hearse’s hood. Clean up the shot scar.
My copper brown skin decayed to a grey cast; they’ll gawk.
Momma pray that I make it to the squad car.

Bathing in blood for wearing a hood. This life is bizarre.
My starring role on CNN, cemented like caulk.
One day, I’m going to be a big star.

My killer will don their white hood. Press my head to the tar
and slather my entrails to serve the best hawk.
Momma, is being a nigga, all we are?

The bullets still go through the cap and hood. Never on par,
they can’t ignore me in death, even after the cleanup of chalk.

One day, I’m going to be a star.
But Momma, if you’re reading this, I didn’t make it to the car.


Jaya Montague is a 2018 graduate of Temple University’s journalism program. She was the first runner-up for the first iteration of the Youth Poet Laureate of Philadelphia and mentored under poet Sonia Sanchez. She has work published in Apiary Magazine and is based in Philadelphia, PA.

Why I Never Talk About My Mother

Editors’ Choice: 2021 Sandy Crimmins Poetry Contest

When my father remembers my mother has died,
when he realizes he had forgotten, and he cries
— if that’s the word for those great, wracking peals of thunder
I feel against me, holding the hollow tree
he has become as it waits to fall — he shudders
in the sudden storm of memory, and I know
I brought this down upon him,
the lightning bolt loosed from my callous hand.
I decided, then and there, I would never
speak of my mother again. I would lie
if he asked where she was. The dead die
again and again in their remembrance.
It is I who would kill her, the coward with my words.

But there is this: they are also reborn in the forgetting.
I become young again, the little boy he expects
when the nurse tells him I’m here, your son,
here to see you. Maybe he thinks to bounce me
up and down on his knee, a bronco I tried to,
but could never, tame. Up and down
goes time, rushing, fierce in its will to throw me.
But in that moment of his expectation, my mother is alive
and she is young and, oh my, so beautiful.
I never knew how beautiful she had been,
as she is again in his mind
when he hears the words Your son is here.
We are all young, and strong, and not even a little
bit broken. It’s why I lie.
It’s exactly what I wish I could see.


In addition to Philadelphia Stories, Joe’s poems have appeared in journals such as the Schuylkill Valley Journal, Philadelphia Poets, and Apiary. He was the Featured Poet for the Fall 2014 Edition of the SVJ, which has nominated two of Joe’s poems, “Light” and “Forsythia,” for the Pushcart Prize. Philadelphia Stories recently selected his poem, “Hospice,” for their 15th Anniversary Edition. Joe’s first book of poetry, Always in the Wrong Season, is available on Amazon.com.

Plural

Runner Up: 2021 Sandy Crimmins Poetry Contest

To read “Plural,” click HERE.


Jessica Chretien is a person and poet from New Hampshire who only recently discovered, after twenty-five years of living, that she likes the sun, the ocean, plants, poems, making meals, reading Critical Theory, crying with gratitude, and being alive. She doesn’t seem able to stop overflowing with wonder and suspects everything might just be okay. This past spring she won the Victor Howes Prize in Poetry through the New England Poetry Club.

On a Day’s Pause from the Rigors of Metastases We Walk Through Laurel Hill Cemetery, You and I

Runner Up: 2021 Sandy Crimmins Poetry Contest

We have returned to see the lion, his human-like fingers
of stone gripping stone where he sits above the river
in the rain, high above us on a massive pedestal. Fall
colors are muted now but still beautiful against the gray.
The river is rising. Bright wet leaves stick to everything.
Our current distance between the dead can be measured
in the peculiar family names no longer heard of—
the Herknesses, the Spancs and Frinks, all folded
into other nomenclatures, other families persisting.
Colossal mausoleums anchor the familiar names—
Elkins, Widener, Lippincott. The die is cast so early
for some, there seems little variance, even over time.
Out over the river I see no evidence of living things.
What I think of living, movement over time. The river
is moving faster and becoming muddier as it rises.
Between headstones, we notice a flash of color—
a red fox with sprays of white on his chest and tail
loping over wet grass between stones and monuments.
He notices us but has little concern. Our distance is
insurmountable and we do not matter. Like everything
he is dead and not dead, living and not living as time only
seems to move. The still air in the empty spaces inside
the mausoleums do not support anything living. The illusion
of death persists. If it is an illusion to the dead, it is quite real
to the living, and not real, of course. I try to will my mind
to images of those underground in various states of decay
but I cannot. That reality is unknowable. Biocentrism postulates
that existence cannot suddenly become nonexistence.
(The pallor of death has left you and yet it is with us.)
Last night, we watched a fire on a large screen television.
A beautiful fire at the base of snowy mountains. Wind
whipped flames higher and we enjoyed it at a cellular level,
something deep in us connecting to ancient advents of survival.
We started noticing the points where the fire was revived
as it was digitally morphed to a return of the robust fire.
The fire was neither real nor without bounds, endlessly
looping for the hours it was created and we consumed it
with our eyes. And what do you make of the notion that
all this may just be a vast simulation? The possibility that all
of existence as we know it is something like a video game
created by greater beings. Maybe we are simply dream factories
firing up pre-programmed sequences of events. Just as the lion
was created to honor a General whose life spanned two centuries
and several wars in a time far removed from us and unfathomable.
The lion, though stately and august, has unmistakable fear in his eyes.
The sculptor could not help himself. Try as he might to create
a representative lion, he kept creating himself. The knuckles
that resemble exposed birch roots—his knuckles. The mouth
articulating awe and terror—his mouth. The tense haunches—
what he sees in his own legs. On our way back to the car,
hidden under a holly tree, surrounded by a manicured hedge,
we stumble across a remembrance in mosaic. Tiny bright tiles
that have been assembled to create a map of this exact location.
You would hardly notice it unless you just happen upon it,
or already know from some divine guidance that it is here.
We are walking past Millionaires row now, I imagine
straight lines leading up to mountains. Well planned grids
of cities laid out in valleys all around the world. Uniform
roads, regulated development, routines and codicils. There is
sense in the thoughts. Order in the musings. Civilization,
even at arm’s length, returning us to the rest of our lives.


Sean Webb says, “ I have received many honors for my work, including fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Utah Arts Council. Recent awards include the Passages North Neutrino Prize and I was the winner of the Gemini Magazine Poetry Open. My recent chapbooks include “The Constant Parades” and “What Cannot Stay Small Forever.” My work has appeared in many publications including Prairie Schooner, North American Review, The Quarterly, Seattle Review, West Branch, and Schuylkill Valley Journal.”

Airborne

Winner of the 2021 Sandy Crimmins Poetry Contest

While they are sitting
with the empty seats between them
I am cleaning the flies
stuck, dead, to the toilet seat
in the apartment no one has touched
for four months.

Waiting for me
was the musty damp
of unwashed clothes in the laundry
and two rolls of disinfectant wipes
on the made bed.
Today, this is care:

methods to kill what can’t be seen,
maybe isn’t even there,
packaged neatly
for my arrival in their absence,
and the exaggerated repulsion of strangers
long in advance

avoiding meeting.
They breathe through cloth and plastic
even sealed among the clouds,
as I waste sodden paper towels,
lift a window
for a gust of sound to feed the candle flame.

When they land
their message is the same as if
they’d just pulled up downstairs
or at the grocery store on Harrison.
I can’t tell
if they made it there alone.

I am trying to read out of the air
what I can’t hear: the ticking
of the next second,
the shape of air currents
around missing bodies, the things
those molecules run into,

the pressure drop of a kiss.
The sigh before the mold blooms
already like an aftertaste
as I fold the sheets.


Caitlin Kossmann is a PhD candidate at Yale University in the Program in the History of Science and Medicine, currently completing a dissertation entitled ‘The Myth of Gaia: Gender, Ecology, and Community in the Making of Earth System Science.’ A dancer and rock-climber originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, this is her first poetry publication.

Pond: a synonym for hope

To read “Pond: a synonym for hope,” click HERE.

elijah b. pringle, III has facilitated workshops on writing. Published nationally and internationally, he is nominated for a “Best In Net 2020.” Elijah has been the MC/Host for Panoramic Poetry, Moonstone Art Center, ToHo Journal and PhillyCAM’s “Who Do You Love”. He has been a mentor to many and a student of everyone.

Washing Stockings

Around Midnight

the same fashion Daddy’s arms would rest
on the torn edge of his seldom used easy chair
which sat lonely in a corner trying to be unseen
Mom’s arms would rest on the lip of the basin
bending over a sink made white with Comex

water would dance between strong sturdy hands
as she scrubbed vigorously ‘puff of smoke’ stockin’s
to move the dirt and dust collected from the week
when she would fix the kids for school and please her man
after the day’s work for money to close the gap

between can’t afford and thrift shop bargains
second handed stuff that was given another chance
the ritual of familiar made us all comfortable
we knew it was Saturday soon to be Sunday
Mommy’s steps were bunions and corns then

the bottom of her feet black from the walks
barefooted because her shoes were too tight
and so was money and I needed new sneakers
just so the white kids wouldn’t laugh at me
or we needed something, always something

but Ivory soap lathers up extremely well
when rubbed against used nylon stockings
about to be glory bound in eight hours that’s
after they had dried in front of the heat vent
even in summer the ritual meant everything


elijah b. pringle, III has facilitated workshops on writing. Published nationally and internationally, he is nominated for a “Best In Net 2020.” Elijah has been the MC/Host for Panoramic Poetry, Moonstone Art Center, ToHo Journal and PhillyCAM’s “Who Do You Love.” He has been a mentor to many and a student of everyone.

Black Diamonds and Pearls

He tells me of days when even dreams can’t wriggle free.

I see him struggle to hold
the laughing child

once alive inside him,
watch him strain to remember
how beautiful it can feel to be gentle.

There are walls and there are walls,

and now I only see him through gun-proof double-thick glass,
in this place where chained hearts steadily drip
onto already stained concrete floors,
and I don’t waste time telling him

I miss him. I find ways to smile,
even manage to drag an actual laugh through his
ragged lips, and his fingers

aren’t too torn
when they line up mirror-image of mine. He worries, you see,
that I will let go of even this, and I can offer no reassurance

for that same fear has already seized
my own broken heart.


As a mixed-race child of the 80s, Martin Wiley grew up confronting and embracing a world that was as jumbled and confused as he was. His current work attempts to examine what it was to search for manhood in that time and place. For the past few years he had labeled himself a “recovering poet,” but his children’s love of words has dragged him, mostly happily, off the wagon. After receiving his MFA from Rutgers-Camden, he remained in Philadelphia, working at Project HOME, being a dad and husband, and finding time, when possible, to write.

Tea Scars

To read “Tea Scars,” click HERE.

Mariah Ghant (she/her) is a Black woman artist based out of Philly. An alumnus of Vassar College, she studied Drama and English focusing on Acting and Poetry Writing. Mariah’s work has been featured in three print publications with Z Publishing, as well as online with Distance Yearning, Lucky Jefferson, MixedMag, and Passengers Journal. Forever fantasizing on the phenomenal, Mariah’s writing explores relationships, identity, and the cosmos. Visit her poetry Instagram @mariah.g.poetry or check out her artist website, mariahghant.com.