Early evening heat rises from pavements, from cement and asphalt, carrying a scent slightly sour, slightly acrid—oily and tar-like.
Outside the café, beyond its fenced-in tables, a large man looks down, pleading with a small woman in a light summer dress and with light-brown hair—
“But I gave it up, I gave it up for you,” he repeats, “I gave it up for you . . .” exactly what he gave up, we know not— drink, drugs, that job in New York?
On one corner, an angle-front building shows the “Nordstrom Rack” sign, while around the next from it, a man lies unconscious, as if dropped recently
from another kind of rack—his hand droops at his side, offering no excuse, as people walk and see “nothing here.” Further down, the chalkboard sign
by the door of “Imperial Wines and Spirts” proclaims “Four Bottles of Bourbon for $100”—not a bad price, and open Sunday, too, so no weekends lost.
The couple waiting at the crosswalk nuzzle each other, feeling a different heat, oblivious to the old woman down the block, shouting angry
indecipherable rants in rasping tones, sawing at the attention of the crowd. We keep walking, having seen but still unseeing—this show goes on nightly.
Above us, on the ledge beneath the sign for “Charles Schwab Investments,” perches a lone pigeon, observant but indifferent, raising its right foot to adjust a feather.
Vincent Casaregola teaches American literature and film, creative writing, and rhetorical studies at Saint Louis University. He has published poetry in a number of journals, as well as creative nonfiction, short fiction, and flash fiction. His poetry collection, Vital Signs (dealing with illness, loss, trauma, and grieving), is now available from Finishing Line Press.
I remember this – I was a child clutching the string of a green balloon Shivering next to classmates On a blustery day in March Our shaky cursive messages on strings
We set our balloons free Watching them ride wildly through the air Our necks craned backwards As green faded into blue Hoping someone would find our words
I remember this – We could grow a garden in the spring The summer lasted just one season The rains came in fall – the snow came in winter There were no hurricanes in western Carolina
I remember this – We used to look each other in the eyes And read each other’s faces We used to talk to strangers – on the bus – on the street We used to read books printed on paper
You ask me about America’s future But I want to tell you a story About the time I knit a sweater From the yarn that I found In a basket from your grandmother.
Heather Bruce Satrom teaches English to Speakers of Other Languages at Montgomery College. Her oral history project, “History in the Making: Documenting Stories of Immigrant and Refugee Students,” won the American Association of Community Colleges’ Faculty Innovation Award in 2024. A believer in the healing power of storytelling, Heather writes poetry and creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in WWPH Writes, Maryland Literary Review, The Mid-Atlantic Review, and in the anthology America’s Future: Poetry & Prose in Response to Tomorrow.
quiet nights held inside your hands like water waiting for the chance to become your ladder.
you first reminisced, as if maybe certain musings you’d want to hold out for again, buying yourself more time.
how could I have fully known that you were planning a one-way trip to winter?
survivor’s guilt for me mostly feels like I’m glued to the stage in the spotlight, unable to look any audience member in the eyes. Nor can I muster up a ballad for the microphone. without you, my friend, every thursday afternoon in that first floor art classroom was ever so lonesome. where you are now, stars melt in your skin, illuminating all corners of this world, and the next.
the rewind button on this remote won’t bring you back to the physical like I thought it would.
I miss you, come back home. maybe we could have a beer and laugh ‘round the campfire, in the woods.
WHISPERS OF THE TIDES
The present breaks through the clearing I’ve made, out of everything and nothing.
‘Though I’ve stood here resolutely, always, I’d erred for the comfort of longing for a future unpromised, and a past with shallow breath.
What are now but faded memories, I begged to cling to life, for a little longer.
I promise I won’t drown a second time,
I know you’ve gotta go, I know you’ve gotta go.
The future, justified, owes me nothing, but for my heart, oh, let a preemptive pardon clear anyway.
Everything else is rooted, I’ll try to be okay.
Tony Nicholas Clark (he/him) is a black, trans writer from Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Short Edition, Soundings East, Epiphany Magazine, and others. He holds an M.A in English & M.F.A in Creative Writing from Monmouth University. Tony was a 2024 Poet-Author Fellow at the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing.
Featured image in this post is “VISTA’s infrared view of the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8),” ESO/VVV, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
(David sings-“ dee bee dee bee dee bee boop dee poop
Dee bobbity poop dee do do.”)
David Eberhardt, 83, was a member of the historic Baltimore Four with father Philip Berrigan, Tom Lewis, and Rev. James Mengel; who, in a bold act of civil disobedience, poured blood on draft files at a Selective Service office on October 27, 1967. For this, the group was convicted and sent to federal prison. A fixture of the Baltimore poetry scene since the 1960s, Eberhardt began writing for underground newspapers and has remained an active voice ever since. In recent years he’s turned to parody, crafting takes on works by poets like William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His shift reflects a belief that “poetry needs more humor.”
Featured image in this post is, “Gallus gallus domesticus” by Böhringer friedrich, licensed via creative commons 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Malachi Byrd is the winner of the 2025 DC Poet Project, an annual poetry reading series and open-to-all poetry competition produced by Day Eight, publisher of the Mid-Atlantic Review. Day Eight is publishing Before We Gone by Malachi Byrd Fall 2025. A book launch reading for Before We Gone is scheduled for Saturday October 11, 2025.
2045
The year is 2045 and I am the last native left in D.C. A man on a bullhorn tells me I have 3 minutes to evacuate or they’ll open fire on me And this gives me a sense of pride because death can’t scare someone whose home has vanished before his eyes but I knew this day would come
I heard that if you scream at the top of your lungs in the city you’re from that breath will circle the earth and catch you when you need it most
So I pray this poem be planet-sized propellers that prevent my people from being pushed across the Potomac
And I vividly remember how the big neighborhoods were the first to go, how the place I learned to read became a Trader Joe’s
And yes the city was rough but we triumphed despite our pain And looking back I would’ve told us to be scared of dog parks Starbucks and bike lanes
This poem started writing itself in 2012 when Southeast didn’t have a trauma unit and Ward 8 victims were pushed to the bottom of the call log, In 2022 when somebody told me that they were from D.C. and they were really from Waldorf
And what seems like a microaggression is actually the difference between ruins and a renaissance Language is the reason you hear violent and criminal and think of Southeast before you think of the Pentagon
This place is not parsley for your plate not an instagram caption not a revolving door not a pit stop not a detour It’s not even the nation’s capital anymore
Because no amount of capital can unbound the blood bond I got with these blocks the soul ties we got with these streets
The year is 2045 and I am the last native left in D.C. Muriel Bowser is on her seventh consecutive term Martin Luther King is now Wall Street Skyscrapers lace what used to be the heart of the South Side and this big chair is all that I got left
So this city, I will 1965 riot for it ride for it ‘cus what is a city if not the people that died for it
My body belongs with my people it was never for audit dump your mortgage you do not own this land just because you bought it
Remember I will always be the boy who repped his city like a state Remember I was the congas that never lost they crank Remember I was the native that didn’t bend nor break
Remember I Remember I Remember I died for the place that gave me life
Addendum Upon second thought ain’t no block or plot that deserves my blood No neighborhood that has earned my urn and as much as I love this city I do not know her anymore
The love of my life took my lemonade and made lemons took my sacrifice and made it sour again
And before I was down to be martyr and miracle to stand firm in my final days but now I know that my city is not a place it’s punctuation on a life sentence the slur in my accent the congas in my crank
And sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the nostalgia remember the revival more than the repast remember what my grandfather was instead what my grandmother does
When I say I would give my life for the city I mean the coroners will crack open my chest to a knot of Northeast hear Overnight Scenario when they cut me open
But the place I once loved is no longer a barrage of buildings it’s a moment an amalgamation of what was and what could’ve been
My city cannot be gentrified because it is not a place it is a people a purpose and a point to prove and when they set the soil for the skyscrapers I knew my height wasn’t holy enough
So yes the cranes won the construction crew carried us out and the outsiders got their way
But even when Malcolm X Park becomes McConaughey Way Marion Barry becomes Musk Manor when this country decides I am more rebellious than resource
We will live without buildings without boundaries without blood
You can have this land I pray my dead makes your daffodils dangle I hope our candles light your picnic
I hope you love it I hope you love it I hope you love it Until the land decides to love you back the way it loved us
Time Black people don’t never be on time. It’s me, I’m Black people. I don’t care if it’s your birthday, Your baby shower, Or your bachelor party Malachi…. is going to be a bit behind
I promised that I would try to be punctual and I was being honest but I went to a Lauryn Hill concert on Thanksgiving and she didn’t step on stage until Kwanzaa and that’s when I knew I too had a problem
I have nightmares of running away from hands that only reach 12 succumbing to secondhand grandfather clocks and becoming a pendulum that never swings back Black boys look blue in the moonlight but every shadow is Black on a sundial and I just do not want to die. Especially before I learn the person I’m supposed to be. Really, I do not want time to run out of me
But truthfully, I have a toxic relationship with this timeline Somewhere between my mother who had me at 16 and me not making enough money to have a child until I’m 60 Somewhere between the early bird gets the worm and as a boy of a dying breed I never want to wake up and stare at the soil I used to think that when you got older you finally understood how the world works but really I think the monumental moments massage the urgent out of us.
I always wanted to be the young parent that knew all the songs at the kids’ party The cool chaperone that could recite the latest raps Without embarrassing the kids But let’s be honest you become embarrassing the moment you make an embryo So no, I don’t care about knowing the newest dance I want to be 100 years old doing the oldest dance imaginable
This whole time I thought that I was running out of time, but really I was catching up to it. I am learning to be on time That I can be both poem and prompt Both punctuation and punctual
I proclaim here and now that I will walk into the sunset I will walk step by step into the afterlife with all of my breath and all of my composure but more importantly, that day is nowhere near I am breaking the generational curse of the sun setting at 2pm Screw being a lawyer or a doctor I want to be ancient I want to be a Morgan Freeman meme I want to be the everlasting everglade that sees the world change over and over again until the last day comes
More than a writer I want to be a relic Lorraine Hansberry only lived to the age of 35 so I will age until I am a Raisin in the Sun The world used to move fast then it slowed down now I want it to stop I don’t want to kill time I want to be on time all the time in line with the life that is supposed to mine.
Malachi Byrd is the 2025 winner of the DC Poet Project, a competition that identifies and supports exceptional poets. The artist known as MalPractice is a poet, teacher, battle rapper, songwriter, and arts advocate from the District of Columbia. He is the former youth Poet Laureate of Washington, D.C. and a graduate of Princeton University. A full-time artist, the author has taught in over 100 schools in the DMV.
