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The Spinning Center
Well traveled lovers, we have filled
the same set of suitcases together
for thirty years, know the seams
where grit likes to hide, still
set them side-by-side in the trunk,
on conveyor belts.
Tonight,
in this logged room fixed
in your family for 74 years, I
need you to turn the music off
so I don’t follow the lyrics
to Wildflowers. So I stay
in this room with our suitcases
where your grandparents perhaps
touched each other after four
children and a mistress. Turn
the music off long enough
to board the bed’s space
ship, feel its trembling
lift off.
Us in the galaxy now,
familiar vessels unearthing young pulsars,
moving deep into the Milky
Way, closer to time’s spinning
center than we have ever been—
Second Tuesday of September
A golden shovel after Richard Wright
How clear the sky, a
good morning to walk with the buggy, balmy
with sunshine, garden flags in gentle wind.
My seven week-old reminding
me of air’s soothing power, giving me
an hour’s silence, an hour of
my body all my own. Then something
happens. My husband calls and I
pull the tv out of attic storage, watch people who cannot
withstand any more. That sky, the last they will recall.
Michelle DeRose
Michelle DeRose is Professor of English at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she teaches creative writing and African-American, Irish, and world literatures. She is the 2023 recipient of the Faruq Z Bey award for a poem relating to music and the 2022 first place winner from the Poetry Society of Michigan for a poem about loss. You can find some of her recent poetry in The Healing Muse, Dunes Review, The Lakeshore Review, Sparks of Calliope, and G.I. Days: An Anthology of Military Life.
board setup: griptape
i use a razor
blade to cut out
an oval of sky
a screwdriver
to file down
the perimeter
of the night
blow the moon
dust off
my fingers
board setup: bolts
moods swing between
phillips & allen
one silver bolt
in the northeastern part
of these heavens
just under a light
year away from my heel
i'll take whatever
light's left of these
dim constellations
trusting their suns
won't rattle
won't slowly
unscrew themselves
from the sky as they burn
board setup: trucks
mall grabbers unite
give a shoutout
to the slappy kids
to the speed wobbles
we had coming
no matter how
many times you kiss
the concrete
you can't give up
the reward
of rolling away
so what
if you were born
& raised
in wheelbite city
grind the soul
all the way
to the axle
Larry Narron
Larry Narron's poems have appeared in Phoebe, Bayou, Hobart, Booth, and Sugar House Review, among others. They've been nominated for the Best of the Net and Best New Poets. Larry's first chapbook, Wasted Afterlives, was published in 2020 by Main Street Rag. He teaches language arts at a secondary school in San Diego.
Collision. Uneven floors.
Broken glass & dizziness.
Wasteland. Life grows
out of the cracks
Of the concrete outside.
Wind whips through dyed
Hair & the fabric of skirts.
Black buckles adorn my boots.
Bruises trace the edges
Of skin that was once soft.
It is a self-induced madness.
Who could find their God
In the strangling, the cry for
Help, finally answered?
It is movement untamed.
There is something here
I have yet to name, &
In the chaos of my body
Meeting body meeting
body of stranger,
I am suspended in time
& sound & present in all things,
& when the one above
Calls my name, I answer.
Ariana Alvarado
Ariana Alvarado is an undergraduate student at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky studying English, Creative Writing, and Theology. At Bellarmine, she has served as founder and President of Pen and Sword Open Mic Club. She has also served as an editorial board member, Vice President, and President of the Ariel Literary Society Her work has been published in The White Squirrel Magazine, Preposition: The Undercurrent Anthology, Sanctuary Magazine, and two editions of the Ariel Magazine. Her poem “I ask my father why he believes.” won the Flo Gault Student Poetry Prize in 2022 from Sarabande Books.
