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The Journey of a Ghost
I. Out of Darkness Here in the realm of shadow, in the deep darkness of a wretched chasm that never lightens, lives a ghost. Living lonely, it craves to spread this darkness, but it knows nothing of the bright world above. One day, it stumbles across a traveller exploring. It has seen men stumble into…
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Babysitting
You sleep fretfully, stirring up the buttermilk air. It’s been through your lungs and mine. You’re grasping and grasping, with hands plump and rosy. For hours you’d screamed, straining and messing my hair until exhausted. I notice us in the windowpane and let my neck slacken and chin fall forward. A mahogany…
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Still Race
A burgundy ant scampers along an iron windowsill, weaves manically around bits of old dust as if they’re skyscrapers. Dust picks up, sometimes, when the train car door opens. Makes me sneeze. Take a bite from my organic wrap – hand-packed the way my mother does it. Her mother would wrap grape leaves around loaves…
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Flawed ways to recognize what remains of home
The extremely specific black-brown spots on bananas, as though painted upon; symbols in smoke; the convenience of exploitation; the mistake of birth. Perhaps the last one is common in all lands. The uncomfortable ease of your childhood bedroom cannot be replicated. An echochamber of extremity—too cold, or too hot, with peeling walls. And the set…
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SURROGATE
Ava Adelaja’s poem was a finalist for the 2025 Nassau Weekly Poetry Competition. SURROGATE For Pamela (Mimi) I. Her hair’s somewhat intact, ruddy clumps on the skin, hanging like the sanguine bush-berries you’re not supposed to eat, tempting. I fixate on that ‘cause her voice has fallen to a register that quite cools…
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On Sunday, go to the Pond and be selfish
Iman Monfopa Kone’s poem was a finalist for the 2025 Nassau Weekly Poetry Competition. On Sunday, go to the Pond and be selfish there you will find that there is no great mystery. and even though this morning, a man buried his brother, you weep for a lover who wouldn’t love you back.…
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When Shall White Lilies Replace my Kalaniot?
The Kalaniot (poppy anemone) is a potent symbol for both Israelis and Palestinians: its red, white, and black petals and green stem match the colors of the Palestinian flag, while in the winter it famously blankets the Otef Azah region of Israel, precisely where the October 7 massacres occurred. Both peoples have since used this…
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Diamond in this Room
We all want the melt of you the pulsing red ocean full of brine, combed by pearly topsail shimmers imagined to infinity but never really making slices, want to drive a four-fathom pike down and down and lose it on the way. Fathom comes from old english when it used to mean “embrace”…
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Spetses Sonnets
Avery Gendler’s sonnet series was awarded first place in the 2025 Nassau Weekly Poetry Competition. The poems demonstrated not only an innovative style but a commitment to consistent and beautiful language — making the old new again. Spetses Sonnets I. Legend We swim to a cave, underneath the rock ledge inches from our heads. Pleasure…
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Because We Were Girls Together
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? (from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) Because We Were Girls Together (a golden shovel) …
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No machine
In lieu of goodbye I send a tiny house in the mail, flimsy porcelain talisman a weak barricade. Like Joni I become cellophane, no personal defenses, the wrapper on a pack of cigarettes, the dirt on the road of your espresso cup — in sand in bone you will learn to drink it. I let…