If you say so | Issue 18

taraxacum officinale

Zapoura Newton-Calvert

how to get rid of dandelions:
remove the long taproot
dig out with claws or rake
pour boiling water
poison with vinegar and salt
kill with herbicide

and still each parachute
seeds a hundred, a thousand new plants
for millions of years
rayed flower
straight down from my chin
through my chest

entirely food and medicine
bitter leaves
and candy flowers

for bees and children
their mothers
with honey in the walls
words buzzing in their lungs

roots so deep
they break up hard soil

hold the seed head gently

blow

1

Auntie Mary’s Chair

Osasere Ewansiha

Auntie Mary never bothered me.
She let me and my anime sit in peace
in the middle of the little closet that was her salon,
as long as I held my head well.

I remember the satisfying crunch of braiding hair,
as she twisted it into an elaborate pattern on my scalp
with a tight hand that threatened to braid my brain into my cornrows.

I smell the smear of Blue Magic on the back of her hand that soothed
burns a relaxer left the night before,

I can still hear the clattering of her children’s footsteps,
who excitedly squeezed past their mother
to greet the mysterious guest with a smile.

There was a little TV that was nestled between bottles of cream,
it played Yoruba movies that I watched when I got tired of my Kindle screen.

One day, she said, “You see that cat?”
“Yes Auntie?” I replied, seeing the feline flash in the frame,
“If it was Nigeria, I would just catch it and eat it. They don’t do it here,” she laughed,

Dragging her comb through my hair,

Parting it, as she finished
The next braid
And the next,
And the next.

2

Local Legend

Joel Bush

An old man on our street
cured his pesky toothache
by prying out
his back molar
with a box-cutter.

Don’t fret.
He sanitized the blade
with a Bic lighter,
and the knife was
X-Acto brand,
so you know
it was sharp enough.

He would’ve paid
hundreds for a dentist.
And you always have to supply
the blood and pain yourself.

3

Hymn for the worst heat wave of our times

Greeshma Gayathri

“Keep an onion in your pocket and stay safe from the heat”
— Union Minister Shri. Jyotiraditya Scindia

O pink god pullulating the dry corners of our kitchen floors,
accept our salty lacrimal offering and jump whole
into our neat linen pocket-holes.

Nuzzle against our thighs, remind us in every swing
and sashay of hip, you are our bulwark
against the ocean's colic.

In your dome of charms, make us grow scales
tough as Chambal's desiccated shales. Nothing will
happen, you assure. Of course, everything else pales
against your word. Who would dare
to rouse your sulphurous wrath?

O dweller of the underworld, negotiator
of wet-bulb temperatures, we praise.

Nuke our lives with your bulbous grace.

4

Before Thai Food

Chinyere Obasi

Mark asks if I want to be White and I say
no,
rather

I want
(people’s sight of whatever beauty lies in me)
to be uncomplicated
Unsoiled
Clean
Plain
A tabula rasa
A blank sheet
A napkin

5

Pāyal Walks Out of the Body

Hannan Khan

I wait in the weave of the charpoy
heat held like a held-down sigh
she leaves me to shut up the floor
but the floor won’t shut up her leaving

A latch absorbs her wrist
her wrists un-absorb the latch
I circle the talus that circles me
I furl the night that won’t furl me

He calculates her steps to make them his
his steps unmake her calculation
his lips keep the salt of her heel
her heels keep the ache of his mouth
I chhan-chhan where there’s no chhan-chhaning
I hush what won’t hush me heavily

She shrouds me under the pillow
pillow shrouds her under me tenderly
cloth chews into skin & I tighten what had loosened
he lifts & jerks the dark onto her
she lowers herself out of it
the room pins her choke

She chokes the pin by not breaking
his hand turns her face down
her face turns the hand into a wall
he crushes the breath out of her mouth
her mouth keeps the breath from him
his weight christens her body
her body erases the christening

He takes what he hails his ḥaq
she takes her ḥaq herself by leaving her body
charpoy groans him into her
she ungroans the charpoy by going still

She says nothing to orgasm it
nothing orgasms what says her
bed takes her in —
I chhan-chhan against the silence
silence chhan-chhans against me

Outside, the dog devours the dark
the gate yawns into the wide street
she moves toward not-here

I fall from her like a scant mercy
mercy falls from her like me
he wakes to the echo I don’t make
I make the waking he won’t wake

Sunrise puts light on her pāyals
her pāyals put light on the sun
marks clothe her like metal
metal attires her like marks

She peels me off to walk away
I walk her back by peeling on

6

Tell

Paul Smith

There is this movie about
a gambler who eats Oreos
his eyes move from one card player
to another
all the while twisting an Oreo
and their eyes watch him
and his cookie
either he twists it apart so that
the white inside sticks to one side
or the cookie breaks
or half the creamy center stays on one side
and half on the other
the card sharks know
when
all the white goo stays on one half
of the cookie
they fold

Our cousin John tells tall tales
each yarn is revealed as
one hand reaches up to the
side of his face
pulling down so that
one eye droops
right above his thumb
while four fingers grab his jaw
on the other side
his mouth opens
like the entrance to a catacomb
then the hand becomes one
sliding further
down the throat
clutching it
followed by
a half-baked sigh
we know what is coming
he was a helicopter pilot in Nam
he knew everyone in
a Swedish rock band that featured
four cellos
last but not least
he promises to take all of us
to Disneyworld one spring
to spin in Alice in Wonderland’s teacups
but when Aunt Barb corners him
he fesses up
grabs at his jowls again and
tells us he’s broke

I tried that thing with
the Oreo
doing my darndest to make the
creamy white stuff stick to
one side
it’s a tossup
some days
the hand goes your way
other times
it just crumbles

7

Snake Skin

Tahna Bargen-Lema

“I’m not afraid
to have a crush”
she says
after flirting with me
furiously
for hours

I’m not afraid either
(at least not now)
not here
with her big smile
and her hands that talk

We are in dresses
with gold scales
pressing fresh colour
onto our lips
side by side
“You are so pretty”
she says
adding weight to each word
I swallow it whole
like a snake
planning to digest it
for days

I used to say
I didn’t like flirty friends
I wanted it
one way
or the other

I take it back

It feels good to be wanted
It feels good to want
within the safe habitat
of a friendship

She’s not afraid
to be in love
with a man
and to be friends
with me
I’m not afraid either
(at least not now)

She jokes that she wants
to take me home
that there is a slice of bed
between her
and her fiance
just big enough
for me

I remember the story
of a pet snake
who slipped
into her owner’s bed
every
night

stretching alongside her
waiting measuring
until she was big enough
to swallow
her whole

8

Public Speaking After the Governor Declared our Civil Rights Group a Terrorist Organization

Katherine Shehadeh

In the manmade lake, minnows surround a pinkening tomato,
needling into its soggy flesh ‘til its skin breaks open, becomes frayed
& its particles, formerly bonded by chains, float atop the water,
wading between consumption & assumption as two turtle shells
appear—leaving the tomato guts to bob—fish fleeing their fate as prey.
I send pictures of these long neck turtles to my partner, along with a snake

from Instagram painted by someone on mushrooms. A silly sea snake,
like the sweater on my feed reading, “Make America Italy 4/28/45”. Mussolini’s belly a tomato-
tinged trace as his shell hanged upside down in Milan that day, arms splayed.
That picture, I didn’t send, not because it’s not funny, but because I am afraid.
I think now before I send. Consider a case vs. me, evidence of Henry Kissingers in hell
& Luigi likes, so many Luigi likes, which maybe wouldn’t sink some in hot water,

but because we’re “terrorists” I worry how words look on a sweater,
dress instead in a print depicting flowers and pink fruit, maybe a snake
shaking his don’t-tread-on-me tail, or NRA-supportin’ shotgun shells
& whatever opinions I’m still allowed to have, to make—know
now why the Egyptian boy at last year’s reading was suddenly stone quiet, afraid
from lessons learned on cinderblock & cold floor, his young life barely pried

free from the clutches of my empire’s tyranny. In whispers, we pray
prostrating ourselves like fruit before the sun, bobbing atop the water
hoping to ascend into the universal soup versus artificial lake-sprayed,
sucked into fights between minnows and some professor, slippery as snake,
who needed a Muslim to speak on a panel, a token for his friends to lob tomato-
weighted accusations against, but they say death to America (lol). They shilled

fake questions, needling me to disavow governments I don’t know, in defense of tanks shelling
toddlers sleeping in tents, in defense of guarding our words like prey,
while my brain begins to bob on the ripples of their questions like that pink tomato,
skin thinning with every biting word. My answers roll off their fish skin like water.
New goalposts, new demands to distance ‘til this meeting is naked.
I see why they brought us here, whose voices they hoped to’ve frayed.

Instead they’ve got me, some silly little longneck who should be afraid
but’ll shield my friends’ flesh using what words I still have like turtle shells
to protect against their accusations, secretly considering the snake
in that Instagram post. How straight the line stretched across its page in praise,
the way the painter probably saw it squiggling through swirling blue water
not needing to make its movements obvious. To me though,

it first looked cooked like a potato, french-fried. Green stick-up, ray
of light, majestic—is this hell? With eddies swirling in cobalt water,
stunned-silent body of snake. Tongue licked out in defiance—its however-red tomato.

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