Heaven and Its Teenage Riot
Mary Biddinger
One woman smelled like honey, the other like Funyuns.
I hadn't started carrying a purse yet, kept a check safe

in my sports bra. When house lights turned off I was not
centered. But nobody waits for a shadow to catch up.

One woman took measurements, the other extracted
feathers from a gallon bag. What exactly was I learning

aside from how to lean? My unremarkable thighs
clanged together like volumes of a fresh encyclopedia.

I wondered how many people had touched the clipboard.
Back then people still actively licked their fingers.

I walked everywhere, considered a coat demeaning.
My street had more boards than windows, a stray rooster.

Thinking about the moon brought collective nausea.
It was 1990 and we spent zero time pondering the future.

People always asked if I had a fever. I tested poorly.
When the flood lights powered on it felt like spit falling.

Basically it was a life with very little context beyond
yes or no. They assigned me a leotard thinner than a mask.

The only taboo was braids so loose they resembled grain.
A phone was a thing with square buttons, a wall mount.

The "hangout" a bald fire pit by warehouse tracks.
Getting high meant becoming happy, and I aspired to it.
from the book DEPARTMENT OF ELEGY / Black Lawrence Press
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When writing "Department of Elegy" I found myself in the role of ambassador for the 1990s. For this poem I grabbed an assortment of details and observations and attempted to do justice to the decade. The title, of course, is a nod to the song “Teen Age Riot" by Sonic Youth. Thinking about the moon still makes me a little nauseous.
Cover of Silvina Lopez Medin's book, Poem That Never Ends
"Poem That Never Ends"

"Poem That Never Ends balances polarities such as absence and presence, revelation and discretion, and intimacy and distance. A visual motif of dashes operates in paradox, by turns representing stitches (a coming together) and perforation (a tearing apart). One poem written in Spanish is offered to the mother within the book, yet the rest is in English, at a cool remove."

via HARVARD REVIEW
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Color image of the cover of the journal Copper Nickel, Fall 2022
What Sparks Poetry:
Layla Benitez-James on Two Poems by Beatriz Miralles de Imperial

"Bea has been described as 'a poet of silence, of everything unsaid which is suggested through language,' and translating these poems opened my eyes to the immense possibilities of brevity, inspiring me to begin a book-length project in small bursts. How Dark My Skin Is Left by Her Shadow taught me the strength of distillation, how intensity rises, and pressure builds when a substance is compressed."
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