Two Poems

“American Buffalo” by Sean Foster

Disorder

There is order. There is the classroom
and the hospital room.
I hear poetry in both. You don’t
understand. It’s over,
all over. I am here now,
past the classroom and the hospital.
The poetry, it still comes
and trails. I wish
like I did before. And then I don’t.
I was sweeping, still sweeping.
You see, I’m not an orderly person.
The hospital room was complete
and messy and orderly. The classroom
was hell. When in one,
I wanted the other. We packed up
the hospital room. I lied: my brothers packed.
I stood near the waiting room. It was not
for waiting. It was for something else. The windows,
the tranquility garden, the atrium in the classroom.
You don’t see it, do you?
I was reading a hiking magazine. I decided
I was going on the Appalachian trail.
All of it. This was before he died. I made a pact.
It would take an entire summer.

“The owls are not what they seem” by Nataliia Burmaka

Again my father

Again, my father
came to see me while I was sleeping,
a bubble on my lips.
He still surprises me.
So close to my face, his face,
all teeth and noor.
My mother would say, “He’s full
of noor now,” made of light.
Moonlight, light at the crack
of his bedroom door,
fluorescence of his office
at night. Above that desk,
a painting of a city skyline in grays,
How to paint rain? A brushstroke
of a person, of people holding black umbrellas.
Yet the day he left, not rain, light—
that white marble of the mosque in Mecca—
filled the room, pouring from his mouth,
he could have been choking.
A hiccup. That’s all. Then gone.
Now he comes back to me,
seems preoccupied. He said, “Pray.”
He said, “I have to go,” fiercely,
and I woke like I needed more
air, like I should have been gasping.
Was he still there? It felt like he was
threaded blue against black on my pillow
so I looked for him. Fell back
asleep to the thought of him facing me.

About the author

Maryam Ghafoor is a queer Pakistani-American woman from Illinois. Her poems appear in Foundry, Barnstorm, and American Poetry Review. She currently works as an instructor at Purdue University.

about the artists

Sean Foster carries mail in Hamilton, Ohio when it is light and at times, when it is dark. In 2022, Sean wrote something every day. In 2023, he has begun publishing and illustrating on a small substack called typaphobe. Sean lives with his wife, daughter, and boxer outside Cincinnati. You can find him on twitter @foster_ious or instagram @fosterious.

Nataliia Burmaka graduated from Boris Danchenko’s National Studio of Fine Arts (Sumy, Ukraine) in 1999 and worked as an artist designer from 1999 till 2005. Later she made illustrations for books and worked together with her husband creating murals (private orders). She moved to Finland in 2022, escaping from war in Ukraine. She took part in four 2-person exhibitions in Central Finland. Her works are featured by such journals as Welter, Quibble Lit, Red Noise Collective, and is forthcoming in FLARE!. Besides being a painter, she is also a writer and co-organizer of the Ukrainian short story contest “Open World”.