Sometimes I find myself huddling
orchid-shaped,
in the one patch of soft, something
masculine
in the kettle of my chest.

I am sometimes
the knife singing an older song
falling between the walls. It is the dead,

this butter grip on the dark,
the distant self
like a daughter
too loud.

And neon carrot.
Powerslam. Chokehold.
The still-tender.

What I mean is once I was a boy
something
masculine
in parks strewn with heads of rubbled statues,
coo-cooing

coo-cooing
is a kind of possession.

Waiting to be identified,
I wanted to know everything
about suffering,
an insect, its interior,
and who walks over blood and then knocks.

[Nicholas Wong, Jayson P. Smith, Sarah M. C. Baugh, Roberta Iannamico trans. by Alexis Almeida, John Gosslee, Jayson P. Smith, sam sax, Nicholas Wong, Sarah M. C. Baugh, Leila Chatti, Catherine Brasner, C. McAllister Williams, Sarah M.C. Baugh, sam sax, Roberta Iannamico trans. by Alexis Almeida, Philip Metres, Celia Bland, Celia Bland, sam sax, Rosemary Kitchen, Leila Chatti, Mitchell Jacobs, Kyle G. Dargan]

This is a part of a series of centos in tribute to lit mags I have to give away for lack of space. I wanted to imagine these poets in a room (though not limited to a stanza) and put the poems in each issue in dialogue with one another as a way to save what touched me. Formally, for the most part, I have kept the poets’ original line breaks.

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