*Alyssa Yankwitt

*Alyssa Yankwitt is a Pushcart-nominated poet as well as a photographer, teacher, bartender, documenter, and earth walker. Her poems, essays, and photographs have previously appeared in GravelTL;DRBlacktop PassagesAlyss, Up the Staircase QuarterlyIt’s All About ShoesSpry Literary Journal, Peacock JournalAfter the PauseThirteen Myna Birds, and Gargoyle. She teaches in the English Department at the City College of New York and is also a Staff Developer for CCNY’s Poetry Outreach Program. Alyssa has incurable wanderlust, enjoys drinking bourbon, hates writing about herself in third person, and loves a good disaster. You can see more of her work here: https://www.facebook.com/Alyssa-Yankwitt-609514002467835/ .

For the Tears

Don’t apologize for your pell-mell hurtle, for the sudden startle of the earth across sun disc, the open mouth eclipsing good intentions, for blood-spatter or salt-tears, for the hitch of breath in surprise or mortification, the needle as it digs for a sliver, the slam of the door, the too-loud guffaw, for the need, groping and grappling, for the bite, bigger than speech, bigger than swallow, for the face in the mirror, in the damp pillow, for the tears, all of them.


Devon Balwit teaches in Portland, OR. She has six chapbooks and two collections out or forthcoming, among them: We are Procession, Seismograph (Nixes Mate Books), Risk Being/Complicated (A collaboration with Canadian artist Lorette C. Luzajic); and Motes at Play in the Halls of Light (Kelsay Books). Her individual poems can be found in The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday, the Aeolian Harp Folio, Red Earth Review, The Fourth River, Long Exposure, The Inflectionist, The Free State Review, Red Paint Hill, Rattle, Peacock Journal, Bending Genres and more.

"For the Tears," by Devon Balwit