National Poetry Month 2025
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Census at Bethlehem, 1566, oil on panel
The editors at REFRACT are closing out National Poetry Month with a celebration of the form. The editors who chose to participate in this month’s column have drafted poems covering a wide range of themes, forms, and techniques. Here are those poems:
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To the girl whose hair makes her look like a lion
by Kethlyn Young
Admire your mane, though it may look silly
You are a young lioness after all
Do you know why your hair shoots up & out?
It’s trying to reach the sun,
So it has to stand tall.
You can lay your hair down with gel,
Use a hard brush to brush it back,
But! As soon as the sun hits it
Bam!
It snaps right back.
And that’s okay.
It just means your hair is alive,
And it wants to dance in the sun.
So wear it with pride.
You are a young lioness after all.
Days of March
by Jon Sosa
Can’t see what’s beyond the torment, can’t see stars.
Birds can’t fly nor can’t leave the nest,
Only one thing to reassure their essence:
They’ll chirp as it’s gone,
The gray sky and painful cold.
Numb hands and burning eyes,
Feelings change when it says yes.
A day of hope and scarce threats,
A whisper brings the grateful tears,
Stroll and breathe the humid scent
Through your pores, the peaceful air reaches your head.
Again the nightmare while you dream
As it was, not advice, just a slight breeze
A normal day shows no warning;
Run faster before it gets closed,
Or you’ll wait again to see a face covered in gold.
Dear Hollywood
by Navipa Zaman
Dear Hollywood,
You moved away.
You left. You left. You left.
And now nothing is right.
I know. I know. I know.
I'm jealous and dramatic.
It's just life, they say.
The time will pass anyway, they say.
But do you know?
Do you know that when I’m with you, the trees don't seem that big?
Dear Hollywood,
In another universe, we are still eating lunch together.
We are still drinking overpriced coffee together.
We are still sharing bagels, lip gloss, and answers to the homework.
We are still girls.
Dear Hollywood,
You wear your heart on your sleeve.
I tell you,
‘The boys you love at 15 are not the boys you’ll love forever.’
You don't listen.
You never listen.
You’re calling me up at 2 a.m.
And there I am again, fixing a heart I didn’t break.
Dear Hollywood,
18 months.
18 months of radio silence.
Most people are lucky to find a twin flame once.
For us, it happened twice.
All thanks to you.
I didn’t realize what I lost.
Not until you found us again.
Dear Hollywood,
People are going to think I’m in love with you.
I’m not in love with you.
But I love you.
Dear Hollywood,
I hate phone calls.
I once spent 4 hours on the phone with you.
Dear Hollywood,
We’re playing chess.
I hate chess.
I play my hand. Deal my cards. Roll the dice.
I'm all in.
Are you?
(We’re not playing chess)
Dear Hollywood,
I can feel you sneaking glances at me.
We’re sitting across the table from each other.
You’re an ocean away from me.
I hate silence.
We’ve stewed in silence for days.
Dear Hollywood,
I can’t help it.
I forgive you.
You surprise me.
You forgive me.
Dear Hollywood,
Do you ever think we talk too much shit?
No?
Yeah, me neither.
Dear Hollywood,
I used to hate my hair.
You have my hair.
I love my hair.
Dear Hollywood,
Call me.
Or don’t.
The time will pass anyway.
A Window
by Katerina Ventouratos
Billions of people exist outside
i look through and gaze
Billions of grains exist inside
Each wearing a mask to hide
acting in various plays
Billions of people exist outside
Forced to conform to one mind
crushed in the maze
Billions of grains exist inside
How many times have we lied
caught in the craze
Billions of people exist outside
How many times have I cried
compelled to one phrase
Billions of grains exist inside
Overthinking makes the brain fried
laughing in the haze
Billions of people exist outside
Billions of grains exist inside
On Drinking Coffee with an LDS Missionary
by Aleander Santos
I’ve died and I’ve been reincarnated. I renounced my ways, left everything behind, and moved to a monastery on the Tibetan plateau to live with the monks and learn the lore of the sacred and of the mythical who were painted on thangkas and carved out of stone. It was the only way to make sense of things. The monks outside spent what seemed like two days working on the same mandala on the floor. They all sat on the floor in a circle in a lotus position and spent hours on one section of the mandala, working with bowls of colored sand. The hand of the auspicious deity faced my direction while his contorted feet faced the sky. They, then, took brushes and each took turns wiping the sand towards the center of the mandala, around the chest of the rosy-cheeked deity, where her heart would be. The monks continued this until the design was no longer visible and the sand had accumulated into a sad gray mound. In my first life, I lived in the United States of America. I have lived three different lives since then. First, as a dung beetle in Laos; I suppose my agnosticism and criticism of organized religion didn’t help me there. A thin kid picked me up off the ground and picked at my exterior. Then, I was a well-off Italian man who spent a majority of his adult life living in a castello his family had owned for generations. He didn’t work, but he read a lot of Dante, smoked a pack a day, and had passionate orgies with younger men. After that, I was reborn again in the United States of America, but I returned to the monastery. During my junior year of college, a Latter-Day Saint missionary, somewhere around my age, probably from Iowa, had knocked on my door and asked if I knew the word of God and knew of the gospels. For some reason, I invited him in and offered him some leftover pizza and coffee. I didn’t know that LDS folks couldn’t drink coffee. Oddly enough, he revealed to me that his father was forcing him to go on this mission trip. In private, he’d been reading the Three Great Bodhisattvas—Manjushri, Vajrapani, and Avalokiteśvara—and the teachings of Siddharta Gautama. After his third cup of coffee and second Four Loko, he told me that the Buddha and Joseph Smith were not that far apart—canonically, they were the same. One was born in Vermont, the other in Nepal. Eventually, I quit my degree, sold my possessions, slept with the LDS guy, renounced my citizenship, and returned to the monastery where the vacant room that was assigned to me looked vaguely familiar, like I had been there before. A week has passed since then, and I see these monks on the floor sitting in a lotus position. They would make a mandala out of sand for days, then wipe it towards the center where the deity’s heart is, leaving a sad gray mound. Why would they destroy the mandala they had created over the past two days and three lifetimes?
SPRING 2025
Kethlyn Young and Jon Sosa are members of the editorial board; Navipa Zaman is the events coordinator and social media editor; Katerina Ventouratos is the copy chief; and Aleander Santos is the editor-in-chief.
To read more about them, head to the masthead page.