Rob Franklin

He was my writer. The writer whose verse I could recite on loop, by memory, whose words were literally etched into my skin. I’d read him first in high school on the recommendation of my punk friend, Ella, who used to scribble Patti Smith lyrics on her forearms during homeroom and had received, at fifteen, a lifelong ban from Urban Outfitters and its sister store Anthropologie . . .

Marina Tsvetaeva

My soul is fed up to the throat
With wrongs and fiendish hurt,
I swear to give up the revolt
Against the Demon’s hordes—

Not as they were in books of old—
Fiery cataracts—
Against the everyday assaults
Of people’s callousness—

Megan Fernandes

If you haven’t taken the Amtrak in Florida, you haven’t lived. At 2:00 AM, seven months into the pandemic, I’m looking up where Seamus Heaney died. It was Blackrock Clinic overlooking the sea and I wonder, sometimes, what is my thing with the Irish, but if the white kids can go to India for an epiphany, maybe it’s fine that I go to Ireland.

Sara Michas-Martin

Out in the field, the coming storm already lives inside the legs of horses. My son and I watch them turn and leap. The sun sparks their black coats like a searchlight that startles back at us. Flies bite our ankles because the storm is inside them also. They feed now, before their airspace is full of disturbance . . .