the blueshift journal

existing is an act of revolution

Landon Marchant

​

bloated, the grass burps mud.

work-worn RedWing boots

bruise the sodden ground.

​

this fog reeks of rotting snow. it is

Sunday morning, 9 am.

invisible but not silent, a crow argues with itself.

harsh, grating.

​

it is hard to breathe, with

damp memories of construction rumblings and farm fences,

with past lives

twisting in my nose.

unseasonably warm, January clings like

spring. like rebirth, renewal, a seventh chance, shedding the

decomposing flesh of

yesterday. or was it years?

​

heavy:

General Issue dog tags chill

my 98.2° meatbag,

grounding today's bones in

everything

repeats.

​

everything

brings us home.

​

I have been here a hundred times.

Beginnings smell like rotting snow.

​

~

Landon Marchant is a veteran of the United States Air Force, former plumbers apprentice, LGBT advocate, and first year at Williams College.

there's a dying girl in the sand

Isabelle Jia

​

a man watches her body turn—

sea salt and kelp scraps.

​

he took her body to the butcher,

licked his lips for ground meat.

​

the butcher packed her into styrofoam money—

just her teeth, kneecaps, breasts.

​

i found her saran-wrapped in a meat market.

she told me she was on his grocery list

​

but she was number twenty-six.

it was strange how her body wept.

​

no eyes no fears no sound.

silenced by the familiarity of being

​

small. she let the funeral home take

what they could salvage

​

from the grinder, and she was packed

into another child’s coffin—

​

no one else could stomach the stench

of youth.

~

Isabelle Jia is a sixteen-year old poet whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Blueshift Journal, Polyphony HS, Glass Kite Anthology, Phosphene, Track Four, and Sooth Swarm. Jia has attended the Iowa Young Writer’s Studio and the California State Summer School of Arts. She has also been recognized as a California Arts Scholar, by the Walt Whitman Poetry Foundation, and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She is a poetry editor for the Glass Kite Anthology and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA.

for we shall be torn from each other

Alfredo Aguilar

​

i step into a home & can hear only
bricks falling out. clothes on

​

a line are sopping & heavy
with rain. brass cuts through

​

the sound of hammers striking
strings. we are the voice

​

of a lone trumpet on ice.
the floor is an alternative

​

to heaven. forgive me. i was given
this one life & spent it divining

​

signs at the bottom of a cup.
your hands cradle my face—

​

i am prepared to disappoint you.
i am sorry the past comes so quickly.

​

a blue deeper than your eyes rubbed
into my skin. swear to me

​

the rain makes every window
we look out ours.

​

~

Alfredo Aguilar is the son of Mexican immigrants. His work has appeared in Winter Tangerine, Vinyl, Drunk in Midnight Choir, & elsewhere. He lives in North County San Diego.

It Begins, January 20th

Levi Todd

​

after Safia Elhillo

​

I jump and land on Demi’s feet

but she says there is no room

for apologies at this party. We ransack all

the oxygen the dance floor has, pledge allegiance

to who we are and will become, it is day one

and tonight I wanted to become my bed

but showed up anyway. I am pushed and land

with my knees bent, arm bracing the ground

and make it look intentional, grind my hips

into the quaking floorboards and rise again

when I am ready. This house party

is a sovereign nation and the law says

raise hell. It’s ours now. There is no martial authority

but mosh pit, when you are shoved you shove back,

when someone falls you lift them up and bless

the dust off their body. If we make this house crumble

we will admit fault and build another. We worship no flag

but shaking canvas on walls, billowing glory

of mic cords, stars this smoke is rising

toward. Swear me into the party

of the people by the people for the people

who push me in the name of grace, I fall again

and do no one the favor

of staying there.

​

~

Levi Todd is a poet from Chicago always trying to make his way back. He is the Founder and Executive Director of Reacting Out Loud, an independent organization devoted to uplifting poetry and affirming community in Muncie, Indiana. He has also served as Executive Editor at Polyphony HS and Poetry Editor at The Broken Plate. His work has been published in or is forthcoming from The Indianola Review, In Transit, and Thread.

Spellwork (for protecting those I love)

Jennifer Givhan

​

Into the dark body I went into

wells gurgling the way syrup in a wound

& gauze      someone tender

wrapped me

o syringe o bloodletting

no      I insist      it was necessary

sadness      sparkling as river rocks

tiny pebbles jamming the skin

& minnows

      finding homes for holes

Is there a monster inside you     too      the children

ask everyone in the water

the children ask me what I cannot

accept      not yet      not hours I fight

the sickness

O Lord you know what children need

many arms reach (a village     a whole seed for planting)

      we climb from the river

mosquitos plucked from calves      slit of silver jangle

at my own throat      I pulled the cards

& lay them on the sheets      black candle lit

between my thighs

      & prayed & prayed & prayed

​

​

~

Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American poet from the Southwestern desert. She is the author of the full-length collections Landscape with Headless Mama, which won the 2015 Pleiades Editors' Prize, and Protection Spell, winner of U. of Arkansas Press's 2016 Miller Williams Series Prize, and two poetry chapbooks, Curanderisma (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming 2016) and The Daughter's Curse (ELJ, forthcoming 2017). Her honors include an NEA Fellowship, a PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship, The Frost Place Latin@ Scholarship, The 2015 Lascaux Review Poetry Prize, The Pinch Poetry Prize, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best of the Net 2015, Best New Poets 2013, AGNI, TriQuarterly, Crazyhorse, Blackbird, The Kenyon Review, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, and Southern Humanities Review (where she was a finalist for the 2015 Auburn Witness Prize). She is Poetry Editor at Tinderbox Poetry Journal and teaches online workshops at The Poetry Barn.