Louder! | Issue 14

Voice

Tricia Knoll

The little girl asks “Are you all right?” I sit next to her to help her learn to read. She hears a problem in my voice. I tell her I’m old. Nothing hurts. I don’t have cancer. I don’t say that at age 50, a disability, spasmodic dysphonia, afflicted me. The nerves between my vocal cords and my brain sort of frayed. Jiggered my voice just when I was doing radio interviews for work. Vowels drop out. Apply adjectives like craggy and strangled. A hint of menace. The hinge of a rusty gate. Skeletons speak like I do; so do black locust trees that sway in a storm. I never play throw-an-echo in the rock canyon. Since alcohol eases the larynx, years ago I over-relied on dry martinis with three olives. Dreams roll out as silent movies. I applaud the audacity of wind that rattle-knocks snow off my roof. Wonder how the mouse objects as it tiptoes into my trap. Wish the mother with a baby at her breast could loan me a simple sigh. I mimic the soft snores of my terrier as if we are in dialogue. Only alone do I sing with the car radio. I have figured this out: my voice thrives in my fingertips. Keyboarding one hundred words a minute. Gentle tapping, rapping at poetry’s blood-red open door.

1

Tag

Jasmine Anderson

I’m nine.
Tall bones hiding in the blind spot of my home,
legs poking out from under beds.
I’ve outgrown hide and seek.
My breast can now spill into a man’s hand nearly filling them,
They sharpen during Tag –
Two porcupine quills under my flower tank top,
I’m a woman now.
Time for a new game
Only one rule: keep quiet,
because sound can escape from bolted doors –
pain can come from cousins.
Your girlishness slipped in his back pocket
jeans undressed.
Morning came.
And then it came for 15 years.
But I’m still nine.
My navel was mine and my mother’s
now a hole I sneak out of
for others to occupy.

2

getting cold, after stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

Em Roth

when the pope died we sat on your kitchen floor and ate two-dollar quesadillas not because the pope died but because we were hungry and broke and the taco bell was an easy walk when my car was still towed but the pope was still dead and his last call was to the church in palestine, i wonder what he said when he met his god do you think he asked forgiveness do you think god pointed at the martyred and said ask them instead, jesus was from palestine i will say palestine again here on the dirty floor when we called my mother the preacher we asked was it sacrifice because he cared or because we didn't, the cheese dripping from my lips i can't even flip a table it's not so much that history repeats but that it never ended and the pope is always dying by which i mean to say some new man always takes his place i am not just talking about the pope the hot sauce between your fingers is running down your wrist while someone is playing eddie money outside the window we are living in exile from ourselves in the empire yesterday someone else killed themselves in defiance and if we can't say there's something wrong with them then we have to say what is wrong with us i am not thinking about suicide i am just saying i get it, why isn't everyone flipping tables but the pope is still dead and the cinnamon twists are still getting cold.

3

Karachi and I

Ashar Ali

Travel flings suck – literally and figuratively
Karachi and I had a love-hate thing
for twenty-six years.
We separated on August 18th, 2017.
Still, we’d meet once or twice a year —
a familiar ache,
a guilty catch-up
never enough time

Karachi and I never really saw eye to eye
We hung out in different circles
Dangly earrings and masjids don’t really mix –
but somehow also in the same ones?
Getting stuck in a traffic jam on Korangi road and late night paratha roll runs

Karachi and I would share peaceful evenings
At a roadside dhaba sitting on dusty plastic tables and chairs
We’d have a soft moment over hot karak chai and sometimes a flaky paratha

Karachi and I would then fight –
about who gets to love who
and why I couldn’t shut the fuck up
about why it mattered so deeply

Karachi and I got divorced last year
The color changed from green to red
Congratulations were being sung
I wanted to throw up.

After that Karachi became more distant
Karachi and I fell into an anxious avoidant trap.
I would still come back and see Karachi.
But the quiet resentment prevailed.

But I still came back.
Like muscle memory
Like homesickness –
but not for home.
For something harder to name.

Karachi and I met again,
this time sooner than planned
We fought.
We fought in the beginning and I got angry at the same old things.
And so did Karachi.

Enter Dr Sahib,
Stage left.
At the same dhaba where Karachi and I would chill but also fight
Dr Sahib had brown eyes
Dr Sahib had gentle hands
Smelled like sunscreen he didn't wear and Marlboro Golds he didn't smoke
Dr Sahib showed me a side of Karachi I shut my eyes to

We shared cigarettes and joints with the Karachi I used to argue with
We secretly held hands and shared mini kisses.
Karachi looked away

Karachi and I pretended that this would last
And I wouldn't leave this time
But I will
I always do

Karachi and I usually say our goodbyes amicably
But this time it will be a little harder
This time Karachi had Dr Sahib.

Karachi will pretend she didn't notice that I left
She’ll go back to doing her thing
Whilst reminding me who I was
Before I knew better.

And me?
I wonder if Karachi and I hadn’t gotten that divorce
Would things be different?

I’d wonder once again –
What if I had stayed
Would things be different
Better?

And Dr Sahib would say:
Beshak

4

The Padilla Affair (Joking Aside)

Mark Murphy

i

In Castro’s Cuba, you’ll find nothing surprising
about the dissident poet
and his return from the dead,
telling the latest knock-knock jokes.
In both Americas, everyone is telling jokes,
except of course, Theodor Adorno
and Max Horkeimer. What’s the difference
between capitalism and socialism…

In America man exploits man, in Cuba
it’s the other way round.
However, Señor Padilla is having none of it
sitting at his vintage Underwood
firing out one liners like pejorative conspiracies,
which, of course, assail ‘having’ and ‘being,’
under the awnings of that city
that Kennedy always dreamt of destroying.

The same Havana that Batista turned
into a casino. Where the Cuban Union of Writers
and Artists are now telling jokes
against the workers. What’s the difference
between Marie Antoinete and false consciousness –
the difference between having your cake
and eating it. Of course, they don’t mention
their old Compañero, hungry children

or chewing tobacco leaves on the plantations
of Puerta de Golpa – as if to resuscitate
John Locke (restore ‘natural rights’ to the masses)
or assay their collective demands.

ii

Now the old poets are bombing on stage,
chasing their own tales in a joke
of their own making – condemning themselves
to the oldest gag in the book –
which lingers in the wind like ash
from burning books. Missing the punchline
altogether, which is the real terror
of our times.

5

Protesting from Bed

M. S. Marquart

Inspired by #MEAction’s annual #MillionsMissing protest

I may be disabled,
alone at home,
but my crip kin
invite me to join
protests from bed

A photo, a video,
a story, a sign
shared online —
I can still contribute,
my voice still counts

I am included
in photo montages,
social media posts;
my words are read
to reporters, politicians
I use the organizers’
simple tools
to sign petitions,
send letters
to representatives

I can watch the protests
live, streaming from DC:
save social security
save medicaid, medicare
save the search for cures

My one small voice
joins other voices from bed,
all our voices
coming together
getting loud

6

She Played Marc Anthony Loud

Joely Williams

The bus exhales before she does—
6:45 a.m. and the Café Bustelo’s gone cold.
Steam clings to her large sunglasses,
her chipped red nails tap out rhythms—
older than payroll clocks.

Her apartment smells like sofrito,
bleach, and hair being blow-dried.
Plastic still on the couch since ‘92.
She wears her crown in curlers,
soft slippers, a robe stained from last week's arroz con salchichas.

Kids spill into the yellow bus
like pigeons on Kingsbridge sidewalks,
gum in hair, shoelaces flapping,
talking about parents like they aren’t made of nerves.
No one calls her “Miss”—just “Driver.”
Her Bronx lingo is thick,
yelling at the world, quieting the kids.

On the ride, the rearview mirror watches her worry.
Not just for fights or smuggled candy,
but for signs—who came in quiet,
who hasn’t eaten, who’s breathing wrong.

She’s learned to speak three dialects:
authority, tenderness, and silence.

On weekends, Marc Anthony played loud.
One Saturday—me and the cousins—
burst through the door, freeze tag still clinging to our clothes—
and there she was on the floor,
bottle tipped, tears smudging her liner,
Marc’s voice cracking over the stereo.
Singing of love, heartbreak,
like he knew what it meant to be both mother and daughter
in the same lifetime.
She looked up—startled, then steady.
Wiped her face. Fixed her robe.
"¿Comieron?"
(Did you all eat?)
"¿Dónde estaban?"
(Where did you all go?)
Became mother again in half a breath.

On Mondays, she’s back to ‘Driver’.
In her seat before the sun,
fighting sleep and asylums,
asking nothing but for peace, the right A/C and stereo system.

But I carry that Saturday in my chest—
a woman undone and remade—
in the space of a child's question.
Louder than the school bell.
Louder than the city’s cold shoulder.
Louder than the hush of women like her—
held together by curlers and courage.

7

Flowa

Janan Young

Flow sleeps with flowers. So,
what of the sunbaked
flam and flambé, a shake
and a warble, vibrato quiver
in a backyard waterfall.
Percuss lemons and a trumpet vine
like a trilobite and a trillion furrows.
Tan the rootstocks on the fingers
of a passenger's pigeons. Firm
the colors in a molten Leonid.
It is lengthwise lentando to let on
a hairspring
in the half-and-half of halos
and lyricism. The foozles
are threaded into her tail and then
gurgle through his antennae as vegetation.
We call it co-conscious.
Pewter phrasing. Whorls.
Outside the mainstream
is fountain cumulus,
a flowery metamorphic
Carl Sagan flying over Chernobyl
with a weathervane. Me-thinks short,
short stories and to create a mood, but sweet.
A door with squeaky hinges opening and
closing. Music is temperate prophecy,
photopia with sunglasses and phrasing.
I want honey in my tea.

8

Defiance

Flavian Lupinetti

I am the mighty oak across the asphalt ocean
from the supermarket you patronize
just before you cozy your empty cart against my bark
rather than scootering it back to yonder emporium
of carbs calories and carnivore bait
or even parking it within the tender embrace
of the repository under the “Please Leave Carts Here” sign
a mere ten paces from your ’98 Subaru

kind of a dick move don’t you think

oh I get it it’s your act of rebellion
your dismantling of the Bastille
your storming of the Winter Palace
a regular Che Guevara are you not
in righteous revolt

you never consider by setting this example
you rationalize the conduct of others who also
abandon their vehicles to form an exponentially growing
traffic jam that while causing me no physical harm
creates an aesthetic nightmare

a nightmare condemned to irrelevance
by the revolutionary ideals of you
you my sincere Sendero Luminoso
you mon petit Viet Minh
you my bad Baader-Meinhof

9

Spray

Jennifer Locke

Sometimes I still squeeze my breasts in the shower.
I take my small hands and cup their doughy weight,
and I press.
I’m looking for the bead of white which precedes the arc of milk produced by my squashing palms–
that wild, delightful arc–
that hits the shower wall and dribbles down.

The spray always made me smile, even though I never made much milk. It was so animal, so pleasing.
“Look what I can do!”
I have three girls, so I haven’t witnessed this firsthand, but I’m told this is how it is for boys as they learn the multivarious ways they can spray the earth with their piss. I’m told they’re just feral, swinging their little penises with abandon, marking their territory left and right.
The milk spray must be the female version.
Who wouldn’t want that power? I think as I remember myself,
issuing forth twin ribbons of white.

I still try it,
Even though it’s been years since the white beads appeared from the small dots in my nipples–
Years that feel like days.
They say you can milk anything if you squeeze it enough–
But why would I want to do that, I think, I have other things to do.
The milk is gone and it’s not coming back.
My womb is gone.
And I don’t mind! Strangers tell me ‘You have your hands full,’ and they’re right, I do. I don’t miss my womb. Sometimes I miss the spray, though. How wild it was. How elemental.

That life-sustaining current moving through me.

10

All the Quiet Things Were Loud First

Oluwanifemi Bakare

This city once whispered—
in the dark between danfo horns
and mama Eboh’s early morning curses
in the way NEPA blinked twice before surrender
in how your mouth trembled when you said
you were tired of trying.

Now it screams.
in billboard preachers on third mainland
in generator gulps louder than your thoughts
in the market woman’s protest-song haggling
in the silence that follows your mother’s prayers
when she says
“God no deaf.”

I watched a man light a cigarette with the sun—
his hunger gleamed golden.
“na suffer head dey hot pass fire,” he said,
and laughed like a man who’s seen too much road.
my father once said the world will teach you to shout
but not how to be heard.

So I write this:
with fists full of sand
and lungs clogged with unspoken poems
hoping that even if the wind won’t carry my voice,
the dust will
settle on someone’s windowsill
as evidence
that I was here
and I said something.

11