Title Page
Carlina Duan, Bea Troxel, John Miguel Shakespear
perhaps, years from now, I will pause to reconsider it:
this slipknot loosening, this slinky tide of awe carrying
me closer to myself. what other lives have I lived to cup
my hands around today: where I touch the papery petals
of a new poppy, its face sheer and luminous, reddening
towards the light. but isn’t this how it always goes?
I say Look when I mean, some cardinal slips through
a current of air, ordinary and pristine. say Luck
when I mean, standing by water, I am made brazen
with it: the soft edges between Grief and Joy.
lurking between myself & myself, there go
entire histories of breath—who lived so I
could inherit, yes, this red water within
me? (pulse & blood, pavement & star)—
I etch myself across the water; I sling myself
further towards the light. what a dare: to live
& live amidst the vastness of worlds past
& come. an extraordinary debt, this quivering
a body makes. this gentle knowing that someday,
what’s to come is to come. & someday,
I will again touch a wild poppy found
in the grass—& glimmer with the hue.
poem by Carlina Duan // read by Bea Troxel
music composition by John Shakespear
vocals by John Shakespear & Bea Troxel
John Miguel Shakespear is a writer and musician from Massachusetts. His fiction can be found in Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, and Cincinnati Review, and his debut record Spend Your Youth drew praise from NPR and American Songwriter. He lives in New York City and bears no know relation to William Shakespeare.
Bea Troxel writes essays and songs, will begin her MFA at U of Arizona this fall, and is obsessed with beavers, fake phones, and Nashville’s local water park, Wave Country.
Carlina Duan loves community gardens. Author of the poetry collections I Wore My Blackest Hair (Little A, 2017), and Alien Miss (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021), Carlina is an Assistant Professor in English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she teaches poetry.
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