LIT CITY: On the Move

“Requiem/to Jean Valentine” I thought you thought The world in shapes moved What is still the unsober world moves In the street You hail a cab You thought I thought Unseen is better than seen This scene appears to disappear All matter matters Shapes in the world move One never gets the ending right One stands at the curb, arm out After a swell of music The rest — Kazim Ali

“Bubble Man” They catch my eye, sometimes, the veil of clear clean bubbles falling gently, gently, gently down from your third-story window to the busy streets below.

And though I cannot touch the stars, I can reach up to those falling orbs and feel the joy of a million years, million lives, long, lost, forgotten, drift through me like a lone traveler, home at last.

Until, soon, it pops.

— Ates

“Words Were Our Warmth” Now you tell me you are going away this time for good nothing to say silence blots out exchange words were our only warmth isn’t it strange Winter makes your news endurable this abiding chill through my veins holding me still — Ansie Baird

Destination: Home A whirlpool of words, a tornado of text, a vortex of vernacular.

Adrift on a sea of stars, each blinking light a stepping-stone thought ready to bloom, to be cracked open and born anew in the sunlight.

Lost at home in the space between words, consumed by the artistry of the ink-void outside of time and space.

Drifting by unknown souls carrying unknown worlds in their eyes.

With each pass-by, an exchange of memory, of half-bloomed imagination so that they may place the next stone.

We bear our own worlds, changed by each trade so we may place our own star in the sky.

— Theodore Bellavia-Frank

“I'm No Tulip” I pick no weeds. Instead, I take them in. Wearing eyeglasses made of steel, my soils are like candy.

I take up a new sport. Trusting a new date to belay me, climbing up walls of a fake mountain. Glaciers of orangutan sizes. I'm no tulip.

I'm still the same animal I was once, resisting bedtime, resisting the alarm. I can spend the whole entire day procrastinating. Until I raise my heart rate.

I run, bike, swim, box, climb all things. I worship open air, daffodils, and the feeling of my body in clear motion.

The smell of Cheerios while my legs churn my wheels along Lake Erie, the wind slapping. Oh, the power of my core! That wind, how it can push me.

— Kim Chinquee

“The Hope in Silence” One leaf falls to the ground and another and another while you peer outside the window vision clouding until all you see are dots of light stretching and constricting like warped galaxies You put down your pen an act of surrender because you feel as if you’re falling falling How it hurts to be real How it hurts to just be You can still live nine lives in a single one It won’t be perfect and you’ll still feel hopeless from time to time But you’ll live You'll live because there lies hope in the silence of your heart — Emma

the walk from the train station where you kissed me, baby-fresh-sticky-lip-gloss-real-girl, in the dark, under the bridge in the park, even the cemetery trees, the lone white deer i would watch from my living room window early in the morning over a cup of too black coffee. they echo back awfully. this city is haunting me and you are at every corner. let’s make a deal—keep the piece of me that i can bear to give. in return, the spaces of this place that you evicted me from, filled with the bones of my body that ache for us. no—in return, the click of my typewriter for hours on end; the scrawl of a fragment of a new line on a piece of receipt paper at work; the burn on my middle finger from oversteamed milk. i forgot anything other than love and, now that i’ve lost it, i’ve lost all the spitty slurry words i ever had in the first place. i’ve been walking through this city for hours and nothing has changed. i’ve been walking through this city for years and nothing has changed, except you, except me, without you. you will erode me.

— Sage Katherine Enderton

“Letter to Simeon on Where I’ve Been” Tikva Levi got me into the beat of the #48 C bus, Walt & Hart plucking the short strings of the Ohio Street Bridge, CA Conrad moved me to press my forehead against bark to receive the telepathy of trees growing under the elevated 198, roots sunk into Scajaquada Creek, Neidecker moved me down to the Niagara’s banks where water mixes with dirt, Roberson tracing the line of the lives the 190 & 33 made and unmade, Robert Creeley and Ishmael Reed have got me thinking about what's in the silence of each panel of sidewalk walking down Main, and to say that all of you— you reading this too—moved that bruised and learning thing my heart, my heart, my heart — Joe Hall

“Sis haiku” You are a vibe, sis A whole entire plot twist Now read it again — Jillian Hanesworth

“Hope (Verb)” Fists pumping up towards the sky.

Calling across concrete mountains for accountability.

Shouting towards pavements of paperwork for Freedom, shouting through blue and red colored sirens for Justice, with our hearts interlocked.

Crafting an awakening song with our bold lips, each intentional letter holds a symphony, they pull together music notes of change, and unite the unscathed listeners.

Our stories weave together a strength that survives generations.

Our advocacy wakes up a living, breathing, creature of empathy.

We can be brave enough to live in the present.

We can be louder than the voices that say we can’t.

Resistance in our words.

Resilience is our joy.

— Zanaya Hussain

“Within a Pen, Hope” Poetry takes all the woe I’m soaked in, all my broken, slowly morphs it to a more controllable emotion.

When my heart almost stops, it shocks it.

Poetry will last until I’m old & gray, and maybe find a home for me.

— Jahton

What happens when an island of misfit toys organizes toward a better future? A wave of euphoria cutting through the billionaire wind so we can hear every voice again, community activists always standing in the storm teaching raindrops how not to fall, what it takes to change, when we talk about metamorphosis we’re talking about the mouth and words that inspire, mouth as mechanic keeping our engines running, mouth as protester never sleeping mouth as unstoppable gardener growing everything under the sun textbooks and poems bursting through the windows of everything no more boarded-up storefronts and empty condo buildings, how hope stretches across every corner, what else to do but pick up the pieces truly embrace what it means to be a city of no illusions where everyone’s invited, here is where we refrigerate our dreams so they never go bad, where they feel uplifted, the way birds feel inside trees — Justin Karcher

And when the stars fell, where was she?

Curled up under a blanket, reading.

There are no answers in the heavens, or in the ravaged bones of the earth.

But between ink and paper, you can press flat dreams.

You can turn a page, and with it, breathe.

— Amanda Kelly

To wake up curious.

The best anyone could ever hope for.

— David Kowalczyk

What moves me: my feet, a bus, a train, a plane A slow, smooth, heart-flipping grin A well-built sentence Three ice cubes, lime, soda, and gin Bullfrogs in ponds on summer nights Laughing and talking and dancing and kin — Raina Lipsitz

“What Moves” It's music shimmering out of a simmering kitchen, love notes layered, hidden amongst the everyday grey, the anticipatory hum of an audience thirsty for words, strangers holding the door, shining eyes, and free fruit in the grocery store.

It's heads tipped back in side-aching laughter, and fistfuls of dollars thrust into an open guitar case, seeing fathers cry pride tears for their children as they glow, ignorance becoming enlightened, crises averted, recognizing the ways we never thought we were wrong.

And you, precious dream, delicious reason to be alive.

The thing that moves me most is you.

— Janna Willoughby-Lohr

“Transfer” city bus in high school one transfer I could walk the rest of the way and often would keep walking so we could dance in the skate park with our headphones on no one could discern the music we craved hearing our experience felt by someone else who had moved through it — Rebekah S. Malone

Also I miss you The sun beats hot upon my head, Interrupted only by sleepy clouds.

Dismal winter thoughts are dead, Whilst all the birds sing proud.

The sky it blazes blue, And also, I miss you.

Busy feet work the busy street Matched in haste only by the busy cars.

Busy people march in beat, Nobody sees the stars.

Street lights shine constant and true, and also, I miss you.

— Liam McMahon

“Welcome Back” the rooftops that touch the sky and the lights that stay on under the stars or the silence of a movie theater as the lights dim and the outside isn’t real or the sun that blinds as it shines off the sand or the rotten wood in the darkness of the attic or the cool smell of the leaves shifting under quiet winds welcome back! they say but I feel like I never left

— Danny Merlino

Next year, a different poem will not peel back the skin, will not walk into water, will not enclose the dragonflies in ice.

It will not marry silence.

It will unfold the cities crumpled like misshapen origami, will begin to speak again about the bodies flooding the streets in protest and those that remain in dark corners, will live in bright blue water even if breathing remains difficult and maybe then we will learn enough from the ocean’s collective movement that you will displace me and I will embrace you and the singing of the fish will grow so loud that we can hear ourselves.

— Ariana Nadia Nash

"LOOK" The surface of everything feels like a ticking time bomb. The morning leaves a hole in the sky when the sun finishes rising.

The blades of grass look more like beanstalks, growing with no sign of stop. Everywhere we go, placing a doorstop in front of our feet.

Every flower outside is a form of a lily. But lines deviate course and bridge our hands. In the future, there is no winter, but for now we fly kites in the snow, watch as thick flurries tear through the silk. A new way to look at the atmosphere.

But the same way to look around—the rain, the lake, fountains, sprinklers, rivers in our palms— there is always water.

— Julianne Neely

“Enough” It's easy to feel small in a big world And it's easy to feel tall in a shallow pool But how do you make yourself feel big in a small world?

How do you show everyone that you are comprised of pieces of a puzzle just waiting to be solved?

How do you show the world that you're a candle waiting to be lit?

Ready to spark, to show your fire?

Do you recount the time you’ve wasted?

Or do you sing for the time you spent?

Have you done enough?

Or more than enough? Or too little?

Did you love enough?

Is everything measured in terms of enough?

Or do we break the measuring cup?

— Nzingha

“Mantras through the InBetween” Tomorrow's mood is a mere by-product of the moves I make Life is fleeting, but my actions have the power to change the world for generations With the courage to flutter my wings I will inspire From my consistency, I shall motivate And from my successes I shall be remembered It’s thanks to my reflection from yesterday It’s thanks to me tomorrow It’s thanks to me now It’s thanks to you We are the butterflies And we alter realities with each flutter we shake — M!LL!EE RAEE

These words are finally mine.

My tongue, untamed as a wild lion, has forgotten the pain of biting teeth.

I stretch my lips and jaw around new truths, and empty my lungs of stale, caught breath.

My words run playfully at my feet like little children, luxuriating in the freedom of boundless joy.

I yell and shout and sing— there isn't a soul who could stuff them back down my throat.

These words are mine to give, embraced by eager ears.

Every stifled curse or whispered plea has a home in the world.

— Trinity Ridout

We read one word per cardboard page at her age: cat, then cow, then moon.

She pats at them but one day soon she’ll say out loud her own first word and set the world in motion.

Bus and train and boat and heart all wait to start till she says so…then go.

— Sherry Robbins

“PHOTOGRAPH” I smell the leaves, their musty scent lingering in the air.

A certain freshness, signaling new beginnings, an end to the old.

I smell the wind—how so, it is impossible to pinpoint—carrying everything on its back.

I hear the buzz of construction and feel exhilarated.

Something good is going to happen.

I will grow up. I won’t hold back.

Stop tripping over myself.

— Katie Rooney

Words sail me Soothe me Save me So sad, so true These words of mine are meant for you.

— Maria Scrivani

“On This Road” as I walk this road, charcoal clouds loom overhead, and daylight never breaks, so I stumble through the dark. as I walk this road, lined by houses with broken boards, splintered floors, the shackles clink in rhythm, I remember there’s no time for rest. as I walk this road, the wind howls, kicking up dust that stings my eyes and blurs my vision, sightless, I press on.

— Maya Simmons

“Poetry” Don’t do it because you want to get something off your chest— it’s not about your chest.

It’s about what wants to sound itself out, to skip and slide into shapes of spaces and swooshes spoken or broken in lines on the page.

Don’t do it to shove in a drawer— you have enough stuff in your drawer.

Don’t save it, don’t lock it, don’t block it.

Spend it, send it, donate it to a pocket, leave it on a subway seat, scrawl it on a rock, chalk it on a wall.

Place two poems in closed fists and offer this hand or that.

— Irene Sipos

return to the world its birds for we have been sick a while & missed their public music, words flown past us before we could catch them—yet still they transport us through all the hollows of flight, of hearts, of grief, of routes, all the world we might travel in a word’s cadence — Lytton Smith

“Spare Change” Move through love Move through knock-knocks Moving through what’s up? What’s that?

Move inside hush Over anthills of whispers Without you, where can I move?

Move, moving, mover Move over Move around Move through Are you comfortable? Are you moved?

A house doesn’t move.

Homes move. Families move.

Wind moves.

We move. Move with me.

Turn, twist and roll.

Move inside spacing Who can spare the change?

My pockets are empty. Except for bits of road inside bare seams.

— Annette Daniels Taylor

“Nest” Like a sparrow gathers grasses and threads for her nest, a safe basket for her brood, I collect scraps of thought, words on strips of paper, that one day will be wound into poems, strong vessels to contain my life.

— Carol Townsend

“And It Will Move You” There is something inherently Buffalo in the bass of the road as the 5 crawls to its lull.

While many endure the deferred ride and its clunky grumbling on the hard blue seats, there is always solace found when greeted with its hissing and open doors.

Whether it is the kids bartering gossip like classroom confessions or the 2nd shift worker bee spending dreams as bus fare, There is something inherently Buffalo here and it will move you, too.

“Y te Conmueve” Translated by Braulio Montalvo

Hay algo inherentemente búfalo en el bajo de la calle cuando el cinco se arrastra hacia su calma.

Cuando muchos toleran el viaje en diferido y su gruñido sobre los asientos azules y duros, hay siempre un consuelo encontrado cuando es bienvenido con su silbido y sus puertas se abren.

Ya sean los niños intercambiando habladurías como confesiones de clase o la trabajadora del segundo turno gastando los sueños como el billete de la guagua, hay algo inherentemente de Búfalo aquí y te conmueve a ti también.

— Julio Montalvo Valentín

“Worthy of Dreaming” I dream to create, for no other reason than my own satisfaction.

I dream to just breathe, And realize that I can have more in life but I don't need to.

Even if no one likes my creations, I am still valid.

I dream, to see myself as being capable and worthy of love.

— Keira Lorelei VanDerBeck

“Notations” Hey you, show me something like hearing the ocean in a shell like tree branches hanging on to raindrops like they are wearing them and they are The camera captures the real you when you’re laughing, so unclench the jaw roll your shoulders one by one Take a deep breath or two, close your eyes blink a few times, relax, look out a window Take up tap dancing, practice Double Time Steps and Shuffle off to Buffalo Contract and pulse and move whatever you hold — Dana Venerable

“THE JOY OF TOGETHERNESS” I sit in a classroom of 2.7 million future tragedies.

Boys that carry their parents’ hope that their son will be the one to win a war that has never seen a victor and girls that skip lunch to practice their smiles in the bathroom mirror for their inevitable appearance on the milk carton.

All the toothy smiles I have loved since third grade— nothing but collateral damage in the eyes of the law.

The boy next to me hasn’t stopped fidgeting all day.

Exactly a year ago, his mama poked fun at his restlessness, told him that she would tie a bell around his neck so that she would hear him whenever he moved and no one would ever take him away.

Now he wishes that he had done the same to her.

The boy’s mother is in prison and that is what he said when the teacher asked what had been troubling him.

— Taylor Yarns * with lines from Jaime Joyce’s “Let’s Make It Easier for Kids to Visit Incarcerated Parents”

“nomenclature” let us all have the heart of a blue whale, six feet wide, six human's lifelong breaths wide, six yearlengths on the horizon wide, six oceanwave crests wide six millennia of tears wide six ghost schooners of old wide, six million gasps of awe wide, six harmonic chord cycles reverberating wide, six holy rooms for kindnesses wide, six seabird wingspan sense of majesty wide.

— ryki zuckerman