These poems were selected through Sixty Literary, a biannual call for literary writing from writers and artists based in the Midwest. You can learn more about Sixty Lit’s inaugural call for writing here.

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Things We Did to Cool Our Bodies

We heckle each other,
enter a freezer’s mouth, shirtless,
our chests dampened from
the desert boiling
within our bellies.

The best part: a bicker over flavors,
strawberry stubble on our chins.
The heat simmers as we observe
the neighborhood outside fester
with a mirage of something
greater.

.

In this poem a woman misremembers a father

En route to O’Hare,
the rectrice of a plane glides overhead,
its silhouette a sunset.

I rouse my pilot, feeling the car’s sprint
pull me upward towards the indigo,
near the JetBlue logo splashed on the plane’s rib.
Our car lags, I watch its talons claw the tarmac.

↓

En route to a nest that has raised two generations,
I egg you on, clutching my side
as laughter leaks.

Snorting our breath, we fabricate futures,
my lips parting to grin as our bird skims the rocky driveway.

As you abandon, I remember
that you don’t live here,
the chemtrail from your car, a sunset.

.

Untitled

The Odawa soil
in Berwyn
reminds me of Oreos.

The cheap kind—
a kind of tar
that makes you
believe the love you
deserve is affordable.

A sticky road
where words are
dead ends.

I want to say what
my tongue cannot,
what silver maples whisper:

A kind of tar that
births a miracle
a truth somehow.

Because what is an Oreo,
what is Muscogee,
without love, without a name?

.

What Remains of the Jungle

Inspired by Mereba’s ‘The Jungle is the Only Way Out’

What remains of the jungle,
bodies that vine after they’ve raised
their blades.
Stillness heavy,
stiff as burlap; they
export illusions.
Out here, “freedom”
confines like a coffin.
Regrettably, we choke
on promises that keep
Lake Michigan blue—
what are we, if not
feed?
A twig snaps,
as a mob forms;
birds speak in
new tongues.
They chant
of our remains:

Somebody’s son died here.
But they want to pose with The Bean.
Cloud Gate won’t bring a body back.

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