As the barber snipped and combed, lathered and groomed, I lapsed into a kind of understanding with the universe. There in his chrome-and-leather swivel chair as his small talk raged in my ears I counted each hair as it fell, a hirsute mail on my chest. The mirrors, berserk with light, redoubled the room. A twitch in time, you might say. Epiphany. I’ve heard it can happen that way. Marc Alan Di Martino is the author of two collections, Still Life with City (2022) and Unburial (2019). …

incubator, talking point, someone’s mother, sister, daughter, girlfriend—at least I could be. Sometimes the closet, and by that, I mean the hanger. Sometimes both the case & the point, asking for it, a burden, a dowry, a score to be settled, a martyr. The hunger & its clarity. Always, the target for the devil’s advocate. Sometimes, feminine divine—both Kali, the killer & Persephone, raped then killed. Sometimes the oppressor herself, white feminism with all its allegiance to …

First assignment: Underline the words that describe you. My father has a hunchback for beauty. Gunshot in Borno— girls do not know how to smile. Last summer, like before, the sun is an assault in the mouth of a dwarf Jamal threw a rock at my pelvis, Simi fell in love, so she sang Complete me. This is a type of poem for ghosts. Sometimes, when I try to cry, I am often betrayed by my tears Second Assignment: Use those words to form the mouth of a poem. The language of our grief is a …

slimy & joy-wet. you're night's work of art, hatched from nothing into the belly of a jaw—softening the hard ground of language. your pronouns: ruffled between edges, as the heft threatens to refund your mother in past perfect tense. my tongue, raised towards your image—spills the purple consonant where a curve ends. say, I howl into wetness, shards of you grieve out in thanksgiving. you, scolding bronze into portrait. light waylays me, till I whiten & duplicate. whiten & play …

I always questioned who my father was before the hair decided to settle between his chest, Before he was sentenced to manhood, Was he a believer of far-off things? Would we have been friends? Did he fight for possession of the brownie whisk with the entire fist of his mouth? I wonder if on his road, He carried his hopes in his bindle, And if he will ever get around to leaving them wide-open again. Dad, You are a mighty thing of your father’s distance and your mother’s vocabulary, But who …

As frail as I am with my bandaged head my stumbling abnormality of gait I can still lift my son a leg up into the crotch of the Kwanzan cherry. I can still wrap my one good arm around his waist and heave. I can stand there at sunset spotting him in his tiger-faced rain boots his firefighter’s costume complete with helmet and ear-piercing red whistle (the hatchet had to go). Where low sun gleams in the eye of an exoskeleton a tiny mirror of cicada reflects the setting sun and worn- out father …