Nullipara Song

If it doesn’t happen soon,
it just won’t.

The weight of a smaller hand
fisting my pointer finger.

Toothless smiles humming through
playpen netting.

Matching wallpaper to a duck
or sailboat theme.

Spooning powder cereal to water,
making bowled meals.

With a lean, walking the weighty body
slapping against a hip always.

—

This selection comes from Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s poetry book Paper, Cotton, Leather, available from Press 53! Purchase your copy here!

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper, Cotton, Leather and four chapbooks. Recent poetry has appeared in Redivider, Eleven Eleven, Thrush Poetry Journal, PANK, Rhino, Sixth Finch, ILK, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, and Poemeleon. Recent prose has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, and Delirious Hem. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly and an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Hand Me Down

Cards we played on our honeymoon are still in the pink
suitcase you were too masculine to carry out to the black
trunk of taxi. We thought things don’t change when you leave
home. There, taxis are yellow too. I left the cards you bought,

forgotten by you, in the suitcase you won’t open or touch.
I kept them there, spread out, code-like, as if summoning spirits
to see what we were made of. They are sprawled amongst
slight sand and salt, a bikini I never wore, a toothbrush I bought
the day of the wedding, thinking married, bride teeth must feel

different. I saved them spread out so that when our someday
daughter unearths the suitcase for her class trip
to somewhere foreign, the cards with pictures of half-naked
women will spill out, scatter her young ankles.

—

This selection comes from Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s poetry book Paper, Cotton, Leather, available from Press 53! Purchase your copy here!

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper, Cotton, Leather and four chapbooks. Recent poetry has appeared in Redivider, Eleven Eleven, Thrush Poetry Journal, PANK, Rhino, Sixth Finch, ILK, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, and Poemeleon. Recent prose has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, and Delirious Hem. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly and an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Brocade in the Water Garden

Their hooked lips are sewn
with the thinnest skins.
The mouths open and wait.

It seemed wrong to take
the picture. You were too close.
It seemed like a cheap move.

I stood over them. My reflection
off their slimy orange, wanting
their heads to sink.

I would say I saw before you
the stippled mouths move
toward the lens and shudder.

—

This selection comes from Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s poetry book Paper, Cotton, Leather, available from Press 53! Purchase your copy here!

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper, Cotton, Leather and four chapbooks. Recent poetry has appeared in Redivider, Eleven Eleven, Thrush Poetry Journal, PANK, Rhino, Sixth Finch, ILK, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, and Poemeleon. Recent prose has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, and Delirious Hem. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly and an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Failed Bearings

One weekend morning I mark
our woods with a trail while
you’re steeping in the shower.

The trail flails and is a comet,
a centipede curled into his death.
The symmetry is a hive.

As you dry off, I tell you: leave
behind the compass, the barometer,
the metal detector. Figure it out on your own.

I guide you to the trail’s mouth
and fire the emergency kit flare gun.
We needed the dramatic beginning.

My distress signal is a traitor,
listens to itself, pings out, diving
to bury itself in a stack of leaves.

Tapping a fingernail on my father’s
stopwatch hanging from my neck,
I ache for your failure. I refuse you clues.

I await your unsafe return. Without
breakfast, I imagine you hungry and weak.
I believe you’ll eat my patient display.

—

This selection comes from Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s poetry book Paper, Cotton, Leather, available from Press 53! Purchase your copy here!

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper, Cotton, Leather and four chapbooks. Recent poetry has appeared in Redivider, Eleven Eleven, Thrush Poetry Journal, PANK, Rhino, Sixth Finch, ILK, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, and Poemeleon. Recent prose has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, and Delirious Hem. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly and an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Forgiveness Act

My doppelganger would never let this happen. She’d
swap her frilled dress for your groom pants at the
altar. She’d fling her fickle body into cartwheels down
the flowered aisle, those hired-for-the-day instru-
ments sighing at her back like some flimsy net she
didn’t hear. No one in the audience would know what
comes next so they’ll grip their hands to fight their
own applause.

From this day forward she would remember every
grocery list in her head, eat slick doughnuts only to
be reminded of symmetry, let every first date feel
her up in the backseat before the date, trash old
tickets from movies and planes. She remembers
without them.

She would take up tightrope walking to hear the
bottoms of her feet slide across wire, devote practice
time to cartwheels and splits, her specialties. After
her first performance, she will look down to you
from her glittered perch, and since she can’t feel,
you have and hold all the applause for her. You hoard
it in a jar, your souvenir.

—

This selection comes from Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s poetry book Paper, Cotton, Leather, available from Press 53! Purchase your copy here!

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper, Cotton, Leather and four chapbooks. Recent poetry has appeared in Redivider, Eleven Eleven, Thrush Poetry Journal, PANK, Rhino, Sixth Finch, ILK, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, and Poemeleon. Recent prose has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, and Delirious Hem. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly and an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.