Pangyrus

“This poem originated from a dream. I often harvest the content of my dreams crafting poems built on my best recollection of whatever my subconscious presented to me while sleeping. In writing dream poems there’s always a tension between my desire to stick to the script of my memory vs. aesthetic and other considerations. In this case, the final product is very close to my memory of the dream. The location was the ranch house I grew up in. My efforts to process the tenor of contemporary life with daily assaults on privacy, bodily autonomy, and human rights are reflected in poem which evokes feelings of being intruded upon and violated in my once safe family home. The title came to me after writing the first draft. It is a reference to the famous poem, “They Came First” by the German pastor Martin Niemoller which condemns the complicity of N**i era intellectuals, clergy, and others for not speaking out against the persecution of Jews, trade unionists, socialists, and communists. Other undesirables were also persecuted, but the poignancy of his confession remains. Sadly, with the passage of time the list of scapegoated groups by people in power has only grown longer,” — David Janey on his poem “They Came First for Our Dreams.”

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“As I’ve traveled through different channels of my life, each one inevitably brings me back to the ocean. I am most centered and do my best work when I can breathe salty air, contemplate tides, recognize the music of gulls and rumbling waves, and stand with my feet in sand. I wrote ‘Menopause’ by the ocean at Split Rock Cove in South Thomaston, Maine. I believe my writing has shifted with the wisdom of menopause, which can be a time of great self-hatred for women. We find ourselves shape-shifting once again and questioning as if we have returned to our adolescent selves: Am I fat? Am I ugly? Do I care what others think? Learning what it means to live as an older woman means accepting both physical and mental changes. This poem is the courage to embrace and celebrate aging. And to find our own strength, even through challenging times and the threat of the modern world invading our peace,” — Linda Lamenza on her poem “Menopause.”

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“My mom went to the dog psychic because she was in a season of impasse, and she was afraid that it was not just one season but all of them. She had done this to herself: she’d cultivated a dead-end marriage; she had chosen a profession with no chance of promotion; she had moved herself into a nice house at the end of a cul-de-sac for comfort and yes, perhaps a little bit for gluttony, for sin, and now she was terrified that she would atone for it,” — an excerpt from Rachel Whalen’s story “The Dog Psychic.”

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“This poem is part of a project I’m working on in which each section is inspired by an episode of the BBC documentary Planet Earth. One long poem (‘Mountains,’ for example) or multiple poems make up each section. ‘The Gates Open’ is part of the ‘Seasonal Forests’ section. In May 2023, just after my book, Apocalypse on the Linoleum, came out with Lily Poetry Review Press, I insanely signed up for 30/30 with Tupelo Press, which meant writing a new draft every day of the month. Each new poem would go up online, so there was a real pressure to not only write every day, but make it decent enough to be seen in public. After the month was over, Tupelo would take down that month’s poems and start over. ‘The Gates Open’ began as one of those drafts. I sat on the steps of the farmhouse porch and thumb-typed on my phone while the party went on around me. Minutes before the midnight deadline, I sent the draft into the ether, and in the morning, still enamored with my output, sent it to my friend who’d hosted the farm fundraiser and answered my questions about cheese. Two years later, I was still tinkering with it, and up until recently, I hadn’t nailed down the title, which references a mystical (Kabbalistic) belief that on Shabbat, the gates to the divine realm open and we receive a second soul, which allows us to open ourselves to the mystery and to delight in the kiss of divine light that floods in. I’m still grateful for the push to write so much in such a short time — I still have some unworked first drafts from that month, sitting in a folder, waiting for their moment,” — Josette Akresh-Gonzales on her poem “The Gates Open.”

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