In Which Mallory Learns Three Important Things
About Herself as She Pinwheels to Death, Among Other Things

p.1
Dear Mother,
I do not regret the time we never spent.

Dear Father,
I am you and you are me. Who came first? The chicken or the egg?

Dear Self,
You must accept the fact that your imminent death is not and will never be glorious.

p.2
The worst part of realizations,
is they are cruel because
they cannot be changed.

Mine is that I will die
in exactly 17.12 minutes,
(my suit calculates)
whirling between
green, blue, black
speckled with
pinpricks of distant
light from a
different age.

I do not scream.
I do not cry.
I accept.
I am streaking
through time and
the atmosphere is
so close, filling my polycarbonate
visor with wisps of white.

I am glad that the last
thing I will see before
I asphyxiate is the
pacific ocean. I wonder
if fish look up
and wonder what it
is like to breathe.

p.3
I do not envy anything.
I am here, staring at my
entire life defined to
four numbers ticking!

(I have moved past
all things in life. I have
moved past staring at
twin tombstones and
I shall move even when
my synapses shall not,
forever freefalling into
nothing.)

the third thought
that cartwheels across
me squealing heavenly
mercy cries⸺
who will remember you?

The birds twittering under the shingles
of my roof, the squirrels eating the acorns
left on my porch, my posters hanging in
my room are all bits of my
existence and remember me in of
themselves.

I am real; my pain is proof of this.

p.4
00.10
there
00.09
is
00.08
nothing
00.07
more
00.06
beautiful
00.05
than
00.04
earth.
00.03
I
00.02
am
00.01
happy.

for Katie

by the glow of the cigarette she bummed, Madam Marie read her palm

overcoming the limitations of Etch-A-Sketch with a ball-peen hammer

I’ve given up on the idea of ever bending a spoon with my mind

the gray green Atlantic rollers on the way to my father’s first wave

Fuller’s Earth

her thumb print 

next to mine

the staggering odds he was deifying depended on a simple utterance

foreman berating Snot-rocket at the work site

bird migration

Hitchcock rushes to board before the closing doors

of the bus in my consciousness

three fairy ‘glees’ for the soul of Jack Kerouac

he came out in the heat to pick a leaf up off the lawn

her dead son’s shoeshine box

the footrest

size 9

Governments of this overheated world, ashamed before astral travelers

HOTEL ACAPULCO

Le mie mani, scarne, han continuato a batter testi,

trasformando in carta ogni voce di morto

che non abbia lasciato testamento,

dimenticando di curare

ciò che tutti definiscono il normale affare

d’ogni essere umano: ufficio, casa, famiglia,

l’ideale, insomma, di una vita regolare.

Abbandonata, nel lontano 2026, ogni difesa

d’un contratto a tempo indeterminato,

etichettato come squilibrato,

mi son rinchiuso nel centro di Milano,

Hotel Acapulco, albergo scalcinato,

chiamando a raccolta i sogni degli emarginati,

esaurendo i risparmi di una vita

nella pigione, in riviste e pasti risicati.

Quando i carabinieri faranno irruzione

nella stanza scrostata dell’Hotel Acapulco

e troveranno un altro morto senza testamento,

chi racconterà la storia, ordinaria,

d’un vecchio vissuto controvento?  

HOTEL ACAPULCO

My emaciated hands continued to write,

turning each voice of death into paper,

That he lefts no will,

forgetting to look after

what everyone defines as the normal business

of every human being: office, home, family,

the ideal, at last, of a regular life.

Abandoned, back in 2026, any defense

of a permanent contract,

labelled as unbalanced,

i’m locked up in the centre of Milan,

Hotel Acapulco, a decrepit hotel,

calling upon the dreams of the marginalized,

exhausting a lifetime’s savings

in magazines and meagre meals.

When the Carabinieri burst

into the decrepit room of the Hotel Acapulco

and find yet another dead man without a will,

who will tell the ordinary story

of an old man who lived windbreak?

LA BALLATA DI PEGGY E PEDRO

La ballata di Peggy e Pedro è latrata dai punkabbestia

di Ponte Garibaldi, con un misto d’odio e disperazione,

insegnandoci, intimi nessi tra geometria ed amore,

ad amare come fossimo matematici circondati da cani randagi.

Peggy eri ubriaca, stato d’animo normale,

nelle baraccopoli lungo l’alveo del Tevere,

e l’alcool, nelle sere d’Agosto, non riscalda,

obnubilando ogni senso in sogni annichilenti,

trasformando ogni frase biascicata in fucilate nella schiena

contro corazze disciolte dalla calura estiva.

Sdraiata sui bordi del muraglione del ponte,

tra i drop out della Roma città aperta,

apristi il tuo cuore all’insulto gratuito di Pedro,

tuo amante, e, basculandoti, cadesti nel vuoto,

disegnando traiettorie gravitazionali dal cielo al cemento.

Pedro, non eri ubriaco, ad un giorno di distanza,

non eri ubriaco, stato d’animo anormale,

nelle baraccopoli lungo l’alveo del Tevere,

o nelle serate vuote della movida milanese,

essendo intento a spiegare a cani e barboni

una curiosa lezione di geometria non euclidea.

Salito sui bordi del muraglione del ponte,

nell’indifferenza abulica dei tuoi scolari distratti,

saltasti, in cerca della stessa traiettoria d’amore,

dello stesso tragitto fatale alla tua Peggy,

atterrando, sul cemento, nello stesso istante.

I punkabbestia di Ponte Garibaldi, sgomberati dall’autorità locale,

diffonderanno in ogni baraccopoli del mondo la lezione surreale

imperniata sulla sbalorditiva idea

che l’amore sia un affare di geometria non euclidea.

THE BALLAD OF PEGGY AND PEDRO

The ballad of Peggy and Pedro barked out by the punkbestials

of the Garibaldi Bridge, with a mixture of hatred and despair,

teaches us the intimate relationship between geometry and love,

to love as if we were maths surrounded by stray dogs.

Peggy you were drunk, normal mood,

in the slums along the bed of the Tiber

and alcohol, on August evenings, doesn’t warm you up,

clouding every sense in annihilating dreams,

transforming every chewed-up sentence into a gunfight in the back

on armour dissolved by the summer heat.

Lying on the edges of the bridge’s ledges,

among the drop-outs of the Rome open city,

you opened your heart to the gratuitous insult of Pedro,

your lover, and toppled over, falling into the void,

drawing gravitational trajectories from the sky to the cement.

Pedro wasn’t drunk, a day’s journey away,

you weren’t drunk, abnormal state of mind,

in the slums along the bed of the Tiber,

or in the empty parties of Milan’s movida,

with the intention of explaining to dogs and tramps

a curious lesson of non-Euclidean geometry.

Mounted on the edge of the bridge,

in the apathetic indifference of your distracted pupils,

you jumped, in the same trajectory of love,

along the same fatal path as your Peggy,

landing on the cement at the same instant.

The punkbestials of the Garibaldi Bridge, cleared by the local authority,

will spread a surreal lesson to every slum in the world

centred on the astonishing idea

that love is a matter of non-Euclidean geometry.

L’ANTI-«PROMESSA» D’AMARE

Da anti-«poeta», vittima della mia anti-«poesia»

non sarei in grado di dedicarti che un’anti-«promessa» d’amore,

la mia anti-«promessa» d’amore avrebbe i tratti d’una sinestesia,

la durezza staliniana dell’acciaio e la dolcezza del colore,

la finezza dell’amicizia e la consistenza dell’amore,

i tuoi occhi, candidi, mi tramutano in cinico malato d’idrofobia,

e contro la rabbia – monamour– non esiste dottore.

Anti-«promessa» d’amore da leggere davanti all’ufficiale di stato civile,

come riuscire a convincere un mondo tecno-triviale

che ti ho amata dal Giugno del 1976, forse, addirittura, da Aprile,

io ero un embrione e tu, ancora, eri immersa nell’aurora boreale,

saresti stata sei anni un angelo, un fantasma, l’inessenza di un frattale,

senza fare una piega a attenderti, sei anni, trentasei anni, senza niente da dire,

i contemporanei montoni di Panurgo mi condannerebbero al silenzio totale.

Sei la mia anti-«promessa» d’amore e, magari, il concetto ti suona insensibile

ti osservo dormire, serena, come una briciola adagiata in un tostapane,

il mio amore – mi spogli dal ruolo di «guastatore»- è abissale come un sommergibile,

condannato a disseminar siluri sotto (mentita) spoglia di pesci-cane.

THE ANTI-PROMISE TO LOVE

Anti-poet, victim of my anti-poetry, 

all I could do is dedicate to you an antpromise of love,

my anti-promise of love would have the features of a synesthesia,

the Stalinist hardness of steel and the softness of colour,

the finesse of friendship and the consistency of love,

your white eyes turn me into a hydrophobic cynic,

and there’s no doctor for rage, my love.

An anti-promise of love to be read before a registrar,

as to convince a tecno-trivial world,

i’ve loved you since June 1976, perhaps, in truth, since April,

i was an embryo and you were still immersed in the aurora borealis,

for six years you would have been an angel, a ghost, the inessential of a fractal,

without batting an eyelid waiting for you, six years, thirty-six years, with nothing to say,

the sheep of Panurge’s contemporaries would condemn me to total silence.

You are my anti-promise of love, and the idea may seem imperceptible to you,

i observe you sleeping, serene, like a crumb abandoned in a toaster,

my love I am stripped of the role of ‘sapper’ – it is abyssal like a submarine,

condemned to scatter torpedoes under the (false) guise of a dogfish.

BALLATA DEGLI INESISTENTI

Potrei tentare di narrarvi

al suono della mia tastiera

come Baasima morì di lebbra

senza mai raggiunger la frontiera,

o come l’armeno Méroujan

sotto uno sventolio di mezzelune

sentì svanire l’aria dai suoi occhi

buttati via in una fossa comune;

Charlee, che travasata a Brisbane

in cerca di un mondo migliore,

concluse il viaggio

dentro le fauci di un alligatore,

o Aurélio, chiamato Bruna

che dopo otto mesi d’ospedale

morì di aidiesse contratto

a battere su una tangenziale.

Nessuno si ricorderà di Yehoudith,

delle sue labbra rosse carminio,

finite a bere veleni tossici

in un campo di sterminio,

o di Eerikki, dalla barba rossa, che,

sconfitto dalla smania di navigare,

dorme, raschiato dalle orche,

sui fondi d’un qualche mare;

la testa di Sandrine, duchessa

di Borgogna, udì rumor di festa

cadendo dalla lama d’una ghigliottina

in una cesta,

e Daisuke, moderno samurai,

del motore d’un aereo contava i giri

trasumanando un gesto da kamikaze

in harakiri.

Potrei starvi a raccontare

nell’afa d’una notte d’estate

come Iris ed Anthia, bimbe spartane

dacché deformi furono abbandonate,

o come Deendayal schiattò di stenti

imputabile dell’unico reato

di vivere una vita da intoccabile

senza mai essersi ribellato;

Ituha, ragazza indiana,

che, minacciata da un coltello,

finì a danzare con Manitou

nelle anticamere di un bordello,

e Luther, nato nel Lancashire,

che, liberato dal mestiere d’accattone,

fu messo a morire da sua maestà britannica

nelle miniere di carbone.

Chi si ricorderà di Itzayana,

e della sua famiglia massacrata

in un villaggio ai margini del Messico

dall’esercito di Carranza in ritirata,

e chi di Idris, africano ribelle,

tramortito dallo shock e dalle ustioni

mentre, indomito al dominio coloniale,

cercava di rubare un camion di munizioni;

Shahdi, volò alta nel cielo

sulle aste della verde rivoluzione,

atterrando a Teheran, le ali dilaniate

da un colpo di cannone,

e Tikhomir, muratore ceceno,

che rovinò tra i volti indifferenti

a terra dal tetto del Mausoleo

di Lenin, senza commenti.

Questi miei oggetti di racconto 

fratti a frammenti di inesistenza

trasmettano suoni distanti

di resistenza.

BALLAD OF THE NON-EXISTENT

I could try to tell you

with the sound of my keyboard

how Baasima died of leprosy

without ever reaching the border,

or how the Armenian Meroujan

under a flutter of half-moons

felt the air in his eyes vanish

thrown into a mass grave;

Charlee, who moved to Brisbane

in search of a better world,

ends the journey

in the mouth of an alligator,

or Aurelio, named Bruna

who, after eight months in hospital

died of AIDS contracted

to hit a ring road.

Nobody will remember Yehoudith,

her lips carmine red,

erased by drinking toxic poisons

in an extermination camp,

or Eerikki, with his red beard, 

defeated by the turbulence of the waves,

who sleeps, scoured by orcas,

on the bottom of some sea;

the head of Sandrine, Duchess

of Burgundy heard the rumour of the feast

as it fell from the blade of a guillotine

into a basket

and Daisuke, modern samurai,

counted the revolutions of a plane’s engine 

transhumanizing a kamikaze gesture into harakiri.

I could go on and on

in the stifling heat of a summer night

how Iris and Anthia, deformed Spartan children

were abandoned,

or how Deendayal died of deprivation

attributable to the single crime

of living the life of an outcast

without ever having rebelled;

Ituha, an Indian girl,

threatened with a knife,

who ends up dancing with Manitou

in the anteroom of a brothel

and Luther, born in Lancashire

freed from the profession of beggar

and forced to die by His Britannic Majesty

in the coal mines.

Who will remember Itzayana

and her family massacred

in a village on the outskirts of Mexico

by Carranza’s retreating army,

and what of Idris, the African rebel,

stunned by shocks and burns

while untamed by colonial domination,

he tried to steal an ammunition truck;

Shahdi flew high into the sky

above the flagpoles of the Green Revolution,

landing in Tehran with his wings torn apart

by a cannon shot,

and Tikhomir, a Chechen bricklayer,

that fell among the indifferent faces

to the ground from the roof of Lenin’s Mausoleum,

without comment.

From objects of narrative

fractured into fragments of non-existence

transmits distant sounds

of resistance.

Ivan Pozzoni è nato a Monza nel 1976. Ha introdotto in Italia la materia della Law and Literature. Ha diffuso saggi su filosofi italiani e su etica e teoria del diritto del mondo antico; ha collaborato con con numerose riviste italiane e internazionali. Tra 2007 e 2018 sono uscite varie sue raccolte di versi: Underground e Riserva Indiana, con A&B Editrice, Versi Introversi, Mostri, Galata morente, Carmina non dant damen, Scarti di magazzino, Qui gli austriaci sono più severi dei Borboni, Cherchez la troika e La malattia invettiva con Limina Mentis, Lame da rasoi, con Joker, Il Guastatore, con Cleup, Patroclo non deve morire, con deComporre Edizioni. È stato fondatore e direttore della rivista letteraria Il Guastatore – Quaderni «neon»-avanguardisti; è stato fondatore e direttore della rivista letteraria L’Arrivista; è stato direttore esecutivo della rivista filosofica internazionale Información Filosófica; è, o è stato, direttore delle collane Esprit (Limina Mentis), Nidaba (Gilgamesh Edizioni) e Fuzzy (deComporre). Ha fondato una quindicina di case editrici socialiste autogestite. Ha scritto/curato 150 volumi, scritto 1000 saggi, fondato un movimento d’avanguardia (NeoN-avanguardismo, approvato da Zygmunt Bauman), con mille movimentisti, e steso un Anti-Manifesto NeoN-Avanguardista, È menzionato nei maggiori manuali universitari di storia della letteratura, storiografia filosofica e nei maggiori volumi di critica letteraria.Il suo volume La malattia invettiva vince Raduga, menzione della critica al Montano e allo Strega. Viene inserito nell’Atlante dei poeti italiani contemporanei dell’Università di Bologna ed è inserito molteplici volte nella maggiore rivista internazionale di letteratura, Gradiva.I suoi versi sono tradotti in francese, inglese e spagnolo. Nel 2024, dopo sei anni di ritiro totale allo studio accademico, rientra nel mondo artistico italiano e fonda il collettivo NSEAE (Nuova socio/etno/antropologia estetica).

Ivan Pozzoni was born in Monza in 1976. He introduced Law and Literature in Italy and the publication of essays on Italian philosophers and on the ethics and juridical theory of the ancient world; He collaborated with several Italian and international magazines. Between 2007 and 2018, different versions of the books were published: Underground and Riserva Indiana, with A&B Editrice, Versi Introversi, Mostri, Galata morente, Carmina non dant damen, Scarti di magazzino, Here the Austrians are more severe than the Bourbons, Cherchez the troika. et The Invective Disease with Limina Mentis,Lame da rasoi, with Joker, Il Guastatore, with Cleup, Patroclo non deve morire, with deComporre Edizioni. He was the founder and director of the literary magazine Il Guastatore – «neon»-avant-garde notebooks; he was the founder and director of the literary magazine L’Arrivista; he is the editor and chef of the international philosophical magazine Información Filosófica; he is, or has been, creator of the series Esprit (Limina Mentis), Nidaba (Gilgamesh Edizioni) and Fuzzy (deComporre). It contains a fortnight of autogérées socialistes edition houses. He wrote 150 volumes, wrote 1000 essays, founded an avant-garde movement (NéoN-avant-gardisme, approved by Zygmunt Bauman), with a millier of movements, and wrote an Anti-manifesto NéoN-Avant-gardiste. This is mentioned in the main university manuals of literature history, philosophical history and in the main volumes of literary criticism. His book La malattia invettiva wins Raduga, mention of the critique of Montano et Strega. He is included in the Atlas of contemporary Italian poets of the University of Bologne and figures à plusieurs reprized in the great international literature review of Gradiva. His verses are translated into French, English and Spanish. In 2024, after six years of total retrait of academic studies, he return to the Italian artistic world and melts the NSEAE Kolektivne (New socio/ethno/aesthetic anthropology).

Of Sonnets and Skyscrapers

I wear this sonnet like a borrowed coat,

Stiff in the shoulders, seams pulled tight,

But stitched with threads from centuries ago,

Where ink met quill under a candle’s light.

I try to walk its lines, the measured pace,

Yet find the iambs don’t quite match my stride—

We’ve outgrown gallant rhymes and studied grace,

In favor of the blunt truths we can’t hide.

Now cities hum with digital confessions,

Algorithms dance in place of stars.

We measure worth in data and impressions,

Our loves reduced to avatars and bars.

Still, I patch this form, frayed though it may be—

Let it hold the sum of what we see.

Roots and Wings

I was born with roots buried deep,

tangled in the soil of a place

I never chose.

They said, grow where you’re planted,

but the earth felt like chains,

pulling me down

when all I wanted

was to fly.

You see, no one tells you

that wings come at a cost,

that to lift off

means leaving something behind—

a house,

a name,

a past.

I’ve felt both—

the pull of ground

and the ache of sky.

Each promises something the other can’t give,

each holds a piece of me

that the other can’t understand.

And now, I sit between them,

torn like a tree split by lightning—

my roots reaching down

while my heart looks up,

waiting for the courage to choose.

Maybe that’s the lie

we tell ourselves:

that you must pick one,

that you can’t grow

and fly,

that to be grounded

means losing the air,

and to soar

means forgetting the dirt.

But I think

we are both—

roots in the earth,

wings in the sky—

always tugged between where we come from

and where we long to go,

never quite free,

never quite still,

yet whole

in the longing.

Storms, Oaks, Roots

The sky cracked like a bell on the last night of autumn,

cold biting through the marrow, every bone humming.

We live like this—between breakage and bloom,

roots deepened by storms, reaching, always reaching,

downward into soil heavy with rain.

Oaks stand because they must,

holding what the earth gives—grit, flood, wind,

gathering strength from what tries to tear them apart.

We, too, are carved by what we survive,

the lines on our faces tracing the years of drought and plenty.

Pain sets its teeth in us, but still we grow,

hope rising stubborn as new shoots through cracked stone.

There’s no music to it, just the slow rise,

a kind of weathering in silence,

until we learn the language of roots,

how to drink deep from what remains.

Bruised but upright, we live as oaks live,

accepting the storms, holding tight in the wind,

and somehow, finding growth even in the breaking.

No Longer Here in Body, But …

You left in the middle of the night,

the house sighing in your absence, the door ajar,

as if you might return to fill the space again.

But silence consumed your place,

and we’ve learned to live with that weight,

growing larger by the day.

Your boots still by the hearth, worn thin with the miles,

carry the imprint of where you’ve been—

fields turned to dust, rivers that swelled and sank.

I trace the scuffed leather, hoping for something left behind,

a sign you’re still walking somewhere,

beneath a sky we both knew.

Absence doesn’t stay quiet,

it grows loud in the smallest things:

the kettle that doesn’t boil,

the coat never worn again,

the tools untouched, rust creeping in like autumn frost.

You are no longer here in body, but—

you remain in the turning of the soil,

in the way the wind presses through the trees,

in the stones you laid by hand,

one by one, until the walls stood solid.

We keep moving through the days,

because that’s what you’d want—

but the earth knows what’s missing,

and so do we,

every footfall a memory of where yours used to be.

Walking Your Field

I walked your field today, the one you tended

with hands thick from years of toil,

where earth clung to you as if it knew your name.

The furrows are softer now, untended,

but still they hold the shape of your labor,

your will pressed into the soil.

The air held a quiet weight,

a heaviness that comes from things left undone,

the half-mended fence,

the stones you set aside for later.

I stood where you used to stand,

looking out over what remains—

and what’s lost beneath it all.

I remember your boots sinking into the mud,

each step deliberate, as if every grain of dirt

mattered. And it did,

to you, everything mattered—the smallest seed,

the rainfall, the lengthening days.

Now the field feels like a question,

asking how long we can hold what we’ve lost,

how much we can grow without you here

to shape the rows, to tell the seasons when to start.

I plant my feet where yours once stood,

but the earth feels foreign, unfamiliar.

Still, I walk, because that’s all I know,

wanting something to rise from this,

like the crops you coaxed from the barren land,

year after year, with only your hands and hope.

Jeffery Allen Tobin is a political scientist and researcher based in South Florida. His extensive body of work primarily explores U.S. foreign policy, democracy, national security, and migration. He has been writing poetry and prose for more than 30 years.

Submission: Synchronized Chaos: Rengay 
           By Marjorie Pezzoli,  Christina Chin  & Sarang Bhand
_______________________________________________________


1
Sanctuary 

curtains drawn
fireplace crackles          
chrysanthemums drop petals     Marjorie Pezzoli 
 

then a heron forewarns 
the birds of hurricane             	  Christina Chin  

                       
uprooted children 
from faraway land
sleeping under sky                     Sarang Bhand 


mist settles in
soft gray clouds 
blue skies soon                          Marjorie Pezzoli 


looking up to sky in hope
bowing down to earth in faith       Sarang Bhand 


in the air
aroma of coffee and chai
grandma's tea table                     Christina Chin


2
Mountain Top

adjusting  
to long night
new time zone                          Christina Chin
 

the earth spins 
eucalyptus bark peels             Marjorie Pezzoli 


changing sky
at every mile 
long road trip                           Sarang Bhand 


unsolicited—
passenger giving 
directions                                Christina Chin


a scenic detour 
much needed break                Sarang Bhand 


sky show 
brilliant production 
no tickets needed                   Marjorie Pezzoli 






3
Windswept     

rising sun
that you sent 
to my side                               Sarang Bhand 


mist rises
evergreen branches               Marjorie Pezzoli 


roadblock ahead 
fastening a neck collar 
pretending to sleep                Christina Chin


stuck in traffic
together we catch
figments of time                      Sarang Bhand 


a house on an island 
king tide                                  Christina Chin


steadfast evergreen 
branches waltz with wind
she dreams about clouds       Marjorie Pezzoli